58802	----	COMMUNITY PROPERTY BY ALFRED COPPEL _The first successful non-Terrestrial divorce case! Fame for Legal Eagle Jose Obanion for his generalship of a three-sexed, five Venusian history-shattering precedent! Habits are habits but--alas!--on Venus they differ...._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] One of these days an embittered lawyer is going to write a text on the effects of spaceflight on the divorce laws. This writer will be a Terrie, about five ten, with blue eyes, black hair--turning grey very fast, and the unlikely name of Jose Weinberg Obanion III. Me. I remember very well the day I was graduated from law school; the day my father gave me his version of the Obanion credo. _Always remember you live in a community property state--_ That simple phrase has kept three generations of Obanions in the divorce trade. And only I have had cause to regret it. Basically, I suppose, my troubles began the day the Subversive Party swept the Joe Macs out of Congress and repealed the Alien Restriction Act of 1998. That bit of log-rolling gave the franchise to almost all resident aliens and resulted in a situation virtually destroying the sanctity of divorce as an institution. I'm a Joe Mac myself--politically, I mean. Obanions have been voting the Joe Mac Party Ticket for more than a hundred years. Red is our color. There are even family legends that say an Obanion was with the first Joe Mac when he became President of that old unit the Euse of Aay. We have to rely on legends, unfortunately, because the Joe Mac Party traditionally fed their rally bonfires with books, and when they won the election and took over the Euse of Aay they had a rally to end all rallies and somehow the Government Archives--books, you see, as well as punch cards and the like--got taken over by some very zealous Party men. The records were always rather incomplete after that. Only word of mouth information was available during that first Joe Mac Administration, and that can be sketchy. For example, the party color is red. All we know is that first Joe Macs had something to do with red. You see how it goes. What I mean by all this, is that I can see the faults in my own Party. I'm no diehard. Nor am I a bad loser. The Subs won control of Congress by a landslide, so I guess the people wanted that sort of slipshod government. Only they should have been more careful, dammit, when they started tampering with the laws. I'm not antispacegook, either. I have my framed Legal Eagle's Oath right over my desk and I live up to it. And if Congress sees fit to make any Tmm, Dccck, or Harry a citizen of our great Commonwealth--I account it my duty to see to it that they are not denied the benefits of our Terrestrial divorce laws. But sometimes it can be _very_ trying. The new Sub Administration and their rash repeal of Joe Mac laws has had the effect of putting reverse English on the Obanion credo. _Always remember you live in a community property state...._ That wonderful phrase that encompasses so many great truths--that ringing statement that has made me rich and kept me a bachelor--now means something else. Confusion. Work. Yes, and even spacegook depravity. * * * * * I should go back and pick up the story at the beginning before I get too upset. My name, as I said before, is Jose Obanion. I'm a licensed Legal Eagle, specializing in divorce law--and doing well at it. I have a good office on the 150th floor of the Needle Building, a damned fine address and a comfortable lay-out, too. A whole room to myself, a private visor service to the Municipal Law Library, and a lap-desk for my secretary, Thais Orlof. On the day it began I was walking to work from the tubeway station and feeling rather pleased with myself. My income was high and steady, my protein ration account was in good shape and I was doing my bit as a civilized Terrestrial. The morning was remarkably clear. You could make out the disc of the sun quite nicely through the smog, and there was a smogbow gleaming with carbon particles in the sky. I felt alert, expectant. Something BIG was going to happen to me. I could feel it. Even in the go-to-work press of people on Montgomery Street, I didn't get shocked once. That's the way my luck was running. And three characters brushed against me and got nipped by my new Keep-A-Way. There's been talk about making Keep-A-Ways illegal. Just the sort of infringement on personal liberty the Subversives are famous for. Inconsistent, too. They pass laws letting every spacegook in the universe come here to live and then talk about taking away one of the things that makes the crowding bearable. I made a point of arriving at the office a little early, hoping to catch Thais in the act of coming in late. My secretary was a hard girl to dock, but I never stopped trying. It was a game we played. If she came in late, I would be justified in docking a protein credit off her pay for every thirty seconds of office time she wasted. So far I had managed to keep her pay low enough so she couldn't think of leaving my employ--though she was earning a few prots on the side by acting as correspondent in divorce cases that couldn't be settled by Collusion Court and actually had to be tried before a judge and jury. Thais and I were still haggling over the price of her services as part-time mistress, too. I couldn't see giving her her asking price, which was half again the regular market price. Thais knew the value of a prot, all right. And of an erg, too. "Take care of the ergs," she would say, looking at me meaningfully, "and the prots will take care of themselves." Thais was a devout Ben Franklinist and she was full of aphorisms like that. I settled myself into my Lowfer and glanced over the desk calendar. A full, profitable day ahead. Tremmy Jessup and his new fiancee were coming in at 0900 to sign the premarital divorce settlement. A wise couple, I thought approvingly. Save a lot of trouble later. At 1100 Truncott vs Truncott and Truncott. A multiple divorce case with two women involved. Very lucrative sort of case. And then at 1200 Gleda Warick was coming in to have me validate her Interlocutory decree. A formality. But I hoped to take her to lunch at the Palace where they were advertising a five ounce portion of genuine horsemeat on their five prot dinner. That sort of thing would impress Gleda and I rather hoped for great things from her. Not only that, she was spending 25,000 prots yearly on divorces. No Franklinist, she. It still lacked a minute to the hour so I switched on the TV to catch Honest Pancho's commercial. Pancho was my most active competitor and he cost me plenty, but I couldn't suppress a grudging admiration of his enterprise. He had Lyra Yves doing his stuff for him, and anyone as socko as Lyra was dangerous. Sweetheart of the Western Hemisphere is the way she was billed, and her agent wasn't exaggerating too much. Lyra was singing his come-on backed by a quartet humming a steady whap rhythm and doing a slow twitch. The lights were playing her daring costume big, accenting the fact that she had one breast almost covered. I frowned. How come the League of Decency let her get away with anything as suggestive as an opaque breast covering. Pancho must have friends in the censor's office. It was just another sign of the increasing degeneracy of our times. Soon entertainers would be appearing clothed from head to foot, exploiting the erotic stimulation of imagination. "--whap me slap me baby doll," Lyra was singing. "Beat my head against the wall--lover, I don't care at all at all--_Whap!_ Honest Pancho's on the ball!" Now the announcer cut in with his insinuating voice explaining how you could get your divorces quicker, cheaper and twice as funny at Honest Pancho's Big Splitzmart in the Flatiron Building, as well as his Legal Eaglery just down from the County Courthouse. "--yes, friends--TWO big locations to serve you. Come in and see Honest Pancho today!" And then Lyra again: "Whap! Honest Pancho's on the baaalll! WHAP!" She faded doing a sinuous twitch. I turned the TV off feeling a little worse than when I turned it on. Maybe, I thought, I've been too conservative. Maybe _I'd_ better get on the baaaalll, too. Or else. I shrugged the thought aside just as Thais slipped through the door--exactly on time. I watched her strip off her smog mask and cinder cape--on office time--and place them carefully in the sterilizer. She was very careful not to smear the paint that was most of what she wore. I tapped a NoKanse alight and inhaled deeply. "Good morning, Thais," I said. "Whap!" she said in return. "I heard the TV all the way down the hall." She pulled a Lowfer out of the wall and settled down with her lap-desk across her knees. The tip of one sandal was just brushing my shin. The office, unfortunately, could have been bigger, but with sixteen million people living in the city, space was rather costly even for a man with a better than average prot account. "New paint?" I asked. She smiled brilliantly at me. "Nice of you to notice, boss." She fumbled in the pockets of the belt around her naked, cerise-painted middle and took out her pad and stylus. "On time and ready for work," she said. "A calorie saved is a calorie earned." But now, somehow, I didn't feel like attacking the day's schedule. Not quite yet. Pancho's commercial had disturbed me. "Thais," I said. "I wonder if I'm--well, slowing down--" "You, boss?" She fluffed her green-tinted hair provocatively and raised an eyebrow at me. "I wouldn't say so." "I don't mean that way," I said. "I mean professionally. I wonder if I shouldn't seek wider horizons." "New cases? _Different_ cases? Give up divorce work? Oh, _Boss_!" "Not give it up, Thais. Not that. I couldn't. Divorce is my life. Could a doctor give up healing? Could a Freudist give up lobotomy? No, I didn't mean that. Frankly, I meant should I get more aggressive. Go out and get cases that would have a certain advertising value." I didn't want to say I didn't feel like spending good protein on the sort of advertising Pancho and some of the other Legal Eagles, an unethical lot really, were buying. Besides, we Obanions have always been rather frugal. Thais' face had come radiantly alive. "Oh, _Joe_--" Now, that should have been a tip-off, because she _never_ called me anything but boss. But I blundered right ahead because she was looking at me as though I were Clarence Darrow or somebody. "I have a case. A _real_ case. If you would--if you only _would_ take it, you'd be famous. More famous, that is. You'd be _really_ famous." I knew that Thais had some rather questionable friends, being a Franklinist and all. And I knew too that some of them were spacegooks. But the combination of Lyra singing for Pancho and the way Thais was looking at me made me get careless. "Tell me about it," I said in my best legal manner. Her face fell. "Non-terrestrial." And then she brightened. "But that's the whole point. These people are citizens of Terra now ... and _think of it_--_you_ will be the very first Legal Eagle to represent them in a divorce case tried under our laws." _Under our laws._ Oh, I should have known. But almost all law is precedent. And I was blinded by trying a case that would _set_ a precedent instead of follow one. Heaven help me, I said yes. "Where are these spacegooks from? And what time can they be in the office tomorrow?" "The Llagoe Islands on Venus," she said excitedly. "And they can be here anytime you say." "Okay, ten hundred sharp. What do they do and how many people are involved?" "They're musicians. And, uh, there are three. And two correspondents." She looked rather sheepishly at me as I raised my eyebrows and commented that even in this day and age of easy morality that was quite a number of 'people' to be involved in one divorce case. Too many, in fact. "Well, they _are_ subject to our laws," she said doubtfully. "Indeed they are--thanks to a Subversive Congress." I made a few notations on my desk pad. "Five of them, eh? A multiple marriage." Thais' voice was very low. "Well, no. Not exactly." "What then?" She looked at me resignedly. "Three sexes," she said. * * * * * I gave up my luncheon with Gleda; as much as I should have liked to split a five prot pony steak with her. Instead of the Palace, I went to the library. The _public_ library. And read about Venerians. What I found out was interesting--and a little frightening, too. They were trisexual symbiotes. And they were only remotely humanoid. There were very few of them on Terra--mainly because they relished their own planet's formaldehyde atmosphere so much they were extremely reluctant to leave it. When they did, ... and this really interested me--they generally became very wealthy as entertainers. They were accomplished musicians and--of all things--tumblers. For reasons that were only hinted at in the staid _Encyclopedia Terrestria_, Venerians never entertained through the mass media such as the Livies or TV. Their stuff was limited to small, elite gatherings and it cost plenty. I thought of Gleda Warick and the party she was planning for later in the week. She'd asked me to be alert for some good entertainment. Her friends were getting weary of games like Lizzie Borden and Clobber. Too many people getting hurt and all. Venerian tumblers and minisingers would be just the thing. And it would assure solvency on the part of my clients-to-be. Part of the Legal Eagle's Oath binds us to be concerned over our customer's finances. The next morning, promptly at ten hundred, I was treated to the first sight of my clients. Their names didn't transliterate into anything remotely pronounceable, so they were going by the names of Vivian, Jean and Clare Jones. After the first shock of seeing them wore off, I wrote on my pad: "Names used by humans of both genders. Significant." They spoke English, the current _lingua franca_, with only a trace of a sibilant accent and they smelled of formaldehyde. I explained their rights under our divorce laws. Did the best I could, that is, not being quite sure who was married to whom and under what conditions their marriage functioned--if at all. Finally I said, "Tell me all about it." Clare, who seemed to be the spokesman for the group and therefore assumed, in my mind, a male gender, waved a boneless arm excitedly. "Had we known we were becoming subject to your Terrestrial laws by residing here we would never have remained. Our situation is desperate." I wrote on my pad: "Situation desperate." "Yes," hissed Vivian breathlessly. "Desperate." I underlined _desperate_. "We are, as you may know," Clare continued giving Vivian a dark look, "Trisexual symbiotes. You do not have any analogous situation among mammals on Terra." I glanced at Thais. "We sure haven't," she said with feeling. "But it sounds _fabulous_." "It is not, I assure you," Clare said running a four-fingered hand over his scaly crest in what I took to be a Venerian gesture of distraction. "We are not _married_ as you people understand the term--" "Not married," I wrote, underscoring it heavily. "But your law enforcement agencies insist that our symbiosis is analogous to marriage and therefore subject to the regulations governing that odd institution." "What a bore," Thais said helpfully. "Our problem is this. The three of us live in what you might roughly call a connubial state. We--what is your word?--co-inhabit?--" "That's close," I said. "We live together, that is. But more than eroticism is involved, I assure you." "Of course." Now it began to sound like most of my other cases and I could get my teeth into it. "You seem doubtful," the Venerian said with a sharp-toothed frown. "Let me reiterate that what I say is so. The three of us have spent a _ygith_ together--that is more than fourteen of your long years. But now the _ygith_ is over and we must seek another--how would you say it?--liaison?" "This is essential?" I asked. "Not just a whim?" It is, you see, the duty of a Legal Eagle to make every effort to save a marriage. In view of the circumstances, I felt that surely this was a marriage unique and therefore _worth_ saving. "No whim," declared Clare emphatically. "Each _ygith_--or what you Terrestrials would call 'mating period'--we must uh--realign. If we do not, deleterious effects are certain. Our health goes bad. We may even die." "My friends," I said, "you have very little to worry about. There are many similar cases here on Terra. Just last week, for example, a divorce was granted in the case of Nork vs. Nork wherein it was established that the plaintiff, Mr. Nork was allergic to _Mrs._ Nork. A simple case, and not the first of its kind. I myself tried one such case wherein a wife broke out in a rash whenever her husband sought to question her about the household expenses. A divorce was granted on the grounds of basic incompatibility." "Ah," Clare said sadly. "If it were only that simple. Our two correspondents, Gail and Evelyn, are ready to enter the realignment. But--" and here the Venerian glared at the smallest of the trio. "_this_ ungrateful wretch is unwilling to adjust to the changed circumstances." Great tears formed in Jean's slotted eyes. "How can you speak that way to me? After we've been through so much together?" "Now, now--" Thais, who has a very soft heart, patted Jean in an effort to make he she or it feel better. "Get to the point, Clare," Vivian said testily. "It is our understanding that property held in joint tenancy by two contesting parties in a divorce case may be distributed at the discretion of the court." "That's correct," I said. "We contend, therefore, that Jean--" Clare pointed a scaly finger at the small Venerian, "is community property. Vivian's and mine. We wish to make an agreement between us for the disposal of it--" "Wait a _minute_," I said, shocked. "I don't think you understand the community property laws at all. Jean is, by definition, a person. A person cannot be considered property or chattel. Oh, no--" The small Venerian made a face at them. "I told you you couldn't get away with it," she said. "This isn't Venus, you know." "On Venus you would be property," declared Vivian. And to me, he--she--I still get confused about this--added: "My sex was emancipated thirty _ygiths_ ago at home. But Jean's is still considered--what did you call it?--chattel. No vote. No rights. Nothing but symbiosis." "And Clare's is still the--uh--dominant one?" I asked hesitantly. "That's the myth that's perpetrated," Clare declared acidly. "We _guths_ do most of the work, if that means anything." I wrote on my pad: "Guths--breadwinners." "And who--well, forgive my indelicacy, but--" I shrugged mundanely, "who bears the children?" "We all do," the three Venerians chorused at once. Well, that's the way the interview went. When the three Venerians finally left I had a rough outline for the brief on my pad. Besides the other comments, I had the following information: Re Jones and Jones vs Jones, trsex smbytes!! See Ency Clare--guth } Terrestria Vivian--warth } PP 1099, Jean--ith } Vol 17, 09 Ed Jean--Community Property? No. Not under Terr Law See US vs Ignatz Wolk 1999. What then? Correspondents: Evelyn (guth) Gail (warth) Any overt acts of infidelity? Probable. No proof. Only obstacle: Jean. Must reach agreement. IMPORTANT: Plaintiffs and Defendant or Defendants and Plaintiff not solvent. Must arrange something. See Gleda. And see Gleda I did. I asked her if she could use not two, not three, but FIVE Venerian entertainers. She could and would. At 1,000 prots a head for an hour's entertainment. That took care of that much, anyway. I was, I felt, well on the road to making legal history. * * * * * The following day I made arrangements to meet Jean alone in a little bistro down on the Embarcadero. I felt the salt water air would make her-it feel more co-operative. But on the way down I became aware of someone following me. Cinder-caped and smog-masked, the tail I was dragging was inconspicuous enough, but I figured the thing about right. It was a Government man. There could be only one answer. Honest Pancho had tipped the TBI that I was doing something illegal or immoral. I was an active Joe Mac and that would be enough to put the Witch Hunt Division of TBI on me even without Pancho getting wind of my dealings with the spacegooks. The gimmick would be, of course, that I was taking advantage of them, violating their rights under the V Amendment of the World Constitution. Pure falsehood, but my previous unwise political affiliations put me under suspicion. I looked up through the smog, and sure enough. An Eyespy hung in the air just over my head--a tiny transmitter about as big as a half erg piece. If I spit on the sidewalk, I thought, they'll haul me in on the double. This was bad enough, but when and if I actually got the Venerians an interlocutory decree, I'd really have to watch it--and them, to see that nothing went wrong. The WH boys would have Pancho right at their shoulder watching for the slightest excuse to invalidate the decree. I could get used to the Eyespy, and I thought I could convince Jean. And above all, I had to keep the Venerians from anything like sexual activity during the two day period of the decree. Nothing--but nothing--will invalidate a decree quicker than _that_. And an invalidated decree is very bad for a Legal Eagle's reputation. I was, I thought darkly, getting into this thing deeper than I thought. But the rewards would be worth it. Think of it. To Legal Eagle the _first_ extraterrestrial divorce case in the history of the world! Holy Protein, I'd be in song and story. I made my way through the press of people on the slidewalks, my Keep-A-Way crackling a jolly tune, and the Eyespy hovering over my head. San Francisco is a wonderful place. Full of excitement and bustle. It's a port of entry, for one thing, with starliners letting down into the Bay from all over the Solar System. On the Embarcadero there were Sandies from Mars, Rooks from the Jovian System--every sort of spacegook there is. Except Venerians. And mingled with the crowd I could make out the distinctive cinder capes of the Longshoremen--absolute rulers of the district. The bistro I was looking for was a floating platform moored to the ancient wharves, the ones that were left after the tidal wave caused by the bomb back in '59. It was a nautilus type joint, most of it under water, called the Deep Six. An attendant took my cape and smog mask at the door and bowed me along to the maitre d'. "A table, sir?" He clapped his hands for a waiter. "May I order you something? A morphine syrette? Phenobarb? We have a particularly fine aphrodisiac cocktail, sir. Or shall I just send the hostess to you and you can order later?" I eyed the line up of girls regretfully. They were all lovely, all almost fully clothed--and what flesh was exposed was completely unpainted. If Thais looked like that, I thought sadly, I wouldn't haggle about her price. But that was sheer depravity, I told myself sternly. That's what comes of associating with triple sexed spacegooks--I was here on business. Not pleasure. "I'm meeting someone," I said. "A spaceg--a Venerian uh--lady. Miss Jones." The maitre shrugged. "Everyone to his taste. The person you wish is at the corner table, sir. Near the window." And sure enough, there was Jean, her crest waving agitatedly as she pressed her three nostrilled nose against the glass watching the sandsharks swimming gracefully among the mossy pilings outside. "Oh, Joe--just like _home_," she hissed softly as I sat down. She was very strong of formaldehyde today, I thought. I didn't quite know how to begin with her. I had to make her see reason, but she seemed to be unwilling to pay any attention to me at all except to comment that Clare and Vivian were very cruel to her. "And after I've given them the best ygith of my life." Then she returned to her melancholy contemplation of the underseascape beyond the glass. I ordered an alkie-and-treacle and sipped it thoughtfully watching Jean. An amber tear had formed in the outer corner of each slotted eye and was oozing gelatinously down her pale green cheeks. It was like someone turning on a light in my brain. The answer was plain as day. Jean was homesick. Miserable. And a miserable woman--or man--or--well, does it matter?--a miserable _person_ was always contrary. Remove the misery and _voila_--gentle as a lamb. "Jean," I said, "this case is important to me. You must help me get the decree. If you do--I'll do something nice for you." Over my head the Eyespy clucked reproachfully, but I ignored it. "Agree to the divorce. We can settle it in Collusion Court. And I'll see to it you get passage back to Venus on the first available starliner. How's that?" "Back to Venus? Back Home?" Her eyes gleamed redly. "That's a promise," I said. This would cost me plenty of prots, but the fame would be worth it. You can see how far gone I was on this case. "Just one thing," I added thoughtfully. "What will become of the rest _after_ the divorce? I mean, can two of each sex get along without a third? It sounds, well, almost unvenerian, if you know what I mean." "The mating wouldn't be a very high-type experience," Jean said loftily, "without an _ith_--but it can take place. It's just the sort of disgusting business you could expect from people like Clare and Vivian. And those _other_ two--_well_--you haven't met them, but really--" "Then you'll do as I ask?" Jean waved her crest at me seductively. "Joe Obanion, you're really very nice." I backed away and swallowed hard as Jean laid a slick, webbed hand on my wrist. "How about it? Agreed?" "You know," Jean said dreamily, "you remind me of a _warth_ I used to know back home. He and I and a really divine _guth_ called Charlie had the most marvelous _ygith_ together. I wonder if he remembers little me--?" "I'm sure he does. How could she forget you?" I asked warily. Jean blinked her slotted eyes at me and her thin lips split into a tusky smile. "You say the nicest things, Joe. Yes, baby, I'll do as you ask. I won't contest the divorce." "Jean," I said with feeling, "you'll never regret this." And the Eyespy clucked disapprovingly. Drop dead, Pancho, I thought. Drop dead twice. I had made it. * * * * * Gleda Warick's house--mansion, really, lay sprawled over most of the Twin Peaks Area. From her Lunar Room you could see the whole of the city stretched out as if for inspection. To the east, the bay and the floating housing developments, wharves and night spots on and under the water. To the west the transocean highways, ribbons of plastic floating on the still Pacific. No one could afford to run ships now and almost all surface commerce was run over the highways in caravans of atomic trucks. To the Orient, to Alaska, to the Pacific islands. A steady string of lights moving at two hundred miles per hour. Rocket trails streaked the sky as starliners splashed into the bay and burbled to the surface, hissing and steaming. Market Street--all seven levels of it--ran from the base of the hills to the bay, a multilevel slidway jammed with people. The view from Gleda's place was magnificent because of the infra-red antismog windows she had installed in the Lunar Room at a cost, incidentally, of 100,000 prots. She had three rooms and a kitchenette. You entered her place and almost had an attack of agoraphobia. It was that big. The place was overrun with people. I'd brought Thais, of course, resplendent in red and silver paint. Lyra Yves appeared in a solid coat of gilt, with that one breast and her left arm sheathed in flexible vinyl. Thais nudged me. "Look at that. I think it's disgusting." I did look. I couldn't help myself. That shiny vinyl caught the eye of every man in the room. "Depraved," Thais sniffed. Honest Pancho came in with an older man who was pointed out to me as an ethnologist from the University of California across the bay. A Professor Cripps. Pancho, dressed in his customary green and orange enamel and embroidered cowboy boots, stumped across the room to give me the big hello. "Jose, my boy! Good to see you...." He glanced up at the Eyespy. "Trouble with the Witch Hunters? Tsk tsk--" "As if you didn't know," I snapped. "You think I'd do a thing like that to a _friend_?" "Yes." He grinned a big toothy smile at me. "As a matter of fact, you're right. I hear you've got a big case. Non-terrie. Worth a lot to a Legal Eagle to be the first with a non-terrie case--" "You're too late, you vulture," I said. "Interlocutory decree granted." I tapped my pouch. "Right here." He shrugged. "Hope nothing happens to void it, old sport." He winked at his silent companion, the staid and seemingly dumb professor. He turned back to me. "Sorry. Should have introduced you. Prof Cripps--this is my friend and competitor, Jose Obanion." "Pleased," the Professor said, looking fearfully at the Government Eyespy over my head. His fingers went automatically to the engraved tablet he wore on a chain round his neck--a validated Loyalty Oath--as though to show the unseen TBI observers he wasn't _really_ a friend of this Joe Mac's. "The Prof," Honest Pancho said softly, "is a specialist in Venerian ethnology. He'd like to meet your clients." That gave me a start. "He'll meet them. They're going to sing tonight." The Professor's eyes widened. They looked shocked in his yellow painted face. "And dance?" I smirked happily at Pancho. "And dance. At 1,000 prots each." If Pancho had any reply for that, I don't know, for Gleda came in. She was wearing her hair blue and she wore a really striking pattern of iridescent blue paint with a double snake pattern coiling up her legs and torso. The party got under way very quickly. Gleda supplied the alkie and treacle and everyone nibbled their own synthetic protein out of their pouches. The combination soon had an hilarious effect on the gathering and a couple that I didn't know, a boy and girl in particolored green and blue, starting throwing small articles of furniture at the Eyespy over my head. Couldn't hurt the Eye, of course, but I was kept pretty busy dodging. Then Thais suggested a quick game of Clobber. I must confess, not without satisfaction, that I cheated a little and peeked through the bandage so I could land a real lulu on Pancho's long pointed nose. When Gleda stopped the bleeding and he was on his feet, someone asked Lyra for a song and the cry was taken up by all. I caught a glimpse of the five Venerians' round eyes peering at us out of the kitchenette. But Gleda was saving them for the last--the _piece de resistance_. Lyra tore down a drapery and staggering a bit from two or three too many alkie-and-treacles, wrapped herself in it from head to foot. There was a shocked sort of gasp from the watchers. Professor Cripps turned red under his yellow paint. Gleda put a tape on the MusiKall and Lyra went into her act. I've never seen anything like it. Swaying like a cobra, her bare feet pounding out the beat on the plastic floor, she raised the temperature about ten degrees in that room. Her green painted lips twisted in agony, her eyes rolled in the chromatic mask of her face. An old folk tune--not the sort of thing she generally did. Something that really tore at the heartstrings. A song that dated centuries back. History and the sense of our way of life lived in that room for a few short moments. Her voice was a blood-stirring trumpet-- "Mairzy Doats and Lammsy Doats And little kiddsie Divy-- A Kiddlee Tivy Tooo Wouldn't you--?" When it was over, there was a breathless hush in the room. I wondered where in the world Gleda had gotten that MusiKall tape--It had probably cost her plenty. There was only one thing, I thought, that could top that. "Gleda," I said. "_Now._" Besides if the gooks didn't earn their prots, what about my fee? I was already losing protein on this deal. Passage to Venus isn't cheap. The Venerians trooped in and squatted on the floor while Gleda made the introductions. The room began to smell very like an embalming room must smell. "May I present Clare, Vivian, Gail, Evelyn and little Jean. They're going to sing for us." Cheers from the guests. I glanced triumphantly at Pancho. The Professor seemed fascinated. "And," added Gleda archly, "they may even tumble for us." The Venerians looked at one another, tittered and flushed dark green. I was glad to see they were all on friendly terms with Jean. Clare struck an attitude, crest erect, and waited until everyone quit shuffling around. Presently, they sang. I think it was singing. Very cultural. Very esoteric. Also very noisy. It sounded rather like they were all in pain. After what seemed to me a very long time, they grew silent. There was a smattering of discontented applause. Gleda glared at me. I looked at Thais in dismay. "They also dance," she said weakly. "Yes," Pancho said. "Let's see them dance!" "By all means," Gleda said, still eyeing me. "Dance, fellows," I said hopefully. Jean came over to me and whispered: "Are you sure it will be all right?" "Do you want to ruin me? Dance. Tumble. Do something." Jean shrugged and went back to where the Venerians squatted. "He says dance." Evelyn and Gail stepped properly, I should say primly, aside and the other three began stomping about. The rhythm was infectious. The movements became more heated and shouts of approval began to ring out. "Dance, Gookie!" "Whapperoonie!" "Go go go Gook!" I was delighted. So was everyone else. The dance grew more and more violent. There was a great deal of body contact in it. Evelyn and Gail looked longingly at the gyrating three, but kept out of it. I wondered why--never knowing that the Venerians are a _very_ conventional people. Pancho was delighted. So was the Professor. In the middle of it, the prof raised his hands and made a signal. An earsplitting clangor broke from the Eyespy. The Venerians stopped. Everyone stared at the Eye. And at me. The Professor stepped forward and flipped his Loyalty Oath over, it opened like a poison-ring. The engraving inside said TBI Morals Division. "The Interlocutory Decree, if you please," he commanded. Stunned, I fished it out and handed it over. He glanced at it. "You realize of course that this is immediately invalidated." "_What?_" I couldn't believe my ears. "You know--as any Legal Eagle should know--that any re-stablishment of--uh--connubial rights abrogates an interlocutory." "Of course I know that." He glanced at Honest Pancho and smiled. There was triumph flashing between them like a shuttlecock. "You Joe Macs never learn. The law is the law. What do you think your clients were just doing--and in front of a roomful of witnesses?" I felt my heart sink. "You mean--?" Cripps nodded. "That?" I asked weakly. "_That_," he said, and tore up the paper. I watched my future as a Legal Eagle flutter down to the floor. "And I thought they were dancing," Thais said sadly. * * * * * Well, the story doesn't end quite there. Gleda and I were arrested for running an obscene show. Gleda doesn't speak to me anymore. Nor do any of the people who were there that night. Lyra and Gleda get all their divorces at Pancho's Splitzmart now. It took most of my prot account to bail us out and pay our fines. Thais is with me. We're married and we haven't a prot between us for a divorce, so we'll just have to _stay_ married. The Venerians came out all right though. They were deported. 
16150	----	MISS MCDONALD BY MRS. MARY J. HOLMES AUTHOR OF "THE LEIGHTON HOMESTEAD," "MILLBANK; OR, ROGER IRVING'S WARD," "MILDRED; OR, THE CHILD OF ADOPTION," "EDITH LYLE'S SECRET," "ETHELYN'S MISTAKE," ETC. THE MERSHON COMPANY RAHWAY, N.J. NEW YORK CONTENTS I. EXTRACTS FROM MISS FRANCES THORNTON'S JOURNAL II. EXTRACTS FROM GUY'S JOURNAL III. EXTRACTS FROM DAISY'S JOURNAL IV. AUTHOR'S STORY V. THE DIVORCE VI. EXTRACTS FROM DIARIES VII. FIVE YEARS LATER VIII. DAISY'S LETTER IX. DAISY, TOM, AND THAT OTHER ONE X. MISS MCDONALD XI. AT SARATOGA XII. IN THE SICK-ROOM XIII. DAISY'S JOURNAL MISS MCDONALD CHAPTER I EXTRACTS FROM MISS FRANCES THORNTON'S JOURNAL ELMWOOD, June 15, 18--. I have been out among my flowers all the morning, digging, weeding, and transplanting, and then stopping a little to rest. Such perfect successes as my roses are this year, while my white lilies are the wonder of the town, and yet my heart was not with them to-day, and it was nothing to me that those fine people staying at the Towers came into the grounds while I was at work, "just to see and admire," they said, adding that there was no place like Elmwood in all the town of Cuylerville. I know that, and Guy and I have been so happy here, and I loved him so much, and never dreamed what was in store for me until it came so suddenly and seemed like a heavy blow. Why did he want to get married, when he has lived to be thirty years old, without a care of any kind, and with money enough to allow him to indulge his taste for books, and pictures, and travel, and is respected by everybody, looked up to as the first man in town, and petted and cared for by me as few brothers have ever been petted and cared for; why, I say, did he want a change, and, if he must be married, why need he take a child of sixteen, whom he has only known since Christmas, and whose sole recommendation, so far as I can learn, is her pretty face? Daisy McDonald is her name, and she lives in Indianapolis, where her father is a poor lawyer, and Guy met her last winter in Chicago and fell in love at once, and made two or three journeys West on "important business," he said, and then, some time in May, told me he was going to bring me a sister, the sweetest little creature, with such beautiful blue eyes and wonderful hair. I was sure to love her, he said, and when I suggested that she was very young, he replied that her youth was in her favor, as he could more easily mold her to the Thornton pattern. Little he knows about girls, but then he was perfectly infatuated and blind to everything but Daisy's eyes, and hair, and voice, which is so sweet and winning that it will _speak_ for her at once; and he asked me to see to the furnishing of the rooms on the west side of the house, two which communicate with his own private library, where he spends a great deal of time with his books and writing. The room adjoining this he would have for Daisy's boudoir or parlor, where she could sit when he was occupied and she wished to be near him. This he would have fitted up in blue, as she had expressed a wish to that effect, and he said no expense must be spared to make it as pretty and attractive as possible. So the walls were frescoed and tinted, and I spent two entire days in New York hunting for a carpet of the desirable shade, which should be right both in texture and design. Guy was exceedingly particular, and developed a wonderful proclivity to find fault with everything I admired. Nothing was quite the thing for Daisy until at last a manufacturer offered to get one up which should suit, and so the carpet question was happily ended for the time being. Then came the furniture, and unlimited orders were given to the upholsterer to do his best, and matters were progressing finely when order number two came from the little lady, who was sorry to seem so fickle, but mamma, whose taste was perfect, had decided against all blue, and would Guy please furnish the room with drab trimmed with blue. "It must be a very delicate shade of drab," she wrote, and lest he should get too intense an idea, she would call it a _tint_ of a _shade_ of drab, or, better yet, a _hint_ of a tint of a shade of drab would describe exactly what she meant, and be so entirely unique, and lovely, and recherché. Guy never swears, and seldom uses slang of any kind, but this was a little too much, and with a most rueful expression of countenance he asked me "what in thunder I supposed a hint of a tint of a shade of drab could be." I could not enlighten him, and we finally concluded to leave it to the upholsterer, to whom Guy telegraphed in hot haste, bidding him hunt New York over for the desired shade. Where he found it I never knew, but find it he did, or something approximating to it, a faded, washed-out color, which seemed a cross between wood-ashes and pale skim milk. A sample was sent up for Guy's approval, and then the work commenced again, when order number three came in one of those dainty little billets which used to make Guy's face radiant with happiness. Daisy had changed her mind again and gone back to the blue, which she always preferred as most becoming to her complexion. Guy did not say a single word, but he took the next train for New York and stayed there till the furniture was done and packed for Cuylerville. As I did not know where he was stopping, I could not forward him two little missives which came during his absence, and which bore the Indianapolis post-mark. I suspect he had a design in keeping his hotel from me, and whether Daisy changed her mind again or not I never knew. The furniture reached Elmwood the day but one before Guy started for his bride, and Julia Hamilton, who was then at the Towers, helped me arrange the room, which is a perfect little gem and cannot fail to please, I am sure. I wonder Guy never fancied Julia Hamilton. Oh, if he only had done so I should not have as many misgivings as I now have nor dread the future so much. Julia is sensible and twenty years old, and lives in Boston, and comes of a good family, and is every way suitable; but when did a man ever choose the woman whom his sister thought suitable for him? And Guy is like other men, and this is his wedding day; and after a trip to Montreal, and Quebec, and Boston, and New York, and Saratoga, they are coming home, and I am to give a grand reception and then subside, I suppose, into the position of the "old maid sister who will be dreadfully in the way." SEPTEMBER 15, 18--. Just three months since I opened my Journal, and, on glancing over what I wrote on Guy's wedding day, I find that in one respect at least I was unjust to the little creature who is now my sister and calls me Miss Frances. Not by a word or look has she shown the least inclination to assume the position of mistress of the house, nor does she seem to think me at all in the way; but that she considers me quite an antediluvian I am certain, for, in speaking of something which happened in 1820, she asked if I remembered it! And I only three years older than Guy! But then she once called him a dear old grandfatherly man, and thought it a good joke that on their wedding tour she was mistaken for his daughter. She looks so young--not sixteen even; but with those childish blue eyes, and that innocent, pleading kind of expression, she never can be old. She is very beautiful, and I can understand in part Guy's infatuation, though at times he hardly knows what to do with his pretty plaything. It was the middle of August when they came from Saratoga, sorely against her wishes, as I heard from the Porters, who were at the same hotel, and who have told me what a sensation she created, and how much attention she received. Everybody flattered her, and one evening when there was to be a hop at Congress Hall, she received twenty bouquets from as many different admirers, each of whom asked her hand for the first dance. They had ascertained that Guy was not a disciple of Terpsichore, though I understand he did try some of the square dances, with poor success, I imagine, for Lucy Porter laughed when she told me of it; and I do not wonder, for my grave, scholarly Guy must be as much out of place in a ball room as his little, airy doll of a wife is in her place when there. I can understand just how she enjoyed it all, and how she hated to come home, for she did not then know the kind of home she was coming to. It was glorious weather for August, and a rain of the previous day had washed all the flowers and shrubs, and freshened up the grass on the lawn, which was just like a piece of velvet, while everything around Elmwood seemed to laugh in the warm afternoon sunshine as the carriage came up to the door. Eight trunks, two hat-boxes, and a guitar-case had come in the morning, and were waiting the arrival of their owner, whose face looked eagerly out at the house and its surroundings, and, it seemed to me, did not light up as much as it should have done under the circumstances. "Why, Guy, I always thought the house was brick," I heard her say as the carriage door was opened by the coachman. "No, darling--wood. Ah, there's Fan," was Guy's reply, and the next moment I had her in my arms. Yes, literally in my arms. She is such a wee little thing, and her face is so sweet, and her eyes so childish and wistful, and her voice so musical and flute-like that before I knew what I was doing I lifted her from her feet and hugged her hard and said I meant to love her, first for Guy's sake and then for her own. Was it my fancy, I wonder, or did she really shrink back a little and put up her hands to arrange the bows and streamers and curls floating away from her like the flags on a vessel on some gala day? She was very tired, Guy said, and ought to lie down before dinner. Would I show her to her room with Zillah, her maid? Then for the first time I noticed a dark-haired girl who had alighted from the carriage and stood holding Daisy's traveling bag and wraps. "Her waiting maid, whom we found in Boston," Guy explained when we were alone. "She is so young and helpless, and wanted one so badly, that I concluded to humor her for a time, especially as I had not the most remote idea how to pin on those wonderful fixings which she wears. It is astonishing how many things it takes to make up the _tout ensemble_ of a fashionable woman," Guy said, and I thought he glanced a little curiously at my plain cambric wrapper and smooth hair. Indeed he has taken it upon himself to criticise me somewhat! thinks I am too slim, as he expresses it, and that my head might be improved if it had a more snarly appearance. Daisy, of course, stands for his model, and her hair does not look as if it had been combed in a month, and yet Zillah spends hours over it. She--that is, Daisy--was pleased with her boudoir, and gave vent to sundry exclamations of delight when she entered it and skipped around like the child she is, and said she was so glad it was blue instead of that indescribable drab, and that room is almost the only thing she has expressed an opinion about since she has been here. She does not talk much except to Zillah, and then in French, which I do not understand. If I were to write just what I think I should say that she had expected a great deal more grandeur than she finds. At all events, she takes the things which I think very nice and even elegant as a matter of course, and if we were to set up a style of living equal to that of the Queen's household I do believe she would act as if she had been accustomed to it all her life; or, at least, that it was what she had a right to expect. I know she imagines Guy a great deal richer than he is; and that reminds me of something which troubles me. Guy has given his name to Dick Trevylian for one hundred thousand dollars. To be sure, it is only for three months, and Dick is worth three times that amount, and an old friend and every way reliable and honest. And still I did not want Guy to sign. I wonder why it is that women will always jump at a conclusion without any apparent reason. Of course, I could not explain it, but when Guy told me what he was going to do, I felt in an instant as if he would have it all to pay and told him so, but he only laughed at me and called me nervous and fidgety, and said a friend was good for nothing if he could not lend a helping hand occasionally. Perhaps that is true, but I was uneasy, and shall be glad when the time is up and the paper canceled. Our expenses since Daisy came are double what they were before, and if we were to lose one hundred thousand dollars now we should be badly off. Daisy is a luxury Guy has to pay for, but he pays willingly and seems to grow more and more infatuated every day. "She is such a sweet-tempered, affectionate little puss," he says; and I admit to myself that she is sweet-tempered, and that nothing ruffles her, but about the affectionate part I am not so certain. Guy would pet her and caress her all the time if she would let him, but she won't. "Oh, please don't touch me. It is too warm, and you muss my dress," I have heard her say more than once when he came in and tried to put his arm about her or take her in his lap. Indeed, her dress seems to be uppermost in her mind, and I have known her to try on half a dozen different ones before she could decide in which she looked the best. No matter what Guy is doing, or how deeply he is absorbed in his studies, she makes him stop and inspect her from all points and give his opinion, and Guy submits in a way perfectly wonderful to me who never dared to disturb him when shut up with his books. Another thing, too, he submits to which astonishes me more than anything else. It used to annoy him terribly to wait for anything or anybody. He was always ready, and expected others to be, but Daisy is just the reverse. Such dawdling habits I never saw in any person. With Zillah to help her dress she is never ready for breakfast, never ready for dinner, never ready for church, never ready for anything, and that, in a household accustomed to order and regularity, does put things back so and make so much trouble. "Don't wait breakfast for me, please," she says, when she has been called for the third or fourth time, and if she can get us to sit down without her she seems to think it all right, and that she can dawdle as much as she likes. I wonder that it never occurs to her that to keep the breakfast table round, as we must, makes the girls cross and upsets the kitchen generally. I hinted as much to her once when the table stood till ten o'clock, and she only opened her great blue eyes wonderingly, and said mamma had spoiled her, but she would try and do better, and she bade Zillah call her at five the next morning, and Zillah called her, and then she was a half-hour late. Guy doesn't like that, and he looked daggers on the night of the reception, when the guests began to arrive before she was dressed! And she commenced her toilet, too, at three o'clock! But she was wondrously beautiful in her bridal robes, and took all hearts by storm. She is perfectly at home in society, and knows just what to do and say so long as the conversation keeps in the fashionable round of chit-chat, but when it drifts into deeper channels she is silent at once, or only answers in monosyllables. I believe she is a good French scholar, and she plays and sings tolerably well, and reads the novels as they come out, but of books and literature, in general, she is wholly ignorant, and if Guy thought to find in her any sympathy with his favorite studies and authors he is terribly mistaken. And yet, as I write all this, my conscience gives me sundry little pricks as if I were wronging her, for in spite of her faults I like her, and like to watch her flitting through the house and grounds like the little fairy she is, and I hope the marriage may turn out well, and that she will improve with age, and not make so heavy drafts on my brother's purse. CHAPTER II EXTRACTS FROM GUY'S JOURNAL SEPTEMBER 20, 18--. Three months married. Three months with Daisy all to myself, and yet not exactly to myself either, for except I go after her I confess she does not often come to me, unless it is just as I have shut myself up in my room, thinking to have a quiet hour with my books. Then she generally appears, and wants me to ride with her, or play croquet, or see which dress is most becoming, and I always submit and obey her as if I were the child instead of herself. She is young, and I almost wonder her mother allowed her to marry. Fan hints that they were mercenary, but if they were they concealed the fact wonderfully well, and made me think it a great sacrifice on their part to give me Daisy. And so it was; such a lovely little darling, and so beautiful. What a sensation she created at Saratoga, and still I was glad to get away, for I did not like some things which were done there. I did not like so many young men around her, nor her dancing those abominable round dances which she seemed to enjoy so much. "Square dances were poky," she said, even after I tried them with her for the sake of keeping her out of that vile John Britton's arms. I have a fancy that I made a spectacle of myself, hopping about like a magpie, but Daisy said "I did beautifully," though she cried because I put my foot on her lace flounce and tore it, and I noticed she ever after had some good reason why I should not dance again. "It was too hard work for me; I was too big," she said, "and would tire easily. Cousin Tom was big, and he never danced." By the way, I have some little curiosity with regard to that Cousin Tom who wanted Daisy so badly and who, because she refused him, went off to South America. I trust he will stay there. Not that I am or could be jealous of Daisy, but it is better for cousins like Tom to keep away. Daisy is very happy here, though she is not quite so enthusiastic over the place as I supposed she would be, knowing how she lived at home. Well enough, it is true, and the McDonalds are intensely respectable, so she says; but her father's practice cannot bring him over two thousand a year, and the small brown house they live in, with only a grass plot in the rear and at the side, is not to be compared with Elmwood, which is a fine old place, everyone admits. It has come out gradually that she thought the house was brick and had a tower and billiard room, and that we kept more servants, and had a fishpond on the premises, and velvet carpets all over the house. I would not let Fan know this for the world, as I want her to like Daisy thoroughly. And she does like her, though this little pink and white pet of mine is a new revelation to her, and puzzles her amazingly. She would have been glad if I had married Julia Hamilton of Boston; but those Boston girls are too strong-minded and positive to suit me. Julia is nice, it is true, and pretty and highly educated, and Fan says she has brains and would make a splendid wife. As Fan had never seen Daisy she did not, of course, mean to hint that she had not brains, but I suspect even now she would be better pleased if Julia were here, but I should not. Julia is self-reliant; Daisy is not. Julia has opinions of her own and asserts them, too; Daisy does not. Julia can sew and run a machine; Daisy cannot. Julia gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night; Daisy does neither. Nobody ever waits for Julia; everybody waits for Daisy. Julia reads scientific works and dotes on metaphysics; Daisy does not know the meaning of the word. In short, Julia is a strong, high-toned, energetic, independent woman, while Daisy is--a little innocent, confiding girl, whom I would rather have without brains than all the Boston women like Julia with brains! And yet I sometimes wish she did care for books, and was more interested in what interests me. I have tried reading aloud to her an hour every evening, but she generally goes to sleep or steals up behind me to look over my shoulder and see how near I am to the end of the chapter, and when I reach it she says: "Excuse me, but I have just thought of something I must tell Zillah about the dress I want to wear to-morrow. I'll be back in a moment"; and off she goes, and our reading is ended for that time, for I notice she never returns. The dress is of more importance than the book, and I find her at ten or eleven trying to decide whether black or white or blue is most becoming to her. Poor Daisy! I fear she had no proper training at home. Indeed, she told me the other day that from her earliest recollection she had been taught that the main object of her life was to marry young and to marry money. Of course she did not mean anything or know how it sounded, but I would rather she had not said it, even though she had refused a millionaire for me, who can hardly be called rich as riches are rated these days. If Dick Trevylian should fail to meet his payment I should be very poor, and then what would become of Daisy, to whom the luxuries which money buys are so necessary? (Here followed several other entries in the journal, consisting mostly of rhapsodies on Daisy, and then came the following:) DECEMBER 15, 18--. Dick has failed to meet his payment, and that after having borrowed of me twenty thousand more! Is he a villain, and did he know all the time that I was ruining myself? I cannot think so when I remember that look on his face as he told me about it and swore to me solemnly that up to the very last he fully expected relief from England, where he thought he had a fortune. "If I live I will pay you some time," he said; but that does not help me now. I am a ruined man. Elmwood must be sold, and I must work to earn my daily bread. For myself I would not mind it much, and Fan, who, woman-like, saw it in the distance and warned me of it, behaves nobly; but it falls hard on Daisy. Poor Daisy! She never said a word when I told her the exact truth, but she went to bed and cried for one whole day. I am so glad I settled that ten thousand on her when we were married. No one can touch that, and I told her so; but she did not say a word or seem to know what I meant. Talking or expressing her opinion was never in her line, and she has not of her own accord spoken with me on the subject, and when I try to talk with her about our future she shudders and cries, and says, "Please don't! I can't bear it. I want to go home to mother!" And so it was settled that while we are arranging matters she is to visit her mother and perhaps not return till spring, when I hope to be in a better condition financially than I am at present. One thing Daisy said, which hurt me cruelly, and that was: "If I must marry poor, I might as well have married Cousin Tom, who wanted me so badly!" To do her justice, however, she added immediately: "But I like you the best." I am glad she said that. It will be something to remember when she is gone, or rather when I return without her, as I am going to Indianapolis with her, and then back to the dreary business of seeing what I have left and what I can do. I have an offer for the house, and shall sell at once; but where my home will be next, I do not know, neither would I care so much if it were not for Daisy--poor little Daisy!--who thought she had married a rich man. The only tears I have shed over my lost fortune were for her. Oh, Daisy, Daisy! CHAPTER III EXTRACTS FROM DAISY'S JOURNAL ELMWOOD, December 20, 18--. Daisy McDonald Thornton's journal, presented by my husband, Mr. Guy Thornton, who wishes me to write something in it every day; and when I asked him what I should write, he said: "Your thoughts, and opinions, and experiences. It will be pleasant for you some time to look back upon your early married life and see what progress you have made since then, and will help you to recall incidents you would otherwise forget. A journal fixes things in your mind, and I know you will enjoy it, especially as no one is to see it, and you can talk to it freely as to a friend." That is what Guy said, and I wrote it right down to copy into the book as a kind of preface or introduction. I am not much pleased with having to keep a journal, and maybe I shall have Zillah keep it for me. I don't care to fix things in my mind. I don't like things fixed, anyway. I'd rather they would be round loose, as they surely would, if I had not Zillah to pick them up. She is a treasure, and it is almost worth being married to have a waiting maid--and that reminds me that I may as well begin back at the time when I was not married, and did not want to be, if only we had not been so poor, and obliged to make so many shifts to seem richer than we were. My maiden name was Margaret McDonald, and I am seventeen next New Year's Day. My father is of Scotch descent, and a lawyer; my mother was a Barnard, from New Orleans, and has the best blood of the two. I am an only child, and very handsome--so everybody says--and I should know it if they did not say it, for can't I see myself in the glass! And still I really do not care so much for my good looks except as they serve to attain the end for which father says I was born. Almost the first thing I can remember is of his telling me that I must marry young and marry rich, and I promised him I would, and asked if I could stay at home with mother just the same after I was married. Another thing I remember, which made a lasting impression, and that is the beating father gave me for asking before some grand people staying at our house, "Why we did not always have beefsteak and hot muffins for breakfast, instead of just baked potatoes and bread and butter." I must learn to keep my mouth shut, father said, and not tell all I knew; and I profited by the lesson, and that is one reason, I suppose, why I so rarely say what I think, or express an opinion whether favorable or otherwise. I do not believe I am deceitful, though all my life I have seen my parents try to seem what they are not; that is, try to seem like rich people, when sometimes father's practice brought him only a few hundreds a year, and there was mother and myself and Tom to support. Tom is my cousin--Tom McDonald--who lived with us and fell in love with me, though I never tried to make him. I liked him ever so much, though he used to tease me horribly, and put horn-bugs in my shoes, and worms on my neck, and Jack-o'-lanterns in my room, and tip me off his sled into the snow; but still I liked him, for with all his teasing he had a great, kind, unselfish heart, and I shall never forget that look on his face when I told him I could not be his wife. I did not like him as he liked me, and I did not want to be married anyway, and if I did marry it must be to some rich man. That was in Chicago, and the night before he started for South America, where he was going to make his fortune, and he wanted me to promise to wait for him, and said no one would ever love me as well as he did. I could not promise, because, even if he had all the gold mines in Peru, I did not care to spend my days with him--to see him morning, noon, and night, and all the time. It is a good deal to ask of a woman, and I told him so, and he cried so hard--not loud, but in a pitiful kind of way, which hurt me cruelly. I hear that sobbing sometimes now in my sleep, and it's like the moan of the wind round that house on the prairie where Tom's mother died. Poor Tom! I gave him a lock of my hair and let him kiss me twice, and then he went away, and after that old Judge Burton offered himself and his million to me; but I could not endure his bald head a week, and I told him no, and when father seemed sorry and said I missed it, I told him I would not sell myself for gold alone. I'd run away first and go after Tom. Then Guy Thornton came, and--and--well, he took me by storm, and I liked him better than anyone I ever saw, and I married him. Everybody said he was rich, and father was satisfied and gave his consent, and bought be a most elaborate trousseau. I wondered then where the money came from. Now I know that Tom sent it. He has been very successful with his mine, and in a letter to father sent me a check for fifteen hundred dollars. Father would not tell me that, but mother did, and I felt worse, I think, than when I heard the sobbing. Poor Tom! I never wear one of the dresses now without thinking who paid for it and wrote, "I am working like an ox for Daisy." Poor, poor Tom! OCTOBER 1, 18--. I rather like writing in my journal, for here I can say what I think, and I guess I shall not let Zillah make the entries. Where did I leave off? Oh, about poor Tom. I have had a letter from him. He had just heard of my marriage, and only said: "God bless you, my darling little Daisy, and may you be very happy." I burned the letter up and cried myself into a headache. I wish people would not love me so hard. I do not deserve it. There's Guy, my husband, more to be pitied than Tom, because, you see, he has got me; and, privately, between you and me, old journal, I am not worth the getting, and I know it perhaps better than anyone else. I like Guy and believe him to be the best man in the world, and I would rather he kissed me than Tom, but do not want anybody to kiss me; and Guy is so affectionate, and his great hands are so hot, and muss my fluted dresses so terribly. I guess I don't like to be married anyway. If one only could have the house, and the money, and the nice things without the man! That's wicked, of course, when Guy is so kind and loves me so much. I wish he didn't, but I would not for the world let him know how I feel. I did tell him that I was not the wife he ought to have, but he would not believe me, and father was anxious, and so I married him, meaning to do the best I could. It was splendid at Saratoga, only Guy danced so ridiculously and would not let me waltz with those young men. As if I cared a straw for them or any other man besides Guy and Tom! It is pleasant here at Elmwood, only the house is not as grand as I supposed, and there are not as many servants, and the family carriage is awful poky. Guy is to give me a pretty little phaeton on my birthday. I like Miss Frances very much, only she is such a raging housekeeper, and keeps me all the while on the alert. I don't believe in these raging housekeepers, who act as if they wanted to make the bed before you are up, and eat breakfast before it is ready. I don't like to get up in the morning anyway, and I don't like to hurry, and I am always behind, and keeping somebody waiting, and that disturbs the people here very much. Miss Frances seems really cross sometimes, and even Guy looks sober and disturbed when he has waited for me half an hour. I guess I must try and do better, for both Guy and Miss Frances are as good as they can be, but then I am not one bit like them, and have never been accustomed to anything like order and regularity. At home things came round any time, and I came with them, and that suited me better than this being married, a great deal, only now I have a kind of settled feeling, and am Mrs. Guy Thornton, and Guy is good-looking, and highly esteemed, and very learned, and I can see that the young ladies in the neighborhood envy me for being his wife. I wonder who is that Julia Hamilton Miss Frances talks about so much, and why Guy did not marry her instead of me. She, too, is very learned and gets up in the morning and flies round and reads scientific articles in the _Westminster Review_. I asked Guy once why he did not marry her instead of a little goose like me, and he said he liked the little goose the best, and then kissed me, and crumpled my white dress all up. Poor Guy! I wish I did love him as well as he does me, but it's not in me to love any man! DECEMBER 20, 18--. A horrible thing has happened, and I have married a poor man after all! Guy signed for somebody and had to pay, and Elmwood must be sold, and we are to move into a stuffy little house without Zillah, and with only one girl. It is too dreadful to think about, and I was sick for a week after Guy told me of it. I might as well have married Tom, only I like Guy the best. He looks so sorry and sad that I sometimes forget myself to pity him. I am going home to mother for a long, long time--all winter, maybe--and I shall enjoy it so much. Guy says I have ten thousand dollars of my own, and the interest on that will buy my dresses, I guess, and get something for Miss Frances, too. She is a noble woman, and tries to bear up so brave. She says they will keep the furniture of my blue room for me, if I want it; and I do, and I mean to have Guy send it to Indianapolis, if he will. Oh, mother, I am so glad I am coming back, and I almost wish--no, I don't, either. I like Guy, only I don't like being married! CHAPTER IV AUTHOR'S STORY Reader, Guy Thornton was not a fool, and Daisy was not a fool, though I admit they have thus far appeared to disadvantage. Both had made a great mistake; Guy in marrying a child whose mind was unformed, and Daisy in marrying at all, when her whole nature was in revolt against matrimony. But married they are, and Guy has failed and Daisy is going home, and the New Year's morning, when she was to have received Guy's gift of the phaeton and ponies, found her at the little cottage in Indianapolis, where she at once resumed all the old indolent habits of her girlhood, and was happier than she had been since leaving home as a bride. On the father, Mr. McDonald, the news of his son-in-law's failure fell like a thunderbolt and affected him more than it did Daisy. Shrewd, ambitious, and scheming, he had for years planned for his daughter a moneyed marriage, and now she was returned upon his hands for an indefinite time, with her naturally luxurious tastes intensified by recent indulgence, and her husband a ruined man. It was not a pleasant picture to contemplate, and Mr. McDonald's face was cloudy and thoughtful for many days until a letter from Tom turned his thoughts into a new channel and sent him with fresh avidity to certain points of law with which he had of late years been familiar. If there was one part of his profession in which he excelled more than another it was in the divorce cases which had made Indiana so notorious. Squire McDonald, as he was called, was well known to that class of people who, utterly ignoring God's command, seek to free themselves from the bonds which once were so pleasant to wear, and now, as he sat alone in his office with Tom's letter in his hand, and read how rapidly that young man was getting rich, there came into his mind a plan, the very thought of which would have made Guy Thornton shudder with horror and disgust. Daisy had not been altogether satisfied with her brief married life, and it would be very easy to make her more dissatisfied, especially as the home to which she would return must necessarily be very different from Elmwood, Tom was destined to be a millionaire. There was no doubt of that, and once in the family he could be molded and managed as the wily McDonald had never been able to mold or manage Guy. But everything pertaining to Tom must be kept carefully out of sight, for the man knew his daughter would never lend herself to such a diabolical scheme as that which he was revolving, and which he at once put in progress, managing so adroitly that before Daisy was at all aware of what she was doing, she found herself the heroine of a divorce suit, founded really upon nothing but a general dissatisfaction with married life and a wish to be free from it. Something there was about incompatibility of temperament and uncongeniality, and all that kind of thing which wicked men and women parade before the world when weary of the tie which God has distinctly said shall not be torn asunder. It is not our intention to follow the suit through any of its details, and we shall only say that it progressed rapidly, while poor, unsuspicious Guy was working hard to retrieve in some way his lost fortune, and to fit up a pleasant home for the childish wife who was drifting away from him. He had missed her so much at first, even while he felt it a relief to have her gone just when his business matters needed all his time and thought. It was some comfort, too, to write to her, but not much to receive her letters, for Daisy did not excel in epistolary composition, and after a few weeks her letters were short and far apart, and, as Guy thought, constrained and studied in their tone, and when, after she had been absent from him for three months or more his longing to see her was so great that he decided upon a visit of a few days to the West, and apprised her of his intention, asking if she would be glad to see him. He received in reply a telegram from Mr. McDonald telling him to defer his journey, as Daisy was visiting some friends and would be absent for an indefinite length of time. There was but one more letter from her and that was dated at Vincennes, and merely said that she was well, and Guy must not feel anxious about her or take the trouble to come to see her, as she knew how valuable his time must be and would far rather he should devote himself to his business than bother about her. The letter was signed, "Hastily, Daisy," and Guy read it over many times with a pang in his heart he could not define. But he had no suspicion of the terrible blow in store for him, and went on planning for her comfort just the same; and when at last Elmwood was sold and he could no longer stay there, he hired a more expensive house than he could afford, because he thought Daisy would like it better, and then, with his sister Fan, set himself to the pleasant task of fitting it up for Daisy. There was a blue room with a bay window just as there had been in Elmwood, only it was not so pretentious and large. But it was very pleasant and had a door opening out upon what Guy meant should be a flower garden in the summer, and though he missed his little wife sadly and longed so much at times for a sight of her beautiful face and the sound of her sweet voice, he put all thought of himself aside and said he would not bring her back until the May flowers were in blossom and the young grass bright and green by the blue room door. "She will have a better impression of her new home then," he said to Fan; "and I want her to be happy here and not feel the change too keenly." Julia Hamilton chanced those days to be in town, and as she was very intimate with Miss Thornton the two were a great deal together, and it thus came about that Julia was often at the brown cottage and helped to settle the blue room for Daisy. "If it were only you who was to occupy it," Frances said to her one morning when they had been reading together for an hour or more in the room they both thought so pleasant. "I like Daisy, but somehow she seems so far from me. Why, there's not a sentiment in common between us." Then, as if sorry for having said so much, she spoke of Daisy's marvelous beauty and winning ways, and hoped Julia would know and love her ere long, and possibly do her good. It so happened that Guy was sometimes present at these readings, enjoying them so much that there insensibly crept into his heart a wish that Daisy was more like the Boston girl whom he had mentally termed strong-minded. "And in time, perhaps, she may be," he thought. "I mean to have Julia here a great deal next summer, and with two such women for companions as Julia and Fan, Daisy cannot help but improve." And so at last, when the house was settled and the early spring flowers were in bloom, Guy started westward for his wife. He had not seen her now for months, and it was more than two weeks since he had heard from her, and his heart beat high with joyful anticipation as he thought just how she would look when she came to him, shyly and coyly, as she always did, with that droop in her eyelids and that pink flush in her cheeks. He would chide her a little at first, he said, for having been so poor a correspondent, especially of late, and after that he would love her so much, and shield her so tenderly from every want or care, that she should never feel the difference in his fortune. Poor Guy--he little dreamed what was in store for him just inside the door where he stood ringing one morning early in May, and which, when at last it was opened, shut in a very different man from the one who went through it three hours later, benumbed and half-crazed with bewilderment and surprise. CHAPTER V THE DIVORCE He had expected to meet Daisy in the hall, but she was nowhere in sight, and she who appeared in response to the card he sent up seemed confused and unnatural to such a degree that Guy asked in some alarm if anything had happened, and where Daisy was. Nothing had happened--that is--well, nothing was the matter with Daisy, Mrs. McDonald said, only she was nervous and not feeling quite well that morning, and thought she had better not come down. They had not expected him so soon, she continued, and she regretted exceedingly that her husband was not there, but she had sent for him, and hoped he would come immediately. Had Mr. Thornton been to breakfast? Yes, he had, and he did not understand at all what she meant; if Daisy could not come to him he must go to her, he said, and he started for the door, when Mrs. McDonald sprang forward, and, laying her hand on his arm, held him back, saying: "Wait, Mr. Thornton; wait till husband comes--to tell you--" "Tell me what?" Guy demanded of her, feeling sure now that something had befallen Daisy. "Tell you--that--that--Daisy is--that he has--that--oh, believe me, it was not my wish, and I don't know now why it was done," Mrs. McDonald said, still trying to detain Guy and keep him in the room. But her efforts were vain, for, shaking off her grasp, Guy opened the hall door, and with a cry of joy caught Daisy herself in his arms. In a state of fearful excitement and very curious to know what was passing between her mother and Guy, she had stolen downstairs to listen, and had reached the door just as Guy opened it so suddenly. "Daisy, darling, I feared you were sick," he cried, nearly smothering her with his caresses. But Daisy writhed herself away from him, and, putting up her hands to keep him off, cried out: "Oh, Guy, Guy, you can't--you mustn't. You must never kiss me again or love me any more, because I am--I am not--oh, Guy, I wish you had never seen me; I am so sorry, too. I did like you. I--I--Guy--Guy--I ain't your wife any more! Father has got a divorce!" She whispered the last words, and then, affrighted at the expression of Guy's face, fled half-way up the stairs, where she stood looking down upon him, while, with a face as white as ashes, he, too, stood gazing at her and trying to frame the words which should ask her what she meant. He did not believe her literally; the idea was too preposterous, but he felt that something horrible had come between him and Daisy--that in some way she was as much lost to him as if he had found her coffined for the grave, and the suddenness of the blow took from him for a moment his powers of speech, and he still stood looking at her when the street door opened and a new actor appeared upon the scene in the person of Mr. McDonald, who had hastened home in obedience to the message from his wife. It was a principle of Mr. McDonald never to lose his presence of mind or his temper, or the smooth, low tone of voice he had cultivated years ago and practiced since with so good effect. And now, though he understood the state of matters at once and knew that Guy had heard the worst, he did not seem ruffled in the slightest degree, and his voice was just as kind and sweet as ever as he bade Guy good-morning and advanced to shake his hand. But Guy would not take it. He had always disliked and distrusted Mr. McDonald, and he felt intuitively that whatever harm had befallen him had come through the oily-tongued, insinuating man who stood smilingly before him. With a gesture of disgust he turned away from the offered hand, and in a voice husky with suppressed excitement, asked: "What does all this mean, that when, after a separation of months, I come for my wife I am told that she is not my wife--that there has been a--a divorce?" Guy had brought himself to name the horrid thing, and the very sound of the word served to make it more real and clear to his mind, and there were great drops of sweat upon his forehead and about his mouth as he asked what it meant. "Oh, Guy, don't feel so badly. Tell him, father, I did not do it," Daisy cried, as she stood leaning over the stair-rail and looking down at the wretched man. "Daisy, go to your room. You should not have seen him at all," Mr. McDonald said, with more sternness of manner than was usual for him. Then, turning to Guy, he continued: "Come in here, Mr. Thornton, where we can be alone while I explain to you what seems so mysterious now." They went together into the little parlor, and for half an hour or more the sound of their voices was distinctly heard as Mr. McDonald tried to explain what there really was no explanation or excuse for. Daisy was not contented at Elmwood, and though she complained of nothing, she was not happy as a married woman, and was glad to be free again. That was all, and Guy understood at last that Daisy was his no longer; that the law which was a disgrace to the State in which it existed had divorced him from his wife without his knowledge or consent, and for no other reason than incompatibility of temperament, and a desire on Daisy's part to be free from the marriage tie. Not a word had been said of Guy's altered fortunes, but he felt that his comparative poverty was really the cause of this great wrong, and for a few moments resentment and indignation prevailed over every other feeling; then, when he remembered the little blue-eyed, innocent-faced girl whom he had loved so much and thought so good and true, he laid his head upon the sofa arm and groaned bitterly, while the man who had ruined him sat coolly by, citing to him many similar cases where divorces had been procured without the knowledge of the absent party. It was a common--a very common thing, he said, and reflected no disgrace upon either party where there was no criminal charge. Daisy was too young and childish anyway, and ought not to have been married for several years, and it was really quite as much a favor to Guy as a wrong. He was free again--free to marry if he liked--he had taken care to see to that, so-- "Stop!" Guy almost thundered out. "There is a point beyond which you shall not go. Be satisfied with taking Daisy from me, and do not insult me with talk of a second marriage. Had I found Daisy dead it would have hurt me less than this fearful wrong you have done. I say you, for I charge it all to you. Daisy could have had no part in it, and I ask to see her and hear from her own lips that she accepts the position in which you and your diabolical laws have placed her before I am willing to give her up. Call her, will you?" "No, Mr. Thornton," Mr. McDonald replied. "To see Daisy would be useless and only excite you more than you are excited now. You cannot see her." "Yes, he will, father. If Guy wants to see me, he shall." It was Daisy herself who spoke, and who a second time had been acting the part of listener. Going up to Guy, she knelt down beside him, and, laying her arms across his lap, said to him: "What is it, Guy? what is it you wish to say to me?" The sight of her before him in all her girlish beauty, with that soft, sweet expression on the face raised so timidly to his, unmanned Guy entirely, and, clasping her in his arms, he wept passionately for a moment, while he tried to say: "Oh, Daisy, my darling, tell me it is a horrid dream; tell me you are still my wife, and go with me to the home I have tried to make so pleasant for your sake. It is not like Elmwood, but I will some time have one handsomer even than that, and I'll work so hard for you! Oh, Daisy, tell me you are sorry for the part you had in this fearful business, if, indeed, you had a part, and I'll take you back so gladly! Will you, Daisy? will you be my wife once more? I shall never ask you again. This is your last chance with me. Reflect before you throw it away." Guy's mood was changing a little, because of something he saw in Daisy's face--a drawing back from him when he spoke of marriage. "Daisy must not go back with you; I shall not suffer that," Mr. McDonald said, while Daisy, still keeping her arms around Guy's neck, where she had put them when he drew her to him, replied: "Oh, Guy! I can't go with you now; but I shall like you always, and I'm so sorry for you. I never wanted to be married; but if I must, I'd better have married Tom, or that old Chicago man; they would not feel so bad, and I'd rather hurt them than you." The utter childishness of the remark roused Guy, and with a gesture of impatience, he put Daisy from him, and, rising to his feet, said angrily: "This, then is your decision, and I accept it; but, Daisy, if you have in you a spark of true womanhood you will some time be sorry for this day's work; while you!" and he turned fiercely upon Mr. McDonald--"words cannot express the contempt I feel for you; and know, too, that I understand you fully, and am certain that were I the rich man I was when you gave your daughter to me, you would not have taken her away. But I will waste no more words upon you. You are a villain! and Daisy is--" His white lips quivered a little as he hesitated a moment, and then added: "Daisy was my wife." Then, without another word, he left the house, nor saw the white, frightened face which looked after him so wistfully until a turn in the street hid him from view. CHAPTER VI EXTRACTS FROM DIARIES _Extract 1st--Mr. McDonald's._ MAY ----. Well, that matter is over, and I can't say I am sorry, for the expression in that Thornton's eye I do not care to meet a second time. There was mischief in it, and it made one think of six-shooters and cold lead. I never quite indorsed the man--first, because he was not as rich as I would like Daisy's husband to be, and, second, because even if he had been a millionaire it would have done me no good. That he did not marry Daisy's family, he made me fully understand, and for any good his money did me, I was as poor after the marriage as before. Then he must needs lose all he had in that foolish way, and when I found that Daisy was not exceedingly in love with married life, it was natural that, as her father, I should take advantage of the laws of the State in which I live, especially as Tom is growing rich so fast. On the whole, I have done a good thing. Daisy is free, with ten thousand dollars that Thornton settled on her, for, of course, I shall prevent her giving that back, as she is determined to do, saying it is not hers, and she will not keep it. It is hers, and she shall keep it, and Tom will be a millionaire if that gold mine proves as great a success as it seems now to be, and I can manage Tom, and, as I said before, I've done a nice thing after all. _Extract 2nd--Miss Thornton's._ JUNE 30, 18--. To-day, for the first time, we have hopes that my brother will live; but, oh! how near he has been to the gates of death since that night when he came back to us from the West, with a fearful look on his face and a cruel stab in his heart. I say us, for Julia Hamilton has been with me all through the dreadful days and nights when I watched to see Guy's life go out and know I was left alone. She was with me when I was getting ready for Daisy and waiting for Guy to bring her home--not to Elmwood--that dear old place is sold and strangers walk the rooms I love so well--but here to the brown cottage on the hill, which, if I had never had Elmwood, would seem so pleasant to me. And it is pleasant here, especially in Daisy's room, which we shall never use, for the door is shut and bolted, and it seems each time I pass it as if a dead body were inside. Had Guy died I would have laid him there and sent for that false creature to come and see her work. I promised her so much, but not from any love, for my heart was full of bitterness that night when I turned her from the door out into the rain. I shall never tell Guy that--never, lest he should soften toward her, and I would not have her here again for all the world contains. And yet I did like her, and was looking forward to her return with a good deal of pleasure. Julia had spoken many a kind word for her, had pleaded her extreme youth as an excuse for her faults, and had led me to hope for better things when time had matured her somewhat and she had become accustomed to our new mode of life. And so I hoped and waited for her and Guy, and wondered I did not hear from him, and felt so glad and happy when I received the telegram, "Shall be home to-night." It was a bright day in May, but the evening set in cool, with a feeling of rain in the air, and I had a fire kindled in the parlor and in Daisy's room, for I remembered how she used to crouch on the rug before the grate and watch the blaze floating up the chimney with all the eagerness of a child. Then, although it hurt me sorely, I went to Simpson, who bought our carriage, and asked that it might be sent to the station so that Daisy should not feel the difference at once. And Jerry, our old coachman, went with it and waited there just as Julia and I waited at home, for Julia had promised to stay a few weeks and see what Daisy was like. The train was late that night, an hour behind time, and the spring rain was falling outside and the gas was lighted within when I heard the sound of wheels stopping at the door and went to meet my brother. But only my brother. There was no Daisy with him. He came in alone, with such an awful look on his white face as made me cry out with alarm. "What it is, Guy, and where is Daisy?" I asked, as he staggered against the banister, where he leaned heavily. He did not answer my question, but said, "Take me to my room," in a voice I would never have known for Guy's. I took him to his room, made him lie down, and brought him a glass of wine, and then, when he was strong enough to tell it, listened to the shameful story, and felt that henceforth and forever I must and would hate the woman who had wounded my Guy so cruelly. And still there is some good in her--some sense of right and wrong, as was shown by a strange thing which happened when Guy was at the worst of the terrible fever which followed his coming home. I watched him day and night, I would not even let Julia Hamilton share my vigils, and one night when I was worn out with fatigue and anxiety I fell asleep upon the lounge, where I threw myself for a moment. How long I slept I never knew, but it must have been an hour or more, for the last thing I remember was hearing the whistle of the Western train and the sighing of the wind, which sounded like rain, and when I awoke the rain was falling heavily and the clock was striking twelve, which was an hour after the train was due. It was very quiet in the room, and darker than usual, for someone had shaded the lamp from my eyes as well as Guy's so that at first I did not see distinctly, but I had an impression that there was a figure sitting by Guy near the bed. Julia, most likely, I thought, and I called her by name, feeling my blood curdle in my veins and my heart stand still with something like fear when a voice I knew so well and never expected to hear again, answered softly: "It is not Julia. It's me!" There was no faltering in her voice, no sound of apology. She spoke like one who had a right there, and this it was which angered me and made me lose my self-command. Starting to my feet, I confronted her where she sat in my chair, by Guy's bedside, with those queer blue eyes of hers fixed so questioningly upon me as if she wondered at my impertinence. "Miss McDonald," I said, laying great stress on the name, "why are you here, and how did you dare come?" "I was almost afraid, it was so dark when I left the train, and it kept thundering so," she replied, mistaking my meaning altogether, "but there was no conveyance at the station, and so I came on alone. I never knew Guy was sick. Is he very bad?" Her perfect composure and utter ignoring of the past provoked me beyond endurance, and without stopping to think what I was doing, I seized her arm, and drawing her into an adjoining room, said, in a suppressed whisper of rage: "Very bad--I should think so. We have feared and still fear he will die, and it's all your work, the result of your wickedness, and yet you presume to come here into his very room--you who are no wife of his, and no woman, either, to do what you have done." What more I said I do not remember. I only know Daisy put her hands to her head in a scared, helpless way, and said: "I do not quite understand it all, or what you wish me to do." "Do?" I replied. "I want you to leave this house to-night--now, before Guy can possibly be harmed by your presence. Go back to the depot and take the next train home. It is due in an hour. You have time to reach it." "But it's so dark, and it rains and thunders so," she said, with a shudder, as a heavy peal shook the house and the rain beat against the windows. I think I must have been crazy with mad excitement, and her answer made me worse. "You were not afraid to come here," I said. "You can go from here as well. Thunder will not hurt such as you." Even then she did not move, but crouched in a corner of the room farthest from me, reminding me of my kitten when I try to drive it from a place where it has been permitted to play. As that will not understand my scats and gestures, so she did not seem to comprehend my meaning. But I made her at last, and with a very white face and a strange look in her great, staring blue eyes, she said: "Fanny" (she always called me Miss Frances before), "Fanny, do you really mean me to go back in the dark and the rain and the thunder? Then I will, but I must tell you first what I came for, and you will tell Guy. He gave me ten thousand dollars when we first were married; settled it on me, they called it, and father was one of the trustees and kept the paper for me till I was of age. So much I understand, but not why I can't give it back to Guy, for father says I can't. I never dreamed it was mine after the--the--the divorce." She spoke the word softly and hesitatingly, while a faint flush showed on her otherwise white face. "If I am not Guy's wife, as they say, then I have no right to his money, and I told father so, and said I'd give it back, and he said I couldn't, and I said I could and would, and I wrote to Guy about it, told him I was not so mean, and father kept the letter, and I did not know what I should do next till I was invited to visit Aunt Merriman in Detroit. Then I took the paper--the settlement, you know, from the box where father kept it and put it in my pocket; here it is--see," and she drew out a document and held it toward me while she continued: "I started for Detroit under the care of a friend who stopped a few miles the other side, so you see I was free to come here if I liked, and I did so, for I wanted to see Guy and give him the paper, and tell him I'd never take a cent of his money. I am sorry he is sick. I did not think he'd care so much, and I don't know what to do with the paper unless I tear it up. I believe I'd better; then, surely, it will be out of the way." And before I could speak or think she tore the document in two, and then across again, and scattered the four pieces on the floor. "Tell Guy, please," she continued, "what I have done, and that I never meant to take it, after--after--that--you know--and that I did not care for money only as father taught me I must have it, and that I am sorry he ever saw me, and I never really wanted to be married and can't be his wife again till I do." She spoke as if Guy would take her back of course if she only signified her wish to come, and this kept me angry, though I was beginning to soften a little with this unexpected phase of her character, and I might have suffered her to stay till morning if she had signified a wish to do so, but she did not. "I suppose I must go now if I would catch the train," she said, moving toward the door. "Good-by, Fanny. I am sorry I ever troubled you." She held her little white, ungloved hand toward me, and then I came to myself, and, hearing the wind and rain, and remembering the lonely road to the station, I said to her: "Stay, Daisy, I cannot let you go alone. Miss Hamilton will watch with Guy while I go with you." "And who will go with you? It will be just as dark and rainy then," she said; but she made no objection to my plan, and in less than five minutes Julia, who always slept in her dressing-gown so as to be ready for any emergency, was sitting by Guy, and I was out in the dark night with Daisy and our watchdog Leo, who, at sight of his old playmate, had leaped upon her and nearly knocked her down in his joy. "Leo is glad to see me," Daisy said, patting the dumb creature's head, and in her voice there was a rebuking tone, which I resented silently. I was not glad to see her, and I could not act a part, but I wrapped my waterproof around her and adjusted the hood over her flowing hair, and thought how beautiful she was, even in that disfiguring garb, and then we went on our way, the young creature clinging close to me as peal after peal of thunder rolled over our heads, and gleams of lightning lit up the inky sky. She did not speak to me, nor I to her, till the red light on the track was in sight, and we knew the train was coming. Then she asked timidly. "Do you think Guy will die?" "Heaven only knows," I said, checking a strong impulse to add: "If he does, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you killed him." I was glad now that I did not say it. And I was glad then, when Daisy, alarmed perhaps by something in the tone of my voice, repeated her question: "But do you think he will die? If I thought he would I should wish to die, too. I like him, Miss Frances, better than anyone I ever saw; like him now as well as I ever did, but I do not want to be his wife, nor anybody's wife, and that is just the truth. I am sorry he ever saw me and loved me so well. Tell him that, Fanny." It was Fanny again and she grasped my hand nervously, for the train was upon us. "Promise me solemnly that if you think he is surely going to die you will let me know in time to see him once more. Promise--quick--and kiss me as a pledge." The train had stopped. There was not a moment to lose, and I promised, and kissed the red lips in the darkness, and felt a remorseful pang when I saw the little figure go alone into the car which bore her swiftly away, while I turned my steps homeward with only Leo for my companion. I had to tell Julia about it, and I gathered up the four scraps of paper from the floor where Daisy had thrown them, and, joining them together, saw they really were the marriage settlement, and kept them for Guy, should he ever be able to hear about it and know what it meant. There was a telegram for me the next evening, dated at Detroit, and bearing simply the words, "Arrived safely," and that was all I heard of Daisy. No one in town knew of her having been here but Julia and myself, and it was better that they should not, for Guy's life hung on a thread, and for many days and nights I trembled lest that promise, sealed by a kiss, would have to be redeemed. That was three weeks ago, and Guy is better now and knows us all, and to-day, for the first time, I have a strong hope that I am not to be left alone, and I thank Heaven for that hope, and feel as if I were at peace with all the world, even with Daisy herself, from whom I have heard nothing since that brief telegram. AUGUST 1, ----. The shadow of death has passed from our house, and I may almost say the shadow of sickness, too, for though Guy is still weak as a child and thin as a ghost, he is decidedly on the gain, and to-day I drove him out for the third time, and felt from something he said that he was beginning to feel some interest in the life so kindly given back to him. Still he will never be just the same. The blow stunned him too completely for him to recover quite his old hopeful, happy manner, and there is a look of age in his face which pains me to see. He knows Daisy has been here, and why. I had to tell him all about it, and sooner, too, than I meant. Almost his first coherent question to me after his reason came back was: "Where is Daisy? I am sure I heard her voice. It could not have been a dream. Is she here, or has she been here? Tell me the truth, Fanny." So I told him, though I did not mean to, and showed him the bits of paper, and held his head on my bosom while he cried like a little child. How he loves her yet, and how glad he was to know that she was not as mercenary as it would at first seem. Not that her tearing up that paper will make any difference about the money. She cannot give it to him, he says, until she is of age, neither does he wish it at all, and he would not take it from her; but he is glad to see her disposition in the matter; glad to have me think better of her than I did, and I am certain that he is half expecting to hear from her every day and is disappointed that he does not. He did not reproach me when I told him about turning her out in the rain; he only said: "Poor Daisy, did she get very wet? She is so delicate, you know. I hope it did not make her sick." Oh, the love a man will feel for a woman, let her be ever so unworthy. I cannot comprehend it. And why should I--an old maid like me, who never loved anyone but Guy? AUGUST 30, ----. In a roundabout way we have heard that Mr. McDonald is going away with his wife and daughter. When the facts of the divorce were known they brought him into such disgrace with the citizens of Indianapolis that he thought it best to leave for a time till the storm blows over, and so they will go to South America, where there is a cousin Tom, who is growing rich very fast. I cannot help certain thoughts coming into my mind any more than I can help being glad that Daisy is going out of the country. Guy never mentions her now, and is getting to look and act quite like himself. If only he could forget her we might be very happy again, as Heaven grant we may. CHAPTER VII FIVE YEARS LATER "Married, this morning, at St. Paul's Church, by the Rev. Dr. ----, assisted by the rector, Guy Thornton, Esq., of Cuylerville, to Miss Julia Hamilton, of this city." Such was the notice which appeared in a daily Boston paper one lovely morning in September five years after the last entry in Miss Thornton's journal. Guy had reached the point at last when he could put Daisy from his heart and take another in her place. He had never seen her or heard directly from her since the night she brought him the marriage settlement and tore it in pieces, thinking thus to give it to him beyond a doubt. That this did not change the matter one whit he knew just as he knew she could not give him the ten thousand dollars settled upon her until she was of age. She was of age now, and had been for a year or more, and, to say the truth, he had expected to hear from her when she was twenty-one. To himself he had reasoned in this wise: Her father told her that the tearing up that paper made no difference, that she was powerless of herself to act until she was of age, so she will wait quietly till then before making another effort. And in his heart Guy thought how he would not take a penny from her, but would insist upon her keeping it. Still he should respect her all the more for her sense of justice and generosity, he thought, and when her twenty-first birthday came and passed, and week after week went by, and brought no sign from Daisy, there was a pang in his heart and a look of disappointment on his face which did not pass away until October hung her gorgeous colors upon the hills of Cuylerville, and Julia Hamilton came to the Brown Cottage to spend a few weeks with his sister. From an independent, self-reliant, energetic girl of twenty-two Julia had ripened into a noble and dignified woman of twenty-seven, with a quiet repose of manner which seemed to rest and quiet one, and which told insensibly on Guy, until at last he found himself dreading to have her go and wishing to keep her with him always. The visit was lengthened into a month; and when in November he went with her to Boston he had asked her to take Daisy's place, and she had said she would. Very freely they had talked of the little golden-haired girl, and Julia told him what she had heard of her through a mutual acquaintance who had been on the same vessel with the McDonalds when they returned from South America. Cousin Tom was with them, a rich man then and a richer now, for his gold mine and his railroad had made him almost a millionaire, and it was currently reported and believed that Mr. McDonald designed him for his daughter. They were abroad now, the McDonalds and Tom, who bore the expenses of the party. Daisy, it was said, was even more beautiful than in her early girlhood, and to her loveliness were added cultivation and refinement of manner. She had had the best of teachers while in South America, and was now continuing her studies abroad with a view to further improvement. All this Julia Hamilton told Guy, and then bade him think again ere deciding to join her life with his. And Guy did think again, and his thoughts went across the sea after the beautiful Daisy, and he tried to picture to himself what she must be, now that education and culture had set their seal upon her. But always in the picture there was a dark background, where cousin Tom stood sentinel with his bags of gold, and so, with a half-unconscious sigh for what "might have been," Guy dug still deeper the grave where years before he had buried his love for Daisy, and to make the burial sure this time, so that there should be no future resurrection, he put over the grave a head-stone on which were written a new hope and a new love, both of which centered in Julia Hamilton. And so they were engaged, and after that there was no wavering on his part--no looking back to a past which seemed like a happy dream from which there had been a horrible awaking. He loved Julia at first quietly and sensibly, and loved her more and more as the winter and spring went by and brought the day when he stood again at the altar and for the second time took upon him the marriage vow. It was a very quiet wedding, with only a few friends present, and Miss Frances was the bridesmaid, in a gown of silver gray; but Julia's face was bright with the certainty of a happiness long desired; and if in Guy's heart there lingered the odor of other bridal flowers, withered now and dead, and the memory of other marriage bells than those which sent their music on the air that summer morning, and if a pair of sunny blue eyes looked into his instead of Julia's darker ones, he made no sign, and his face wore an expression of perfect content as he took his second bride for better or worse, just as he once had taken little Daisy. In her case it had proved all for the worse, but now there was a suitableness in the union which boded future happiness, and many a hearty wish for good was sent after the newly married pair, whose destination was New York. It was nearly dark when they reached the hotel and quite dark before dinner was over. Then Julia suddenly remembered that an old friend of hers was boarding in the house, and suggested going to her room. "I'd send my card," she said blushingly, "only she would not know me by the new name, so if you do not mind my leaving you a moment I'll go and find her myself." Guy did not mind, and Julia went out and left him alone. Scarcely was she gone when he called to mind a letter which had been forwarded to him from Cuylerville, and which he had found awaiting him on his return from the church. Not thinking it of much consequence he had thrust it in his pocket and in the excitement forgotten it till now. He had dressed for dinner and worn his wedding coat, and he took the letter out and looked at it a moment, and wondered whom it was from, as people ofttimes do wait and wonder, when breaking the seal would settle the wonder so soon. It was postmarked in New York, and felt heavy in his hand, and he opened it at last and found that the outer envelope inclosed another one on which his name and address were written in a handwriting once so familiar to him, and the sight of which made him start and breathe heavily for a moment as if the air had suddenly grown thick and burdensome. Daisy's handwriting! which he had never thought to see again; for after his engagement with Julia he had burned every vestige of a correspondence it was sorrow now to remember. One by one, and with a steady hand, he had dropped Daisy's letters into the fire and watched them turning into ashes, and thought how like his love for her they were when nothing remained of them but the thin gray tissue his breath could blow away. The four scraps of the marriage settlement which Daisy had brought him on that night of storm he kept, because they seemed to embody something good and noble in the girl; but the letters she had written him were gone past recall, and he had thought himself cut loose from her forever--when, lo! there had come to him an awakening to the bitterness of the past in a letter from the once-loved wife, whose delicate handwriting made him grow faint and sick for a moment as he held the letter in his hand and read thereon: "GUY THORNTON, ESQ., Brown Cottage, Cuylerville, Mass. Politeness of Mr. Wilkes." Why had she written, and what had she to say to him, he wondered, and for a moment he felt tempted to tear the letter up and never know what it contained. Better, perhaps, had he done so--better for him, and better for the fond new wife whose happiness was so perfect, and whose trust in his love so strong. But he did not tear it up. He opened it and read--another chapter will tell us what he read. CHAPTER VIII DAISY'S LETTER It was dated at Rouen, France, and it ran as follows: "MAY 15, 18--. "DEAR, DEAR GUY:--I am all alone here in Rouen; not a person near me who speaks English or knows a thing of Daisy Thornton as she was, or as she is now, for I am Daisy Thornton here. I have taken the old name again, and am an English governess in a wealthy French family; and this is how it came about: I have left Berlin and the party there and am earning my own living for three reasons, two of which concern cousin Tom and one of which has to do with you and that miserable settlement which has troubled me so much. I thought when I brought it back and tore it up that was the last of it, and did not know that by no act of mine could I give it to you until I was of age. Father missed it, of course, and I told him just the truth, and that I could never touch a penny of your money and I not your wife. He did not say a word, and I supposed it was all right, and never dreamed that I was actually clothed and fed on the interest of that ten thousand dollars. Father would not tell me and you did not write. Why didn't you, Guy? I expected a letter so long, and went to the office so many times and cried a little to myself, and said Guy has forgotten me. "Then we went to South Africa--father, mother, and I--went to live with Tom. He wanted me before you did, you know, but I could not marry Tom. He is very rich now, and we lived with him; and then we all came to Europe and have traveled everywhere, and I have had teachers in everything, and people say I am a fine scholar and praise me much; and, Guy, I have tried to improve just to please you; believe me, Guy, just to please you. Tom was as a brother--a dear, good big bear of a brother whom I loved as such, but nothing more. Even were you dead, I could not marry Tom after knowing you; and I told him so when in Berlin he asked me for the sixth time to be his wife. I had to tell him something hard to make him understand, and when I saw how what I said hurt him cruelly and made him cry--because he was such a great, big, awkward, dear old fellow, I put my arms around his neck and cried with him, and tried to explain, and that made him ten times worse. Oh, if folks only would not love me so it would save me so much sorrow. "You see, I tell you this because I want you to know exactly what I have been doing these five years, and that I have never thought of marrying Tom or anybody. I did not think I could. I felt that if I belonged to anybody it was you, and I cannot have Tom; and father was very angry and taunted me with living on Tom's money, which I did not know before, and he accidentally let out about the marriage settlement, and that hurt me worse than the other. "Oh, Guy, how can I give it up? Surely there must be a way, now I am of age. I was so humiliated about it, and after all that passed between father and Tom and me I could not stay in Berlin and never be sure whose money was paying for my bread, and when I heard that Madame Lafarcade, a French lady, who had spent the winter in Berlin, was wanting an English governess for her children, I went to her, and, as the result, am here at this beautiful country-seat, just out of the city, earning my own living and feeling so proud to do it; only, Guy, there is an ache in my heart, a heavy, throbbing pain which will not leave me day or night, and this is how it came there. "Mother wrote that you were about to marry Miss Hamilton. Letters from home brought her the news, which she thinks is true. Oh, Guy, it is not, it cannot be true! You must not go quite away from me now just as I am coming back to you. For, Guy, I am--or rather, I have come, and a great love, such as I never felt before, fills me full almost to bursting. I always liked you, Guy; but when we were married I did not know what it was to love--to feel my pulses quicken as they do just now at thought of you. If I had, how happy I could have made you, but I was a silly little girl, and married life was distasteful to me, and I was willing to be free, though always, way down in my heart, was something which protested against it, and if you knew just how I was influenced and led on insensibly to assent, you would not blame me so much. The word divorce had an ugly sound to me, and I did not like it, and I have always felt as if bound to you just the same. It would not be right for me to marry Tom, even if I wanted to, which I do not. I am yours, Guy--only yours, and all these years I have studied and improved for your sake, without any fixed idea, perhaps, as to what I expected or hoped. But when Tom spoke the last time it came to me suddenly what I was keeping myself for, and, just as a great body of water, when freed from its prison walls, rolls rapidly down a green meadow, so did a mighty love for you take possession of me and permeate my whole being until every nerve quivered for joy, and when Tom was gone I went away alone and cried more for my new happiness, I am afraid, than for him, poor fellow. And yet I pitied him, too; as I could not stay in Berlin after that I came away to earn money enough to take me back to you. For I am coming, or I was before I heard that dreadful news which I cannot believe. "Is it true, Guy? Write and tell me it is not, and that you love me still and want me back, or, if it in part is true, and you are engaged to Julia, show her this letter and ask her to give you up, even if it is the very day before the wedding--for you are mine, and, sometimes, when the children are troublesome, and I am so tired and sorry and homesick, I have such a longing for a sight of your dear face, and think if I could only lay my aching head in your lap once more I should never know pain or weariness again. "Try me, Guy. I will be so good and loving and make you so happy--and your sister, too--I was a bother to her once. I'll be a comfort now. Tell her so, please; tell her to bid me come. Say the word yourself, and, almost before you know it, I'll be there. "Truly, lovingly, waitingly, your wife, DAISY. "P.S.--To make sure of this letter's safety I shall send it to New York by a friend, who will mail it to you. "Again, lovingly. DAISY THORNTON." This was Daisy's letter which Guy read with such a pang in his heart as he had never known before, even when he was smarting the worst from wounded love and disappointed hopes. Then he had said to himself, "I can never suffer again as I am suffering now," and now, alas, he felt how little he knew of that pain which rends the heart and takes the breath away. "God help her!" he moaned, his first thought, his first prayer, for Daisy, the girl who called herself his wife, when just across the hall, only a few rods away, was the bride of a few hours--another woman who bore his name and called him her husband. With a face as pale as ashes and hands which shook like palsied hands, he read again that pathetic cry from her whom he now felt he had never ceased to love; aye, whom he loved still, and whom, if he could, he would have taken to his arms so gladly and loved and cherished as the priceless thing he had once thought her to be. The first moments of agony which followed the reading of the letter were Daisy's wholly, and in bitterness of soul the man she had cast off and thought to take again cried out, as he stretched his arms toward an invisible form: "Too late, darling--too late. But had it come two months, one month, or even one week ago, I would--would--have gone to you over land and sea, but now--another is in your place, another is my wife; Julia--poor, innocent Julia. God help me to keep my vow; God help me in my need!" He was praying now; Julia was the burden of his prayer. And as he prayed there came into his heart an unutterable tenderness and pity for her. He had thought he loved her an hour ago! he believed he loved her now, or, if he did not, he would be to her the kindest, most thoughtful of husbands, and never let her know, by word or sign, of the terrible pain he should always carry in his heart. "Darling Daisy; poor Julia!" was what to himself he designated the two women who were both so much to him. To the first his love, to the other his tender care, for she was worthy of it. She was noble, and good, and womanly; he said it many times, and tried to stop the rapid heart throbs and quiet himself down to meet her when she should come to him with her frank, open face and smile, in which there was no shadow of guile. She was coming now; he heard her voice in the hall speaking to her friend, and, thrusting the fatal letter in his pocket, he rose to his feet, and steadying himself upon the table stood waiting for her, as, flushed and eager, she came in. "Guy--Guy--what is it? Are you sick?" she asked, alarmed at the pallor on his face and the strange expression of his eyes. He was glad she had thus construed his agitation, and he answered that he was faint and a little sick. "It came on suddenly, while I was sitting here. It will pass off as suddenly," he said, trying to smile, and holding out his hand, which she took at once in hers. "Is it your heart, Guy? Do you think it is your heart?" she continued, as she rubbed and caressed his cold, clammy hand. A shadow of pain or remorse flitted across Guy's face as he replied: "I think it is my heart, but I assure you there is no danger--the worst is over. I am a great deal better." And he was better with that fair girl beside him, her face glowing with excitement and her soft hands pressing his. Perfectly healthy herself, she must have imparted some life and vigor to him, for he felt his pulse grow steadier beneath her touch, and the blood flow more easily through his veins. If only he could forget that crumpled letter which lay in his vest pocket and seemed to burn into his flesh; forget that and the young girl across the sea, watching for an answer and the one word "Come!" he might be happy yet, for Julia was one whom any man could love and be proud to call his wife. And Guy said to himself that he did love her, though not as he once loved Daisy, or as he could love her again were he free to do so, and because of that full love withheld he made a mental vow that his whole life should be given to her happiness, so that she might never know any care or sorrow from which he could shield her. "And Daisy?" something whispered in his ear. "I must and will forget her," he sternly answered, and the arm he had thrown around Julia, who was sitting with him upon the sofa, tightened its grasp until she winced and moved a little from him. He was very talkative that evening, and asked his wife many questions about her friends and the shopping she wished to do, and the places they were to visit; and Julia, who had hitherto regarded him as a great, silent man, given to few words, wondered at the change, and watched the bright red spots on his cheeks, and thought how she would manage to have medical advice for that dreadful heart disease which had come like a nightmare to haunt her bridal days. Next morning there came a Boston paper containing a notice of the marriage, and this Guy sent to Daisy, with only the faint tracing of a pencil to indicate the paragraph. "Better so than to write," he thought; though he longed to add the words, "Forgive me, Daisy; your letter came too late." And so the paper was sent, and after a week or two Guy went back to his home in Cuylerville, and the blue rooms which Julia had fitted up for Daisy five years before became her own by right. And Fanny Thornton welcomed her warmly to the house, and by many little acts of thoughtfulness showed how glad she was to have her there. And Julia was very happy save when she remembered the heart disease, which she was sure Guy had, and for which he would not seek advice. "There was nothing the matter with his heart unless it were too full of love," he told her laughingly, and wondered to himself if in saying this to her he was guilty of a lie, inasmuch as his words misled her so completely. After a time, however, there came a change, and thoughts of Daisy ceased to disturb him as they once had done. No one ever mentioned her to him, and since the receipt of her letter he had heard no tidings of her until six months after his marriage, when there came to him the ten thousand dollars, with all the interest which had accrued since the settlement first was made. There was no word from Daisy herself, but a letter from a lawyer in Berlin, who said all there was to say with regard to the business, but did not tell where Miss McDonald, as he called her, was. Then Guy wrote to Daisy a letter of thanks, to which there came no reply, and as time went on the old wound began to heal, the grave to close again; and when, at last, one year after his marriage, they brought him a beautiful little baby girl and laid it in his arms, and then a few moments later let him into the room where the pale mother lay, he stooped over her and, kissing her fondly, said: "I never loved you half as well as I do now." It was a pretty child, with dark blue eyes, and hair in which there was a gleam of gold, and Guy, when asked what he would call her, said: "Would you object to Margaret?" Julia knew what he meant, and, like the true, noble woman she was, offered no objection to Guy's choice, knowing well who Margaret had been; and herself first gave the pet name of Daisy to her child, on whom Guy settled the ten thousand dollars sent to him by the Daisy over the sea. CHAPTER IX DAISY, TOM, AND THAT OTHER ONE Watching, waiting, hoping, saying to herself in the morning, "It will come before night," and saying to herself at night, "It will be here to-morrow morning." Such was Daisy's life, even before she had a right to expect an answer to her letter. Of the nature of Guy's reply she had no doubt. He had loved her once, he loved her still, and he would take her back of course. There was no truth in that rumor of another marriage. Possibly her father, whom she understood now better than she once had, had gotten the story up for the sake of inducing her through pique to marry Tom; but if so his plan would fail. Guy would write to her, "Come!" and she would go, and more than once she counted the contents of her purse and added to it the sum due her from Madame Lafarcade, and wondered if she would dare venture on the journey with so small a sum. "You so happy and white, too, _ce matin_," her little pupil, Pauline, said to her one day, when they sat together in the garden, and Daisy was indulging in a fanciful picture of her meeting with Guy. "Yes, I am happy," Daisy said, rousing from her reverie; "but I did not know I was pale--or white, as you term it--though, now I think of it, I do feel sick and faint. It's the heat, I guess. Oh! there is Max with the mail! He is coming this way! He has--he certainly has something for me!" Daisy's cheeks were scarlet now, and her eyes were bright as stars as she went forward to meet the man who brought the letters to the house. "Only a paper!--is there nothing more?" she asked in an unsteady voice, as she took the paper in her hand, and, recognizing Guy's handwriting, knew almost to a certainty what was before her. "Oh, mon Dieu! vous êtes malade! J'apporterai un verre d'eau!" Pauline exclaimed, forgetting her English and adopting her mother tongue in her alarm at Daisy's white face and the peculiar tone of her voice. "No, Pauline, stay; open the paper for me," Daisy said, feeling that it would be easier so than to read it herself, for she knew it was there, else he would never have sent her a paper and nothing more. Delighted to be of some use, and a little gratified to open a foreign paper, Pauline tore off the wrapper, starting a little at Daisy's quick, sharp cry as she made a rent across the handwriting. "Look, you are tearing into my name, which he wrote," Daisy said, and then remembering herself, she sank back into her seat in the garden chair, while Pauline wondered what harm there was in tearing an old soiled wrapper, and why her governess should take it so carefully in her hand and roll it up as if it had been a living thing. There were notices of new books, and a runaway match in high life, and a suicide on Summer Street, and a golden wedding in Roxbury, and the latest fashions from Paris, into which Pauline plunged with avidity while Daisy listened like one in a dream, asking when the fashions were exhausted: "Is that all? Are there no deaths or marriages?" Pauline had not thought of that--she would see, and she hunted through the columns till she found Guy's pencil mark, and read: "Married, this morning, at St. Paul's Church, by the Rev. Dr. ----, assisted by the rector, Guy Thornton, Esq., of Cuylerville, to Miss Julia Hamilton, of this city." "Yes, yes; it's very hot here, isn't it? I think I will go in," Daisy said, her fingers working nervously with the bit of paper she held. But Pauline was too intent on the name of Thornton to hear what Daisy said, and she asked: "Is Mr. Thornton your friend?" It was a natural enough question, and Daisy roused herself to answer it, and said quickly: "He is the son of my husband's father." "Oh, oui," Pauline rejoined, a little mystified as to the exact relationship existing between Guy Thornton and her teacher's husband, whom she supposed was dead, as Daisy had only confided to madame the fact of a divorce. "What date is the paper?" Daisy asked, and on being told she said softly to herself: "I see, it was too late." There was in her mind no doubt as to what the result would have been had her letter been in time; no doubt of Guy's preference for her; no regret that she had written to him, except that the knowledge that she loved him at last might make him wretched with thinking "what might have been," and with the bitter pain which cut her heart like a knife there was mingled a pity for Guy, who would perhaps suffer more than she did, if that were possible. She never once thought of retribution, or of murmuring against her fate, but accepted it meekly, albeit she staggered under the load and grew faint as she thought of the lonely life before her, and she so young. Slowly she went back to her room, while Pauline walked up and down the garden trying to make out the relationship between the newly married Thornton and her teacher. "The son of her husband's father?" she repeated, until at last a meaning dawned upon her, and she said: "Then he must be her brother-in-law; but why didn't she say so? Maybe, though, that is the English way of putting it," and, having thus settled the matter, Pauline joined her mother, who was asking for Mrs. Thornton. "Gone to her room, and her brother-in-law is married. It was marked in a paper and I read it to her, and she's sick," Pauline said, without, however, in the least connecting the sickness with the marriage. Daisy did not come down to dinner that night, and the maid who called her the next morning reported her as ill and acting very strangely. Through the summer a malarial fever had prevailed to some extent in and about Rouen, and the physician whom Madame Lafarcade summoned to the sick girl expressed a fear that she was coming down with it, and ordered her kept as quiet as possible. "She seems to have something weighing on her mind. Has she heard any bad news from home?" he asked, as in reply to his question where her pain was the worst Daisy always answered: "It reached him too late--too late, and I am so sorry." Madame knew of no bad news, she said, and then as she saw the foreign paper lying on the table, she took it up, and, guided by the pencil marks, read the notice of Guy Thornton's marriage, and that gave her the key at once to Daisy's mental agitation. Daisy had been frank with her and told her as much of her story as was necessary, and she knew that the Guy Thornton married to Julia Hamilton had once called Daisy his wife. "Excuse me, she is, or she has something on her mind, I suspect," she said to the physician, who was still holding Daisy's hand and looking anxiously at her flushed cheeks and bright, restless eyes. "I thought so," he rejoined, "and it aggravates all the symptoms of her fever. I shall call again to-night." He did call and found his patient worse, and the next day he asked Madame Lafarcade: "Has she friends in this country? If so, they ought to know." A few hours later, and in his lodgings at Berlin, Tom read the following dispatch: "Mrs. Thornton is dangerously ill. Come at once." It was directed to Mr. McDonald, who with his wife had been on a trip to Russia, and was expected daily. Feeling intuitively that it concerned Daisy, Tom had opened it, and without a moment's hesitation packed his valise, and, leaving a note for the McDonalds when they should return, started for Rouen. Daisy did not know him, and in her delirium she said things to him and of him which hurt him cruelly. Guy was her theme, and the letter which went "too late, too late." Then she would beg of Tom to go for Guy, to bring him to her and tell him how much she loved him and how good she would be if he would take her back. "Father wants me to marry Tom," she said in a whisper, and Tom's heart almost stood still as he listened; "and Tom wanted me, too, but I couldn't, you know, even if he were worth his weight in gold. I could not love him. Why, he's got red hair, and such great freckles on his face, and big feet and hands with freckles on them. Do you know Tom?" "Yes, I know him," Tom answered sadly, forcing down a choking sob, while the "big hand with the great freckles on it" smoothed the golden hair tenderly and pushed it back from the burning brow. "Don't talk any more, Daisy; it tires you so," he said, as he saw her about to speak again. But Daisy was not to be stopped, and she went on: "Tom is good, though; so good, but awkward, and I like him ever so much, but I can't be his wife. I cannot. I cannot." "He doesn't expect it now, or want it," came huskily from Tom, while Daisy quickly asked: "Doesn't he?" "No, never any more; so, put it from your mind and try to sleep," Tom said, and again the freckled hands smoothed the tumbled pillows and wiped the sweat drops from Daisy's face, while all the time the great kind heart was breaking, and the hot tears were rolling down the sun-burned face Daisy thought was so ugly. Tom had heard from Madame Lafarcade of Guy's marriage, and, like her, understood why Daisy's fever ran so high and her mind was in such a turmoil. But for himself he knew there was no hope, and with a feeling of death in his heart he watched by her day and night, yielding his place to no one, and saying to madame when she remonstrated with him and bade him care for his own health: "It does not matter to me. I would rather die than not." Daisy was better when her mother came--saved, the doctor said, more by Tom's care and nursing than by his own skill, and then Tom gave up his post and never went near her unless she asked for him. His "red hair and freckled face" were constantly in his mind, making him loathe the very sight of himself. "She cannot bear my looks, and I will not force myself upon her," he said; and so he stayed away, but surrounded her with every luxury money could buy, and, as soon as she was able, had her removed to a pretty little cottage which he rented and fitted up for her, and where she would be more at home and quieter than at Madame Lafarcade's. And there, one morning when he called to inquire for her, he, too, was smitten down with the fever which he had taken with Daisy's breath the many nights and days he watched her without rest or sufficient food. There was a faint, followed by a long interval of unconsciousness, and when he came to himself he was in Daisy's own room, lying on Daisy's little bed, and Daisy herself was bending anxiously over him with a flush on her white cheeks and a soft, pitiful look in her blue eyes. "What is it? Where am I?" he asked, and Daisy replied: "You are here in my room--on my bed; and you've got the fever, and I'm going to take care of you, and I'm so glad. Not glad you have the fever," she added, as she met his look of wonder, "but glad I can repay in part all you did for me, you dear, noble Tom! And you are not to talk," and she laid her small hand on his mouth as she saw him about to speak. "I am strong enough; the doctor says so, and I'd do it if he didn't, for you are the best, the truest friend I have." She was rubbing his hot, feverish hands, and though the touch of her cool, soft fingers was so delicious, poor Tom thought of the big freckles so obnoxious to the little lady, and, drawing his hands from her grasp, hid them beneath the clothes. Gladly, too, would he have covered his face and hair from her sight, but this he could not do and breathe, but he begged her to leave him and send someone in her place. But Daisy would not listen to him. He had nursed her day and night, she said, and she should stay with him, and she did, through three weeks, when Tom's fever ran higher than hers had done, because there was more for it to feed upon, and when Tom in his ravings talked of things which made her heart ache with a new and different pain from that already there. At first there were low whisperings and incoherent mutterings, and when Daisy asked him to whom he was talking he answered her: "To that other one over in the corner. Don't you see him? He is waiting for me till the fever eats me up. There's a lot of me to eat, I'm so big and awkward, overgrown--that's what Daisy said. You know Daisy, don't you? a dainty little creature, with such delicacy of sight and touch! She doesn't like red hair; she said so when we thought the man in the corner was waiting for her, and she doesn't like my freckled face and hands--big hands, she said they were, and yet how they have worked like horses for her! Oh, Daisy! Daisy! I have loved her ever since she was a child, and I drew her to school on my sled and cut her doll's head off to tease her. Take me quick, please, out of her sight, where my freckled face won't offend her." He was talking now to that other one, the man in the corner, who, like some grim sentinel, stood there day and night, while Daisy kept her tireless watch and Tom talked on and on--never to her--but always to the other one, the man in the corner, whom he begged to take him away. "Bring out your boat," he would say. "It's time we were off, for the tide is at its height, and the river is running so fast. I thought once it would take Daisy, but it left her, and I am glad. When I am fairly over and there's nothing but my big, freckled hulk left, cover my face and don't let her look at me, though I'll be white then, not red. Oh, Daisy, Daisy, my darling, you hurt me so cruelly!" Those were terrible days for Daisy, but she never flinched from her post, and stood resolutely between the sick man and that other one in the corner until the latter seemed to waver a little; his shadow was not so black, his presence so all-pervading, and there was hope for Tom. His reason came back at last, and the fever left him, but weak as a child, with no power to move even his poor wasted hands which lay outside the counterpane and seemed to trouble him, for there was a wistful, pleading look in his gray eyes as they went from the hands to Daisy, while his lips whispered faintly, "Cover." She understood him, and with a rain of tears spread the sheet over them, and then on her knees beside him, said to him amid her sobs: "Forgive me, Tom, for what I did when I was crazy. You are not repulsive to me. You are the truest, best, and dearest friend I ever had, and I--I--oh, Tom, I wish I had never been born." Daisy did not stay by Tom that night. There was no necessity for it, and she was so worn and weary with watching that the physician declared she must have absolute rest or be sick again herself. So she remained away, and in a little room by herself fought the fiercest battle she had ever fought, and on her knees, with tears and bitter cries, asked for help to do right. Not for help to know what was right. She felt sure that she did know that, only the flesh was weak, and there were chords of love still clinging to a past she scarcely dared think of now lest her courage should fail her. Guy was lost to her forever; it was a sin even to think of him as she must think if she thought at all, and so she strove to put him from her--to tear his image from her heart and put another in its place, even Tom, whom she pitied so much, and whom she could make so happy. "No matter for myself," she said. "No matter what I feel, or how sharp the pain in my heart, if I only keep it there and never let Tom know. I can make him happy, and I will." There was no wavering after that decision--no regret for the "might have been," but her face was white as snow, and about the pretty mouth there was a quivering of the muscles as if the words were hard to utter when next day she went to Tom, and, sitting down beside him, asked how he was feeling. His eyes brightened a little when he saw her, but there was a look on his face which made Daisy's pulse quicken with a nameless fear, and his voice was very weak as he replied: "They say I am better; but, Daisy, I know the time is near for me to go. I shall never get well, nor do I wish to, though life is not a gift to be thrown away easily, and on some accounts mine has been a happy one, but the life beyond is better, and I feel sure I am going to it." "Oh, Tom, Tom, don't talk so! You must not leave me now!" Daisy cried, all her composure giving way as she fell on her knees beside him, and, taking both his hands in hers, wet them with her tears. "Tom," she began, when she could speak. "I have been bad to you so often, and worried and wounded you so much; but I am sorry, so sorry, and I've thought it all over and made up my mind, and I want you to get well and ask me that--that--question again--you have asked so many times--and--and--Tom--I will say--yes--to it now, and try so hard to make you happy." Her face was crimson as if with shame, and she dared not look at Tom until his silence startled her. Then she stole a glance at his face and met an expression which prompted her to go on recklessly: "Don't look so incredulous, Tom. I am in earnest. I mean what I say, though it may be unmaidenly to say it. Try me, Tom; I will make you happy, and, though at first I cannot love you as I did Guy when I sent him that letter, the love will come, born of your great goodness and kindness of heart. Try me, Tom, won't you?" She kissed his thin, white hands where the freckles shone more plainly than ever, and which Tom tried to free from her; she held them fast and looked steadily into the face, which shone for a moment with a joy so great that it was almost handsome, and when she said again, "Will you, Tom?" the pale lips parted with an effort to speak, but no sound was audible, only the chin quivered, and the tears stood in his gray eyes as he battled with the great temptation. Should he accept the sacrifice? Ought he to join her life with his? Could she ever learn to love him? No, she could not, and he must put her from him, even though she came asking him to take her. Thus Tom decided, and, turning his face to the wall, he said, with a choking sob: "No, Daisy--no. It cannot be. Such happiness is not for me now. I must not think of it. Thank you, darling, just the same. It was kind in you and well meant, but it cannot be. I could not make you happy. I am not like Guy; never can be like him, and you would hate me after a while, and the chain would hurt you cruelly. No, Daisy, I love you too well--and yet, Daisy--Daisy--why do you tempt me so--if it could have been!" He turned suddenly toward her, and, winding both his arms around her, drew her to him in a quick, passionate embrace, crying piteously over her, and saying: "My darling, my darling, if it could have been, but it's too late now--God is good and will take me to himself. I thought of it before I was sick, and believe I am a better man, and Jesus is my friend, and I am going to him. I'm glad you told me what you have. It will make my last days happier, and when I am gone you will find that I did well with you." He put her from him then, for faintness and great exhaustion were stealing over him, and that was the last that ever passed between him and Daisy on the subject which all his life had occupied so much of his thoughts. The fever had left him, it is true, but he seemed to have no vital force or rallying power, and after a few days it was clear even to Daisy that Tom's life was drawing to a close. "The man in the corner" was there again waiting for his prey, and would not leave this time until he bore with him an immortal soul. And Tom was very happy. He had thought much of death and what lay beyond during those days when Daisy's life hung in the balance, and the result of the much thinking had been a full surrender of himself to God, who did not forsake him when the dark, cold river was closing over him. Calm and peaceful as the setting of the summer sun was the close of his life, and up to the last he retained his consciousness, with the exception of a few hours, when his mind wandered a little, and he talked to "that other one," whom no one could see but whose presence all felt so vividly. "It would have been pleasant, and for a minute I was tempted to take her at her word," he said; "but when I remembered my hair and face and hands, and how she liked nothing which was not comely, I would not run the chance of being hated for my repulsive looks. Poor little Daisy! she meant it all right, and I bless her for it, and am glad she said it, but she must not look at me when I'm dead. The freckles she dislikes so much will show plainer then. Don't let her come near, or, if she must, cover me up--cover me up--cover me from her sight." Thus he talked, and Daisy, who knew what he meant, wept silently by his side, and kept the sheet closely drawn over the hands he was so anxious to have hidden from her view. He knew her at last, and bade her a long farewell, and told her she had been to him the dearest thing in life, and Daisy's arm was round him, supporting him upon the pillow, and Daisy's hand wiped the death moisture from his brow, and Daisy's lips were pressed to his dying face, and her ear caught his last faint whisper: "God bless you, darling! I am going home! Good-by!" "The man in the corner--that other one"--had claimed him, and Daisy put gently from her only the lifeless form which had once been Tom. They buried him there in France on a sunny slope, where the grass was green and the flowers blossomed in the early spring, and when Mr. McDonald examined his papers he found to his surprise that, with the exception of an annuity to himself and several legacies to different charitable institutions, Tom had left to Daisy his entire fortune, stipulating only that one-tenth of all her income should be yearly given back to God, who had a right to it. CHAPTER X MISS MCDONALD She took that name again, and with it, also, Margaret, feeling that Daisy was far too girlish an appellation for one who clad herself almost in widow's weeds, and felt, when she stood at poor Tom's grave, more wretched and desolate than many a wife has felt when her husband was put from her sight. Tom had meant to make her parents independent of her so that she need not have them with her unless she chose to do so, for, knowing Mr. McDonald as he did, he thought she would be happier alone, but God so ordered it that within three months after poor Tom's death they made another grave beside his, and Daisy and her mother were alone. It was spring-time now, and the two desolate women bade adieu to their dead, and made their way to England, and from there to Scotland, where among the heather hills they passed the summer in the utmost seclusion. Here Daisy had ample time for thought, which dwelt mostly upon the past and the happiness she cast away when she consented to the sundering of the tie which had bound her to Guy Thornton. "Oh, how could I have been so foolish and so weak," she said, as, with intense contempt for herself, she read over the journal she had kept at Elmwood during the first weeks of her married life. Guy had said it would be pleasant for her to refer to its pages in after years, little dreaming with what sore anguish of heart poor Daisy would one day weep over the senseless things recorded there. "Can it be I was ever that silly little fool?" she said bitterly, as she finished her journal. "And how could Guy love me as I know he did. Oh, if I but had the chance again, I would make him so happy! Oh, Guy, Guy--my husband still--mine more than Julia's, if you could know how much I love you now; nor can I feel it wrong to do so, even though I never hope to see your face again. Guy, Guy, the world is so desolate, and I am young, only twenty-three, and life is so long and dreary with nothing to live for or to do. I wish almost that I were dead like Tom, only I dare not think I should go to heaven where he has gone." In her sorrow and loneliness Daisy was fast sinking into an unhealthy, morbid state of mind from which nothing seemed to arouse her. "Nothing to live for--nothing to do," was her lament until one golden September day, when there came a turning point in her life, and she found there was something to do. There was no regular service that Sunday in the church where she usually attended, and as the day was fine and she was far too restless to remain at home, she proposed to her mother that they walk to a little chapel about a mile away, where a young Presbyterian clergyman was to preach. She had heard much of his eloquence, and as his name was McDonald, he might possibly be some distant relative. Inasmuch as her father was of Scotch descent she felt a double interest in him, and with her mother was among the first who entered the little, humble building and took a seat upon one of the hard, uncomfortable benches near the pulpit. The speaker was young--about Tom's age--and with a look on his florid face and a sound in his voice so like that of the dead man that Daisy half started to her feet when he first took his stand in front of her and announced the opening hymn. His text was: "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" and so well did he handle it, and so forcible were his gestures and eloquent his style of delivery, that Daisy listened to him spellbound, her eyes fixed intently upon his glowing face and her ears drinking in every word he uttered. After dwelling for a time upon the loiterers in God's vineyard, the idlers from choice, who worked not for lack of an inclination to do so, he spoke next of the class whose whole life was a weariness for want of something to do, and to these he said: "Have you never read how, when the disciples rebuked the grateful woman for wasting upon her Master's head what might have been sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor, Jesus said unto them, 'The poor ye have with you always,' and is it not so, my hearers? Are there no poor at your door to be fed, no hungry little ones to be cared for out of the abundance which God has only loaned you for this purpose? Are there no wretched homes which you can make happier, no aching hearts which a kind word would cheer? Remember there is a blessing pronounced for even the cup of cold water, and how much greater shall be the reward of those who, forgetting themselves, seek the good of others and turn not away from the needy and the desolate. See to it, then, you to whom God has given much. See to it that you sit not down in idle ease, wasting upon yourself alone the goods designed for others, for to whom much is given of him much shall be required." Attracted, perhaps, by the deep black of Daisy's attire, or the something about her which marked her as different from the mass of his hearers, the speaker had seemed to address the last of his remarks directly to her, and had the dead Tom risen from his grave and spoken with her face to face, she could hardly have been more affected than she was. The resemblance was so striking and the voice so like her cousin's that she felt as if she had received a message direct from him; or, if not from him, she surely had from God, whose almoner she henceforth would be. That day was the beginning of a new life to her. Thenceforth there must be no more repining; no more idle, listless days, no more wishing for something to do. There was work all around her, and she found it and did it with a will--first, from a sense of duty, and at last for the real pleasure it afforded her to carry joy and gladness to the homes where want and sorrow had sat so long. Hearing that there were sickness and destitution among the miners in Peru, where her possessions were, she went early in November, and many a wretched heart rejoiced because of her, and many a lip blessed the beautiful lady whose coming among them was productive of so much good. Better dwellings, better wages, a church, a schoolhouse followed in her footsteps, and then, when everything there seemed in good working order, there came over her a longing for her native country, and the next autumn found her in New York, where in a short space of time everybody knew of the beautiful Miss McDonald, who was a millionaire and who owned the fine house and grounds in the upper part of the city not far from the Park. Here society claimed her again, and Daisy, who had no morbid fancies now, yielded in part to its claims and became, if not a belle, a favorite, whose praises were in every mouth. But chiefly was she known and loved by the poor and the despised whom she daily visited, and to whom her presence was like the presence of an angel. "You do look lovely and sing so sweet; I know there's nothing nicer in heaven," said a little piece of deformity to her one day as it lay dying in her arms. "I'se goin' to heaven, which I shouldn't have done if you'se hadn't gin me the nice bun and told me of Jesus. I loves him now, and I'll tell him how you bringed me to him." Such was the testimony of one dying child, and it was dearer to Daisy than all the words of flattery ever poured into her ear. As she had brought that little child to God, so she would bring others, and she made her work among the children especially, finding there her best encouragement and greatest success. Once when Guy Thornton chanced to be in the city and driving in the Park, he saw a singular sight--a pair of splendid bays arching their graceful necks proudly, their silver-tipped harness flashing in the sunlight, and their beautiful mistress radiant with happiness as she sat in her large open carriage, not in the midst of gayly dressed friends, but amid a group of poorly clad, pale-faced little ones, to whom the Park was a paradise, and she was the presiding angel. "Look--that's Miss McDonald," Guy's friend said to him, "the greatest heiress in New York, and I reckon the one who does the most good. Why, she supports more old people and children and runs more ragged schools than any half-dozen men in the city, and I don't suppose there's a den in New York where she has not been, and never once, I'm told, was she insulted, for the vilest of them stand between her and harm. Once a miscreant on Avenue A knocked a boy down for accidentally stepping in a pool of water and sprinkling her white dress in passing. Friday nights she has a reception for these people, and you ought to see how well they behave. At first they were noisy and rough, and she had to have the police, but now they are quiet and orderly as you please. Perhaps you'd like to go to one. I know Miss McDonald, and will take you with me." Guy said he should not be in town on Friday, as he must return to Cuylerville the next day, and with a feeling he could not quite analyze, he turned to look at the turnout which always excited so much attention. But it was not so much at the handsome bays and the bevy of queer-looking children he gazed as at the little lady in their midst, clad in velvet and ermine, with a long white feather falling among the curls of her bright hair. When Daisy first entered upon her new life she had affected a nun-like garb as one most appropriate, but after a little child said to her once, "I'se don't like your black gown all the time. I likes sumptin' bright and pretty," she changed her mind and gave freer scope to her natural good taste and love of what was becoming. And the result showed the wisdom of the change, for the children and inmates of the dens she visited, accustomed only to the squalor and ugliness of their surroundings, hailed her more rapturously than they had done before, and were never weary of talking of the beautiful woman who was not afraid to wear her pretty clothes into their wretched houses, which, lest she should soil and defile them, gradually grew more clean and tidy for her sake. "It wasn't for the likes of them gownds to trail through sich truck," Bridget O'Donohue said, and so, on the days when Daisy was expected, she scrubbed the floor, which, until Daisy's advent had not known water for years, and rubbed and polished the one wooden chair kept sacred for the lady's use. Other women, too, caught Biddy's spirit and scrubbed their floors and their children's faces on the day when Miss McDonald was expected to call, and when she came her silk dress and pretty shawl were watched narrowly lest by some chance a speck of dirt should fasten on them, and her becoming dress and handsome face were commented on and remembered as some fine show which had been seen for nothing. Especially did the children like her in her bright dress, and the velvet and ermine in which she was clad when Guy met her in the Park were worn more for their sakes than for the gaze of those to whom such things were no novelties. To Guy she looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her before, and there was in his heart a smothered feeling as of a want of something lost, as her carriage disappeared from view and he lost sight of the fair face and form which had once been his own. The world was going well with Guy, for though Dick Trevylian had paid no part of the hundred thousand dollars, and he still lived in the brown cottage on the hill, he was steadily working his way to competency, if not to wealth. His profession as a lawyer, which he had resumed, yielded him a remunerative income, while his contributions to different magazines were much sought after, so that to all human appearance he was prosperous and happy. Prosperous in his business, and happy in his wife and little ones, for there was now a second child, a baby Guy of six weeks old, and when on his return from New York the father bent over the cradle of his boy and kissed his baby face, that image seen in the Park seemed to fade away, and the caresses he gave to Julia had in them no faithlessness or insincerity. She was a noble woman, and had made him a good wife, and he loved her truly, though with a different, less absorbing, less ecstatic love than he had given to Daisy. But he did not tell her of Miss McDonald. Indeed, that name was never spoken now, nor was any reference ever made to her except when little Daisy asked where was the lady for whom she was named, and why she did not send her a doll. "I hardly think she knows there is such a chit as you," Guy said to her once, when sorely pressed on the subject, and then the child wondered how that could be, and wished she was big enough to write her a letter and ask her to come and see her. Every day after that little Daisy played "make b'lieve Miss McDolly" was there, said McDolly being represented by a bundle of shawls tied up to look like a figure and seated in a chair. At last there came to the cottage a friend of Julia's, a young lady from New York, who knew Daisy, and who, while visiting in Cuylerville, accidentally learned that she was the divorced wife of whose existence she knew, but of whom she had never spoken to Mrs. Thornton. Hearing the little one talking one day to Miss McDolly and asking her why she never wrote nor sent a "sing" to her sake-name, the young lady said: "Why don't you send Miss McDonald a letter? You tell me what to say and I'll write it down for you, but don't let mamma know till you see if you get anything." The little girl's fancy was caught at once with the idea, and the following letter was the result: "BROWN COTTAGE, 'Most Tissmas time. "DEAR MISS MCDOLLY:--I'se an 'ittle dirl named for you, I is, Daisy Thornton, an' my papa is Mr. Guy, an' mam-ma is Julia, and 'ittle brother is Guy, too--only he's a baby, and vomits up his dinner and ties awfully sometimes; an' I knows anoder 'ittle girl named for somebody who dives her 'sings,' a whole lot, an' why doesn't youse dive me some, when I'se your sake-name, an' loves you ever so much, and why'se you never turn here to see me. I wish you would. I ask papa is you pretty, an' he tell me yes, bootiful, an' every night I p'ays for you and say God bress papa an' mam-ma, an' auntie, and Miss McDolly, and 'ittle brodder, an' make Daisy a dood dirl, and have Miss McDolly send her sumptin' for Tissmas, for Christ's sake. An' I wants a turly headed doll that ties and suts her eyes when she does to seep, and wears a shash and a pairesol, and anodder bigger dolly to be her mam-ma and pank her when she's naughty, an' I wants an 'ittle fat-iron, an' a cookstove, an' wash-board. I'se dot a tub. An' I wants some dishes an' a stenshun table, an' 'ittle bedstead, an' yuffled seets, an' pillars, an' blue silk kilt, an' ever so many sings which papa cannot buy, 'cause he hasn't dot the money. Vill you send them, Miss McDolly, pese, an' your likeness, too. I wants to see how you looks. My mam-ma is pretty, with black hair an' eyes, but she's awful old--I dess. How old is you? Papa's hair is some dray, an' his viskers, too. My eyes is bue. "Yours respectfully, DAISY THORNTON." * * * * * Miss McDonald had been shopping since ten in the morning, and her carriage had stood before the dry-goods stores, and toy-shops, and candy stores, while bundle after bundle had been deposited on the cushions, and others ordered to be sent. But she was nearly through now, and just as it was beginning to grow dark in the streets she bade her coachman drive home, where dinner was waiting for her in the dining room, and her mother was waiting in the parlor. Mrs. McDonald was not very well, and had kept her room all day, but she was better that night, and came down to dine with her daughter. The December wind was cold and raw, and a few snowflakes fell on Daisy's hat and cloak as she ran up the steps and entered the warm, bright room, which seemed so pleasant when contrasted with the dreariness without. "Oh, how nice this is, and how tired and cold I am!" she said, as she bent over the blazing fire. "Are you through with your shopping?" Mrs. McDonald asked, in a half-querulous tone, as if she did not altogether approve of her daughter's acts. "Yes, all through, except a shawl for old Sarah Mackie and a few more toys for Biddy Warren's blind boy," Daisy said, and her mother replied: "Well, I'm sure I shall be glad for your sake when it is over. You'll make yourself sick, and you are nearly worn out now, remembering everybody in New York." "Not quite everybody, mother," Daisy rejoined cheerfully; "only those whom everybody forgets--the poor, whom we have with us always. Don't you remember the text and the little kirk where we heard it preached from? But come--dinner is ready, and I am hungry, I assure you." She led the way to the handsome dining room, and took her seat at the table, looking, in her dark street dress, as her mother had said, pale and worn, as if the shopping had been very hard upon her. And yet it was not so much the fatigue of the day which affected her as the remembrance of a past she did not often dare to recall. It was at Christmas time years ago that she first met with Guy, and all the day long, as she turned over piles of shawls and delaines and flannels, or ordered packages of candy and bonbons and dollies by the dozen, her thoughts had been with Guy and the time she met him at Leiter and Field's and he walked home with her. It seemed to her years and years ago, and the idea of having lived so long made her feel old, and tired, and worn. But the nice dinner and the cheer of the room revived her, and her face looked brighter and more rested when she returned to the parlor and began to show her mother her purchases. Daisy did not receive many letters except on business, and as these usually came in the morning she did not think to ask if the postman had left her anything; and so it was not until her mother had retired and she was about going to her own room that she saw a letter lying on the hall-stand. Miss Barker, who had instigated the letter, had never written to her more than once or twice, and then only short notes, and she did not recognize the handwriting at once. But she saw it was postmarked Cuylerville, and a sick, faint sensation crept over her as she wondered who had sent it, and if it contained news of Guy. It was long since she had heard of him--not, in fact, since poor Tom's death, and she knew nothing of the little girl called for herself, and thus had no suspicion of the terrible shock awaiting her, when at last she broke the seal. Miss Barker had written a few explanatory lines, which were as follows: "CUYLERVILLE, Dec., 18--. "DEAR MISS MCDONALD--Since saying good-by to you last June, and going off to the mountains and seaside, while you like a good Samaritan stayed in the hot city to look after 'your people,' I have flitted hither and thither until at last I floated out to Cuylerville to visit Mrs. Guy Thornton, who is a friend and former schoolmate of mine. Here--not in the house, but in town--I have heard a story which surprised me not a little, and I now better understand that sad look I have so often seen on your sweet face without at all suspecting the cause. "Dear friend, pardon me, won't you, for the liberty I have taken since knowing your secret? You would, I am sure, if you only knew what a dear, darling little creature Mr. Thornton's eldest child is. Did you know he had called her Daisy for you? He has, and with her blue eyes and bright auburn hair, she might pass for your very own, with the exception of her nose, which is decidedly retroussé. She is three years old, and the most precocious little witch you ever saw. What think you of her making up a bundle of shawls and aprons and christening it Miss McDolly, her name for you, and talking to it as if it were really the famous and beautiful woman she fancies it to be? She is your 'sake-name,' she says, and before I knew the facts of the case, I was greatly amused by her talk to the bundle of shawls which she reproached for never having sent her anything. When I asked Julia (that's Mrs. Thornton) who Miss McDolly was, she merely answered, 'The lady for whom Daisy was named,' and that was all I knew until the gossips enlightened me, when, without a word to anyone, I resolved upon a liberty which I thought I could venture to take with you. I suggested the letter which I inclose and which I wrote exactly as the words came from the little lady's lips. Neither Mr. Thornton nor his wife know aught of the letter, nor will they unless you respond, for the child will keep her own counsel, I am well assured. "Again forgive me if I have done wrong, and believe me, as ever, "Yours, sincerely, "ELLA BARKER." Daisy's face was as pale as ashes as she read Miss Barker's letter, and then snatching up the other, devoured its contents almost at a glance, while her breath came in panting gasps and her heart seemed trying to burst through her throat. She could neither move nor cry out for a moment, but she sat like one turned into stone with that sense of suffocation oppressing her, and that horrible pain in her heart. She had thought the grave was closed, the old wound healed by time and silence; and now a little child had torn it open, and it was bleeding and throbbing again with a pang such as she had never felt before, while there crept over her such a feeling of desolation and loneliness, a want of something unpossessed, as few have ever experienced. But for her own foolishness that sweet little child might have been hers, she thought, as her heart went after the little one with an indescribable yearning which made her stretch out her arms as if to take the baby to her bosom and hold it there forever. Guy had called it for her, and that touched her more than anything else. He had not forgotten her then. She had never supposed he had, but to be thus assured of it was very sweet, and as she thought of it and read again little Daisy's letter, the tightness about her heart and the choking sensation in her throat began to give way, and one after another the great tears rolled down her cheeks, slowly at first, but gradually faster and faster, until they fell in torrents and a tempest of sobs shook her slight frame as with her head bowed upon her dressing-table she gave vent to her grief. It seemed to her she never could stop crying or grow calm again, for as often as she thought of the touching words, "I p'ays for you," there came a fresh burst of sobs and tears, until at last nature was exhausted, and with a low moan Daisy sank upon her knees and tried to pray, the words which first sprang to her lips framing themselves into thanks that somewhere in the world there was one who prayed for her and loved her, too, even though the love might have for its object merely dolls and candies and toys. And these the child should have in such abundance, and Miss McDonald found herself longing for the morrow in which to begin again the shopping she had thought was nearly ended. It was in vain next day that her mother remonstrated against her going out, pleading her white, haggard face and the rawness of the day. Daisy was not to be detained at home, and before ten o'clock she was down on Broadway, and the dolly with the "shash" and "pairesol" which she had seen the day before under its glass case was hers for twenty-five dollars, and the plainer bit of china, who was to be dollie's mother and perform the parental duty of "panking her when she was naughty," was also purchased, and the dishes and the table and stove and bedstead, with ruffled sheets and pillow-cases and blue satin spread and the washboard and clothes bars and tiny wringer, with divers others toys, were bought with a disregard of expense which made Miss McDonald a wonder to those who waited on her. Such a Christmas box was seldom sent to a child as that which Daisy packed in her room that night, with her mother looking on and wondering what Sunday-school was to be the recipient of all those costly presents and suggesting that cheaper articles would have answered just as well. Everything the child had asked for was there except the picture. That Daisy dared not send, lest it should look too much like thrusting herself upon Guy's notice and wound Julia, his wife. Daisy was strangely pitiful in her thoughts of Julia, who would in her turn have pitied her for her delusion could she have known how sure she was that but for the tardiness of that letter Guy would have chosen his first love in preference to any other. And it was well that each believed herself first in the affection of the man to whom Daisy wanted so much to send something as a proof of her unalterable love. They were living still in the brown cottage; they were not able to buy Elmwood back. Oh, if she only dared to do it, and could do it, how gladly her Christmas gift should be the handsome place which they had been so proud of! But that would hardly do; Guy might not like to be so much indebted to her; he was proud and sensitive in many points, and so she abandoned the plan for the present, thinking that by and by she would purchase and hold it as a gift to her namesake on her bridal day. That will be better, she said, as she put the last article in the box and saw it leave the door, directed to Guy Thornton's care. * * * * * Great was the surprise at the brown cottage, when, on the very night before Christmas, the box arrived and was deposited in the dining room, where Guy and Julia, Miss Barker and Daisy gathered eagerly around it, the latter exclaiming: "I knows where it tum from, I do. My sake-name, Miss McDolly, send it, see did. I writ and ask her would see an' she hab." "What!" Guy said, as, man-like, he began deliberately to untie every knot in the string which his wife in her impatience would have cut at once. "What does the child mean? Do you know, Julia?" "I do. I'll explain," Miss Barker said, and in as few words as possible she told what she had done, while Julia listened with a very grave face, and Guy was pale even to his lips as he went on untying the string and opening the box. There was a letter lying on the top which he handed to Julia, who steadied her voice to read aloud: "NEW YORK, December 22, 18--. "DARLING LITTLE SAKE-NAME DAISY: Your letter made Miss McDolly very happy, and she is so glad to send you the doll with a shash, and the other toys. Write to me again and tell me if they suit you. God bless you, sweet little one, is the prayer of "MISS MCDONALD." After that the grave look left Julia's face, and Guy was not quite so pale, as he took out one after another the articles which little Daisy hailed with rapturous shouts and exclamations of delight. "Oh, isn't she dood, and don't you love her, papa?" she said, while Guy replied: "Yes, it was certainly very kind in her, and generous. No other little girl in town will have such a box as this." He was very pale, and there was a strange look in his eyes, but his voice was perfectly natural as he spoke, and one who knew nothing of his former relations to Miss McDonald would never have suspected how his whole soul was moved by this gift to his little daughter. "You must write and thank her," he said to Julia, who, knowing that this was proper, assented without a word, and when on the morning after Christmas Miss McDonald opened with trembling hands the envelope bearing the Cuylerville postmark, she felt a keen pang of disappointment in finding only a few lines from Julia expressive of her own and little Daisy's thanks for the beautiful Christmas box, "which made our little girl so happy." Not Julia, but Mrs. Guy, and that hurt Daisy more than anything else. "Mrs. Guy Thornton! Why need she thrust upon me the name I used to bear?" she whispered, and her lip quivered a little, and the tears sprang to her eyes as she remembered all that lay between the present and the time when she had been Mrs. Guy Thornton. She was Miss McDonald now, and Guy was another woman's husband, and with a bitter pain in her heart, she put away Julia's letter, saying as she did so, "And that's the end of that." The box business had not resulted just as she hoped it would. She had thought Guy would write himself, and by some word or allusion assure her of his remembrance, but instead there had come to her a few perfectly polite and well-expressed lines from Julia, who had the impertinence to sign herself Mrs. Guy Thornton! It was rather hard and sorely disappointing, and for many days Miss McDonald's face was very white and sad, and both the old and young whom she visited as usual wondered what had come over the beautiful lady to make her "so pale and sorry." CHAPTER XI AT SARATOGA There were no more letters from Mrs. Guy Thornton until the next Christmas time, when another box went to little Daisy, and was acknowledged as before. Then another year glided by, with a third box to Daisy, and then one summer afternoon in August there came to Saratoga a gay party from New York, and the clerk at Congress Hall registered, with other names, that of Miss McDonald. Indeed, it seemed to be her party, or at least she was its center, and the one to whom the others deferred as to their head. Daisy was in perfect health that summer, and in unusually good spirits, and when in the evening, yielding to the entreaties of her friends, she entered the ball-room, clad in flowing, gauzy robes of blue and white, with costly jewels on her neck and arms, she took all hearts by storm, and was acknowledged at once as the star and belle of the evening. She did not dance--she rarely did that now--but after a short promenade through the room she took a seat near the door, and was watching the gay dancers when she felt her arm softly touched, and, turning, saw her maid standing by her with an anxious, frightened look upon her face. "Come, please, come quick," she said in a whisper, and, following her out, Miss McDonald asked what was the matter. "This--you must go away at once. I'll pack your things. I promised not to tell, but I must. I can't see your pretty face all spoiled and ugly." "What do you mean?" the lady asked, and after a little she made out from the girl's statement that in strolling on the back piazza she had stumbled upon her first cousin, of whose whereabouts she had known nothing for a long time. The girl, Mary, had, it seemed, come to Saratoga a week or ten days before, with her master's family, consisting of his wife and two children. As the hotel was crowded they were assigned rooms for the night in a distant part of the house, with a promise of something much better on the morrow. In the morning, however, the lady, who had not been well for some days, was too sick to leave her bed, and the doctor who was called in to see her, pronounced the disease--here Sarah stopped and gasped for breath and looked behind her and all ways, and finally whispered a word which made even Miss McDonald start a little and wince with fear. "He do call it the very-o-lord," Sarah said, "but Mary says it's the very old devil himself. She knows, she has had it, and you can't put down a pin where the cratur didn't have his claws. They told the landlord, who was fur puttin' 'em straight outdoors, but the doctor said the lady must not be moved--it was sure death to do it. It was better to keep quiet, and not make a panic. Nobody need to know it in the house, and their rooms are so far from everybody that nobody would catch it. So he let 'em stay, and the gentleman takes care of her, and Mary keeps the children in the next room, and carries and brings the things, and keeps away from everybody. Two of the servants know it, and they've had it, and don't tell, and she said I mustn't, nor come that side of the house, but I must tell you so that you can leave to-morrow. The lady is very bad, and nobody takes care of her but Mr. Thornton. Mary takes things to the door, and leaves them outside where he can get them." "What did you call the gentleman?" Miss McDonald asked, her voice faltering and her cheek blanching a little. "Mr. Thornton, from Cuylerville, a place far in the country," was the girl's reply, and then, without waiting to hear more, Miss McDonald darted away, and, going to the office, turned the leaves of the register to the date of ten or eleven days ago, and read with a beating heart and quick coming breath: "Guy Thornton, lady, two children, and servant. Nos. ---- and ----." Yes, it was Guy; there could be no mistake, and in an instant her resolution was taken. Calling to her maid, she sent for her shawl and hat, and then bidding her follow, walked away in the moonlight. The previous summer when at Saratoga she had received medical treatment from Dr. Schwartz, whom she knew well and to whose office she directed her steps. He seemed surprised to see her at that hour, but greeted her cordially and asked when she came to town and what he could do for her. "Tell me if this is still a safeguard," she said, baring her beautiful white arm and showing a large round scar. "Will this insure me against disease?" The doctor's face flushed, and he looked uneasily at her as he took her arm in his hand, and, examining the scar closely, said: "The points are still distinct. I should say the vaccination was thorough." "But another will be safer. Have you fresh vaccine?" Daisy asked; and he replied: "Yes, some just from a young, healthy heifer. I never use the adulterated stuff which has been humanized. How do I know what humors may be lurking in the blood? Why, some of the fairest, sweetest babies are full of scrofula!" He was going on further with his discussion, when Daisy, who knew his peculiarities, interrupted him: "Never mind the lecture now. Vaccinate me quick and let me go." It was soon done, the doctor saying as he put away his vial: "You were safe without it, I think, and with it you may have no fears whatever." He looked at her curiously again as if asking what she knew or feared, and, observing the look, Daisy said to him: "Do you attend the lady at the hotel?" He bowed affirmatively and glanced uneasily at Sarah, who was looking on in surprise. "Is she very sick?" was the next inquiry. "Yes, very sick." "And does no one care for her but her husband?" "No one." "Has she suffered for care--a woman's care, I mean?" "Well, not exactly, and yet she might be more comfortable with a woman about her. Women are naturally better nurses than men, and Mr. Thornton is quite worn out, but it does not make much difference now; the lady--" Daisy did not hear the last part of the sentence, and, bidding him good-night, she went back to the hotel as swiftly as she had left it, while the doctor stood watching the flutter of her white dress, wondering how she found it out, and if she would "tell and raise thunder generally." "Of course not. I know her better than that," he said to himself. "Poor woman [referring then to Julia], nothing, I fear, can help her now." Meanwhile Daisy reached the hotel, and without going to her own room, bade Sarah tell her the way to No. ----. "What! Oh, Miss McDonald! You surely are not--" Sarah gasped, clutching at the dress, which her mistress took from her grasp, saying: "Yes, I am going to see that lady. I know her, or of her, and I'm not afraid. Must we let her die alone?" "But your face--your beautiful face," Sarah said, and then Daisy did hesitate a moment, and, glancing into a hall mirror, wondered how the face she saw there, and which she knew was beautiful, would look scarred and disfigured as she had seen faces in New York. There was a momentary conflict, and then, with an inward prayer that Heaven would protect her, she passed on down the narrow hall and knocked softly at No. ----, while Sarah stood wringing her hands in genuine distress, and feeling as if her young mistress had gone to certain ruin. CHAPTER XII IN THE SICK-ROOM Julia had the smallpox, not varioloid, but the veritable thing itself, in its most aggravated form. Where she took it, or when, she did not know, nor did it matter. She had it, and for ten days she had seen no one but her husband and physician, and had no care but such as Guy could give her. He had been unremitting in his attention. Tender and gentle as a woman, he had nursed her night and day, with no thought for himself and the risk he ran. It was a bad disease at the best, and now in its worst type it was horrible, but Julia bore up bravely, thinking always more of others than of herself, and feeling so glad that Providence had sent them to those out-of-the-way rooms, where she had at first thought she could not pass a night comfortably. Her children were in the room adjoining, and she could hear their little voices as they played together, or asked for their mamma and why they must not see her. Alas! they would never see her again; she knew it now, and Guy knew it, too. The doctor had told them so when he left them that night, and between the husband and wife words had been spoken such as are only said when hearts which have been one are about to be severed forever. To Julia there was no terror in death, save as it took her from those she loved, her husband and her little ones, and these she had given into God's keeping, knowing his promises are sure. To Guy she had said: "You have made me so happy. I want you to remember that when I am gone; I would not have one look or act of yours changed if I could, and yet, forgive me, Guy, for saying it, but I know you must often have thought of that other one whom, you loved first, and it may be best." Guy could not say no to that, but he smoothed her hair tenderly, and his tears dropped upon the scarred, swollen face he could not kiss, as Julia went on. "But if you did you never showed it in the least, and I bless you for it. Take good care of my children; teach them to remember their mother, and if in time there comes another in my place, and other little ones than mine call you father, don't forget me quite, because I love you so much. Oh, Guy, my darling, it is hard to say good-by and know that after a little this world will go on the same as if I had never been. Don't think I am afraid. I am not, for Jesus is with me, and I know I am safe, but still there's a clinging to life, which has been so pleasant to me. Tell your sister how I loved her. I know she will miss me and be good to my children, and if you ever meet that other one tell her--tell her--I--" The faint voice faltered here, and when it spoke again, it said: "Lift me up, Guy, so I can breathe better while I tell you." He lifted her up and held her in his arms, while through the open window the summer air and the silver moonlight streamed, and in the distance was heard the sound of music as the dance went merrily on. And just then, when she was in the minds of both, Daisy came, and her gentle knock broke the silence of the room and startled both Guy and Julia. Who was it that sought entrance to that death-laden and disease-poisoned room? Not the doctor, surely, for he always entered unannounced, and who else dared to come there? Thus Guy questioned, hesitating to answer the knock, when to his utter surprise the door opened and a little figure, clad in airy robes of white, with its bright hair wreathed with flowers and gems, came floating in, the blue eyes shining like stars and the full red lips parted with the smile, half pleased, half shy, which Guy remembered so well. "Daisy, Daisy!" he cried, and his voice rang like a bell through the room, as, laying Julia's head back upon the pillow, he sprang to Daisy's side, and, taking her by the shoulder, pushed her gently toward the door, saying: "Why have you come here? Leave us at once; don't you see? don't you know?" and he pointed toward Julia, whose face showed so plainly in the gaslight. "Yes, I know, and I came to help you take care of her. I am not afraid," Daisy said, and, freeing herself from his grasp, she walked straight up to Julia and laid her soft, white hand upon her head. "I am Daisy," she said, "and I've come to take care of you. I just heard you were here; how hot your poor head is! let me bathe it; shall I?" She went to the bowl, and wringing a cloth in ice water, bathed and rubbed the sick woman's head, and held the cool cloth to the face and wiped the parched lips, and rubbed the feverish hands, while Guy stood, looking on, bewildered and confounded, and utterly unable to say a word or utter a protest to this angel, as it seemed to him, who had come unbidden to his aid, forgetful of the risk she ran and the danger she incurred. Once as she turned her beautiful face to him and he saw how wondrously fair and lovely it was, lovely with a different expression from any he had ever seen there, it came over him with a thrill of horror that that face must not be marred and disfigured with the terrible pestilence, and he made another effort to send her away. But Daisy would not go. "I am not afraid," she said. "I have just been vaccinated, and there was already a good scar on my arm; look!" and she pushed back her sleeve and showed her round, white arm with the mark upon it. Guy did not oppose her after that, but let her do what she liked, and when, an hour later, the doctor came he found his recent visitor sitting on Julia's bed, with Julia's head lying against her bosom and Julia herself asleep. Some word which sounded very much like "thunderation" escaped his lips, but he said no more, for he saw in the sleeping woman's face a look he never mistook. It was death, and ten minutes after he entered the room Julia Thornton lay dead in Daisy's arms. There was a moment or so of half-consciousness, during which they caught the words. "So kind in you; it makes me easier; be good to the children; one is called for you, but Guy loved me, too. Good-by. I am going to Jesus." That was the last she ever spoke, and a moment after she was gone. In his fear lest the facts should be known to his guests, the host insisted that the body should be removed under cover of the night, and as Guy knew the railway officials would object to taking it on any train, there was no alternative except to bury it in town, and so before the morning broke there was brought up to the room a closely sealed coffin and box, and Daisy helped lay Julia in her last bed, and put a white flower in her hair and folded her hands upon her bosom, and then watched from the window the little procession which followed the body out to the cemetery, where, in the stillness of the coming day, they buried it, together with everything which had been used about the bed, Daisy's party dress included; and when at last the full morning broke, with stir and life in the hotel, all was empty and still in the fumigated chamber of death, and in the adjoining room, clad in a simple white wrapper, with a blue ribbon in her hair, Daisy sat with Guy's little boy on her lap and her namesake at her side, amusing them as best she could and telling them their mamma had gone to live with Jesus. "Who'll be our mamma now? We must have one. Will oo?" little Daisy asked, as she hung about the neck of her new friend. She knew it was Miss McDolly, her "sake-name," and in her delight at seeing her and her admiration of her great beauty, she forgot in part the dead mamma on whose grave the summer sun was shining. The Thorntons left the hotel that day and went back to the house in Cuylerville, which had been closed for a few weeks, Miss Frances being away with some friends in Connecticut. But she returned at once when she heard the dreadful news, and was there to receive her brother and his motherless little ones. He told her of Daisy when he could trust himself to talk at all, of Julia's sickness and death, and Miss Frances felt her heart go out as it had never gone before toward the woman about whom little Daisy talked constantly. "Most bootiful lady," she said, "an' looked des like an 'ittle dirl, see was so short, an' her eyes were so hue an' her hair so turly." Miss McDonald had won Daisy's heart, and, knowing that made her own happier and lighter than it had been since the day when the paper came to her with the marked paragraph which crushed her so completely. There had been but a few words spoken between herself and Guy, and these in the presence of others, but at their parting he had taken her soft little hand in his and held it a moment, while he said, with a choking voice: "God bless you, Daisy. I shall not forget your kindness to my poor Julia, and if you should need--but no, that is too horrible to think of; may God spare you that. Good-by." And that was all that passed between him and Daisy with regard to the haunting dread which sent her in a few days to her own house in New York, where, if the thing she feared came upon her, she would at least be at home and know she was not endangering the lives of others. But God was good to her, and though there was a slight fever, with darting pains in her back and a film before her eyes, it amounted to nothing worse, and might have been the result of fatigue and over-excitement; and when at Christmas time, yielding to the importunities of her little namesake, there was a picture of herself in the box sent to Cuylerville, the face which Guy scanned even more eagerly than his daughter, was as smooth and fair and beautiful as when he saw it at Saratoga, bending over his dying wife. CHAPTER XIII DAISY'S JOURNAL NEW YORK, June 14, 18--. To-morrow I am to take my old name of Thornton again, and be Guy's wife once more. Nor does it seem strange at all that I should do so, for I have never thought of myself as not belonging to him, even when I knew he was another's. And yet when in that dreadful night at Saratoga I went to Julia's room, there was in my heart no thought of this which has come to me. I only wished to care for her and to be a help to Guy. I did not think of her dying, and after she was dead there was not a thought of the future in my mind until little Daisy put it there by asking if I would be her mamma. Then I seemed to see it all, and expected it up to the very day, six weeks ago, when Guy wrote to me: "Daisy, I want you. Will you come to me again as my wife?" I was not surprised. I knew he would say it some time, and I replied at once, "Yes, Guy, I will." He has been here since, and we have talked it over; all the past when I made him so unhappy, and when I, too, was so wretched, though I did not say much about that, or tell him of the dull, heavy, gnawing pain which, sleeping or waking, I carried with me so long, and only lost when I began to live for others. I did speak of the letter, and said I had loved him ever since I wrote it, and that his marrying Julia made no difference; and when I told him of poor Tom, and what I said to him, not from love, but from a sense of duty, and when I told him how Tom would not take me at my word, he held me close to him and said: "I am glad he did not, my darling, for then you would never have been mine." I think we both wept over those two graves, one far off in sunny France, the other in Saratoga, and both felt how sad it was that they must be made in order to bring us together. Poor Julia! She was a noble woman, and Guy did love her. He told me so, and I am glad he did. I mean to try to be like her in those parts wherein she excelled me. We are going straight to Cuylerville to the house where I never was but once, and that on the night when Guy was sick and Miss Frances made me go back in the thunder and rain. She is sorry for that, for she told me so in the long, kind letter she wrote, calling me her little sister and telling me how glad she is to have me back once more. Accidentally I heard Elmwood was for sale, and without letting Guy know I bought it, and sent him the deed, and we are going to make it the most attractive place in the country. It will be our summer home, but in the winter my place is here in New York with my people, who would starve and freeze without me. Guy has agreed to that and will be a great help to me. He need never work any more unless he chooses to do so, for my agent, says I am a millionaire, thanks to poor Tom, who gave me his gold mine and his interest in that railroad. And for Guy's sake I am glad, and for his children, the precious darlings; how much I love them already, and how kind I mean to be to them both for Julia's sake and Guy's! Hush! That's his ring, and there's his voice in the hall asking for Miss McDonald, and so for the last time I write that name, and sign myself, MARGARET MCDONALD. _Extracts from Miss Frances Thornton's Diary._ ELMWOOD, June 15, ----. I have been looking over an old journal, finished and laid away long ago, and accidentally I stumbled upon a date eleven years back. It was Guy's wedding day then; it is his anniversary now, and as on that June day of years ago I worked among my flowers, so I have been with them this morning, and as then, people from the town came into our beautiful grounds, so they came to-day and praised our lovely place and said there was no place like it in all the country round. But Julia was not with them. She will never come to us again. Julia is dead, and her grave is off in Saratoga, for Guy dare not have her moved, but he has erected a costly monument to her memory, and the mound above her is like some bright flower bed all the summer long, for he hires a man to tend it, and goes twice each season to see that it is kept as he wishes to have it. Julia is in Heaven and Daisy is here again at Elmwood, which she purchased with her own money and fitted up with every possible convenience and luxury. Guy is ten years younger than he used to be, and we are all so happy with this little fairy, who has expanded into a noble woman, and whom I love as I never loved a living being before, Guy excepted, of course. I never dreamed when I turned her out into the rain that I should love her as I do, or that she was capable of being what she is. I would not have her changed in any one particular, and neither, I am sure, would Guy, while the little ones fairly worship her, and must sometimes be troublesome with their love and their caresses. It is just a year since she came back to us again. We were in the old house then, but somehow Daisy's very presence seemed to brighten and beautify it, until I was almost sorry to leave it last April for this grander place with all its splendor. There was no wedding at all; that is, there were no invited guests, but sure, never had bride greater honor at her bridal than our Daisy had, for the church where the ceremony was performed, at a very early hour in the morning, was literally crowded with the halt, the lame, the maimed, and the blind; the slums of New York, gathered from every back street and by-lane and gutter; Daisy's "people," as she calls them, who came to see her married, and who, strangest of all, brought with them a present for the bride, a beautiful family Bible, golden-clasped and bound, and costing fifty dollars. Sandy McGraw presented it, and had written upon the fly leaf: "To the dearest friend we ever had we give this book as a slight token of how much we love her." Then followed upon a sheet of paper the names of the donors and how much each gave. Oh, how Daisy cried when she saw the ten cents and the five cents and the three cents and the one cent, and knew how it had all been earned and saved at some sacrifice for her. I do believe she would have kissed every one of them if Guy had permitted it. She did kiss the children and shook every hard, soiled hand there, and then Guy took her away and brought her to our home, where she has been ever since, the sweetest, merriest, happiest little creature that ever a man called wife, or a woman sister. She does leave her things round a little, to be sure, and she is not always ready for breakfast. I guess she never will wholly overcome those habits, but I can put up with them now better than I used to. Love makes a vast difference in our estimate of others, and she could scarcely ruffle me now, even if she kept breakfast waiting every morning, and left her clothes lying three garments deep upon the floor. As for Guy--but his happiness is something I cannot describe. Nothing can disturb his peace, which is as firm as the everlasting hills. He does not caress her as much as he did once, but his thoughtful care of her is wonderful, and she is never long from his sight without his going to seek her. God bless them both and keep them ever as they are now, at peace with Him and all in all to each other. THE END * * * * * NEW JUVENILES By Famous Authors _Bound in Cloth; decorated cover designs; printed on extra book paper; burnished colored edges; handsomely illustrated._ * * * * * THE MANOR SCHOOL. By MRS. L.T. MEADE. Ten Full Page Illustrations. A sweetly written and popular story of girl life. Full of fun and adventure. Told in a manner to interest and amuse young people of any age. Very few authors have achieved a popularity equal to that of Mrs. Meade as a writer of stories for girls. Her characters are living beings of flesh and blood. Into the trials and crosses of these the reader enters at once with zest and hearty sympathy. Mrs. Meade always writes with a high moral purpose. Cloth. 12mo. Price, $1.25. THE DEFENSE OF THE CASTLE. A Story for Boys and Girls. By TUDOR JENKS, author of "Imaginotions," "World's Fair Book," "Boys' Book of Explorations," "Galopoff, the Talking Pony," "Gypsy, the Talking Dog," etc. This is a good, lively, fighting story, but not bloodthirsty. It tells of a boy and girl who, during the absence of their father at the Crusades, with the help of an old soldier defended the castle from the attack of an armed force led by a treacherous relative. The time is about that of Ivanhoe. Cloth, 12mo. Price, $1.00. WITH BOONE ON THE FRONTIER; or, The Pioneer Boys of Old Kentucky. By CAPTAIN RALPH BONEHILL. This tale is complete in itself, but forms Volume I of the "Frontier Series." It relates the true-to-life adventures of two boys who, in company with their folks, move westward with Daniel Boone. Contains many thrilling scenes among the Indians and encounters with wild animals. Written in Captain Bonehill's best style, and will most likely be the boys' book of the season. Cloth. 12mo. Price, $1.00. UNDER THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. Story of a Boy's Adventures in the Spanish-American War. By CAPTAIN F.S. BRERETON, author of "Dragon of Pekin," etc. A vivid and accurate account of this memorable struggle. The hero leaves his home in search of work, finds it on a Cuban plantation, is denounced to the Spaniards as a spy, makes his escape to the American fleet, and afterwards joins the Rough Riders and participates in the battles around Santiago. Cloth. 12mo. Price, $1.00. THE MERSHON COMPANY, RAHWAY, N.J. * * * * * FLAG OF FREEDOM SERIES By CAPTAIN RALPH BONEHILL Volumes Illustrated, Bound in Cloth, with a very Attractive Cover, Price 60 Cents per Volume * * * * * WITH CUSTER IN THE BLACK HILLS; or, A Young Scout among the Indians This is a complete story in itself, but forms the sixth and last volume of Captain Bonehill's popular "Flag of Freedom" Series. It tells of the remarkable experiences of a youth who, with his parent, goes to the Black Hills in search of gold. Custer's last battle is well described. A volume every lad fond of Indian stories should possess. BOYS OF THE FORT; or, A Young Captain's Pluck Captain Bonehill is at his best when relating a tale of military adventure, and this story of stirring doings at one of our well-known forts in the Wild West is of more than ordinary interest. The young captain had a difficult task to accomplish, but he had been drilled to do his duty, and he did it thoroughly. Gives a good insight into army life of to-day. THE YOUNG BANDMASTER; or, Concert Stage and Battlefield In this tale Captain Bonehill touches upon a new field. The hero is a youth with a passion for music, who, compelled to make his own way in the world, becomes a cornetist in an orchestra, and works his way up, first, to the position of a soloist, and then to that of leader of a brass band. He is carried off to sea and falls in with a secret-service cutter bound for Cuba, and while in that island joins a military band which accompanies our soldiers in the never-to-be-forgotten attack on Santiago. A mystery connected with the hero's inheritance adds to the interest of the tale. OFF FOR HAWAII; or, The Mystery of a Great Volcano Here we have fact and romance cleverly interwoven. Several boys start on a tour of the Hawaiian Islands. They have heard that there is a treasure located in the vicinity of Kilauea, the largest active volcano in the world, and go in search of it. Their numerous adventures will be followed with much interest. A SAILOR BOY WITH DEWEY; or, Afloat in the Philippines The story of Dewey's victory in Manila Bay will never grow old, but here we have it told in a new form--not as those in command witnessed the contest, but as it appeared to a real, live American youth who was in the navy at the time. Many adventures in Manila and in the interior follow, giving true-to-life scenes from this remote portion of the globe. A book that should be in every boy's library. WHEN SANTIAGO FELL; or, The War Adventures of Two Chums Captain Bonehill has never penned a better tale than this stirring story of adventures in Cuba. Two boys, an American and his Cuban chum, leave New York to join their parents in the interior of Cuba. The war between Spain and the Cubans is on, and the boys are detained at Santiago de Cuba, but escape by crossing the bay at night. Many adventures between the lines follow, and a good pen-picture of General Garcia is given. The American lad, with others, is captured and cast into a dungeon in Santiago; and then follows the never-to-be-forgotten campaign in Cuba under General Shafter. How the hero finally escapes makes reading no wide-awake boy will want to miss. * * * * * Press Opinions of Captain Bonehill's Books for Boys "Captain Bonehill's stories will always be popular with our boys, for the reason that they are thoroughly up-to-date and true to life. As a writer of outdoor tales he has no rival."--_Bright Days._ * * * * * THE MERSHON COMPANY 156 Fifth Ave., New York Rahway, N.J. 
20443	----	[Illustration: See p. 29 "Can't you see that my heart's breaking, too?" She looked him in the face, shaking her head, sadly. "No, I can't see that."] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT BY BASIL KING AUTHOR OF The Inner Shrine ILLUSTRATED HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXIV ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE INNER SHRINE" BASIL KING THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT. Ill'd THE WAY HOME. Illustrated THE WILD OLIVE. Illustrated THE INNER SHRINE. Illustrated THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT. Ill'd LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER. Post 8vo IN THE GARDEN OF CHARITY. Post 8vo THE STEPS OF HONOR. Post 8vo THE GIANT'S STRENGTH. Post 8vo ----------------------------------------------------------------------- HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1914. BY HARPER & BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED AUGUST, 1914 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. TRANSGRESSION 1 II. RESENTMENT 41 III. REPROACH 83 IV. DANGER 134 V. PENALTY 160 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ILLUSTRATIONS "Can't You See that My Heart's Breaking, Too?" She Looked Him in the Face, Shaking Her Head, Sadly. "No, I Can't See That" Frontispiece He Turned from the Girl to His Wife. "I'm Willing to Explain Anything You Like--as Far as I Can" Page 26 "Oh, Chip, Go Away! I Can't Stand Any More--Now." "Do You Mean that You'll See Me--Later--when We're in London?" " 155 Edith was Standing in the Doorway, the Man Behind Her. "Chip, Mr. Lacon Knows We Met in England" " 192 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT I TRANSGRESSION It was strange to think that if, on finishing her coffee in her room, she had looked in on the children, as she generally did, instead of going down to the drawing-room to write a note, her whole life might have been different. "Why didn't I?" was the question she often asked herself in the succeeding years, only to follow it with the reflection: "But perhaps it would have happened in any case. Since the fact was there, I must have come to know it--in the long run." The note was an unimportant one. She could have sent it by a servant at any minute of the day. The very needlessness of writing it at once, so that her husband could post it as he went to his office, gave to the act something of the force of fate. Everything that morning, when she came to think of it, had something of the force of fate. Why, on entering the drawing-room, hadn't she gone straight to her desk, according to her intention, if it wasn't that fate intervened? As a matter of fact, she went to the oriel window looking down into Fifth Avenue, with vague thoughts of the weather. It was one of those small Scotch corner windows that show you both sides of the street at once. It was so much the favorite conning-spot of the family that she advanced to it from habit. And yet, if she had gone to her desk, that girl might have disappeared before the lines of the note were penned. As it was, the girl was there, standing as she had stood on other occasions--three or four, at least--between the two little iron posts that spaced off the opening for foot-passengers into the Park. She was looking up at the house in the way Edith had noticed before--not with the scrutiny of one who wishes to see, but with the forlorn patience of the unobtrusive creature hoping to be seen. In a neat gray suit of the fashion of 1904 and squirrel furs she was the more unobtrusive because of a background of light snow. She was pathetically unobtrusive. Not that she seemed poor; she suggested, rather, some one lost or dazed or partially blotted out. People glanced at her as they hurried by. There were some who turned and glanced a second time. She might have been a person with a sorrow--a love-sorrow. At that thought Edith's heart went out to her in sympathy. She herself was so happy, with a happiness that had grown more intense each month, each week, each day, of her six years of married life, that it filled her imagination with a blissful, pitying pain to think that other women suffered. The pity was sincere, and the bliss came from the knowledge of her security. She felt it wonderful to have such a sense of safety as that she experienced in gazing across the street at the girl's wistful face. It was like the overpowering thankfulness with which a man on a rock looks on while others drown. It wasn't callousness; it was only an appreciation of mercies. She was genuinely sorry for the girl, if the girl needed sorrow; but she didn't see what she could do to help her. It was well known that out in that life of New York--and of the world at large--there were tempests of passion in which lives were wrecked; but from them she herself was as surely protected by her husband's love as, in her warm and well-stored house, she was shielded from hunger and the storm. She accepted this good fortune meekly and as a special blessedness; but she couldn't help rejoicing all the more in the knowledge of her security. The knowledge of her security gave luxury to the sigh with which she turned in the course of a few minutes to write her note. The desk stood under the mirror between the two windows at the end of the small back drawing-room. The small back drawing-room projected as an ell from the larger one that crossed the front of the house. She had just reached the words, "shall have great pleasure in accepting your kind invitation to--" when she heard her husband's step on the stairs. He was coming up from his solitary breakfast. She could hear, too, the rustle of the newspaper in his hand as he ascended, softly and tunelessly whistling. The sound of that whistling, which generally accompanied his presence in the house, was more entrancing to her than the trill of nightingales. The loneliness her fancy ascribed to the girl over by the Park emphasized her sense of possession. She raised her head and looked into the mirror. The miracle of it struck her afresh, that the great, strong man she saw entering the room, with his brown velvet house-jacket and broad shoulders and splendid head, should be hers. She herself was a little woman, of soft curves and dimpling smiles and no particular beauty; and he had stooped, in his strength and tenderness, to make her bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, as she had become. And he had become bone of _her_ bone and flesh of _her_ flesh. She was no more his than he was hers. That was the great fact. She was no longer content with the limited formula, "They twain shall be one flesh"; they twain had become one spirit and one life. It was while asserting this to herself, not for the first time, that she saw him start. He started back from the window--the large central window--to which he had gone, probably with vague thoughts of the weather, like herself. It was the manner of his start that chiefly attracted her attention. After drawing back he peered forward. It was an absurd thing to think of him; she knew that--of him of all people!--but one would almost have said that, in his own house, he shrank from being seen. But there was the fact. There was his attitude--his tiptoeing--his way of leaning toward the mantelpiece at an angle from which he could see what was going on in the Park and yet be protected by the curtain. Then it came to her, with a flush that made her tingle all over, that she was spying on him. He thought her in the children's room up-stairs, when all the while she was watching him in a mirror. Never in her life had she known such a rush of shame. Bending her head, she scribbled blindly, "dinner on Tuesday evening the twenty-fourth at--" She was compelled by an inner force she didn't understand to glance up at the mirror again, but, to her relief, he had gone. Later she heard him at the telephone. To avoid all appearance of listening she went to the kitchen to give her orders for the day. On her return he was in the hall, dressed for going out. Scanning his face, she thought he looked suddenly care-worn. "I've ordered a motor to take me downtown," he explained, as he pulled on his gloves. He generally took the street-car in Madison Avenue. "Aren't you well?" she thought it permissible to ask. "Oh yes; I'm all right." "Then why--?" He made an effort to be casual: "Well, I just thought I would." She had decided not to question him--it was a matter of honor or pride with her, she was not sure which--but while giving him the note to post she ventured to say, "You're not worried about anything, are you?" "Not in the least." He seemed to smother the words by stooping to kiss her good-by. She followed him to the door. "You'd tell me, wouldn't you, if you were worried?" For the second time he stooped and kissed her, again smothering the words, "Yes, dear; but I'm not." She stood staring at the glass door after he had closed it behind him. "Oh, what is it?" she questioned. Within less than an hour the world had become peopled with fears, and all she could do was to stare at the door through which she could still see him dimly. She could see him dimly, but plainly, for the curtain of patterned filet-work hanging flat against the glass was almost transparent from within the house, though impenetrable from outside. Was it her imagination that saw him look cautiously round before leaving the protection of the doorway? Was it her imagination that watched while he crossed the pavement hurriedly, to spring into the automobile before he could be observed? Was it only the needless alarm of a foolish woman that thought him anxious to reach the shelter of the motor lest he should be approached or accosted? She tried to think so. It was easier to question her own sanity than to doubt him. She would not doubt him. She assured herself of that as she returned to her post in the oriel window. The girl in gray was gone, and down the long street, over which there was a thin glaze of ice, the motor was creeping carefully. She watched it because he was inside. It was all she should see of him till nightfall. The whole of the long day must be passed with this strange new something in her heart--this something that wasn't anything. If he would only come back for a minute and put his arms about her and let her look up into his face she would _know_ it wasn't anything. She did know it; she said so again and again. But if he would only discover that he had forgotten something--a handkerchief or his cigar-case; that did happen occasionally.... And then it was as if her prayer was to be answered while still on her lips. Before the vehicle had got so far away as to be indistinguishable from other vehicles she saw it stop. It stopped and turned. She held her breath. Slowly, very slowly, it began to creep up the gentle slope again. She supposed it must be the treacherous ground that made it move at such a snail's pace. It moved as if the chauffeur or his client were looking for some one. Gradually it drew up at the curb. It was the curb toward the Park--and from another of the little openings with iron posts to space them off appeared the girl in gray. She advanced promptly, as if she had been called. At the door of the car she stood for a few minutes in conversation with the occupant. For one of the parties at least that method of communication was apparently not satisfactory, for he stepped out, dismissed the cab, and accompanied the girl through the little opening into the Park. In a second or two they were out of sight, down one of the sloping pathways. * * * * * During the next two months Edith had no explanation of this mystery, nor did she seek one. After the first days of amazement and questioning she fell back on what she took to be her paramount duty--to trust. She argued that if he had seen her in some analogous situation, however astounding, he would have trusted her to the uttermost; and she must do the same by him. There were ever so many reasons, she said to herself, that would not only account for the incident, but do him credit. The girl might be a stenographer dismissed from his office, asking to be reinstated; she might be a poor relation making an appeal; she might be a wretched woman toward whom he was acting on behalf of a friend. Such cases, and similar cases, arose frequently. The wonder was, however, that he never spoke of it. There was that side to it, too. It induced another order of reflection. He was so much in the habit of relating to her, partly for her amusement, partly for his own, all the happenings, both trivial and important, of each day, that his silence with regard to this one, which surely must be considered strange--strange, if no more--was noticeable. A wretched woman toward whom he was acting on behalf of a friend! It surely couldn't, _couldn't_ be a wretched woman toward whom he was acting, not on behalf of a friend, but.... That it might be all over and done with would make no difference. Of course it was all over and done with--if it was that. No man could love a woman as he had loved his wife during the past six or seven years, and still--But it _wasn't_ that. It never _had_ been that. _If_ it had been--even before they were married, even before he knew her--But she would choke that thought back. She would choke everything back that told against him. She developed the will to trust. She developed a trust that acted on her doubts like a narcotic--not solving them, but dulling their poignancy into stupor. So March went out, and April passed, and May came in, with leaves on the trees and tulips in the Park, and children playing on the bits of greensward. She had walked as far as the Zoo with the two little boys, and, having left them with their French governess, was on her way home. People were in the habit of dropping in between four and six, and of late she had become somewhat dependent on their company. They kept her from thinking. Their scraps of gossip provided her, when she talked to her husband, with topics that steered her away from dangerous ground. He himself had given her a hint that a certain ground was dangerous; and, though he had done it laughingly, she had grown so sensitive as to see in his words more perhaps than they meant. She had asked him a question on some subject--she had forgotten what--quite remote from the mystery of the girl in gray. Leaning across the table, with amusement on his lips and in his eyes, he had replied: "Don't you remember the warning? 'Where the apple reddens Never pry, Lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.'" Inwardly she had staggered from the words as if he had struck her, though he had no reason to suspect that. In response she merely said, pensively: "_En sommes nous lá?_" "_En sommes nous_--where?" "Where the apple reddens." "Oh, but everybody's there." "You mean all married people." "Married and single." "But married people _more_ than single." "I mean that we all have our illusions, and we'd better keep them as long as possible. When we don't--" "We lose our Edens." "Exactly." "So that our Edens are no more than a sort of fool's paradise." "Ah, no; a sort of wise man's paradise, in which he keeps all he's been able to rescue from a wicked world." She was afraid to go on. She might learn that she and their children and their home and their happiness had been what _he_ had been able to rescue from a wicked world--and that wouldn't have appeased her. Her thoughts would have been of the wicked world from which he had escaped more than of the paradise in which he had found shelter. She was no holy Elisabeth, to welcome Tannhäuser back from the Venusberg. That he should have been in the Venusberg at all could be only a degree less torturing to her than to know he was there still. So she kept away from subjects that would have told her more than she feared already, taking refuge in themes she had once considered vapid and inane. To miss nothing, she hurried homeward on that May afternoon, so as to be beside her tea-table in the drawing-room before any one appeared. And yet, the minute came when she cast aside all solicitudes and hesitations. Going up the pathway leading to the opening opposite her house, she noticed a figure standing between the two iron posts. It was not now a figure in gray, but one in white--in white, with a rose-colored sash, and carrying a rose-colored parasol. Edith quickened her pace unconsciously, urged on by fear lest the girl should move away before she had time to reach her. In spite of a rush of incoherent emotions she was able to reflect that she was perfectly cool, entirely self-possessed. She was merely dominated by a need--the need of coming face to face with this person and seeing who she was. She had no idea what she herself would do or say, or whether or not she would do or say anything. That was secondary; it would take care of itself. The immediate impulse was too imperative to resist. She must at least _see_, even if nothing came of her doing so. If she had any thought of a resulting consequence it was in the assumption that her presence as wife and woman of the world would dispel the noxious thing she had been striving to combat for the past two months, as the sun dissipates a miasma. But her approaches were careful and courteous. She, too, carried a parasol, negligently, gracefully, over the shoulder. It served to conceal her face till she had passed the stranger by a pace or two and glanced casually backward. She might have done so, however, with full deliberation, for the woman took no notice of her at all. Her misty, troubled blue eyes, of which the lids were red as if from weeping, were fixed on the house across the way. Edith saw now that, notwithstanding a certain youthfulness of dress and bearing, this was a woman, not a girl. She was thirty-five at least, though the face was of the blond, wistful, Scandinavian type that fades from pallor to pallor without being perceptibly stamped by time. It was pallor like that of the white rose after it has passed the perfection of its bloom and before it has begun to wither. Edith paused, still without drawing the misty eyes on herself. "Do you know the people in that house?" she asked, at last. The woman looked at her, not inquiringly or with much show of comprehension, but vaguely and as from a distance. Edith repeated the question. The thin, rather bloodless lips parted. The answer seemed to come under compulsion from a stronger will: "I--I know--" "You know the gentleman." The pale thin lips parted again. After a second or two there was a barely audible "Yes." "I'm his wife." There was no sign on the woman's part either of surprise or of quickened interest. There was only the brief hesitation that preceded all her responses. "Are you?" "You knew he was married, didn't you?" "Oh yes." "Have you known him long?" "Eleven years." "That's longer than I've known him." "Oh yes." "Do you know how long I've known him?" "Oh yes." "How do you know?" "I remember." "What makes you remember?" "He told me." "Why did he tell you?" A glow of animation came into the dazed face. "That's what I don't know. I didn't care--much. He always said he would marry some day. It had nothing to do with me. We agreed on that from the first." "From the first of--what?" "From the first of everything." Before putting the next question Edith took time to think. Because she was so startlingly cool and clear she was aware of feeling like one who stands with the revolver at her breast or the draught of cyanide in her hand, knowing that within a few seconds it may be too late to reconsider. And yet, she had never in her life felt more perfectly collected. She looked up the street and down the street, and across at her own house, of which the cheerful windows reflected the May sunshine. She bowed and smiled to a man on foot. She bowed and smiled two or three times to people passing in carriages. From the Park she could hear the shrieks of children on a merry-go-round; she could follow a catchy refrain from "The Belle of New York" as played by a band at a distance. Her sang-froid was extraordinary. It was while making the observation to herself that her question came out, before she had decided whether or not to utter it. She had no remorse for that, however, since she knew she couldn't have kept herself from asking it in the end. As well expect the man staggering to the outer edge of a precipice not to reel over. "So it was--everything?" In uttering the words she felt oddly shy. She looked down at the pavement, then, with a flutter of the eyelids, up at the woman. But the woman herself showed no such hesitation. "Oh yes." "And is--still?" And then the woman who was not a girl, but who was curiously like a child, suddenly took fright. Tears came to her eyes; there was a convulsive movement of the face. Edith could see she was a person who wept easily. "I won't tell you any more." The declaration was made in a tone of childish fretfulness. Edith grew soothing. "I'm sorry if I've hurt your feelings. Don't mind speaking, because it doesn't make any difference to me--now." The woman stared, the tears wet on her cheeks. "Don't you--love him?" Edith was ready with her answer. It came firmly: "No." "Didn't you--_ever_?" This time Edith considered, answering more slowly. "I don't know. If I ever did--the thing is so dead--that I don't understand how it could ever have been alive." The woman dried her eyes. "I don't see how you can help it." "_You_ can't help it, can you?" Edith smiled, with a sense of her own superiority. "I suppose that's the reason you come here. I've seen you before." "Have you?" "Yes; several times. And that _is_ the reason, isn't it?--because you can't help loving him." The woman's tears began to flow again. "It's because I don't know what else to do. When he doesn't come any more--" "Oh, so he doesn't come." "Not unless I make him. When he sees me here--" "Well, what then?" "He gets angry. He comes to tell me that if I do it again--" "I see. But he _comes_. It brings him. That's the main thing, isn't it? Well, now that you've told me so much, I'll--I'll try to--to send him." She was struck with a new thought. "If you were to come in now--you could--you could wait for him." The frightened look returned. "Oh, but he'd kill me!" "Oh no, he wouldn't." She smiled again, with a sense of her superiority. "He wouldn't kill you when he knew I didn't care." "But _don't_ you care?" She shook her head. "No. And I shall never care again. He can do what he likes. He's free--and so are you. I'd rather he went to you. Eleven years, did you say? Why, he was your husband long before he was mine." "Oh no; he was never my husband. We agreed from the first--" "He wasn't your husband according to the strict letter of the contract; but I don't care anything about that. It's what _I_ call being your husband. I'd rather you took him back.... Oh, my God! There he is." He was standing on the other side of the street watching them. How long he had been there neither of them knew. Engrossed in the subject between them, and screened by their sunshades, they hadn't noticed him come round the corner from Madison Avenue on his way home. He stood leaning on his stick, stroking an end of his long mustache pensively. He wore a gray suit and a soft gray felt hat. For a minute or more there was no change in his attitude, even when the terrified eyes of the women told him he was observed. As he began to thread his way among the vehicles to cross the street he displayed neither haste nor confusion. Edith could see that, though he was pale and grave, he could, even in this situation, carry himself with dignity. In its way it was something to be glad of. She herself stood her ground as a man on a sinking ship waits for the waves to engulf him. Reaching the pavement, he ignored his wife to go directly to the woman. "What does this mean, Maggie?" His tone was not so much stern as reproachful. The faded woman, who was still trying to make herself young and pretty, quailed at it. Edith came to her relief: "Isn't that something for _you_ to explain, Chip?" He turned to his wife. "I'm willing to explain anything you like, Edith--as far as I can." "I won't ask you how far that is--because I know already everything I need to know." "Everything you need to know--what for?" "For understanding my position, I suppose." "Your position? Your position is that of my wife." "Oh no, it isn't. There's your wife." "Don't say that, Edith. That lady would be the first to tell you--" "She _has_ been the first to tell me. She's been extremely kind. She's answered my questions with a frankness--" "But _you're_ not kind, Edith. Surely you see that--that mentally she's not--not like every one else." "Oh, quite. I don't think _I_ am now. I doubt if I ever shall be again. No woman can be mentally like every one else after she's been deceived as we've been." "_She_ hasn't been deceived, Edith; and I should never have deceived you if--" She laughed without mirth. "If you hadn't wanted to keep me in the dark." "No; if I hadn't had responsibilities--" "Responsibilities! Do you call _that_"--her glance indicated the woman, whose misty stare went from the one to the other in a vain effort to follow what they were saying--"do you call that a responsibility?" "I'm afraid I do, Edith." "And what about--me?" "Hasn't a man more responsibilities than one?" "A married man hasn't more wives than one." "A married man has to take his life as his life has formed itself. He was an unmarried man first." "Which means, I suppose, that the ties he formed when he was an unmarried man--" "May bind him still--if they're of a certain kind." "And yours _are_--of a certain kind." "They're of _that_ kind. I haven't been able to free myself from them. But don't you think we'd better go in? We can hardly talk about such things out here." She bowed to another passing friend. He, too, lifted his hat. When the friend had gone by she glanced hastily toward the house. "No, I can't go in," she said, hurriedly. "I'd rather talk out here." "Very well, then. We can take a stroll in the Park?" "What? We three?" "Oh, she's gone--if that's the only reason." Turning, Edith saw the woman with the rose-colored parasol rapidly descending the path by which she had come. [Illustration: He turned from the girl to his wife. "I'm willing to explain anything you like--as far as I can."] "I'd still rather stay out here," she said. "If I were to go in, I think it would--" "Yes? What?" "I think it would kill me." "Oh, come, Edith. Let's face the thing calmly. Don't let us become hysterical." "_Am_ I hysterical, Chip?" "In your own way, yes. Where another woman would make a fuss, you're unnaturally frozen; but it comes to the same thing. I know that your heart--" "Is breaking. Oh, I don't deny that. But I'd rather it broke here than indoors. I don't know why, but I can stand it here, with people going by; whereas in there--" "Oh, cut it, Edith, for God's sake! Can't you see that my heart's breaking, too?" She looked him in the face, shaking her head sadly. "No, Chip, I can't see that. If there had been any danger of it you wouldn't have--" "But I couldn't help it. That's what you don't seem to understand." "No; I'm afraid I don't." "Would you _try_ to understand--if I were to tell you?" "I think I know already most of what you'd have to say. She's a woman whom you knew long before you knew me--and from whom you've never been able--" "She was the daughter of a Swedish Lutheran pastor--dead now--established in New Jersey. In some way she drifted to the stage. Her name was Margarethe Kastenskjold. When she went on the stage she made it Maggie Clare. She had about as much talent for the theater as a paper doll. When I first knew her she was still getting odd jobs in third and fourth rate companies. Since then she hasn't played at all." "I understand. There's been no need of it. She's quite well dressed." "Let me go on, will you, Edith? I was about two or three and twenty then. She may have been a year or two older. She was living at that time with Billy Cummings. And somehow it happened--after Billy died--and she was stranded--" She made an appealing gesture. "_Please!_ I know how those things come about--or I can easily imagine. In your case--I'd--I'd rather not try." She got the words out somehow without breaking down. "All the same, Edith," he went on, "you'll _have_ to try--if you're going to do me anything like justice. If she hadn't been a refined, educated sort of girl, entirely at sea in her surroundings, and stranded--stranded for money, mind you, next door to going to starve--and no chance of getting a job, because she couldn't act a little bit--if it hadn't been for all that--" "Oh, I know how you'd be generous!" "Yes; but you don't know how I came to be a fool." "Is there any reason why I _should_ know--now that the fact is there?" He looked at her steadily. "Edith! What are you made of?" She returned his look. "I think--of stone. Up till to-day I've been a woman of flesh and blood; but I'm not sure that I am any longer. You can't kill the heart in a woman's body--and still expect her to _feel_." "But, Edith--Edith darling--there's no reason why I _should_ have killed the heart in your body when I never dreamed of doing you a wrong--that is, an intentional wrong," he corrected. "You knew you were doing _some_ woman a wrong--some future woman, the woman you'd marry--as far back as when you took up what Billy Cummings dropped from his dead hands--" "Oh, that! That, dear, is nothing but the talk of feminist meetings. Men are men, and women are women. You can't make one law for them both. Besides, it's too big a subject to go into now." "I'm not trying to. I wasn't thinking of men in general; I was thinking only of you." "But, good Lord, Edith, you don't think I've been better than any one else, do you?" Her forlorn smile made his heart ache. "I _did_ think so. I dare say it was a mistake." "It _was_ a mistake. If you hadn't made it--" "But it was at least a mistake one can understand. I could hardly be expected to take it for granted--whatever men may be, or may have the right to be--that the man who asked me to marry him--and who made me love him as I think few men have been loved by women--I could hardly take it for granted that he was already keeping--and had been keeping for years--and would keep for years to come--another--" He moved impatiently. "But, I tell you, I couldn't get rid of her. I couldn't shake her off--or pay her off--or do any of the usual things. It was agreed between us before I married you--_long_ before I married you--that everything was at an end. But, poor soul, she doesn't know what an agreement is. There's something lacking in her. She's always been like a child, and of late years she's been more so. If you knew her as I do you'd be sorry for her." "Oh, I _am_ sorry for her. Her whole mind is ravaged by suffering." "I know it's my fault; but it isn't wholly or even chiefly my fault. A woman like that has no right to suffer. She lost the privilege of suffering when she became what she is. At any rate, she has no right to haunt like a shadow the man who's befriended her--" "But, I presume, she's befriended _him_. And--and continues to befriend him--since that's the word." He avoided her eyes, looking up the street and whistling tunelessly beneath his breath. "I said--_continues_ to befriend him," she repeated. The tuneless whistling went on. She allowed him time to get the full effect of her meaning. As far as she could see her way, her line of action depended on his response. When he dodged the question she knew what she would have to do. "Look here, Edith," he said, at last, "the long and short of it is this. She's on my hands--and I can't abandon her. I must see that she's provided for, at the very least. Hang it all, she's--she's attached to me; has been attached to me for more than ten years. I can't ignore that; now, can I? And she's helpless. How can I desert her? I can't do it, any more than I could desert a poor old faithful dog--or a baby. Can I, now?" "No; I dare say not." "But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll undertake never to see her again--of my own free will. I'll give you my word of honor--" She shook her head. "Oh, I'm not asking for that." "Then what do you ask for? Just tell me, and whatever it is--" "It's that, since you can't abandon her, you abandon me." "_What_?" She repeated the words more firmly. "_Never_." "Then I'm afraid it will be for me to abandon you." She gave him a little nod. "Good-by." She had turned and taken a step or two along the pavement before his astonishment allowed him to overtake her. "Edith, for God's sake, what do you mean? You're not crazy, are you?" "Quite possibly I am; I can't tell yet. Or perhaps I _can_ tell. It's like this," she went on, after an instant's thinking. "A half-hour ago, while I was talking to that--that poor creature--before you came up--I was quite aware of being like a woman with a dose of cyanide of potassium in her hand, and doubting whether or not to take it. Well, I took it. I took it and I--died. That is, the Edith who was your wife--died. What survives of her personality is something else. I don't know what it is yet--it's too soon to say--but it isn't your wife.... It's--it's something like that." "Oh, don't!" he groaned. "Don't talk that way. Come in. You can't stay out here." She looked over at the house again. He thought she shuddered. "I can't stay out here; but I don't have to go in--there." "What do you mean? Where are you going?" "Just now I'm going to Aunt Emily's." "Very well. I'll send a carriage for you after dinner--if you stay so late." "No; don't do that." "Do you mean--?" "I mean that I may stay there for two or three days--perhaps longer. After that I'll--I'll see." "You'll see--what?" "Where to go next." "Oh, come, Edie, let's talk sense. You know I can't allow that." She smiled again, with that queer, forlorn smile that seemed to stab him. "I'm afraid the authority is out of your hands--now." He let that pass. "Even so, there are the children. Think of them." "I _am_ thinking of them--which is why I must hurry away. They'll be here in a minute; and I--I can't see them yet. I shouldn't be able to bear it." "And do you think you'll be able to bear our being separated for two or three days, when you _know_ I adore you? Why, you'll break down within an hour." "That's just it. That's why I must hurry. I shall break down within half an hour. You don't suppose I can go on like this? I'm almost breaking down now. I must get to Aunt Emily's before--" She was interrupted by a cry: "Hello, papa!" Up the pathway leading from the Zoo a little white-suited man of five came prancing and screaming, followed by another of three doing the same. The French governess marched primly and sedately behind them. "You see?" Edith said, quickly. "I must go. I can't see them to-night--or speak to them--or kiss them--or hear them say their prayers--or anything. You wouldn't understand; but--but I couldn't bear it. You must tell them I've gone to spend a few nights with Aunt Emily, as I did when she was ill. You must say that to the servants, too. Tell Jenny she needn't send me anything--yet. I have some things there--that I left the last time--" "Oh, you're not going to stay all night," he groaned. "You'll come back." "Very well. If I come back--I come back. It will be so much the better or so much the worse, as the case may be. If I come back, it will be because I accept the compromise you make between me and--and your other--" He broke in hastily. "It's not a compromise--and there's no 'other.' If you could see how far from vital the whole thing is, from a man's point of view--" "Unfortunately, I'm only a woman, and can see it only from a woman's point of view. So that, if I don't come back, it will be because--because--the Edith who was your wife is dead beyond resurrection." "But she isn't!" "Perhaps not. We must see. I shall know better when I've--I've been away from you a little." "And in the mean time you may be risking your happiness and mine." She shot him a reproachful glance. "Do _you_ say that?" "Yes, Edith, I do say it. If I've broken the letter of the contract, you may be transgressing its spirit. Don't forget that. Take care. What I did, I did because I couldn't help it. You _can_ help it--" "Oh no, I can't. That's where you haven't understood me. You say I don't see things from your point of view, and perhaps I don't. But neither do you see them from mine. You wonder why I don't go over there"--she nodded toward the house--"where I had my home--where my children have theirs--where you and I ... But I can't. That's all I can say. I may do it some day; I don't know. But just now--I couldn't drag myself up the steps. It would mean that we were going on as before, when all that--that sort of thing--seems to me so--so utterly over." "You'll feel differently when you've had time to think." "Perhaps I shall. And time to think is all I'm asking. You understand that, don't you? that I'm not making anything definite--yet. If I can ever come back to you, I will. But if I can't--" "Hello, mama! Hello, papa!" The elder boy galloped up. "We've seen the monkeys. And one great big monkey looked like--" "Allô, maman! Allô, papa! N's avons vu les singes--mais des drôles! Il y en avait un qui--" The children caught their father round the knees. Stooping, he put his arms about them, urging them toward their mother. They were to plead for him--to be his advocates. "Tell mama," he whispered to the older boy, "not to go to Aunt Emily's to-night. Tell her we can't do without her--that we want her at home." He turned to the younger. "Dis à maman que tu vas pleurer si elle te quitte ce soir--qu'il faut qu'elle vienne t'écouler dire la prière." But, when he raised himself, Edith was already walking swiftly up the Avenue. He would have followed her, only that the children seemed to restrain him, clinging to his knees. All he could do was to watch her--watch her while the thronging crowds and the shimmering sun-shot dust of the golden afternoon blotted her from his sight--and the great city-world out of which he had received her took her back. II RESENTMENT It was a strange sensation to be free. It was still more strange that it was not a sensation. It was a kind of numbness. She could only feel that she didn't feel. In spite of her repeated silent assertions, "I'm free! I'm free!" any consciousness of change eluded her. It was true that there had been a moment like a descent into hell, from which she thought she must come up another woman. Aunt Emily and the lawyer had whirled her somewhere in a motor. Veiled as heavily as was consistent with articulation, she had told a tale that seemed abominable, though it was no more than a narrative of the facts. It added to her sense of degradation to learn that one of the cheaper dailies had published a snapshot of her taken as she was re-entering the motor to come away. But even the horror of that moment passed, as something too unreal to be other than a dream, and, except that she and the children were staying with Aunt Emily instead of in their own home, all was as before. All was as before to a disappointing degree--to a degree that maddened her. It maddened her because it brought no appeasement to that which for more than a year had been her dominating motive--to do something to Chip that would bring home to him a realizing sense of what he had done to her. It was not that she wanted revenge. She was positive as to that. She wanted only to make him understand. Hitherto he hadn't understood. She had seen that in all his letters, right up to the moment when, driven to despair by what seemed to her his moral obtuseness, she had implored him not to write again. It was to help him to understand that which he was either unable or unwilling to understand that she had so resolutely refused to see him--partly that, and partly Aunt Emily. She would have died if it hadn't been for Aunt Emily--died or given in; and the mere thought of giving in frightened her. It frightened her chiefly because she possessed the capacity to do it. In a way it would be easier to do it than not--easier to do it, and yet impossible to go on with the new situation thus created after it was done. It would mean being back in the old home and resuming the old life; there would be what people called a reconciliation. Chip would be coming and going and whistling tunelessly all over the house. And the awful thing about it would be that he had it in him to be as happy as if this horrible thing had never taken place--happier, doubtless, because it would be behind him. He would not have understood; she would have ceased trying to make him understand; he would have so little seen the significance of his own acts as to feel free to do the same thing all over again. So the impulse to go back frightened her with a fear that paralyzed her longing. If he had said but once: "Edith, I know I've sinned against you; I know I've made you suffer; I've broken the contract between us; I'm repentant; forgive me," it might have been different. But he had said nothing of the kind. His letters, beseeching though they were, only aggravated her complaint against him. "What else could I do?... The poor thing clung to me.... As far as it affected my devotion to you it might have happened in another phase of creation." That was the amazing part of it, that he should expect her to be content with such an explanation, that he should try to deprive her of a wife's last poor pitiful privilege, a sense of indignity. She was not only to condone what he had done, but as nearly as possible she was to give it her approval. As to this aspect of the case she might not have been so clear if it hadn't been for Aunt Emily. Aunt Emily was very clear. She was clear and just, without being wholly unsympathetic toward Chip. That is, she pointed out the fact that Chip did no more than most men would do. He was no worse than the average. He might even be a little better. But, according to Aunt Emily, the man didn't live who was worthy of a really good woman's love. It was foolish for a really good woman to put herself at the disadvantage of casting her pearls before--well, Aunt Emily was too much of a lady to say what; it was all the more foolish considering the quantity of feminine tag-rag and bobtail quite good enough to be wives. Edith couldn't deny that her aunt had kept herself on an enviably high plane of safety. She had her money to herself, and no heartaches. She was respected, admired, and feared. By a little circle of adorers, mostly composed of spinsters younger, poorer, and less advantageously placed than herself, she was even loved. She was far from lonely; she was far from having missed the best things in life. She was traveled, well-read, philanthropic, and broad-minded. She was likewise tall, stately, and dominant, with an early Victorian face to which a mid-Victorian wig, kept in place by a band of plaits around the brow, was not unbecoming. Nevertheless, Aunt Emily was entirely modern, modern with that up-to-date femininity which with regard to men takes its key from the bee's impulse toward the drone, stinging him to death once he has fulfilled his functions. It was a help to Edith that Aunt Emily could enter into the sufferings entailed by an outraged love without being hampered by the weaknesses inherent in the love itself. She could afford to be detached and impartial bringing to bear on the situation the interest every intelligent person takes in drama. For her participation Edith felt she couldn't be too grateful to a relative on whom she had no urgent claim beyond the fact that she was now her only one. Aunt Emily's clear vision might, indeed, be said to have found the way through a tangle of poignant conditions in which her own poor heart had been able to do nothing but fumble helplessly. It was a way of sorrows, and there had been no choice but to take it. Chip had to be made to _feel_. Her whole being had become concentrated on that result. From it she had expected not only realization for him, but assuagement of longing for herself; and the latter hadn't come. She could hardly see that anything had come at all. If it were not for Aunt Emily she wouldn't have perceived that she had won a victory. Chip might realize now; she didn't know; she probably would never know; it was perhaps the impossibility of knowing that left her still unsatisfied. So long as the thing had not yet been done she had enjoyed at least the relief of action. She was challenging Chip, she was defying him; he was making her some sort of response, even when it was made in silence. She was _the_ one and he was _the_ other, and there was an interplay of forces between them. Now all that was broken off; all that had come to an end. She was still _the_ one; but there was no other. Where the other had been there was a blank, an emptiness. Her heart when it cried out to him produced the queer, creepy effect of a man talking to himself--there was no one to hear or to answer. There was a needle but no pole; there was a law of gravitation, but nothing to justify the power of attraction. She was dazed, lost, which was the reason why in the following autumn she went abroad. She didn't know what else to do. Aunt Emily was rich and kind; but there were limits to hospitality. One had to feel that there was a world beneath one's feet, and Europe seemed to be there for that purpose. Besides, it was easy to travel while the children were so young. The lawyer conveyed to Chip her intention of taking them, and returned with the father's consent. She was not bound to ask for this, but she considered it courteous to do so. If while she did it he chose to take the opportunity to recognize her continued existence by an inquiry or a word--well, then, she said to herself with a sob, it was there for him to make use of. But he didn't take it. He maintained the silence on which he had fallen back ever since her final peremptory letter requesting him not to write to her--she wondered if she had made it more peremptory than she had intended!--and so she sailed away without so much as a gift from him to the children. She could hardly bear to look at the shore of the continent that held him as it faded out of sight, so bitterly she resented what she now called his callousness. When the cold weather came she established herself at Cap d'Ail, where the lofty perch of the hotel above Monaco and the Mediterranean seemed to lift her into a region of friendly, flowery peace. She enjoyed this as much as she could enjoy anything. No echo of the past reached her here, and it was an unexpected relief to be away from Aunt Emily's bursts of triumph and felicitation. With a book she hardly looked at in her hand she could sit at her window or on the terrace, soothed incomprehensibly by the blue-green sweep of the immemorial sea beside which so many other sad hearts had watched before her own. She felt herself caught into a fellowship that included not only Hagar and Hecuba, but myriads of unremembered women whose tears alone might have filled this vast inland ocean--drawing a comfort that was not wholly morbid from the reflection that there was an end even to the breaking of hearts. Here in this high, sequestered spot, which nevertheless preserved the _mondanités_ to which she was accustomed, she would gladly have spent the winter alone with her children and their governess had there not arrived at the hotel a woman she had known for many years and who was in a position oddly similar to her own. At school she had been Gertie Cottle. In New York she was Mrs. Harry Scadding. She was now Mrs. G. Cottle Scadding for purposes of exact identification. She also had "freed herself"; she also had had a snapshot in the cheaper dailies; she also traveled with two children. It was impossible for Edith not to meet her and engage in amicable conversations, during which the lady talked freely of her "case," discussing the merits and demerits of her "co-," as though that person had been a kind of partner. She was a lively young woman, frank and amusing. Moreover, she knew the people who made up Edith's small world, and Edith was lonely. While the two sets of children played together the two mothers sat on the terrace and talked. It was talk in which Edith was chiefly a listener, but a listener who couldn't deny that she was entertained. She was uncomfortable only when discerning compatriots appeared, and with visible nods and smiles rated them as "two of a kind." It was a kind over which she and Chip had smiled and nodded many a time during their wanderings in Europe, never thinking that she herself should ever be classed in the number. She had been able to take the situation lightly then--this curious situation of the "freed" American wife, with or without children, drifting through Europe, aimless, and generally better off when friendless. But she began to be sorry for the type. Instead of shrinking from Gertie in the presence of the discerning compatriots, as she was at first inclined to do, she made it a point to be seen with her, championing the sisterhood of loneliness. There were moments when this association might not have been discreet; but they were also moments in which--so it seemed to Edith--discretion was not a part of valor. Once or twice she accompanied her friend to Nice; once or twice to Monte Carlo. On each of these occasions she found herself in a gathering of cosmopolitan odds and ends in which she was not at ease; but championship being new to her, she felt obliged to take its bitter with its sweet. That it was mostly bitter gave her additional ground of complaint against Chip. He had driven her to a kind of deterioration, a deterioration she couldn't define, but of which, as of something noxious in the atmosphere, she was conscious during every moment spent in her friend's society. She grew fanciful with regard to the other Americans in the hotel. She imagined they slighted her, or disapproved of her, or watched her course with misgiving. With a family of good, simple people, who apparently had nothing to strive for with the restlessness which characterized the social fag-ends whom she was now in the habit of meeting, she would have been glad to establish relations; but she never got beyond an occasional bow or smile, generally over some incident connected with the children. Of one man she was afraid. She was afraid of him without knowing why, except that he seemed to watch her rather pityingly. She resented the pity; she resented his watching her at all. And yet.... If he hadn't been a grave man, evidently occupied with grave affairs, her resentment might have become annoyance. In the circumstances it was resentment modified by a little gratitude. She hardly understood her gratitude unless it was for a hint of solicitude in a world where no one seemed to bother about her any more. He did bother about her. She grew sure of that. Not for an instant could she think of the quiet, rather wistful, regard with which she caught him following her or the children as being meant otherwise than kindly. She had no idea who he was. All she could affirm from distant and somewhat superficial observation was that he was Somebody--Somebody of position, experience, and judgment--Somebody to respect. She thought, too, that he must be Somebody of distinction, partly because he looked it, and partly because he was served by a valet and a secretary scarcely less distinguished than himself. All three were serious men well into the forties. The valet was English, the secretary French, the master American. She would not, however, have taken the last-named for a fellow-countryman if she had not accidentally heard him speak. In regard to externals he was as nearly as possible denationalized. He had evidently lived a long time abroad, though he bore no one country's special stamp. He roused her curiosity, even while the kind of interest in herself which she attributed to him--with what she admitted were the most shadowy of reasons--hurt her pride. It hurt it in a manner to make her the more resolute in going her own way. Not that it was a really reprehensible way. The worst that could be said of it was that it brought her into contacts and promiscuities from which she should have been kept free. Even so no great harm had been done, especially in the case of a woman with her knowledge of the world. None had been so much as threatened until the arrival on the scene of a young Frenchman, a friend of Mrs. Scadding's. Edith then found it necessary to submit to an introduction with daily, almost hourly, hazards of encounter. He was a young Frenchman like many hundreds of his kind, who might have been a finished sketch in sepia. Sepia would have done justice to the even tan of his complexion, to the soft-brown of his eyes, of his hair, of his mustache, and rendered the rich chestnut which was oftener than not his choice for clothes. Gertie flirted with him outrageously--there was no other phrase for it. It was the kind of flirting one was obliged to consider innocent, since the alternative would have been too appalling. Edith opted for the innocent construction, lending an abashed countenance to the situation out of loyalty to the sisterhood of loneliness. It was a countenance that grew more abashed whenever, in the process of lending it, her eye met that of the man who had constituted himself, she was convinced, her silent guardian. Fortunately, Mrs. G. Cottle Scadding took herself off to Italy, the young Frenchman disappearing at the same time. It was a new proof to Edith of the depth of need to which she had come down that she missed them. She missed their frivolity and inconsequentiality because they were the only interests she had. She was thrown back, therefore, on her own desolation and on her memories of Chip. She made the discovery with some alarm that Chip was becoming to her more and more the center of a group of memories. She was losing him. That is, she was losing him as an actuality; she was losing him as the pivot round which her life had swung, even since her knowledge of his great treason. She was no more appalled by the loss than by the perception of her own volatility. It was a perception that deepened when, some fortnight after Gertie's departure, the young Frenchman reappeared. "He's come back on my account," was Edith's instant reflection. She was indignant; and yet something else stirred in her that was not indignation, and to which she was afraid to give a name. Perhaps there was no name to give it. As far as she could analyze its elements, they lay in the twin facts that she was still young enough to be attractive to men and to find pleasure in her attractiveness. It was a pleasure that raised its head timidly, apologetically; but it raised it none the less. It was a new and terrifying thought that Chip might not always be the only man in her life. She had dedicated herself to him so entirely that it was difficult to accept the idea that any part of her might have been held in reserve for future possibilities. That her life should have been blasted was bad enough; but that it should renew its vigor and put forth shoots for a second bloom was frightful. Yet there was the fact that such things happened. Women in her position even married again. _She_ might marry again. She never would--of course! But remarriage was among the potentialities of the new conditions she had achieved. The full comprehension of this liberty filled her with dismay. Up to the present the knowledge that she possessed it had been theoretic only. The young Frenchman brought home to her the fact that she could act on it if she were ever so inclined. Not that he asked her to do so. He had only reached the point of inviting her to dine with him at Monte Carlo and look in at the gaming afterward. She declined this invitation gently and without rancor toward him; but, in the idiom she used in talking with him, it gave her to think. It gave her to realize also. The moment was rich in revelations concerning herself. She discovered she was a woman whom a relatively strange man might invite to dine with him alone. She had passed out of the fellowship of Hagar and Hecuba to enter that of Mrs. G. Cottle Scadding. This had happened, she hardly knew how. She discovered, moreover, that now that it had happened, she was scarcely shocked. Somehow it seemed in the nature of things--these curious new things she had created for herself--that she should be invited in this way to Ciro's and that there might be similar incidents to follow. She certainly was not shocked. Deep down in her heart something--was it something feminine? or was it something broadly human?--was secretly shamefully flattered. She couldn't blame the young fellow. She couldn't blame Gertie--very much. She might blame herself for being drawn into Gertie's company, and yet what other course could she have taken? She had known Gertie since they were school-girls. When all was said and done Gertie was as good as she--in whatever met the eye. One divorced woman could hardly draw her skirts away from another. The longer she reflected the more clearly she saw that she couldn't have done anything but what she had done without becoming in her own eyes a hypocrite or a prude, and so she had laid herself open to hearing those words, spoken ever so respectfully, with a sympathy no American could have approached: "Madame is so lonely. Madame is too much by herself. Wouldn't it _distraire_ Madame to dine to-night, let us say, at Ciro's, or the Hotel de Paris, and look in at the Casino afterward? Madame is always so sad." The man was too insignificant for her wrath, but not so insignificant that he couldn't be a warning. He was a warning that even if he failed to touch her heart it was by no means certain that another man might not succeed; and not long afterward a man did. That was Sir Noel Ordway. She had met him almost at once after moving to Cannes. She moved to Cannes practically on the advice of the distinguished stranger who continued to follow her with eyes of brooding concern. That is, what he said amounted to advice. It was, in a measure, to show him that she appreciated an interest in which there was an element that touched her profoundly that she accepted it. She met him suddenly at one of the many turnings in the long flight of steps that descend from the hotel at Cap d'Ail to the station, and what there is in the way of town. She had never come abruptly face to face with him before. She knew she colored and betrayed a ridiculous self-consciousness. He, on his part, was unruffled and sedate, lifting his hat with the somewhat rigid dignity that characterized all his movements. "Mrs. Chipman Walker, I think." She acknowledged the words by a slight inclination. He mentioned his own name, which she knew already. "I've just been seeing some friends of yours," he went on, calmly, "at Cannes. I've been lunching with the Misses Partridge." "Oh, they're there?" It was to say something, no matter what, to cover up her absurd confusion that she added, "They're friends of my aunt's." "I, too, have the pleasure of knowing Miss Winfield, which will perhaps excuse my self-introduction." She answered this by another slight inclination, while he continued: "The Misses Partridge asked me to say that they would be glad to see you, if you could ever make it convenient to go over. They wished me to add that they'd come to see you, but that, unfortunately, neither is quite well enough. You'd find them at the Villa Victoire, on the Route de Fréjus." She was murmuring something to the effect that she would go at once, when he said in a tone that struck her as significant: "It's very pleasant at Cannes--more so than here." She didn't resent this, perhaps because her need was too great. Besides, there was something about him--it might have been the tenderness of a man who himself knew what suffering was--that put him outside the region of resentments. She only said: "Indeed? Why?" "You'll see that when you go. For one thing, it's further removed from the atmosphere that comes up to us from--down there." He pointed toward Monte Carlo. "In that way it's--healthier." She knew that as she thanked him and passed on she smiled, and that she did so from lightness of heart. Certainly her heart was less heavy. It was less heavy because of his kindness, because of this indication that some one cared what became of her. She felt so forsaken that almost anybody's kindness would have had the same effect, almost anybody's care for her welfare; and so she came to respond to the appeal of Noel Ordway. He sat beside her the first Sunday she lunched at the Villa Victoire. The Misses Partridge "knew every one." Of few people in either hemisphere could the expression be used with no more exaggeration. Possessing little in the way of means, less in that of accomplishments, and nothing at all in the line of looks, they had formed a vast circle of acquaintance, chiefly by a hearty, unaffected interest in each individual personality. No one, however unimportant, was ever forgotten by them. Miss Rosamond, who looked like a coachman, spent her time in correspondence, rounding up absent friends; Miss Gladys, who was thin and angular, coursed whatever neighborhood they happened to be in, getting the nice people to come and see them. For reasons not always clear to the superficial the nice people came and sent others. No two ladies ever received so many letters of introduction, or wrote them. Their Sunday luncheons at Cannes were as famous as their Sunday dinners in New York. In New York Edith had fought shy of them, mainly because Chip didn't do them justice. He spoke of them flippantly as "those two old flyaways," and would never go to their house. For this reason she herself went rarely, though when she did she got a perception of broad social inclusiveness which Chip could hardly appreciate. It was the only house she knew of in which there were no "sets," and where one met the most interesting people of all walks in life. She often wondered hew the Misses Partridge, with their slight resources, physical and material, accomplished it, envying them somewhat their success. She wondered less, and envied them less, after she had seen them at Cannes. Miss Rosamond's deep bass voice, the perfect expression of her red face and man-like way of dressing, were the first influence in winning her. "My dear, there's the very hotel for you close beside us, where we could see you all the time. We stay there ourselves when we're opening and closing the villa. Big garden for the children--runs right down to the sea--and nothing but nice people of your own kind." Edith couldn't help the suspicion that the distinguished stranger at Cap d'Ail had inspired Miss Partridge's solicitude, but neither did she resent this. Miss Gladys accompanied her to the hotel in question, to bring her personal powers to bear on the proprietor, and to help in the selection of rooms, so that next day Edith was able to move over. In this way it happened that on the following Sunday she found herself seated beside Sir Noel Ordway. The luncheon party was again a collection of cosmopolitan odds and ends--but with a difference. There was a foreign royalty with his morganatic wife, the American wife of an English peer, two or three notable Russians, a French painter of international fame, together with some half-dozen English and Americans of no importance, among whom Edith classed herself and the young Englishman beside her. Between him and her the friendship ripened rapidly and unexpectedly. It was so unexpectedly that it took her off her guard. It was beyond all the possibilities her imagination could foresee that he should fall in love with her--a woman who had had her tragic experience, of no great beauty, the mother of two children. It was, in fact, through the children that he made his approaches, in as far as he made them intentionally. She judged that he didn't do that, that he was caught unawares, like herself. He had merely expressed a "liking for kids," and offered to take the youngsters for an outing in his motor-car on the following day. The kids were to go with their governess; but when he drove up to the door, and Edith had come out to see them off, it seemed ridiculous that she shouldn't accompany them. Besides, the governess was young and pretty, necessitating an elderly person for purposes of propriety. It was partly, too, in thoughtlessness that Edith yielded to his persuasion and, putting on a thick coat, jumped in with the rest. He acted as his own chauffeur, and they drove up the new road through the Esterels. Edith sat beside him, and as they talked little she was able to observe him to better effect than on the previous day. She took him to be a year or two younger than herself, tall and slight, with a stoop he had probably acquired at Eton. She had understood from Miss Partridge that he was delicate; and he looked it. The circumstance had kept him from entering the army or going into diplomacy, sending him to the Riviera for his winters. He was blue-eyed and blond, with a ragged mustache too thin to conceal the rather pathetic line of the mouth. A long, thin nose, with an upper lip so short that the flash of teeth was visible even when the mouth was in repose, gave him the appearance of an extremely aristocratic rodent. The drive was repeated a day or two later, and longer excursions came after that--to St. Raphael, to Valescure, and as far away as Mentone and the Gorges du Loup. Edith couldn't help liking the young man, first for his kindness to the children, and then for himself. For himself she liked him because he was so simple, straightforward, and sincere. He grew confidential as time went on, telling her of his home, his mother, his sisters, his duties as squire and lord of the manor, and the bore it was to be kept out of a profession and away from England at the very moment of the hunting. He formed the habit of dropping in so frequently to tea with her, in the little sun-pavilion of the hotel, that she fancied the Misses Partridge, who were friends of Lady Ordway's, began to look uneasy. She wondered if they had given the young man all the information concerning her that was his due. She made up her mind to ask. Once the fact was recognized it would be a safeguard, in that any possibilities of their being other than friends would be out of the way. He gave her the opportunity one afternoon in March by asking where she thought of going after she left Cannes. The children and the governess had had tea with them, but had strolled into the garden. Other occupants of the sun-pavilion had also wandered out among the pansy-beds and the blossoming mimosas. Edith took her time before answering. "I don't know," she said at last. "It's so hard for me to make plans. You see, there's nothing to hinder me from going to Sweden, Switzerland, or Spain; and when that's the case you're indifferent about going anywhere." She waited a few seconds before saying, "You know about me, don't you?" "Rather," he said, promptly. "I've known that all along." The reply was so downright that she was sorry she had raised the subject. He seemed to imply that as far as he was concerned the peculiarities in her situation were of no importance. As she was obliged to say something, she could only express a measure of relief. "I'm glad of that. I hoped Miss Partridge would tell you." He startled her by saying, with the bluntness that was curiously, but characteristically, at variance with the hesitations of his general manner: "You could get married again, couldn't you?" "Oh no." She blushed helplessly. "Oh, but you could." She struggled to keep to the ground of mere discussion. "I could legally; but I never should." "Why?" "Oh, for a lot of reasons I can't talk about." "Then what did you do it for?" She managed a smile, even if it was a forced and feeble one. She understood what he meant by "it." "I don't have to explain that, do I?" "No, I suppose not." She hoped he was going to drop the subject, when he lifted his head to look at her with his rather pathetic blue eyes, "Oh, but I say, you're not serious in thinking you wouldn't, are you?" "Perfectly serious. I should never look on the matter as admitting discussion." "Oh, but it does, you know." "Not for me." "Well, it might not for you, and yet might for--for other people." She still forced an unsteady smile. "That's something I don't have to worry about, at any rate. I've given up thinking of other people's opinions." "I don't mean other people in general--only in particular." "I don't know any other people--in particular." "Yes, you do. You know me." "I only know you--like that." She snapped her fingers so as to give him an idea of the entirely transitory nature of their acquaintance. "That isn't the way I know you." "Oh, you don't know me at all. You couldn't. You're too young. I belong to another generation in point of time, and to ages ago in the matter of experience." "How old _are_ you?" She told him. "You're eighteen months older than I; but that's nothing. My mother was four _years_ older than my father--nearer five. That sort of thing often runs in families." She sprang up. "There's Chippie tramping all over that flower--bed. How _can_ Miss Chesley?" The negligence of Miss Chesley enabled her to make her escape, and when he rejoined her in the garden he accepted the diversion her ingenuity had found. In a short time he took his leave with no more display of emotion than on previous occasions. But he left her troubled and shaken. He left her with the feeling that the foundations of life, as she was leading it, were insecure. Where she had thought she was strong and determined she began to see she was weak and irresolute. She began to see herself as a woman with such an instinctive need of protection that sooner or later she would accept it--from some one. If from any one, why not from this man? She liked him; she was sure of his goodness and kindness. He was already fond of the children, and the children of him. Moreover, she could be a mother to him, and he needed mothering, as any one could see. It might not be a romantic marriage, but it could easily be an ideal one, as far as anything ideal still lay within the range of her possibilities. It could be ideal in the sense of a sincere affection both on his side and hers, and a common life for perhaps higher aims than she had lived with Chip. It would doubtless be the final stage to the process of making Chip understand. She wouldn't marry--she couldn't--without some inner reference to him, without a vital reference to him. If she did marry he would know at last to what he had forced her. He would have forced her to looking to another man for what she should have had from him--and then he would be repentant. Surely he would be repentant then! If he wasn't he would never be. All her efforts would have become in vain. She would feel that for any good she had accomplished she might as well have stayed with him. That thought choked her with its implication of agony escaped--and bliss forfeited. But it was looking too far ahead. Everything was looking too far ahead. Noel Ordway had not asked her to marry him--and might never do so. She might have scared him off. She hoped she had. That would be simpler. She was not so inexperienced as to be without the knowledge that marriage with him would raise as many difficulties as it would settle--perhaps more. The day came when she had to point that out to him. But it did not come at once. Nearly a week passed without his return. For Edith it was a week of some disappointment, and a good deal of relief. If she wasn't the happier for his absence, she was more at ease. She could be at ease till the time came for moving on in one direction or another, when she would be oppressed anew with the sense of her helplessness. It became clearer to her that if she married at all it would be to be taken care of. The question was put formally before her at a moment when she was least expecting it. It was an afternoon late in March when she was struggling along the Boulevard du Midi, in the teeth of a warm west wind. On her left children played in the sands or threw sticks or bruised flowers into the huge breakers to see them rolled shoreward. On her right the palms in the villa gardens bowed their heads eastward, while the mimosas tossed their yellow branches wildly. Before her the Esterels formed a jagged line of indigo flecked with red, above which masses of stormy orange cloud broke along the edges into pink. It was still far from the hour of sunset, though the glamour of sunset was gathering in the air. She heard his step behind her scarcely an instant before he spoke. "Oh, I say, Mrs. Walker, I want you to marry me." The statement was so startling that in spite of all her preparatory discussion with herself, she turned on him tragically. "For God's sake, why?" "Well, because I'm awfully fond of you, you know." His expression touched her. There was no mistaking the kindliness in his eyes, or the look of rather wan beseeching in his thin, pinched face. In his golfing suit of Harris tweed he was not an unattractive figure, even if he wasn't handsome. Again her words had little relation to the things she had thought of beforehand. Her heart was so much with him that she spoke with an emotion she had never shown to him before. "Even if you are, don't you see, dear friend, that you can't marry me?" "Oh, but I can, you know." She looked about her for a refuge where they could talk, finding it in a rough shelter designed for the protection of nurses watching children playing on the sands. It was empty for the moment, except for a tiny, bare-legged girl of three or four crooning over a big doll. Edith led the way. "Come over here." They sat down on a bench hacked with initials and cleanly dirty with sand. The little girl at the other end of the bench rolled her big eyes toward them with indifference, continuing to croon to her doll: "Dors, mon enfant; dors, dors; ta mère est allée au bal.... Dors, mon enfant, dors; ta mère est au théâtre.... Tais-toi; tais-toi; ta mère dîne au restaurant.... Dors, ma chérie, dors." Edith plunged into her subject as soon as they were seated and turned toward each other. "Tell me. If you married a divorced woman, wouldn't your whole position in England be--be different?" "I shouldn't care anything about that." "That's not what I'm asking you. I'm asking you if there wouldn't be ways in which it would be hard for you?" The honesty in his eyes pierced her like a pain. "I shouldn't be thinking about that, you know. I should be thinking about you." "Well, then, aren't there ways in which it would be hard for me?" "Not any harder than it is now. It's pretty hard, isn't it?" The tears sprang into her eyes, but she knew she must control herself. "Yes; but it's in the way of the ills I know. The ills I know not of might be worse." "Oh, well, they wouldn't be that, you know." "What about your people?" She sprang the question on him suddenly. "They'd be all right--in time." The qualification was like a stab. She spoke proudly. "I'm afraid I couldn't wait for that." "You wouldn't have to wait for anything. They'd jolly well have to put up with what I decided to do. I've got all the say, you know. I'm the head of the family." "Yes, _you_ might look at it in that way; but you can easily see what it would be to me to enter a family where I wasn't wanted." "That's a bit strong," he corrected. "They'd want you right enough, once they knew you. It would only be the--the fact of--the--" She helped him out. "The divorce." He nodded and finished. "That they'd jib at. Even then--" "Oh, please don't think I'm blaming them. I should do exactly the same, in their case." "They're really not half bad, you know," he tried to explain. "Mother's an awfully decent sort, and so is Di. Aggie's a bit cattish. But then she'll soon be married. Fellow named Jenkins, in the Guards. And then," he added, irrelevantly, "you're an American." "Which is another disadvantage." "No," he said, with emphasis. "The other way round when it comes to a--a--" He stumbled at the word, but faced it eventually: "When it comes to a divorce, you know." She looked at him mistily. "No, I don't know. Aren't a divorced Englishwoman and a divorced American in very much the same position?" He hastened to reassure her. "Oh, Lord, no. Not in England they wouldn't be. A divorced Englishwoman--well, she's in rather a hole, you know; whereas a divorced American woman--that's natural." "I see," she responded, slowly. "It's not considered quite so bad." "Oh, not half so bad. One expects an American woman to be divorced--or something." She couldn't be annoyed with him because he was so honest and ingenuous. She merely said, "So they'd think me the rule rather than the exception." "They'd just think you were American, and let it go at that. Besides," he continued, earnestly, "when a woman's only been married in America--" "She's been hardly married at all. Is that what they'd think in England?" "Well, if they'd ever seen the chap around--But when they haven't, you know--" "They can't believe in him." "Oh, I don't say that. But--well, they wouldn't think anything about him." She shifted her ground slightly. "But you'd think about him, wouldn't you?" "Me? Why should _I_?" "Because I'd married him before I'd married you--for one thing." "Oh, but I shouldn't go into that, you know. That would be over and done with." "Would it?" "Well, wouldn't it?" She mused silently, while the little girl with the bare legs continued to croon to her doll with a kind of chant: "Dors, mon enfant, dors.... Ta mère ne reviendra plus ce soir.... Elle dîne avec le beau monsieur que tu as vu.... Elle te dira bonne nuit demain.... Dors; sois sage--et dors" "Even if it were over and done with," Edith said at last, "the fact would remain--supposing I married you--that your wife had had a life in which you possessed no share--a very living life, I assure you--and that her memories of that life were perhaps the most vital thing about her." "Oh, but I say!" he protested. "That's the very reason I'm so fond of you. I can see all that already. I shouldn't interfere with it, you know. It's what makes the difference between you and other women. It's like the difference between--" He sought for a simile. "It's like the difference between a book that's been written and printed, and has something in it, and a silly blank book." Her eyes filled with tears. "I wonder if you have the least idea of what you're saying?" He sought for a more effective figure of speech. "If you were walking about your place, and found something wounded, you'd want to take it home and tend it, wouldn't you, till you'd put it to rights again? And the more you tended it the fonder of it you'd be. But you wouldn't stop to ask whether a boy had thrown a stone at it or whether it had been attacked by its mate. You'd let all that alone--and just tend it." Her tears were coursing freely now beneath her veil. "Is that really the way you feel about me?" He grew apologetic. "Oh, I don't mean any Good Samaritan business, don't you know? If I could look after you a bit you'd do the same by me. I'm thinking of that, too. Look here," he pursued, confidentially, but coloring; "I'll tell you something, if you won't think me an ass. I could have married two or three girls--oh, more than that!--if I'd wanted to. But I could see what they were after. It wasn't me--not by a long shot. It was the place--Foljambe--it's really quite a decent place, you know--right in the shires--and the hunting. They'd have thought it awful luck to have to clear out of England every year, just when the hunting begins--and stick in this bally hole--or go to Egypt. But you wouldn't." As she said nothing for the minute, he insisted, "Would you, now?" She shook her head musingly. "No, I shouldn't." He looked relieved. "Well, that's just it. That's just what I thought." He colored more deeply, with a hectic spot in each cheek. "Life isn't all beer and skittles to me, don't you know--and you'd be the kind of thing I haven't got, don't you know?" He leaned toward her beseechingly. "Do you see now?" "I think I do. You mean that we'd mutually take care of each other." "Well, that's what it would amount to--not to say any more about my being so awfully fond of you. You won't forget that." She smiled through her tears. "Oh no; I'm not likely to forget it. I wish I could tell you--" But she broke off because she could say no more, struggling to her feet. He agreed to her request that she should have time to think his proposal over, and also that he should let her return alone to the hotel, remaining in the shelter with the crooning child long after she had gone away. But once she was out in the wind again she found it difficult to give the matter concentrated thought. Much as she had been moved while he talked to her, the emotion seemed to be blown away by the strong air of reality. It was like the crying in which she had sometimes indulged herself at a play, and which left no aftermath of sadness. She could hardly tell what aftermath had been left by Noel Ordway's words; but as far as she could judge it had everything in it to touch her and appeal to her, except the possible. And yet so much that was impossible had happened to her already, who knew but that the next incredible thing would be that she should become mistress of Foljambe Park? Why not? Since the haven was open to her, and Chip had left the poor little craft of her life to toss in a sea too strong for it, why not creep into any refuge that would receive her? She would certainly be driven sooner or later into some such port--then why not into this? She hurried homeward between the thundering breakers on the one hand and the tossing palms on the other, her mind in a state of storm. In the garden, as she passed toward the hotel, she saw Miss Chesley with the children, but she couldn't stop and speak to them. She hurried. She wanted the protection of her room, of quiet, of the accessories to mental peace. Perhaps when she got these she should be able to think--and decide; so she hurried on. To avoid the main hall, where people might speak to her, she took the short cut through the sun-pavilion, which would bring her nearer to the stairs. But on throwing open the door she stood still on the threshold with a little soundless gasp. "Oh!" He came toward her sedately, the glimmer of a smile on the stamped gravity of his face. "I took the liberty of waiting for you. I couldn't bring myself to go back to Cap d'Ail without knowing how you were." As he held her hand he seemed to bend over her with what she had already described to herself as a brooding concern. She knew she was blushing foolishly and that her knees were trembling under her; and yet, curiously enough, the little craft of her life seemed suddenly to find itself in quiet waters, ranged round by protecting hills. She was confused and sorry and glad and afraid all in one instant. Nothing but the habit of the hostess, which was so strong in her, enabled her to capture a conventional tone and say the obvious thing: "I'm so glad you waited. Won't you sit down, and let me ring for tea?" III REPROACH Chip had never really noticed her until on that Sunday morning in June it suddenly struck him that she was trying to get a word with him alone. He had seen her, of course. She had been at Mountain Brook--which was the name of Emery Bland's place in New Hampshire--every time he had gone there; but, her quality being unobtrusive, he had paid her no attention. Furthermore, both Bland and Mrs. Bland, being emphatic in personality and talkative, he had been the more easily led to ignore this reticent girl, whose function was apparently limited to seeing her aunt provided with a shawl, or her uncle with a cigar, at the right opportunities. If he thought of her at all, it was as of the living spirit of the furniture. The tables and chairs became animate in her, and articulate; but her claim to recognition had never gone beyond the necessity for a hand-shake or a smile. When he did take her hand--on arriving, or on coming down-stairs in the morning--he received an impression of something soft and slim and tender; but the moment of pleasure was always too fleeting for conscious registration. Similarly, when, from a polite instinct to include her in the conversation, he smiled vaguely in her direction, he received a look gentle and beaming and almost apologetic in return; but it was never more to him than if the dimly lustrous surfaces of Mrs. Bland's nice Sheraton had suddenly become responsive. She made no demand; and he offered no more than she asked. Perhaps the fact that the girl was not really the niece of either Mr. or Mrs. Bland had something to do with his tendency to treat her as a negligible quantity. Mrs. Bland had explained the situation to him during his first visit to Mountain Brook. "Lily isn't our niece at all," she had said, in a tone which seemed to reproach Lily with an inadvertance. "She's no relation to us whatever. We don't know who she is. She doesn't even know herself. Since you insist," she continued, as though Chip had been pressing for information, "we got her out of an orphanage, the year we built this house. Mr. Bland seemed to think the house ought to have something young in it; and so--" "You might have had a dog," Chip said, dryly. "You needn't laugh. It wasn't _my_ desire to adopt a child. I simply yielded to Mr. Bland, as I do in everything. The only stipulation I made was that she should call us uncle and aunt. I couldn't bear to be called mother by a child who wasn't my own; but Mr. Bland is so odd that he wouldn't have cared. I dare say you've noticed how odd he is." Chip could see that Bland might be odd from his wife's point of view. He was the self-made man who had shed the traces of self-making. Mrs. Bland was fond of describing herself as a self-made woman; but the stages of the process by which she had "turned herself out" were visible. She would have been disappointed had it not been so. Having confessed from youth upward that her ambition was "to make the most of herself," there had never, in her case, been any question of the _ars celare artem_. She belonged to a number of women's clubs of which the avowed object was "self-improvement," and attended such classes on "current events" as would keep her posted on the problems of the day without the bore of reading the papers. As a self-made woman she also looked the part, dressing for breakfast as she would like to be found in the afternoon, with but slight variation for dinner. In her full panoply of plum or dove color she suggested one of those knights eternally in armor who decorate baronial halls. Chip considered it probable that Emery Bland would never have chosen her as the life-long complement to himself had he not taken that step while he was still an obscure "up-state" country lawyer, and she the dignified young school-teacher who stood for "cultivation" in their little town. Cultivation had always been to Mrs. Bland what hunting is to the rider to hounds--the zest was in the chase. The zest was in the chase, and the quarry but an excuse for the run. Over hedges of lectures, and ditches of "talks," and through turnip-fields of serious, ponderous women like herself, green even in winter, and after being touched by frost, Mrs. Bland kept on in full career, with "cultivation" scudding ahead like a fox she never caught a glimpse of, and which her hounds tracked only by the scent. It was splendid exercise, and helped her to feel in the movement. If she failed to notice that her husband had long ago run the fleet animal to earth, and affixed the mask as an adornment to his home, it was only because their views of life were different. No one would now suppose that there had been a time in Emery Bland's life when it had been his aim also to "cultivate himself," and when he had actually used the phrase. Between the debonair, experienced New York lawyer, so much in demand for cases requiring discretion and so capable of dealing with them--between him and the farmer's boy he had been there was no more resemblance than between a living word and the dead root out of which it has been coined. In Emery Bland's case the word was not only living, but pliant, eloquent, and arresting to ear and eye. He was one of those men who overlook nothing that can be counted as self-expression, from their dress to the sound of their syllables. Superficially genial, but essentially astute, he had made everything grist that came to his mill, flourishing on it not only in the financial sense, but also in that of character. It was said that he knew as many life histories as a doctor or a priest, and generally the more dramatic ones. The experience had clearly made him cynical, but tolerant also, and human, with a tendency, as far as he was personally concerned, to being morally strait-laced. He had seen so much of the picturesque side of life that he could appreciate the prosaic, which, in Chip's explanation, was why he could stand by Mrs. Bland. Other people's surfeits of champagne and ortolans had assured his own taste for plain roast beef. But he himself ordered the porcelain on which his simple fare was served, and the wines by which it was accompanied, drunk from fine old Irish or Bohemian glass. Chip took this in by degrees. His first acquaintance with a man who was to exercise some influence on his future was purely professional. He had gone to him as an offset to Aunt Emily. If the results of this move were indirect--since Aunt Emily had won the victory--they became apparent in time. They became apparent when in Chip's bruised heart, where everything healthy seemed to have been stunned, a slight curiosity began to awaken concerning his new friend's personality. He came to consider him a friend by accident--the accident of a club, where, finding themselves sitting down to dine at the same moment, they had taken the same table. Primarily, it was an opportunity to adjust some loose ends of Chip's domestic affairs; incidentally, they stumbled on a common hobby in Victorian English politics. There was no subject on which Emery Bland was better informed, with a learning that covered the whole long stretch from Lord Melbourne to Lord Salisbury, and which he could garnish with anecdote _ad libitum_. It was a kind of conversation of which Chip, who had been brought up partly in England, rarely got a taste in New York, and for which Bland, on his side, didn't often find an interested listener. Something like an intimacy thus sprang up, but an intimacy of the kind common among men who have little or no point of contact out of office hours or away from the neutral ground of the club. Within these limits the meetings had already been numerous before it occurred to Chip--more or less idly--that while Bland knew too much of his sad background, he knew nothing of Bland's. An occasional reference revealed the lawyer as a married man, but beyond that basic fact their acquaintance had no more attachment to the main social structure of life than a floating island of moss and flowers has to the system of geological strata. It was Bland himself who took the first step in the direction of closer association. "Well, how are you getting on?" He asked the question while slipping into the seat opposite Chip as the latter lunched at the club, where they met most frequently. "Oh, so so." "H'm. So so. _That's_ what you call it." The tone implied reproach or reproof or expostulation. Chip kept his eyes on his knife and fork. "Well, what do _you_ call it?" "Oh, I'm not obliged to give it a name. I hear other people do that." "And what do other people say--since you seem to want me to ask the question?" "I do. I think you ought to know. They say it's a pity." Chip took on the defiant air of a bad boy. "They can say it--and go to blazes." "They'll say it, all right. Don't you worry about that. But I rather think that you'll do the going to blazes--at this rate." Chip raised his haggard eyes. "Well, why not? What is there any better than blazes for me to go to? Besides, it isn't so awful--when you've got nothing else." "Oh, rot, Walker! I'm ashamed of you. I can imagine a man of your type doing almost anything else but taking to drink." Chip shrugged his shoulders with the habit acquired in French schools. "On fait ce que l'on peut. I had three resources left to me--wine, woman, and song. For song I've no ear; for woman--well, that's all over; so it came down to Hobson's choice." "Hobson's choice be blowed! Walker's choice! And you've just time enough left to cast about for a set of alternatives. Why, I've seen scores of men in your fix; and of some of them it was the salvation." "And what was it of the others?" "Hell. But it was a hell of their own making." "All right. I'm willing to accept the word. It's a hell of _my_ own making--but it's hell, just the same." "But, good Lord! man, even if it is hell, you don't want to wallow in it." Chip smiled ruefully. "Oh, I like it. Kind of penance. I like it as medieval sinners used to like a hair shirt." "Yes; but the hair shirt was kept out of sight. You're parading your penance, as you call it, before the world. See here, Walker, why don't you come up and spend the weekend with me in New Hampshire? My wife would like to have you. To-day is Friday, and I go up to-morrow morning. A Sunday in the country would do you good." Chip refused, but he long remembered why he retracted his refusal. It was the look of his apartment when he returned to it that night. It was an apartment in a house at the corner of Madison Avenue and a street in the Thirties, dedicated to the use of well-to-do bachelors. It had been a slight mitigation in the collapse of life as he had built it up, that rooms in so comfortable a refuge should have been free for him. He had furnished them with some care; and after his first distress had worn off a little had found a measure of lawless satisfaction in a return to the old unmarried ways. But on this particular evening the aspect of the place appalled him from the minute he turned his latch-key in the lock. Under the stimulus of Bland's counsels he had come home early, which was in itself a mistake. It was scarcely nine o'clock. There was an hour or an hour and a half to pass before he could think of going to bed. Any such interval as that was always the hardest feature in the day for him. But what smote him specially now was the air of emptiness and loneliness. It met him as an odor in the stale smell of the cigar he had smoked on coming up-town from the office, and which still lingered in the rooms. He had forgotten to open a window, and the house valet, whose duty it was to "tidy up," had evidently gone out. In the small hall into which Chip entered there was a bookcase with but two or three odds and ends of books in it, for his habits of reading had dropped away from him with everything else. In the sitting-room one brown shoe stood on the hearth-rug before the empty fireplace; the other on the center-table, a collar and necktie beside it. The soiled shirt he had thrown off lay on the couch, a sleeve dragging on the floor. On the mantelpiece, which he had at first consecrated as a shrine for the photographs of Edith and the children, and flanked by two silver candlesticks like an altar, there had intruded an open box of perfectos, an ash-tray that still held the butt-end of a cigar, and an empty tumbler smelling of whisky. There were traces of cigar ashes everywhere--on the arms of the easy-chairs, on the rugs, and on the terra-cotta tiles of the hearth. For the rest the room was a litter of newspapers, as the bedroom which opened off it was a litter of clothes. He was not disorderly; he was only careless, and incapable of creating order for himself. Disorder shocked him profoundly. He always sat down in the midst of it, helpless, but with a sense of inner misery. And so he sat down in it now. "My God!" he said to himself, summing up in the ejaculation all the wretchedness he had wrought, or that had been wrought, about him. It was at such minutes that his mind reverted to Edith, with renewed stupefaction over what she had done. Stupefaction was the word. Reflection on the subject only left him the more hopelessly bewildered. If she hadn't loved him her course might have been explicable. As it was, he found himself driven to a choice between mental aberration on her part and a witch's spell, inclining to the latter--with the witch in the guise of Aunt Emily. Not that he absolved himself. He made no attempt to do that. But he looked upon his offense as of the kind that naturally calls for mercy rather than severity. What was the letter of the contract in comparison with the spirit?--and he had kept the spirit sacredly. Of course he had done wrong. Who in thunder, he asked, impatiently, ever denied that? But how many men had not done wrong in the same way? Very few, was his answer. The answer was the essence of his defense--a defense which, according to all the laws of human nature and common sense, Edith should have accepted. That she shouldn't accept it, or couldn't, or wouldn't, passed his comprehension. As a rule, he tried not to think of it. He tried not to think of it by filling up the time with something else. When there had been nothing else to fill up the time he had stupefied himself with drink. He drank at first, not because he liked drinking, but because it dulled his brain, his heart. It didn't excite him; on the contrary, it brought him to a state of lethargy which, if he was at the club, made him willing to go home, or, if he was at home, made it possible for him to go to bed and sleep. It was only within a month or so that he had begun to suspect that other people noticed it; and even then he hadn't been sure until Bland had told him so that day. He had, consequently, come back to his room in the possession of his faculties, but with a feeling of something unfulfilled that emphasized his desolation. He perceived then that a habit was beginning to form in him with a tenacity which it might be difficult to counteract. After all, would anything be gained by counteracting it? He had known fellows who drank themselves to death; and except in the last dreadful stages it hadn't been so bad. They had certainly got their fun out of it, even if in the end they paid high. He was paying high--and perhaps getting nothing at all. Wouldn't it be better if he went off this minute somewhere, and made a night of it?--made a night which would be but the beginning of a long succession of nights of the same kind? Then when he was ruined beyond recovery, or in his grave, Edith would know what she had done to him. He had tried every other way of bringing it home to her but that. That might succeed where argument had failed. She couldn't have a mind so much astray as not to be sorry when she saw, or heard of, the wreck she would have made of him. It was worth thinking of, and he sat and thought of it. He tried to conjure up the picture of himself as really besotted--he was not besotted as yet, even when the worst was said!--degraded, revolting. He rose to take a cigar, to help his imagination in the task to which he had set it, but he remembered that the cigar suggested a whisky-and-soda to go with it, and there was a bottle of Old Piper in the cupboard. He fell back into his seat again with the longing unsatisfied, but he continued his dream. It was so pleasant a dream--that is, there were so many advantages to the course he thought of taking, that he ended by springing to his feet and saying, almost aloud, "By God, I'll do it." The resolution being formed, there was a large selection of ways and means of putting it into execution. He could do this or that. He could go here or there. It was a bewilderment of choice that saved him. He sat down again. No; when it came to the point he wasn't equal to it. It was not the end he shrank from, but the means--the places to which he would have to go, the people he would have to consort with. He knew just enough of them to be sickened in advance. It was with a sense of fleeing to escape that he hurried to the telephone and called up Emery Bland, asking to be allowed to accept his invitation. He arrived at Mountain Brook late on an afternoon in early June, just as the sun, hovering above the point of its setting, was throwing an almost horizontal light on the northern and western slopes of Monadnock. The mountain raised its majestic mass as the last and successful effort of a tumbling, climbing wilderness of hills. Scattered amid the upward-sweeping stretches of maple and oak, groves of spruce and pine had the effect of passing rain-clouds. In the clear air, against the clear sky, every tree-top on the indented ridges stood out like a little pinnacle, till with a long, downward curve, both gracious and grandiose, the mountainside fell to the edge of a gem-like, broken-shored lake. It was a world extraordinarily green and clean. Its cleanness was even more amazing than its greenness. The unsullied freshness of a new creation seemed to lie on it all day long. It was a world which suggested no past and boded no future. Its transparent air, in which there was not a shred of atmosphere, its high lights, and long shadows, and restful, clambering woods, and singing birds, and sweet, strong winds were like those of some perpetual, paradisical present, with no story to tell, and none that would ever be enacted. It was a world in which Nature seemed to hold herself aloof from man, refusing to be tamed by him, rejecting his caress, keeping herself serene, inviolate, making his presence incongruous with her sanctity. It was this incongruity that struck Chip first of all. Not that there were any of the unapproachable grandeurs of the Alps or the Selkirks, nor anything that towered or terrified or overawed. All the hilly woodland was smiling and friendly--but remote. Man might buy a piece of ground and camp on it; but if he had sensibilities he would remain conscious of an essence that eluded him, the real thing--withdrawn. He could be on the spot, but he could never be of it--not any more than he could give his dwelling the air of springing from the soil. Chip noticed that, too--the intrusive aspect of any kind of roof that man could make to cover him, unless it were a wigwam. Emery Bland had tried to temper this resentment of the landscape to what was not indigenous to itself by making the lines of his shelter as simple and as straight as possible. He was from the first apologetic to the Spirit of the Mountain, as who would say, "Hang it all, you've tempted me here, but I'll outrage you as little as I can." So he perched his long, white house, Italian in style if it had style at all, on the top of a knoll whence he could look far into green depths, with nothing in the way of excrescence but a tile-paved open-air dining-room at one end, and a shady spot of similar construction at the other, getting his effects from proportion. Something in the way of lawn and garden he was obliged to have, and Mrs. Bland had insisted on a pergola. He fought the pergola for a year or two, but Mrs. Bland had had her way. A country house without a pergola, she said, was something she had never heard of. A _sine quâ non_ was what she called it. So beyond the square of lawn with its border of flowers the pergola stretched its row of trim white wooden Doric pillars, while over the latticed roof and through it hung bine and vine, grape, wistaria, and kadsu. Below the pergola the land broke to a brook that gurgled through copses of alder, tangles of wild raspberry, and clumps of blueberry and goldenrod, carrying the waters of the lake to the Ashuelot, which bore them to the Connecticut, which swept them southward, till quietly, and almost as unobserved by the human eye as when they rose in the bosom of the hills, they fell into the sea. As there was no other guest, Chip was allowed to do as he pleased. What he pleased was chiefly to sit in the pergola, where the mauve petals of the wistaria were dropping about him, and fill his gaze with the mystic peace of the mountain. On Sunday morning the three Blands went to church, leaving him in sole possession of this green, cool world, with its quality of interpenetrating purity. He took a volume of some ambassador's "Recollections" from his host's shelves of Victorian memoirs; but he never opened it. He also took a cigar, but he didn't smoke. He only looked--looked without effort, almost without consciousness--up into the high wonderlands of peace, whence whatever was brooding there seemed to steal into his soul and cleanse it. It was this sense of cleansing that he carried back as a sort of possession to New York--that and the fact imparted by Mrs. Bland during the afternoon, regarded as unimportant, and yet retained, that Lily Bland was not their niece. He returned to Mountain Brook twice during that summer, and in June of the following year. It was during this last visit that the girl who had been to him hitherto no more than the living element of the background gave him the impression that she was seeking an opportunity to speak to him. Throughout Saturday it had been an impression almost too faint to be recorded; but it was significant to him that on Sunday morning she didn't go to church. She shared the house with him, therefore, a fact of which he was scarcely aware till he saw her in possession of the pergola. With a book in her hand she had established herself in a chair not far from that which by preference he had made his own. The act roused his curiosity; but when he, too, had taken a book and strolled out to join her, she didn't keep him in suspense. She closed her novel as he approached, looking up at him with simple directness. "I've something to tell you." Behind the attention he gave to these words he registered the observation that when you looked at her--which he had rarely done--you saw she was pretty. Her white skin had a luminosity like that of satin, and the mouth was sweet with a timid, apologetic tenderness. The glances one got from her were almost too fleeting to show the color of the eyes, but he knew they must be blue. Her hair had been striking to him from the first, chiefly because it was of that hue for which there is no English word, but which the French call _cendré_--ashen--something between flaxen and brown, but with no relation to either--that might have been bleached by a "treatment" only for its unmistakable gleam of life. It waved naturally over the brows from a central parting, and massed itself into a great coil behind. She was dressed simply in white linen, with a belt of "watered" blue silk, and neat, pointed cuffs of the same material. Instinctively he knew that what she had to tell him must be important, for otherwise she would not have come out of the shy depths into which, like the Spirit of the Mountain, her life seemed to be withdrawn. What it could be he was unable even to guess at. He smiled, however, and, taking a casual tone so as not to strike too strong a note at first, he said, as he sat down, "Have you?" She continued to speak with the same simple directness. "It's about some one you used to know." He grew more grave. "Indeed? I should hardly have supposed that you could know any one--whom I _used_ to know?" "I do. I know--You won't mind my speaking right out, will you?" "Of course not. Say anything you like." "Well, I know Miss Maggie Clare." "Great God!" He sank deeper into his wicker arm-chair, throwing one leg over the other. He seemed to shrink away and to look up at her from under his brows. The shy serenity of her bearing was undisturbed. "I've got a message to you from her." He was unable to keep the note of resentment out of his voice. "What?" "She's very ill. I think she's going to die. She thinks so herself. She wants to know if--if you'd go and see her." He slipped down deeper into his chair, his chin sunk into his fist. It was quite like the act of cowering. It was long before he spoke. When he did so the tone of resentment was more bitter. "Does she realize what she's done to me?" "I think she does. In fact, it's the only thing she does realize very clearly now. She talks of it continually, in her dreamy way--but a way that's quite heartbreaking. I really think that if you were to see her--" He looked up under his lids and brows as she hesitated. "Well?" The tone was as savage as courtesy would let him make it. "That you'd forgive her." His body bounded to an upright attitude, his hands thrust deep into pockets. "No." If the word had been louder it would have been a shout. "I shall never forgive her." There was no change in her sweet reasonableness. "I don't see what you gain by that." "I gain this much--that I don't do it." "I still can't see that it makes your situation any better, while it makes hers a good deal worse." "If hers is worse, mine _is_ better. The woman deliberately wrecked my life after I'd been kind to her--for years." "The poor thing didn't do it deliberately, Mr. Walker. She did it because she couldn't help it--because she loved you so." He shook himself impatiently. "Ah, what kind of love is that?" The audacity of her response--the curious audacity of shyness--seemed to him extraordinary only when, later, he thought it over. "I dare say it isn't a very high kind of love--but there was no question of its being that--from the first. Was there?" "All the more reason then why she should have kept where she belonged." "Yes, of course. And yet it's difficult for love to keep itself where it belongs when it's very--very consuming." He leaned back in his chair, eying her. If he spoke roughly it was only because she had roused all his emotions on his own behalf, as well as a faint subconscious interest in herself. "Look here, Miss Bland. How much do you know about this?" "Oh, I know all about it," she assured him, hurrying to explain, in answer to something she saw in his face: "Uncle Emery didn't tell me. I read it first in the papers--you remember there was a lot of talk about it in the papers--and then every one was talking of it. I couldn't help knowing. Uncle Emery," she added, "only told me one tiny little thing, which couldn't do any one any harm." "And that was--?" "Miss Clare's address. I asked him for it when I found that I--that I wanted to go and see her." "And why on earth should you want to go and see her--a young girl like you?" Her blush was like a color from outside reflected in the soft luster of her skin as a tint of sunset may be caught by the petals of certain white flowers. "I had a reason. It wasn't doing any one any harm," she repeated, "not even you." In further self-defense she added: "Uncle Emery didn't disapprove, and I've never told Aunt Zena. But I've always been glad I went--very." "Why?" "Because she's a sort of charge of Uncle Emery's, for one thing--since you've put her in his care. I help _him_ a little bit. And then the sister she lives with--you knew we'd got her to live with her sister, didn't you?--isn't very kind to her. It's just the money. And then," she continued, the soft color deepening, "I had another reason--more personal--that I'd rather not say anything about." "I can't imagine anything in the whole bad business that could be personal to you." "No, of course you can't. It's only personal by association--by imagination, probably." She made nothing clearer by adding: "You know I'm not really Uncle Emery's niece, or Aunt Zena's." He nodded. "I don't know who my mother was. But whoever she was--I'm sorry for her." He began to get her idea. "You're probably quite wrong," he said, kindly; "and until you know you're right I shouldn't let fancies of that sort run away with me." "Oh, I don't. And yet you can see that when I meet any one like Maggie Clare--well, I don't feel superior to her. It's like being a gipsy--George Eliot's Fedalma, for instance--adopted by a kind family, but knowing she's a gipsy just the same." He brought his knowledge of the world to bear on her. "I assure you you're not in the least like that kind of gipsy." "Neither was Fedalma like her kind; and yet when she could do something for them she went to them and did it." "How old are you?" he said, abruptly, asking the same question which but a few weeks before Noel Ordway had put to Edith, and in much the same way. "We call it twenty-three--because we keep my birthday on the date on which Uncle Emery and Aunt Zena took me; but I must be nearer twenty-five." He looked at her more attentively than he had ever done. She was not really shy; she wasn't even reserved; but she was repressed--repressed as any one might be who lived under the weight of Mrs. Bland's protesting, grudging kindliness. It came back to him now, the tone in which she had said, a year earlier, that she couldn't be called mother by a child who didn't belong to her. How that must have been "rubbed in" to the poor girl before him! Other things, too, came back to him, especially on Bland's part certain stolen moments of tenderness toward the girl, that had been interrupted in Chip's presence by a peremptory voice, saying, "Now, Emery, don't spoil the child," or "Lily, dear, _can't_ you find anything better to do than tease your uncle?" In it all Chip had found two subjects of wonderment: first, the strange egoism of this middle-aged woman who could see nothing in the expansion of her husband's affections but what was stolen from herself; and then, the extraordinary freak of marital loyalty that could keep a man like Emery Bland, with his refinement and his knowledge of the world, true to a woman whom he had once loved, no doubt, in a youthful way, but who was now his inferior by every token of character. A good enough woman she was of her kind; but it was no more her husband's kind than it was that of the gods immortal. What was the secret that kept these unequal yoke-fellows together, sympathetic, and tolerably happy, when he and Edith, who were made for each other, had by some force of mutual expulsion been thrust apart? Bland himself was of the type which, in the language that was almost more familiar to him than English, Chip would have called _charmeur_; and yet he deferred to this second-rate woman, and considered her, and even loved her in a placid, steady-going way, submitting at times to her dictation. Chip couldn't understand it. If he himself had been married to Mrs. Bland--But that was unthinkable. What wasn't unthinkable, and yet became the more bewildering the more he tried to work the problem out, was that he himself had failed to keep for his own the woman who suited him in every respect, whose love he possessed and who possessed his, who was happy with him and he with her, while Emery Bland had contrived to make the most of the estimable but rather coarse-grained lady who sat at the head of his table, and have a truly enviable life with her. No one could be more keenly aware of the lady's shortcomings, which lay within the realm of taste and intelligence, than Bland himself. What was his secret? Was it a principle, or was it nothing but a lucky accident? Was it something in a cast of character or a tenet of a creed, or was it what any one could emulate? These thoughts and questions passed rapidly through Chip's mind, not for the first time, during the two or three minutes in which there was no sound about them but the murmur of the brook, the humming of insects, and the whisper of the summer wind through millions of trees. He reverted to Maggie Clare, the timbre of his voice again growing harder. "What's the matter with her?" She was singularly gentle. "I suppose it could be described most accurately as a broken heart." He flushed hotly. "Oh, don't say that," he cried, as if he had been stung. "I shouldn't say it if it didn't answer your question." "_I_ didn't break her heart," he declared, in sharp aggressiveness of self-defense. "Oh no. Even she doesn't think so. The poor thing hasn't much mind left, as you know; but what she has is concentrated on that point--that you were not to blame in anything. Please don't think that I'm in any way hinting at such an accusation." He looked at her stupidly. "Then if her heart's broken, what's broken it?" "The circumstances, I suppose. You don't seem to understand that the poor soul must long ago have reached a point where her love for you was absolutely the only thing she had." Again he seemed to shake himself, as though to rid his body of something that had fastened on it. "I never _asked_ her to love me like that. I never _wanted_ it." She smiled, faintly and sweetly. "Oh, well, that wouldn't make any difference. Love gives itself. It doesn't wait for permission. I should think you'd have known that." He leaned forward, an arm resting on one knee. While he reflected he broke into the tuneless, almost inaudible, whistling Edith used to know so well. "I said I'd never see her again," he muttered, as the result of his meditation. "May I ask if that was a promise to any one, or if it was something you just said to yourself and about which you'd have a right to change your mind?" He continued to mutter. "I said it to--to my wife." "As a promise? Please forgive me for asking. I shouldn't, only that the request of a dying woman--" "I said it," he admitted, unwillingly; "but it wasn't exactly a promise. My wife said--" He stopped and bit his lip. "She said she didn't care." "You can't go by that. Of course she did care." "Then if she cared, I'd let twenty women die, whoever they were--" She rose with dignity. "That must be for you to decide, Mr. Walker. I've given you the message I was charged with. It isn't a matter in which I could venture to urge you." He, too, rose. "You do urge me," he said in a tone of complaint, "by thinking that I ought to go." She looked him timidly, but steadily, in the eyes. "I'm not so sure that I do. The whole thing is too sacred to your own inner life for me to have an opinion. You must do what you think right, and Maggie Clare--" "The woman ruined me," he cried, desperately. "And must she bear all the responsibility of that?" The words were accompanied by one of her swift, half-frightened smiles; but she didn't wait for an answer. Before Chip could begin to stammer out an explanation that would give his point of view she was passing rapidly up the pathway, bordered with irises and peonies and bleeding-hearts, toward the house. But when he returned to town he went to see Maggie Clare. He went, and went again. The experience became, in its way, the most poignant in his life. He had not much knowledge of death and even less of sickness. The wasted face and the sunken, burning eyes wrought in him a kind of terror. It was with an effort that he could take the long thin hand, that already had the chill of the grave in its limp fingers, into his own. As for kissing those bloodless lips, so eager, so strained, which he could see was what she wanted him to do, he was unable to bring himself to it. Luckily he was not obliged to talk, since her mind couldn't follow coherent sentences. It was enough for her to have him sit by the bed while she worked her hands gropingly toward him, saying, "Oh, Chip! oh, Chip!" and murmuring broken things in Swedish. It was incredible to him that this poor worn thing, this living shadow, that had exhausted everything but its passion for himself, had once been a woman whom he loved. He was glad when she died and could be buried, so that he might consider that episode as ended--if there was ever an end to anything in this cursed life! And yet the occurrence brought him another kind of shock. In the death of one who for years had been so closely associated with his thoughts it was as if his own death had begun. He grew uneasy, morbid. Such occupations as he found to fill the hours when he was not at work grew insufficient. He came to hate the clubs, the restaurants, the theaters, and such social gatherings as he was now invited to. There was an evening when from sheer boredom he went home to his rooms as early as eight o'clock--and the bottle of Old Piper came out of its hiding-place. The real struggle followed on that. He had not so far forgotten Emery Eland's warning as to cease to put up a fight; but he saw now that the fight would be a hard one. There was again a period in which he weighed the advantages of "going to the bad" with all sails set against a life of useless respectability. Going to the bad had the more to recommend it since he knew that Edith was in New York. His downfall might bring her back to him, in some such way, from some such motive of saving or pity, as that by which he himself had been brought to Maggie Clare. The argument being in favor of Old Piper, Old Piper supported it. Chip never forgot an evening when, as he staggered down the steps of the club toward the taxi that had been called for him, he met Emery Bland, who was coming up. He would have dodged the lawyer without recognition had it not been for the latter's kindly touch on his arm, while a voice of distress said: "Ah, poor old chap, what's this?" He had just wit enough left to stammer: "Edith's in New York. Go and tell her how you saw me." With that he staggered on, knowing that he almost fell into the waiting vehicle. Worse days ensued--for nearly a week. Worse still might have followed had they not been cut short suddenly. They were cut short by a note which bore the signature, Lily Bland. It was a simple note, containing nothing but the request that he should come and see her on one of a choice of evenings which she named. He took the first one, which was that of the day of the note's arrival. He had hardly seen her since their talk at Mountain Brook in the previous June. He had not gone again that summer to New Hampshire, and on the two or three occasions on which he had visited Bland's house in town she seemed to have retreated once more to her old place as the spirit of the furniture. He had made efforts to get nearer her, but she seemed to elude his approaches. He knew she would not have summoned him without having something grave to say, and saw that his surmises were correct by her method of receiving him. She was not in the drawing-room, but in Emery Bland's library, with a background of bindings of red and blue and green and gold, a few Brangwyn and Meryon etchings, and one brilliant, sinister spot of color by Félicien Rops. There was a fire in the monumental fireplace, and as he entered, a log was just breaking in the middle and spluttering, across the tall, richly wrought French dog-irons. It was the room of the successful New-Yorker who delights in giving himself all the indulgences of taste of which his youth has been deprived. The girl, dressed simply in some light stuff, and scarcely _décolletée_, seemed somewhat lost in the spaciousness of her surroundings. She made no pretense at preliminary social small talk, going straight to her point. She did this by a repetition of the words with which she had opened the similar conversation at Mountain Brook. "I've something to tell you." Having said this while they were shaking hands, she went on as soon as they were seated in the firelight: "At least Uncle Emery had something to tell you, and I asked him to let me do it." "Why?" He put the question rather blankly. "Because I thought I could do it better." But she caught herself up at once. "No; not better. Of course, I can't do that. Only--only I _wanted_ him to let me do it." Chip's heart bounded. Edith was in New York. She had heard of his condition. She was coming back to him. He was to have his reward for taking pity on Maggie Clare. His tongue and lips were parched as he forced out the words: "Then it's good news--or you wouldn't want to break it?" She was not visibly perturbed. Rather, she was pensive, sitting with an elbow resting on the arm of her chair, the hand raised so as to lay a forefinger on her cheek. "Don't you think that we often make news good or bad by our way of taking it?" "That's asking me a question, when you've got information to give me. What have you to tell me, Miss Bland?" "I've something to tell you that will give you a great shock; so that I don't want to say it till I know you're prepared." "Oh, prepared! Is one ever prepared? For God's sake, Miss Bland, what is it? Is one of the children hurt? Is one of them dead?" "That would be a great grief. I said that this would be a great shock. There's a difference--and one _can_ be prepared." "Well, I am. Please don't keep me in suspense. Do tell me." She sat now with hands folded in her lap, looking at him quietly. "No, you're not prepared." "Tell me what to do and I'll do it," he said, nervously, "only don't torture me." "One is prepared," she said, tranquilly, "by remembering beforehand one's own strength--by knowing that there's nothing one can't bear, and bear nobly." "All right; all right; I'll do that. Now please go on." "But _will_ you?" "Will I what?" "Will you try to say to yourself: I'm a man, and I'm equal to this. It can't knock me down; it can't even stagger me. I'll take it in the highest way. I sha'n't let it degrade me or send me for help to degrading things--" He flung his hands outward. "Yes, yes. I know what you're driving at. I promise. Only, for God's sake, tell me. Is it about--?" "It's about Mrs. Walker." "Yes, so I supposed. But what is it? Is she ill? Oh, she isn't dead?" The cry made her eyes smart, but she kept control of her voice. "No, she's not dead. She's not even ill. She's perfectly well, so I understand. But she's been--" The horror in his face, the way in which he leaned forward as though he would spring at her, warned her that he knew what was coming. She gave him time to get himself in hand by rising and taking the two or three paces to the fireplace, where she stood with a hand on the mantel-board, which was above her head, while she gazed into the embers. "She's been--married." She didn't turn round. She knew by all the subtle unnamed senses that he was huddled in his big arm-chair in a state of collapse. For the minute there was nothing to say or do. Since the iron had to enter into his soul, it was better that it should be like this. It was better that it should be like this--with her there to keep him such company as one human being can keep for another at such an hour--better than if he were to learn it in the solitude of his own rooms, or in the unsustaining frigidity of a lawyer's office. She knew she didn't count for much, except for the fact--a detail only--that she was _with_ him in every nerve that helped her to sensation and every faculty she possessed. So, after the minutes had passed--ten, perhaps, or fifteen--instinct told her when to speak again. She did it without changing the position in which she stood, or turning for a glance toward him. "You won't forget your promise?" He spoke with the vacant, suffering tone of a sick child, or of a person so sunk into wretchedness as to find it hard to come up out of it. "What?" She repeated the words. "You won't forget your promise?" His tone was still vacant--vacant and afflicted. "What promise?" "That you'd remember you're strong enough to bear it nobly." "But I'm not." She turned partly. He was bent over in a crushed, stupid attitude, his hands hanging limply between his knees. "Oh, Mr. Walker!" He raised his forlorn eyes. "Why did you want to tell me?" "Because I wanted to say _that_. I was afraid, if any one else did it, they'd leave it out." He gazed at her long with a dull, unintelligent, unseeing expression. When he spoke he was like a man who tries to get his wits together after delirium or unconsciousness. "Do you think I am--strong enough?" "I _know_ you are." He lumbered to his feet, staggering heavily to the chimney-piece, where he, too, laid his hands upon the mantel-board, which was just on a level with his height, bowing his forehead upon them. As he did so she moved away. Seeing his broad shoulders heave, and fearing she heard something smothered--was it a groan or a sob?--she slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her. But when, some twenty minutes later, he himself came forth, his head bent, perhaps to hide his red eyes and his convulsed visage, he found her at the door of the dining-room, with a cup of tea in her hand. "Drink this," she said, with gentle command. He declined it with a shake of his head and an impatient wave of the hand. "Yes, do," she insisted. "It's nice and hot. I'll have one, too." Obediently he went into the dining-room. He drank the tea standing and in silence, in two or three gulps, while she, standing likewise, made a feint of pouring a cup for herself. He left without a good-night, beyond a hard, speechless wringing of her hand on his way to the door. Two things seemed strange to Chip after that evening--the one, that the fight with Old Piper was ended; and the other, that in the matter of Edith's marriage, once the immediate shock had spent its strength, he bowed to the accomplished fact with a docility he himself could not understand. As for the fight with Old Piper, there was no longer a reason for waging it. In the new situation Old Piper had lost its appeal, from sheer inadequacy to meet the new need. The fact of the marriage he contrived to keep at a distance. He could do this the more easily because it was so monstrous. It was so monstrous that the mind refused to take it in, and he made no attempt to force himself. He asked neither whom she had married nor why she had married, nor anything else about her. It was a measure of safety. As long as he didn't know he was able to create a pretended fool's paradise of ignorance which, in his state of mind, was none the less a fool's paradise for being a pretense. Even a fool's paradise was a protection. If it hadn't been for the children, he might not have heard so much as the man's name. The children called him "papa Lacon." Chip was obliged to swallow that. They spoke of him simply and spontaneously, taking "papa Lacon" as a matter of course. They varied the appellation now and then by calling him "our other papa." It had been intimated to him, not long after the second marriage, that he might see the children with reasonable frequency, through the good offices of Mr. and Mrs. Bland. He soon saw that the arrangements were really in charge of Lily Bland, who brought the children to her house, and took them home again. Chip saw them in the library. The first meeting was embarrassing. Tom was nearly eight, and Chippie on the way to six. They entered the library together, dressed alike in blouses and knickerbockers, their caps in their hands. They approached slowly to where he had taken up a position he tried to make nonchalant, standing on the hearth-rug with his hands behind him. He felt curiously culpable before them, like a convict being visited by his friends in jail. He felt childish, too, as though they were older than, and superior to, himself. The childishness was shown in his standing on his guard, determined not to be the first to make the advances. He wouldn't be even the first to speak. They came forward slowly, with an air judicial and detached. Tom's eyes observed him more closely than his brother's, who looked about the room. Tom, as the elder, seemed to feel the responsibility of the meeting to be on his shoulders. He came to a halt, on reaching the end of the library table, Chippie by his side. "Hello, papa." "Hello, Tom." Encouraged by this exchange of greetings, Chippie also spoke up. "Hello, papa." "Hello, Chippie." There followed a few seconds during which the interview threatened to hang fire there, when the protest in Chip's hot heart--which was essentially paternal--broke out almost angrily: "Aren't you going to kiss me?" It was Tom who pointed out the unreasonableness of emotion in making this demand. His brows went up in an expression of surprise, which hinted at protest on his own part. "Well, you're not sitting down." Of course! It was obviously impossible for two little mites to kiss a man of that height at that distance. Chip dropped into an arm-chair, waiting jealously for the two dutiful little pecks that might pass as spontaneous, and then throwing his big arms about his young ones in a desperate embrace. After that the ice was broken, and, with the aid of the games and the picture-books provided by Lily Bland, the meeting could go forward to a glorious termination in ice-cream. Now and then there were difficult questions or observations, but they were never pressed unduly for reply. "Papa, why don't you live with us any more?" "Papa, shall we have another papa after this one?" "Papa, our other papa has a funny nose." "Papa, are you our real papa, or is papa Lacon?" In general it was Chippie who put these questions or made the remarks. Tom seemed to understand already that the situation was delicate, and had moments of puzzled gravity. But, taking one thing with another, the occasion passed off well, as did similar meetings through the rest of that winter and whenever they were possible--which was not often--in the summer that followed. It was a joy to Chip when they began again in the autumn, with a promise of regularity. But that joy, too, was short-lived. It was his second time of seeing them after the general return to town. Tom was hanging on his shoulder, while Chippie was seated on his knee. Chippie was again the spokesman. "We've got a baby sister at our house." It seemed to Chip as if all the blood in his body rushed back to his heart and stayed there. He felt dizzy, sick. The walls of his fool's paradise were dissolved as mist, revealing a picture he had seen twice already, each time with an upleaping of the primal and the fatherly in him; but now ... Edith had been lying in bed, wan, bright-eyed, happy, with a little fuzzy head just peeping at her breast! He put the boy from off his knee. Tom seemed to divine something and stole away. For a second or two both lads watched him--Chippie looking up straight into his face, Tom gazing from the distant line of the bookcase, with his habitual expression of troubled perplexity. Chip managed to speak at last, getting out the words in a fairly natural tone. "Look here, boys; I can't stay to-day. I've got a--I've got a pain. Just play by yourselves till Miss Bland comes for you. Be good boys, now, and don't touch any of Mr. Bland's things." He was hurrying to the door when Chippie interrupted him. "Where have you got a pain, papa?" He tapped himself on the heart. "Here, Chippie, here; and I hope you may never have anything so awful." As he went down the steps he found himself saying: "Will this crucifixion never end? Have I deserved it? Was the crime so terrible that I must be tortured by degrees like this?" He was unable to answer his questions, or even to think. His mind seemed to go blank till as he tramped down the street he came again to the consciousness that he was speaking inwardly. "Damn her! Damn her! She's nothing to me any more." He was shocked, but he repeated the imprecation. He repeated it because it shocked him. It struck at what he held to be most sacred. It profaned his holy of holies, and left it bare to sacrilege. It gave him a fierce, perverted joy to feel that she whom he would have loved to shield with everything that was most tender was now exposed to his cursing. It was rifling his own sanctuary and trampling its treasures in the streets. He had never had a sanctuary but in her. Other people's temples were to him not so much objects of contempt as of dim, vague astonishment. Such words as righteousness and sacrament and Saviour had no place in his speech. Edith had been the holiest thing he knew. She was both shrine and goddess. Now that the shrine had been proven empty, and the goddess irrevocably flown, he got an impious satisfaction from battering down the altars and blaspheming the deity to whom they had been raised. "Damn her! Damn her!" He repeated the curse at intervals till he reached his rooms, the hateful rooms that he rarely visited at this hour of the day. He was not, however, thinking of their hatefulness now, as he had come with an intention. There was a fire laid in the fireplace, and he lighted it. When it was crackling sufficiently he drew Edith's photograph from its frame and, after gazing at it long and bitterly, tossed it into the blaze. He watched it blister and writhe as though it had been a living thing. The flame seized on it slowly and unwillingly, biting at the edges in a curling wreath of blue, and eating its way inward only by degrees. But it ate its way. It ate its way till the whole lovely person disappeared--first the hands, and then the bosom, and then the throat and the features. The sweet eyes still gazed up at him when everything else was gone. He had hoped to get relief by this bit of ritual, but none came. When that which had been the semblance of his wife was no more than a little swollen rectangle of black ash, and the fire itself was dying down, he threw himself into a chair. The reaction was not long in setting in. It set in with a voice that might have come from without, but which he nevertheless recognized as his own: "You fool! Oh, you fool! What difference does this make to your love for her? You know you love her, and that you will never cease loving her, and that what you envy her is--the child." What you envy her is--the child! He pondered on this. It was like an accusation. The admission of it--when admission came--was the point of departure in his heart of a new conscious yearning. IV DANGER It was what he had been afraid of on and off for seven years. The wonder was that it hadn't happened before. But, since it had not happened, he had got out of the way of expecting it. The fear of it used to dog him whenever he went to the theater or the opera or out to dine. There had been minutes in Fifth Avenue, or Bond Street, or the Rue de la Paix, as the case might be, when, at the sight of a feather or a scarf or something familiar in a way of walking, his heart and brain seemed to stop their function. He had known himself to stand stock-still, searching wildly for the easy, casual phrases he had prepared--for the purpose of carrying off such a meeting as this, if ever it occurred, only to find that he was mistaken--that it was some one else. There had been two or three years like that, two or three years in which they had often been in the same city, perhaps under the same roof; but he had never so much as caught a glimpse of her. In the earlier months that had been a relief. He couldn't have seen her and kept his self-control. He could follow the routine of life only by a system he had invented--a system for shutting her out of his thought, that the sight of her would have wrecked. Then had come another period in which he felt he could have committed infamies just to see her getting in or out of a carriage, or lunching in a restaurant, or buying something in a shop. There were whole seasons when he knew she was in New York from autumn to spring; and, though he haunted all the places where women who keep in the movement are likely to be found, he never saw her. He knew he could have discovered her plans and followed her; but he wouldn't do that. Besides, he didn't want to meet her in such a way as to be obliged to speak to her. He wouldn't have known what to say, or by what name to call her. Such an encounter would have annoyed her and made him grotesque. It was more than he asked. He would have been satisfied with a glimpse of her gloved hand or her veiled face as she drove in the Park or the Avenue. But he never got it. After he married, the fear of meeting her came back. It was fear as much for her sake as for his own. He began to understand that the embarrassment wouldn't be all on his side, nor the suffering. He picked that up from the children, as he had picked up so many things, piecing odds and ends of their speeches together. He saw them so rarely now that he attached the greater value to the hints they threw out. He never questioned them about her, but it was natural that they should take a wider range of comment in proportion as they grew older. So he learned that her dread of seeing him was as great as his own of seeing her. It was astonishing that in all those seven years the hazards of New York should not have thrown them together. And now, at the moment when he might reasonably have felt safest, there she was! That is, she was on the steamer. For seven or eight days they were to be cooped up on the same boat. He could never go on deck or into the saloon without having to pass her. Worse still, she could never go outside her cabin door without the risk of being obliged to make him some sign of recognition. And a sign of recognition between _them_--why, the thing was absurd! Between them it must be all--or nothing; and it couldn't be either. He looked at the passenger-list again. Yes; that was her name: _Mrs. Theodore Lacon_. It was not a name likely to be duplicated. In all human probability it was she. As far as he could gather from the list, she was traveling alone, without so much as the companionship of a maid. He, too, was alone; but, fortunately, his name was inconspicuous: _Mr. C. Walker_. It was just the sort of name to be overlooked. She might read the list half a dozen times without really seeing it. If she were to notice it, she might easily not reflect that the initial stood for Chipman. It was conceivable that if she didn't actually see him she might not know that he was on the ship at all. The thought suggested a line of action. He was in his cabin at the time. He could stay there. Looking through the port-hole, he saw that they had not yet passed the Statue of Liberty. While in dock he had kept to his room, in order to read letters and avoid the crowd that throngs the deck of an outgoing steamer. There was every likelihood that she hadn't seen him any more than he had seen her. If he kept himself hidden she might never know! He could avoid the decks by day and take his exercise by night. By night, too, he could creep into the smoking-room and get a little change. But he would stay away from the general gathering-places on the ship and spare her what pain he could. That they should meet as strangers was out of the question. That they should meet as social acquaintances was even more so. They had been all to each other--and they had been nothing. No other relation was possible. So the week passed, and they reached Liverpool. He was purposely among the last to go ashore. In the great shed where the luggage was distributed under initial letters, he was glad to remember that W was so far from L. Nevertheless, he allowed his eye to roam toward section L, but found no one there whom he recognized. He ran over in his mind the various chances that she might not have come. It was no uncommon thing to read in a list of passengers the names of people who hadn't sailed. He had done so before. Later he scanned, as discreetly as he could, the occupants of the special train that was to take them to London. He couldn't see that she was anywhere among them. He sighed, but whether from relief or disappointment he was not sure. As it was one o'clock, he took his seat in the luncheon-car, making sure in advance that she wasn't there. He had come to the conclusion by this time that she was not on the train at all--that she hadn't been on the steamer. He did not, however, regret his precautions, because--well, because the sense of her proximity had made him feel as he had felt in the days--fourteen years ago now--when the very streets of the city in which she lived were hallowed ground. He had supposed that emotion dead. Probably it was dead. It must be dead. It was merely that, owing to the constraint of the voyage, his nerves were unstrung, inducing the frame of mind in which people see ghosts. Yes, that was it; he had been seeing ghosts. It was not a living thing, this renewed yearning for a sight of her. It was only the reflex of something past. It could be explained psychologically. It was the sort of evanescent sentiment inspired by old songs, or by the scent of faded flowers, reviving old joys tenderly, perhaps poignantly, but fleetingly, insubstantially, and only as the wraiths of what they were. Yes, that was it, he repeated to himself as he lunched. It was nothing to be afraid of, nothing incongruous with the fact that he had left a wife and child in New York. It was not an emotion; it was only the echo, the shadow, the memory of an emotion, gone before it could be seized. And then, suddenly, they were face to face. He was on his way from the luncheon-car to the compartment he shared with two or three men at the other end of the train. She was standing in the corridor, looking out at the vaporous English landscape. Through the mists overlying the flat fields and distant parks trees loomed weirdly, the elms and beeches in full leaf, the oaks just tinged with green. Cottony white clouds drifted overhead; the sun was dimly visible. Now and then a line of hedge was white, or pink and white, with the bursting may. He didn't recognize the lady who barred his way along the narrow passage. As she stood with one arm on the brass rail that crossed the window he could see an ungloved hand; but it might have been any hand. She wore a long brown coat, rather shapeless, reaching to the hem of her dress, while a large hat, about which a green veil looped and drooped irregularly, entirely concealing the head, helped to make her, as he stood waiting for her to move, a mere feminine figure without personality. It was the sense that some one desired to pass that caused her to turn slightly, glancing up at him sidewise. Even so, he couldn't see all of her face--not much more than the forehead and the eyes. But the eyes seemed to come alive as he looked down into them, like sapphires under slowly growing light. When she turned, her movements had the deliberation of bewilderment. She might have been just wakened in a place she didn't know. "Chip!" There was another half-minute of incredulous gazing before she said anything more. "What are you doing here?" He felt the necessity of explaining his presence. "I was on the boat. I didn't know--" "That I was on it, too?" "I--I did know that," he stammered, "after we sailed. Not before. It was the name in the list--" "But I never saw you. There weren't many passengers. I was always on deck." Her distress betrayed itself in the trembling of her voice, in the shifting of her color, and in the beating of the ungloved hand upon the gloved one. He felt his own confusion passing. It was so natural to be with her, so right. His voice grew steadier as he said: "I didn't go about very much. I was afraid--" She nodded, speaking hastily. "I understand. It was kind of you. And you're--alone?" He cursed himself for coloring, but he couldn't help it. He had a wife and child in New York! He saw that she wanted to recognize that fact from the first. She wanted to put that boy and his mother between them. Her husband and child stood between them, too. He took that cue in answering. "Yes; I've run over hurriedly on business. And are you alone, too?" She glanced toward the empty compartment where her bags were stowed in the overhead racks, and her books and illustrated papers lay on the cushions. "I'm on my way to join my--" It was her turn to color. He nodded quickly, to show that he understood. "He's in Biarritz," she hurried on, for the sake of saying something. "I'm to meet him in Paris. I wasn't coming over at all this spring. I wanted to stay with the children at Towers--" It was a safe subject. "How were the children when you left?" "Tom was all right; but Chippie has been having the same old trouble with his tonsils. They'll have to be cut again." "I thought so the last time I saw him. And he's growing too fast for his strength, poor little chap. I notice," he added, gazing at her more intently than he had as yet permitted himself to do, "that he begins to look like you." She smiled for the first time. "Oh, but _I_ think he looks like _you_." "No; Tom takes after me. He's a Walker. Chippie's--" "A darling," she broke in. "But he's not strong. Ever since he had the scarlet fever--" "Yes, I know. But it might have been worse. We might have lost him. Do you remember the night--?" She put her hand to her eyes as if to shut out the vision of it. "Oh, that awful night! And you were more afraid than I was. Mothers are braver than fathers at times like that." "It was watching the fight he put up. Gad, he was plucky, the poor little chap! And he was only three, wasn't he?" "Three and five months." "And he'll be eleven his next birthday. How the years fly! By the way, won't it soon be time for Tom to be going to boarding-school?" They were being pushed and jostled by guards and passengers. Between sentences it was necessary to make room for some one going or coming. She was obliged to step back into her compartment. Having taken the seat in the corner by the window, she motioned with her hand toward that in the opposite corner by the door. In this way they were separated by the length and width of the compartment, the distance marking the other gulf between them. She continued to talk of the children, looking at first into the cavernous obscurity of Crewe station, through which they were dashing, and then at the open country. The children, with their needs, their ailments, their future careers, could not but be the natural theme between them. It lasted while they passed Nuneaton, Rugby, and Stafford, and were well on their way to London. Suddenly he risked a question: "Do they--understand?" She was plainly agitated that he should disturb the ashes that buried their past. Her eyes shot him one piteous, appealing glance, after which they returned to the passing landscape. "Tom understands," she said, at last. "Chippie takes it for granted." "Takes it for granted--how?" "Just as they both did--till Tom began to get a little more experience. It seemed to them quite the ordinary thing to have"--she hesitated and colored--"to have two fathers." He winced, but risked another question: "What makes you think that Tom's discovered it to be unusual?" "Because he's said so." "In what way? Do you mind telling me?" "I'd rather _not_ tell you." "But if I insist?" "You'll insist at the risk of having your feelings hurt." "Oh, that!" A shrug of his shoulders and a wry smile expressed his indifference to such a result. "Did he ask you anything?" She nodded, without turning from the window. "Won't you tell me what it was? It would help me in my future dealing with the boy." She continued to gaze out at the park-like fields, from which the mists had risen. "He asked me if you had done anything bad." "And you told him--?" "I told him that I didn't understand--that perhaps I'd never understood." "Thank you for putting it like that. But you did understand, you know--perfectly. You mustn't have it on your conscience that--" "Oh, we can't help the things we've got on our consciences. There's no way of shuffling away from them." He allowed some minutes to pass before saying gently: "You're happy?" She spoke while watching a flock of sheep trotting clumsily up a hillside from the noise of the train. "And you?" "Oh, I'm as happy as--well, as I deserve to be. I'm not _un_happy." A pause gave emphasis to his question when he said, almost repeating her tone: "And you?" "I suppose I ought to say the same." A dozen or twenty rooks alighting on an elm engaged her attention before she added: "I've no _right_ to be unhappy." "One can be unhappy without a right." "Yes; but one forfeits sympathy." "Do you need sympathy?" She answered hurriedly: "No, not at all." "I do." His words were so low that it was permissible for her not to hear them. Perhaps she meant at first to make use of this privilege, but when a minute or more had gone by she said: "What for?" "Partly for the penalties I've had to pay, but chiefly for deserving them." It seemed to him that her profile grew pensive. Though it detached itself clearly enough against the pane, it was a soft profile, a little blurred in the outline, with delicate curves of nose and lips and chin--the profile to go with dimpling smiles and a suffused sweetness. It pained him to notice that, though the suffused sweetness and the dimpling smiles were still as he remembered them, they didn't keep out of her face certain lines that had not been there when he saw her last. "I think I ought to tell you," she said, after long reflection, "that I understand that sort of sympathy better now than I did some years ago. One grows more tolerant, if that's the right word, as one grows older." "Does that mean that if certain things were to do again--you wouldn't do them?" She took on an air of dignity. "That's something I can't talk about." "But you think about it." "Even so, I couldn't discuss it--with you." "But I'm the very one with whom you _could_ discuss it. Between us the conversation would be what lawyers call privileged." She looked round at him for the first time since entering the compartment. "Is anything privileged between you and me?" "Isn't everything?" "I don't see how." "We've been man and wife--" "That's the very reason. No two people seem to me so far apart as those who've been man and wife--and aren't so any longer." "And yet, in a way, no two are so near together." Her eyes were full of mute questioning. He made no attempt to approach her, but in leaning across the upholstered arm of his seat he seemed to overcome some of the distance between them. "No two are so near together," he went on, "for the very reason that when they're separated outwardly they're bound the more closely by the things of the heart and the soul and the spirit. After all, those are the ties that count. The legal dissolving of bonds and making of new ones is only superficial. It hasn't put you and me asunder--not the you and me," he hurried on, as something in her expression and attitude seemed to indicate dissent, "not the you and me that are really essential. No court and no judge could dissolve the union we entered into when you were twenty-one and I was twenty-seven, and our two lives melted into each other like the flowing together of two streams. Neither judge nor court can resolve into their original waters the rivers that have already become one." She smiled faintly, perhaps bitterly. "Doesn't your figure of speech carry you too far? In our case the judge and the court were only incidental. What really dissolved our union was--" "I know what you're going to say. And it _was_ against the letter of the contract. Of course. I've never denied that, have I? But in every true marriage there's something over and above the letter of the contract--to which the letter of the contract is as nothing. And if ever there was a true marriage, Edith, ours was." "Stop!" Her little figure became erect. Her eyes, which up to the present he had been comparing to forget-me-nots, as he used to do, now shone like blue-fired winter stars. "Stop, Chip." "Why?" "Because I ask you to." "But why should you ask me to, when I'm only stating facts? It _is_ a fact, isn't it? that our marriage was a true one in every sense in which a marriage _can_ be true, till other people--no, let me go on!--till other people--your Aunt Emily most of all--advised you to exact your pound of flesh and the strict rigor of the law. I gave you your pound of flesh, Edith, right off the heart; so that if atonement could be made in that way--" "Chip, _will_ you tell me what good there is in bringing this up now? You're married to some one else, and so am I. We can't go back, because we've burned the bridges behind us--" "But it's something to know that we'd go back if we could." "I haven't said so." "True." He fell silent because of the impossibility of speech. He made no move to go. To sit with her in this way, without speaking, was like an obliteration of the last seven years, reducing them to a nightmare. It was a shock to him, therefore, when she pointed to a distant spire on a hill, saying: "There's Harrow. We shall be in London in half an hour." In London in half an hour, and this brief renewal of what never should have been interrupted would be ended! He recalled similar journeys with her over this very bit of line, when the arrival in London had been but the beginning of long delightful days together. And now he might not see her for another seven years; he might never see her any more. It was unnatural, incredible, impossible; and yet the facts precluded any rebellion on his part against them. Even if she were willing to rebel he couldn't do it--with a wife and boy in New York. He had married again on purpose to satisfy his longing for a child--a family. He felt very tenderly toward them, the little chap and his mother; but he was clear as to the fact that he felt tenderly toward them, pityingly tender, largely because when face to face with Edith he wished to God that they had never been part of his life. And doubtless she felt the same toward her Mr. Lacon and the child of that union. But she would never admit it--not directly, at any rate. He might gather it from hints, or read it between the lines; but he could never make her say so. Why should she say so? What good would it do? Were she to confess to him that she hated the man toward whom she was traveling, he would experience an unholy satisfaction--but, after all, it would be unholy. In the end he could find no simpler relief to his feelings than to take down her belongings from the overhead racks. "I'll just run along and pick up my own traps," he explained, "and come back to see you properly looked after." Though she assured him of her ability to look after herself, he felt at liberty to ridicule her pretensions. "You must have changed a great deal if you can do that," he declared, as he handed down a roll of rugs strapped with a shawl-strap. "I have changed a great deal." "I don't see it. I can't see that you've changed at all--essentially." "Oh, but it's essentially that I _am_ changed. Superficially I may be more or less the same--a little older; but within I'm another woman." She took advantage of the fact that his back was turned to her, as he disentangled the handles of parasols and umbrellas from the network above, to say further: "Perhaps--since we've met in this unexpected way--and talked--possibly a little too frankly--it may be well if I remind you that you'd still be confronted with that fact--that I'm another woman--even if our bridges weren't burned behind us." He decided to let that pass without discussion, and because he said nothing she added: "And I dare say I should find you another man. So don't let us be too sorry, Chip, or think that if we hadn't done what we _have_ done--" Though he still stood with his back to her, lifting down a heavy bag with a black canvas covering, he could hear a catch in her voice that almost amounted to a sob. Because there was something in himself dangerously near responding to this appeal, he uttered the first words that came to him: "Hello! Here's a thing I recognize. Didn't you have this--?" As he stood holding the bag awkwardly before her she inclined her head. "One of your wedding presents, wasn't it?" [Illustration: "Oh, Chip, go away! I can't stand any more--_now_." "Do you mean that you'll see me--later--when we're in London?"] She found voice to say: "It's my dressing-case. Mama gave it to me." "And didn't I break a bottle in it once?" She tried to catch his tone of casual reminiscence. "It's still broken." "And isn't this the bag that got the awful bang that time we raised a row about it when we landed in New York? A silver box stove in, or something of that sort?" She succeeded in smiling, though she knew the smile was ghastly. "It's still stove in." "Gad, think of my remembering that!" He meant the remark to be easy, if not precisely jocose; but the trivial, intimate details wrung a cry from her: "Oh, Chip, go away! I can't stand any more--_now_." He pressed his advantage, standing over her, the black bag still in his hands, as she cowered in the corner, pulling down her veil. "'Now'! 'Now'! Do you mean that you'll see me--later--when we're in London?" The veil hid her face, but she pressed her clasped hands against her lips as if to keep back all words. "Do you mean that, Edith?" he insisted. Her breath came in little sobs. She spoke as if the words forced themselves out in spite of her efforts to repress them: "I'm--I'm staying at the Ritz. I shall be there for--for some days--till--till--he sends for me." "Good. I'm at the Piccadilly. I shall come to-morrow at eleven." Before she could withdraw her implied permission he was in the corridor on the way to his own compartment; but at Euston he was beside her door, ready to help her down. Amid the noise and bustle of finding her luggage and having it put on a taxi-cab, there was no opportunity for her to speak. He took care, besides, that there should be none. She was actually seated in the vehicle before she was able to say to him, as he stood at the open window to ask if she had everything she required: "Oh, Chip, about to-morrow--" "At eleven," he said, hastily. "I make it eleven because if it's fine we might run down and have the day at Maidenhead." She caught at a straw. If she couldn't shelve him, a day in the country, in the open air, would be less dangerous than one in London. And perhaps in the end she might shelve him. At any rate, she could temporize. "I've never been at Maidenhead." "And lunch at Skindle's isn't at all bad." "I've never been at Skindle's." "And after lunch we'll go out on the river--the Clieveden woods, you know--and all that." "I've never seen the Clieveden woods." "Then that's settled. At eleven. All right, driver; go on." But she stretched her hands toward him. "Oh, Chip, don't come! I'm afraid. What's the good? Since we've burned our bridges--" He had just time to say: "Even without bridges, there are wings. At eleven, then. All right, driver; go on. The Ritz Hotel." V PENALTY He went to Berne because she had let slip the name of that place during the afternoon at Maidenhead. It was the only hint of the kind she threw out during the afternoons--four in all--they passed together. He forgot the connection in which they came, but he retained the words: "He may have to go to Berne." _He_ was between them as an awesome presence, never mentioned otherwise than allusively. His name was too sinister to speak. Each thought of him unceasingly, in silence, and with anguish; but, as far as possible, they kept him out of their intercourse. It was enough to know that he was there, a fearful authority in the background, able to summon her from this brief renewal of old happiness, as Pluto could recall Eurydice. It was the supremacy of this power, which they themselves had placed in his hands, that in the end drove Chip Walker to wondering what he was like. "What _is_ he like?" he found the force to ask. She looked distressed. "He's a good man." He nerved himself to come to a point at which he had long been aiming: "Look here, Edith! Why did you marry him?" "Do you mean, why did I marry him in particular, or why did I marry any one?" "I mean both." "Oh, I don't know. There--there seemed to be reasons." That was at Tunbridge Wells--in the twilight, on the terrace of the old Calverly Hotel. They were sitting under a great hawthorn in full bloom. The air was sweet with the scent of it. It was sweet, too, with the scent of flowers and of new-mown hay. In a tree at the edge of the terrace a blackbird was singing to a faint crescent moon. There was still enough daylight to show the shadows deepening toward Bridge and over Broadwater Down, while on the sloping crest of Bishop's Down Common human figures appeared of gigantic size as they towered through the gloaming. Edith was pouring the after-dinner coffee. It was the first time they had dined together. On the other days she had made it a point to be back in London before nightfall; but she had so far yielded to him now as to be willing to wait for a later train. "What sort of reasons?" he urged. "Oh, I don't know," she said again, pensively, dropping a lump of sugar into his coffee-cup. She added, while passing the cup to him: "It isn't so easy for a woman to be--to be drifting about--especially with two children." "But why should you have drifted about, when you knew that at a sign from you--?" She went on as if he hadn't spoken. "And when I saw you had dismantled the house and other people were living in it--I couldn't help seeing that, you know, in driving by--" "But, good God, Edith, you wouldn't have come back to me?" She stirred her own coffee slowly. "N-no." "Does that mean no or yes?" "Oh, it means no. That is"--she reflected long--"if I _had_ gone back to you I should have been sorry." "You would have considered it a weakness--a surrender--" She nodded. "Something like that." "And you really had stopped--caring anything about me?" "It wasn't that so much as--so much as that I couldn't get over my resentment." She seemed to have found the explanatory word. "That was it," she continued, with more decision. "That's what I felt: resentment--a terrible resentment. Whatever compromise I thought of, that resentment against you for--for doing what you did--blocked the way. If I'd gone back I should have taken it with me." "But you don't seem to suffer from it now. Or am I wrong?" She answered promptly: "No; you're right. That's the strange part of it. After I married--it left me. It was as if old scores were wiped out. That isn't precisely what I felt," she hastened to add; "and yet, it was something _like_ that." "You'd got even." She shook her head doubtfully. "N-no. I don't mean that. But the past seemed to be dissolved--not to exist for me any more." "H'm! Not to exist for you any more!" "I said _seemed_. That's what bewildered me--from the beginning: things I thought I felt--or thought I didn't feel--for a while--only to find later that it wasn't--wasn't _so_." She went on with difficulty. "For instance--that day--that day at the Park--I thought that everything was killed within me. But it wasn't. It came alive again." "But not so much alive that you wanted to come back to me." "Alive--in a different way." "What sort of different way?" Her eyes became appealing. "Oh, what's the good of talking of it now?" "Because you haven't told me what I asked--why you married him--why you married any one." She turned the query against himself: "Why did _you_?" "I didn't till after you did. I wouldn't have done it then if--if I hadn't been so--well, to put it plainly, so damned lonely." She gave him one of the smiles that stabbed him. "Well, then? Doesn't that answer your question?" He thought it did, and for a while they listened to the blackbird's song in silence. It was their last talk. They parted at the door of the Ritz with the intention of spending the next day in Windsor Forest--or some other romantic wood; but within a few minutes she had telephoned him that the summons had arrived. Next morning she left for Paris. And so he went to Berne. He hadn't meant to go there when he said good-by to her at Victoria. He had no intention of following her or putting himself in her way. He had purposely asked nothing of her plans, or so much as the date of her return to America. He had not precisely made up his mind that they were parting for good, but he was too stunned to forecast the future. He was stunned and sickened. He was stunned and sickened and disconsolate to a degree beyond anything he had thought possible in life. If it hadn't been for the bit of business that had brought him to London he would hardly have had courage enough to get through the days. But, the business coming to an end, he was stranded. There was nothing to do but go back to the wife and child whose existence he never remembered except with a pang of self-reproach. He meant to go back to them--but not yet. It was too soon. Edith was too much with him. The fact that her physical presence was withdrawn made her spiritually the more pervasive. The afterglow of their days together couldn't fade otherwise than slowly, like light when the sun goes down. So, when he should have been going to New York, he went to Berne. It was not really in the hope of being face to face with her again or of having speech with her. Even if she came there the dread presence would come with her and keep them apart. But Berne was a little place, a quiet place, restful, soothing, a haunt of ancient peace. It had struck him, on former visits there, that on this spot ignored by the tourist, who changes trains subterraneously, consecrated to old sturdiness and modern wisdom, serenely heedless of the blatant and the up-to-date, a bruised spirit might heal itself in a seclusion cheered by green hills and distant snowy ranges. It was such solitude that, in the first place, he sought now. If in addition he could see the shadow of Edith passing by--no more!--he felt that he would soon be inwardly strong again. At Berne there is a hotel known chiefly to wise travelers--a hotel of old wines, old silver, old traditions, handed down from father to son, and from the son to the son's son. Standing on the edge of the bluff which the city crowns, it dominates from its windows and terraces the valley of the Aar. Swift and unruffled, the river glides through the meadows like a sinuous ice-green serpent. Beyond the river and behind the pastoral slopes of the Gurten hangs a curtain of mist, which lifts at times to display the line of the Bernese Oberland, from the Wetterhorn to the Bettfluh. It is a hotel with which the learned people who sit in international conferences and settle difficult questions are familiar. It was sheltering a conference when Chip Walker arrived. Each of the nations had appointed three distinguished men to consult with three distinguished men from each of the other nations on possible modifications in the rules of the Postal Union when the use of aeroplanes became general in that service. The distinguished men met officially in a great room of the Bundespalast; but unofficially they could be seen strolling along the arcaded medieval streets, or feeding the civic bears with carrots at the bear-pit, or reading or smoking or sipping coffee and liqueurs in the fine semicircular hall of the hotel. They were French, or Austrian, or Russian, or German, or English, or Danish, or Dutch, as the case might be. There were also some Americans. The great national types were more or less easy to discern--except the Americans. That is, Chip Walker could see no one whom he could recognize offhand as a fellow-countryman. Three gentlemanly, jovial Englishmen were easily made out, because, in Walker's phrase, they "flocked by themselves" and in the intervals of sitting in the Bundespalast complained that Berne had no golf-links. They also dressed for dinner and dined in the restaurant. A few others did the same. But the majority of the distinguished men preferred to spend the evening in the costumes they had worn all day, and, with their wives--there were eight or ten dumpy, dowdy, smiling little wives--were content with the _table d'hote_. Indeed, the popularity of the _table d'hote_ sifted the simple, scholarly professors of Gottingen, Freiburg, or Geneva from the representatives of the larger and more sophisticated social world, leaving the latter to eat in the restaurant, _à la carte_. In this way Chip came to observe a man of some distinction who took his meals at a small table alone and kept to himself. He was a man who would have been noticeable anywhere, if it were for no more than the dignified gravity of his manner and the correctness of his dress. Not only did he wear what was impeccably the right thing for the right occasion, but his movements were of the sedate precision that never displaces a button. As straight and slim and erect as a guardsman, he was nevertheless stamped all over as a civilian. From the lines in his gray, clean-shaven face of regular profile, and the silvery touches in his hair, Chip judged him to be fifty years old. He puzzled the analyst of nationalities--though, as Chip put it to himself, it was clear he must belong to one of the peoples who were chic. He was, therefore, either English or French or Russian or Austrian or American. There was a bare chance of his being a Dane or a Swede. When he spoke to a waiter or a passing acquaintance, it was in so low a tone that Walker couldn't detect the language he used. All one could affirm from distant and superficial observation was that he was Somebody--Somebody of position, experience, and judgment--Somebody to respect. That, perhaps, was the secret of Walker's curiosity--that he respected him. He would have liked to talk to him--not precisely to ask his advice, but to lay before him some of the difficulties that were inchoate in his soul. He had an idea that this man with the grave, suffering face--yes, there was suffering in his face, as one could see on closer inspection!--would understand them. He came to the conclusion that he was a Russian, though he had an early opportunity to find out. As he stood one day by the concierge's desk the stranger entered, paused, spoke a few words inaudible to Walker, and passed on. It was a simple matter to ask his name of the one man who knew every name in the hotel, and he was on the point of doing so. He had already begun: "Voulez vous bien me dire--?" when he stopped. On the whole he preferred his own speculations. In the long, idle hours they gave him something to think of that took his mind from dwelling on his own entangled affairs. He counted, too, on the hazards of hotel life throwing them one day together. He was already on speaking or nodding terms with most of the distinguished men whom he could address in a common language. This had come about by the simple means of propinquity on the terrace or in the semicircular hall. He soon saw, however, that no diligence in frequenting these places of reunion would help him with the stately stranger whose interest he desired to win. The gentleman took the air elsewhere. For contiguous to the terrace of the hotel is a little public park called the Kleine Schanze--haunt of well-behaved Bernese children, of motherly Bernese housewives supplied with knitting and the gossip of the town, of Bernese patriarchs in search of gentle exercise and sunshine. This little park possesses a music-pavilion, a duck-pond, a monument to the Postal Union of 1876, many pretty pathways, and an incomparable promenade. The incomparable promenade has also an incomparable view on those days when the Spirit of the Alps permits it to be visible. Two such days at least there were during that month of June. Glancing casually over his left shoulder as he marched one afternoon with head bent and back turned toward the east, Chip saw that which a few minutes before had been but the misty edge of the sky transformed into a range of ineffable white peaks. The unexpectedness with which the glistering spectacle appeared made his heart leap. It was like a celestial vision--like a view of the ramparts of the Heavenly City. He clutched the stone top of the balustrade beside which he stood, seeking terms with which to make the moment indelible in his memory. Nothing came to him but a few broken, obvious words--sublime!--inviolate!--eternal! and such like. What he chiefly felt was his inadequacy for even gazing on the sight, much less for recording it, when he became aware that in the crowding of people to the edge of the terrace the stranger was standing near him. It was an opportunity not to be missed. "Ça, c'est merveilleux, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?" The words were banal, but they would serve to break the ice. "Yes; and it becomes more marvelous the oftener it appears. I've never seen it more beautiful than to-day; but perhaps that's because I've seen it so many times." Chip was disappointed to be answered in English, and especially in the English of an American. It brought the man too near for confidence. They might easily find themselves involved in a host of common acquaintances, a fact that would preclude intimate talk. Had he been a Russian the remoteness of each from the other's world would have made the exchange of secrets--perhaps of secret griefs--a possibility. Not so with a man whom one might meet the next time one entered a club in New York. Such a man might even be.... But he dismissed that alarming thought as out of the question. Edith wasn't at Berne. If she had been he would have seen her. He would not inquire at the hotel, nor at any other hotel; but he knew that in so small a town he must have had a glimpse of her somewhere. While it was conceivable that her husband might have come to Berne leaving her elsewhere, this was not the sort of man she would have married. The type to appeal to her would be something like his own--of course! Nevertheless, as he had begun the conversation, he felt that in courtesy he must go on with it. He did so by pointing with his stick to what he took to be the highest summit of the range, and saying: "I suppose that's the Jungfrau." The stranger moved nearer him. "No, you're too far to the west. That's the Breithorn. There's the Jungfrau"--he, too, pointed with his stick--"sentineled by the Eiger and the Mönch." He went on to indicate the Wetterhorn, the Schreckhorn, the Blumlisalp, the Finsteraarhorn, and the Ebnefluh. They were like a row of shining spiritual presences manifesting themselves to an unbelieving world. For the moment they served their turn in helping Chip Walker to subjects of conversation with his fellow-countryman, in whom he had lost some interest because he was a fellow-countryman. "You know a lot about Switzerland, don't you?" he observed, as the stranger, still pointing with his stick and naming names--the Silberhorn, the Gletschhorn, the Schneehorn, the Niesen, the Bettfluh--that impressed the imagination with the force of the great white peaks themselves, resolved the panorama into its minor elements. The stick came down and the explanation ceased. "I've lived a good deal abroad," was the response, given quietly. "You, too, haven't you?" With the question they turned for the first time and looked each other in the eyes. While Chip explained that he had spent his early years in France or Italy or England, according to the interests of his parents, he was inwardly remarking that the gray face, with its stiff lines, its compressed lips, its unmoving expression, and its stamp of suffering, was really sympathetic. Something in the composure of the manner and the measured way of speaking imposed this new acquaintance on him as a superior. Instinctively he said "sir" to him, as to an elder, though the difference in their ages could not have been more than seven or eight years. It flattered him somewhat, too, that the man who kept aloof from others should make an exception of him and welcome his advances. They parted with the tacit understanding that for the future, in the routine of the hotel, they should be on speaking terms. There was, however, no further meeting between them till after dinner on the following evening. Turning from the purchase of stamps at the concierge's desk, Chip saw his new acquaintance, wearing an Inverness cloak over his dinner-jacket, and a soft felt hat, lighting a cigar. There was an exchange of nods. On the older man's lips there was a ghost of a smile. It seemed friendly. He spoke: "You don't want to smoke a cigar in the little park? It's rather pleasant there, with a full moon like this." So it was that within a few minutes they found themselves seated side by side on one of the benches of the terraced promenade where they had met on the previous day. Though the row of shining spiritual presences had withdrawn, the valley was spanned by a Velvety luminosity, through which the lights of the lower town shone like stars reflected in water. The talk was of the conference. The stranger spoke of himself: "I've been interested in the various methods of international communication for many years. In fact, I've made some slight study of them. When the authorities were good enough to appoint me on this commission I was glad to serve." "Quite so," Chip murmured, politely. "It's an attractive little town, too--one of the few capitals in Europe that remain characteristic of their countries, and nothing else--wholly or nearly unaffected by the current of life outside. But," he went on, unexpectedly, "I wonder what a man like you can see in it--to remain here so long?" Chip was startled, but he managed to say: "It isn't that I see anything in particular. I'm--" "Waiting?" The query was perfectly courteous. It implied no more than a casual curiosity--hardly that. "No; resting," Chip answered, with forced firmness. "Ah, it's certainly a good place for resting." Then, after a pause: "You're married, I think you said." Chip didn't remember having said so, and replied to that effect. The stranger was unperturbed. "No? But you are?" By way of pressing the question, he added, with a glance at Chip through the moonlight: "Aren't you?" "I've a wife and little boy in New York," Walker answered, soberly. "Ah!" There was no emphasis on this exclamation. It signified merely that a certain point in their mutual understanding had been reached. "A happy marriage must be a great--safeguard." The tone was of a man making a moral reflection calmly, but Chip was startled again. It was his turn to stare through the moonlight, where the length of the bench lay between them. He felt that he was being challenged, but that he must not betray himself too soon. "Safeguard against what, sir?" There was a faint laugh, or what might have been a laugh had there been amusement in it. "Against everything from which a married man needs protection." Chip would have dropped the subject but for that sense that a challenge was being thrown him before which he could not back down. Nevertheless, he determined to keep from committing himself as long as possible. "I'm not sure that I know what you mean." The stranger seemed to examine the burning end of his cigar. "Oh, nothing but the obvious things--pursuing another man's wife, for instance. A man who's happily married doesn't do that." There was no aggression in the tone, and yet Chip felt a curious chill. Who was this man, and what the devil was he driving at? It was all he could do to answer coolly, knocking the ash off the end of his own cigar: "And yet, I've known of such cases." "Oh, so have I. But there was always a screw loose somewhere--I mean, a screw loose in what we're assuming to be the happy marriages." "Are there any happy marriages?--permanently happy, that is?" The response was surprisingly direct: "That's what I hoped you'd be able to tell _me_." "Then you don't know, sir?" Again the response was surprisingly direct: "I don't know, because I'm not happily married." A second later he added: "But other people may be." So they were going to exchange secrets, after all. "But you _are_ married, sir?" To clear the air, he felt himself obliged to add: "Happily or unhappily." "I married a lady who had divorced her husband." In the silence that followed it seemed to Chip that he could hear the murmur of the almost soundless river below. Somehow the sound of the river was all he could think of. Quietly moving, low-voiced couples paced up and down the promenade, and from the music-pavilion in the distance came the whine and shiver of the Mattiche. "In divorce," the measured voice resumed, "there are some dangerous risks. It's a dangerous risk for a man to divorce his wife. It's a more dangerous risk for a woman to divorce her husband. But to marry a divorced husband or a divorced wife is the most dangerous risk of all." Chip's voice was thick and dry. "May I ask, sir, on what you base your--your opinion?" "Chiefly on the principle that, no matter how successfully the dead are buried, they may come back again as ghosts. No one can keep them from doing that." "And--and I presume, sir, that you held this theory when you married?" "I held it _as_ a theory; I didn't know it as a fact." Chip felt obliged to struggle onward. "And do I understand you to be telling me now that the ghosts _have_ come back?" "Perhaps you could as easily tell me." It was a minute or more before Chip was able to say, in a voice he tried to keep firm: "If they have come back, you're not more haunted by them than--than any one else." "So I understand." The brief responses had the effect of dragging him forward. "And would it be fair to ask why you say that?--that you understand?" "Oh, quite fair. It's partly because you are here." "Then you think I ought to go away?" "I think--since you ask me--that you oughtn't to have come." "I came--to rest." "I don't question that. I'm only struck by--by the long arm of coincidence." "That is, you believe I had another motive?" With a gesture he seemed to wave this aside. "That's hardly my affair. You're here; and, since you are, I'd rather--" "Yes?" "I'd rather you didn't hurry away." He rose on saying this, apparently with the intention of going back to the hotel. Chip remained seated. He smoked mechanically, without knowing what he did. Questions rose to his lips and died there. Was Edith in Berne? Had she seen him? Was she keeping out of his way? Was she being kept out of his way? Was she suffering? Was it through her that he had been recognized? The fact that he _had_ been recognized brought with it a kind of humiliation. The humiliation was the greater because of the way in which he had singled out this man and approached him. During all those days of studying the stranger with respectful discretion, seeking an opportunity to address him, the stranger, without deigning him a look, had known perfectly well who he was and had been imputing motives to his presence. The reference to the long arm of coincidence was stinging. Because it was so he tried to muster his dignity. "I've no intention of hurrying away," he began; "but--" "If you like, I'll put it this way," the measured voice broke in, courteously. "If you have time to wait a little longer I should be glad if you'd do it." "Would there be any point to that?" "I think you might trust me not to make the request if there were not." He added presently: "It's a wise policy to let sleeping dogs lie; but when they've once been roused, they've got to be quieted." "Quieted--how?" "I can't tell you that as yet. I may have some vague idea concerning the process; I've none at all as to the result." Chip was not sure that the stranger said good night. He knew he lifted his hat and moved away. He watched him as, with stately, unhastening step, he walked down the promenade, the Inverness cape and soft felt hat silhouetted in the moonlight. For the next forty-eight hours Walker hung about the hotel like a culprit. He would have sacrificed even a glimpse of Edith to feel free to go away. He couldn't go away while the other man's plans remained enigmatical; but he wished he hadn't come. He felt his position undignified, grotesque, like that of a boy detected in some bit of silly daring. Two days later they met again on the terrace of the Kleine Schanze. It was not an accidental meeting. The stranger had walked directly up to Chip to say: "The lady to whom we were referring the other night--" But Chip was still on his guard. "Did I refer to a lady?" "Perhaps not. But I did. And that lady is ill. You may be interested to know it. She was ill when she arrived in Paris from London ten days ago." "Then she's here." "She's here. That's why I'm taking your time in asking you to remain." Chip forced the next question with some difficulty: "Does she--does she want to--to see me?" "She hasn't said so." "Has she--said anything about me at all?" "That, I think, I must leave you to learn later. But I should like you to know at once that I'm not keeping you here without a motive." The stately figure moved on, leaving Chip to guess blindly at the possibilities in store. More days passed--nearly a week. Chip spent much of his time in the Kleine Schanze, noticing that the distinguished stranger frequented it less. Idleness would have got on his nerves, and Berne begun to bore him, had it not been for the knowledge that he was under the same roof with Edith. That gave him patience. It was the kind of comfort a man or a woman finds in being near the prison where some loved one is shut up in a cell. It was again an afternoon when the shining spiritual presences were making themselves visible--not with the gleaming suddenness with which they had appeared ten days before, but slowly, with vague wonders, as if finding it hard to bring themselves within mortal ken. Rounding the corner of the promenade at the end remote from the hotel, at a point from which he had the whole line of the bluff and the green depths of the valley and the slopes of the Gurten and the curtain of Alpine mist in one superb _coup d'oeil_, Chip saw a great white shoulder baring itself luminously in the eastern sky. For long minutes that was all. It might have been one of the gates of pearl of which he had heard tell. It was the sort of thing from which no earth-dweller could take his eyes. He stood leaning on his stick, his cigar smoldering in his left hand. He couldn't see that the clouds lifted or that the mists rolled away; he only grew aware that what seemed like a gate became a bastion, and what seemed like a bastion rose into a tower, and that out of the tower and in the midst of the tower and round about the tower white pinnacles glistened in white air. Nothing had happened that he could define, beyond a heightening of his own capacity to see. Nothing on that horizon seemed to emerge or to recede: looking wrought the wonder; he either saw or he didn't see; and just now he saw. He thought of something he had heard or read--he had forgotten where: "Immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales." That, apparently, was the process, while the spiritual presences ranged themselves slowly within his vision--row upon row, peak upon peak, dome upon dome, serried, ghostly--white against a white sky, white in white air. He withdrew his gaze only because the people, ever eager for this spectacle which they had seen all their lives, crowded to the parapet. As the children were still in school, it was a quiet throng, elderly and sedate. Leaning on the balustrade, all faces turned one way, they fringed the promenade, leaving the broad, paved spaces empty. For this reason Chip's eye caught the more quickly at the other end of the terrace the figures of a man and a woman who stood back from the line of gazers. They were almost in profile toward himself, the man's erect, stately form allowing the fact that a woman was clinging to his arm to be just perceptible. It required no such movement as that of a few minutes later--a movement by which the woman came more fully into view--for Chip to recognize Edith. _His_ Edith, _his wife_, clinging to another man's arm, clinging to her husband's arm, clinging to the arm of a husband who was not himself, dependent on him, supported by him, possessed by him, coming and going with him, living and eating with him, bearing him children, sharing with him whatever was most intimate, directed by him and dominated by him!--yet, all the while, in everything that could make two beings one except that stroke of the pen called law, _his wife_! How had it come about? What had he done, what had she done, to make this hideous topsyturvydom a fact? He put his hand to his forehead like a man dazed; but he withdrew it quickly. His forehead was wet and clammy. He was shaken, transpierced. He saw now that, in all the three years since he had heard she was married, he hadn't really known it. Perhaps it was his imagination that was at fault--perhaps his incapacity for believing what wasn't under his very eyes--perhaps his own success in keeping the dreadful fact at a distance--_but he hadn't really known it_. Nothing could have brought it home to him like this--this glimpse of her intimate association with the other man, and her dependence upon him. His first impulse was to get out of their sight, to hide, to find some place where he could grasp the appalling fact in silence and seclusion. Second thoughts reminded him that there was a situation to be faced and that he might as well face it now as at any other time. What sort of situation it would be he couldn't guess; but he was sure that behind the immobile mask of the other man's grave face there was something that would be worth the penetration. He would give him a chance. He would go forward to meet them. No, he wouldn't go forward to meet them; he would wait for them where he stood. No, he wouldn't wait for them where he stood; he would slip into the little rotunda close beside him--a little rotunda generally occupied by motherly Bernese women, but which for the moment the commanding spectacle outside had emptied. It was a little open rotunda, with seats all round and a rude table in the middle. In sitting down he placed himself as nearly as possible in full view, but with his face toward the mountains. It gave him a preoccupied air to be seen relighting his cigar. It was thus optional with the couple who began to advance along the promenade to pass him by or to pause and address him. Nothing but a shadow warned him of their approach. "Chip--" He turned. Edith was standing in the doorway, the man behind her. The haggard pallor of her face and the feverishness of her eyes reminded Chip of the morning little Tom was born. He was on his feet--silent. He couldn't even breathe her name. It was the less necessary since she herself hastened to speak: "Chip, Mr. Lacon knows we met in England. I told him as soon as I reached Paris; I didn't want him not to know. And now he wants us all to meet--I don't know why." Since he had to say something, he uttered the first words that came to him: "Was there any harm in it--our meeting? Mr. Lacon knows we have children--and things to talk over." "Oh, it isn't only that," she said, excitedly. "It's more. I don't know what--but I know it's more." He looked puzzled. "More in what way?" "More in this way," said the measured voice, that had lost no shade of its self-control. "I understand that Edith feels she has made a mistake--that you've both made a mistake--" [Illustration: Edith was standing in the doorway, the man behind her. "Chip, Mr. Lacon knows we met in England."] "I never said so," she interrupted, hurriedly. Lacon smiled, as nearly as his saddened face could smile. "I didn't say you said so," he corrected, gently. "I said I understood. There's a difference. And, since I do understand, I feel it right to offer you--to offer you both--" Exhaustion compelled her to drop into a seat. "What are you going to say?" "Nothing that can hurt you, I hope--or--or Mr. Walker, either. Suppose we all sit down?" He followed his own suggestion with a dignity almost serene. Chip took mechanically the seat from which he had just risen. It offered him the resource of looking more directly at the range of glistening peaks than at either of his two companions. "The point for our consideration is this," Lacon resumed, as calmly as if he were taking part in a meeting at the Bundespalast. "Admitting that you've both made a mistake, is there any possibility of retracing your steps?--or must you go on paying the penalty?" Chip spoke without turning his eyes from the mountains: "What do you mean by--the penalty?" "I suppose I mean the necessity of making four people unhappy instead of two." "That is," Chip went on, "there are two who must be unhappy in any case." "Precisely. There are two for whom there's _no_ escape. Whatever happens now, nothing can save _them_. But, since that is so, the question arises whether it wouldn't be, let us say, a greater economy of human material if the other two--" Edith looked mystified. "I don't know what you mean. Which are the two who must be unhappy in any case?" Chip answered quietly, without turning his head: "He's one; my--my wife is the other." "Oh!" With something between a sigh and a gasp she fell back against a pillar of the rotunda. "It's the sort of economy of human material," Chip went on, his eye following the lines of the Wetterhorn up and down, "that a man achieves in saving himself from a sinking ship and leaving his wife and children to drown--assuming that he can't rescue them." "The comparison isn't quite exact," Lacon replied, courteously. "Wouldn't it rather be that if a man can save only one of two women, he nevertheless does what he can?" Edith still looked bewildered. "I don't know what you're talking about, either of you. What is it? Why are we here? Am I one of the two women to be saved?" "The suggestion is," Chip said, dryly, "that Mr. Lacon wouldn't oppose your divorcing him, while my--my present wife might divorce me; after which you and I could marry again. Isn't that it, sir?" The older man nodded assent. "It's well to use plain English when we can." Chip continued to measure the Wetterhorn with his eye. "Rather comic the whole thing would be, wouldn't it?" "Possibly," Lacon replied, imperturbably. "But we've accepted the comic in the institution of marriage, we Americans. It's too late for us to attempt to take it without its possibilities of opera bouffe." "But aren't there laws?" Edith asked. Again Lacon's lips glimmered with the ghost of a smile. "Yes; but they're very complacent laws. They reduce marriage to the legal permission for two persons to live together as man and wife as long as mutually agreeable; but the license is easily rescinded--and renewed." "But surely marriage is more than that," she protested. Lacon's ghost of a smile persisted. "Haven't we proved that it isn't?--for us, at any rate. Hesitation to use our freedom in the future would only stultify our action in the past. If we go in for an institution with qualities of opera bouffe isn't it well to do it light-heartedly?--or as light-heartedly as we can." Edith looked at him reproachfully. "Should you be doing it light-heartedly?" "I said as light-heartedly as we can." "What makes you think that Chip and I--I mean," she corrected, with some confusion, "Mr. Walker and I--want to do it at all?" "Isn't that rather evident?" "I didn't know it was." Chip glanced at them over his shoulder. It seemed to him that Lacon's look was one of pity. "You met in England," the latter said, displaying a hesitation unusual in him, "with something--something more than pleasure, as I judge; and--and Mr. Walker is here." "Yes, by accident," she declared, hurriedly. "It was by accident in England, too." He lifted his fine white hand in protest. "Oh, I'm not blaming you. On the contrary, nothing could be more natural than that you should both feel as I--I imagine you do. You're the wife of his youth--he's the husband of yours. The best things you've ever had in your two lives are those you've had in common. That you should want to bridge over the past, and, if possible, go back--" "We've burned our bridges," she interrupted, quickly. "Even burned bridges can be rebuilt if there's the will to do it. The whole question turns on the will. If you have that I want you to understand that I shall not be--be an obstacle to the--to the reconstruction." "Don't you _care_?" "That's not the question. We've already assumed the fact that my caring--as well as that of a certain other person whom Mr. Walker would have to consider--is secondary. It's too late to do anything for us--assuming that she understands, or may come to understand, the position as I do. Your refusing happiness for yourselves in order to stand by us, or even to stand by the children--the younger children, I mean--wouldn't do us any good. On the contrary, as far as I'm concerned, if there could be any such thing as mitigation--" He broke off. Seeing the immobile features swept as by convulsion, Chip took up the sentence: "It would be that Edith should feel free." "Precisely." "And her not feeling free would involve the continuance of--the penalty." "In its extreme form." He regained control of himself. "That the penalty should be abrogated altogether is out of the question. Some of us must go on paying it--all four of us, indeed, to some degree. And yet, any relief for one would be some relief for all. Do you see what I mean?" The question was addressed to Edith specially. "I'm not sure that I do," she replied, looking at him wistfully. "Is it this?--that, assuming what you do assume, it would be easier for you if I--I went away?" "I shouldn't put it in just those words, I only mean that what's hardest for you is hardest for me. I couldn't hold you to the letter of one contract if you were keeping the spirit of another. Do you see now?" She didn't answer at once, so that Chip intervened: "Hasn't some one said--Shakespeare or some one--that the letter killeth? It seems to me I've heard that." "You probably have. Some one has said it. But He also added, as a balancing clause, 'The Spirit giveth life.' That's the vital part of it. To find out where the spirit is in our present situation is the question now." She looked at him tearfully. "Well, _where_ is it?" He rose quietly. "That's for you and Mr. Walker to discover for yourselves. I've gone as far as I dare." "You're not going away?" she asked, hastily. He smiled at them both. For the first time in Chip's acquaintance with him it was a positive smile. "I think you'll most easily find your way alone." "Oh no. Wait!" she begged; but he had already lifted his hat in his stately way and begun to walk back toward the hotel. Then came the bliss of being alone together. In spite of everything, they felt that. Edith leaned across the rude table, her hands clasped upon it. She spoke rapidly, as if to make full use of the time. "Oh, Chip, what are we to do?" He too leaned across the table, his arms folded upon it, the extinct cigar still between his fingers. He gazed deep into her eyes. "It's a chance. It will never come again. Shall we take it?--or let it go?" "Could you take it, if I did?" "Could you--if I did?" She tried to reflect. "It's the spirit," she said, haltingly, after a minute. "Oughtn't we to get at that?--just as he said. We've had so much of--of the letter." "Ah, but what _is_ the spirit? How _do_ you get at it? That's the point." She tried to reflect further--further and harder and faster. "Wouldn't it be--what we _feel_?" "What we feel is that--that we love each other, isn't it?--that we love each other as much as we did years ago--more!--more! Isn't that it?" She nodded. "Yes, more--oh, much more! And yet--" "Yes?" he said, eagerly. "Yes? And what, then?" "And yet--oh, Chip, I feel something else!" She leaned still further toward him, as if to annihilate the slight distance between them. "Don't you?" "Something else--how?" "Something else--higher--as if our loving each other wasn't the thing of most importance. I thought it was. All these years--I mean latterly--I've thought it was. When we met in England I was sure it was. Since I've been back with him I've felt that I would have died gladly just to have one more day with you, like those at Maidenhead and Tunbridge Wells. But now--oh, Chip, I don't know _what_ to say!" "Is it because he's been so generous?" She shook her head. "Not altogether. No; I don't think it's that at all. He's more than generous; he's tender. You can't think how tender he is--and always has been--with me and with the children. That's why I married him--why I thought I could find a sort of rest with him. You see that, don't you?--without judging me too harshly. He's that kind. I'm used to it with him. He can't help being generous. I knew he would be when I told him we'd met in England. I told him because I couldn't do anything else. It was a way of talking about you--even if it was only that way. But, oh, Chip, if I left him now and went back to you--" "Yes, darling? What?" He spoke huskily, covering both her hands with one of his and crushing them. "If you left him now and came back to me--what?" She hurried on. "And then there's--there's the other woman. We mustn't forget _her_. What's her name, Chip?" "Lily. She was Lily Bland." "Yes, yes; of course. I knew that. And she loves you? But how could she help loving you? I'd hate her if she didn't. Curiously enough I don't hate her now. I wonder why? I suppose it's because I'm so sorry for her. She's a sweet woman, isn't she?" He answered, with head averted. "She's as noble in her way as--as this man is in his." "That's just what I thought. I used to see her when she came to our house to call for the children. It never occurred to me that you'd marry her. If it had I don't know what I should have--But it's no use going back to that now. What would you do about her, Chip, if we decided to--to take the chance that's opened up--?" "I don't know. I've never thought about it. I--I suppose she'd let me go--just as he's letting you go--if I put it to her in the right way." "And what would be the right way?" "Oh, Lord, Edith, don't ask me. How do _I_ know? I should have to tell her--the truth." "And what would happen then?--to her I mean." "I've no idea. She'd bear up against it. She's that sort of person. But then, inwardly, she'd very likely break her heart." "Oh, Chip, is it worth while? Think!" "I _am_ thinking." "Is it the spirit? That's the thing to find out." He shook his head sadly. "I don't know how to tell." "But suppose I do? Would you trust to me? Would you believe that the thing I felt to be right for me was the right thing for us both?" "I think I should." "Well, then, listen. It's this way. You know, Chip, I love you." She had his hand now in both of hers, twisting her fingers nervously in and out between his. "I don't have to tell you, do I? I love you. Oh, how I love you! It's as if the very heart had gone out of my body into yours. And yet, Chip--oh, don't be angry--it seems to me that if I left him now and went back to you I should become something vile. It _isn't_ because he's so noble and good. No, it isn't that. And it isn't just the idea of passing from one man to another and back again. We _have_ turned marriage into opera bouffe, we Americans, and we might as well take it as we've made it. It isn't that at all. It's--it's exactly what you said just now: it's like a man swimming away from a sinking ship, and leaving his wife and children to drown, because he can't rescue them. Better a thousand times to go down with them, isn't it? You may call it waste of human material, if you like, and yet--well, you know what I mean. I should be leaving him to drown and you'd be leaving her to drown; and, even though we _can't_ give them happiness by standing by, yet it's some satisfaction just to _stand_ by. Isn't that it? Isn't that the spirit?" He withdrew his hand from hers to cover his eyes with it. He spoke hoarsely: "It may be. I--I think it is." "But, _if_ it is, then the spirit of the contract is different now from what it would have been--well, you know when. Then it meant that I should have stood by _you_--forgiven you, if that's the word--and shown myself truly your wife, for better or for worse. I didn't understand that. I only knew about the better. I didn't see that a man and a woman might take each other for worse--and still be true. If I had seen it--oh, what a happy woman I should have been to-day, and in all these years in which I haven't been happy at all! That was the spirit of the contract then, I suppose--but now it's different. It confuses me a little. Doesn't it confuse you?" "Perhaps." "Let me take your hand again; I can talk to you better like that. Now--_now_--we've undertaken new responsibilities. We've involved others. We've let them involve themselves. We can't turn our back upon them, can we? No. I thought that's what you'd say. We can't. The contract we've made with them must come before the one we made with each other. We're bound, not only in law but in honor. Aren't we?" He made some inarticulate sign of assent. "And I suppose that's what he meant by the penalty--the penalty in its extreme form: that we've put ourselves where we can't keep the higher contract, the complete one, we made together--because we're bound by one lower and incomplete, to which we've got to be faithful. Isn't that the spirit _now_, don't you think?" Again he muttered something inarticulately assenting. "Well, then, Chip, I'm going." She rose with the words. "No, no; not yet." He caught her hand in both of his, holding it as he leaned across the table. "Yes, Chip, now. What do we gain by my staying? We see the thing we've got to do--and we must do it. We must begin on the instant. If I were to stay a minute longer now, it would be--it would be for things we've recognized as no longer permissible. I'm going. I'm going now!" There was something in her face that induced him to relax his hold. She withdrew her hand slowly, her eyes on his. "Aren't you going to say good-by?" She shook her head, from the little doorway of the rotunda. "No. What's the use? What good-by is possible between you and me? I'm--I'm just going." And she was gone. With a quick movement he sprang to the opening between two of the small pillars. "Edith!" She turned. "Edith! Come here. Come here, for God's sake! Only one word more." She came back slowly, not to the door, but to the opening through which he leaned, his knee on the seat inside. "What is it?" He got possession of her hand. "Tell me again that quotation he gave us." She repeated it: "'The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.'" "Good, isn't it? I suppose it _is_ from Shakespeare?" "I don't know. I'll ask him--I'll look it up. If ever I see you again I'll tell you." "I wish you would, because--because, if it gives us _life_, perhaps it'll carry us along." With a quick movement he drew her to him and kissed her passionately on the lips. A minute later he had sunk back on the seat out of which he had sprung. He knew she was disappearing through the crowd that, satiated with gazing, was sauntering away from the parapet. But he made no attempt to follow her with so much as a glance. Slowly, vaguely, mistily, like a man tired of the earthly vision, he was letting his eyes roam along the line of shining spiritual presences. THE END 
17545	----	American Authors' Series, No. 17. PRINCESS by M. G. McCLELLAND Author of "Oblivion," "Jean Monteith," "Eleanor Gwynn," Etc. New York: United States Book Company Successors to John W. Lovell Company 150 Worth St., Cor Mission Place Copyright, 1886, by Henry Holt & Co. With love and admiration, I dedicate this book to the memory of my friend, THOMAS ALEXANDER SEDDON. PRINCESS. CHAPTER I. When the idea of a removal to Virginia was first mooted in the family of General Percival Smith, ex-Brigadier in the United States service, it was received with consternation and a perfect storm of disapproval. The young ladies, Norma and Blanche, rose as one woman--loud in denunciation, vehement in protest--fell upon the scheme, and verbally sought to annihilate it. The country! A farm!! The South!!! The idea was untenable, monstrous. Before their outraged vision floated pictures whereof the foreground was hideous with cows, and snakes, and beetles; the middle distance lurid with discomfort, corn-bread, and tri-weekly mails; the background lowering with solitude, ennui, and colored servants. Rusticity, nature, sylvan solitudes, and all that, were exquisite bound in Russia, with gold lettering and tinted leaves; wonderfully alluring viewed at leisure with the gallery to one's self, and the light at the proper angle, charmingly attractive behind the footlights, but in reality!--to the feeling of these young ladies it could be best appreciated by those who had been born to it. In their opinion, they, themselves, had been born to something vastly superior, so they rebelled and made themselves disagreeable; hoping to mitigate the gloom of the future by intensifying that of the present. Their mother, whose heart yearned over her offspring, essayed to comfort them, casting daily and hourly the bread of suggestion and anticipation on the unthankful waters, whence it invariably returned to her sodden with repinings. The young ladies set their grievances up on high and bowed the knee; they were not going to be comforted, nor pleased, nor hopeful, not they. The scheme was abominable, and no aspect in which it could be presented rendered its abomination less; they were hopeless, and helpless, and oppressed, and there was the end of it. Poor Mrs. Smith wished it might be the end, or anywhere near the end; for the soul within her was "vexed with strife and broken in pieces with words." The general could--and did--escape the rhetorical consequences of his unpopular measure, but his wife could not: no club afforded her its welcome refuge, no "down town" offered her sanctuary. She was obliged to stay at home and endure it all. Norma's sulks, Blanche's tears, the rapture of the boys--hungering for novelty as boys only can hunger--the useless and trivial suggestions of friends, the minor arrangements for the move, the decision on domestic questions present and to come, the questions, answers, futile conjectures, all formed a murk through which she labored, striving to please her husband and her children, to uphold authority, quell mutiny, soothe murmurs, and sympathize with enthusiasm; with a tact which shamed diplomacy, and a patience worthy of an evangelist. After the indulgent American custom, she earnestly desired to please _all_ of her children. In her own thoughts she existed only for them, to minister to their happiness; even her husband was, unconsciously to her, quite of secondary importance, his strongest present claim to consideration lying in his paternity. Had it been possible, she would have raised her tent, and planted her fig tree in the spot preferred by each one of her children, but as that was out of the question, in the mother's mind of course her sons came first. And this preference must be indulged the more particularly that Warner--the elder of her two boys, her idol and her grief--was slowly, well-nigh imperceptibly, but none the less surely, drifting away from her. A boyish imprudence, a cold, over-exertion, the old story which is so familiar, so hopeless, so endless in its repetition and its pathos. When interests were diverse, the healthy, blooming daughters could hope to make little headway against the invalid son. _They_ had all the sunny hours of many long years before them; he perhaps only the hurrying moments of one. For Warner a change was imperative--so imperative that even the rebellious girls were fain to admit its necessity. His condition required a gentler, kindlier atmosphere than that of New York. The poor diseased lungs craved the elixir of pure air; panted for the invigoration of breezes freshly oxygenized by field and forest, and labored exhaustedly in the languid devitalized breath of a city. The medical fraternity copiously consulted, recognized their impotence, but refrained from stating it; and availed themselves of their power of reference to the loftier physician--the boy must be healed, if he was to be healed, by nature. The country, pure air, pure milk, tender care; these were his only hope. General Smith was a man trained by military discipline to be instant in decision and prompt in action. As soon as the doctors informed him that his son's case required--not wanderings--but a steady residence in a climate bracing, as well as mild, where the comforts of home could supplement the healing of nature, he set himself at once to discover a place which would fill all the requirements. To the old soldier, New England born and Michigan bred, Virginia appeared a land of sun and flowers, a country well-nigh tropical in the softness of its climate, and the fervor of its heat. The doctors recommended Florida, or South Carolina, as in duty bound, and to the suggestion of Virginia yielded only a dubious consent; it was very far _north_, they said, but still it might do. To the general, it seemed very far _south_, and he was certain it would do. In the old time, he remembered, when he was in lower Virginia with McClellan, he had reveled in the softness, the delight of that, to him, marvelous climate. He had found the nights so sweet; the air, vitalized with the breath of old ocean, so invigorating, the heat at noonday so dry, and the coolness at evening so refreshing. There were pines, too; old fields of low scrub, and some forests of the nobler sort; that would be the thing for Warner. He remembered how, as he sat in the tent door, the breeze scented with resinous odors used to come to him, and how, strong man though he was, he had felt as he drew it into his lungs that it did him good. In those old campaigning days, the fancy had been born in him that some time in the future he would like to return and make his home here, where "amorous ocean wooed a gracious land"--that when his fighting days were over, and the retired list lengthened by his name, it would be a pleasant thing to have his final bivouac among the gallant foes who had won his admiration by their dauntless manner of giving and taking blows. The exigencies and absorptions of military life, in time, dimmed the fancy, but it never altogether vanished. Out on the plains with Custer, away in the mountains and the Indian country, vegetating in the dullness of frontier posts, amid the bustle, the luxury and excitement of city life, the fancy would return; the memory of those soft starlit Virginia evenings would infold him with a subtle spell. In thought he would again sit smoking in the tent door, the gray shadows stealing out from their covert in the woods, reconnoitering all the country ere they swept down and took possession, in the name of their queen--the night. The air would grow cool with the fragrant breath of the ocean and the pines; whip-poor-wills would chant in the tree tops, and partridges sound their blithe note away in the fields. It was not wonderful that when the necessity of securing a country home arose, the fancy should resume its sway, and that a meditated flitting southward should suggest Virginia as its goal. The idea that any portion of his family would be displeased by the realization of his fancy, or feel themselves aggrieved by his arrangements, never entered into the veteran's calculations; he returned from the South with his purchase made, and his mind filled with anticipations of the joy the unlading of this precious honey would occasion in the domestic hive, and when he was met by the angry buzz of discontent instead of the gentle hum of applause, his surprise was great, and his indignation unbounded. "What the devil are they grumbling about?" he demanded of his wife. "Shirley's a fine plantation. The water is good, the air superb; there are excellent gardens and first-rate oyster beds. The house is old-fashioned, but it's comfortable, and a little money will make it more so. What's the matter with them?" "The girls are young, Percival," explained the mother, putting in a plea for her rebels. "They are used to society and admiration. They don't take interest in gardens and oyster beds yet; they like variety and excitement. The country is very dull." "Not at all dull," contradicted the general. "You talk as if I were requiring you all to Selkirk on a ten acre island, instead of going to one of the pleasantest and most populous counties in the oldest state in the Union. Mr. Byrd, the former owner of Shirley, told me that the neighborhood was very thickly settled and sociable. I counted five gentlemen's houses in sight myself. Southerners, as a rule, are great visitors, and if the girls are lonely it will be their own fault. They'll have as much boating and dancing and tom-foolery as is good for them." "Are there any young men?" demanded Mrs. Smith, who recognized the necessity of an infusion of the stronger element to impart to social joys body and flavor. "Yes, I guess so," replied her husband indifferently, masculinity from over-association having palled on him; "there's always men about everywhere, except back in the home villages in Maine--they're scarce enough _there_, the Lord knows! I saw a good many about in the little village near Shirley--Wintergreen, they call it. One young fellow attracted my attention particularly; he was sitting on a tobacco hogshead, down on the wharf, superintending some negroes load a wagon, and I couldn't get it out of my head that I'd seen his face before. He was tall, and fair, and had lost an arm. I must have met him during the war, I think, although I'll be hanged if I can place him." Mrs. Smith looked interested. "Perhaps you formerly knew him," she remarked, cheerfully; "it's a pity your memory is so bad. Why didn't you inquire his name of some one, that might have helped you to place him?" "My memory is excellent," retorted the general, shortly; for a man must resent such an insinuation even from the wife of his bosom. "I've always been remarkable for an unusually strong and retentive memory, as you know very well--but it isn't superhuman. At the lowest computation, I guess I've seen about a million men's faces in the course of my life, and it's ridiculous to expect me to have 'em all sorted out, and ticketed in my mind like a picture catalogue. My memory is very fine." Mrs. Smith recanted pleasantly. Her husband's memory _was_ good, for his age, she was willing to admit, but it was not flawless. About this young man, now, it seemed to her that if she could remember him at all, she could remember all about him. These hitches in recollection were provoking. It would have been nice for the girls to find a young man ready to their hands, bound to courtesy by previous acquaintance with their father. She regretted that her husband should fail to recall, and had neglected to inquire, the name of this interesting person; but the knowledge that he was _there_, and others besides him, ameliorated the rigor of the situation. Mrs. Smith did not care for the south or southern people; their thoughts were not her thoughts, nor their ways, her ways. In her ignorance, she classed them low in the scale of civilization, deeming them an unprofitable race, whose days were given over to sloth, and their nights to armed and malignant prowling. For the colored people of the censured states, she had a profound and far-off sympathy, viewing them from an unreal and romantic standpoint. This tender attitude was mental; physically she shrank from them with disgust, and it was not the least of the crosses entailed by a residence in the south that she would be obliged to endure colored servants. But all this was trifling and unimportant in comparison with the main issue, Warner's health. To secure the shadow of hope for her boy, Mrs. Smith decided that any thing short of cannibalism in her future surroundings would be endurable. The information gleaned from her husband was faithfully repeated by Mrs. Smith to her daughters, with some innocent exaggeration and unconscious embellishment. She always wanted to make things pleasant for the children. Blanche looked up from her crewel sun-flowers with reviving interest, but Norma walked over to the window, and stood drumming on the panes, and regarding the passers with a lowering brow. "I wonder what Nesbit Thorne will think of it all?" she remarked, after an interval of silence, giving voice to the inwardness of her discontent. "He'll _hate_ it!" spoke Blanche, with conviction; "he'll abhor it, just as we do. I know he will." Blanche always followed her sister's lead, and when Norma was cross considered it her duty to be tearful. She was only disagreeable now because Norma was. Percival, the youngest of the family, a spoiled and lively lad of twelve, to whom the prospect of change was rapture, took up the last remark indignantly. "Nesbit won't do anything of the kind," quoth he. "Nesbit isn't a spoiled, airified idiot of a girl. He's got sense enough to appreciate hunting and fishing and the things that are of importance to _men_. I guess he'll want to come to Shirley this autumn for his shooting, instead of going down to North Carolina." Norma stopped her tattoo and turned her head slightly; the boy, observing that he had scored a point, proceeded: "Just the minute he gets back from Montana, I'm going to tell him all about Shirley and beg him to come. And if he does, I'm going gunning with him every day, and make him teach me how to shoot--see if I don't," regarding his mother from under his tawny brows threateningly. Percival's nature was adventurous and unruly: he had red hair. "Nesbit got back last night," announced Warner from his sofa beside the other window. "I saw him pass the house this morning. There he is now, coming up the street. If his opinion is a matter of such importance, you can call him over and get it. I don't see that it makes any difference what he thinks, myself." The latter part of the sentence was muttered in an unheeded undertone. Norma tapped sharply on the glass, and beckoned to a gentleman on the opposite pavement, her brow clearing. He nodded gayly in response, and crossing, in obedience to her summons, entered the house familiarly without ringing the bell. CHAPTER II. All turned expectantly toward the door, pausing in their several occupations; even Warner's eyes were raised from his book, although his attention was involuntary and grudging. The attitude of the little circle attested the influence which the coming man wielded over every member of it; an influence which extended insensibly to every one with whom Nesbit Thorne's association was intimate. He was Mrs. Smith's nephew, and much in the habit, whenever he was in New York, of making her house his home--having none now of his own. He was a slender, dark man, with magnificent dark eyes, which had a power of expression so enthralling as to disarm, or defy, criticism of the rest of his face. Not one man in fifty could tell whether Nesbit Thorne was handsome, or the reverse--and for women--ah, well! they knew best what they thought. In his air, his carriage, his expression, was that which never fails to attract and hold attention--force, vitality, individuality. He was small, but tall men never dwarfed him; plain, but the world--his world--turned from handsomer men with indifference, to heap consideration upon him. To borrow the forceful vernacular of the street, there was "something in him." There was no possibility of viewing either him or his actions with indifference; of merging him in, and numbering him with, the crowd. There are men whose lives are intaglios, cut by the chisel of destiny deep into the sard of their generations; every line and curve and faintest tracing pregnant with interest, suggestion, and emotion. Men who are loved and hated, feared, adored and loathed with an intensity that their commonplace fellows are incapable of evoking. They are loadstones which attract events; whirlpools which draw to themselves excitement, emotion, and vast store of sympathy. Some years previous to the opening of this story, Nesbit Thorne, then a brilliant recent graduate of Harvard, a leader in society, and a man of whom great things were predicted, whose name was in many mouths as that of a man likely to achieve distinction in any path of life he should select, made a hasty, ill-advised marriage with a Miss Ethel Ross, a New York belle of surpassing beauty and acumen. A woman whose sole thought was pleasure, whose highest conception of the good of life was a constantly varied menu of social excitement, and whose noblest reading of the word duty was compassed in having a well ordered house, sumptuous entertainments, and irreproachable toilets. A wife to satisfy any man who was unemotional, unexacting, and prepared to give way to her in all things. Nesbit Thorne, unfortunately, was none of these things, and so his married life had come to grief. The first few months were smoothed and gilded by his passionate enjoyment of her mere physical perfection, his pleasure in the admiration she excited, and in the envy of other men. Life's river glided smoothly, gayly in the sunshine; then ugly snags began to appear, and reefs, fretting the surface of the water, and hinting of sterner difficulties below; then a long stretch of tossing, troubled water, growing more and more turbulent as it proceeded, boiling and bubbling into angry whirlpools and sullen eddies. The boat of married happiness was hard among the breakers, tossed from side to side, the sport of every wind of passion; contesting hands were on the tiller ropes. The craft yawed and jerked in its course, a spectacle for men to weep over, and devils to rejoice in; ran aground on quicksands, tore and tangled its cordage, rent the planking, and at the end of a cruise of as many months as it should have lasted years, it lay a hopeless wreck on the grim bar of separation. The affair was managed gracefully, and with due deference to the amenities. There was gossip, of course--there always is gossip--and public opinion was many sided. Rumors circled around which played the whole gamut from infidelity to bankruptcy; these lived their brief span, and then gave place to other rumors, equally unfounded, and therefore equally enjoyable. The only fact authenticated, was the fact of separation, and the most lasting conclusion arrived at in regard to the matter was that it had been managed very gracefully. The divorce which seemed the natural outcome of this state of affairs, and to which every one looked, as a matter of course, was delayed in this instance. People wondered a little, and then remembered that the Thornes were a Roman Catholic family, and concluded that the young man had religious scruples. With Mrs. Thorne the matter was plain enough; she had no reason, as yet, sufficiently strong to make her desire absolute release, and far greater command over Thorne's income by retaining her position as his wife. When his domestic affairs had reached a crisis, Thorne had quietly disappeared for a year, during which time people only knew that he was enjoying his recovered freedom in distant and little frequented places. There were rumors of him in Tartary, on the Niger, in Siberia. At the expiration of the year he returned to New York, and resumed his old place in society as though nothing untoward had occurred. He lived at his club, and no man or woman ever saw him set foot within the precincts of his own house. Occasionally he was seen to stop the nurse in the park, and caress and speak to his little son. His life was that of a single man. In the society they both frequented, he often encountered his wife, and always behaved to her with scrupulous politeness, even with marked courtesy. If he ever missed his home, or experienced regret for his matrimonial failure, he kept the feeling hidden, and presented to the world an unmoved front. In default of nearer ties, he made himself at home in his aunt's house, frequenting it as familiarly as he had done in the days before his marriage. In his strong, almost passionate nature, there was one great weakness; the love and admiration of women was a necessity to him. He could no more help trying to make women love him, than the kingfisher can help thrusting down his beak when the bright speckled sides of his prey flash through the water. It was from neither cruelty nor vanity, for Thorne had less of both traits than usually falls to the lot of men; it was rather from the restlessness, the yearning of a strong nature for that which it needed, but had not yet attained; the experimental searching of a soul for its mate. That sorrow might come to others in the search he scarcely heeded; was he to blame that fair promises would bud and lead him on, and fail of fruition? To himself he seemed rather to be pitied; their loss was balanced by his own. Thorne had never loved as he was capable of loving; as yet the _ego_ was predominant. As he entered the room, after an absence of weeks, with a smile and a pleasant word of greeting, the younger members of the circle fell upon him clamorously; full of themselves and their individual concerns. Even Warner, in whose mind lurked a jealousy of his cousin's influence, forgot it for the nonce, and was as eager to talk as the rest. Nesbit found himself listening to a demand for advice, an appeal for sympathy, and a paean of gratulation, before he had made his salutations, or gotten himself into a chair. "Hold on!" he cried, putting up his hand in protest. "Don't all talk at once. I can't follow. What's the matter, Norma?" His eye turned to his favorite involuntarily, and an almost imperceptible brightening, a lifting of the clouds on that young lady's horizon, began to take place. She answered his look, and (assisted by the irrepressible Percival) unfolded to him the family plans. Thorne, with good-humored enthusiasm, threw himself into the scheme, pronounced it delightful, and proceeded to indulge in all manner of cheerful prognostications. Percival was enchanted, and, establishing himself close beside the arm of his cousin's chair, commenced a series of vehement whispers, which lasted as long as the visit. Norma's brow cleared more and more, and when Thorne declared his intention of paying them a long visit during the hunting season, she allowed a smile to wreathe her full crimson lips, and snubbed poor little Blanche unmercifully for still daring to be lachrymose. The talk grew momentarily merrier, and the mother listened, smiling; her eyes, with a tender glow in them, fixed on Warner's face. The sick boy was in raptures over the old house mossed over with history and tradition, which would be his future home. Noting the eagerness of his interest, her heart gave a sudden bound, hope took her by the hand, and she dreamed dreams. There might come a reaction and improvement. At times the intuition of an invalid was the voice of nature, crying out for that which she needed. Warner's longing for this change might be the precursor of his cure. Who could read the future? CHAPTER III. Backward and forward, from pantry to sideboard, from sideboard to china closet, flitted Pocahontas Mason setting the table for breakfast. Deftly she laid out the pretty mats on the shining mahogany, arranged the old-fashioned blue cups and saucers, and placed the plates and napkins. She sang at her work in a low, clear voice, more sweet than powerful, and all that her hands found to do was done rapidly and skillfully, with firm, accustomed touches, and an absence of jar and clatter. In the center of the table stood a corpulent Wedgwood pitcher, filled with geraniums and roses, to which the girl's fingers wandered lovingly from time to time, in the effort to coax each blossom into the position in which it would make the bravest show. On one corner, near the waiter, stood a housewifely little basket of keys, through the handle of which was thrust a fresh handkerchief newly shaken out. When all the arrangements about the table had been completed, Pocahontas turned her attention to the room, giving it those manifold touches which, from a lady's fingers, can make even a plain apartment look gracious and homelike. Times had changed with the Masons, and many duties formerly delegated to servants now fell naturally to the daughter of the house. Perhaps the change was an improvement: Berkeley Mason, the young lady's brother, maintained that it was. Having finished her work, Pocahontas crossed the room to one of the tall, old-fashioned windows, and pushed open the half-shut blinds, letting a flood of sunshine and morning freshness into the room. Under the window stood an ottoman covered with drab cloth, on which the fingers of some dead and gone Mason had embroidered a dingy wreath of roses and pansies. Pocahontas knelt on it, resting her arms on the lofty window-sill, and gazed out over the lawn, and enjoyed the dewy buoyance of the air. The September sunshine touched with golden glory the bronze abundance of her hair, which a joyous, rollicking breeze, intoxicated with dew and the breath of roses, tangled and tumbled into a myriad witcheries of curl and crinkle. The face, glorified by this bright aureole, was pure and handsome, patrician in every line and curve, from the noble forehead, with its delicate brown brows, to the well-cut chin, which spoke eloquently of breadth of character and strength of will. The eyes were gray, and in them lay the chief charm of the face, for their outlook was as honest and fearless as that of a child--true eyes they were, fit windows for a brave, true soul. The house, neutral-tinted with years and respectability, stood well back from the river, to whose brink the smooth, green lawn swept in scarcely perceptible undulation. The river here was broad, almost resembling an arm of the sea it was moving languidly to join. There was no haste about it, and no fret of ever active current; as all large bodies should, it moved slowly, and the eye rested gratefully on the tranquil flow. Across the water, apparently against the far horizon, a dense line of trees, fringing the further shore, rose tall and dark, outlined with picturesque distinctness against the soft, warm blue. The surrounding country was flat, but relieved from monotony by a certain pastoral peacefulness, and a look of careless plenty which, with thrift, might have become abundance. In the meadows the grass grew rich and riotous between the tall stacks of cured hay, and the fields of corn and tobacco gave vigorous promise of a noble harvest. The water also teemed with life and a shiftless out-at-elbow energy. Shabby looking fishing smacks, with dirty white wings, like birds too indolent to plume themselves, passed constantly, and flat-bottomed canoes, manned by good-humored negro oystermen, plied a lazy, thievish trade, with passing steamers. Presently a gate slammed somewhere in the regions back of the house, and there was a sound of neighing and trampling. Pocahontas leaned far out, shading her eyes with her hands, to watch the colts career wildly across the lawn, with manes and tails and capering legs tossed high in air, in the exuberance of equine spirits. Following them sedately came a beautiful black mare, stepping high and daintily, as became a lady of distinction. She was Kentucky born and bred, and had for sire none other than Goldenrod himself. In answer to a coaxing whistle of invitation, she condescended to approach the window and accept sugar and caresses. Pocahontas patted the glossy head and neck of the beauty, chattering soft nonsense while the little heap of sugar she had placed on the window-sill vanished. Presently she laid an empty palm against the nose pushed in to her, and dealt it a gentle blow. "That's all, Phyllis; positively all this morning. You would empty the sugar bowl if I'd let you. No, take your nose away; it's all gone; eleven great lumps have you had, and the feast of the gods is over." But Phyllis would not be convinced; she pushed her nose up over the window ledge, and whinnied softly. As plainly as a horse can beg, she begged for more, but her mistress was obdurate. Placing both hands behind her, she drew back into the room, laughing. "Not another lump," she called, "eleven are enough. Greedy Phyllis, to beg for more when you know I'm in earnest. Go away and play with the colts; you'll get no more to-day." "You'll never make Phyllis believe that, my dear," remarked a tall, gray-haired lady, in a pretty muslin cap, who had entered unperceived. "Oh, yes, mother. She understands quite well. See, she's moving off already. Phyllis knows I never break my word, and that persuasion is quite useless," replied Pocahontas, turning to give her mother the customary morning kiss, to place her chair before the waiter for her, and to tell her how becoming her new cap was. The Masons never neglected small courtesies to each other. The branch of the Mason family still resident at the old homestead of Lanarth had dwindled to four living representatives--Mrs. Mason, who had not changed her name in espousing her cousin Temple Mason, of Lanarth, and her son Berkeley, and daughters Grace and Pocahontas. There had been another son, Temple, the younger, whose story formed one of those sad memories which are the grim after-taste of war. All three of the Masons had worn gray uniforms; the father had been killed in a charge at Malvern Hill, the elder son had lost his good right arm, and the younger had died in prison. Of the two daughters, Grace had early fulfilled her destiny in true Virginian fashion, by marrying a distant connection of her family, a Mr. Royall Garnett, who had been a playmate of her brothers, and whose plantation lay in an adjoining county. With praiseworthy conservatism, Mrs. Garnett was duplicating the uneventful placidity of her parents' early years, content to rule her household wisely, to love and minister to her husband, and to devote her energies to the rearing of her children according to time-honored precedent. Pocahontas, the youngest of the family, was still unmarried, nay, more--still unengaged. They had called her "Pocahontas" in obedience to the unwritten law of southern families, which decrees that an ancestor's sin of distinction shall be visited on generations of descendants, in the perpetuation of a name no matter what its hideousness. It seems a peculiarity of distinguished persons to possess names singularly devoid of beauty; therefore, among the burdens entailed by pride upon posterity, this is a grievous one. Some families, with the forest taint in their blood, at an early date took refuge in the softer, prettier "Matoaca;" but not so the Masons. It was their pride that they never shirked an obligation, or evaded a responsibility: they did not evade this one. Having accepted "Pocahontas" as the name by which their ancestress was best known, they never swerved from it; holding to it undaunted by its length and harshness, and unmoved by the discovery of historians that Pocahontas is no name at all, but simply a pet sobriquet applicable to all Indian girls alike, and whose signification is scarcely one of dignity. Historians might discover, disagree, wrangle and explain, but Pocahontas followed Pocahontas in the Mason family with the undeviating certainty of a fixed law. To the present Pocahontas (the eighth in the line) it really seemed as though the thing should stop. She yielded to the family fiat her own case, because not having been consulted she had no option in the matter, but when Grace's little daughter was born she put in a plea for the child. "Break the spell," she entreated, "and unborn generations will bless you. We Virginians will keep on in one groove until the crack of doom unless we are jerked out of it by the nape of the neck. Your heart ought to yearn over the child--mine does. It's a wicked sin to call a pretty baby by such a monstrous name." Grace trampled on the protest: "Not name her Pocahontas? Why, of _course_ I shall! If the name were twice as long and three times as ugly my baby should bear it. I wonder you should object when you know that every Pocahontas in the family has invariably turned out an exceptionally fine woman. All have been noble, truthful, honorable; quick to see the right and unswerving in pursuit of it. I shall call my baby by that name, and no other." Pocahontas opened her eyes. "Why, Grace," she said, "you talk as if the name were a talisman; as if virtues were transmitted with it. Isn't that silly?" "Not at all," responded Grace promptly; "unless we cease to be ourselves after death, we _must_ still take interest in the things of this world, in our families and descendants. We may not be able actually to transmit our virtues to them, but surely by guardian influence we can help them imitate ancestral good qualities. Guardian angels of our own blood are a great deal nearer than outside angels, and I believe the dear Lord appoints them whenever he can; and if so, why shouldn't the good women who are in heaven take interest in my baby who will bear their name? It _is_ their name still, and it must hurt them to see it soiled; of course they must take interest. Were I an angel, the child on earth who bore my name should be my special charge." "Then, according to your showing, Grace, six good women, now holy angels, have baby and me in constant keeping for love of our ugly name. The idea is fanciful, and I don't consider it orthodox: but it's pretty, and I like it. Miss Pocahontas the ninth, you and I must walk with circumspection, if not to grieve the good ladies up above who are kind enough to take such interest in us." Pocahontas mocked at Grace's idea, but it pleased her all the same, and unconsciously it influenced her more than she knew. She loved the legends of her house, delighted in the fact of descent from brave men and true women. The past held her more than is common with the young people of the present day, and she sought out and treasured all the records of the six women who had borne her name, from the swarthy Indian princess down to the gentle gray-haired lady who held the place of honor at the Lanarth breakfast table. "Princess," said Mrs. Mason, as she distributed the sugar and cream, "I wish you'd ring the bell. Rachel must have breakfast ready by this time, and I hear Berkeley's step outside." Princess rang the bell quite meekly. The pet sobriquet was in as familiar use among them as her real name, but her touch on the bell did not suggest the imperiousness of royalty. Aunt Rachel was an old family servant, faithful, fat, and important, and Aunt Rachel _hated_ to be hurried. She said "it pestered her, an' made her spile the vittles." She answered promptly this time, however, entering with the great waiter of hot and tasty dishes before the bell had ceased its faint tintinnabulation. Berkeley, a tall fair man, whose right sleeve was fastened against his breast, entered also. "I saw Jim Byrd this morning," he remarked as he seated himself, after the customary greeting to his mother and sister. "He called here on his way over to Roy Garnett's, where he was going to bid good-by. I asked him in to breakfast, but he couldn't stop; said he had promised Grace to take breakfast with them. He has to make a farewell tour, or old friends' feelings will be hurt. It's rather awful, and hard on Jim, but he couldn't bear the thought of the neighbors feeling slighted. I suggested a barbecue and a stump speech and bow, but the idea didn't seem to appeal to Jim. Poor old fellow!" "Couldn't he contrive to hold Shirley, Berke?" questioned Mrs. Mason, as she passed his cup. "He had retained possession so long, there must have been some way to hold it altogether." "No; the thing was impossible," replied Berkeley; "the plantation was mortgaged to the hub before Jim was born. The Byrds have been extravagant for generations, and a crash was inevitable. Old Mr. Byrd could barely meet the interest, even before the loss of Cousin Mary's money. During the last years of his life some of it was added to the principal, which made it harder work for Jim. But for Jim's management, and the fact that the creditors all stood like a row of blocks in which the fall of one would inevitably touch off the whole line, things would have gone to smash long ago. Each man was afraid to move in the matter, lest by so doing he should invite his own creditors to come down on him. Until lately they haven't bothered Jim much outside of wringing all the interest out of him they could get. While his sisters were single, he was obliged to keep a home together for them, you know. Nina's marriage last spring removed that responsibility, and I reckon it's a relief to Jim to relinquish the struggle." "What a pity old Mr. Byrd persuaded Mary to sell out her bonds, and invest the money in tobacco during the war!" observed Mrs. Mason, regretfully. "It would have been something for the children if she had kept the bonds. It was too bad that those great warehouses, full of tobacco, belonging to the Byrds and Masons were burned in Richmond at the evacuation. Charlie Mason persuaded Mr. Byrd into that speculation, and although Charlie is my own cousin and Mary's brother, I must admit that he did wrong. Your father always disapproved of the sale of those bonds." "The speculation was a good one, and would have paid splendidly had events arranged themselves differently; even at the worst no one could foresee the burning of Richmond. Cousin Mary's money couldn't have freed Shirley, but if things had gone well with the venture, that tobacco would have done so, and left a handsome surplus. Charlie Mason is a man of fine judgment, and that he failed that time was through no fault of his. It was the fortunes of war." Mrs. Mason sighed and dropped the subject. She was unconvinced, and continued to feel regret that Mr. Byrd had been allowed to work his speculative will with his wife's little patrimony. It would have been a serviceable nest-egg for the children, and a help to Jim in his long struggle. All of her life, she had been accustomed to seeing husbands assume full control of their wives' property, using it as their own, and she had taken little thought of the equities of the matter. To her it appeared natural that a wife's surrender to her husband should embrace things financial as well as things less material, but in this case she had always felt it a trifle hard. It would have been such a pleasant thing for Jim to have had some money, and been able to hold Shirley. Pocahontas helped herself to hot waffles, and sugared them with a liberal hand. "Dear old Jim," she said, calmly, "I wish he had come in: you should have insisted, Berkeley. It's cruel for him to have to give up the old home to strangers, and start life in a new place. I can't bear to think of it. Jim's such a good fellow, and Mexico seems a long way off. When is he coming to say good-by to us, Berke?" "This evening. He is coming to tea; so mind you have something special." After a pause, Mrs. Mason resumed the subject with the inquiry whether he had heard any thing relative to the purchaser of Shirley. But Berkeley only knew that the place had been bought by a northern man, a retired army officer, and that his name was Smith. After they rose from the table, he lingered awhile, watching his mother gather the cups and saucers into the waiter in readiness for Aunt Rachel, and Pocahontas collect scraps for the dogs, two of which were already poking impatient, wistful noses into the room. Beyond the threshold they were not allowed to intrude, but they stood in the passage outside the open door, and whined and indulged in sharp "yaps" of protest against hope deferred. When they saw their mistress advancing with a heaped-up plate of food, both gave reins to their joy, and jumped and barked around her with delight. Pocahontas loved animals; the nobleness and fidelity of their instincts, harmonized with the large faithfulness of her own nature. When his sister was out of hearing, Berkeley reopened the topic of Jim Byrd. He was standing at the mantle filling his pipe, which he balanced dextrously against one of the ornaments, and his back was toward his mother as he spoke. "Mother," he questioned, "did it ever occur to you that Jim might grow fond of Pocahontas--might want her for a wife, in fact? I fancy something of the sort has happened, and that he came to grief. He has been depressed and unhappy for months; and neither business, nor trouble about the old place can account for his shunning us in the way he has been doing lately. I don't believe he's been inside this house twice in the last three months." "Yes, my dear, I used often to think of it--long before Jim thought of it himself, I believe, Berkeley. He spoke to Princess this summer, and she refused him. She did not tell me about it; but from little things I could guess pretty accurately. It's a great disappointment to me, for I scarcely remember when the hope that they might love each other first dawned on my mind. Mary Mason and I were warm friends, as well as cousins, and it seemed natural that our children should marry." Berkeley knew that his mother had wished him to marry Belle or Susie, and that this was not the first time that she had been disappointed in her desire for another Byrd-Mason match. Had Temple lived, Nina Byrd would have been his wife: the two had been sweethearts from babyhood. Mrs. Mason sighed regretfully. "I wish it could have been," she said; "Jim is such a good fellow, and was always gentle and careful with the little girls, even when he grew a great rough lad; such a little chevalier in his feelings, too. I remember one Christmas just after the war, when he was about fourteen, the children wanted some Christmas green to decorate the parlor. It was the fall you were in the South, and they wanted to make the room pretty to welcome you home again. Susie, Nina and my two girls, went over into the Shirley woods to get it, and Jim went with them. They found plenty of lovely holly, but no mistletoe for a long time; you know how scarce it is around here. At last Pocahontas 'spied a splendid bunch, full of pure, waxen berries, way up in the top of a tall oak tree, and she set her heart at once on having it. There had been heavy sleet the night before, and every limb was caked with ice--slippery as glass. Climbing was doubly dangerous, and Grace begged him not to try, but that foolish Pocahontas looked disappointed, and Jim dashed right at the tree. It was a terribly foolhardy thing to do, and Grace said it made her sick to watch him; every minute she expected to see him slip and come crashing to the ground. The little girls all cried, and Grace boxed Jim's ears the instant he was safe on the ground again with the mistletoe. The children came home in great excitement, Pocahontas with the mistletoe hugged tight in her arms and tears pouring down her cheeks. When I scolded Jim for his recklessness, he opened those honest hazel eyes of his at me in surprise and said, 'But Princess wanted it,' as if that were quite sufficient reason for risking his life. Poor little Princess." After a moment she resumed: "I wish she could have loved him in the way we wish. Marriage is a terrible risk for a girl like her. She is too straightforward, too uncompromisingly intolerant of every-day littleness, to have a very peaceful life. She has grown up so different from other girls; so full of ideals and romance; she belongs, in thought and motives, to the last century rather than to this, if what I hear be true. She is large-hearted and has a great capacity for affection, but she is self-willed and she could be hard upon occasion. If she should fall into weak or wicked hands she would both endure and inflict untold suffering. And there is within her, too, endless power of generosity and self-sacrifice. Poor child! with Jim I could have trusted her; but she couldn't love him, so there's nothing to be done." "Why couldn't she?" demanded Berkeley, argumentatively. "She'll never do any better; Jim's a handsome fellow, as men go, brave, honorable and sweet-tempered. What more does she want? It looks to me like sheer perversity." Mrs. Mason smiled indulgently at her son's masculine obtuseness. The subtleties of women were so far beyond his comprehension that it was hardly worth while to endeavor to make him understand. She made the effort, however, despite its uselessness. "It isn't perversity, Berkeley," she said; "I hardly realize, myself, why the thing should have seemed so impossible. I suppose, having always regarded Jim as a kindly old playmate, and big, brotherly friend, the idea of associating sentiment with him appeared absurd. Had they ever been separated the affair might have had a different termination; but there has never been a break in their intercourse--Jim has always been here, always the same. That won't do with a girl like Princess. It is too commonplace, too devoid of interest and uncertainty. Yes, my dear, I know that in your eyes this is folly, but at the same time it is nature. You don't understand. Princess, I fear, sets undue value on intellect, holding less brilliant endowments cheap beside it. And we must admit, Berkeley, dearly as we love Jim Byrd, and noble fellow as he is, he has not the intellectual power which commands admiration. With all my respect for intellect, I can see that Princess greatly overrates it. She has often declared that unless a man were intellectually her superior, she could never love him." "Intellectually--a fiddle-stick!" scoffed Berkeley, contemptously. "She don't know what she wants, or what is good for her. Women rarely do. They make their matrimonial selections like the blindest of bats, the most egregious of fools, and then, when the mischief is done, go in for unending sackcloth, or a divorce court. Pocahontas will get hold of a fellow some day who will wring her heart--with her rubbishing longing after novelty and intellect, and fine scorn of homespun truth and loyalty. Were I a woman, I should esteem the size of my husband's heart, and the sweetness of his temper, matter of more importance than the bigness of his brain, or the freshness of the acquaintance." "Very true, my son," assented Mrs. Mason, gently, "but you are powerless to alter women. Their hearts must go as nature wills, and lookers-on can only pray God to guide them rightly. But, Berkeley, you are unjust to your sister. Pocahontas has sound discrimination, and a very clear judgment. Her inability to meet our wishes is no proof that her choice will fall unworthily." Berkeley made no response in words, but he looked unconvinced, and soon withdrew to attend to the plantation, indulging in profound conclusions about women, which were most of them erroneous. In the afternoon Pocahontas, providing herself with a book and a gayly colored feather fan, established herself comfortably in the old split-bottomed rocking-chair in the deep shadow of the porch. The day had been close and sultry, and even the darkened rooms felt stifling; outside it was better, although the morning freshness had evaporated, and that of evening had not yet come. The sun sank slowly westward, sending long rays across the bosom of the river, whose waters were so still that they gleamed with opalescent splendor. The slender leaves of the old willows at the foot of the lawn drooped exhaustedly, showing all their silver linings; and the sky was one tawny blaze of color. The sail-boats in sight rocked gently with the sluggish flow of the current, and drifted rather than sailed on their course. Once a noisy, throbbing steamer, instinct with life and purpose, dashed by tumultuously, churning the still water with impatient wheels, and rupturing the slumberous air with its discordant whistle. It jarred upon the quiet beauty of the scene, and it was a relief when it swept around a bend of the river, leaving only a trail of blue smoke, which was harmonious. One of the setters who had secreted himself in the house during the hot hours, stepped out with overdone innocence, and stretched himself in a shaded corner, panting and yawning dismally. Pocahontas formed the only bit of coolness in the picture, sitting in the shadow of the old porch, in her pretty white dress, with a cape jessamine blossom showing purely against the bronze knot of her hair, and another among the laces on her breast. The volume of Emerson selected for the enlargement of her mental vision lay unheeded in her lap, and the big fan moved lazily, as the gray eyes gazed and gazed out over the parched lawn and the glistening river until the glare nearly blinded them. She was thinking of Jim, and feeling pitiful and sad over her old friend who must break away from every home association, and far from kindred and family, among strange faces and unfamiliar surroundings, make for himself a new life. She was sorry for Jim--grieved for his pain in parting, for his disappointment in regard to herself, for her own inability to give him the love he longed for. She would have loved him had it been in her power; she honestly regretted that the calm, true sisterly affection she felt for him could not be converted into something warmer. Her friends wished it; his friends wished it. It was the natural and proper thing to have happened, and yet with her it had not happened. With Pocahontas, marriage was a very sacred thing, not to be contemplated lightly, or entered into at all without the sanctification of a pure, unselfish love. If she should marry Jim now, it would be with the knowledge that the depths of her nature were unstirred, the true rich gold still hidden. It did not seem to her that her old playfellow's hand was the one destined to stir the one, or discover the other. She might judge wrongly, but so it appeared to her, and she was too loyal to Jim to imagine for an instant that he would be satisfied with aught save her very best. The evening freshened as the sun went down, a vagrant breeze stole out from some leafy covert and disported itself blithely. The big Irish setter moved from the corner to the top step, and ceased yawning. An old colored man appearing from behind the house took his way across the lawn in quest of the colts. The dog, with his interest in life reawakened, bounded off the steps prepared to lend valuable assistance, but was diverted from this laudable object by the approach of two gentlemen who must be welcomed riotously. Pocahontas, rising, advanced out of the shadow to meet them--Jim Byrd, and a tall broad-shouldered man with a great silky red beard, her brother-in-law, Mr. Royall Garnett. CHAPTER IV. After a joyous exchange of greeting with her brother-in-law, of whom she was unusually fond, and a sweet, gracious welcome to her old play-fellow, Pocahontas withdrew to tell her mother of their arrival, and to assure herself that every thing was perfectly arranged for Jim's last meal among them. Through some strange deficiency in herself, she was unable to give him what he most desired, but what she could give him she lavished royally. She wore her prettiest dress in his honor, and adorned it with his favorite flowers, forgetful in her eagerness to please him, that this might make things harder for him. She ordered all the dishes she knew he liked for tea, and spent a couple of hours in the hot kitchen that scorching morning preparing a cake that he always praised. With eager haste she took from its glass-doored cabinet the rare old Mason china, and rifled the garden of roses to fill the quaint century old punch-bowl for the center of the table. All things possible should be done to make Jim feel himself, that night, the honored guest, the person of most importance in their world. It was an heirloom--the Mason china--quaint and curious, and most highly prized. There was a superstition--how originated none knew--that the breakage of a piece, whether by design or accident, foreboded misfortune to the house of Mason. Very carefully it was always kept, being only used on rare occasions when special honor was intended. During the civil war it had lain securely hidden in a heavy box under the brick pavement of one of the cellar rooms, thereby escaping dire vicissitudes. Many pieces had been broken, said to have been followed in every case by calamities harder to endure than the loss of precious porcelain, but much of it still remained. In design it was unique, in execution wonderful, and its history was romantic. In the olden time a rich and fanciful Mason had visited the colonies with one of the expeditions sent out by the Virginia Company of London. He was an artist of no mean repute, and during his stay in the new world had made sketches of the strange beautiful scenery, and studies from the wild picturesque life which captivated his imagination. After his return to England, he perfected these drawings from memory, and some years later crossed over to France, and had them transferred to china at fabulous cost. The result was very beautiful, for each piece showed small but exquisite portrayals of life and scenery in the new world. The scenes were varied, and depicted in soft, glowing colors, and with a finish that made each a gem. On one cup a hunter followed the chase through the silent forest; another showed a dusky maiden dreaming beside a waterfall; a third, a group of deer resting in a sunny valley; a fourth, a circle of braves around a council fire. When, in after years, the grandson of the artist had married a bride with Indian blood in her veins, the punch-bowl had been added as a special compliment to the lady, and the china had been sent a wedding gift from the Masons of England, to the Masons of Virginia. The bowl was very graceful, and contained on one side a lovely representation of the landing at Jamestown, with the tranquil, smiling river, the vessel in the offing, and the group of friendly red men on the shore; on the other was, of course, depicted the rescue of Captain John Smith by the Indian girl. The bowl was finished at top and bottom with wreaths of Virginia creepers, forest leaves and blossoms. To bring out this precious heirloom in honor of a guest was making him of consequence indeed. Jim knew all about it, and when he caught sight of the pretty tea-table he understood the girl's intention and shot a quick, grateful glance across to her from his brown eyes. A whimsical memory of a superb breakfast he had once seen served to a man about to be hanged obtruded itself, but he banished it loyally. As betook the cup with the dreaming maiden on it from Mrs. Mason's hand, he said gratefully: "How good of you to have out the beautiful old china in my honor. When I was a boy, I always imagined that coffee from these cups tasted different--had a woodsy, adventurous flavor. I think so still." It was a merry meal, despite the shadow in the background, for the gentlemen taking their cue from Pocahontas vied with each other in talking nonsense, and depicting ridiculous phases of camp life in the tropics with Jim always for the hero of the scene. And Jim, shaking off the dismal emotions peculiar to farewell visits, responded gallantly, defending himself from each sportive attack, and illumining his exile with such rays of promise as occurred to him. He knew these old friends were sorry to lose him, and trying to lessen the wrench of parting; and being a quiet, self-controlled man--more given to action than speech, and with a deep abhorrence of scenes, he appreciated their efforts. After tea, Berkeley and Royall lit their pipes and strolled out toward the stables, leaving Jim and Pocahontas alone together on the porch. The girl leaned back in her chair silently, not trying to make conversation any more, and Jim sat on the steps at her feet, letting his eyes follow wistfully the slope of the lawn, and the flow of the river. Presently, without turning his head, he asked her to walk with him down to the old willows by the riverside, for a farewell look on the scene so dear to him, and Pocahontas rose instantly and slipped her hand within his proffered arm. Down by the river, where the lawn bent softly to the wooing of the water, stood two ancient willows of unusual size: they were gnarled with age, but vigorous and long limbed. The story ran that once a Pocahontas Mason, the lady of the manor here, had lovers twain--twin brothers who being also Masons were her distant cousins. One she loved, and one she did not, but both loved her, and being passionate men both swore that they would have her, come what might; and cause any man that came between, most bloodily to rue it. Between the brothers there arose quarrels, and ill feeling, which afflicted the lady, who was a good woman, and averse to breaking the peace of families. That brothers--twin-brothers, should be scowling venomously at each other because of her, appeared a grievous thing, and she set herself to mend it. By marrying the man she loved, she could end the affair at once, but his brother would never forgive him, and before love had maddened them the men had been friends as well as brothers. She gauged their characters thoughtfully, and hit upon a plan--which, at the expense of some self-sacrifice, would arrange the matter peacefully. Bidding both lovers attend her one day, she brought them to this spot, and cutting two willow wands of exactly the same length and thickness she stuck them deep into the moist soil, and announced her decision. They would wait three years, she said, and at the end of that time the man whose tree had grown the strongest, should come and claim his answer. She would attend to both willows herself, giving to each the same care, and treating them with equal fairness. Then she made the men shake hands in amity once more, and swear to abide by her decision. The story further tells that both willows flourished finely, but that in the last year the true love's tree outstripped its mate, as was right and proper. As the lady had anticipated, when the term of probation expired only one of the twins appeared to claim an answer to his suit. And in the pocket of the constant man, when he kissed his own true love, lay a letter, from across the seas, full of brotherly affection and congratulation. This little story was a favorite with Pocahontas, and she was fond of relating how her great-great-grandmother by a little wit and generous self-sacrifice, averted a feud between brothers, and kept family peace unbroken. The trees were always called "The Lovers," and under their sweeping branches the young people were fond of gathering on moonlit summer evenings. Pocahontas seated herself under the larger tree on the dry, warm grass, and Jim leaned against the rugged trunk, silently drinking in, with his eyes, the still beauty of the night--the silvery sheen of the water, the pure bend of the sky, the slope of the lawn, and the gray tranquillity of the old house in the background. And as he gazed, there awoke in his breast, adding to its pain, that weary yearning which men call home-sickness. With a shuddering sigh and a movement of the strong shoulders as though some burden were settling down upon them, Jim dropped himself to the ground beside his companion, and suffered her gently to possess herself of his tobacco pouch and pipe. The girl felt that the peacefulness of the scene jarred upon his mood, and set herself to soothe him into harmony with himself and nature. Jim watched the white fingers deftly fill the bowl, and strike the match for him; then he took it from her hand and breathed softly through the curved stem until the fire circled brightly round, and the tobacco all was burning. He leaned back on his elbow and sent the smoke out in long quiet wreaths, and Pocahontas, with her hands folded together in her lap, watched it rise and vanish dreamily. "I wonder," she murmured presently, "if the nights out there--in Mexico, I mean--can be more beautiful than this. I have read descriptions, and dreamed dreams, but I can't imagine any thing more perfect than that stretch of water shimmering in the moonlight, and the dark outline of the trees yonder against the sky." "It's more than beautiful; it's _home_." Jim's voice shook a little. "Do you know, Princess, that whenever the memory of home comes to me out yonder in the tropics, it will be just this picture, I shall always see. The river, the lights and shadows on the lawn, the old gray house, and _you_, with the flowers on your breast, and the moonlight on your dear face. Don't be afraid, or move away; I'm not going to make love to you--all that is over; but your face must always be to me the fairest and sweetest on earth." He paused a moment, and then added, looking steadily away from her; "I want to tell you--this last time I may ever have an opportunity of speaking to you alone--that you are never to blame yourself for what has come and gone. It's been no fault of yours. You could no more help my loving you than I could help it myself; or than you could make yourself love me in return." "Oh, Jim, dear!" spoke the girl, quickly and penitently, "I do love you. I do, indeed." "I know it, Princess, in exactly the same way you love Roy Garnett, and immeasurably less than you love Berkeley. That isn't what I wanted, dear. I'm a dull fellow, slow at understanding things, and I can't put my thoughts into graceful, fluent language; but I know what love is, and what I wanted you to feel is very different. Don't be unhappy about it--or me. I'll worry through the pain in time, or grow accustomed to it. It's tough, just at first, but I'll pull through somehow. It shall not spoil my life either, although it must mar it; a man must be a pitiful fellow, who lets himself go to the bad because the woman he loves won't have him. God means every man to hold up his own weight in this world. I'd as soon knock a woman down as throw the blame of a wasted life upon her." Pocahontas listened with her eyes on the folded hands in her lap, realizing for the first time how deeply the man beside her loved her. Would any other man ever love her with such grand unselfishness, she wondered, ever give all, receive nothing in return, and still give on. _Why_ could not she love him? Why was her heart still and speechless, and only her mind responsive. He was worthy of any woman's love; why could not she give him hers? Ask the question how she would, the answer was always the same. She did not love him; she could not love him; but the reason was beyond her. After a little while Jim spoke again: "When you were a little girl," he said, "I always was your knight. In all our plays, and troubles, it was always _me_ you wanted. My boat was the one you liked best, and my dog and horse would come to your whistle as quickly as to mine. I was the one always to care for you and carry out your will. That can never be again, I know, but don't forget me, Princess. Let the thought of your old friend come to you sometimes, not to trouble you, only to remind you when things are hard and rough, and you need comfort, that there's a heart in the world that would shed its last drop to help you." With quick impulse Pocahontas leaned forward and caught his hand in hers, and before he could divine her intention, bent her head and laid her soft, warm lips against it. When she lifted her eyes to his there were tears in them, and her voice trembled as she said: "I will think of you often, old friend; of how noble you are, and how unselfish. You have been generous to me all my life; far more generous than I have ever deserved." As they arose, to return to the house, the jasmin blossom fell from the girl's hair to the ground at Jim's feet; he stooped and raised it. "May I keep it?" he said. She bowed her head, silently. CHAPTER V. In the dining-room at Lanarth stood Pocahontas, an expression of comical dismay upon her face, a pile of dusty volumes on the floor at her feet. The bookcase in the recess by the fireplace, with yawning doors and empty shelves, stood swept and garnished, awaiting re-possession. In a frenzy of untimely cleanliness, she had torn all the books from the repose of years, and now that the deed was beyond recall, she was a prey to disgust, and given over to repentance. The morning promised to be sultry, and the pile was very big; outside bugs and bees and other wise things hummed and sang in leafy places; the leaves on the magnolias were motionless, and the air asleep. A butterfly, passing to his siesta on the bosom of a rose, paused an instant on the window ledge to contemplate her foolishness; the flowers in the borders hung their heads. Berkeley passed the open window, looking cool and fresh in summer clothing, and Pocahontas, catching sight of him, put her fingers to her lips and whistled sharply to attract his attention, which being done, she followed up the advantage with pantomimic gestures, indicative of despair, and need of swift assistance. Berkeley turned good-naturedly, and came in to the rescue, but when he discovered the service required of him, he regarded it with aversion, and showed a mean desire to retreat, which unworthiness was promptly detected by Pocahontas, and as promptly frustrated. "Do help me, Berkeley," she entreated. "They must all be put in place again before dinner, and it only wants a quarter to one now. I can't do it all before half-past two, to save my life, unless you help me. You know, mother dislikes a messy, littered room, and I've got your favorite pudding for dessert. Oh, dear! I'm tired to death already, and it's _so_ warm!" The rising inflection of her voice conveyed an impression of heat intense enough to drive an engine. "What made you do it?" inquired Berkeley, in a tone calculated to make her sensible of folly. "Mother asked me to dust the books sometime ago, but I neglected it, and this morning when the sun shone on them I saw that their condition was disgraceful. I was so much disgusted with my untidiness, that I dragged them all out on the impulse of the moment, and only realized how hot it was, and how I hated it, after the deed was done. Come, Berke, do help me. I'm so tired." Thus adjured, Berkeley laid aside his coat, for lifting is warm work with the sun at the meridian. The empty shirt sleeve had a forlorn and piteous look as it hung crumpled and slightly twisted by his side. Berkeley caught it with his other hand and thrust the cuff in the waistband of his trowsers. He was well used to his loss, and apparently indifferent to it, but the dangling of the empty sleeve worried him; the arm was gone close up at the shoulder. Then the pair fell to work briskly, dusting, arranging, re-arranging and chatting pleasantly. Pocahontas plied the duster and her brother sorted the books and replaced them on the shelves. The sun shone in royally, until Pocahontas served a writ of ejectment on his majesty by closing all the shutters; and the sun promptly eluded it by peeping in between the bars. A little vagrant breeze stole in, full of idleness and mischief, and meddled with the books--fluttering the leaves of "The Faery Queen," which lay on its back wide open, lifting up the pages, and flirting them over roguishly as though bent on finding secrets. The little noise attracted the girl's attention, and she raised the book and wiped the covers with her duster. As she slapped it lightly with her hand to get out all the dust, a letter slipped from among the leaves and fell to the floor near Berkeley's feet. "Where did this come from?" he inquired, as he picked it up. "Out of this book," she answered, holding up the volume in her hand. "It fell out while I was dusting; some one must have left it in to mark a place. It must have been in the book for years; see how soiled it is. Whose is it?" There is something in the unexpected finding of a stray letter which stimulates curiosity, and Berkeley turned it in his hand to read the address. The envelope was soiled like the coat of a traveler, and the letter was crumpled as though a hand had closed over it roughly. The writing was distinct and clerkly. "Berkeley Mason, Esq., Wintergreen, ---- Co., Virginia." Mr. Mason examined the blurred, indistinct postmark. "Point"--something, it seemed to be; and on the other side, Washington, plain enough, and the date, May, 1865. What letter had been forwarded him from the seat of government in the spring of '65? Then memory unfolded itself like a map whose spring is loosened. Seating himself in an easy chair, he drew the letter from its envelope, unfolding it slowly against his knee. It was a half-sheet of ordinary commercial paper and the lines upon it numbered, perhaps, a dozen. Mason winced at sight of the heading as though an old wound had been pressed. His sister, leaning over the back of his chair, read with him; putting out a hand across his shoulder to help him straighten the page. It ran thus: POINT LOOKOUT, May --, 1865. TO BERKELEY MASON, ESQ., Virginia. SIR--A Confederate soldier, now a prisoner of war at this place, giving his name as Temple Mason, is lying in the prison hospital at the point of death. He was too ill to be sent south with the general transfer, and in compliance with his urgent request, I write again--the third time, to inform you of his condition. He can't last much longer, and in event of his dying without hearing from his friends, he will be buried in the common cemetery connected with the prison, and his identity, in all probability, lost. This is what he appears to dread, and he entreats that you will come to him, in God's name, if you are still alive. The utmost dispatch will be necessary. Respectfully, PERCIVAL SMITH, B. G. U. S. A. Comdt., U. S. P., Point Lookout. Mason returned the letter to its envelope and leaned back in his chair thinking. It was one of the many messages of sorrow that had winged their way through the country in the weeks following the close of the war; one of the murmurs of pain that had swelled the funeral dirge vibrating through the land. Pocahontas came and seated herself on her brother's knee, gazing at him with wide gray eyes filled with inquiry. "When did this come? I never saw it before," she questioned, gravely. Then with troubled brow, and voice that grew husky at times, he went over for her the sad story of the last months of the last year of that unhappy and fateful struggle. In the autumn of '64 their brother Temple, a lad of seventeen, had been taken prisoner, with others of his troop, while making a reconnoissance, and they had been unable to discover either his condition or place of incarceration. Mason, himself, had been at home on sick leave, weak and worn with the loss of his arm and a saber cut across his head. All through the winter and spring, while calamity followed calamity with stunning rapidity, the wearing anxiety about Temple continued, made more intolerable by the contradictory reports of his fate brought by passing soldiers. Finally, this letter had arrived and converted a dread fear into a worse certainty. It had been handed to Roy Garnett by a Federal officer at Richmond, and Roy had ridden straight down with it all those weary miles, feeling curiously certain that it contained news of Temple, and sharing their anxiety to the full. Roy had been stanch and helpful in their trouble, aiding in the hurried preparations for the journey, and accompanying the wounded man, and the pale, resolute mother on their desperate mission. Then came the hideous journey, the arrival at the prison, the fearful questioning, the relief akin to pain of the reply; the interview with the bluff, kindly commandant, who took their hands heartily and rendered them every assistance in his power. Then, in the rough hospital of the hostile prison, the strange, sad waiting for the end, followed by the stranger, sadder home-coming. It was a pitiful story, common enough both north and south--but none the less pitiful for its commonness. With her head down on her brother's shoulder, Pocahontas sobbed convulsively. She was familiar with the outlines of the tale, and knew vaguely of the weeks of anxiety that had lined her mother's gentle face and silvered her brown hair, but of all particulars she was ignorant. She had been very young at the time these sad events occurred; the young brother sleeping in the shadow of the cedars in the old burying-ground was scarcely more than a name to her, and the memories of her childhood had faded somewhat, crowded out by the cheerful realities of her glad girl-life. When she broke the silence, it was very softly. "Berkeley," she said, "it was kindly done of that Federal officer to let us know. This is the third letter he wrote about poor Temple; the others must have miscarried." "They did; and this one only reached us just in time. You see, communication with the south in those early days was more than uncertain. If Roy hadn't happened to be in Richmond, it's a question whether I should have received this one. It was kindly done, as you say, and this General Smith was a kindly man. I shall never forget his consideration for my mother, nor the kindness he showed poor Temple. But for his aid we could hardly have managed at the last, in spite of Roy's efforts. We owe him a debt of gratitude I'd fain repay. God bless him!" "Amen!" echoed Pocahontas, softly. CHAPTER VI. One bright, crisp morning about the middle of October, Pocahontas stood in the back yard surrounded by a large flock of turkeys. They were handsome birds of all shades, from lightish red to deep glossy black; the sunlight on their plumage made flashes of iridescent color, green, purple, and blue, and that royal shade which seems to combine and reflect the glory of all three. Their heads were bent picking up the corn their mistress threw from the little basket in her hand, but occasionally the great gobblers would pause in their meal, and puff themselves out and spread their tails and throw their crimson heads back against their shining feathers, and proudly strut backward and forward, to the admiration, doubtless, of their mates. Turkeys were the young lady's specialty, and on them alone of all the denizens of the poultry yard did she bestow her personal attention. From the thrilling moment in early spring when she scribbled the date of its arrival on the first egg, until the full-grown birds were handed over to Aunt Rachel to be fattened for the table, the turkeys were her particular charge, and each morning and afternoon saw her sally forth, armed with a pan full of curds, or a loaf of brown bread, for her flock. Her usual attendant, on these occasions, was a little colored boy named Sawney--the last of a line of Sawneys extending back to the dining-room servant of Pocahontas's great-grandmother. The economy in nomenclature on a southern plantation in the olden time was worthy of Dandie Dinmont himself. The Sawney in question was a grandson of Aunt Rachel, and an utterly abominable little darkey, inky black, grotesque, and spoiled to a degree. He was devoted to Pocahontas, and much addicted to following her about, wherever she would allow him. At feeding-time he always appeared as duly as the turkeys, for Pocahontas never forgot to put a biscuit, or a lump of sugar, in her pocket for him. With the largest black gobbler Sawney was on terms of deadly enmity; for on more than one occasion had his precious biscuit been plucked from his unsuspicious hand, and borne away in triumph by the wily bird. Half of feeding time was usually consumed by Sawney in throwing small stones at his enemy, who, as he was never by any chance smitten, would raise his head from time to time and gobble his assailant to scorn. On this particular morning there had been a lull in the feud. Sawney had devoured his biscuit unmolested, and had offered no gratuitous insults to his foe. Pocahontas, having emptied her basket, was watching her flock with interest and admiration, when Berkeley made his appearance on the porch with a letter in his hand. He seemed in a hurry, and called to his sister impatiently. "Look here, Princess," he said, as she joined him, "here's a letter from Jim to old Aunt Violet, his 'mammy.' He told me he had promised the old woman to write to her. It came with my mail this morning, and I haven't time to go over to Shirley and read it to her; I wish you would. She's too poorly to come after it herself, so put on your bonnet and step over there now, like a good girl." "Step over there, indeed!" laughed Pocahontas. "How insinuatingly you put it. Aunt Vi'let's cabin is way over at Shirley; half a mile beyond Jim Byrd's line fence." "General Smith's line fence, you mean. I wish you'd go, Princess. There's money in the letter, and I don't want to send it by the negroes. I promised Jim we'd look after the old woman for them. The girls want her to come to Richmond, but she won't consent to quit the old place. She hasn't any children of her own, you know." Pocahontas extended her hand for the letter. "She ought to go to Richmond and live with Belle or Nina," she said, slipping it into her pocket. "She'd die of homesickness way out in California with Susie. I wonder whether the new people will let her stay at Shirley?" "Oh, yes; Jim made every arrangement when he found she wouldn't consent to move. He had an understanding with General Smith about the corner of land her cabin stands on; reserved it, or leased it, or something. It's all right." Always kind, always considerate, thought the girl, wistfully, even amid the pain and hurry of departure--the sundering of old ties, finding time to care for the comfort of his old nurse. Good, faithful Jim. "Have the new people come?" she called after her brother, as he disappeared within the house. "I don't know. I rather think they have," he answered. "I noticed smoke rising from the kitchen chimney this morning. Ask Aunt Rachel--the negroes are sure to know." Pausing a moment at the kitchen door to request the servants to inform her mother that she had walked over to Shirley to read a letter to old Aunt Vi'let, and would be home in an hour or so, Pocahontas set out on her expedition, never noticing that little Sawney, with a muttered "Me d'wine too," was resolutely following her. The way led along a pleasant country road, as level as a table, which ran, with scarcely a bend, or turning, straight from the Masons' back gate over to the ancient home of the Byrd family at Shirley. Overhead the interlacing branches of oak and magnolia trees made a gorgeous canopy of glossy green and russet, and the sunshine filtering through the leaves embroidered the old road with an intricate pattern of light and shadow. Now and then a holly tree, or bush, bright with berries, made a lovely dash of color, and glowed all over with suggestions of Christmas and rejoicing. Pocahontas sauntered slowly, enjoying the beauty of the morning, and thinking happy thoughts of the past, in which were mingled memories of the three Byrd girls, who had been her playmates, and of Jim. It was just beside that holly that Nina Byrd, an enterprising child, had fallen over the fence into a mud puddle, while in pursuit of a little striped ground squirrel, and soiled her hands and dress, and afterward shook her and Susie because they laughed at her. Nina was always passionate. And over in that meadow, she had once been forced to take refuge in a tree from the hostile demonstrations of an unruly heifer whose calf she had annoyed with overtures of friendship. She had sat among the branches, forlorn and frightened, for more than an hour, feeling that each moment was a month, and that such a thing as forgetfulness was impossible to the bovine mind, when Jim, cantering home from school over in the village, had spied her out and rescued her. Passing from retrospect to anticipation, the girl's mind wandered to the new arrivals, and idle speculations about them filled it. Naturally, her thoughts were colored by her wishes, and she pleased herself with fancying them agreeable people, refined and cultured, with whom association would be pleasant. Her fancy was untrammeled, for her facts were few, and the name afforded no clew whatever. People named "Smith" might be any thing--or nothing, regarded socially. The name was non-committal, but it suggested possibilities, and its range was infinite. Wits, felons, clergymen, adventurers, millionaires and spendthrifts, all had answered to the unobtrusive cognomen. It was plain and commonplace, but as baffling as a disguise. With Talbot, Meredith, or Percival, the case is different, such nomenclature presupposes gentility. As the name "Percival" crossed the girl's mind in her whimsical musings, her thoughts seized upon it and fitted it instantly to the name which had preceded it, Percival--and Smith! Percival Smith! That was the name signed to the letter they had re-discovered after its sleep of years--the letter telling them of Temple. This newcomer was, or had been, an army officer--a general. Suppose it should be the same person? Nay; it must be--it _was_! Her mind leaped to the delightful conclusion impetuously, and before she had proceeded ten yards further, Pocahontas was fully convinced of the correctness of her conclusion, and busy with plans for returning the kindness they had received. Filled with pleasure in her thought, her steps quickened, as though her feet were trying to keep pace with her bright imaginings. And so engrossed was she with castle-building, that it was only when she stopped to climb a fence separating the road from a field through which lay a short cut to Aunt Violet's cabin, that she became aware of her small attendant. "Why, Sawney, who told you to come?" she questioned, as she sprang to the ground on the other side. The little fellow slowly and carefully mounted the fence, balancing his fat body on the top rail as he turned circumspectly in order to scramble down. When the landing had been safely effected, he peered up at her with twinkling eyes, and announced, with the air of one imparting gratifying intelligence: "Nobody. I tum myse'f. I dwine long-er you." "There are sheep in this field; you'd better run home. They'll scare you to death." "Ain't 'feard," was the valiant response. Pocahontas wrinkled up her brows; it was almost too far to send him back alone, and there was no one passing along the road who could escort him to the home gate--even if he would go, which was unlikely. It would not do to start him home with the certainty that he would return, the instant her eye was off him, and stand by the fence, peeping through the cracks until she should get back to him. Since he had followed her so far, it would be better to let him go all the way. "Come, then," she said, doubtfully, "I suppose I must take you, although you had no business to follow me. If the sheep come after us, Sawney, remember that you're not afraid. You must not cry, or hold on to my dress with your dirty little hands. Do you hear?" "Ya-m," acquiesced Sawney, with suspicious readiness, resuming his line of march behind her. They pursued their way uneventfully until they had reached the middle of the field when the catastrophe, which Pocahontas had anticipated, occurred. A flock of sheep peacefully grazing at a little distance, suddenly raised their heads, and advanced with joyful bleating, evidently regarding the pair as ministering spirits come to gratify their saline yearning. Sawney--perjured Sawney! all unmindful of his promise, no sooner beheld their advance, than he halted instantly, the muscles of his face working ominously. "Come on, Sawney," urged the young lady, encouragingly, "the sheep won't hurt you: they think we have salt for them; come on." But Sawney had no confidence in the explanation, and plainly discredited the statement of the animals' lack of hostile intention. He refused to stir: nay, more, he dropped himself solidly to the earth with an ear-splitting howl, and grabbed tight hold of Pocahontas's dress with both grimy paws; the sheep, meanwhile, came hurrying up at a sharp trot, pushing against each other in their haste, and bleating in glad anticipation of a treat. Some of the boldest ventured near enough to sniff the girl's dress, gazing up at her expectantly, with their soft, pretty eyes; a proceeding which evoked redoubled yells from Sawney. They were perfectly harmless; even the rams were peaceful, which made the child's conduct the more provoking. In vain Pocahontas coaxed, threatened and commanded, in vain she assured him solemnly that the sheep would not hurt him, and acrimoniously that if he did not hush instantly and get up, she would leave him alone for the sheep to eat up. Sawney would not stir. The more she talked the louder he howled and the more obstinately he clung to her dress. Then she took off her hat and waved it at the animals who sprang aside, startled at first, but returned in closer ranks with more insistent bleating. Losing patience at last, Pocahontas stooped and caught the boy by his shoulders and shook him soundly. She was about to proceed to more violent measures when a voice at her elbow said quietly: "Perhaps I can be of service to you." She started, and glanced round quickly. A slender, dark, young man, a stranger, was standing beside her, glancing, with unconcealed amusement, from her flushed, irate countenance to the sulky, streaming visage at her feet. "Oh, thank you; you can indeed," accepting his proffered aid with grateful readiness. "If you will kindly drive these sheep away, I'll be much indebted to you. This provoking little boy is afraid of them, or pretends to be, and I can't induce him to stir. Now, Sawney, hush that abominable noise this instant! The gentleman is going to drive all the sheep away." With perfect gravity, but his eyes full of laughter, Nesbit Thorne flourished his cane and advanced on the flock menacingly. The animals backed slowly. "Will that do?" he called, when he had driven them about a hundred yards. "A little further, please," she answered. "No, a great deal further; quite to the end of the field. He won't move yet!" Her voice quivered with suppressed mirth. Feeling like "Little Boy Blue" recalled to a sense of duty, Thorne pursued the sheep remorselessly; the poor beasts, convinced at last that disappointment was to be their portion, trotted before him meekly, giving vent to their feelings in occasional bleats of reproach. Meanwhile, Pocahontas lifted Sawney forcibly to his feet, and led him across to the opposite fence, over which she helped him to climb, being determined that no more scenes should be inflicted on her that morning. When she had put a barrier between him and danger, she ordered him to sit down and calm his shattered nerves and recover his behavior. She remained within the field, herself, leaning against the fence and awaiting the gentleman's return, that she might thank him. By the time he rejoined her, Nesbit Thorne had decided that his new acquaintance was a very handsome, and unusually attractive woman. The adventure amused him, and he had a mind to pursue it further. As he approached, he removed his hat courteously, with a pleasant, half-jocular remark about the demoralized condition of her escort, and a word indicative of his surprise at finding a country child, of any color, afraid of animals. "Yes; it is unusual," she assented, smiling on him with her handsome gray eyes, "I can't account for his terror, for I'm sure no animal has ever harmed him. If he were older I'd accuse him of trying to earn a cheap notoriety, but he's almost too little to pretend. He's a troublesome monkey, and if I'd noticed he was following me, I'd have forbidden him. I'm much indebted for your kindly service; without your assistance, Sawney would have sat there screaming until they organized an expedition at home to cruise in search of us, or the sheep had retired of their own accord." "Not as bad as that, I guess," he returned, extending his hand to aid her in mounting the fence, noticing that the one she gave him was delicate and shapely, and that the foot, of which he caught a glimpse, was pretty, and well-arched. He would gladly have detained her talking in the pleasant sunshine, or even--as time was no object, and all ways alike--have liked to saunter on beside her, but there was no mistaking the quiet decision of her manner as she repeated her thanks and bade him good morning. "Who the dickens was she?" he wondered idly as he leaned on the fence in his turn, and watched the graceful figure disappearing in the distance. She walked well, he noticed, without any of the ugly tricks of gait so many women have; firm and upright, with head finely poised, and every movement a curve. Her look and voice harmonized with her carriage; she pleased his artistic sense, and he lowered his lids a little as he watched her, as one focuses a fine picture, or statue. The aesthetic side of Thorne's nature was cultured to the extreme of fastidiousness; ugly, repulsive, even disagreeable things repelled him more than they do most men. He disliked intensely any thing that grated, any thing that was discordant. If "taste is morality," Thorne had claims to be considered as having attained an unusual development. His taste ruled him in most things, unless, indeed, his passions were aroused, or his will thwarted, in which case he could present angularities of character in marked contrast to the smoothness of his ordinary demeanor. Women amused him, as a rule, more than they interested him. He constantly sought among them that which, as yet, he had never found--that which he was beginning to think he never should find, originality combined with unselfishness. Even in that brief interview, Pocahontas had touched a chord in his nature no woman had ever touched before; it vibrated--very faintly, but enough to arrest Thorne's attention, for an instant, and to cause him to bend his ear and listen. In some subtle way, a difference was established between her and all other women. Her ready acceptance of his aid, her absolute lack of self-consciousness, even her calmly courteous dismissal of him, piqued Thorne's curiosity and interest. He reflected that in all probability he would meet her soon again, and the idea pleased him. As he selected a cigar, the grotesque side of the adventure touched him; he smiled, and the smile broadened into a laugh as he recalled his own part in the performance. What would Norma have said, could she have beheld him heading off sheep from a squalling little African at the command of an utterly strange young woman? Pocahontas related her adventure gleefully when they were all assembled at dinner; and the amusement it excited was great. Berkeley insisted teasingly that her deliverer would develop into one of the workmen from Washington, employed by General Smith in the renovation of Shirley. One of the carpenters, or--as he looked gentlemanly and wore a coat, a fresco man, abroad in search of an original idea for the dining-room ceiling. This idea she had obligingly furnished him, and he would be able to make a very effective ceiling of her, and Sawney, and the sheep, if he should handle them rightly. These suggestions Pocahontas scouted, maintaining gayly that the dark stranger was none other than her "Smith," the very identical John of her destiny. Later she confided to her brother her conjecture relative to the identity of their new neighbor, and was more delighted than surprised to learn from him that her surmise had been correct. Berkeley had obtained the information from the solicitor in Wintergreen, who had been employed in the transfer of the estate. CHAPTER VII. The Smith family speedily settled down into their new home, and after the first feeling of strangeness had worn off, were forced to acknowledge that the reality of country living was not so disagreeable as they had anticipated. The neighborhood was pleasantly and thickly settled, the people kind-hearted and hospitable. True, Mrs. Smith still secretly yearned for modern conveniences and the comforts of a daily market, and felt that time alone could reconcile her to the unreliability and inefficiency of colored servants, but even she had compensation. Her husband--whose time, since his retirement, had hung like lead upon his hands, was busy, active and interested, full of plans, and reveling in the pure delight of buying expensive machinery for the negroes to break, and tons of fertilizers for them to waste. The girls were pleased, and Norma happier and less difficult than she had been for years. And, best and most welcome of all, Warner appeared to strengthen. As for Percival, his satisfaction knew no bounds; his father had given him a gun and Nesbit Thorne was teaching him how to use it. At the eleventh hour Nesbit Thorne had decided to accompany his relatives in their flitting, instead of waiting to visit them later in the season. He was incited thereto by idleness and ennui, leavened by curiosity as to the manner in which their future life would be ordered, and also by a genuine desire to be of service to them in the troublesome move. Perhaps there was, besides, an unacknowledged feeling in his breast, that with the departure of his kindred, New York would become lonelier, more wearisome than ever. They had given him a semblance of a home, and there was in the man's nature an undercurrent of yearning after love and the rounding out of true domestic life, that fretted and chafed in its obstructed channel, and tried here and there blindly for another outlet. Thorne's coming with them seemed to the Smiths a very natural proceeding. His aunt proposed it one day, when he had been more than usually helpful, vowing that she scarcely knew how to get along without him, and Thorne fell in with the proposal at once; it made little difference, since he was coming for the shooting anyway. If Norma had another theory in regard to his unwillingness to be separated from them, she was careful to keep it hidden. The country gentry, led and influenced by the Masons, extended the right hand of fellowship to the new-comers, and wrapped the folds of the social blanket cordially around them. The worldly affairs of the Virginians, like their surroundings, were in a more or less perceptible state of dilapidation, and their means frequently failed to match their hospitality. But their intentions were the best, and the Smiths (well-bred people, neither arrogant, nor purse-proud) speedily became reconciled to informality and lack of system, and learned to overlook deficiencies, or to piece them out with kindness. From the first they were thrown much into the society of the Lanarth family, for the Masons at once assumed right of property in them, being bent with simple loyalty on defraying some portion of their debt of gratitude. When their loved one was "sick and in prison" these strangers had extended to him kindness, and now that opportunity offered, that kindness should be returned, full measure, pressed down and running over. For the general, Pocahontas conceived a positive enthusiasm, a feeling which the jolly old soldier was not slow in discovering, nor backward in reciprocating; the pair were the best of friends. Ever since the finding of the letter, the girl's mind had been filled with the story of the brother whom she scarcely remembered. With tender imagination, she exaggerated his youth, his courage, his hardships, and glorified him into a hero. Every thing connected with him appeared pitiful and sacred; his saber hung above the mantle, crossed with his father's, and she took it down one morning and half-drew the dulled blade from the scabbard. The brass of the hilt, and the trimmings of the belt and scabbard were tarnished, and even corroded in places. She got a cloth and burnished them until they shone like gold. When she replaced it, the contrast with the other sword hurt her, and a rush of remorseful tenderness made her take that down also, and burnish it carefully. Poor father! almost as unknown as the young brother, she was grieved that he should have been the second thought. She was restoring her father's sword to its place, and re-arranging the crimson sash, faded and streaked in its folds, from wear and time, when Norma and Blanche arrived, escorted by Nesbit Thorne. Little Sawney had been sitting on the hearth-rug watching her polish the arms, and offering suggestions, and Pocahontas dispatched him to invite her guests into the parlor, while she ran up-stairs to remove the traces of her work. The young people from Shirley often walked over in the afternoons; the way was short and pleasant, and the brother and sister usually accompanied them part of the way home. Thorne was fond of these informal visits; his interest in Pocahontas had increased; the chord, instead of merely vibrating, was beginning to give out faint, sweet notes, like a far-off dream of music, just stirring toward embodiment. He took a keen artistic pleasure in her, she satisfied him, and at first he was almost shy of pressing the acquaintance lest she should fail somewhere. He had been disappointed so many times, had had so many exquisite bubbles float before him, to break at a touch and leave only dirty soap-suds. He let himself be interested slowly, drawing out the pleasure, and getting its full flavor. Then, when he found that it was true metal and might be worked at will without fear of baseness, or alloy, he gave himself up to the pleasure of it. Then, his instinct being always to draw to himself what he desired, he strove to awaken an interest in her. He was a man of unusually brilliant attainments, and he spared no pains. He began to seek her society, and, when in it, to exert himself and appear always at his best, trying to fascinate her as she was, unconsciously, beginning to fascinate him. He would entrap her into ventilating her old-fashioned ideas and prejudices; her primitive notions of life and conduct. Her straightforwardness, simplicity, absolute truthfulness, struck him as quaint and delicious; even her romance and almost German sentiment were attractive to him. He felt like a scientist, who discovers old truths in an absolutely new development. Early in their acquaintance he discovered her fondness for old legends, and her perfect acceptance of, and faith in them; and it was his delight to beguile her into relating tales of her kindred, and of the olden times so dear to the hearts of Virginians. Her remarks and comments often touched, always interested him, although sometimes they well-nigh convulsed him with amusement. To the mind of the man of the world they appeared so--almost obsolete. Pocahontas was generally willing enough to tell her stories, unless indeed Norma happened to be present, and then the improvisatrice was dumb. Pocahontas was not in sympathy with Norma. Norma thought old stories great rubbish, and did not scruple to show that such was her opinion, and Pocahontas resented it. One evening, in the beginning of their acquaintance, the three girls had walked down to the old willows at the foot of the lawn, and Pocahontas, for the amusement of her guests, had related the little story connected with them. "I think it was all great foolishness," Norma declared. "If she loved the man, why not marry him at once like a sensible woman? The idea of making him wait three years, and watch a rubbishing little tree, just because his brother would have made a scene. What if he did make a scene? He would soon have submitted to the inevitable, and made friends. The lady couldn't have cared much for her lover, to be willing to put up with that driveling probation." "She did love him," retorted Pocahontas, with annoyance, "and she proved it by being willing to sacrifice a little of her happiness to spare him the bitterness of a quarrel with his own brother. The men were twins, and they loved one another, until unnatural rivalry pushed family affection into the background. If the matter had been settled when both were at white heat, an estrangement would have ensued which it would have taken years to heal--if it ever _was_ healed. There's no passion so unyielding as family hate. They were her kinsmen, too, men of her own blood; she must think of _them_, outside of herself. The welfare of the man she didn't love must be considered as well as that of the man she did love--more, if any thing, because she gave him so much less. How could she come between twin brothers, and turn their affection to hatred? She knew them both--knew that her own true lover would hold firm for all the years of his life, so that she could safely trust him for three. And she knew that the lighter nature would, in all probability, prove inconstant; and if he left her of his own freewill, there could be no ill-feeling, and no remorse." Norma laughed derisively. "And in this fine self-sacrifice she had no thought of her lover," quoth she. "_His_ pain was nothing. She sacrificed him, too." "And why not? Surely no man would grudge a paltry three years out of his whole life's happiness to avoid so dreadful a thing as ill blood between twin brothers. If _she_ could wait for his sake, _he_ could wait for hers. A woman must not cheapen herself; if she is worth winning, she must exact the effort." "I think it is a lovely story," Blanche interposed, decidedly. "The lady behaved beautifully; just exactly as she should have done. A quarrel between brothers is awful, and between twin brothers would be awfuler still." In her eager partisanship, Blanche's language was more concise than elegant, but she wanted Pocahontas to know that she sided with her. Norma regarded her sister with amusement not unmixed with chagrin. These new friends were stealing away her follower. Blanche was becoming emancipated. "Any woman who trifles with her happiness, because of a scruple, is a fool," she repeated, dogmatically. Pocahontas held back the angry retort that was burning on the tip of her tongue, and let the subject drop. Norma was her guest, and, after all, what did it matter what Norma thought? But after that she refrained from repeating old stories before her; and of the two sisters, Blanche became her favorite. As she entered the parlor with smiles and words of welcome, Blanche held out her hands filled with late roses and branches of green holly, bright with berries. "See," she said, "two seasons in one bouquet. The roses are for your mother. I found them on a bush in a sheltered corner; and as we came along I made Nesbit cut the holly for me. I never can resist holly. That tree by your gate is the loveliest thing I have ever seen; just like those in the store windows at home for Christmas. Only we never had such a profusion of berries, and I don't think they were as bright. Do you think the holly we get at home is as bright, Norma?" "Oh, yes; it looked always pretty much the same. We got beautiful holly every Christmas," replied Norma, who did not like Virginia exalted at the expense of her native place. "But not with such masses of berries. Just look at this branch; was there ever any thing more perfect? Princess, please give me something to put it in. It's far too pretty to throw away. Can I have that vase on the piano?" Pocahontas smiled assent. She could have holly by the cart-load, but she liked Blanche's enthusiasm. While the others chatted, Blanche decked the vase with her treasure; then two others which she found for herself on a table in the corner. There were still some lovely rich bits, quite small twigs, left when she had finished, and she once more clamored for something to put them in. Pocahontas, in the midst of an eager discussion with Thorne and Norma, in which both were arrayed against her, glanced around carelessly. There was a cup and saucer on a small stand near her, and she picked up the cup thoughtlessly and held it out to Thorne. Just as their hands met in the transfer, both of them talking, neither noticing what they were doing, Berkeley entered suddenly and spoke, causing them to start and turn. There was a quick exclamation from Pocahontas, a wild clutch into space from Thorne, and on the floor between them lay the fragile china in half a dozen pieces. Pocahontas bent over them regretfully. It was the cup with the dreaming Indian maiden on it--the cup from which Jim Byrd had taken his coffee on that last evening. There were tears in her eyes, but she kept her head bent so that no one should see them. She would rather any cup of the set should have come to grief than that one. She had brought it into the parlor several days before to show to a visitor, who wished a design for a hand-screen for a fancy fair, and had neglected to replace it in the cabinet. She reproached herself for her carelessness as she laid the fragments on the piano, and then the superstition flashed across her mind. Could it be an omen? The idea seemed foolish, and she put it aside. "Don't feel badly about it," she said to Thorne, who was humbly apologetic for his awkwardness, "it was as much my fault as yours; we neither of us were noticing. Indeed, it's more my fault, for if I hadn't neglected to put it away, the accident could not have happened. You must not blame yourself so much." "In the actual living present, I'm the culprit," observed Berkeley, "since my entrance precipitated the catastrophe. I startled you both, and behold the result! Nobody dreamed of convicting me, and this is voluntary confession, so I expect you all to respect it; the smallest unkindness will cause me to leave the room in a torrent of tears." Every one laughed, and Pocahontas put the fragments out of sight behind a pile of music books. She could not put the subject out of her mind so easily, although she exerted herself to an unusual degree to prevent her guests from feeling uncomfortable; the superstition rankled. As they took leave, Thorne held her hand in a warmer clasp than he had ever before ventured on, and his voice was really troubled as he said: "I can't tell you how worried I am about your beautiful cup. I never had a small accident trouble me to the same extent before. I feel as though a serious calamity had befallen. There was no tradition, no association, I hope, which made the cup of special value, beyond its beauty, and the fact of its being an heirloom." Pocahontas was too truthful for evasion. "There were associations of course," she answered gently, "with that cup as well as with the rest of the china. It has been in the family so many generations, you know. Don't reproach yourself any more, please--remember 'twas as much my fault as yours. And broken things need not remain so," with an upward glance and a bright smile, "they can be mended. I shall have the cup riveted." She would not tell him of the superstition; there was no use in making him feel worse about the accident than he felt already. She did not wish him to be uncomfortable, and had gladly assumed an equal share of blame. It was extremely silly in her to allow her mind to dwell on a foolish old tradition. How could the breakage of a bit of china, no matter how precious, presage misfortune? It was ill doing that entailed ill fortune, not blind chance, or heathen fate. She would think no more of foolish old portents. Still!--she wished the cup had not been broken--wished with all her heart that it had not been _that_ cup. CHAPTER VIII. Blanche Smith was not at all a clever girl--not like Norma. Norma had always stood first in her classes, had borne off prizes and medals, but with Blanche it was otherwise. No amount of coaching ever sufficed to pull her through ah examination, or to remove her from the middle of her class. Blanche was a dunce confessedly; she hated books, and the acquisition of knowledge by labor. If people told her things and took the trouble to explain them, she remembered them sometimes; sometimes not. To accomplishments she took as a duck to water--danced beautifully, was a fair musician, sang with taste and sweetness, and chattered French with absolute self-confidence and a tolerable accent, although her rudimentary knowledge of the tongue was of the vaguest. At school she had been more popular than her cleverer sister; the girls affirmed that she was sweeter tempered and more obliging. At home also, she was the favorite. Her father idolized her, her brothers domineered over, and petted her; even the mother made an unconscious difference between the girls; she admired Norma more--was prouder of her, but she depended upon Blanche. Norma saw the difference, and sometimes it vexed her, but generally she was indifferent to it. Her people did not understand her; she was not like them; when barn-door fowls unwittingly hatched eaglets, it was natural that the phenomenon should be beyond their comprehension, and that their ignorance should prefer the tamer members of their brood. Not that Norma actually instituted such comparison, and deliberately set herself above her kindred; she simply acted upon the hypothesis unconsciously, and when the warmest of the family affection settled around Blanche, felt sure that it was due to natural difference, and could be no fault of hers. Little Blanche, in her deep content with her new surroundings, wondered how she could ever have been so besotted as to object to the move. The place, the people, the mode of life were all delicious to her, and for the family at Lanarth, her enthusiasm was touching. Mrs. Mason was just her idea of "Mrs. Washington, or Cornelia, or Lady de Bourgainville," she explained to Norma, mixing history and fiction, as usual, and was laughed at for her pains. Pocahontas never laughed at her--at least not offensively, or in a way to make her feel her ignorance. She thought sometimes that her foolish society was preferred by her new friend to that of her clever sister; certainly the quaint old tales which Pocahontas poured unreservedly into her delighted ears were never told to Norma. What impression lay in the girl's mind of handsome Berkeley Mason, had best remain uncanvassed. It is ill work, violating feminine sanctuaries unless the need be urgent; an empty coat-sleeve, carelessly carried, is a powerful agent for converting a man into a hero. Christmas, the grand high festival of the year, was approaching, and all the community was stirred with deep desire for its worthy celebration. Sociability ceased, or at best was sustained in limp, half-hearted fashion by the men. The ladies had other things to think of; for on them rested the sole responsibility of the Christmas preparations--the providing of copious lodging for expected guests, the bedecking of rooms with evergreens and holly, the absorption of store-room and kitchen, the never-ending consultations with the cook--all the wonderful machinations, the deep mysteries and incantations, which would result in glittering hospitality later on. Realizing this, they suffered lesser matters to pass unheeded, caring naught for social converse, intellectual pleasures, or intelligence of church or state. Women might elope, men embezzle, dynasties fall, ministries change, or public faith be broken, and they viewed the result, if indeed they noted it, with absolute composure. But let eggs be unattainable, jellies become murky, the fruit in cake or pudding sink hopelessly to the bottom, and Rachel weeping for her children could not have made more wild acclaim. At Lanarth, the week of preparation (good old Virginia housekeepers always allowed a week at least, and Mrs. Mason adhered to the time-honored custom) passed busily. Every thing turned out unusually well, and the store-room was a picture. Jellies, in slender glasses, glittered in exquisite amber perfection, or glowed warmly crimson, with points of brighter hue where the sun fell on them. Heaps of old-fashioned "snowballs" hid golden hearts under a pure white frosting, and cakes, baked in fantastic shapes, like Turks' heads and fluted melons, were rich, warm, brown, or white and gleaming as Christmas snow. The pastry showed all shades from palest buff to tender delicate brown, and for depth of tone there were their rich interiors of dark mincemeat and golden custards. Of the pleasures of this beautiful world not the least is the sight of beautiful food. And it was Christmas eve. The shadows were gathering, and the sun sending in his resignation to the night, when Pocahontas, tying on her pretty scarlet hood and wrappings, armed herself with a small basket of corn, and proceeded to the poultry yard to house her turkeys for the night. They usually roosted in an old catalpa tree near the back gate, earlier in the season; but as Christmas approached Pocahontas found it expedient to turn the key upon them, since leaving them out caused weaker brothers to offend. As she passed the kitchen door she called to little Sawney, whose affection for his grandmother increased at Christmas, to come out and help her. The little fellow had that morning been invested by a doting parent with a "pa'r o' sto' boots" purchased entirely with reference to the requirements of the future. They were many sizes too large for him: the legs adorned with flaming scarlet tops, reached nearly to his middle; they flopped up and down at every step, and evinced an evil propensity for wabbling, and bringing their owner with sorrow to the ground. They were hard-natured, stiff-soled, uncompromising--but! they were _boots_!--"sto' boots, whar cos' money!"--and Sawney's cup of bliss was full. Any one who has experience in the ways and wiles of the domestic treasure, must be aware of the painful lack of consideration sometimes evinced by turkeys in this apparently simple matter of allowing themselves to be housed. Some evenings, they march straight into their apartment with the directness and precision of soldiers filing into barracks; on others the very Prince of Darkness, backed by the three Fates and the three Furies, apparently takes possession of the perverse, shallow-pated birds. They wander backward and forward, with an air of vacancy as though they knew not what to do; they pass and repass the yawning portal of the turkey house, with heads erect and eyes fixed on futurity, not only as if they did not see the door, but actually as if there were no door there to see. And when the maddened driver, wrought to desperation, hurls into their midst a stick or stone, hoping fervently and vengefully that it may break a neck or a leg, they leap nimbly into the air with "put-putterings" of surprise and rebuke, and then advance cautiously upon the missile and examine it. The Lanarth turkeys were behaving in just this reprehensible manner, and Pocahontas was working herself into a frenzy over them. Three times she engineered the flock successfully up to the open door, and three times the same old brown hen advanced, peered cautiously into the house, started tragically aside as though she beheld some evil thing, and produced a panic and a stampede. "You miserable wretch!" exclaimed Pocahontas, hurling her empty basket impotently at the dusky author of her woe, "I could kill you! Shoo! shoo! Sawney, why don't you help me? Head them! Run round them! Shoo! shoo! you abominable creatures!" Sawney essayed to obey, grasping the straps of his boots, and lifting his feet very high. "Take them off and run," commanded Pocahontas. But Sawney would as soon have parted with his skin. "I dwine ter run," he responded, and gripped his boots valiantly. It was of no use. Sawney had gotten too much boot for his money, and if walking in them was difficult, running was impossible. He held on to them bravely, but that only impeded progress further; the faithless cowhides wabbled, twisted, and finally landed him sprawling on his back in the middle of the flock, which promptly retired to distant parts of the poultry yard, "puttering" and dodging. "Sawney proves a broken reed, as usual," called a pleasant voice from somewhere in the background; "here, let me help you," and Nesbit Thorne leaped over the fence, and advanced, gun in hand, to the rescue. "It's the fault of his 'sto' boots,'" Pocahontas explained, laughing, as she extended her hand. "Sawney's intentions were honorable enough. I shall be glad of your assistance--as usual," with a merry glance, "for these aggravating birds are shattering my nerves, and ruining my temper." Then, together, the pair pursued the unruly fowls, and pressed upon them and buffeted them, until the turkeys were right glad to defy the vision of the old brown sensationalist, and take refuge in their house. Pocahontas closed the door with a sharp bang almost upon the tail of the hindmost one, locked it, and then turned cordially to her companion and invited him to remain and take tea with them. Thorne glanced down at his splashed boots and corduroys. "I'm scarcely in trim for a lady's tea table," he said, smiling, "you must excuse me, and let me come some other time. I met your brother on the low grounds as I came up. I've been shooting over his land, and called to leave your mother a few birds." "Had you good sport?" inquired Pocahontas, with interest, watching him empty the pockets of his shooting-coat on the top of an adjacent chicken-coop, and admiring the soft shades, and exquisite markings of the plumage of the dead birds. "Here's old 'bur-rabbit,'" said Thorne, reaching his hand behind his back, and drawing out the pretty brown beast by the legs. "I knocked him over just below your garden fence in a little patch of briers. It was a pretty shot; see, right through the head. I hate to mangle my game. I'd pretty fair sport; the birds are a little wild, though, and I had no dog. I lost a fine duck--a canvas-back, this afternoon, by its falling into deep water. I must send North for a brace of good dogs." "That isn't necessary," said Pocahontas, touching the birds gently, and stroking their soft feathers. "Berke and Royall both have good dogs, trained retrievers, and used to the country. Strange dogs don't do so well over unaccustomed ground. It's a shame that you had no dog, and dreadfully neglectful of the boys not to have noticed. No, no!" as Thorne moved away from the coop, "you must not leave all those; you have none for yourself, and you'll be disgraced as a sportsman if you go home empty-handed. They won't believe you've killed a thing. We _never_ do, when our men come home with nothing to show. Jim Byrd never dared face Nina, or me, without, at least, half a dozen birds." "Who is Jim Byrd?" demanded Thorne quickly. "I never heard you mention him before." "Haven't you?" regarding him with great surprise. "Well that is curious, for he is one of our oldest, dearest friends, Berke's and mine. A year ago I couldn't have imagined life possible without Jim's dear old face near us. He formerly lived at Shirley; it was the Byrd patrimony for generations. His sisters were the closest girl-friends Grace and I ever had, and for years the two families were as one. There were financial troubles handed down from father to son, growing always greater; the old place had finally to be sold, and your uncle bought it. Jim is in Mexico now, engineering, and the girls are all married. I wonder you have never heard me mention Jim. I think, and speak of him frequently. We all do." So perfectly unembarrassed was the girl's manner, that despite a faint wistfulness discernible in her face, Thorne put aside the half-thought formulated in his brain by the familiar mention of Jim Byrd's name. He allowed himself to be persuaded to re-pocket part of the game, particularly a brace of ducks, which the soul of the general loved. As he rose from his seat on the chicken-coop, Pocahontas noticed the handsome gun beside him, and leaning forward with a woman's instinctive desire to handle dangerous things, she took it in her hands with an exclamation of admiration. "Is it loaded?" she inquired, raising it to her shoulder, and laying her finger lightly on the trigger. "Yes," Thorne answered, drawing nearer, "take care, Miss Mason. It always makes me nervous to see a gun in a woman's hands. Don't pull the trigger, please; the charge is heavy and the recoil will hurt you." But the warning came too late; intentionally, or unintentionally, she _did_ pull the trigger, and the gun carelessly held, recoiled sharply, striking against her shoulder with such force that she staggered and would have fallen, if Thorne had not caught her in his arms. The gun slipped to the ground, but fortunately did not discharge the second barrel. Thorne regarded the white face upon his breast with trepidation, amazed even amid his anxiety at the fierce pang that shot through his heart at the sight of its pallor. Suppose she should be seriously hurt! Brute that he had been, not to have taken better care of her. Fool! _fool_! to have let her touch that accursed gun! His hand trembled as he loosened her cloak, and passed it tenderly over her shoulder. Dislocated? No; such cruel harm had not befallen her: a bruise, a little stiffness was the worst in store. A passionate relief, bewildering in its intensity, thrilled through him; his dark cheek rivaled hers in pallor; his eyes glowed. Then her lids quivered, the gray eyes unclosed, and the color flushed back warmly, covering cheek and brow and neck with a mighty surge of crimson. With a quick effort, Pocahontas disengaged herself from his arms, and leaned against the fence, a few steps away from him. Struggling for self-mastery, Thorne made his anxious inquiries, striving by a fierce exercise of will to still his bounding pulses, and banish from his eyes the expression he felt glowing within them. And Pocahontas, with her paleness in force again, replied to his inquiries with tremulous but determined lightness, putting aside his self reproaches, and assuming the blame with eager incoherence. She made a terrible mess of it, but Thorne was past all nicety of observation; his only thought, now that he was assured of her safety, was to get himself away without further betrayal of his feelings. His mind was in a tumult, and his heart rose up and choked him. For a moment he held the small, tremulous fingers in a strong, warm clasp, then with a quick "good-night" relinquished them, sprang over the fence and walked rapidly away in the direction of Shirley. CHAPTER IX. Walking home in the still dusk of the winter gloaming, Thorne found himself compelled at last to look the situation in the face without disguise or subterfuge; to "take stock" of it all, as it were, and ask himself what should be the result. He had lingered in Virginia, lengthening his stay from week to week, because the old world quaintness of the people, the freshness and yet antiquity of thought prevalent among them, charmed him, pleased the aesthetic side of his nature, as the softness of their voices pleased his ear, and the suavity of their manners, his taste. He was tired to death of the old routine, weary beyond expression of the beaten track, of the sameness of the old treadmill of thought. Here he had found variety. For somewhat the same reason he had sought Pocahontas, charily at first, dreading disappointment, but finally, as his interest deepened, without reserve. She was different from other women, more candid, less impressible. He could not discover what she thought of him, beyond her surface interest in his talents and conversation. She piqued and stimulated him; in her presence he exerted himself and appeared at his best, which is always pleasant to a man. Even old thoughts, and hackneyed theories donned new apparel when about to be presented to her notice. He had played with fire, and was forced now to admit that the fate of the reckless had overtaken him. He loved her. The truth had been dawning on his mind for weeks past, but he had put it aside, willfully blinding himself because of his contentment with the present. Now, self delusion was no longer possible; the report of his gun had blown away the last rays of it forever. When Pocahontas lay well-nigh senseless in his arms, when her fair face rested on his breast and her breath touched his cheek, he knew, and acknowledged to himself that he loved her with a passionate intensity such as in all his careless, self-indulgent life he had never before felt for a woman. And he had no right to love her; he was a married man. When this idea flashed across his mind it almost stunned him. He had been free in heart and mind so long that he had ceased to remember that he was bound in fact. The substance had so withdrawn itself into the background of his life that he had forgotten that the shadow still rested on him. He was free, and he was bound. Thorne turned the idea over in his mind, as one turns a once familiar thing that has grown strange from being hidden long from sight. Was he a married man?--undoubtedly--the idea appalled him. Two years had passed since the separation and there had been no divorce. Thorne had thought the matter out at the time, as a man must, and had decided to wait, and to let any initial steps be taken by his wife. He had no love left for her, and he realized with grim intensity that their marriage had been a terrible mistake, but there was sufficient chivalry if his nature to make him feel that the mother of his child had claims upon him--to make him willing, for the child's sake, to leave her the protection of his home and name as long as she cared to keep it. Then, too, the habit of thought in his family, and all his early influences were against divorce. The idea had not presented itself spontaneously, as the natural solution of his domestic difficulties; he had been obliged to familiarize himself with it. His family had been Catholics for generations, his mother had become one on her marriage, and had been ardent and devout, as is usual with proselytes. Thorne was not a religious man himself, but he respected religion, and in an abstract way considered it a beautiful and holy thing. He had never thought of it with any reference to his own life, but it made a halo around the memory of his mother. Her views had influenced him in his decision in the matter of a divorce. The world had given him credit for religious scruples of his own, but the world had done him more than justice; he was only haunted by the ghosts of his mother's scruples. Thorne leaned on the fence of the field where he had first seen Pocahontas, and went over his former experience of love. What a miserable thing it had been, at best! How feverish, vapory and unsatisfying! What a wretched fiasco his marriage had proved! And yet he had loved his wife! Her beauty was of a type that insures its possessor love of a certain sort--not the best, but strong enough to stand the wear and tear of well-to-do existence, if only it is returned. If Ethel had loved him, Thorne would have held to his lot, and munched his husks, if not with relish, certainly with decency and endurance. But Ethel did not love him. Their marriage, from Ethel's standpoint, had been mercantile; for his wealth and position, she had willingly bartered her youth and beauty, and if he would have been content with face value, she would have been content. Why should people trouble the depths of life when the surface was so pleasant and satisfying? She liked Thorne well enough, but his ceaseless craving for congeniality, deep affection, community of interest, and the like, wearied, bored and baffled her. Why should they care for the same things, cultivate similar tastes, have corresponding aspirations? If they differed in thought and life and expression, let them differ--it was of no consequence. She found her husband's exactions tiresome. He had her birthright, she had his pottage; let the matter end there, and each be satisfied. But Thorne was _not_ satisfied. He had married a transcendently beautiful woman, but he had no wife. Half the men of his acquaintance envied him, but he did not rejoice, nor plume himself. He wanted his wife to lean on him, to clothe the strength of his manhood with the grace of her womanhood--and his wife showed herself not only capable of standing alone, but of pushing him away with both hands. His mood underwent many changes, and finally he let her go, with some disgust, and a deep inward curse at his past folly. It was not a pleasant retrospect. Night had fallen; the air was still and brooding; across the sky scudded ragged masses of clouds, advanced guard of the storm that was mustering along the horizon; everywhere there was a feeling that foreboded snow. In the sky, few stars were visible, and those glimmered with a cold, wan light; at the zenith a solitary planet burned steadfastly. The road stretched away into the night; it was dark under the trees beside the fence; away in the distance the echo of footsteps sounded. Thorne thought of Pocahontas. His face softened, and his eyes shone tenderly. How true she was, how thorough and noble. Her pure face and fearless gray eyes rose before him; with the love of such a woman to bless him, her hand in his, her influence surrounding him, to what might not a man aspire! There were no insincerities, no half-truths, no wheels within wheels, such as Ethel delighted in, about this other woman. Even her occasional fits of impatience and temper were indulged in frankly--a sudden flurry of tempest and then the bright, warm sunshine; no long-continued murkiness, and heavy sodden depression for hours and days. Did she love him? As he asked himself the question, Thorne's heart bounded, and the blood coursed hotly through his veins. He had tried to make her love him--had he succeeded? Thorne was no fatuous fool, blinded by his own vanity, but his power over women had been often tried, fully proven, and he had confidence in himself. Once only had he failed of securing the love he sought, and it was the memory of that failure which made him pause and question now. He was not sure. She liked him, was pleasant and gracious, but he had seen her so to other men. Never until this evening had she changed color at his touch. She liked him--and Thorne felt within him a fierce desire to change her passivity of regard into wild activity of passion. He could do it. That tide of crimson, a vague terror and awakening in the gray eyes, as they met his gaze on re-opening to consciousness, had shown him a tiny cleft which his hand might broaden, until it should flood their two lives with the light of love. The echo of the footsteps deepened, merged into actual sound, drew nearer. Thorne, in the deep obscurity of the trees, listened, moving near to the dusky, trunk of an old magnolia; he was in no mood for passing civilities, and in this friendly country all wayfarers exchanged greetings. In the sound of the advancing steps, he could distinguish an unmistakable shuffle which proclaimed race--two negroes returning from the little village, beyond Shirley, whither they had gone to make Christmas purchases. They walked by the light of a flaring pine knot, which was encouraged to burn by being swung around violently from time to time; it lighted the men's dark faces, and reflected itself in intermittent flashes on the sides of a bright tin bucket which the younger man carried, but it intensified the gloom around them. Both had on their backs bags filled with lumpy things, like bundles. They were talking cheerfully, and the sound of their rough voices and guttural laughter reached Thorne before the men themselves came abreast of his position. The negro with the bucket was relating an anecdote. Thorne caught part of it. "Yes, sar," he was saying, "dat was de fust ov it. Mars Jim, he clumb right spang up to de tip-top de tree, an' de ice was cracklin', an' slippin', an' rattlin' down like broke up lamp chimblys. De little gals was 'pon de groun' watchin' him, an' hollerin' an' wringin' deir han's. I was loadin' de ox-cart wid pine kindlin's back in de woods, an' when I hearn de chil'en hollerin', I came runnin' to see what was de matter wid 'em." "What he clumb arter?" questioned the other negro; "hit's mighty dangersome gittin' up trees when dey got sleet 'pon 'em." "Mighty dangersome," acquiesced the narrator, "dat's what I 'lowed ter myse'f when I seed him. He was arter a lump o' dat green truck wid white berries 'pon it--mizzletoe, dey calls its name. When I got dar, he was comin' down de tree holdin' it by de stem wid he teef. He wouldn't fling it down, kase he's feard he'd spile de berries. Time he totch de groun' good, Miss Grace, she hauled off, she did, an' smacked his jaws ez hard ez she could stave, an' axed him how _dar'ed_ he skeer 'em like dat? An' Mars Jim, he larfed out loud, and said: 'Princess wanted it,' an' den he put de truck he'd resked his nake ter git in Miss Pocahontas's arms, an' she hugged it up tight, an' went long to de house cryin'." Thorne moved involuntarily, and the gun in his hand struck against the trunk of the tree behind which he stood. The negroes paused and glanced around alertly, the man with the torch swinging it backward and forward, with a muttered "What's dat?" Nothing of any consequence; a bird, or a rabbit, perhaps--nothing worth investigation. The man with the bucket set his burden on the ground, and opened and shut his hand rapidly several times. The wire of the handle had cramped his fingers. Both men transferred their bags from the right shoulder to the left, and leaned against the tree stems to rest themselves a moment. The elder man resumed the subject. "Love her! Lord-er-mussy 'pon me! Jim Byrd was fa'rly _foolish_ wid love. De groun' warn't fitten fur Miss Pocahontas ter set her foots 'pon in his notion; he'd er liked ter spread _hissef_ down to save her slippers. T'want no question 'bout lovin' wid Mars Jim!" "But he gone away," objected the torch-bearer. "I reckon Miss Pocahontas done kick him; dat how come he lef. What he doin' in Nexican ef he kin get what he want here? He _gone_!" "_Dat_ ain't nothin'. He was bleeged ter go out yander ter git money ter buy back de old place. Money mighty plentiful out dar, Aunt Vi'let say. Gwine way ain't nothin' ter a _man_; he kin come back 'gin. I went 'way ter Richmond onct myse'f ter rake up money 'nouf ter buy one mule, an' rent er scrop o' lan', so ez I could marry Sarah. Mars Jim's comin' back; las' word he sed ter Aunt Vi'let, was _dat_. Miss Pocahontas ain't kick him n'other. What she gwine kick him fur? Mars Jim's er likely man, an' all de ginnerashuns o' de Byrds an' Masons bin marryin' one n'other ever sence Virginny war er settle_mint_. My ole gran'daddy, whar war ole Mr. Dabney Byrd's kyar'ege driver, allus sed--Lord, a-mussy! what DAT!!" The speaker paused with his mouth open and a chilly sensation about the back, as though a lump of ice were traveling down his spine. A sound, as of scriptural denunciation, low, but intense, had caught his ear. A bat, circling low, had grazed Thorne's face and caused him to throw up his hand with an impatient oath. The wisdom of the defunct "kyar'ege driver" was overwhelmed in the flood of perturbation which seized his descendant. The man swung his torch around nervously and peered into the darkness, conscious of a distrust of his surroundings that amounted to positive pain. The other negro said nothing; but addressed himself to the adjustment of his burden in the manner least likely to impede retreat. Among the colored folks this portion of the road enjoyed an evil reputation, particularly after nightfall, for in a field near by there was an ancient graveyard, and the rumor went, that the denizens thereof were of a specially unruly, not to say malicious spirit, and found pure delight in ambuscades along the road side, and in sallies upon unsuspecting travelers with results too painful for description. "Haunts was mighty rank 'bout dar," the negroes said, and after sundown that part of the road was destitute of attractions. The graveyard had not been used for many years; but that only made the danger greater, for ghosts, grown bold with long immunity of office, were held capable of deeper malignity, than would be within the range of ghosts oppressed with the modesty of debutants. The fact that the occupants of the place had, in life, been of their own race, inspired the negroes with no feeling of kinship or confidence. They were earnestly afraid of all spirits, be they white, black, or red; but most of all of black ones, because they seemed most in league with the devil. When, therefore, the light of the flickering pine torch fell obliquely on Thorne's dark figure and caught a gleam from the polished mountings of his gun, and another from the brass of the cartridge belt, which to the terrified darkeys looked like a cincture of fire, they became possessed with the idea that the most malevolent of all the spirits, perhaps the devil himself, was upon them. Calling on their Maker with more urgence than they ever did at "pray'r meetin'," they grabbed up their belongings and addressed themselves to flight. The bags, flopping up and down on their backs, held them to their speed, by corporeal reminder of what they had to lose if the devil should overtake them, and the molasses in the bucket slopped over the sides and sweetened the dust at every jump. The bucket top had bounced off in the first burst and sped down the road before them, and the owner, feeling that he had no time to lose, never dreamed of stopping to look for it. Every now and then the bucket banged against his leg causing him to feel that the evil one might be gaining, and to yell "Oh, Lawdy! Oh, Lawdy!!" at the top of his lungs. The torch-bearer had flung away his light, thinking to elude the devil in the darkness, and all his soul was in his heels. Thorne laughed a little, in a mirthless fashion; but he was too miserable to be amused. While the men talked, black jealousy had crept around the old magnolia and linked arms with him. Twice in the same evening this name had crossed him. Who the devil _was_ this Jim Byrd? These men had spoken of him as the avowed lover of Pocahontas, the man she would eventually marry. The girl herself had admitted him to be a dear and valued friend--a friend so dear that his going had left a blank in her life. The power he had but now felt to be his own, suddenly appeared to be slipping into other hands. Another sickle was sharpening for the harvest; other eyes had recognized the promise of the golden grain; other hands were ready to garner the rich sheaves. Thorne's heart grew hot; angry blood surged from it and inflamed his system; every nerve tingled; his eyes glowed, and his fingers tightened on the barrel of the gun beside him. His consciousness of antagonism grew so intense that it seemed to annihilate space and materialize his distant rival into an actual presence; his feeling was that which animates brutes when they lock horns, or fly at each other's throats; and, could the emotional force which swayed his soul have been converted into physical force and projected through space, Jim would never have seen the light of another day. Poor Thorne! If suffering may be pleaded in extenuation of moods whose cause is mingled love and pain, he certainly was not without excuse. Imagination, wounded by jealousy, leaped forward into the future and ranged amid possibilities that made him quiver--noble, beautiful possibilities, filled with joy and light and sweetness--and filled for his rival--not for him. As in a mirror he beheld his love in his rival's arms, resting on his bosom, as an hour ago she had rested on his own; only in this man's embrace, he pictured her glowing, sentient, responsive to look and caress; not cold, lifeless and inanimate. Should this thing be? No! a thousand times no! Must he always have a stone for bread? Must his garners always stand empty while other men's overflowed with corn? Deeply the man cursed his past folly; bitterly he anathematized the weakness which had allowed shadowy scruples and a too fastidious taste to rule his judgment in the matter of a divorce. He would wait no longer; he would break at once and forever the frail fetter that still bound him to a union from which all reality, all sanctity had fled. He would be free in fact, as he was in heart and thought, to pit his strength against that of his rival. This prize should not slip from his grasp uncontested. No man should approach the shrine unchallenged. The wind rose, sighing fitfully; the clouds gathered and formed an army which stormed the zenith and threatened to overwhelm the pure light of the planet. The lesser stars vanished, two or three falling in their haste and losing themselves forever in infinity. The night thickened; snow began to fall. CHAPTER X. The Christmas festivities were to close on New Year's Eve with a grand ball at Shirley. It was to be a sumptuous affair with unlimited Chinese lanterns, handsome decorations, a magnificent supper, and a band from Washington. The Smiths were going to requite the neighborhood's hospitality with the beating of drums, the clashing of cymbals, and the flowing of champagne. This cordial friendly people had welcomed them kindly, and must have their courtesy returned in fitting style. Mrs. Smith suggested a simpler entertainment, fearing contrast, and any appearance of ostentation, but the general gauged his neighbors better. They were at once too well bred, and too self-satisfied for any idea of comparison to occur to them. They would eat his fruit-cake, or make him welcome to their corn-bread with the same hearty unconcern. His wealth, and their own poverty troubled them equally little; they were abstract facts with which hospitality had nothing to do. But in their way they were proud; having given their best without grudge or stint, they would expect his best in return, and the general was determined that they should have it. The risk of offense lay in simplicity, not grandeur. Mrs. Royall Garnett came over to Lanarth a day or so before the grand event, bearing her family in her train, to assist in the weighty matter of a suitable toilet for Pocahontas. She was a tall, handsome woman, with a noble bearing, and great decision of character; and on most matters--notably those pertaining to the sacred mysteries of the wardrobe, her word with her family was law. Grace's taste was admitted to be perfect. After an exhaustive discussion of the subject, at which both Berke and Royall ignorantly and gratuitously assisted, and were flouted for their pains, it was irrevocably decided that Pocahontas should appear in pure white unrelieved by a single dash of color. "She looks cheap and common in any thing but dead black, or pure white, at a party," pronounced Grace with sisterly frankness, and of course that settled the matter, although Mrs. Mason did venture on the modest protest that it would look "bride-like and unusual." "I want her to look unusual," declared Grace; "to make her so, is at present the object of my being. I shall hesitate at nothing short of cutting off her nose to secure that desirable result. To be admired, a woman must stand out distinctly from the throng; and I've set my heart on Princess's being the belle of the ball. Have you plenty of flowers, dear? As flowers are to be your sole garniture, you must have a profusion. I can't tolerate skimpy, rubbishing bouquets." "None at all, Grace," confessed Pocahontas, ruefully, "except a single calla. I cut my last white rosebuds and camellias to send to Nina Byrd Marion the very day before I heard about the Shirley ball. Isn't it provoking?" "Then somebody must get you some," Grace responded promptly, pausing in her preparations, and regarding her sister with the air of an autocrat; "if the men are not lost to all sense of honor and decency, you'll have plenty. Of course you _must_ have plenty. If only they will have sufficient intellect to select white ones! But they won't. I'd better instruct Roy and Berkeley at once." On the morning of the ball, Berkeley entered his mother's room, where the three ladies sat in solemn conclave regarding with discontent a waiter full of colored flowers which a thoughtful neighbor had just sent over to Pocahontas. He held in his hand a good-sized box which he deposited in his sister's lap with the remark: "Look, Princess! Here's a New Year's gift just come for you. I don't know the writing. I wonder what it is!" "A subtle aroma suggests--fruit," hazarded Grace, sniffing curiously. "Perhaps flowers," suggests Mrs. Mason, who that morning was a woman with one idea. Pocahontas wrestled with the cords, unfolded the wrappers, and lifted the cover. Then she uttered a long drawn "oh" of satisfaction. "What is it?" demanded the others with lively impatience. Pocahontas lifted a card and turned it in her hand, and a smile broke over her face as she answered: "Flowers; from Jim Byrd." Then she removed the damp moss and cotton, and lifted spray after spray of beautiful snowy jasmin--Cape Jasmin, pure and powerful, and starry wreaths of the more delicate Catalonian. Only white flowers--all jasmin, Jim's favorite flower; and with them were tropical ferns and grasses. As she held the exquisite blossoms in her hands and inhaled their rich perfume, the girl was conscious that when her old friend penned the order for the fragrant gift, his heart had been full of home, and of the evening beside the river when she had worn his flowers in hair and dress, and had bidden him farewell. "How beautiful they are!" exclaimed Grace, excitedly, "and just in time for to-night. To think of the way I've made that wretched husband of mine charge through the country since day-break, this morning, in pursuit of white flowers, and here they come like a fairy story. It was very nice of Jim. I'd no idea there was so poetical an impulse in the old fellow; as the selection of these flowers appears to indicate." "You don't appreciate Jim, Grace. You do him injustice. If thought and care and love for others, combined with tenderness, and delight in giving pleasure, constitutes poetical impulses, then Jim Byrd is the noblest poet we are likely ever to meet." Pocahontas spoke warmly, the color flushing to her cheeks, the light coming to her eyes. Poor Jim!--so far away. Was it disloyal to her old friend to go that night to dance among strangers in the rooms that had been his,--that were full of associations connected with him? At all events, no flowers would she wear save his; no other ornaments of any kind. It would seem, then, as though he participated in her pleasure; rejoiced in her joy. Jim loved always to see her happy. For reasons of their own, the two elder ladies had decided on remaining at home, so that Pocahontas repaired to the ball in male custody alone. Blanche, who was on the watch for the Lanarth party, came forward the instant of their arrival, accompanied by her father, to welcome them, and to bear Pocahontas away to the upper regions to warm herself and remove her wrappings. The rooms were a little chill, she explained, with a shiver, in spite of the splendid fires the general had kept roaring in them all day. Pocahontas must remain where she was and warm herself thoroughly, and she would send one of the boys for her presently. And after a little girlish gossip and mutual admiration of each others' appearance, the small maiden tripped away to her duties below. Soon there was a knock at the door, and Pocahontas, catching up fan, bouquet and handkerchief, opened it and stepped into the hall. Nesbit Thorne, slender and distinguished looking, was awaiting her, Blanche having encountered and dispatched him immediately on her return to the parlors. As the girl stood an instant framed by the open door, thrown into relief by the soft glowing background of the warmly lighted room, Thorne's heart swelled with mingled gladness and impatience. Joy in the pure perfection of her beauty; impatience at the restraint circumstances forced him still to put upon his love. At the foot of the stairs they were pounced upon by Percival, who had selected that coigne of vantage as least likely to attract his mother's attention, there to lay in wait for the cards of the unwary. He had been strictly forbidden to importune grown young ladies for dances unless they happened to be wall-flowers, and the injunction lay heavy on his soul. "I _will_ ask girls other men ask," he muttered, darkly, "I hate putting up with refuse and leavings. I'm going to ask the ones I want to ask," and he intrenched himself beside the stairway with intent to black-mail such girls as he should fancy. Pocahontas, who had a natural affinity for boys, and a great fondness for Percival, yielded to his demand readily enough, surrendering her card to him in gay defiance of Thorne's outspoken reprobation, and laughing mischievously as the boy scrawled his name triumphantly opposite a waltz. "B.M.! Who's B.M., Miss Princess?" he questioned, as he dextrously avoided Thorne's extended hand, and placed the card in Pocahontas's. "You've got him down just above me, and you wrote it yourself. Who is he? Benevolent Missionary? Brother Mason?" "Exactly!" she answered, smiling, and watching Thorne scribble his name in several places on her card. "It is Berkeley. The Byrd girls and I always saved a waltz for him to prevent his feeling left out. He don't like to ask girls generally; his one arm makes it look awkward, and he knows they wouldn't like to refuse, because they all feel sorry for him. _We_ put a hand on each shoulder, and don't care how it looks. Berke is adroit, and manages quite nicely. Often, too, it's an advantage to have a dance you can dispose of later on, so I continue to put the initials, although Berke seldom dances now. He liked waltzing with the Byrd girls best." "You were very intimate with the Byrds, I think you said," Thorne remarked idly, bowing to an acquaintance as he spoke. "Very intimate. See what came to me this morning; all these exquisite flowers, just when I needed them for to-night. Roy searched the neighborhood through for white flowers without success, and then these came. Aren't they beautiful?" And she lifted her bouquet toward his face. "Extremely beautiful!" he assented, bending his head to inhale their fragrance. "It was very kind and thoughtful of your friends to send them. I suppose, from the connection, that they are a Byrd offering." Pocahontas laughed softly. "Yes," she said, "but they did not come from Belle, or Nina, and Susie is in California. Jim ordered them for me. I am so pleased." Thorne instantly raised his head and stiffened his back as though the delicate perfume were some noxious poison, and moved on with her toward the parlors in silence. "I wish you knew Jim, Mr. Thorne," pursued the happy voice at his side; "he's such a good fellow, so noble, generous, and unselfish; we're all so fond of Jim. I wish he were here to-night to tread a measure with me in the old rooms. You would be sure to fraternize with Jim. You could not help liking him." Thorne drew in his lips ominously. He could help liking Jim Byrd well enough, and felt not the faintest desire for either his presence or his friendship. The intervention of a woman with whom two men are in love has never yet established amity between them; the very suggestion of such a thing on her lips is sufficient to cause an irruption of hatred, malice and all unkindness. Moreover, Thorne was in a fury with himself. He had thought of sending for flowers for Pocahontas at the same time he dispatched the order to the Richmond florist for his aunt. He had feverishly longed to do it, and had pondered the matter fully half an hour before deciding that he had better not. He had not scrupled to pay Pocahontas attentions _before_ he realized that he was in love with her, but that fact, once established in his mind, placed her in a different position in regard to him. She was no longer the woman he wished to draw into a flirtation _pour passer le temps_; she was the woman he wished to marry--was determined to marry, if possible. The instinct, common to every manly man, to hold in peculiar respect the woman whom he wishes to make his wife, led Thorne to feel that, until he should be free from the fetter that bound him, he should abstain from paying Pocahontas marked attention; to feel that she would have cause of complaint against him if he did not abstain. So he argued the case in cold blood; but now his blood was boiling and he dubbed himself fool in language concise and forcible. See what had come of his self-denial? Another man had done what he had left undone; another hand had laid in hers the fragrant offering it should have been his to bestow. Fool that he had been, to stand aside and let another man seize the opportunity! Jasmin, too! Pah! The heavy perfume made him ill. He was conscious of a fierce longing to snatch the blossoms from her hand and crush them down into the heart of the fire and hold them there--the pale, sickly things. _He_ would have given her roses, passionate, glorious roses, deep-hearted and crimson with the wine of love. Pocahontas had small time for wondering over her cavalier's sudden moroseness, for no sooner had she entered the parlors than old friends crowded forward to speak to her and claim a dance; the girl was popular among the young people of the vicinity. She was a wonderful success that night. Not even Norma, for all her rich tropical beauty, was more admired. "Our little squaw is smashing things, Berke," remarked Roy Garnett, later in the evening, as he joined his brother-in-law in the recess by the fireplace. "The men all swear she's the handsomest woman in the room--and on my soul I believe they're right." "She does look well," responded Mason with all a brother's calm moderation. "Her dress is in good taste, and she moves gracefully. But she isn't the handsomest woman in the room by long odds. Look at Norma Smith." "I have looked at her," retorted Roy shortly, "and so I suppose have the other men. There's no more comparison between her and Princess than there is between a gorgeous, striped tulip, and a white tea rose." (For some inscrutable reason Roy had never been able to endure Norma, and even grudged acknowledgment of her undeniable beauty). "Look at that fellow Thorne, now!" he added, with the pleased alacrity of one producing an unexpected trump, "I should say that _he_ shared my opinion. He hasn't danced voluntarily with another woman in the room, nor left her side a moment that he could help. It looks as though he were pretty hard hit, doesn't it?" Garnett was right; for after the episode with Jim Byrd's flowers, Thorne had thrown self-control to the winds. He danced with Pocahontas as frequently as she would allow him, hovered constantly in her vicinity, and only lost sight of her when dragged off by his aunt for duty dances. Twice during the evening--and only twice--did he leave her voluntarily, and then it was to dance with Norma, whose suspicions he did not wish to arouse. The instinct of rivalry had overthrown all restraint and for this evening he was madly determined to let things take their course. They were here, he and his family, in Jim Byrd's place; living in the house that had been his, entertaining the friends that had been his, in the very rooms that so short a time ago had echoed to his footsteps and resounded with his laugh. He had been thrust aside, and must continue to stand aside; the past had been his, let him keep out of the present; let him beware how he marred the future. And for the bond that held himself, Thorne had forgotten all about it. In his passion and excitement it was a thing without existence. Later in the evening, there came a gleam of brightness for little Blanche; a blissful hour which indemnified her for the boredom so unflinchingly endured. As Norma only did what pleased her, most of the drudgery of entertaining fell upon Blanche, whose grievous portion it was to attend to the comfort of dowagers; to find partners for luckless damsels unable to find them for themselves, and to encourage and bring out bashful youths. As the latter considered that the true expression of their gratitude lay in devoting themselves exclusively and eternally to their pretty little preceptress, Blanche had lately come to hold this part of her duty a wearisome affliction. She was seated on a tiny sofa surrounded by a band of uneasy and enamored youths ranging in age from sixteen to twenty, when Mason caught sight of her pretty, fatigued, but resolutely courteous face, and came instantly to her rescue. He was very fond of Blanche, and teased and petted her with almost cousinly freedom. He felt himself a middle-aged man beside her, and admired her sweet face, and gentle unselfishness as unreservedly as he would have done those of a child. Moving her draperies aside with a kindly, if unceremonious hand, he ensconced himself beside her right willingly and devoted his best energies to her amusement, and that of her small court; lifted the burden of their entertainment from her shoulders with ready tact, and waked the boys up vigorously, causing them to enjoy themselves, and forget that they were _young_; and lonesome, and foolish. Kind, thoughtful Berkeley! No wonder the silly little heart beside him fluttered joyously, and the shy blue eyes were raised to his grave handsome face with full measure of content. And so the hours sped, golden-footed, silver-footed; and the pipers piped and the men and maidens danced and the elders gossiped, drank champagne, and reveled in the fleshpots, yawning surreptitiously behind fans and handkerchiefs as the evening waned. Pocahontas, roused from a dream of enjoyment by Roy's mandate, sped lightly up stairs to the dressing-room, and arrayed herself hastily in her mufflings. At the stairway Thorne joined her, and as her foot touched the lowest step he took her unresisting hand and raised it to his lips murmuring softly; "A happy New Year to you--my darling! my queen!" Then good-night to host and hostess, a swift, impulsive kiss to Blanche, and Berkeley put her into the carriage; Roy tightened the reins and they drove rapidly away in the chill gray of the January dawn. The ball was over; the New Year begun. Thorne, standing by the steps watching the receding carriage, noticed the bouquet of half-faded jasmin blossoms, which had slipped unheeded from the girl's hand, and lay neglected and forgotten on the frozen ground. The impulse came to him to raise them tenderly because her hands had touched them, and then the thought of who had given them arose and struck down the impulse. He set his heel upon them. For him also, the New Year had begun. CHAPTER XI. The day after a ball is always a languid, wearisome period, to be dozed or yawned through, on bed or sofa, in a state of total collapse. Life for the time is disorganized, disenchanted; there is a feeling of flatness everywhere, the rooms lately brilliant and joyous with light and color; fade out in the chilling glare of day, and appear like "banquet halls deserted," which each individual "treads alone," surrounded by an atmosphere of fatigue, _ennui_ and crossness. In the country the flatness falls with full perfection, for there is seldom the anticipation of more excitement to buoy one up and keep the effervescence of the cup of pleasure up to the proper sparkle. At a late--a very late breakfast, the morning after the Shirley ball, the Smiths were assembled with the exception of Blanche, who had entreated to be left undisturbed, since she must sleep or die, and Percival, who had breakfasted sketchily on scraps and confectionery, hours before, and was away in the woods with his gun. The mail, always deposited in a little heap beside the general's plate, had been distributed. There was very little--two newspapers, a couple of letters for Nesbit Thorne, and one for Norma from a New York friend, claiming a promised visit, and overflowing with gossip and news of Gotham, full of personalities also, and a faint lady-like suspicion of wickedness--a racy, entertaining letter. The writer, a Mrs. Vincent, was Norma's most intimate friend, and she often sacrificed an hour of her valuable time to the amusement of the girl, whom she felt convinced was bored to death down in that country desert. The letter in question was unusually diffuse, for Mrs. Vincent was keeping her room with a heavy cold, and had herself to amuse as well as Norma. Norma read scraps of it aloud for the edification of her mother, and the young men; the general, with his nose in his paper, let the tide of gossip pass. Thorne, after a comprehensive glance at his own correspondence, slipped his letters quietly into his pocket, and gave his best attention to his cousin's. He had a rooted objection to reading even indifferent letters under scrutiny, and these he felt convinced were not indifferent; for one was addressed in the handsome large hand of his wife, and the writing on the other was unknown to him--it had a legal aspect. They were letters whose perusal might prove unpleasant; so Thorne postponed it. There is an old adage relative to thoughts of the power of darkness being invariably followed by the appearance of his emissaries, and although Mrs. Thorne was far from being the devil, or her letter one of his imps, the arrival of the one, so promptly upon the heels of thoughts of the other, was singular; her husband felt it so. "Mamma," observed Norma, glancing up from her letter, "Kate says that Cecil Cumberland is engaged, or going to be engaged, I can't exactly make out which. Kate words it a little ambiguously; at all events there appears to be considerable talk about it. Kate writes: 'Cecil looks radiantly worried, and sulkily important. His family are ranged in a solid phalanx of indignant opposition, which, of course, clinches the affair firmly. Eva Cumberland was here this morning in a white heat of passion over it; and I believe apoplexy or hydrophobia is imminent for the old lady. The fact of Mrs.----'" Norma's voice trailed off into an unintelligible murmur, and she read on silently. "Mrs.--who, my dear?" questioned her mother, with lively interest. "Is Cecil going to marry an objectionable widow?" "Wait a moment, mamma. Kate writes so indistinctly, I'll be able to tell you presently," there was a shade of reserve perceptible in Norma's voice. "But why do the family oppose it?" persisted Mrs. Smith. A warning look from her daughter admonished her to let the matter rest; that there were facts connected with Mr. Cumberland's marriage, the investigation and discussion of which had better be postponed. Mrs. Smith's tongue burned with inquiries, but she bravely held them back, and sought to produce a diversion by idle conjectures about Percival. Norma parried the curiosity of the others adroitly, and declining any more breakfast, betook herself and her letter to the back parlor, where she drew a deep arm-chair to the fire, and settled herself comfortably to re-peruse that portion of her friend's epistle, which related to Cecil Cumberland's affairs. Thorne presently followed her, and established himself opposite. He was great friends with Norma; once, in the days before his marriage, there had appeared a likelihood of their becoming more than friends. All that had been forgotten by the man; the woman's memory was more tenacious. They were wonderfully good friends still, these two; they never worried or jarred on one another. Thorne, having no special desire to read his own letters, lighted a cigar, stirred the fire to a glorious blaze, and waxed conversational. The theme he selected for discussion was the topic introduced and interdicted at the breakfast table a few moments previously--the debatable engagement of their New York acquaintance. On this subject he chose to exhibit an unusual--and as Norma felt, unnecessary, degree of curiosity. He cross-questioned the girl vigorously, and failing to elicit satisfactory replies, laughingly accused her of an attempt to earn a cheap notoriety by the elaboration of a petty mystery. "I wish you'd stop trying to put me on the witness stand, Nesbit!" she exclaimed in vexation; "why don't you read your own letters? One is from Ethel, I know. See what she says." Thorne took his wife's missive from his pocket, opened, and glanced through it hurriedly; then turned back to the first page, and re-read it more carefully, the expression of his face hardening into cynicism, slightly dashed with disgust. The letter was penned in a large running hand and covered eight pages of dainty cream-laid paper. It was rambling in phraseology, and lachrymose in tone, but it indicated a want, and made that want clear. It was--divorce. Mrs. Thorne gave no special reason for desiring release from her marriage vows; she dwelt at length on her "lonely and unprotected" condition, and was very sorry for herself, and considered her case a hard one; suggesting blame to her husband in that he had not taken the necessary steps for her release long before. She intimated that he had been selfish and lacking in proper consideration for her in leaving it to her to take the initial steps in the matter. He should have arranged about the divorce at the time of the separation, she said, and so have spared her annoyance. As he had not done so, she hoped he would show some consideration for her now, and help her to arrange the disagreeable business as speedily and privately as possible. He really owed her indulgence "after all that had passed"; the last words were heavily underscored. Thorne, conscious that the present position of matters between them, as well as the past unhappiness, was quite as much her fault as his, and the act of separation more so--he having been the passive and consenting party, did not consider it specially incumbent on him to make things easy for his wife. In his irritation and disgust at her heartless selfishness, he half determined to make them very much the reverse. He was not surprised at his wife's communication; he knew perfectly well that she would seek a divorce sooner or later, as the liberality of the world in such matters made it natural that she should do. He also knew that it was the larger command of the income which he had allowed her for his child's sake, combined with the lack of strong personal motive, which had prevented her from getting a divorce before. Her letter irritated him, not because she desired to break the shadowy bonds which still held her, but because he had behaved well to her, and she had taken it as her right with careless ingratitude. What he had done, he had done for his son's sake, but he was none the less provoked that Ethel had failed of appreciation and acknowledgment. "Read _that_!" he said, and tossed the letter into Norma's lap. While she was doing so, he broke the seal of the other letter which proved to be a communication from a firm of solicitors in a small town in Illinois, in whose hands Mrs. Thorne had placed her case. It was delicately and ambiguously worded, as became the nature of the business, and contained simply a courteous notification of their client's intentions. Norma had been prepared for Mrs. Thorne's letter by that of her friend Mrs. Vincent; and perhaps also by a secret hope on which she had fed for years--a hope that this _would_ happen. She read the letter therefore without emotion, and returned it without comment. "Well?" he queried impatiently. "Well!" she echoed. "What do you think of it?" "I think that Mrs. Thorne wishes to marry again." "No!--do you?" The tone was thoughtful; the interrogation delivered slowly. The idea was a new one, and it put a different complexion upon the matter, because of the child; there were still several years during which the personal custody of the boy was the mother's of right. It behooved him to look into this matter more closely. "Yes, I'm sure of it," responded Norma; "it's town talk. See what Kate Vincent says about it." She handed him her letter folded down at this paragraph: "People have been mildly excited, and the gossips' tongues set wagging by a rumor which floated down from the Adirondacks last summer, and has been gaining body and substance ever since. You remember how Cecil Cumberland philandered after a certain lady of our acquaintance last winter, and how unremitting were his attentions? Friendship, my dear! Harmless friendship on a pure platonic platform; you understand--_honi soit qui mal y pense_. Well this autumn the plot thickened; the platonism became less apparent; the friendship more pronounced. Nothing painfully noticeable--oh no; the lady is too clever--still, the gossips began to take a contract, and work on it in slack seasons, and latterly with diligence. It is openly predicted that madam will seek a divorce, and then!--we shall see what we shall see. Cecil looks radiantly worried and sulkily important. His family are ranged in a solid phalanx of indignant opposition, which of course clinches the matter firmly. Eva Cumberland was here this morning in a white heat of passion over it, and I believe apoplexy or hydrophobia is imminent for the old lady. The fact of Mrs. Thorne's being still a married woman gives the affair a queer look to squeamish mortals, and the Cumberland women are the quintessence of conservative old-fogyism; they might be fresh from the South Carolina woods for all the advancement they can boast. It's wicked, and I'm ashamed of myself, but whenever I think of Ethel Thorne trying conclusions with those strait-laced Cumberlands, I'm filled with unholy mirth." Then followed belated apologies for this careless handling of a family matter, and copious explanations. Mrs. Vincent was a wordy woman, fond of writing and apt to be diffuse when not pressed for time. Thorne returned the letter to his cousin, and announced his intention of returning to New York immediately. "By using dispatch I can catch the boat at Wintergreen this afternoon," he said. "I wish you'd tell your mother, Norma, only your mother, please; it will be time enough to acquaint the others when the whole affair is out. And, Norma, I can trust you, I know; keep the matter quiet here as long as possible. These people are strangers; they know nothing. I don't want to be in every body's mouth--a nine days' wonder, _here_ as well as in New York. It will be bad enough there. Promise me to keep it quiet, Norma." Thorne had reasons for the request. He had ascertained, beyond all doubt, that no hint of his story had as yet reached Pocahontas. He was surprised at first, for he thought all women gossiped, and the affair had never been a secret. He did not conceive for a moment, that the fact of his divorce would be a permanent stumbling block in the way of his happiness, but he realized something of the conservatism of her surroundings, and the old world influences and prejudices amid which she had been reared. She would be shocked and startled at first; she would have to grow accustomed to the idea, then reconciled to it. He recognized at a glance the immense advantage it would be to him to tell his story himself, and, in his own way, to enlist her sympathy and to arouse her indignation and her partisanship. The explanation of the girl's ignorance is simple and natural. The intercourse between the two families was cordial and frequent, but there were reservations--tracts of territory which were never trenched on. There was about the Masons a certain fine reserve which discouraged promiscuous and effusive confidences. Exhaustive investigation of their neighbors' affairs had never been their practice; it was a proud family; a conservative family. The Smiths had seen no reason to give publicity to their _own_ particular family scandal. Other people's skeletons were interesting, but the rattling of the bones of their own annoyed them. Then, too, it was such an old story, its interest as gossip had passed, its piquancy had evaporated. These people knew none of the parties; it could be to them of no possible interest even as narrative. There had been no definite determination on the part of the Smiths to say nothing of the affair; but nothing had been said. Thorne did not correspond with his wife, nor did any member of his family, so there were no tell-tale letters to excite comment or curiosity at the village post-office. How was Pocahontas to know? With Thorne's good pleasure, her ignorance would remain until he himself should lift it. Norma gave the required promise willingly. She, too, objected to this affair obtaining publicity. While Thorne sought her father to explain a sudden call to New York "on business," she communicated the contents of Mrs. Vincent's letter to her mother, and informed her of Thorne's determination. Then leaving the good lady to get the better of her consternation by herself, and to make impossible suggestions, to the empty air, she repaired to her cousin's room, and assisted him in his hurried preparations. CHAPTER XII. Norma was exultant. The thing she had longed, thirsted and well-nigh prayed for, was coming to pass. Thorne would be a free man once more, free to come back to her, free to bring again the old sweetness to her life, free to renew the spring of years ago. Sitting by the library fire in the gloaming after her cousin's departure, Norma dreamed dreams and was happy--her eyes softened, and her lips smiled. Then her face darkened slowly, and the hands in her lap clinched themselves. In her fierce joy in the possibility of her reward coming to her at last, was mingled a dread that the cup might be dashed from her lips a second time. During the first couple of months after the removal to Virginia, Norma had relaxed her constant, imperceptible watch over Thorne. He had accompanied them to the new home unsolicited; and having come, he had remained. Small wonder that Norma had been deceived; for vanity aside, she could not help but know that no woman in that region--not even Pocahontas Mason--was her peer in beauty, wit, or accomplishments. What had she to fear, with habit and contrast both in her favor? Norma neglected to provide against one subtle and most powerful element--novelty. For the past few weeks, first one thing, then another; trifles light as air, but forging a chain heavy enough to link suspicion with certainty, had filled the girl with the old fever of unrest. Was she never to be at rest? Would the glory of the past never shine upon the present? Like most women who allow their minds to dwell constantly on one theme, Norma exaggerated the past. When she first left school there had been a little semi-sentiment and a good deal of rather warm cousinly attentions on Thorne's part, but without serious intention. As has been stated, Thorne liked women; he sought their society and was apt to endeavor to awaken their interest, to gain their affection. He thought that the restless craving of his nature was for love to be given him. It was not. It was the wild passion in his breast seeking to give _itself_. What he needed was not more love drawn into the reservoir of his heart, but an outlet for that already accumulated. This he had never had since he had reached manhood, save only in his affection for his child, and that was as yet too small a channel to afford vent for the power of love behind. And so it came to pass that in his need for an outlet, he had made a great deal of love to a great many women, and had looked more than he made. As Norma budded into beautiful womanhood, he had been attracted by her, and had yielded to the attraction, intending no harm but accomplishing a good deal. He had liked and admired his cousin then, and in exactly the same manner and degree, he liked and admired her now. To the young lady, the affair wore a totally different aspect; the flirtation, which had meant nothing to him and had been long ago effaced from his memory, meant every thing of value on earth to _her_, and was as fresh in her mind as though the years that had passed had been days or hours. Thorne's marriage had been a great blow to her--great and unexpected. She had observed his attentions to Ethel Ross, and raged at them in secret; but she had seen him equally devoted to a score of other women, and the devotion had been evanescent; with her rage and jealousy, had mingled no definite alarm. The engagement--an affair of six weeks, had been contracted while she was away from home, and the first intimation she had of it came through a letter from Ethel Ross inviting her to officiate as bridesmaid. Norma read and the heart within her died, but she made no sound, for she was a proud woman--as proud as she was passionate. She even acceded to the bride's request and, as Thorne's next of kin, led the bevy of girls selected, from the fairest of society to do honor to the occasion; her refusal would have excited comment. But as she stood behind the woman, who she felt had usurped her place, a fierce longing was in her heart to strike her rival dead at her feet. After the marriage she continued her intimacy with Mrs. Thorne--and with Mr. Thorne. When clouds began to gather along the matrimonial horizon, and "rifts within the lute" to make discord of life's music, she beheld the one, and hearkened to the other with savage thrills of satisfaction. She did nothing to widen the breach--Norma was too proud to be a mischief-maker, but she did nothing to lessen it. She watched with sullen pleasure the cleft increase to a crack, the crack to a chasm. When the separation became an accomplished fact, it found Norma, of course, ranged strongly on the husband's side. During the year which had elapsed since Thorne's return from abroad, Norma had contrived to establish considerable influence over her cousin. She studied him quietly, and adapted herself to his moods, never boring him with an over-display of interest, never chilling him with an absence of it. Her plan was to make herself necessary to him, and in part she succeeded. Thorne, lonely and cut adrift, came more and more frequently to his aunt's house and exhibited more and more decidedly his preference for his cousin's society. The thin end of the wedge was in, and but for the move to Virginia, and its ill-starred consequences, the inevitable result must have followed. Would it follow now? A vision of Pocahontas, with her fair face, and her sweet gray eyes framed in a soft cloud of white, standing on the lower step of the stairway, with Thorne beside her, his head bent low over the hand he clasped, rose before Norma's eyes and caused them to burn with jealous anger. Here was the old thing repeating itself; here was flirtation again, the exact extent of which she could not determine. It must be stopped at once, trampled out ere the flame should do irremediable damage. But how? With the question came the answer. Norma was sure that, as yet, no knowledge of Thorne's marriage had ever reached Pocahontas. She would enlighten her; and in such a way that, if there had been aught of love-making on the gentleman's part (and Norma, knowing her cousin, thought it probable there had been), every look and word and tone should seem a separate insult. She also decided that it would be better to accept Mrs. Vincent's invitation, and return to New York for awhile. She knew very well why the invitation had been given, and saw through the shallow maneuvers to win her acceptance of it. Hugh Castleton, Mrs. Vincent's favorite brother, was in New York again, and she had not abandoned her old scheme of a match between him and her friend. Norma felt quite competent to foil her friend's plans in the present as she had foiled them in the past, so had no hesitation, on that score, in accepting the invitation. It would be better to be in New York--on the spot, while this matter should be pending. Thorne might need advice, certainly would need sympathy and petting; he must not learn to do without her. Even if he had only been amusing himself here, after his reprehensible wont, her presence in New York could do no harm and might be productive of good. CHAPTER XIII. One afternoon, several days after Thorne's departure, Norma donned her warmest wraps and set out for a walk over to Lanarth. It was a dull afternoon following on a morning of uncertain brightness; dark clouds, heavy with snow, hung sullenly along the horizon; and above, the sky was of a somber, leaden hue. The air felt chill and clinging, like that of a vault; and heaven above, and earth beneath betrayed a severity of mood infinitely depressing. Norma shivered in spite of her heavy furs, and hurried on, burying her hands in her muff. Pocahontas, duly notified of Norma's approach by the vigilant Sawney, met her guest at the door, and drew her in with words of welcome, and praises of her bravery in venturing abroad in such gloomy weather. The girls did not kiss each other--as is too much the custom with their sex. Pocahontas did not like effusive embraces; a kiss with _her_ meant a good deal. In the sitting-room Mrs. Mason and Berkeley added their welcome, and established Norma in the coziest corner of the hearth, where the fire would comfort without scorching her. Pocahontas stooped to remove her furs and wraps, but Norma staid her hand; it would not be worth while, she said; she had only come to call. "Do stay to tea!" entreated Pocahontas. "Berke will take you home afterward. We haven't looked on a white face except our own for two whole days. We are pining for change and distraction, and beginning to hate each other from very _ennui_. Take pity on us and stay." "Yes, my dear, you must consent," added Mrs. Mason. "You haven't taken tea with us for a long time. Berkeley, help Norma with her wrappings. And, Princess, suppose you run and tell Rachel to make waffles for tea. Norma is so fond of them." Norma yielded to their persuasions, feeling a little curiously, but hardening her heart. What she had come to say, she intended to say; but it would be best to wait an opportunity. She let Berkeley take her wraps, and established herself comfortably, bent on making the time pass pleasantly, and herself thoroughly agreeable. The meal was a merry one, for Norma exerted herself unusually, and was ably seconded by Pocahontas, who, for some reason, appeared in brilliant spirits. After tea they discovered that it was snowing heavily. The threatened storm had come--evenly, slowly, in a thick, impenetrable cloud, the white flakes fell, without haste, excitement or the flurry of wind. Already the ground was covered and the trees were bending with the weight of the white garment the sky was throwing over them. It was unfit weather for a lady to encounter, or indeed for anything feminine to be abroad in, save a witch on a broomstick. Norma was fain to accept Mrs. Mason's invitation and remain for the night at Lanarth. When the two girls, in dressing gowns and slippers, sat over the fire in Pocahontas's room, brushing out their long hair, Norma found the opportunity for which she had lain in wait the entire evening. It was the hour for confidences, the house was quiet, the inmates all dispersed to their several couches. Norma, brush in hand and hair flowing in a heavy, black veil around her, had quitted her own room across the passage, and established herself in a low rocking-chair beside Pocahontas's bright fire. She was far too clever a diplomatist to introduce her subject hastily; she approached it gradually from long range--stalked it delicately with skillful avoidance of surprise or bungling. The game must be brought down; on that she was determined; but there should be no bludgeon blows, no awkward carnage. The death-stab should be given clean, with scientific skill and swiftness, and the blow once given, she would retire to her own room and let her victim find what solace she could in solitude. Norma was not wantonly cruel; she could impale a foe, but she had no desire to witness his contortions. After a death-scene she shrank from the grewsomeness of burial; she preferred a decent drop-curtain and the grateful darkness. After some idle conversation, she deftly turned the talk upon New York, and the life there, and rallied all her powers to be picturesque and entertaining. She held her listener entranced with rapid, clever sketches of society and the men and women who composed it, drawing vivid pictures of its usages, beliefs, and modes of thought and expression. Gradually she glided into personalities, giving some of her individual experiences, and sketching in an acquaintance or two, with brilliant, caustic touches. Soon Thorne's name appeared, and she noticed that the listener's interest deepened. She spoke of him in warm terms of admiration--dwelt on his intellect, his talents and the bright promise of his manhood; and then, observing that the brush had ceased its regular passes over the bright brown hair, and that the gray eyes were on the fire, without pause or warning she spoke of his hurried courtship and sudden marriage. She winced involuntarily as she saw the cold, gray pallor creep slowly over the girl's face, and noted the sudden tremor that passed through her limbs; but she steeled herself against compassion, and proceeded with her brushing and her narrative like one devoid of sight and understanding. "I can not expect you, who know Nesbit so slightly, to be much interested in all this," she said, watching Pocahontas through her lashes; "I fear I only bore you with my story, but my mind has been so exercised over the poor fellow's troubles again lately, that I must unburden it to some one. You have no personal interest in the matter, therefore you will forgive my trespassing on your courtesy--especially when I tell you that I've no one at home to talk to. Nesbit wishes particularly that his story shouldn't get abroad here, and if I should revive it in Blanche's mind, she might mention it to others. Mamma would not; but unfortunately mamma and I rarely look at a thing from the same standpoint. It's been a relief to speak to you--far greater than speaking to Blanche. Blanche is so excitable." Yes; Blanche was excitable, Pocahontas assented absently; she was bracing her will, and steeling her nerves to endure without flinching. Not for worlds would she--even by the quivering of an eyelash--let Norma see the torture she was inflicting. She felt that Norma had an object in this disclosure, and was dimly sure that the object was hostile. She would think it all out later; at present Norma must not see her anguish. A woman would sooner go to the stake and burn slowly, than allow another woman, who is trying to hurt her, to know that she suffers. Norma continued, speaking gently, without haste or emotion, telling of the feverish brightness of those early days of marriage, and of the clouds that soon obscured the sunshine--telling of the _ennui_ and unhappiness, gradually sprouting and ripening in the ill-assorted union--shielding the man, as women will, and casting the blame on the woman. Finally she told of the separation, lasting now two years, and of the letter from his wife which had caused Thorne's precipitate departure the day after the Shirley ball. But of the divorce now pending she said never a word. "Have they any children?" questioned Pocahontas steadily. And was told that there was one--a little son, to whom the father was attached, and the mother indifferent. It was a strange case. Again Pocahontas assented. Her voice was cold and even; its tones low and slightly wearied. To herself it appeared as though she spoke from a great distance, and was compelled to use exertion to make herself heard. She was conscious of two distinct personalities--one prostrate in the dust, humiliated, rent and bleeding, and another which held a screen pitifully before the broken thing, and shielded it from observation. When Norma bid her good-night she responded quietly, and rising accompanied her guest to her room to see that every arrangement was perfect for her comfort. Far into the night she sat beside her dying fire trying to collect her faculties, and realize the extent of the calamity which had befallen her. The first, and, for the time, dominant emotion was a stinging sense of shame, an agony of rage and humiliation which tingled hotly through her, and caused her cheek to flame, and her body to writhe as from the lash of a whip. She had been degraded; an insult had been put upon her. Her eyes blazed, and her hands clinched. Oh, for strength to hurl the insult back--for a man's arm and a man's power to avenge the foul affront! He--a married man--to come, concealing his bonds, and playing the part of a lover free to woo--free to approach a woman and to win her heart! The proud head bent to meet the hands upraised to cover the pale, drawn face. She loved him and he was unworthy. He had deceived and lied to her, if not in words, then in actions; knowing himself bound to another woman, he had deliberately sought her out and made her love him. It was cruel, cruel! All along she had played virgin gold against base metal, and now she was bankrupt. When the burning, maddening sense of outrage had passed, and pride stood with lowered crest and listless hands, love lifted its head and tried to speak. He was not without excuse, love pleaded; his life had been miserable; his lot hard and unendurable; he had been given a stone for bread, and for wine, the waters of Marah. Until the night of the ball he had retained mastery over himself--had held his love in check. Then memory roused herself and entered testimony--words, looks, tender, graceful attentions thronged back upon her, and pride caught love by the throat and cried out that there was no excuse. Perhaps, she pondered heavily, he, too, writhed beneath this avalanche of pain; perhaps remorse and the consciousness of the anguish he had entailed upon them both tore and lacerated him. He had gone away at last, out of her life, back to the home and the ties that were hateful to him. He had gone away to take up his share of their joint burden, and he would be merciful, and never cross her path again. But would he? The girl quivered, her hand sought the pocket of her dress, and her eyes glanced forlornly around the room like the eyes of a hunted creature. She recalled something that the morning's post had brought her--something that had seemed sweet and fair, something that had caused her pulses to thrill, all day, with exultant happiness. Only a New Year card; a graceful white-fringed thing, showing a handful of blue forget-me-nots, thrown carelessly beside an old anchor on a bit of golden sand. Pocahontas laid it on her lap and gazed at it with strained, tearless eyes, and read anew its sweet message of remembrance and hope. She had been startled by Thorne's sudden departure, but had quietly accepted the message of explanation and farewell sent her by Blanche; she trusted him too implicitly to doubt that what he did was best and wisest, and was happy in the knowledge that he would return. How long ago it appeared to her already, since this pretty card had come; she looked at it strangely, with eyes in which there was longing, renunciation, and a wild hopelessness of love. She must not keep it; it was not hers; it belonged of right to that other--the woman who was his wife. No, she must not keep it--the beautiful, tender thing. With steady hand, but blanched, quivering lips, she reached over and made a little grave among the dying embers, in which a sullen spark glowed like baleful eye. Quietly, with the feeling that she was burying all of youth and hope and joy her life would ever know, she kissed the card with dumb, clinging, passionate kisses, and then with a low, dry sob, covered it from sight. As she raised herself up, her eyes fell on the little box lying on her desk in which she had placed the fragments of the cup they had broken between them--the cup that her old play-fellow had used on that last evening. With the impulse of habit and association, her mind turned wearily to Jim. He was so true; he had never failed her. Had _he_ suffered as she was suffering? Poor Jim! Was this ceaseless, gnawing agony that had usurped _her_ life no stranger to _his_? If so--God pity him!--and her! CHAPTER XIV. On the way up from Virginia, Nesbit Thorne ran over in his mind the possibilities opened by this new move of his wife's, and, on the whole, he was satisfied. The divorce had become as much an object with him as with her, and if she had remained quiescent in the matter, he must have moved. He was glad to have been spared this--very glad that the initial steps had been of her taking. It put him in a good position with himself. The _manes_ of his mother's scruples would be satisfied, and would never cause him discomfort since the fault did not rest with him. And then the boy--never could his son cast word or thought of blame to the father who had behaved so well; who had given every chance, foregone every advantage; acted not only the part of a gentleman, but of a generous, long-suffering man. Thorne felt a glow of satisfaction in the knowledge that in years to come his son would think well of him. But this supposition of Norma's in regard to a second marriage put the whole matter in a new light in regard to the child. If such a change should be in contemplation, other arrangements must be made about the boy; he could no longer remain in the custody of his mother. _His_ son could not remain under the roof of his wife's second husband during his own lifetime. The line must be drawn somewhere. It did not occur to Thorne that his wife, with equal justice, might raise similar objections. He determined to see Ethel at once and discover whether or not there was truth in the reports that had reached him anent Cecil Cumberland. If there should be, he would bring such pressure as lay in his power to bear on her, in order to obtain immediate possession of the boy. The child was still so young that the law gave the mother rights which could only be set aside at the expense of a disagreeable suit; but Thorne thought he could manage Ethel in such a way as to make her voluntarily surrender her rights. He knew that her affection for the child was neither deep nor strong. He ascended the steps of his own house and rang the bell sharply. It was answered by a strange servant who regarded him with interest; evidently a gentleman caller at that hour of the morning was unusual. Was Mrs. Thorne at home? The man would inquire. Would the gentleman walk in. What name should he say? Mr. Thorne--and his business was pressing; he must see her at once. The man opened the door of the back parlor and stood aside to let Mr. Thorne pass; then he closed it noiselessly and proceeded up-stairs to inform his mistress. Thorne glanced around the room curiously; it was two years since he had seen it. On the marble hearth burned a bright wood-fire, and the dancing flames reflected themselves in the burnished brasses. The tiles around the fireplace were souvenirs of his wedding, hand-painted by the bevy of bridesmaids to please a fancy of Ethel's. Norma's was in the center--the place of honor. It was a strange thing that Norma had selected to paint; heavy sprays of mingled nightshade and monkshood on a ground the color of a fading leaf; but, strange as it was, it was the most beautiful of them all. There were flowers in the room and the perfume of heliotrope and roses filled the air. The piano was open and on it one of the popular songs of the day; a loud, garish thing. Ethel liked what she called "bright music;" on the keys lay a tumbled lace handkerchief, and on the floor, close to the pedal of the instrument, was a man's driving glove. Over the piano hung the portrait of a lady with soft, gray hair, and the expression of purity and love which medieval painters gave to their saints. It was a picture of Thorne's mother and it hurt him to see it there. He determined to have it removed as soon as possible. The door opened and Mrs. Thorne entered, feeling herself terribly ill-used and persecuted, in that her husband had elected to come to her in person, instead of availing himself of the simpler and more agreeable mode of communication through their lawyers. It was quite possible that he would make himself disagreeable. Mrs. Thorne shrank from any thing disagreeable, and had no tolerance for sarcasms addressed to herself. She would have refused the interview had she dared, but in her heart she was dimly afraid of her husband. Thorne bowed coldly, and then placed a chair for her on the hearth-rug. "Sit down," he said, "I want to talk to you," and then he seated himself opposite her. For awhile he did not speak; somehow the words he had come to say stuck in his throat; it was so cold-blooded for them, husband and wife, to sit there beside their own hearth and discuss their final separation. A log, which had burned in half, fell and rolled forward on the marble hearth, sending little puffs of gray smoke into the room. He reached past her for the tongs and laid the log back in its place, and the little action seemed to seal his lips more closely. The tiny clock on the carved oak mantle chimed the hour in soft, low tones; he counted the strokes as they fell, one, two, and so on up to twelve. The winter sunshine streamed in between the parting of the curtains and made a glory of his wife's golden hair. Ethel was the first to speak. "You got my letter?" she questioned, keeping her eyes fixed on the fire. "Yes; that is the reason I'm here." The broken log was blazing again quite merrily, the two ends far apart. "Why not have written instead of coming?" she demanded, as one who protested against some grievous injury; "it would have been far pleasanter for both. There's no sense in our harassing ourselves with personal interviews." "I preferred a personal interview." Ethel lapsed into silence; the man was a hopeless brute, and it was useless to expect courtesy from him. She tapped her foot against the fender, and a look of obstinacy and temper disfigured the soft outlines of her face. The silence might remain unbroken until the crack of doom for any further effort she would make. Thorne broke it himself. He was determined to carry his point, and in order to do so strove to establish ascendency over his wife from the start. "What's the meaning of this new move, Ethel?" he demanded, authoritatively. "I want to understand the matter thoroughly. Why do you want a divorce?" Mrs. Thorne turned her face toward him defiantly. "Because I'm tired of my present life, and I want to change it. I'm sick of being pointed at, and whispered about, as a deserted wife--a woman whose husband never comes near her." "Whose fault is that?" he retorted sharply; "this separation is none of my doing, and you know it. Bad as things had become, I was willing to worry along for the sake of respectability and the child; but you wouldn't have it so. You insisted on my leaving you--said the very sight of me made your chains more intolerable. Had I been a viper, you could scarcely have signified your desire for my absence in more unmeasured terms." "I know I desired the separation," Mrs. Thorne replied calmly, "I desire it still. My life with you was miserable, and my wish to live apart has only increased in intensity. You never understood me." Thorne might have retorted that the misunderstanding had been mutual, and also that _all_ the wretchedness had not fallen to her share; but he would not stoop to reproaches and vituperation. It was a natural peculiarity of her shallow nature to demand exhaustive comprehension for quite commonplace emotions. "It's useless debating the past, Ethel. We've both been too much to blame to afford the luxury of stone-throwing. What we must consider now is the future. Is your mind quite made up? Are you determined on the divorce?" "Quite determined. I've given the matter careful consideration, and am convinced that entire separation, legal as well as nominal, is absolutely necessary to my happiness." "And your reasons?" "Haven't I told you, Nesbit?" using his name, for the first time, in her anger. "Why do you insist on my repeating the same thing over and over, eternally? I'm sick of my life, and want to change it." "But how?" he persisted. "Your life will be the same as now, and your position not so assured. The alimony allowed by law won't any thing like cover your present expenditures, and you can hardly expect me to be more generous than the law compels. The divorce can make little difference, save to diminish your income and deprive you of the protection of my name. You will not care to marry again, and the divorce will be a restricted one." Thorne was forcing his adversary's hand. "Why will it be restricted?" she demanded, her color and her temper rising. "It shall _not_ be restricted, or hampered in any way, I tell you, Nesbit Thorne! Am I to be fettered, and bound, and trammeled by you forever? I will _not_ be. The divorce shall give me unlimited power to do what I please with my life. It shall make me as free as air--as free as I was before I married you." "You would not wish to marry again?" he repeated. "Why not?" rising to her feet and confronting him in angry excitement. "Because, in that case, you would lose your child. I neither could nor would permit my son to be brought up in the house of a man who stood to him in the relationship you propose." "You cannot take him from me," Mrs. Thorne retorted in defiant contradiction; her ideas of the power of men and lawyers hopelessly vague and bewildered. "No court on earth would take so small a child from his mother." "Ah! you propose having the case come into court then? I misunderstood you. I thought you wished the affair managed quietly, to avoid publicity and comment. Of course, if the case comes into court, I shall contest it, and try to obtain possession of the boy, even for the time the law allows the mother, on the ground of being better able to support and educate him." "I do not want the case to come into court here, Nesbit, and you know that I do not! Why do you delight in tormenting me?" "Listen to me, Ethel. I've no wish to torment you. I simply wished to show you that I would abide by my rights, and that I have some power--all the power which money can give--on my side. Our marriage has been a miserable mistake from the first; we rushed into it without knowledge of each other's characters and dispositions, and, like most couples who take matrimony like a five-barred gate, we've come horribly to grief. I shall not stand in your way; if you wish to go, I shall not hinder you. This is what I propose: I'll help you in the matter, will take all the trouble, make the arrangements, bear all the expense. It will be necessary for one of us to go to Illinois, and see these lawyers, if the divorce is to be gotten there. It may be necessary to undergo a short residence in the state in order to simulate citizenship, and make the divorce legal. I'll find out about this, and if it's necessary I will do it. After the divorce, I'll allow you the use of this house, and a sufficient income to support it; and also the custody of our son as long as you remain unmarried. In return, you must waive all right to the boy for the years you can legally claim him, and must bind yourself to surrender him to me, or any person I appoint, at least a month before any such marriage, and never, by word or act, to interfere in his future life, or any disposition I may think best to make of him. I should also strongly object to any future marriage taking place from my house, and should expect legal notice in ample time to make arrangements about the boy." "Would you allow me to see the child whenever I wished?" "Certainly. I'm no brute, and you are his mother. I shall only stipulate that the meetings take place in some other house than yours. You are at liberty to visit him as often as you like, so long as you are faithful to our agreement and leave his mind unbiased. I will never mention you unkindly to him, and shall expect the same consideration from you. When he is old enough to judge between us, he will decide as he thinks right." "Suppose you marry again, yourself. What about the child then? You are very hard and uncompromising in your dictation to me, Nesbit, but I can have feelings and scruples as well as you." Thorne was startled. He considered that he was behaving well to his wife. He wanted to behave well to her; to let the past go generously, so that no shadow of reproach from it might fall upon the future. Her tart suggestion set the affair in a new light. It was an unpleasant light, and he turned his back on it, thinking that by so doing he disposed of it. There was the distance of the two poles between Pocahontas Mason and Cecil Cumberland. _He_ surely was the best judge of what would conduce to the welfare of his son. "We were discussing the probability of your re-marriage, not mine," he responded coldly; "the reports in circulation have reached even me at last." "What reports?" with defiant inquiry. "That you are seeking freedom from your allegiance to one man, in order to swear fealty to another. That your vows to me are irksome because they prevent your taking other vows to Cecil Cumberland. I pass over the moral aspect of the affair; that must rest with your own conscience," (it is astonishing how exemplary Thorne felt in administering the rebuke); "that rests with your conscience," he repeated, "and with that I've nothing to do. The existence of such reports--which lays your conduct as a married woman open to censure--gives me the right to dictate the terms of our legal separation. I'm obliged to speak plainly, Ethel. You brought about the issue, and must abide by the consequences. I've stated my terms and it's for you to accept or decline them." Thorne leaned back in his chair and watched the flames eat into the heart of the hickory logs. He had no doubt of her decision, but he awaited it courteously. The broken log had burned completely away, and a little heap of whity-gray ashes lay on each side of the hearth. Ethel sat and pondered, weighing at full value all the advantages and disadvantages of the proposal and deciding that the former outweighed the latter. The object on which she was bent--the thing which appeared the greatest earthly good, was the divorce. At any cost, she would obtain _that_, and obtain it as quickly and quietly as possible; no talk, no exposure, no disagreeable comments. This was the main point, and to carry it, Ethel Thorne felt herself capable of more than the surrender of one small child. The separation at worst would only be partial; she could see the boy every day if she wished--even after her marriage with Cecil Cumberland. Nesbit had promised, and in all her experience of him she had never known him break his word. Then she could retain the little fellow until all these troublesome affairs should be settled, which would disarm criticism and save appearances, and appearances _must_ be preserved on account of the Cumberlands. That a divorced daughter-in-law would be none too welcome in that stately, old-fashioned family, Mrs. Thorne was well aware. Perhaps it would be as well to be unhampered by such a forcible reminder of her former state as the child, while she was winning the Cumberland heart and softening the Cumberland prejudice. Cecil, she knew already, regarded the baby with scant favor, and would be unfeignedly rejoiced to be quit of him. On the whole, Nesbit was behaving well to her. She had expected far more difficulty, infinitely more bitterness, for, like the world, she gave her husband credit for the scruples of his father's faith. Her heart softened toward him a little for the first time in years--or would have softened, but for the blow he had dealt her egregious self-love in letting her go so easily. She signified her acceptance of his proposal in a few brusque, ungracious words, for she considered it due to her dignity to be disagreeable, in that she was acceding to terms, not dictating them. Thorne rose from his chair with a deep breath of relief. The interview had been intolerable to him, and although he had carried his point and acquitted himself well, his prominent feeling was one of unqualified disgust. What a lie his married life had been! What a sepulcher filled with dead, dry bones! For the moment all womanhood was lowered in his eyes because of his wife's heartless selfishness. Had she shown any feeling about the boy--any ruth, or mother-love, Thorne knew that he would not have driven so hard a bargain; felt that he might even have let his compassion rule his judgment. But she had shown none; all her thought and care had been for herself, and herself alone. And for her, and such as her, men wrecked their lives. A flood of anger at his past folly, of resentful bitterness at the price he had been forced to pay for it, passed over Thorne. He could scarcely constrain himself to the formal bow which courtesy required. As he left the room, the sound of a child's wailing came down to him, mingled with the sound of a woman's voice soothing it. He glanced back at his wife; she had moved nearer the fire, her fair head with its golden glory of hair was thrown back against the dark velvet of the chair; she was smiling and the sound of the child's grief fell on heedless ears. CHAPTER XV. Thorne had even less difficulty with his legal arrangements than he had anticipated. He had, hitherto, relegated the subject of divorce to the limbo of things as little thought and spoken of as possible by well-bred people. He knew nothing of the _modus operandi_, and was surprised at the ease and celerity with which the legal machine moved. "I'll have to prove my identity, and the truth of my statements to the men out there, I suppose," he remarked to the lawyer, from whom he obtained all necessary information. The lawyer laughed; he was a Southerner by birth, and his voice was gentle, his manner courteous. "Of your identity, Mr. Thorne, these men will take excellent care to inform themselves, and of your responsibility also," he answered. "For the truth of your statements, they are apt to take your word, and the depositions of your witnesses, without troubling themselves about substantiating the facts. The soundness of your evidence is your lookout, not theirs. If the case were to be contested, it would be different, but, in this instance, there is consent of both parties, which simplifies matters. This case is reduced to a matter of mere form and business." "Apparently, then, my statements may be a tissue of lies from beginning to end, for all the difference it makes," observed Thorne, curious to discover how small a penknife could now cut the bond which once the scythe of death alone was held to be able to sever. "For your veracity, Mr. Thorne, your appearance is a sufficient voucher," responded the lawyer, with a ready courtesy. "And the looseness on which you comment, recollect, is all in your favor. When a man has an unpleasant piece of business in hand, it's surely an immense advantage to be able to accomplish it speedily and privately." Thorne walked in the direction of his hotel in a state of preoccupation. He was sore and irritated; he disliked it all intensely; it jarred upon him and offended his taste. Over and over he cursed it all for a damnable business from beginning to end. He was perfectly aware, reasoning from cause to effect, that the situation was, in some sort, his own fault; but that was a poor consolation. That side of the question did not readily present itself; his horizon was occupied by the nearer and more personal view. He loathed it all, and was genuinely sorry for himself and conscious that fate was dealing hardly by him. As he turned a corner, he ran against a tall, handsome young lady, who put out her hand and caught his arm to steady herself, laughing gayly: "Take care, Nesbit!" she exclaimed, "you nearly knocked me down. Since when have you taken to emulating Mrs. Wilfer's father, and 'felling' your relatives to the earth?" "Why, Norma! is it really you?" he questioned, refusing to admit the evidence of sight and touch unfortified by hearing. He was genuinely delighted to see her, and foresaw that she would be a comfort to him during the days that must elapse before it became possible for him to start for Illinois. He needed sympathy and some one to make much of him. And Norma, with her lustrous eyes aglow with the pleasure of the meeting, appeared to divine it, for she set herself to entertain him with little incidents and adventures of her journey from Virginia, and with scraps of intelligence of the people at home. She did not mention Pocahontas, save in reply to a direct inquiry, and then simply stated that she had spent a night at Lanarth a day or so before coming North, and that the family were all well. She cheered Thorne wonderfully, for she seemed to bring Virginia and the life of the last few months nearer to him--the peaceful life in which new hopes had budded, in which he had met, and known, and loved Pocahontas. Norma did him good, raised his spirits, and made the future look bright and cheerful; but not in the way she hoped and intended. She had come North with the hope of furthering her own plans, of making herself necessary and agreeable, of keeping the old days fresh in his memory. And she _was_ necessary to him, as a trusted comrade who had never failed him; a clever adviser in whose judgment he had confidence; a charming friend who was fond of him, and who had, but now, come from the enchanted land where his love dwelt. Of her plans he knew nothing, suspected nothing; and the days she brought fresh to his thoughts were days in which she had no part. In a little while, he went West, and there was a period of uneventful waiting; after which Norma received a Western paper containing a short and unobtrusive notice of the granting of a divorce to Nesbit Thorne from Ethel, his wife. She bore it away to her room and gloated over it greedily. Then she took her pen and ran it around the notice, marking it heavily; this done, she folded, sealed and directed it in a clear, bold hand--General Percival Smith,--Wintergreen Co., Virginia. It would save elaborate explanations. CHAPTER XVI. Spring opened very late that year in Virginia--slowly and regretfully, as though forced into doing the world a favor against its will, and determined to be as grudging and disagreeable over it as possible. The weather was cold, wet, and unwholesome--sulking and storming alternately, and there was much sickness in the Lanarth and Shirley neighborhood. The Christmas had been a green one--only one small spurt of snow on Christmas eve, which vanished with the morning. The negroes were full of gloomy prognostications in consequence, and shook their heads, and cast abroad, with unction, all sorts of grewsome prophecies anent the fattening of the church-yard. All through the winter, Mrs. Mason had been ailing, and about the beginning of March she succumbed to climatic influences, backed by hereditary tendency, and took to her bed with a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism. Pocahontas had her hands full with household care and nursing, and perhaps it was as well, for it drove self into the background of her mind, for a part of the time at least, and filled with anxiety the empty days. Grace, living five miles away and loaded down with family cares and duties of her own, could be of little practical assistance. The winter had been a hard one for Pocahontas, harder, perhaps, for the gallant nature which forbade her to bewail herself. She suffered deeply and dumbly through all the weary nights and days. Pride and womanly reserve precluded all beating of the breast, and forced principle and nature to the ceaseless fight. Right gallantly she bore herself. The mortification, the anguish, the love, must be met, hand to hand, eye to eye, foot to foot. She endeavored to keep cheerful--to take the same interest in life as formerly, and in the main she succeeded; but there would come times when the struggle would seem greater than she could bear, and being a woman, with a woman's heart, and a woman's nerves, she would be irritable and difficult. But these moods were never of long duration, any more than the more desperate ones, when she would lock herself in her chamber and cast herself on the floor and lie there prone and quivering--heart and conscience utterly at variance--heart crying out with mad insistence that the struggle was in vain; for love was strengthened by repression; and conscience sternly replying that it should not be; the struggle should continue until the last vestige of love should be expunged from heart and life. It was no wonder, as time went on, that the girl's cheek paled and that a dumb pleading came into the pure gray eyes. Sometimes the thought of Jim would come and place itself in contrast to the thought of the other man, for, unconsciously to her, her old friend was her standard in many things. Her recognition of the nobility of Jim's love would force, in some sort, recognition of the selfishness of Thorne's love. She put such thoughts from her fiercely, and girded at Jim in her aching, unreasonable heart, because his love was grander and truer than the love she craved. Once, when old Sholto--the great red setter--came and laid his head lovingly upon her lap, she frowned and pushed him roughly away, because he looked up at her with eyes whose honest faithfulness reminded her of Jim. And the mother watched her child silently; conscious, through the divination of unselfish mother-love, that her daughter suffered, yet powerless to help her, save by increased affection and the intangible yet perceptible comfort of a delicate respect. She could trust her child and would not force her confidence; if spoken sympathy were needed, Pocahontas knew that her mother's heart was open to her, and if to her silence should seem best, she should have her will. From long experience Mrs. Mason knew that some sorrows must be left quietly to time. When at length the news of Thorne's divorce reached them, she warded off with tender consideration all remark or comment likely to hurt the girl, and gave straight-forward, hot-tempered Berkeley a hint which effectually silenced him. In sooth, the honest fellow had small liking for the subject. He bitterly resented what he considered Thorne's culpable concealment of the fact of his marriage. He remembered the night of the ball at Shirley, and the memory rankled. It did not occur to him that the matter having remained a secret might have been the natural result of an unfortunate combination of circumstances, and in no sort the consequence of calculation or dishonor on Thorne's part. Neither did it occur to him, large-minded man though he was, to try to put himself in Thorne's place and so gain a larger insight into the affair, and the possibility of arriving at a fairer judgment. Berkeley's interest in the matter was too personal to admit of dispassionate analysis, or any impulse toward mercy, or even justice. His anger burned hotly against Thorne, and when the thought of him rose in his mind it was accompanied by other thoughts which it is best not to put into words. During Mrs. Mason's illness, little Blanche was unremitting in her attentions, coming over daily with delicacies of her own concoction, and striving to help her friends with a sweet, unobtrusive kindness which won hearty response from both ladies, and caused them to view Berkeley's increasing attentions to the little maid with pleasure. They even aided the small idyl by every lawful means, having the girl with them as often as they could and praising her judiciously. With her winsome, childish ways and impulsiveness, Blanche formed a marked contrast to grave, reserved Berkeley Mason, and was perhaps better suited to him on that account. When their engagement was announced, there was no lack of congratulation and satisfaction in both families. The general, as he gave his hearty approbation to her choice, pinched her ears and asked what had become of her objections to Virginia; and Percival tormented her unceasingly, twitting her with her former wails of lamentation. Blanche did not care. She took their teasing in good part, and retorted with merry words and smiles and blushes. She had made her journey to the unknown, and returned with treasure. Mrs. Smith, in her chamber, smiled softly, and thought on muslin and lace and wedding favors. CHAPTER XVII. The weeks rolled by, and gradually Mrs. Mason grew convalescent. She was still confined to her room, but the worst of the pain was over, and she could lie on the sofa by the fireside and have Berkeley read aloud to her in the evenings. Blanche, if she happened to be there, would sit on a low chair beside the sofa, busy with some delicate bit of fancy work, and later in the evening Berke would take her home. Sometimes Pocahontas would bring her work and listen, or pretend to listen, with the rest, but oftener she would go into the parlor and play dreamily to herself for hours. She had taken up her music industriously and practiced hard in her spare moments. She had been playing a long time one evening in April, and had left the piano for a low chair beside the open fire. She was tired. Although spring had come, the evenings were chill and the room was large. Her hands were cold and she spread them out to the blaze. The heavy curtains billowed and sank and billowed again, as intrusive puffs of wind crept officiously through the crevices of the old casements. Blanche and Berkeley were with her mother, and they were reading "Lorna Doone." She had read the book a week ago, and did not care to hear it over. The front door opened quietly--it was always on the latch--and footsteps came along the hall; quick, eager footsteps, straight to the parlor door; the knob turned. No need to turn her head, no need to question of her heart whose step, whose hand that was, to guess whose presence filled the room. Thorne came across the room, and stood opposite, a great light of joy in his eyes, his hands outstretched for hers. Benumbed with many emotions, Pocahontas half-rose, an inarticulate murmur dying on her lips. Thorne put her gently back into her chair, and drew one for himself up to the hearth-rug near her; he was willing to keep silence for a little space, to give her time to recover herself; he was satisfied for the moment with the sense of her nearness, and his heart was filled with the joy of seeing her once more. The lamps were lit, but burning dimly. Thorne rose and turned both to their fullest brilliancy; he must have light to see his love. "I want to look at you, Princess," he said gently, seeking her eyes, with a look in his not to be misunderstood; "it has been so long--so cruelly long, my darling, since I have looked on your sweet face. You must not call the others. For this first meeting I want but you--you only, my love! my queen!" His voice lingered over the terms of endearment with exquisite tenderness. Pocahontas was silent--for her life she could not have spoken then. Her gray eyes had an appealing, terrified look as they met his; her trembling hands clasped and unclasped in her lap. "How frightened you look, my darling," Thorne murmured, speaking softly and keeping a tight rein over himself. "Your eyes are like a startled fawn's. Have I been too abrupt--too thoughtless and inconsiderate? You would forgive me, love, if you knew how I have longed for you; have yearned for this meeting as Dives yearned for water--as the condemned yearn for reprieve. Have you no smile for me, sweetheart?--no word of welcome for the man whose heaven is your love? You knew I would come. You knew I loved you, Princess." "Yes;"--the word was breathed, rather than uttered, but he heard it, and made a half movement forward, the light in his eyes glowing more passionately. Still, he held himself in check; he would give her time. "You knew I loved you, Princess," he repeated. "Yes, you must have known. Love like mine could not be concealed; it _must_ burn its way through all obstacles from my heart to yours, melting and fusing them into one. Don't try to speak yet, love, there is no need to answer unless you wish. I can wait--for I am near you." Pocahontas rallied her forces resolutely, called up her pride, her womanhood, her sense of the wrong he had done her. If she should give way an instant--if she should yield a hair's breadth, she would be lost. The look in his eyes, the tenderness of his voice, appeared to sap the foundations of her resolution and to turn her heart to wax within her. "Why have you come?" she wailed, her tone one of passionate reproach. "Had you not done harm enough? Why have you come?" Thorne started slightly, but commanded himself. It was the former marriage; the divorce; she felt it keenly--every woman must; some cursed meddler had told her. "My darling," he answered, with patient tenderness, "you know why I have come--why it was impossible for me to keep away. I love you, Princess, as a man loves but once in his life. Will you come to me? Will you be my wife?" The girl shook her head, and moved her hand with a gesture of denial; words she had none. "I know of what you are thinking, Princess. I know the idea that has taken possession of your mind. You have heard of my former marriage, and you know that the woman who was my wife still lives. Is it not so?" She bent her head in mute assent. Thorne gazed at her pale, resolute face with his brows knit heavily, and then continued: "Listen to me, Princess. That woman--Ethel Ross--is my wife no longer, even in name; she ceased to be my wife in fact two years ago. Our lives have drifted utterly asunder. It was her will, and I acquiesced in it, for she had never loved me, and I--when my idiotic infatuation for her heartless, diabolical beauty passed, had ceased to love her. At last, even my presence became a trouble to her, which she was at no pains to conceal. The breach between us widened with the years, until nothing remained to us but the galling strain of a useless fetter. Now that is broken, and we are free,"--there was an exultant ring in his voice, as though his freedom were precious to him. "Were you bound, or free, that night at Shirley?" questioned the girl, slowly and steadily. A flush crept warmly over Thorne's dark face, and lost itself in the waves of his hair. He realized that he would meet with more opposition here than he had anticipated. No matter; the prize was worth fighting for--worth winning at any cost. His determination increased with the force opposed to it, and so did his desire. "In heart and thought I was free, but in _fact_ I was bound," he acknowledged. "The words I spoke on the steps that night escaped me unaware. I was tortured by jealousy, and tempted by love. I had no right to speak them then; nothing can excuse or palliate the weakness which allowed me to. I should have waited until I could come to you untrammeled--as now. I attempt no justification of my madness, Princess. I have no excuse but my love, and can only sue for pardon. You will forgive me, sweetheart"--using the old word tenderly--"for the sake of my great love. It's my only plea"--his voice took a pleading tone as he advanced the plea hardest of all for a woman to steel her heart against. Pocahontas gazed at him in bewilderment, her mind grappling with an idea that appalled her, her face blanching with apprehension, and her form cowering as from an expected blow. "Must I understand, Mr. Thorne, that love for _me_ suggested the thought of divorcing your wife?" she questioned hoarsely--"that _I_ came between you and caused this horrible thing? It is _not_--it _can not_ be true. God above! Have I fallen so low?--am I guilty of this terrible sin?" Thorne's quick brain recognized instantly the danger of allowing this idea to obtain possession of her mind. Fool! he thought furiously, why had not he been more cautious, more circumspect. Dextrously he set himself to remove the idea or weaken its force--to prove her guiltless in her own eyes. "Princess," he said, meeting the honest, agonized eyes squarely, "I want to tell you the story of my marriage with Ethel Ross, and of my subsequent life with her. I had not intended to harass you with it until later--if at all; but now, I deem it best you should become acquainted with it, and from my lips. It will explain many things." Then he briefly related all the miserable commonplace story. He glossed over nothing, palliated nothing; bearing hardly now on his wife, and again on himself, but striving to show throughout how opposed to true marriage was this marriage, how far removed from a perfect union was this union. Pocahontas listened with intense, strained interest, following every word, sometimes almost anticipating them. Her heart ached for him--ached wearily. Life had been so hard upon him; he had suffered so. With a woman's involuntary hardness to woman, she raised the blame from Thorne's shoulders and heaped it upon those of his wife. Her love and her sympathy became his advocates and pleaded for him at the bar of her judgment. Her heart yearned over him with infinite compassion. If Thorne had kept silence, and left the matter there, and waited until she should have adapted herself to the new conditions, should have assimilated the new influences, which crowded thick upon her, it would have been better. But he could not keep silent--he had no patience to wait. He could not realize that the things which were as a thrice-told tale to _him_, had an overwhelming newness for _her_. That the influences which had molded his thought, were very far removed from the influences which had made _her_ what she was. He could not understand that, while the world had progressed, this isolated community had remained stationary, and that the principles and rules of conduct among them, still, were those which had governed _his_ world in the beginning of the century. He saw that her sympathy had been aroused, that she suffered for, and with, him, and he could not forbear from striving to push the advantage. He went on speaking earnestly; he demonstrated that this marriage which had proved so disastrous was in truth no marriage, and that its annulment was just and right, for where there was no love, he argued, there could be no marriage. With all the sophistry; with all the subtle arguments of which he was master--and they were neither weak nor few--he assailed her. Every power of his brilliant intellect, every weapon of his mental armory, all the force of his indomitable will was brought to bear upon her--and brought to bear in vain. Calm, pale, resolute, she faced him--her clear eyes meeting his, her nervous hands folded tightly together. She would not give way. In their earnestness both had risen, and they stood facing each other on the hearth-rug, their eyes nearly on a level. The man's hand rested on the mantle, and quivered with the intensity of his excitement; the woman's hung straight before her, motionless, but wrung together until the knuckles showed hard through the tense skin. She would NOT give way. Thorne was startled and perplexed. Opposition he was prepared for, argument he could meet and possibly refute, tears and reproaches he could subdue--but dumb, quiet resistance baffled him. Suddenly he abandoned reason, cast self-control to the winds, and gave the reins to feeling. If he could not convince her through the head, he would try a surer road--the heart. Though proof against argument, would she be proof against love? He knew she loved him; he felt it in every fiber of his being, every pulse of his heart--and he was determined to win her at all hazards; his she must be; his she _should_ be. "My love!" he murmured, extending his arms with an appealing tenderness of look and gesture. "Come to me. Lay your sweet face on my breast, your dear arms around my neck. I need you, Princess; my heart cries out for you, and will not be denied. I can not live without you. You are mine--mine alone, and I claim your love; claim your life. What is that woman? What is any woman to me, save you, my darling--you only? My love! My love! It is my very life for which I am pleading. Have you no pity? No love for the man whose heart is calling you to come?" Pocahontas shivered, and bent slightly forward--her face was white as death, her eyes strange and troubled. The strength and fire of his passion drew her toward him as a magnet draws steel. Was she yielding? Would she give way? Suddenly she started erect again, and drew back a step. All the emotions, prejudices, thoughts of her past life; all the principles, scruples, influences, amid which she had been reared, crowded back on her and asserted their power. She could _not_ do this thing. A chasm black as the grave, hopeless as death, yawned at her feet; a barrier as high as heaven erected itself before her. "I can not come," she wailed in anguish. "Have you no mercy?--no pity for me? There is a barrier between us that I dare not level; a chasm I can not cross." "There is _no_ barrier," responded Thorne, vehemently, "and I will acknowledge none. I am a free man; you are a free woman, and there is no law, human or divine, to keep us asunder, save the law of your own will. If there be a chasm--which I do not see; which I swear does not exist--_I_ will cross it. If you can not come to me, I can come to you; and I _will_. You are _mine_, and I will hold you--here in my arms, on my breast, in my heart. Have you, and hold you, so help me God!" With a quick stride he crossed the small space between them, and stood close, but still not touching her. "Have you no pity?" she moaned. "None," he answered hoarsely. "Have you any for me?--for us both? I love you--how well, God knows, I was not aware until to-night--and you love me I hope and believe. There is nothing between us save an idle scruple, which even the censorious world does not share. I ask you to commit no sin; to share no disgrace. I ask you to be my wife before the face of day; before the eyes of men; in the sight of heaven!" Could she be his wife in the sight of heaven? It was all so strange to her, she could not understand. Words, carelessly heard and scarcely heeded, came back to her, and rung their changes in her brain with ceaseless iteration. It was like a knell. "Nesbit?" she said wearily, using his name unconsciously, "listen and understand me. In the eyes of the law, and of men you are free; but I can not see it so. In my eyes you are still bound." "I am _not_ bound," denied Thorne, fiercely, bringing his hand down heavily on the mantle; "whoever tells you that I am, lies, and the truth is not in him. I've told you all--and yet not all. Ethel Ross, the woman who was my wife--whom _you_ say is my wife still--is about to marry again. To join her life--as free and separate from mine as though we had never met--to the life of another man. Isn't that enough? Can't you see how completely every tie between us is severed?" Pocahontas shook her head. "I can not understand you, and you will not understand me," she said mournfully; "her sin will not lessen our sin; nor her unholy marriage make ours pure and righteous." Thorne stamped his foot. "Do you wish to madden me?" he exclaimed; "there is no sin, I tell you; nor would our marriage be unholy. You are torturing us both for nothing on God's earth but a scruple. I've argued, reasoned, and pleaded with you, and you refuse to weigh the argument, to listen to the reason, to yield to the persuasion. You are hard, and opinionated, and obstinate. You set up your individual judgment against the verdict of the world and deem it infallible. You are hard to yourself, and cruelly hard to me, for, as there is a God in heaven, I believe you love me, even as I love you. Oh, my love! my love!" his voice melted, his arms closed around her. "Why do you try me beyond my strength? Why are you so cruel to us both? See; I hold you safely; your heart beats on mine; your dear face is on my breast. Stay with me, my darling, my own, my wife;" and soft, clinging passionate kisses pressed down on hair, and cheek, and lips; kisses that burned like flame, that thrilled like strong wine. For a moment Pocahontas lay quietly in his arms, lulled into quiescence. Then she wrenched herself free, and moved away from him. It had been said of her that she could be hard upon occasion; the occasion had arisen, and she _was_ hard. "Go!" she said, her face wan as ashes, but her voice firm; "it is you who are cruel; you who are blind and obstinate. You will neither see nor understand why this thing may not be. I have showed you my thought, and you will not bend; implored you to have pity, and you are merciless. And yet you talk of love! You love me, and would sacrifice me to your love; love me, and would break down the bulwarks I have been taught to consider righteous, to gratify your love. I do not understand; love seemed to me so different, so noble and unselfish. Leave me; I am tired; I want to think it out alone." Thorne stood silent, his head bent in thought. "Yes," he said presently; "it will be better so. You are overwrought, and your mind is worn with excitement; you need rest. To-morrow, next week, the week after, this matter will wear a different aspect. I can wait, and I will come again. It will be different then." "It will never be different," the voice was low; the gray eyes had a hopeless look. Thorne repeated his assertion in the gentle, persistent tone of one who is patient with the unreasonableness of a frightened child. His determination to win success never faltered, rather it hardened with opposition into adamant; but he was beginning to realize his blunder. He had overwhelmed her; had brought about an upheaval of her world so violent that, in her bewilderment, her dread of chaos, she instinctively laid hold on the old supports and clung to them with desperation. She must have time to think, to familiarize herself with the strange emotions, to adapt herself to the changed conditions. Only one other thing would he say. He held in reserve a card which he knew, ere now, had proved all powerful with conscientious women. To gain his end, he would stop at nothing; he took both her hands in his, and played his card deliberately. "Think over it well," he said, "weigh every argument, test every scruple. My life is in your hands. I am not a religious man, nor a good man, but you can make me both. Give me the heaven that I crave, the heaven of your love, and I will be by it ennobled into faith in that other heaven, of which it will be the foretaste. But refuse; deny the soul that cries out to you; thrust aside the hands that seek to clasp you, as the truest, noblest, holiest thing they have ever touched, and--on your head be it. I have placed the responsibility in your hands and there it rests." With a lingering look into her eyes and a fervent pressure of her hands, he turned and slowly left the room. Back to the mind of the girl, standing motionless where he had left her, came, unwished and unbidden, the memory of a summer night out yonder beside the flowing river. She seemed to see again, the swaying of the branches in the moonlight, and to hear the lulling wash of the water against the shore; to hear also, a quiet, manly voice fighting down its pain, lest the knowledge of it should wound her, saying, simply and bravely: "Don't be unhappy about me, dear. I'll worry through the pain in time, or grow accustomed to it. It's tough just at first, but I'll pull through somehow. It shall not spoil my life either, although it must mar it; a man must be a pitiful fellow who lets himself go to the bad because the woman he loves won't have him. God means every man to hold up his own weight in this world. I'd as soon knock a woman down as throw the blame of a wasted life upon her." Plain words, poorly arranged and simply spoken, for the man who uttered them was not clever; but brave, manly words, for all that. The girl turned from the unwelcome memory with a sharp, impatient sigh that was almost a groan. It pained her. CHAPTER XVIII. The next day Thorne quietly returned to New York, without making any attempt to see or communicate with Pocahontas again. He had considered the situation earnestly, and decided that it would be his wisest course. Like a skilled general, he recognized the value of delay. Failing to carry the citadel by assault, he resorted to strategy. In the girl's love for him, he possessed a powerful ally; there was a traitor in the camp of his adversary, and sooner or later it would be betrayed into his hands; of this he was convinced, and the conviction fortified him to trust the result to time. Pride and principle were in arms now, holding love in check, but it would not be so always; soon her woman's heart would speak, would wield an influence more powerful and resistless, from the concentration engendered by repression. Now, too, she was braced by the excitement of personal resistance; she was measuring her will, with his will, her strength with his strength. Let him withdraw for a time, and what would follow? The outside pressure, the immediate need of concentrated effort removed, there would inevitably ensue a state of collapse; purpose and prejudice would sink exhausted, the strain on the will relax, the weapons fall from the nerveless hands. Then the heart would rally its forces, would collect its strength for the field; external conflict suspended, internal strife would commence, fierce, cruel and relentless as internecine struggles ever are. Was there any doubt of the result of the battle? It only needed time. Time, quietude, and earnest thought, free from the disturbing, stimulating power of his presence. He could wait; every affection of her loving, constant heart, every fiber of her self-sacrificing nature, would fight for him; prejudices, even the most deeply-rooted, must yield, in time, to love. When he should come again it would be to claim his victory. No thought of abandoning the pursuit crossed his brain; no impulse of ruth stirred his heart. Did she suffer? So did he--keenly, cruelly. Let her end this torture for them both; let her lay aside these senseless scruples, and place her hand in his. His arms were open to her, his heart yearning for her; let her come and anchor in the sure haven of his love. Pocahontas told her mother, very quietly, of Thorne's visit, his proposal, and her rejection of it; just the bare facts, without comment or elaboration. But Mrs. Mason had a mother's insight and could read between the lines; she did not harass her daughter with many words, even of approval; or with questions; she simply drew the sweet, young face down to her bosom a moment, and held it there with tender kisses. Nor did Berkeley, to whom his mother communicated the fact, volunteer any comment to his sister. After what had passed, Thorne's proposal was not a surprise, and to them the girl's answer was a foregone conclusion. Poor child! the brother thought impatiently, the mother wistfully, how much bitterness would have been spared her could she only have loved Jim Byrd. During the weeks that followed Thorne's second return north, the two families were thrown together more and more intimately. Blanche's engagement and Warner's increased illness served to break down all restraints. All through the winter the boy had steadily lost ground, and as the spring progressed, instead of rallying as they hoped, his decline became more rapid. The best advice was had, but science could only bear the announcement of bereavement; there was nothing to be done, the doctors said, save to alleviate pain, and let the end come peacefully; it was needless to worry the boy with change, or bootless experiments. Even to the mother's willfully blinded eyes, and falsely-fed hopes, conviction came at last that her son's days were numbered. Berkeley, Royall and other of the neighboring gentlemen took turns in aiding with the nursing and the night-watches, as is the custom in southern country neighborhoods where professional nurses are unknown. Of all the kindly friends that watched and tended him through long weeks of illness, the one that Warner learned to love the best was Berkeley Mason. There was a thoughtful strength in the nature of the man who had suffered, the soldier who had endured, which the weaker nature recognized and rested on. To the general, during this time of trouble, the young man became, in very truth, a son; the old debt of kindness was canceled, and a new account opened with a change in the balance. As is usual in cases of lingering consumption, the end was very sudden--so sudden, in fact, that Norma, still away with her northern friends, received the telegram too late for word or look or farewell kiss. She was traveling with Mrs. Vincent and the message followed her from place to place. On a still, beautiful May morning, Warner was laid to rest in the Lanarth graveyard beside poor Temple Mason. It was the boy's own request, and his mother felt constrained to comply with it, although she would have preferred interring the remains of her child beside those of her own people at Greenwood. The story of the young life beating itself out against prison bars, had taken strong hold of the lad's imagination, and the fancy grew that he too would sleep more sweetly under the shadow of the old cedars in the land the young soldier had loved so well. Norma and Pocahontas stood near each other beside the new-made grave, and as they quitted the inclosure, their hands met for an instant coldly. Pocahontas tried not to harbor resentment, but she could not forget whose hand it had been that had struck her the first bitter blow. After Warner's death, Mrs. Smith appeared to collapse, mentally as well as bodily. She remained day after day shut in his chamber, brooding silently and rejecting with dumb apathy all sympathy and consolation. Her strength and appetite declined, and her interest in life deserted her, leaving a hopeless quiescence that was inexpressibly pitiful. Her husband, in alarm for her life and reason, hurriedly decided to break up the establishment at Shirley, and remove her for a time from surroundings that constantly reminded her of her loss. In the beginning of June, the move was made, the house closed, the servants dismissed, and the care of the estate turned over to Berkeley. With the dawning of summer, the birds of passage winged their flight northward. CHAPTER XIX. There comes a time in human affairs, whether of nations or individuals, when a dull exhausted calm appears to fall upon them--a period of repose, a lull after the excitement of hurried events, a pause in which to draw breath for the renewal of the story. Grateful are these interludes, and necessary for the preservation of true equipoise, but they are not interesting, and in novels all description of them is carelessly skipped over. In stories we want events, not lingerings. The summer passed quietly for the family at Lanarth, broken only by the usual social happenings, visits from the "Byrd girls," as they were still called, with their husbands and little ones; a marriage, a christening, letters from Jim and Susie, and measles among the little Garnetts. In August, Pocahontas and her mother went for a month to Piedmont, Virginia, to try the medicinal waters for the latter's rheumatism, and after their return home, Berkeley took a holiday and ran up to the Adirondacks to see Blanche. Poor Mrs. Smith did not rally as her family had hoped, and the physicians--as is customary when a case baffles their skill--all recommended further and more complete change. They must take her abroad, and try what the excitement of foreign travel would do toward preventing her from sinking into confirmed invalidism. General Smith, who had abandoned every care and interest for the purpose of devoting himself to his wife, embraced the proposal with eagerness, and insisted on the experiment being tried as speedily as possible. Blanche could not help some murmurs, both inwardly and to Berkeley, at the long separation in store for them; and the lover, although himself a little rueful, heartened her up with bright prophecies for their future. An immediate marriage for them was out of the question, for since Warner's death Mrs. Smith clung to her younger daughter with absolute dependence. The last of September was decided on for sailing, as that would allow General Smith time to enter Percival at school, and to complete other necessary arrangements before the family departure. The management of Shirley would remain in Berkeley's hands, and the house would continue closed until the return of the travelers. To Nesbit Thorne, the summer had appeared interminable, and every golden hour had been shod with lead. He had passed the season partly in the Adirondacks with his relatives and partly in New York; but he was always oppressed with the same miserable unrest, the same weary longing. It would appear, at times, impossible for him to hold to his resolution of waiting until after the re-marriage of his _ci-devant_ wife, before again seeking Pocahontas. He yearned to be with her, to hold her hands, and gaze into her eyes, so intensely at times, that it required the utmost exertion of his will to prevent himself from boarding the first southward-bound train. He was forced continually to remind himself that if he should yield to the impulse, he would be guilty of egregious folly--having waited so long, he could surely wait a few weeks longer. Ethel's marriage would dissipate every shadow of a tie between them, and with that fact fully established, Pocahontas _must_ hear him. In deference to Cumberland prejudice, Mrs. Thorne's marriage had been deferred until September--to that lady's great annoyance. She saw no reason for delay, nor any necessity for humoring the Cumberland old-fogyism, and in delicate ambiguous terms she conveyed this opinion to her lover, and discovered, to her surprise and indignation, that he disagreed with her. Some concession was due to the feelings of his family, and he did not wish to be hurried; on this ground, he intrenched himself and defied the world to move him. When Cecil made a point, he held to it with the obstinacy characteristic of mediocrity, and Ethel, not being exactly in a position to dictate, and requiring moreover some portion of the Cumberland countenance, was forced to acquiesce. Some weeks before the day appointed for her marriage, Ethel removed herself and her belongings to the house of a poor and plastic aunt, who was in the habit of allowing herself to be run into any mold her niece should require. According to their agreement, Ethel gave her whilom husband due notice of her plans, and Thorne at once removed the child to Brooklyn, and placed him under the care of a sister of his father's, a gentle elderly widow who had known sorrow. His house he put in the hands of an agent to rent or sell, furnished, only removing such articles as had belonged to his parents. The house was hateful to him, and he felt that should the beautiful, new life of which he dreamed ever dawn for him, it must be set amid different surroundings from those which had framed his matrimonial failure. Still in deference to the Cumberland prejudice, the re-marriage of Ethel Thorne took place very quietly. It was a morning wedding, graced only by the presence of a few indifferent relatives, and a small crowd of curious friends. The two Misses Cumberland, handsome, heavy-browed women, after much discussion in the family bosom, and some fraternal persuasion, had allowed themselves to be seduced into attending the obnoxious nuptials, and shedding the light of the family countenance upon the ill-doing pair. Very austere and forbidding they looked as they seated themselves, reprobatively, in a pew far removed from the chancel, and their light was no better than the veriest darkness. Twelve hours after the marriage had been published to the world, another marked paper was speeding southward, addressed this time to Pocahontas, and accompanied by a thick, closely written, letter. Thorne had decided that it would be better to send a messenger before, this time, to prepare the way for him. In his letter Thorne touched but lightly on the point at issue between them, thinking it better to take it for granted that her views had modified, if not changed. The strength of his cause lay in his love, his loneliness, his yearning need of her. On these themes he dwelt with all the eloquence of which he was master, and the letter closed with a passionate appeal, in which he poured out the long repressed fire of his love: "My darling, tell me I may come to you--or rather tell me nothing; I will understand and interpret your silence rightly. You are proud, my beautiful love, and in all things I will spare you--in all things be gentle to you; in all things, save this--I can not give you up--I _will_ not give you up. I will wait here for another week, and if I do not hear from you, I will start for Virginia at once--with joy and pride and enduring thankfulness." Pocahontas took the paper to her mother's room, the letter she put quietly away. She would answer it, but not yet; at night--when the house should be quiet she would answer it. The lines containing the brief announcement were at the head of the list: MARRIED. "CUMBERLAND-THORNE.--At the church of the Holy Trinity, September 21st, 18--, by the Rev. John Sylvestus, Cecil Cumberland to Ethel Ross Thorne; both of this city." Mrs. Mason laid the paper on the little stand beside her chair. "My daughter," she said, looking up at the girl seriously, "this can make no difference." "No, mother," very quietly, "no difference; but I thought you ought to know." In her own room, at night, when the house was still, the girl sat with the letter in her lap thinking. The moonlight poured in through the open window and made a map on the floor, whereon slender shadows traced rivers, mountains and boundaries. In the trees outside, the night insects chirped, and bats darted and circled in the warm air. If only she could think that this made a difference. She was so weary of the struggle. The arguments which formerly sustained her had, with ceaseless iteration, lost their force; her battle-worn mind longed to throw down its arms in unconditional surrender. Her up-bringing had been so different; this thing was not regarded by the world in the same light as it appeared to her; was she over-strained, opinionated, censorious? Nesbit had called her so--was he right? Who was _she_, to set up her feeble judgment against the world's verdict--to condemn and criticise society's decision? Divorce must be--even Scripture allowed that; a limb must be sacrificed sometimes that a life might be saved. True, the process had always appeared to her, in her ignorance, an operation of cruel anguish, from which the patient came halt, or lame, or blind for life; but what if she should be wrong? What if the present crab-like propensity for the renewal of the missing part was the natural and sensible condition. This wicked woman--this wife who had recklessly thrown aside life's choicest gift--was happy; she had replaced her lopped-off limb with a new one, and it was well with her. Norma had said long ago that, "any woman who trifled with her happiness because of a scruple was a fool." Was Norma right? Was her hesitation senseless, doltish folly? The boundaries of the moonlight shifted; a long irregular cape, like a shining finger, stretched out across the floor and touched the hem of her dress. From behind the screen in the fireplace came a little sound, as though a mouse were rustling fragments of torn paper. If she could only recognize that this marriage _had_ made a difference. It was so wearisome, this strife with a heart that would not admit defeat, a love that fought on and would not die. What was required of her?--nothing; nothing save to sit with folded hands and let happiness flood her life like sunshine--only to lay away the letter in her desk and wait silently for her lover to come to her. Her lover--the man whose influence had changed the monotonous calm of existence into the pulsing passion of living--the man who loved her; whom she loved. No words were needed--only silence; he was so thoughtful for her, so anxious to spare her; only silence, and in a little while his arms would infold her; his beautiful eyes, heavy with tenderness, gaze deep into hers; his sweet, passionate kisses burn upon her lips. The radiant finger stole softly up her dress, across her lap, and made a little pool of brightness in the heart of which the letter lay; outside in the dove-cote a pigeon cooed sleepily to his mate. What was that tale of long ago that was coming strangely back to her? A girl, one whom they all knew and loved, had been separated from her husband after several years of misery, bravely borne. Her husband had been a confirmed drunkard, and in his cups was as one possessed with devils. They had grieved over Clare, and when her husband's brutality grew such that her brother interfered and insisted on her procuring a divorce for the protection of herself and her children, they had felt that it was right; and while they deplored the necessity, they had sided with Clare throughout. But when, two years later, wedding cards had come from Clare, from some place in the West, whither she had moved with her children; it had been a grievous shock, for the drunkard still lived. It had seemed a strange and monstrous thing, and their judgment had been severe--their censure scathing. Poor Clare! She understood her temptation better now. Poor little Clare! What was it Jim had said? The men had been guarded in the expression of their opinion before her; they were fastidious in conversation before women. This, he had said in an under-tone to Berkeley, but she had caught it, and caught also the scorn of the hazel eye, and knew that the lip curled under the brown mustache. He had said--"To a woman of innate purity the thing would be impossible. There is a coarseness in the situation which is revolting." What would he think of her? She was weighing the matter--canvassing its possibility. Was her nature deteriorating? Was she growing coarser, less pure? Would her old friend, whose standard was so high, despise her? Would she be lowered in the eyes of those whose influence and opinions had, heretofore, molded her life? The associations of years are not uprooted and cast aside in days or in months. Responsibilities engendered by the past environed her, full-grown, comprehensible, insistent; responsibilities which might be engendered by the future, lay in her mind a tiny germ in which the embryo life had scarcely begun to stir. The duty to the old life seemed to her plain and clear; a beaten track along which she might safely travel. The duty to another life which might, in time, be equally plain and clear, was now a bewildering mist through which strange shapes passed, like phantasmagoria. She could not think; her mind was benumbed; right and wrong, apparently, had changed places and commingled so, that, for the time, their identity was confused, indistinguishable: she could not guide herself, as yet; she could only hold blindly to the old supports. The silver finger had lifted itself from her lap and rested on her breast, forming a shining pathway from her heart, through the open window, out into the silence and beauty of the night. CHAPTER XX. Winter again; the city dull, listless and sodden of aspect in the gloom of a January evening. In the country, and nature's quiet places, the dusk was throwing a veil over the cheerlessness of earth, as a friend covers a friend's deficiencies with love; but here, in the haunts of men, garish electric lights made plain the misery. The air was a depressing compound which defied analysis; but was apparently composed of equal parts of snow, drizzle, and stinging sleet; the wind caught it in sudden whirls, and dashed it around corners and into the eyes and the coat collars of wayfarers with gusty malevolence. The streets were comparatively deserted, only such people being abroad as could not help themselves, and these plodded along with bent heads, and silent curses on the night. Even the poor creatures who daily "till the field of human sympathy" kept close within the shelter of four walls, no matter how forlorn, and left the elements to hold Walpurgis night in the thoroughfares alone. In a comfortable easy chair, in the handsome parlor of an elegant up-town mansion, sat Ethel Cumberland, reading a novel. Since her second marriage, life had gone pleasantly with her and she was content. Cecil never worried her about things beyond her comprehension, or required other aliments for his spiritual sustenance than that which she was able and willing to furnish; he was a commonplace man and his desires were commonplace--easily understood and satisfied. He liked a pretty wife, a handsome house, a good dinner with fine wine and jolly company; he liked high-stepping horses, a natty turn-out, and the smile of Vanity Fair. Ethel's tastes were similar, and their lives so far had fitted into each other without a single crevice. The Cumberlands were grim and unbending, it is true, and after that one concession to fraternal feeling, made no more; they held themselves rigidly aloof from the pair, and invested all intercourse with paralyzing formality. Ethel did not care a pin for them or their opinion; if they chose to be old-fogyish and disagreeable, they were quite welcome to indulge their fancy. As long as society smiled upon her, Madam Ethel was superbly indifferent to the Cumberland frown. Cecil worried over it, as men will worry, who have been accustomed to the adulation of their womenkind, when that adulation is withdrawn. He grumbled and fumed over their "damned nonsense," as he called it, and bored his wife no little with conjectures as to their reasons for being stiff and unpleasant when nobody else was. Since her return from her wedding trip, which had lengthened to four months amid the delights of Paris, Mrs. Cumberland had found time for only one short visit to her little son. There had been such an accumulation of social duties and engagements, that pilgrimages over to Brooklyn were out of the question; and besides, she disliked Mrs. Creswell, Thorne's aunt, who had charge of the boy, and who had the bad taste, Ethel felt sure, to disapprove of her. It was too bad of Nesbit to put the child so far away, and with a person whom she did not like; it amounted to a total separation, for of course it would be impossible for her to make such a journey often. When her time should be less occupied, she would write to Nesbit about it; meanwhile, her maternal solicitude found ample pacification in sending a servant across at intervals to carry toys and confectionery to the little fellow, and to inquire after his welfare. The portières were drawn aside to admit Mr. Cumberland in smoking jacket and slippers, yawning and very much bored. He was a large, heavy looking man, very dependent on outside things for his entertainment. Failing to attract his wife's attention, he lounged over to the window, and drew aside the velvet curtain. The atmosphere was heavy, and the light in front of the house appeared to hold itself aloof from the environment in a sulky, self-contained way; all down the street, the other lamps looked like the ghosts of lights that had burned and died in past ages. A little girl with a bag of apples in her frost-bitten hands came hastily around the corner, and, going with her head down against the sleet, butted into an elderly gentleman, with a big umbrella, who was driving along in an opposite direction. The gentleman gave the child an indignant shove which caused her to seat herself violently upon the pavement; the bag banged hard against the bricks and delivered up its trust, and the apples scudded away into the gutter. Cecil laughed amusedly as the little creature picked herself up crying, and proceeded to institute search for the missing treasure. A kindly policeman, who doubtless had children of his own, stopped on his beat, and helped her, wiping the mud from the rescued fruit with his handkerchief, and securing all again with a newspaper and a stout twine string which he took from his pocket; then they went away together, the officer carrying the bundle and the child trotting contentedly in the lee of him. They seemed to be old acquaintances. Nothing else happened along to amuse him, so Mr. Cumberland let the velvet folds fall back in their place and came over to the fire. He had been suffering with a heavy cold, and found confinement to the house in the last degree irksome. His wife was too much engrossed with her book to be willing to lay it aside for his entertainment, and he spurned her suggestion of the evening paper, so there was nothing for it but to sulk over a cigar and audibly curse the weather. A sharp ring at the door-bell, tardily answered by a servant, and then footsteps approached the parlor door. Husband and wife looked up with interest--with expectation. Was it a visitor? No; only the servant with a telegram which he handed Mr. Cumberland, and then withdrew. Cecil turned the thin envelope in his hand inquisitively. He was fond of having every thing pass through his own hands--of knowing all the ins and outs, the minutiae of daily happenings. "What is it?" questioned Ethel, indolently. "A dispatch for you. Shall I open it?" "If you like. I hate dispatches. They always suggest unpleasant possibilities. It's a local, so I guess it's from my aunt, about that rubbishing dinner of hers." Cecil tore open the envelope and read the few words it contained with a lengthening visage; then he let his hand fall, and stared blankly across at his wife. "It's from that fellow! and it's about the child," he said, uneasily. "What fellow? What child? Not mine! Give it to me quickly, Cecil. How slow you are!" And she snatched the telegram from his unresisting hand. Hastily she scanned the words, her breath coming in gasps, her fingers trembling so that she could scarcely hold the paper. "The child is dying. Come at once!" That was all, and the message was signed Nesbit Thorne. Short, curt, peremptory, as our words are apt to be in moments of intense emotion; a bald fact roughly stated. For a moment Ethel Cumberland sat stunned, with pallid face and shaking hands, from which the message slipped and fluttered to the carpet. Then she sprang to her feet in wild excitement, an instinct aroused in her breast which even animals know when their young are in danger. "Cecil!" she cried, sharply, "don't you hear? My child! My baby is dying! Why do you stand there staring at me? I must go--you must take me to him now, this instant, or it will be too late. Don't you understand? My darling--my boy is dying!" and she burst into a passion of grief, wringing her hands and wailing. "Go! send for a carriage. There's not a moment to lose. Oh, my baby!--my baby!" "You can't go out in this storm. It's sleeting heavily, and I've been ill. I can't let you go all that distance with only a maid, and how am I to turn out in such weather?" objected Mr. Cumberland, who, when he was opposed to a thing, was an adept in piling up obstacles. "I tell you it's impossible, Ethel. It's madness, on such a night as this." "Who cares for the storm?" raved Ethel, whose feelings, if evanescent, were intense. "I _will_ go, Cecil! I don't want you, I'll go by myself. Nothing shall stop me. If it stormed fire and blood I should go all the same. I'll walk--I'll _crawl_ there, before I will stay here and let my boy die without me. He is _my_ baby--my _own_ child, I tell you, Cecil!--if he isn't yours." Of this fact Cecil Cumberland needed no reminder. It was a thorn that pricked and stung even his dull nature--for the child's father lived. To a jealous temperament it is galling to be reminded of a predecessor in a wife's affections, even when the grave has closed over him; if the man still lives, it is intolerable. He was not a brute, and he knew that he must yield to his wife's pressure--that he had no choice but to yield; but he stood for a moment irresolute, staring at her with lowering brows, a hearty curse on living father and dying child slowly formulating in his breast. As he turned to leave the room to give the necessary orders, a carriage drove rapidly to the door and stopped, and there was a vigorous pull at the bell. Thorne had provided against all possible delay. Then the question arose of who should accompany her, and they found that there was not a single available woman in the house. It was impossible to let her go alone, and Cumberland, with the curses rising from his heart to his lips, was forced, in very manhood, to go with her himself. In Brooklyn Mrs. Creswell met them herself at the door, and appeared surprised--as well she might--to see Mr. Cumberland. She motioned Ethel toward the staircase, and then with a formal inclination of the head, ushered her more unwelcome guest into a small parlor where there was a fire and a lamp burning. Here she left him alone. Her house was in the suburbs, and there was nowhere else for him to go at that hour of the night and in that terrible storm. The room was warm and cheerful, a child's toys lay scattered on floor and sofa, a little hat and coat were on the table, beside a cigar case and a crumpled newspaper. There was nothing for the man to do save to stare around and walk the floor impatiently, longing for death to hasten with his work, so that the false position might be ended. Guided by unerring instinct, Ethel went straight to the chamber where her child lay dying--perhaps already dead. Outside the door she paused with her hand pressed hard on her throbbing heart. It was a piteous sight that met her view as the door swung open, rendered doubly piteous by the circumstances. A luxurious room, a brooding silence, a tiny white bed on which a little child lay, slowly and painfully breathing his life away. CHAPTER XXI. There were two persons in the room besides the little one: Thorne and the doctor, a grave, elderly man, who bowed to the lady, and, after a whispered word with Thorne, withdrew. Ethel sank on her knees beside the low bed and stretched out yearning arms to the child; the mother-love awakened at last in her heart and showing itself in her face. "My baby!" she moaned, "my little one, don't you know your mother? Open your beautiful eyes, my darling, and look at me; it is your mother who is calling you!" Her bonnet had fallen off, the rich wrap and furs were trailing on the carpet where she had flung them; her arms were gathered close around the little form, her kisses raining on the pallid face, the golden hair. The sleet beat on the window panes; the air of the room stirred as though a dark wing pressed it; the glow of the fire looked angry and fitful; a great, black lump of coal settled down in the grate and broke; in its sullen heart blue flames leaped and danced weirdly. The woman knelt beside the bed, and the man stood near her. In the room there was silence. The child's eyes unclosed, a gleam of recognition dawned in them, he whispered his mother's name and put his hand up to her neck. Then his look turned to his father, his lips moved. Thorne knelt beside the pillow and bent his head to listen; the little voice fluttered and broke, the hand fell away from Ethel's neck, the lids drooped over the beautiful eyes. Thorne raised the tiny form in his arms, the golden head rested on his breast, Ethel leaned over and clasped the child's hands in hers. A change passed over the little face--the last change--the breath came in feeble, fluttering sighs, the pulse grew weaker, weaker still, the heart ceased beating, the end had come. Gently, peacefully, with his head on his father's breast, his hands in his mother's clasp, the innocent spirit had slipped from its mortal sheath, and the waiting angel had tenderly received it. Thorne laid the child gently down upon the pillows, pressing his hand over the exquisite eyes, his lips to the ones that would never pay back kisses any more; then he rose and stood erect. Ethel had risen also, and confronted him, terror, grief, and bewilderment, fighting for mastery in her face--in her heart. Half involuntarily, she stretched out her hands, and made a movement as though she would go to him; half involuntarily he extended his arms to receive her; then, with a shuddering sob, her arms fell heavily to her sides, and he folded his across his breast. Down below, pacing the floor, in hot impatience to be gone, was the other man, waiting with smoldering jealousy and fierce longing for the end. And, outside, the snow fell heavily, with, ever and anon, a wild lash of bitter sleet; the earth cowered under her white pall, hiding from the storm, and the wind sobbed and moaned as it swept through the leafless trees like a creature wailing. CHAPTER XXII. The south of France. There is music in the very words--sunshine, poetry, and a sense of calm; a suggestion of warmth and of infinite delight. No wonder pain, care and invalidism, flock there, from less favored climes, for comfort and healing; returning, year after year, to rest beneath the shadow of olive and ilex, and to dream the luscious days away beside the blue waters of the Mediterranean, drinking in strength and peace with every far-reaching gaze into the cloudless azure of the southern sky, every deep-drawn breath of the sunny southern air. Mrs. Smith grew daily stronger, more like herself. Time, and care, and ceaseless affection, had wrought their beneficent work, and mind and body were recovering a healthier tone; her interest revived, and her hold on life renewed itself. As the weeks drifted into months, her condition became so materially improved that the anxiety of her family subsided and left room for other thoughts and interests; and finally her health was sufficiently re-established to admit of her husband's leaving them in the picturesque French village, while he returned to America. In the quaint little village, time glided softly by on golden-slippered feet, the peaceful monotony broken only by little jaunts to neighboring hamlets, the arrival and departure of the mails, and long, blissful sails on the deep blue sea. Blanche's sweet face and gentle ways speedily won the simple hearts of the fisher-folks, and her letters were filled with anecdotes of her village _protégés_, and their picturesque life. And a steamer would have been necessary to convey away the floral and aquatic treasures heaped on her by the kindly peasants and their little brown-legged children. The family would winter abroad, and return to America in the spring for the wedding, which Blanche had decided should take place in June. June was a lovely month, she thought, past all the uncertainty of spring, and with the glory of summer beyond it. Some weeks after General Smith's return to New York, Nesbit Thorne joined his relatives in the pretty Mediterranean village. The general had found his nephew so changed, so worn in mind and body, that the kindly old soldier became seriously alarmed, and insisted on trying the remedy uppermost in his mind. He had come, with unswerving faith, to regard the south of France as an unfailing sanitarium, and he took his nephew promptly in hand, and gave him no peace until he consented to go abroad, never leaving him until he had secured his stateroom, and seen him embarked on his voyage. Thorne went indifferently enough, partly to escape his uncle's persistence, and partly because all places were alike, all equally wearisome to him. He cherished also a hope of hearing, through Blanche, some tidings of the woman who still possessed him like a spell. When he first joined them, Norma's waning hopes flickered up, in a final effort at revivification, but not for long. That her cousin should be moody, listless and thoroughly unhinged, did not surprise her, since the trials through which he had recently passed were sufficient to have tried a more robust physique than his. She set herself to interest and cheer him, and, at first, was in a measure successful; for Thorne--always fond of Norma, observed her efforts and exerted himself to a responsive cheerfulness, often feigning an interest he was far from feeling, in order to avoid disappointing her. But as he grew accustomed to her ministrations, the effort relaxed and he fell into gloom and bitterness once more. There was in the man a sense of wrong, as well as failure. Life had dealt hardly with him--the bitterness had been wrung out to him to the very dregs. In all things--whether his intentions had been noble or ignoble, he had alike failed. He could not understand it. In his eyes, the conduct of the two women whose influence had been potent in his life, while springing from different causes, had resulted in the same effect--uncompromising hardness toward _him_. The diverse properties of the solutions had made no appreciable difference in the crystallization. His love for Pocahontas had suffered no diminution; rather, it had increased. His longing for her presence, for her love, was so great at times, that the thought would come to him to end the intolerable pain by stopping forever the beating of the heart that would not break. Her second refusal had been a cruel blow to him. He had seemed to himself so patient, so tenderly considerate; he had made allowance for the conservatism, the old world principles and prejudices amid which she had been reared; he had given her time to weigh and consider and plead. That the verdict should have gone against him, admitted, in his mind, but of one conclusion--Pocahontas did not love him. Had she loved him, she _must_ have proved responsive; love, as he understood it, did not crucify itself for a principle; it was more prone to break barriers than to erect them. And this point of hers was no principle; it was, at noblest, an individual conscientious scruple, and to the man of the world it appeared the narrowest of bigotry. His mind slowly settled to the conviction that she had never loved him as he had loved her--as he still loved her. Then began a change for the worse. The doubt of her love begot other doubts--a grisly brood of them--doubt of truth, doubt of generosity and courage, doubt of disinterestedness, doubt of womanhood. Thorne was getting in a bad way. Over the smoldering fires of his heart a crust of cynicism began to form and harden, powdered thick with the ashes of bitterness. What was the worth of love?--_he_ had found it but a fair-weather friend. A storm--less than a storm--a cloud, though but as big as a man's hand, had sent the frail thing skurrying to cover. All ended in self--the _ego_ dominated the world. Righteousness and unrighteousness arrived at the same result. The good called it self-sacrifice, and blinded and glorified themselves; the bad were less hypocritical; _they_ gave it no sounding name and sought it openly. Self--from first to last, the same under all names and all disguises. Nay, the wicked were truer than the good, for the self-seeker inflicted no lasting injury on any save himself, while the ardor with which the self-immolator flourished the sacrificial knife imperiled other vitals than his own. Truly, Thorne was getting into a very bad way. His was not the nature that emits sweetness when bruised; it cankered and got black spots through it. And he knew no physician to whom he could go for healing; no power, greater than his own, to set his disjointed life straight. Love and faith, alike, stood afar off. The waters of desolation encompassed his soul, without a sign of olive branch or dove. Norma, watching him with the eyes of her heart, as well as those of her understanding, learned something of all this. Thorne did not tell her, indeed he talked little in the days they spent together, walking or sitting on the warm dry sand of the coast, and of himself not at all. His pain was a prisoner, and his breast its Bastile. But Norma learned it, all the same, and learned, too, that never while that stormy heart beat in a living breast would it beat for her. She faced the conclusion squarely, accepted it, and took her resolution. Norma was a proud woman, and she never flinched; the world should know nothing of her pain, should never guess that her life held aught of disappointment. A letter from Blanche to Berkeley, written within the following month, contained the result of Norma's resolution. "You will be surprised," Blanche wrote, "to hear of Norma's sudden marriage to Hugh Castleton, which took place three days ago, at the house of the American Minister here in Paris. We were amazed--at least mamma and I were--when Hugh joined us here, and, after a long interview with Norma, informed us that he had cabled father for consent and that the ceremony was to take place almost immediately. Hugh, as perhaps you know, is a brother of Mrs. Vincent, Norma's intimate friend, and he has been in love with Norma time out of mind. I do not like the marriage, and feel troubled and sick at heart about it. It has been so hastily arranged, and Norma isn't one bit in love with her husband, and don't pretend to be. Hugh is patient and devoted to her, which is my strongest hope for their happiness in the future. It seems to me so unnatural to make a loveless marriage. I can't understand a woman's doing it. Nesbit is going to Palestine and the East. He is miserably changed; his hair is beginning to streak with gray at the temples already, and the lines about his mouth are getting hard. It makes me miserable to think about his life and his future. I can't help feeling that he has had hard measure meted out to him all around. It is cruel to touch happiness but never grasp it. I know what you all think about the affair, Berkeley, but I'm so wrought up about poor Nesbit, I must and _will_ speak. He ought not to be made to suffer so; it would be far kinder to take a pistol and kill him at once. You don't think about _him_ at all--and you should. I know that I'm just a silly little thing, and that my opinions don't amount to much, but I must say that I think you are wrong about this matter. A human soul is worth more than a scruple, be the scruple ever so noble, and I believe the Heavenly Father thinks so too. If you, who are strong and large-minded, will put prejudice aside and think the matter out fairly, you will be _obliged_ to see that Pocahontas is doing wrong. She is killing herself, and she is killing him, and you ought not to let her do it. You know your influence over her--I believe it is you and your mother--the dread of disappointing you, or lowering herself in your estimation, or something of that sort, that holds her back. Don't do it any longer, Berkeley. Be generous and noble and large-hearted, like God means us all to be toward each other. It is awful to be so hard. Excess of righteousness must be sinful--almost as sinful as lack of righteousness. There, I've said it all and shocked you, but I can't help that. Nesbit's face haunts me so that I can't rid myself of it, sleeping or waking. I am all the time picturing terrible possibilities. Think of all that Nesbit has had to endure. Think of how that selfish woman wrecked his past, and ask yourself if there is any justice--not mercy--bare justice, in letting her wreck his future, now that the child's death has severed the last link that bound them together. Has _any thing_ been spared Nesbit? Has not his heart been wrung again and again? Put yourself in his place, Berkeley, and acknowledge that after so much tempest, he is entitled to _some_ sunshine, How _can_ Pocahontas stand it? Could _I_, if it were _you_? Could I endure to see you suffer? Do you think that if _you_ were in Nesbit's place I would not come to you, and put my arms round you, and draw your head to my bosom and whisper--'Dear love, if to all this bitterness I can bring one single drop of sweet, take it freely, fully from my lips and from my love?'" CHAPTER XXIII. Berkeley Mason went on to New York in ample time to meet the incoming Cunarder. His sister accompanied him, and as it was her first visit to the Empire City, Mason arranged to have nearly a week for lionizing before the arrival of the travelers. Percival was allowed to come from Hoboken and join the party, in order that his mother's eyes might be gladdened by the sight of him the instant she should land. At the last moment, General Smith was prevented from joining his family in Paris according to his original intention, and having old-fashioned notions relative to the helplessness of ladies, and no sort of confidence in Blanche's ability to distinguish herself as her mother's courier and protector, he cabled privately to Nesbit Thorne, requesting him to defer his Eastern journey for a month, and escort his aunt and cousin home. Thorne changed his plans readily enough. He only contemplated prolonged travel as an expedient to fill the empty days, and if he could be of service to his relatives, held himself quite at their disposal. Pocahontas was ignorant of this change of programme, or it is certain that she would have remained in Virginia. Her feelings toward Thorne had undergone no change, but, after the long struggle, there had come to her a quiescence that was almost peace. So worn and tempest-tossed had been her mind, that she clung to even this semblance of rest, and would hardly yet have risked the re-opening of the battle, which a meeting with Thorne would be sure to inaugurate. She was glad to see her old friend General Smith again, for between the two existed a hearty affection, and more than glad to see Percival. That young gentleman's joy at being released from the thralldom of school, coupled with the exhilaration of seeing his friends, and the prospect of a speedy reunion with his mother and Blanche, appeared to well-nigh craze him. It certainly required unusual vents for its exuberance--such as standing on his head in the elevator, promenading the halls on his hands, and turning "cart-wheels" down the passages, accomplishments acquired with labor and pain from his colored confreres in the South. It is an interesting thing to await, on the wharf of a large city, the incoming of a great steamer. The feeling of expectation in the air is exhilarating, the bustle, hurry and excitement are contagious; involuntarily one straightens up, and grows alert, every sense on the _qui vive_, eyes observant, intelligence active, memory garnering impressions. Note the variety of expression in the faces of the waiting crowd--the eager longing, the restless expectation of some; the listless inactivity, indifference, or idle curiosity of others. Stand aside, if you have no business here, no personal interest in the event about to happen, and watch your fellow-men for your own amusement and profit. Many a glimpse of domestic history, many a peep into complex human nature will be vouchsafed you, and if the gift of fancy be yours, you can piece out many a story. See; the throbbing monster has reached her resting place, her fires may subside, her heart may cease its regular pulsations, her machinery may lapse into well-earned rest, given over to polishing and oil and flannel rags. The bridge is down, the waiting crowds rush together, the wharf crowd merging into the deck crowd, and both pouring landward again in an eager flood. There are embraces, kisses, congratulations, tears, a continuous stream of questions and reply, and a never-ending reference to luggage. There they stand, a little group apart, close beside the railing, with hands outstretched and eyes alight; and amid the bustle and confusion, the embraces and hand-clasping, the collection of hand-traps, and inquiries about checks, no one had time to notice that, at sight of each other, two faces paled, or that two hands as they met were cold and tremulous. In a marvelously short time after landing, the party were packed into carriages, and whirled away to their hotel, leaving their heavy luggage in the jaws of the custom-house to be rescued later by the general and Berkeley. As they left the wharf, Pocahontas noticed another steamer forging slowly in, and preparing to occupy the berth next that of the Cunarder. A couple of hours after the arrival of the European travelers at the St. Andrew's Hotel, a squarely-built young man of medium height, with a handsome, bronzed face, and heavy, brown mustache, sprung lightly up the steps of the hotel and passed into the clerk's office. Here he ordered a room and delivered his valise and umbrella to a porter, explaining that he should probably remain several days. Then he turned to the book, pushed toward him by the clerk, to register his name. "You are late, sir," remarked that functionary, affably; not that he felt interest in the matter, but because to converse was his nature. "Late, for what?" inquired the gentleman, without glancing up. "For nothing, in particular," replied the clerk. "I only made the remark because the other Cunard passengers got in an hour ago." "I didn't come by the Cunarder. I'm from down South," responded the bronzed man. "I saw her discharging as we came in." Then he ran his eye over the names above his own on the page of the register. There were only three--Mrs. General Smith, Miss Smith, Nesbit Thorne. No one he knew, so he slapped together the covers of the book, and pushed it from him; procured a light for his cigar, pocketed this key of his room, and sauntered out to have a look at the city, and possibly to drop in at one of the theaters later on. The clerk, in idle curiosity, pulled the register toward him, opened it, and glanced at the name; it was the fourth from the top, just under Nesbit Thorne's--James Dabney Byrd, Mexico. CHAPTER XXIV. No; Blanche was not a clever woman; that could not be claimed for her; but her essential elements were womanly. Pain, grief, distress of any sort woke in her heart a longing to give help and comfort. Since Norma's marriage, Blanche had drawn much nearer to her cousin. She had always been fond of him in an abstract way, and had felt a surface sorrow, not unmingled with aesthetic interest, in the dramatic incidents of his life. She had lived in the same house with him, had associated with him daily, had taken his hand, had kissed him; but she had never _known_ him. She had never gauged his nature with the understanding born of sympathy, never seen the real man. Now it was otherwise. Association with larger, simpler natures had developed the latent capabilities of her own, and the presence of love had made her more observant, more responsive. Her enlarged sympathies made her yearn over Thorne; her happiness made her long earnestly to help him. She cast about in her mind what she should do. She knew the strength of Berkeley's prejudices, and that his influence with his sister had been--and still was--silently but strenuously exerted to hold her back from a course from which, as Blanche suspected, his feelings, more than his conscience, revolted. Blanche, differently reared, could not see the matter from the Mason standpoint at all. To her, the past was past; to be deplored, of course, but not to be allowed to cast a baleful shadow on the future. That, to Blanche, was morbid; she could see no sense in drawing conscientiousness to a point and impaling her own heart, and, worse, other hearts thereon. Blanche's creed was simple--people committed faults, made blunders, sinned, suffered; atoned the sin by the suffering, and should then be kissed and forgiven. She talked to Berkeley in her gentle, persuasive way (she had not courage yet to talk to Pocahontas) and exerted all her influence in Thorne's behalf; but she speedily discovered that she made little headway; that while Berkeley listened, he did not assent; that he put down her efforts; mainly, to personal attachment to her cousin, and was therefore inclined to rule out her testimony. She needed help; pressure must be brought to bear which had no connection with Thorne; some one from the old life must speak, some one who shared the prejudices, and was big enough and generous enough to set them aside and judge of the affair from an unbiased, impersonal standpoint. When this idea presented itself, her mind turned instantly to Jim. Here was a man from the old life, a man reared as they had been reared, a man in no way connected with Thorne. Jim could help her, if he would, and somehow, Blanche felt assured that he would. Jim had discovered their presence in the hotel very speedily and had joined the party, glad, with an earnest gladness, to see his old friends again, glad also to meet these new friends who had become associated with the old ones. Blanche had been attracted by him, as women, children, and dumb animals always were attracted by him; he was strong, and yet very gentle. She determined to speak to him, to make him understand the position, and to entreat him to exert his influence with Berkeley, and through Berkeley, with Pocahontas, to set this matter straight. She did not know that she was about to do a cruel thing; was about to stretch a soul on the rack and turn the screws. That fine reserve which infolded the Masons like a veil precluded gossiping about themselves or their affairs. Blanche had never heard of Jim as the lover of Pocahontas--or if she had, it had been in an outside, intangible way that had made no impression on her. Possessed by her idea, and intent on securing an opportunity for uninterrupted conversation, she asked Jim to take a walk with her. She had some calls to make, she said, and they would walk through the park. At this season the park was very beautiful, and she should like to show it to him; New Yorkers were very proud of it. Blanche knew that she was doing an unconventional thing; but she had observed, rather wonderingly, the frank helpfulness with which Southerners would identify themselves with each others' affairs, and she felt sure that in speaking to Jim she ran little risk of rebuff. Jim had known the Masons always, was of their blood; to put his shoulder to their wheel would seem to him the right, and natural thing to do. Therefore Blanche made her request with confidence, and Jim, who had never in his life questioned a woman's right to his time and attention, went with her willingly. They sauntered about for a time and Jim admired all the beauties that were pointed out to him, and showed his country training by pointing out in his turn, subtler beauties which escaped her; the delicate shading of bark and leaf-bud, the blending of the colors of the soil, the way the shadows fell, the thousand and one things an artist, or a man reared in the woods and fields, is quick to see, if he has eyes in his head. He pointed out to her a nest a pair of birds were building, and called her attention to a tiny squirrel, with a plume-like tail, jumping about among the branches overhead. He told her stories of the tropics, too, and of the strange picturesque life in the land of the Montezumas, and made himself pleasant in a cheery, companionable way that was very winning. He was pleased with Blanche, and thought that his old friend had done well for himself in securing the love of the sweet-faced maiden at his side. He liked talking to her, and walking beside her in the sunshine; he decided that "Berke was a deuced lucky fellow, and had fallen on his feet," and he was glad of it. After awhile they turned into an unfrequented walk, and Blanche seized her opportunity. She made Jim sit down on a bench under an old elm tree and seated herself beside him. Then, insensibly and deftly, she turned the talk to Virginia. She spoke of his old home, and praised its beauty, and told him how a love for it had grown up in her heart, although she was a stranger; she spoke of the cordial, friendly people, and of the kindness they had extended to her family; of Warner, his illness, death, and burial beside poor Temple Mason. Then she glided on to Pocahontas, and spoke of her friend with enthusiasm, almost with reverence; then, seeing that his interest was aroused, she told him as simply and concisely as she could the story of her cousin's love for Pocahontas, and the position in which the affair now stood. "I know that she loves him," Blanche said quietly, "loves him as he loves her, and that she is breaking her own heart, as well as his, by this hesitation. It seems to me so wrong. What is a scruple compared to the happiness of a life? The child is dead, all connection between Nesbit and that heartless woman is severed forever. She is no more to him than she is to you, or to Berkeley. I think that Pocahontas would give way, but for Berkeley, for the influences of her old life. I think some one ought to speak to Berkeley, to make him see how wrong he is, how hard, how almost cruel. I have spoken, but I'm of Nesbit's blood, on Nesbit's side, and my words haven't the weight that words would have coming from a person who is outside of it all, and yet who belongs _to them_. If YOU would speak, Mr. Byrd, I think it would do good. Berkeley would listen to you, and would come to look at this matter in its true light. Pocahontas is breaking her heart, and Nesbit's heart, and she ought not to be let do it." There were tears in Blanche's eyes and in her voice as she spoke, and she laid one small hand on Jim's arm appealingly. Jim never moved; he sat like a man carved out of stone and listened. He knew that Pocahontas had never loved _him_, as he had wanted her to love him; but the knowledge that her love was given to another man, was bitter. He said no word, only listened with a jealous hatred of the man, who had supplanted him, growing in his breast. Blanche looked at him with tearful eyes and quivering lips; his gaze was on the ground; his face wore, to her, an absent, almost apathetic look. She was disappointed. She had expected, she did not know exactly _what_, but certainly more sympathy, more response. She thought that his heart must be less noble than his face, and she regretted having given him her confidence and solicited his aid. When they got back to the avenue, she released him from further attendance a trifle coldly. She would make her calls alone, she said, it might be irksome to him, probably he had other engagements. He had been very good to sacrifice so much of his time to her; she would not detain him longer. Jim went back to the path and sat down again, not noticing her change of manner, and only conscious of the relief of being free from the necessity of talking commonplace, of being left to think this matter out alone. He thought vaguely that she was a kind, considerate woman and then she passed out of his mind. The first feeling with which he grappled was wonder; a strange thing had happened. A few short months ago these people had been unknown to him; were, as far as his life had been concerned, non-existent. And now! Land, home, friends, love, all things that had been his, were theirs! His place knew him no more; these strangers filled it. It was a strange thing, a cruel thing. Pocahontas had been glad to see him again, but in her pleasure there had been preoccupation; he had felt it; it was explained now. He knew that she had never loved him, but the possibility of her loving another man had never come home to him before. He tried to steady himself and realize it; it ate into his heart like corroding acid. Perhaps it was not true; there might be some mistake; then his heart told him that it was true; that there was no mistake. She loved this man, this stranger, of whose existence she had been ignorant that evening when she had said farewell to _him_ under the old willows beside the river. She had been tender and pitiful then; she had laid her soft lips against his hand, had given him a flower from her breast. He moved his hand, and, with the fingers of the other hand, touched the spot which her lips had pressed; the flower, faded and scentless, lay, folded with a girlish note or two she had written him, in the inside pocket of his vest. The shadows shifted as the wind swayed the branches; the sound of women's voices came from behind a clump of evergreens; they were raised in surprise or excitement, and sounded shrill and jarring. In the distance a nurse pushed a basket-carriage carelessly; she was talking to a workman who slouched beside her, and the child was crying. Two sparrows near at hand, quarreled and fought over a bit of string. His anger burned against Thorne. He could see no good in his rival; no tragedy, no pathos, in the situation. Had his life gone wrong?--Doubtless the fault had been his. Did he suffer? Jim felt a brute joy in the knowledge of his pain. What was that the young lady had said? Thorne had been divorced--the woman who had been his wife lived--there were prejudices; he knew them all; a barrier existed; his heart leaped. Here was hope, here was vengeance. A cloud passed over the sun, eclipsing its brightness; a chill was on the face of nature; a dead twig, broken by the squirrel in his gambols, fell at his feet. He had been asked to speak, to exert his influence, to smooth the path for his rival. He would _not_ speak; why should he speak? Was it any business of his? Nay; was it not rather his duty to be silent, or to throw such influence as he possessed into the other scale? Should he aid to bring about a thing which he had been taught to regard with aversion? Was it not his duty as a man, as a Christian, to _increase_ the prejudice, to build higher the barrier? Was it not better that Thorne should suffer, that Pocahontas should suffer, as he himself was suffering, than that wrong should be done? The devil is never subtler than when he assumes the garb of priest. And if he did not speak--more, if he should solidify, by every means in his power, this barrier of prejudice into a wall of principle, which should separate these two forever, what might not be the result? Jim's strong frame shook like a leaf. His abnormally-excited imagination leaped forward and constructed possibilities that thrilled him. The spot on his hand that her lips had touched, burned. A little girl came down the walk, trundling a hoop; it struck against Jim's foot and fell over. The helpful instinct that was in him made him stoop and lift it for her; the child, a tiny thing, pushed back her curls and looked up at him with grave, wide-open eyes; suddenly her face dimpled; a smile like sunshine broke over it, and she raised her sweet lips to his, to kiss her thanks. What had happened? A child's look, a child's kiss; it was a strange thing. He raised his head and glanced around, passing his hand over his brow like a man aroused from a delirium of dreams. Forces foreign to his nature had been at work. He could not understand it--or himself. Words came back to him out of his past--his own words--"a man must hold up his own weight," and other words, "a man must help with his strength a woman's weakness." He thought of his love with pity, with remorse. He had never failed her, never put himself first, till now. What was this thing he had thought of doing? Jim stood erect and pulled himself together, lifting his head and squaring his shoulders as a man does who is about to face an issue fairly. CHAPTER XXV. Pocahontas was alone. The party had dispersed, one here, one there, about their own concerns, filled with their own interests. They had invited her to accompany them, even urged it; but she would not; she was tired, she said, and would rest; but there was no rest for her. The crisis of her life had come, and she was trying to face it. Heretofore the fight had been unequal; the past had had the advantage of sun and wind and field, the old influences had been potent because they were present, had never been broken. Now she was in a measure removed from them; the forces faced each other on neutral ground, the final conflict was at hand. What should she do? How should she decide? She was torn and swayed by the conflict of emotions within her; the old fight was renewed with added fierceness. Her heart yearned over Thorne, her love rose up and upbraided her for hardness. He was so changed, he had suffered so, his hair was growing gray, hard lines were deepening about his mouth, and to his eyes had come an expression that wrung her heart--a cynical hopelessness, a sullen gloom. Was this her work? Was she shutting out hope from a life, thus making a screen of a scruple to keep sunlight from a soul? Unconsciously she was assuming the responsibility which he had thrust upon her--was fitting the burden to her shoulders. She did not analyze the position; did not see that he had been ruthless; that he had no right to use such a weapon against her. She only saw that he suffered, that he needed her, that she loved him. What did it matter about herself? Her scruple might die--and if it should not, she was strong enough to hold it down, to keep her foot on its breast. Was her love so weak that it should shrink from pain? If only the scruple would die! If only the old influences would lose their hold; if only she could see this thing as the world saw it. Was she made different from others, that her life should be molded on other lines than _their_ lives? God, above! _Why_ should she suffer, and make Thorne suffer? Her mother, Berkeley, the dead brother whom she had exalted into a hero, the memory of the brave men and noble women from whom she had sprung, the old traditions, the old associations rose, in her excited fancy, and arrayed themselves on one side. Against them in serried ranks came compassion, all the impulses of true womanhood toward self-sacrifice and love. The loneliness of the crowded hotel oppressed her; the consciousness of the life that environed but did not touch her, gave birth to a yearning to get away from it all--out into the sunshine and the sweet air, and the warmth and comfort of nature. If she could get away into some still, leafy place, she could think. Hastily arraying herself, she left her chamber and descended the broad stairway. She passed through the hall, and out into the sunshine of the busy street; and Jim, who, unseen by her, was standing in the clerk's office, turned and looked after her. A troubled expression, like the shadow of a cloud, passed over his face, and he followed her silently. In the street it was better. There were people, little children, a sense of life, a sense of humanity, and over all, around all, the warm sunlight. Comfort and help abounded. A woman, weighed down with a heavy burden, paused, bewildered, in the middle of a crossing--a man helped her; a child stood crying on a doorstep--a larger child soothed it; an ownerless dog looked pitifully into a woman's face--she stooped and stroked its head with her ungloved hand. The longing for the isolation of nature slowly gave place to a recognition of the community of nature. A quiet street branched off from the crowded thoroughfare. Pocahontas turned into it and walked on. The roar of traffic deadened as she left it further and further behind; the passers became fewer. It was the forenoon and the people were at work; the houses rose tall on either hand; the street was still and almost deserted. A man passed with a barrow of flowers--roses, geraniums, jasmin; their breath made the air fragrant. In a stately old church near by some one was playing; a solemn, measured movement. Pocahontas turned aside and entered. The place was still and hushed; the light dim and beautiful with color; on the altar, tapers burned before the mother and child; everywhere there was a faint odor of incense. Pocahontas wandered softly here and there, soothed by the peace, comforted by the music. On one side there was a small chapel, built by piety in memory of death. Pocahontas entered it. Here, too, lights burned upon the altar, shedding a soft, golden radiance that was caught and reflected by the silver candlesticks and the gold and crystal of the vases. On the steps of the altar was a great basket of roses; and through a memorial window streamed the sunlight, casting on the tesselated pavement a royal wealth of color, blue and gold and crimson; against the dark walls marble tablets gleamed whitely. Near one of them, a tiny shield, a man stood with his head bent and his shoulder resting against a carved oak column--Nesbit Thorne, and the tablet bore the inscription: "Allen Thorne, obiit Jan. 14th, 18--, aetat 4 years." Pocahontas drew back, her breath coming in short gasps; the movement of the music quickened, grew stronger, fiercer, with a crash of cords. Thorne did not move; his head was bent, his profile toward her; about his pose, his whole form, was a look of desolation. His face was stern, its outlines sharp, its expression that of a man who had had hard measure meted out to him, and who knew it, and mutinied against the decree. He did not see her, he was not conscious of her presence, and the knowledge that it was so, sent a pang through her heart. A wave of pity swept over her; an impulse struggled into life, to go to him, to take his hand in hers, to press close to his side, to fill the void of his future with her love. What held her back? Was it pride? Why could not she go to him? His unconsciousness of her presence held her aloof--made her afraid with a strange, new fear. Footsteps neared, echoing strangely; the music had sunk to a minor cadence which seemed to beat the measure of their advance. The eyes of the woman were filled with a strained expectancy. Into the waiting place, framed by the central arch, came the figure of a man--strongly built, of noble air, of familiar presence. Eyes brave and true and faithful met hers gravely, a hand was outstretched toward her. Pocahontas shivered, and her heart beat with heavy, muffled strokes. The counter influences of her life were drawing to the death struggle. Thorne turned; his eyes were upon her; he advanced slowly. Jim came straight to where she stood and took her hands in his; his face was pale and drawn, as the face of a man who has passed through the white heat of suffering. His hands were cold, and trembled a little as they closed on hers; he tried to speak, but his lips were dry and his voice inaudible. "Sweetheart," he said at length, using the tender old word unconsciously, and speaking brokenly, "I asked you once to let the thought of me come--sometimes--when life should be hard upon you; to let the influence, of my love stir sometimes in your memory. That would be wrong now--worse; it would be selfish and unmanly. A man has no right to cast his shadow on a woman's life when it has passed into the keeping of another man." His voice grew husky, his lips quivered, but he went bravely on. "I know your story--Berkeley has told me--the young lady has spoken--I take back the request. I'd rather all thought of me should be banished from you in this world and in the next, than that it should make a breach, even in the outworks of your life, to let in trouble to you." He paused abruptly; through the strong frame ran a shudder, like the recoil from pain; but the man's will was firm, his purpose steadfast. All of her life he had cared for her, been tender with her; shielding her from trouble, or grief, or blame, as far as in him lay, and, though his heart should break, he would not fail her now. Slowly he spoke again. "Child," he said, gently, "if I've ever said a word that hurts you, forget it, put it from you. I did not understand then; I do _now_--and I'd give my right hand to recall it. What you do has always been right in my eyes--_must_ always be right. I can never----" his voice failed him; something rose in his throat and choked utterance; he bent his head until his lips touched the hands he held, and then turned quietly away. Pocahontas did not move; she scarcely breathed. The spell of Jim's magnanimity held her, made her realize, at last, the grandeur, the immensity of love. Her soul was awed. Thought followed thought through her brain; love in its sublimity was bared to her gaze; self fell away--burned as dross in the fire of suffering; to guide herself was not enough; she must aid and comfort others. If hands were outstretched in anguish, she must clasp them; if a heart cried to her in desolation, she had no right to turn aside. Was she so pure, so clean, so righteous, that contact with another soul--one that had known passions and sorrows of which she was, of which she _must_ be, ignorant--should soil her? If so, her righteousness was a poor thing, her cleanness, that of the outside of the cup and platter, her purity, that of unquarried marble. Thorne drew nearer; she raised her head; their eyes met; he extended his hands with a gesture not to be denied. With a smile of indescribable graciousness, a tenderness, a royalty of giving, she made a movement forward and laid her hands in his. CHAPTER XXVI. Thorne did not accompany the party to Virginia, although it was tacitly understood that he should follow in time for Blanche's wedding, which would take place in June. Pocahontas wished it so arranged, and Thorne, feeling that his love had come to him, as through fire, was anxious to order all things according to her wishes. He was very quiet, grave, and self-contained; his old buoyancy, his old lightness had passed away forever. The whirl and lash of a hurricane leave traces which not even time can efface. A man does not come through fire unscathed--he is marred, or purified; he is never the same. In Thorne, already, faintly stirred nature's grand impulse of growth, of pressing upward toward the light. He strove to be patient, tender, considerate, to take his happiness, not as reward for what he was, but as earnest of what he might become. Jim remained in New York also. He would go back to his work, he said, it would be better so. He had come north on business for his company, and when that should be completed he would return to Mexico. He would not go to Virginia; he did not want to see strangers in the old home; he would write to his sisters and explain; no one need trouble about him; he would manage well enough. Before they separated, Jim had a long talk with Berkeley, and in the course of it the poor fellow completed his victory over self. He spoke generously of Thorne. "It's a big subject, Berkeley," he said, in conclusion, "and I don't see that you or I have any call to pass judgment on it, or to lay down arbitrary lines, saying _this_ is righteous, _that_ is unrighteous. We may have our own thoughts about the matter--we _must_ have, but we've no right to lop or stretch other people to fit them. Princess is a pure woman, a noble woman, better, a thousand-fold, than you or me or any other man that breathes. From her standpoint, what she does is right, and, whether we differ with her or not, we are bound to believe that she has weighed the matter and made her choke in all honor and truth. And, Berke, listen to me! You are powerless to alter any thing, and it's a man's part to face the inevitable and make the best of it. You can't better things, but you can make them worse. Don't alienate your sister. You are the nearest man of her blood, and, as such, you have influence with her; don't throw it away. If you are cold, hard, and unloving to her now, you'll set up a barrier between you that you'll find it hard to level. Never let her turn from you, Berke. Stand by her always, old friend." Poor Jim! He could not as yet disassociate the old from the new. To him it still seemed as though Berkeley, and, in a measure, he himself were responsible for her life; must take care and thought for her future. Love and habit form bonds that thought does not readily burst asunder. Berkeley was good to his sister--influenced partly by Blanche, partly by Jim, but most of all by his strong affection for Pocahontas herself. He drew her to his breast and rested his cheek against her hair a moment, and kissed her tenderly, and the brother and sister understood each other without a spoken word. He could not bring himself to be cordial to Thorne all at once, but he loyally tried to do his best, and Thorne was big enough to see and appreciate the effort. There might come a time when the men would be friends. Poor Mrs. Mason! Her daughter's engagement was a shock, almost a blow to her, and she could not reconcile herself to it at first. The foundations seemed to be slipping from under her feet, the supports in which she trusted, to be falling away. She was a just as well as a loving woman, and she knew that the presence of a new and powerful love brings new responsibilities and a new outlook on life. She faithfully tried to put herself in her daughter's place and to judge of the affair from Pocahontas's standpoint; but the effort was painful to her, and the result not always what she could wish. She recognized, the love being admitted, that Thorne had claims which must be allowed; but she felt it hard that such claims should exist, and her recognition of them was not sufficiently full and generous to make her feel at one with herself. Old minds adapt themselves to new conditions slowly. However, mother-love is limitless, and, through all, her impulse was to hold to her child, to do nothing, to say nothing which would wound or alienate her. And for the rest--there was no need of haste; she could keep these things and "ponder them in her heart." 
53711	----	THE ORCHID BY ROBERT GRANT ILLUSTRATED BY ALONZO KIMBALL CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK 1905 Copyright, 1905, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS _Published, April, 1905_ TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK [Illustration: "I ask you to drink to the happiness of the loveliest woman in creation."] ILLUSTRATIONS "_I ask you to drink to the happiness of the loveliest woman in creation_" Frontispiece Facing page _The smile of incredulity which curved her lips betrayed entertainment also_ 108 _"I should not permit it!" he thundered. "I should go to law; I should appeal to the courts"_ 156 _A huge machine of bridal white ... tore around the corner_ 222 THE ORCHID I It was generally recognized that Lydia Arnold's perceptions were quicker than those of most other people. She was alert in grasping the significance of what was said to her; her face clearly revealed this. She had the habit of deliberating just an instant before responding, which marked her thought; and when she spoke, her words had a succinct definiteness of their own. The quality of her voice arrested attention. The intonation was finished yet dry: finished in that it was well modulated; dry in that it was void of enthusiasm. Yet Lydia was far from a grave person. She laughed readily and freely, but in a minor key, which was only in keeping with her other attributes of fastidiousness. Her mental acuteness and conversational poise were accounted for at Westfield--the town within the limits of which dwelt the colony of which she was a member--by the tradition that she had read everything, or, more accurately, that she had been permitted to read everything while still a school-girl. Her mother, a beautiful, nervous invalid--one of those mysterious persons whose peculiarities are pigeon-holed in the memories of their immediate families--had died in Lydia's infancy. Her amiable but self-indulgent father had been too easy-going or too obtuse to follow the details of her home-training. He had taken refuge from qualms or perplexities by providing a governess, a well-equipped, matronly foreigner, from whom she acquired a correct French accent and composed deportment, both of which were now marks of distinction. Mlle. Demorest would have been the last woman to permit a _jeune fille_ to browse unreservedly in a collection of miscellaneous French novels. But Lydia saw no reason why she should inform her preceptress that, having entered her father's library in search of "Ivanhoe" and the "Dutch Republic," she had gone there later to peruse the works of Flaubert, Octave Feuillet, and Guy de Maupassant. Why, indeed? For, to begin with, was she not an American girl, and free to do as she chose? And then again the evolution was gradual; she had reached this stage of culture by degrees. She read everything which the library contained--poetry, history, philosophy, fiction--and having exhausted these resources, she turned her attention outside, and became an omnivorous devourer of current literature. Before her "coming-out" party she was familiar with all the "up-to-date" books, and had opinions on many problems, sexual and otherwise, though be it said she was an eminently proper young person in her language and behavior, and her knowingness, so far as appeared, was merely intellectual. Early in the day her father's scrutiny was forever dazzled by the assuring discovery that she was immersed in Scott. Mr. Arnold had been told by some of his contemporaries that the rising generation did not read Sir Walter, a heresy so damnable that when he found his daughter pale with interest over the sorrows of the "Bride of Lammermoor," he jumped to the conclusion that her literary taste was conservative, and gave no more thought to this feature of her education. Presently he did what he considered the essentially paternal thing--introduced her to the social world through the medium of a magnificent ball, which taxed his income though he had been preparing for it for a year or two. As one of a bevy of pretty, innocent-looking maidens in white tulle, Lydia attracted favorable comment from the outset by her piquant expression and stylish figure. But shortly after the close of her first season she was driven into retirement by her father's death, and when next she appeared on the horizon, sixteen months later, it was as a spirited follower of the hounds belonging to the Westfield Hunt Club. On the crisp autumn day when this story opens, the members of that energetic body were eagerly discussing the interesting proposition whether or not Miss Lydia Arnold was going to accept Herbert Maxwell as a husband. This was the universal query, and the point had been agitated for the past six weeks with increasing curiosity. The hunting season was now nearing its close, and the lover was still setting a tremendous pace, but none of the closest feminine friends of the young woman in question appeared to have inside information. Even her bosom friend, Mrs. Walter Cole, as she joined the meet that morning, could only say in answer to inquiries that Lydia was mum as an oyster. "I suppose the reflection that the offspring might resemble Grandma Maxwell tends to counteract the glamour of the four millions," remarked one of the group, Gerald Marcy, a middle-aged bachelor with a partiality for cynical sallies--also an ex-master of the hounds and one of the veterans of the colony. He was mounted on a solid roan hunter slightly but becomingly grizzled like himself. Thereupon he gave a twist to his mustache, as he was apt to do after uttering what he thought was a good thing. Most of the Westfield Hunt Club were clean-shaven young men who regarded a mustache as a hirsute superfluity. The nucleus of the club had been formed twenty years previous--in the late seventies--at which time it was the fashion to wear hair on the face, but of the small band of original members some had grown too stout or too shaky to hunt, most had families which forbade them to run the risk of breaking their necks, and others were dead. Mrs. Cole's reply was uttered so that only Marcy heard it. Perhaps she feared to shock the smooth-shaven younger men, for, though she prided herself on her complete sophistication in regard to the world and its ways, one evidence of it was that she suited her conversation to the person with whom she was talking. There are points of view which a young matron can discuss with a middle-aged bachelor which might embarrass or be misinterpreted by less experienced males. So she caused her pony to bound a little apart before she said to Marcy, who followed her: "I doubt very much if children of her own are included in Lydia's scheme of life." Mrs. Cole was a bright-eyed, vivacious woman, who talked fast and cleverly. She was fond of making paradoxical remarks, and of defending her theses stoutly. She glanced sideways at her companion to observe the effect of this animadversion, then, bending, patted the neck of her palfrey caressingly. She was herself the mother of two chubby infants, and, out of deference to domestic claims, she no longer followed the hounds, but simply took a morning spin to the meets on a safe hack. Marcy smiled appreciatively. As a man of the world he felt bound to do this, yet as a man of the world he felt shocked at the hypothesis. Race suicide was in his eyes a cardinal sin compared with which youthful indiscretions resulting from hot blood appeared trifling and normal. Besides, it was deliberate rebellion against the vested rights of man. This latter consideration gave the cue to his slightly dogged answer. "I rather think that Herbert Maxwell would have something to say about that." Mrs. Cole surveyed him archly, meditating a convincing retort, when suddenly a new group of riders appeared over the crest of an intervening hill. "Here they are!" she cried with a gusto which proclaimed that the opportunity for subtle confabulation on the point at issue was at an end. The newcomers, all ardent hunting spirits--Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Cunningham, Miss Peggy Blake, Miss Lydia Arnold, Guy Perry and Herbert Maxwell--came speeding forward at a brisk gallop. Mrs. Cunningham--May Cunningham--was a short, dumpy woman, amiable and popular, but hard featured, as though she had burned the candle in social comings and goings in her youth, which indeed was the case. But since her marriage she had by way of settling down fixed her energies on cross-country riding, and was familiarly known as the mother of the hunt. She had an excellent seat. She and her husband, a burly sportsman whose ruling passion was to reduce his weight below two hundred pounds, and whose predilection for gaudy effects in waistcoats and stocks always pushed the prevailing fashion hard, were prime movers in the Westfield set. They had no children, and, as Mrs. Cole once said, it sometimes seemed as though the hounds took the place of them. Miss Peggy Blake was a breezy Amazon, comely, long-limbed and enthusiastic, of many adjectives but simple soul, whose hair was apt to tumble down at inopportune moments, but who stuck at nothing which promised fresh physical exhilaration. Guy Perry, a young broker who had made a fortune in copper stocks, was one of her devoted swains. But dashingly as she rode, her carriage lacked Lydia Arnold's distinction and witchery. Indeed, that slight, dainty young person seemed a part of the animal, so gracefully and jauntily did she follow the movements of her rangy, spirited thoroughbred. When Gerald Marcy exclaimed fervently, "By Jove, but she rides well!" no one of the awaiting group was doubtful as to whom he meant. Keeping as close to his Dulcinea as he could, but not quite abreast, came Herbert Maxwell, a rather lumbering equestrian. Fashion had led him, the previous season, as a young man with great possessions, to follow the hounds, but sedately, as became a somewhat sober novice. Love now spurred him to take the highest stone walls, and for the purpose he had bought a couple of famous hunters. He had long ago dismissed both fear and caution, and had eyes only for the nape of Miss Arnold's neck as they sped over hill and dale. Twice in the last six weeks he had come a cropper, as the phrase is, and been cut up a bit, but he still rode valiantly, bent on running the risk of a final tumble which would break not his ribs but his heart. In every-day life he appeared large and above the average height, with reddish-brown hair and eyebrows and a somewhat grave countenance--rather a nondescript young man, but entirely unobjectionable; the sort of personality which, as Lydia's friends were saying, a clever woman could mould into a solid if not ornamental social pillar. For Herbert Maxwell was a new man. That is, the parents of the members of the Westfield Hunt Club remembered his father as a dealer in furniture, selling goods in his own store, a red-visaged round-faced, stubby looking citizen with a huge standing collar gaping at the front. Though he had grown rich in the process, settled in the fashionable quarter of the city and sent his boy to college in order to make desirable friends and get a good education, it could not be denied that he smelt of varnish metaphorically if not actually, and that Herbert was, so to speak, on the defensive from a social point of view. Everybody's eye was on him to see that he did not make some "break," and inasmuch as he was commonly, if patronizingly, spoken of as "a very decent sort of chap," it may be taken for granted that he had managed to escape serious criticism. His sober manner was partly to be accounted for by his determination to keep himself well in hand, which had been formed ten years previous, during his Freshman year, when one of his classmates, to the manner born, informed him in a moment of frankness that he was too loud-mouthed for success. This had been the turning-point in his career; he had been toning down ever since; he had been cultivating reserve, checking all temptations toward extravagance of speech, deportment or dress, and, in short, had become convincingly repressed--that is, up to the hour of his infatuation for Lydia Arnold. Since then he had let himself go, yet not indecorously, and with due regard to the proprieties. All the world loves a lover, and to the Westfield Hunt Club Herbert Maxwell's kicking over the bars of colorless conventionality appeared both pardonable and refreshing, especially as it was recognized that the manifestations of his ardor, though unmistakable, had not been lacking in taste. The sternest censors of society had not the heart to sneer at the possessor of four millions because the entertainments which he gave in his lady love's honor were more sumptuous than the occasion demanded, and that in his solicitude to keep up with her on the hunting field he was an easy victim to the horse-dealers. Before the bar of nice judgment it was tacitly admitted that he appeared to better advantage than if he had ambled after his goddess with the lacklustre indifference which some of his betters were apt to affect. It takes one to the manner born to be listless in love and yet prevail; and so it was that Maxwell's reversion to breakneck manners had given a pleasant thrill to this fastidious colony. Gay greetings and felicitations on the beauty of the day for hunting purposes were exchanged between the new-comers and their friends. The men in their red coats had a word of gallantry or chaff for every woman. New equestrians appeared approaching from diverse directions, while suddenly from the kennels a few rods distant issued a barking, snuffing pack of eager hounds, conducted by Kenneth Post, the master, whose expansive high white stock and shining black leather boots proclaimed that he took his functions seriously. This was a red-letter day for him, as he had invited the hunt to breakfast with him at the club-house after the run. Lydia, on her arrival, had guided her thoroughbred to the other side of Mrs. Cole so deftly that her admirer was shut out from immediate pursuit. At a glance from her the two women's heads bent close together in scrutiny of some disarrangement in her riding-habit. "Fanny," she whispered, "I've done it." "Lydia! When did it happen?" "Last evening. I've given him permission to announce it at the breakfast." "My dear, I'm just thrilled. You've kept us all guessing." "I've heard that the betting was even," answered Lydia with dry complacency. The intimation that she had kept the world in the dark was evidently agreeable. "I wished you to know first of all." "That was lovely of you. And how clever to escape the bore of writing all those hateful notes! That was just like you, Lydia." "I know a girl who wrote two hundred, and the day they were ready to be sent out changed her mind. I don't wish to run the risk. Here comes Mr. Marcy." Fannie Cole gave her hand an ecstatic squeeze and they lifted their heads to meet the common enemy, man. It was time to start, and he was solicitous lest something were wrong with Miss Arnold's saddle girths. "Beauty in distress?" he murmured with a tug at his mustache. Marcy had his commonplace saws, like most of us. Mrs. Cole was opening her mouth to reassure him on that score when she was forestalled by Lydia. "That's a question, Mr. Marcy, which can be more easily answered a year or two hence." Marcy bowed low in his saddle. "At your pleasure, of course. I did not come to pry." At his best Marcy had quick perceptions and could put two and two together. He was assisted to the divination that something was in the wind by catching sight at the moment of Herbert Maxwell's countenance. That worthy had been blocked in his progress by pretty Mrs. Baxter, who, having resented his attempt to squeeze past her by the following remark, had barred his way with her horse's flank. "We all know where you are heading, Mr. Maxwell, but as a punishment for endeavoring to shove me aside you must pay toll by talking to me for a little." The culprit had started and stared like one awakened in his sleep, and stammered his apologies to his laughing tormentor. But while she kept him at bay, his eyes could not help straying beyond her toward the woman of his heart, and it was their peculiar expression which drew from Marcy the remark which he referred to later as an inspiration. "It's not exactly pertinent to the subject, Miss Arnold, but Herbert Maxwell has the look this morning of having seen the Holy Grail." Lydia calmly turned her graceful head in the direction indicated, then facing her interrogator, said oracularly after a pause: "The wisest men are liable to see false visions. But provided they are happy, does it really matter, Mr. Marcy?" Whereupon, without waiting for a response to this Delphic utterance, she tapped her thoroughbred with her hunting crop and cantered forward to take her place in the van of those about to follow the hounds. II Mrs. Walter Cole was glad to find herself alone after the hounds were off. Without waiting to be joined by any women, who, like herself, had come to see the start and intended to jog on the flank, cut corners and so be in at the finish, she put her hack at a brisk canter in the direction of a neighboring copse, seeking a bridle-path through the woods which would bring her out not far from the club-house after a pleasant circuit. She was indeed thrilled, and, inasmuch as she must remain tongue-tied, she could not bear the society of her sex, and sought solitude and reverie. And so Lydia had done it. Intimate as they were, she had been kept guessing like the rest, and up to the moment of the disclosure of the absorbing confidence she had never been able to feel sure whether Lydia would or not. Lydia married! And if so? She would have been sure to marry some day; and to marry an entirely reputable and presentable man with four millions was, after all, an eminently normal proceeding. Yet somehow it was one thing to think of her as liable to marry, another to recognize that she was actually engaged. It was the concrete reality of Lydia Arnold married and settled which set Mrs. Cole's nimble brain spinning with speculative, sympathetic interest as the dry autumn leaves cracked under the hoofs of her walking horse, to which she had given a loose rein. Lydia had such highly evolved ideas of her own; and how would they accord with the connubial relation? Not that she knew these ideas in specific detail, for Lydia had never hinted at a system; but from time to time in the relaxations of spirit intimacy there had been droppings--flashes--innuendoes, which had set the world in a new light, blazed the path as it were for a new feminine philosophy, and which to a clever woman like herself, fastened securely by domestic ties to the existing order of things, were alike entertaining and suggestive. Mrs. Cole drew a deep breath, as once more recurred to her sundry remarks which had provided her already that morning with material for causing no less experienced a person than Mr. Gerald Marcy to prick up his ears. She and her husband had set up housekeeping on a humble scale--almost poverty from the Westfield point of view--and she remembered the contemplative silence more eloquent than words when, three years previous, hungry for enthusiasm, she had taken Lydia into the nursery to admire her first-born. All her other unmarried friends had gone into ecstasies over baby, as became true daughters of Eve. Lydia, after long scrutiny, had simply said: "Well, dear, I suppose you think it's worth while." Thus wondering how Lydia would deal with the problems of matrimony, and almost bursting with her secret, Mrs. Cole walked her horse until the novelty of the revelation had worn off a little. When she left the covert at a point suggested by the baying of the dogs, she caught a glimpse of the hunt on the opposite side of the horizon to that where it had disappeared from view. Assuming that the finish was likely to occur in the meadow lands in the rear of the club-house, she proceeded to gallop briskly across the intervening valley in the hope of anticipating the hounds. Time, however, had slipped away faster than she supposed. At all events, when she was still some little distance from the field which was her destination she beheld the hounds scampering down the slope from the woodlands beyond. A moment later the air resounded with their yelpings as they attacked the raw meat provided as a reward for the deceit imposed on them by the anise-seed scent. Close on their heels came the Master and the leading spirits of the chase, and by the time Mrs. Cole arrived the entire hunt had put in an appearance or been accounted for, and was proceeding leisurely toward the club, gayly comparing notes on the incidents of the run. There had been amusing casualties. Douglas Hale's horse, having failed to clear a ditch, had tossed its ponderous rider over its head--happily without serious consequences--and in the act of floundering out had planted a shower of mud on the person of Guy Perry, so that the ordinarily spruce young broker was a sight to behold. The Westfield Hunt Club was one of a number of social colonies in the eastern section of the country which in the course of the last twenty-five years have come into being and flourished. Three principal causes have contributed to their evolution: the increase in wealth and in the number of people with comfortable means, the growing partiality for outdoor athletic sports, and the tendency on the part of those who could afford two homes to escape the stuffy air of the cities during as many months as possible, and on the part of young couples with only one home to set up their household gods in the country. Our ancestors of consideration were apt to hug the cities and towns. Their summer excursions to the seaside rarely began before July, and fathers of families preferred to be safe at home before the brewing of the equinoxial storm. But the towering bricks and mortar and increasing pressure of urban life have little by little prolonged the season of emancipation in the fresh air, and spacious modern villas, with many bath-rooms and all the modern improvements, have supplanted the primitive cottages of the former generation, just as the rank fields of gay butter-cups and daisies have given place to velvety lawns, extensive stables, and terraced Italian gardens. The Westfield Hunt Club was primarily a sporting colony--that is, outdoor sport was its ruling passion. Cross-country riding had been its first love, at a time when the free-born farmers of the neighborhood looked askance at the introduction of what they considered dudish British innovations. Yet it promptly offered hospitality to the rising interest in sports of every kind, and the devotees of tennis, polo and golf found there ample accommodation for the pursuit of their favorite pastimes. At the date of our narrative the interest in tennis was at a minimum; polo, always a sport in which none but the prosperous few can afford to shine, had only a small following; but golf was at the height of its fashionable ascendency. Everybody was playing golf, not only the young and supple, the middle-aged and persevering, but every man however clumsy and every woman however feeble or gawky who felt constrained to follow the latest social fad as a law of his or her being. Every links in the country was crowded with agitated followers of the royal and ancient game, who bought clubs galore in the constant hope of acquiring distance and escaping bunkers, and who were alternately pitied and bullied by the attendant army of caddies, sons of the small farmers whose views regarding British innovations had been substantially modified by the accompanying shower of American quarters and dimes. Indeed, it may be said that the attitude of the country-side regarding all the doings of the colony had undergone a gradual but complete change. This was due to the largess and social tact of the new-comers. To begin with, they were eager to pay roundly for the privilege of trampling down crops and riding through fences. Having thus put matters on a liberal pecuniary basis, they endeavored to translate grim forbearance for business reasons into a more genial frame of mind by horse shows with popular features, and country fairs where fat prizes for large vegetables and free dinners bore testimony to the good-will of the promoters. A ball at which the pink-coated male members of the club danced with the farmers' wives and daughters, and Mrs. Andrew Cunningham, with a corps of fair assistants, stood up with the country swains while they cut pigeon-wings in utter gravity, was an annual sop to local sensibilities and a bid for popular regard. Little by little the neighborhood had thawed. Surely the new-comers must be good fellows, if Westfield's tax receipts were growing in volume without demur, and there was constantly increasing employment for the people not only on the public roads, but in carpentry, plumbing, and all sorts of jobs on the new places, besides a splendid market for their sheep and chickens and garden produce. From Westfield's standpoint the ways of some of these individuals with "money to burn" were puzzling, but if grown-up folk could find amusement in chasing a little white ball across country, the common sense of Westfield could afford to be indulgent under existing circumstances. The quarters to which the hunting party now repaired in gay spirits was, as its appearance indicated, a farm-house of ancient aspect, which had been altered over to begin with, and been amplified later to suit the greater requirements of the club. The rambling effect of the low-studded rooms had been enhanced by sundry wings and annexes, the result of which was far from convincing architecturally, but which suggested a quaint cosiness very satisfying and precious to the original members. Progress, reform, innovation--call it what you will--was already rife in the colony itself, a case, it would seem, of refining gold or painting the lily. One had only to observe the more elaborate character of the new houses to be convinced of this. The pioneers had been content to leave the original structures standing, and to do them over with new plumbing and new wall-papers. Then it occurred to some one richer than his fellows, or whose wife remembered the scriptural admonition against putting new wine into old bottles, to pull down an ancient farm-house and replace it with a comely modern villa. The villa was simple and an ornament to the landscape, and though the wiseacres shook their heads and described it as an entering wedge, the general consensus of the colony declared it an improvement. Others followed suit, and within two years there was a dozen of these pleasant-looking homes in the vicinity. But latterly a new tendency had manifested itself. Three sportsmen of large possessions, who had decided to spend most of the year in the country, had erected establishments on an imposing scale, very spacious, very stately, with extensive stables and all the appurtenances befitting a magnificent country-seat. As the owners were building simultaneously, there had naturally been some rivalry to produce the most imposing result. The effect of these splendors was already perceptible. Others with large possessions were talking of invading Westfield, land was rising in value, and it cost the colony more to entertain. Most terrible of all to the pioneers, there was unconcealed whispering that the club-house must come down and be replaced by a convenient modern structure; that more commodious stables were needed; that the golf links should be materially lengthened, and that both the annual dues and the membership must be increased to help provide for these improvements. As a consequence most of the old members were irate on the subject, and Gerald Marcy was quoted as having said that to do away with the original quarters would be an act of sacrilege. "Are not the rafters sacred from time-honored association?" he had inquired in a voice trembling with emotion. "Principally with champagne," had been Guy Perry's comment on this fervent apostrophe. Youth is fickle and partial to change. Guy voiced the sentiment of the younger element in craving modern comfort and conveniences, which could be obtained by demolishing the old rattle-trap, as the less conservative styled it, and putting up a clean, commodious, attractive-looking club-house. Guy himself had given out that his firm was ready to underwrite the bonds necessary to finance all the proposed changes. Thus it will be seen that at this period social conditions at Westfield were in a condition of ferment and change, although the colony was still youthful. Yet differences of opinion were merged on this particular morning in the enjoyment of sport and the crisp autumn weather. The returning members of the hunt found at the club-house some of the golf players of both sexes, who had been invited by the master of the hounds to join them at breakfast, and it was not long before the company was seated at table. Everyone was hungry, and everyone seemed in good spirits. Conversation flowed spontaneously, or, in other words, everyone seemed to be talking at once. The host, Kenneth Post, finding himself free for a moment from all responsibilities save to see that the waiters did their duty, inasmuch as the woman on either side of him was exchanging voluble pleasantries with someone else, cast a contented glance around the mahogany. Personal badinage, as he well knew, was the current coin of his set. The occasion on which it was absent or flagged was regarded as dull. Subjects, ideas, theories bored his companions--especially the women--as a social pastime. What they liked was to talk about people, to gossip of one another's affairs or failings when separated, to discharge at one another keen but good-humored chaff when they met. Naturally the host was gratified by the universal chatter, for obviously his friends were enjoying themselves. Nevertheless there seemed to be something in the air not to be explained by the exhilaration resulting from the run or by cocktails before luncheon. As he mused, his eyes fell on Herbert Maxwell and he wondered. That faithful but solid equestrian was commonly reticent and rather inert in speech, but now, with face aglow, he was bandying words with Miss Peggy Blake and another young woman at the same time. Post remembered that he had seen him take three drinks at the bar, which for him was an innovation. The Master felt knowing, and instinctively his eyes sought the countenance of Miss Arnold. It was demure and furnished no clue to her admirer's mood, unless a faint smile which suggested momentary content was to be regarded as an indication. While Kenneth Post was thus observing his guests he was recalled to more active duties by Mrs. Andrew Cunningham, who, in her capacity of mother of the hunt, had been placed at his right hand. Having finished her soft-shell crab and emptied her quiver of timely shafts upon the young man at her other elbow, she had turned to her host for a familiar chat on the topic at that time nearest her heart. "I hope you're on our side, Mr. Post--that you are opposed to the new order of things which would drive every one except millionaires out of Westfield? Tell me that you intend to vote against pulling down this dear old sanctuary. It's a rookery, if you like, but that's its charm. Will anything they build take the place of it in our affections?" "We've had lots of good times here, of course, and I'm as fond of the old place as anyone, but--the fact is, Mrs. Cunningham, I'm in a difficult position. The younger men count on me in a way; it was they who chose me master, and in a sense I'm their representative; so----" He paused, and allowed the ellipsis to convey an intimation of what he might be driven to by the rising generation, to which he was more nearly allied by age than to the older faction. Mrs. Cunningham looked up in his face in doughty expostulation. Her round cheeks reminded him of ruddy but slightly withered crab-apples. "The time has come for Andrew and me to pull up stakes, I fear. The life here'll be spoiled. Everything is going up in price--land, servants, marketing, horses, assessments." "That's the case everywhere, isn't it?" Kenneth was an easy-going fellow, and preferred smiling acquiescence, but when taken squarely to task he had the courage of his convictions. "The fellows wish more comforts and facilities. There are next to no bathing accommodations at present, and everything is cramped, and--and really it's so, if one looks dispassionately--fusty." "I adore the fustiness." "Wait until you see the improvements. Mark my words, six months after they are finished nothing would induce you to return to the old order of things. We're sure of the money; the loan has been underwritten by a syndicate." Mrs. Cunningham groaned. "Exactly. So has everything in Westfield, to judge by appearances. The palaces erected by the Douglas Hales, the Marburys, and Mr. Gordon Wallace have given the death-blow to simple ways, and we shall soon be in the grip of a plutocracy. The original band of gentlemen farmers who came here to get close to nature and to one another are undone, have become back numbers, and"--she lowered her voice to suit the exigencies--"in case Lydia Arnold accepts Herbert Maxwell, she will not rest until she has something more imposing and gorgeous than anything yet." Kenneth eagerly took advantage of the opportunity to divert the emphasis to that ever-interesting speculation. "Have you any light to throw on the burning problem?" he asked. The mother of the hunt shook her head. "Mrs. Cole said to me only yesterday, 'I've tried to make up my mind for her by putting myself in her place and endeavoring to decide what conclusion I, with her characteristics, would come to, and I find myself still wobbling, because she's Lydia, and he's what he is, which would be eminently desirable for some women, but----'" A sudden hush around the table prevented the conclusion of this philosophic utterance. The sportsman of whom she was speaking had risen with a brimming glass of champagne in one hand and was accosting the master of the hounds. A general thrill of expectancy succeeded the hush. What was he going to say? Speeches were not altogether unknown at Westfield hunt breakfasts, but they were not apt to be so impromptu, nor the contribution of such a negative soul as Herbert Maxwell. Gerald Marcy, sitting next to Mrs. Cole, was prompted to repeat his observation of the morning. "I was right," he whispered. "He has seen the Holy Grail." "Wait--just wait," she answered tensely. _She_ knew what was going to happen, and as her dark eyes vibrated deftly from Herbert's face to Lydia's and back again, she longed for two pairs that she might not for an instant lose the expression on either. Meanwhile the host had rapped on the table and was saying encouragingly: "Our friend Mr. Herbert Maxwell desires to make a few remarks." "Hear--hear!" cried Douglas Hale raucously. His fall had obviously dulled the nicety of his instincts, for everyone else was too curious to utter a word--too rapt to invade the interesting silence. Maxwell had worn the air of a demi-god when he rose. A wave of self-consciousness doubtless obliterated the introductory phrases which he had learned by heart, for after a moment's painful silence he suddenly blurted out: "I'm the happiest man in the world, and I want you all to know it." Here was the kernel of the whole matter. What better could he have said? What more was there left to say? The riddle was solved, and the suspense which had hung over Westfield like a cloud for many months was dissolved in a rainbow of romance. There was no need of names; everybody understood, and a shout of delight followed. Every woman in the room shrieked her congratulations to the bride-to-be, and those nearest her got possession of her person. Miss Peggy Blake was the nearest and hence the first. "You dear thing! It's just splendid; the most intensely exciting thing which ever happened!" she cried, throwing her arms around Lydia's neck. In the embrace her hair, which had become loose during the run, fell about her ears, and Guy Perry had to get down on his knees to find the gilt hair-pins. There was a babel of superlatives, and delirious feminine laughter; the men wrung the happy lover's hands or patted him on the back. When the turmoil subsided Maxwell was still standing. Like St. Michael over the prostrate dragon, he had planted his feet securely for once in his life on the necks of the serpents Diffidence and Repression. He put out his hand to invite silence. "I ask you to drink to the happiness of the loveliest woman in creation. When a man worships a woman as I do her, and she has done him the honor to plight him her troth, why shouldn't he bear witness to his love and blazon her charms and virtues to the stars? God knows I'm going to make her happy, if I can! To the happiness of my future wife, Miss Lydia Arnold!" "All up!" cried the master, and as the company rose under the spell of love's fervid invocation, he added authoritatively, "No heel taps!" As they drained their glasses and were in the act of sitting down, Guy Perry conveyed the cordial sentiment of all present toward the proposer of the toast and lover-elect by beginning to troll, For he's a jolly good fellow-- For he's a jolly good fellow. Under cover of the swelling song Mrs. Walter Cole, fluttering in her seat, and with her eyes fastened on Lydia's countenance, felt the need of taking Gerald Marcy into her confidence. "I just wonder what she thinks of it. His letting himself go like that is rather nice; but it isn't at all in her style. If she is truly in love with him, it doesn't matter. But there she sits with that inscrutable smile, perfectly serene, but not in the least worked up, apparently. Our embraces didn't even ruffle her hair." "He has been repressing himself--been on his good behavior for years, poor fellow," murmured Marcy. "I tell you I like his calling her the loveliest woman in creation and thinking it. Such guileless fervor is much too rare nowadays. But what effect will it have on Lydia, who knows she isn't? That is what is troubling me. Unless she is deeply smitten, won't it bore her?" The question was but the echo of her spirit's wonder; she did not expect a categorical response. Whatever good thing Gerald Marcy was meditating in reply was nipped in the bud by an appeal to him for "Aunt Dinah's Quilting Party" as a continuation of the outburst of song. He felt obliged to comply, and yet was nothing loth, as it was one of the most popular in his repertory, and was adapted to his sweet if somewhat spavined tenor voice. In the skies the bright stars glittered, On the bank the pale moon shone, And 'twas from Aunt Dinah's quilting party I was seeing Nellie home. So he sang with melodious precision, accompanying his performance with that slight exaggeration of chivalric manner which distinguished the rendering of his ditties. The words just suited the sensibilities of the company, combining feeling with banter, and in full-voiced unison they caught up the refrain: I was seeing Nellie ho-o-me-- I was seeing Nellie ho-o-me, And 'twas from Aunt Dinah's quilting party I was seeing Nellie home. Laughing feminine eyes shot merry glances in the direction of Lydia, and the red-coated sportsmen lifted their glasses in grandiloquent apostrophe of the affianced pair. Andrew Cunningham, resplendent in a canary-colored waistcoat with fine red bars, was heard to remark confidentially, after ordering another whiskey and soda, that the festivities which were certain to follow in the wake of this engagement would add five pounds to his weight, which it had taken him two months of Spartan abstemiousness to reduce three. Erect and sportsmanlike, Gerald continued, after an impressive sweep of his hand to promote silence: On my arm her light hand rested, Rested light as o-o-cean's foam, And 'twas from Aunt Dinah's quilting party I was seeing Nellie home. It was a red-letter day not only for the master of the hounds but for Westfield's entire colony. Conjecture was at an end; the love-god had triumphed; the announcement was a fitting wind-up to the exhilarating hunting season. Yet amid the general congratulation and optimism some philosophic souls like Mrs. Walter Cole did not forbear to wonder what was to be the sequel. III Precise consideration by Lydia of her feelings for her betrothed--and presently her husband, as they were married in the following January--were rendered superfluous for the time being by the worship which he lavished upon her. There were so many other things to think of: first her engagement ring, which called forth ejaculations of envious admiration from her contemporaries; then her trousseau, the costumes of her bridesmaids, the details of the ceremony and the wedding breakfast, and the important question whether the honeymoon was to be spent in Europe. There was never any doubt as to this in Lydia's mind. After deliberation she had decided on a winter passage by the Mediterranean route to Nice and Cannes, followed by a summer in the Tyrol and Switzerland, with a fortnight in Paris to repair the ravages in her wardrobe made by changing fashion. It must not be understood that Maxwell demurred to this attractive programme. He merely intimated that if he remained at home and demonstrated what he called his serious side, he would probably receive a nomination for the Legislature in the autumn; that the party managers had predicted as much; and that the favorable introduction into politics thus obtained might lead to Congress or a foreign mission, as he had the means to live up to either position worthily. Lydia listened alertly. "I should like you to go as ambassador to Paris or London some day, of course, but to serve in the Legislature now would scarcely conduce to that, Herbert. I've set my heart on going abroad--I've never been but once, you know--and it's just the time to go when we are building our two houses. Where should we live if we stayed at home? The sensible plan is to store our presents, buy some tapestries and old furniture on the other side, and come back in time to get the autumn hunting at Westfield and inaugurate our two establishments." This settled the matter. The only real uncertainty had been whether she did not prefer a trip around the world instead. But that would take too long. She was eager to figure as the mistress of the most stately modern mansion and the most consummate country house which money and architectural genius could erect. These two houses were perhaps the most engrossing of all among the many concerns which led her to postpone precise analysis of her feelings to a period of greater leisure. That is the exact quality of her love--whether it were eighteen carat or not, to adopt a simile suggested to her by her wedding-ring. That she loved Herbert sufficiently well to marry him was the essential point; and it seemed futile to play hide-and-seek with her own consciousness over the abstract proposition whether she could have loved someone else better, especially as there were so many immediately pressing matters to consider that both her physician and Herbert had warned her she was liable, if not prudent, to fall a victim to that lurking ailment, nervous prostration. It was certainly no slight responsibility to select the lot in town which seemed to combine most advantages as the site for a residence. The matter of the country house was much simpler, for who could doubt that the ideal location was an expanse of undulating country, higher than the rest of the neighborhood, known as Norrey's Farm? These fifty acres, with woods appurtenant, were reputed to be out of the market unless to a single purchaser. Many a pioneer had picked out Norrey's Knoll as his choice, only to be thwarted by the owner with the assertion that he must buy the whole farm or could have none. Later would-be purchasers had recoiled before the price, which had kept not merely abreast but had galloped ahead of current valuations, until it had become a by-word in the colony that Farmer Norrey would bite his own nose off if he were not careful. But the shrewd rustic was more than vindicated by the upshot. Lydia, from the moment when she first seriously thought of Herbert Maxwell as a husband, had cast sheeps' eyes at this stately property, and within a short period after the engagement was announced the title deeds passed. Rumor declared that the canny grantor had divined that the opportunity of his life was at hand and had held out successfully for still higher figures. But, as everybody cheerfully remarked, ten thousand dollars more or less was but a flea-bite to Herbert Maxwell. Then came the selection of the architects and divers inspections of plans for the two establishments, which, to the joy of the bridegroom, were interrupted by the wedding ceremony. They sailed, and their honeymoon was somewhat of a social parade. Special quarters--the most expensive and exclusive to be had--were engaged for them in advance on steamships and in railroad trains, in hotels and wherever they appeared. Maxwell's manifest tender purpose was to gratify his bride's slightest whim, and in regard to the choice of the objects on which his ready money was to be lavished he avoided taking the initiative except when an occasional mania seized him to buy her costly gems on the sly. Otherwise he danced attendance on her taste, which was discriminating and perspicuous. Lydia yearned for distinction, not extravagance; for superlative effects, not garishness. Her eye was on the lookout in regard to all the affairs of life, from food to the manifestations of art, for the note which accurately expressed elegant and fastidious comfort and gave the rebuff to every-day results or the antics of vulgarity. Consequently the wedding trip after the first surprises was but a change of scene. There were still too many absorptions for retrospective thought and nice balancing of soul accounts. At Nice and Cannes they found themselves in a vortex of small gayeties. While travelling, Lydia was on the alert to pick up old tapestries, porcelain, and other works of art; in Paris, shopping and the dressmakers left no time for anything but a daily lesson to put the finishing touch to her French. She had said to herself that she would draw a trial balance of her precise emotions when she was at rest on the steamer--for Lydia by instinct was a methodical person; but a batch of letters reciting complications in regard to the last details on the new houses was a fresh distraction, and the society of several engaging men on the ship another. Nevertheless the thought that she was nearing home struck her fancy favorably, and on the evening before they landed she eluded everybody else to seize her husband's arm for a promenade on deck. There was elasticity in her step as she said, "Won't it be fun to be at Westfield again, Herbert? I long for a good run with the hounds, and I'm beginning to pine for the autumn colors and smells." "Yes, indeed. And we shall be settled at our own fireside at last," he answered with a lover's animation. The remark recalled bothersome considerations to Lydia's mind. She felt sure from the contents of the last packet of correspondence that the architect had failed to carry out her instructions in several instances. "Settled?" she echoed. "If we are settled a year from now we may consider ourselves very fortunate." Lydia's immediate plans met with interruption from an unexpected source. Before the hunting season had fairly begun it was privately whispered in Westfield circles that a stork would presently visit the new establishment on Norrey's Farm. Open inquiries from tactless interrogators, why the Maxwells did not follow the hounds, were answered by the explanation that the young people had so many matters to attend to in connection with their two houses that they had decided to postpone hunting to another year. Later it was known that they would pass the winter in the country, and not furnish the town house until spring. When the baby was actually born, in February, everyone knew that it was expected; but the advent of the infant in the flesh caused a flutter among Lydia's immediate feminine acquaintances. As soon as the mother was able to receive visitors, Mrs. Walter Cole came down from town to offer her warm felicitations and incidentally to satisfy the curiosity of those who took an interest. She had arranged to lunch after the interview with the Andrew Cunninghams, who lived all the year round at Westfield, and thither at the close of the visit to her intimate friend she repaired, replete with information. It happened to be Saturday, and the master of the house had brought down Gerald Marcy by an early train for a winter's afternoon tramp across country, so that the two women had only a few minutes of unreserved conversation. "Well, she was just as one would have expected--Lydia all over," Mrs. Cole began with the intensity of a pent-up stream which has regained its freedom. "She looked sweet, and everything in her room and in the nursery was bewitching, as though she had been preparing for the event for years and doted on it. That's just like her, of course. She bemoaned her fate at losing the hunting season, and she has decided not to nurse the baby. As an experienced mother," continued Mrs. Cole contemplatively, "I felt bound to remind her that there are two sides to that question, and that I had nursed Toto and Jim not only because Walter insisted on it, but to give the children the benefit of the doubt as to any possible effect on character from being suckled by a stranger. But she had thought it all out, and had her arguments at her fingers' ends. She declared it a case of Anglo-Saxon prejudice, and that every Frenchwoman of position sends her babies to a foster-mother. Of course it _is_ a bother, and frightfully confining, but my husband wouldn't hear of it, though half the mamas can't satisfy their babies anyway." Mrs. Cunningham nodded understandingly. "I daresay it's just as well. And of course she regards the rest of us as old-fashioned. But tell me about the baby." Mrs. Cole laughed. "You ought to have heard Lydia on the subject. She talks of it in the most impersonal way, as though it belonged to someone else or were a wedding present. I never cared much for babies before I was married, but could not endure anyone who wouldn't make flattering speeches about mine. Lydia's is a dear little thing as they go, and has a fascinating wardrobe already, and I think she is rather devoted to it in her secret soul, but one of the first things she said to me--before I could get in a single compliment--was, 'She's the living image of Grandma Maxwell, Fannie. She has her mouth and nose.' And the embarrassing part was that it's true. The moment Lydia called my attention to it I saw. Her eagle maternal eye had detected what the ordinary mother would have failed to perceive. But it's Grandma Maxwell to the life. 'Why evade the truth?' remarked Lydia after one of her deliberate pauses. 'I shall name her for her, and I can discern in advance that she will never be a social success.'" "Poor little thing!" murmured Mrs. Cunningham. Such an anathema so early in life was certainly heart-rending. Mrs. Cole put her head on one side like an arch bird by way of reflective protest. "It sounds dreadful, of course, but remember she's Lydia. What she will really do will be to metamorphose her, body and soul, so that by the time she is eighteen there will not be one trace of Maxwell visible to the naked eye. See if I'm not right," she said with the gusto of a brilliant inspiration which seemed to her a logical defence of her friend. The arrival of the men interrupted the dialogue, but the general topic was presently resumed from another point of view. Not many minutes had elapsed after they sat down to luncheon before Gerald Marcy hazarded the observation that, prophecies and innuendoes to the contrary notwithstanding, events in the Maxwell household appeared to have followed the course of nature. Mrs. Cole, to whom this remark was directly addressed, ignored the sly impeachment of her abilities as a seer, and, having finished her piece of buttered toast, said blandly: "I think Lydia is very happy." "I felt sure she would be tamed," continued Marcy with a tug at his mustache. "I look to see her become a model of the domestic virtues." "Don't be too sure that she is tamed, Gerald," said Mrs. Cunningham. "Lydia is Lydia." Perhaps the knowledge that she had been longing in vain for years for a child of her own gave the cue to this slightly brusk comment. "Lydia will never be exactly like the rest of us; that's her peculiarity--virtue--what shall I call it?" interposed Mrs. Cole, looking round the table with a philosophic air. "The rest of us demur at conventions, but accept them in the end. She follows what she deems the truth. I don't say that she is always right or that she doesn't do queer things," she added by way of conservative qualification of her bubbling encomium. "And how about Maxwell?" asked Andrew Cunningham, who had seemed temporarily lost in the contemplation of his lobster salad so long as any of that lusciously prepared viand remained on his plate. "Infatuated as ever, I suppose," he added, sitting back in his chair and exposing benignly his broad expanse of neckcloth and fancy check waistcoat. "Yes, and he ought to be, surely. But Lydia has a rival in the daughter of the house," answered Mrs. Cole, reinspired by the inquiry. "He came in just as I was leaving, and is almost daft on the subject of the baby. If Lydia's ecstasy is somewhat below the normal, he more than makes up for the deficiency. There never was such a proud parent. He just 'chortled in his joy.' He discerns in her already all the graces and virtues, and would like to do something at once--he doesn't know exactly what--to bring them to the attention of an unappreciative world. If it were a boy, he could put his name down on the waiting lists at the clubs, but as she is only a girl, he must content himself with hanging over her crib for the present." "Only a girl!" echoed Marcy. "Born with a golden spoon in her mouth, an heiress to all the virtues and graces, and predestined doubtless, like her mother, to rest her dainty foot upon the neck of man. Nevertheless, as I have already prophesied, I am inclined to think that the yoke--now a double yoke--will not bear too severely on Maxwell, though it may not yield him the bliss which we unregenerate bachelors are wont to associate with the ideal marital relation." "Hear--hear!" exclaimed Andrew Cunningham. "You need some further liquid refreshment after that silver-tongued sophistry, Gerald.--Mary," he said to the maid, "pass the whiskey and soda to Mr. Marcy." Mrs. Cole put her head on one side. "I have my doubts whether the ideal marital relation is a modern social possibility--the strictly ideal such as you bachelors mean," she added, feeling, doubtless, as the wife of a man to whom she had described herself in heart-to-heart talks with other women--not many, for she eschewed the subject ordinarily as sacred--as deeply attached, that this homily on wedlock needed a qualifying tag. But May Cunningham was not in the mood to become a party to even so tempered an imputation on connubial happiness. "Speak for yourself, Fannie," she said sturdily. "Ideals or no ideals, Andrew and I trot in double harness better than any single animal of my acquaintance." "Listen to the old woman, God bless her!" exclaimed the master of the house, raising his tumbler and smiling at his better-half with chivalrous expansiveness. Mrs. Cole was a little nettled at Mrs. Cunningham's obtuseness--wilful obtuseness, it seemed to her. As though the subtle social problem suggested by her was to be solved by a reference to the homely affection of this amiable but limited couple! She sighed and murmured, "Everyone knows, my dear, that you and Andrew are as happy as the day is long. But I'm afraid that you don't understand exactly what I meant." Mrs. Cunningham compressed her lips ominously. She felt that she understood perfectly well, and that it was simply another case of Fannie Cole's nonsense. But any retort she may have been meditating was averted by the timely and genial inspiration of her husband. "One thing is certain," he said: "we all know that our Gerald is the ideal bachelor." This assertion called forth cordial acquiescence from both the ladies, and turned the current of the conversation into a smoother channel. The subject of the remark bowed decorously. "In this company I am free to admit that I sometimes sigh in secret for a happy home. Yet even venerable bachelorhood has its compensations. By the way," he added, "our colony at Westfield is likely to have an addition to its stud of bachelors. I hear that Harry Spencer is coming home." "Harry Spencer? How interesting," cried the two women in the same breath. "The fascinator," continued Mrs. Cole with slow, sardonic articulation. "To break some other woman's heart, I suppose," said Mrs. Cunningham. "And yet it is safe to say that he will be received with open arms by your entire sex, including the present company," remarked Gerald with a tug at his mustache. The sally was received with pensive silence as a deduction apparently not to be gainsaid. "He is very agreeable," said Mrs. Cunningham flatly. "And extremely handsome," said Mrs. Cole. "Not the type of manly beauty which would cause my mature heart to flutter, but dangerous to the youthful imagination. He used to look like a handsome pirate, and if he had whispered honeyed words to me instead of to Laura--who knows?" "Poor Laura!" "They had neither of them a cent; there was nothing for him to do but withdraw. And yet there is no doubt he broke her heart, though there is consumption in her family." Mrs. Cole knit her brows over this attempt on her part to formulate complete justice. "He's a woman's man," said Andrew Cunningham. He had stepped to the mantel-piece to fill his pipe, and having uttered this fell speech, he lit it and smoked for some moments in silence with his back to the cheerful wood fire before proceeding. No one had seen fit to contradict him. The gaps between his assertions and the subsequent explanations thereof were expected and rarely interrupted. "He does everything well--rides, shoots, plays rackets, golf, cards--is infernally good-looking, as you say, has a pat speech and a flattering eye for every woman he looks at, and yet somehow he has always struck me as a _poseur_. I wouldn't trust him in a tight place, though he prides himself on his sporting blood. It may be prejudice on my part. Gerald likes him, I believe, because he is a keen rider and always has a good mount. He always has the best of everything going, but what does he live on anyway?" "Wild oats, perhaps," suggested Marcy. But he hastened to atone for this levity by adding, "He had a little money from his mother, while it lasted, and just after he and Miss Wilford drifted apart, I am told that he followed a tip from Guy Perry on copper stocks and cleaned up enough to enable him to travel round the world." "Poor Laura!" interjected Mrs. Cole. "What a pity he didn't get a tip earlier!" "It wasn't enough to marry on," said Marcy, "and it's probably mostly gone by this time." "That's the sort of thing I complain of," exclaimed Cunningham. "I'm no martinet in morals, Heaven knows, but I always feel a little on my guard with fellows who live by their wits and spend like princes. Confound it, you know it isn't quite respectable even in a free country." Andrew spoke with a wag of his head as though he expected to be adjudged an old fogy for this conservative utterance. "He's an attractive fellow on the surface anyway," answered Marcy after a pause, "and will be an addition from the hunting standpoint. And--give the devil his due, Andrew--if he was looking for money only, there were several heiresses he might have married. That would have made him irreproachable at once." Mrs. Cole drew a long breath. "Perfectly true, Mr. Marcy. I never thought of it before. Harry Spencer doesn't look at a woman twice unless he admires her, no matter how rich she is. He could have married several, of course, if he had tried." "Dozens. That's the humiliating part of it," assented Mrs. Cunningham. "When he is ready to settle down that's what he'll do--pick out some woman with barrels of money," said Andrew. Having once got a proposition in his head he was wont to stick to it tenaciously, like a puppy to a root. "You misjudge him--you misjudge him!" cried Mrs. Cole eagerly. "He won't do anything of the kind. He will never marry any woman unless she has money--or he has; that I'm ready to admit. But, on the other hand, he'll never ask anyone to marry him unless he loves her for herself alone, and--and," she continued with a gasp born of the thrill which the definiteness of her insight caused her, "there are very few women in the world whom he is liable to fall in love with. That's what makes him so interesting. He is polite to us all, but the majority of women bore him at heart." Marcy laughed. "A masterly diagnosis," he said. "And now that he has seen the world and is returning heart-free, so far as we know, there will naturally be curiosity as to how he will bear the ordeal of a fresh contact with native loveliness." "Exactly," said the two women together, and with an engaging frankness which quite overshadowed the grunt by which the master of the house indicated his suspicious dissent from this exposition of character. IV Harry Spencer had been travelling nearly three years. Naturally, he found some changes and some new faces at Westfield. Concerning the former he was becomingly appreciative. He promptly ranged himself on the side of progress, admired the new club-house and the new establishments in the neighborhood, and evinced a willingness to take an active part in the enlarged energies of the club. During his peregrinations in foreign lands he had visited the St. Andrew's golf links, and he had views regarding bunkers and other features of the game which he was prepared to advocate. When he had left home the bicycle was all the rage, and some portion of his journeyings had been on an up-to-date machine. But he found now that the fashionable portion of the community had dropped this craze, and that to ride a "wheel" was beginning to be considered a bore except as a means of getting from one place to another. The fever of golf was rampant instead, and had reached the stage where its votaries were almost delirious in their devotion, notably the people most unfitted to play the game, and who had taken it up in order to be in fashion. During the spring and summer following his return the improved links at Westfield was crowded with players of every grade whose proficiency was generally in reverse proportion to the number of clubs they carried. Soon after the season had fairly opened and the greens were in good order the lately returned wanderer found himself one morning engaged in giving a lesson in the royal and ancient game to Miss Peggy Blake, who had a severe attack of the disease and promised to be a proficient pupil, for Dobson, the professional at the Hunt Club, had declared that she had a free swing and could follow through as well as most men. The trouble at the moment was that, after taking a free swing, she either failed to hit the ball altogether or hit it off at some distressing angle. As she explained volubly to everybody, until within a week she had been making screaming brassie shots which carried a hundred and fifty yards, but had suddenly lost her game completely. Harry had kindly offered himself as a coach, a delightful proposition to the blithe young woman, especially as Dobson was engaged for the time being in superintending the primary and elephantine efforts of Miss Ella Marbury, the stout maiden sister of Wagner Marbury, the Western multi-millionnaire and proprietor of one of the new neighboring palaces so obnoxious to Mrs. Cunningham. Miss Peggy was more than pleased to have for an hour or two the uninterrupted companionship of this good-looking and redoubtable gallant, whose attentions were to be regarded as a feather in her cap, and who would doubtless be able to tell her what she was doing wrong. Hers was one of the new faces, and Harry had given his following to understand that he admired her spirited and comely personality. "Miss West Wind" he had christened her genially, and the epithet had spread with the rumor that he had noticed her. Yet it was tacitly understood that he had no intention of interfering with the suit of his friend Guy Perry, who was supposed to be well in the lead of the other pursuers of the breezy maiden. Yet, though he sought to give the impression that his favor in this case was merely an artistic tribute and that he still walked scatheless in the world of women, he was glad of an opportunity to stroll over the links in her society. She would entertain him. Besides, she was a fluent talker, and he could count on her retailing for his edification more or less of the current history of Westfield written between the lines, which was only to be picked up gradually by one who had been prevented by absence from personal observation. It was a very simple matter to detect the trouble with his companion's stroke. "You don't keep your eye on the ball, Miss Blake. That's the whole trouble with you. Anyone can see that." Peggy looked incredulous. "If there is one special thing more than another which I try to bear constantly in mind, it is to keep my eye on the ball. Do I really take it off, Mr. Spencer? Of course you must know. There are so many other things to remember, but I did think I was completely disciplined on that point. Watch me now." Thereupon she proceeded to execute a dashing stroke, her evident standard being to carry her club through with such velocity as to bring the head round her left shoulder and cause her to execute a pirouette like the pictures of the golfing girls in the magazines. The ball flew off at a tangent and narrowly missed her own caddy. "How rotten!" she murmured. "I had both my eyes glued on the ball, and you see what happened. And only a week ago I was driving like a streak." Her expletive was merely the popular phrase of the day by which golden youth of both sexes was apt to express even trivial dissatisfaction. She was a pathetic figure of distress. Her exertions had heightened her color so that it suggested the poppy rather than the rose, and was not unlike the hue of her trig golfing garment. She swept back a stray ringlet which had escaped from under her hat. "You see I have lost my game utterly, Mr. Spencer." Harry laughed. "You were looking at me out of the corners of your eyes that time. Lower your lids until you exaggerate the modest maiden and don't move your head." It was a half-deferential, half-sardonic voice with a caressing touch, indicating temporary devotion to the subject-matter in hand which was flattering. "Swing more easily," he added, "and don't try to rival the Gibson girl until you recover confidence." Then he corrected slightly her stance and the position of her hands--all with a deft yet bantering grace of manner which soothed and attracted her. He went through the correct motions of the stroke for her enlightenment, and as he stood erect and supple Peggy did not forbear to reflect that he was very handsome. How dark his hair and eyes were! It was a bold sort of beauty, and, though he wore neither mustache nor beard, the faintly bluish tinge of his complexion betrayed that, but for the barber, he would have been what Mrs. Herbert Cole might have termed an incarnate symphony in black. He appeared harmoniously muscular. He executed the necessary movements with lithe, nervous energy, focusing his attention tensely for the brief occasion. The moment he lowered his club he regained his leisurely and rather indolent demeanor. His pupil essayed to follow his instructions. At the third attempt the ball sailed straight as an arrow to a moderate distance, which comforted the performer, but she felt too nervously excited to exult. It might be only an accident. "Try again," he said confidentially. "You've almost got it." Once more the ball shot correctly from the club. Harry stooped and placed another on the tee. Peggy swung, then followed through with a little of her old elasticity. It flew like a rifle bullet low and long across the distant bunker. She rose on the tips of her toes as she followed its entrancing flight. "I've got back my game," she cried jubilantly. "You've saved my life, Mr. Spencer." She looked as though she would have been glad, had convention permitted, to throw her arms around her benefactor's neck. And to the true golfer it would not seem an exaggerated reward. "I've been in the slough of despond for nearly a week, and playing worse every day. Now I'm in the seventh heaven, and it's all your doing." He acknowledged the exuberant gratitude with a graceful mock heroic bow. "I shall consider my terms. The charge should be considerable." Just then by the sheerest chance a white carnation which Peggy was wearing at her throat became detached from her dress and fell to the ground. He picked it up, and, holding it before him and looking into her eyes, said with melodious assurance: "I will keep this, if I may, as my tuition fee." Peggy looked embarrassed and let fall her eyes, albeit not easily disconcerted. The carnation was one from a bunch which Guy Perry had sent her the day before, and to hand it over seemed almost an act of treason, though they were not yet actually engaged. Yet she was conscious that she thought this new acquaintance charming. Silence gives consent where lovely woman is concerned. At any rate, when she looked up he was in the act of placing it in his buttonhole. But his fingers had paused in their work as a consequence of his arrested glance. A feminine figure outlined on the crest of adjacent rising ground had suddenly caught his eye. She was addressing her ball for a brassie shot, and as he gazed it was performed with a sweeping grace of which the lack of effort was the salient charm. Peggy, whose eyes had promptly followed the direction of his, vouchsafed the desired information. "Mrs. Herbert Maxwell." "Really!" There was a shade of interest in the monosyllable, as though the identity of some one whom he had been rather curious to meet had been revealed to him. "You haven't met her?" "Not yet." "Oh, you'd like her immensely." The words were uttered with such naive confidence that Harry Spencer turned away his gaze from the new attraction to survey the old. "How do you know?" he inquired jauntily. Peggy spluttered a little at this flank attack. "Oh, well, you know, she's so awfully clever. She's different. She'd pique your curiosity anyway," she concluded, recovering her aplomb. "Am I so difficult to please?" he asked sententiously. He answered the question himself. "Yes, I admit that I am." His look of admiration, which Peggy divined was constitutional with him on such occasions, was best to be met by diversion. "I shall never be able to play golf as Lydia Maxwell does, and I've been at it twice as long. She has only played this spring, and Dobson says that she has a better idea of the game than any other woman. It's just knack with her, for her balls go farther than mine and yet she makes scarcely an exertion. You couldn't help admire her in all sorts of ways. It has been a dreadfully quiet season for her, though, for when her baby was six weeks old and she had sent out cards for two musical parties in their new town house, her husband's mother, old Mrs. Maxwell, died suddenly, and she had to go into mourning. So they went to Southern California for February and March, and moved down here as soon as they returned. She took lessons in golf at Los Angeles, and she beat me four up the first time we played, even though I supposed I could give her half a stroke." While he listened to this monologue, Spencer followed the progress of the subject of it. She was playing with pretty Mrs. Baxter, but, though her opponent was an ordinarily graceful woman, there was a deft harmony in her movements which made Mrs. Baxter appear an unfinished person by comparison. "They say the real secret is that she has an artistic temperament." The speech was Peggy's by way of reading his thoughts and providing a condensed and comprehensive key. "And her husband--what is he like? You know he has come to the surface during my absence." "He hasn't it at all--I mean an artistic temperament. But he's an awfully good sort--awfully; a true sport, and kind as can be." Peggy's vocabulary of enthusiasm, though fundamentally native, sometimes made reprisals on the kindred jargon of Great Britain. "I see. And you infer that I have an artistic temperament?" A tendency toward challenging unexpectedness was one of Spencer's prime manifestations with women. Peggy looked embarrassed. She had not bargained for such an unequivocal piece of teasing. She put up her hand to her head to secure her escaping comb. "I don't know you very well, of course, but I had supposed so. Yet I'm not clever, and I dote on Lydia," she added archly. Harry Spencer did not have to go out of his way for an opportunity to satisfy his curiosity by personal acquaintance with Mrs. Herbert Maxwell. When he and his fair partner had finished the last hole and approached the piazza of the new club-house, they found her sitting there--one of a group of both sexes waiting for luncheon. Peggy, radiant and prodigal of superlatives, proclaimed to one after another that her game had come back. Wasn't it perfectly glorious?--the loveliest thing which had ever happened. And Mr. Spencer had detected at once what was wrong. "Just think of it, I was pressing and took my eye off the ball," she kept reiterating, "and I never knew it. Wasn't it dear of him?" One of the most characteristic features of golf is that it is not an altruistic pastime. Everyone is feverishly absorbed by the state of his own game, and does not care at heart a picayune for his neighbor's. At the moment of Peggy's vociferous advent the assembled company were talking in pairs, and each member of each pair was endeavoring to excite the interest of his or her partner in the dialogue by glowing or dejected narration of why his or her score was lower or higher than the speaker's average. In some cases both were talking at once and neither listened. Oftener, perhaps, each had asserted an innings, and the strongest or most persistent lungs held the mastery. Miss Marbury, who under the tutelage of Dobson had done the longest hole in 12 and the eighteen holes in 132--five better than ever before--was bubbling over with ecstasy and soliciting congratulations. Douglas Hale, who had failed by one stroke to surpass his previous record of 82, was telling hoarsely and pathetically to everyone whom he could buttonhole how it happened. "At the fourteenth hole I was on the green in two and took seven for the hole. Seven! Just think of that, seven! Five strokes on the green." As he uttered the words with excruciating precision, he would hold up the five fingers of his hand and shake them at his auditor. It was an experience which would last him all day and as far into the evening as he could find new listeners, especially if he could endeavor to take the edge off his disappointment by Scotch and soda. Consequently, though everybody heard that Miss Peggy Blake had recovered her game, and her breezy invasion caused a stir, the fact that she had done so was of interest only because of the means by which this had been brought to pass. It was Harry Spencer, not she, who became the cynosure of numerous feminine eyes. If he had put Peggy onto her game, why not them onto theirs? Peggy, mistaking the reason for the pause in the general chatter for interest in her improvement, proceeded to rehearse gleefully the details of her triumph for the benefit of the company. But Douglas Hale, in no mood to be side-tracked by any such interruption, stepped forward, and hooking his arm in Harry Spencer's, led him apart with a mysterious "A word with you, old man." Having thus enforced an audience, he held forth in the low tone appropriate to an interesting confidence. "Just now I was 58 at the end of the thirteenth hole, and was on the green of the fourteenth in two, and I took seven for the hole. Five puts on the green! Think of that, five!" he whispered hoarsely, and shook his five fingers in Harry's face. "Seven for the hole. And I finished in 82. Tied my own record. Wasn't that the meanest streak of luck a man ever had? Five puts, and two of them rimmed the cup." His victim listened indulgently. The firm grip on his arm precluded escape. "You must learn to put, my dear fellow." "That's the most sickening part of it. I made every other put. Let me tell you--you remember the slope of the fourteenth green? Well, I----" Realizing what he was in for, Harry took advantage of a momentary pause on the part of his torturer for the purpose of lighting a cigarette. His observing eyes had noticed that Mrs. Maxwell was standing apart from the other women who were within range of Miss Blake's jubilant reiteration. He wrenched himself free from Douglas's clutch. "It was a case of downright hard luck, and now, in return for my heart-felt sympathy and for listening to your tale of woe, introduce me to Mrs. Herbert Maxwell." Puffing at his half-lighted cigarette, Douglas Hale reached out to recover his lost grip. "Wait a minute. You haven't heard half. I will show you just how it happened." Spencer intercepted the reaching fingers and grabbed the offender's wrist, and said, with jocund firmness, "I don't care a tinker's dam how it happened, Douglas, and I tell you you can't put. Introduce me to Mrs. Maxwell." This quip caused the egotist to draw himself up stiffly. He was proof against hints and ordinary recalcitration, but such an unmistakable rebuff was not to be ignored; that is, he could not with proper self-respect continue the harangue on which he was bent. "Of course if you don't care to hear how it happened, I won't tell you." So saying, Douglas suffered himself to be conveyed the necessary few steps, and performed the ceremony of introduction. Lydia let her eyes rest with keen but interested scrutiny on this new-comer. He was a boon at the moment, for she had taken the gauge of everybody at Westfield, and was conscious that neither her heart nor her brain was satisfied. She craved novelty and true aesthetic appreciation. Did anyone really understand her? Not even Fannie Cole, who came the nearest to divining her hatred of the commonplace and her dread of being bored. But Fannie, though discerning, chose to remain a slave to the canons of conformity. That morning, in her looking-glass she had asked herself the question, "Why did I ever marry Herbert Maxwell?" But she had asked it with no malice aforethought, merely as one who, with leisure to take account of stock, foots up his assets and puts the question, "Am I solvent?" The interrogation was simply searching and contemplative. The answer had been prompt, and in a measure assuring. "Because it gave me everything I need." Yet, somehow, there remained a cloud upon her spirit. Was this all? Did life offer nothing further? "We make a fuss and circumstance about our sports," she said. "They do creak." It was agreeable to be comprehended so promptly. "It isn't sport for sport's sake, but for the sake of the cups and because it's the thing." "And above all to beat the other fellow. That's the national creed. It's so in everything--competition. We are brought up from childhood to consider that winning is the thing which counts. We must win at any cost at foot-ball or trade, in affairs or in love." She made one of her little pauses. Decidedly he was a kindred spirit and to be cultivated. "I am an exotic then." "How so?" "Competition--the national creed--does not interest me." "Because you win so easily. I watched you play this morning. You will have no rival of your own sex here." She ignored the tribute; she knew that already; it was the thesis which interested her. "It bores me--winning, I mean. Golf, for the time being, is a delight." He gave her a pirate glance, as though to search her soul, and uttered one of his bold sallies: "That is, your doll is stuffed with----" She checked him, shaking her head. "Oh, no. That is, I think not. I have never cut her open. I had in mind something quite different." Her dainty face grew pensive as she sought the exact phrase to interpret her psychology. "I have never had to struggle for anything. It has always come to me." "Exactly." His note of emphasis reminded her that her words were, after all, merely an indirect echo of his diagnosis. "But your time is sure to come," he asserted confidently. The smile of incredulity which curved her lips betrayed entertainment also. "In what field?" she inquired. Spencer shrugged his shoulders. "I am a student of character, not a soothsayer." "And then?" she queried. "You will be like the rest of us--only more so. You could not bear to lose at any cost." What might have seemed effrontery in some men was but a piquant challenge in his mouth, so speciously was it uttered. Lydia was not unaccustomed to men whose current coin was sardonic sallies, as witness the veteran Gerald Marcy. But this was something different. Her soul had been suddenly pitchforked by a professor of anatomy and held up under her nose with the caveat that she was ignorant of the mainsprings of her own behavior. It was impudence, but novel, and she forgave it with the reflection that he would live to eat his gratuitous deductions, which would be the neatest form of vengeance. [Illustration: The smile of incredulity which curved her lips betrayed entertainment also.] V Before many weeks had elapsed it began to be whispered at Westfield that Harry Spencer and Mrs. Herbert Maxwell were seeing more or less of each other. They appeared together not infrequently on the golf links; it was known that he was giving her lessons at her own house in bridge whist, the new game of cards; they had been met walking in the lanes; and--most significant item, which caused the colony to prick up its ears and ask, "What does this mean?"--two youthful anglers had encountered them strolling in the lonely woods skirting distant Duck Pond. This last discovery, which was early in September, led to the conclusion that, under cover of her mourning, Lydia must have been seeing more of him than anyone had imagined. Yet, even then, though alert brains indulged in knowing innuendoes, Mrs. Cole's epigrammatic estimate of the matter was generally accepted as sound: "A woman in mourning for her mother-in-law requires diversion." It seemed probable that Lydia was amusing herself, and that Harry Spencer was playing the tame cat for their mutual edification. The possibility that he had been caught at last and that she was luring him on that she might lead him like a bear with a ring through his nose, and thus avenge her sex for his past indifference, was regarded as unlikely but delightful. That Lydia was enamored of her admirer, and that they both cared, was not seriously entertained until many circumstances seemed to point to such a deduction. Westfield was not wholly without experience in intimacies between husbands or wives and a third party. But only rarely had there been fire as well as smoke in these cases. And even then there had never been up to this time an open scandal. Matters had been patched up or the veil of diplomatic convention had been drawn so skilfully over them that most people were left in the dark as to the real truth. Almost invariably the intimacies in question reminded one of the antics of horses with too high action who had all the show but little of the quality of runaways; and the preferences manifested were not always inconsistent with conjugal devotion. Consequently, everyone took for granted that this was only another "fake" instance of family disarrangement, entered on to pass the time and to provide that appearance of evil which the American woman seems to find a satisfying substitute for the real article. As Mrs. Cole once remarked in defending the propensity to Gerald Marcy, if one's vanity is flattered, why should one go farther? The buzz of curiosity was stimulated during the ensuing autumn by a variety of fresh and compromising rumors. Consequently, when at a golfing luncheon party given at the club by Mrs. Gordon Wallace in October, Mrs. Baxter, whose blue eyes always suggested innocence, asked in her demure way what the latest news was from "The Knoll," every tongue had something new to impart. The most sensational as well as the latest piece of information was provided by Mrs. Cunningham, who repeated it with the air of one whose faith had at last received a serious shock. "She sat with him on the piazza at 'The Knoll' until three o'clock night before last. Her husband came home at eleven and requested her to go to bed, but there they stayed without him. I call that pretty bad, even if she is Lydia. I wonder how long Herbert Maxwell will permit this sort of thing to go on. Even the worm will turn." There was an eloquent silence, which was broken by a repetition of Mrs. Cole's whitewashing epigram as to Lydia's need of diversion. Its cleverness and value as a generalization caused a ripple of amusement, but it fell flat as a specific. Old Mrs. Maxwell had been dead many months, yet matters were more disconcerting than ever. Stout Miss Marbury's question was regarded as much more to the point: "Who saw them, Mrs. Cunningham?" May Cunningham would have preferred to remain silent on this score, but she perceived that the authenticity of her story was dependent on direct testimony. It was a luncheon of eight. She glanced around the table in an appealing manner as much as to say, "This really is not to be spoken of," and said laconically, "There was another couple present." Then, as though she feared on second thought that the wrong persons might be fixed on, she continued: "Neither of them were married. They are supposed to be engaged, and Lydia acted as their chaperone on the piazza while they took a moonlight ride together." "Who can they have been?" murmured some one sweetly, and there was a general giggle. "You wormed it out of me," said Mrs. Cunningham doggedly. "You demanded my credentials. But it doesn't matter about those two, of course, for they're in love." "How about the others?" ventured Mrs. Baxter. "Truly, Rachel, you shock me," answered Mrs. Cunningham sternly. "It's no joking matter. It's a very serious situation for this colony, in my opinion. People who don't know us do not think any too well of us already because some of us smoke cigarettes and go in for hunting and an open-air life instead of trying to reform somebody. But this will give the gossips a real handle. Besides, it's disreputable." "But I really wished to know," murmured Mrs. Baxter. "Does either of them care? And if so, which?" "My own belief," interjected Mrs. Cole, "as I said just now, is that there's nothing in it--nothing serious. Lydia is simply catering to her æsthetic side, and everyone knows Harry Spencer. It seems to me personally that she has gone too far, but that is a question of taste, and, provided her husband doesn't complain, why need we?" Thereupon she popped into her mouth a luscious-looking coffee cream confection and munched it ruminantly. "It has become a question of morals," asserted Mrs. Cunningham. "If their relations are what we don't believe them to be, it's a disgrace to Westfield. If they are simply amusing themselves, it's heartless, and I know what I would do if I were Herbert Maxwell." "So do I," exclaimed Mrs. Reynolds, a spirited young matron with the breath of life in her nostrils, yet, as someone once remarked of her, notoriously devoted to her lord and master. "Just what my husband said," added Mrs. Miller, a bride of a year's standing, which, considering nothing whatever had been said, provoked a smile and brought a blush to the countenance of the speaker, which deepened as Mrs. Baxter with her accustomed innocence asked: "What would you do?" "Pick out the most seductive-looking woman I could set my eyes on, Rachel dear, and"--blurted out Mrs. Reynolds pungently. As she paused an instant seeking her phrase, Mrs. Cunningham interjected: "Sh! We understand. That might bring her to her senses." "But Herbert Maxwell never would," said Mrs. Cole, reaching for another sweetmeat. "I'm not so sure about that," retorted Mrs. Cunningham. "He's faithful as a mastiff, but goad him too far and he may prove to be a slumbering lion, in my opinion." "That wouldn't suit Lydia at all," responded Mrs. Cole. The thesis interested her. "She takes for granted, I presume, his unswerving fidelity. Besides, he would consider it morally wrong. I shall be very much surprised, my dear, if you are not mistaken." "I'm not a married woman," suggested Miss Marbury, "but I think he ought to put a stop in some way or other to the present condition of things, and that it is his fault if he doesn't." A murmur of acquiescence showed that this was the general sentiment, at which point the discussion of the topic was brought to a close by the hostess's rising from the table--that is, discussion by the party as a whole. After they had repaired to the general sitting-room--that neutral apartment in the club which was appropriated to the use of both sexes--the subject still claimed the attention of the groups into which the company subdivided itself. Here Mrs. Baxter found an opportunity to repeat her inquiry whether either, neither, or both cared, which really was the most interesting uncertainty of the situation, and one which elicited a variety of opinion. Some, like Mrs. Cole, were still incredulous, or chose to be, that either of them was in earnest. But several of the more knowing women wagged their heads in concert with Mrs. Cunningham, who, seated where her vision could rest on the full-length portrait of her husband swathed in pink as the first Master of the Westfield Hounds--one of the new decorative features--repeated data to the effect that Herbert Maxwell was looking glum and was drinking a little--much more than ever before in his life. "Poor fellow!" sighed Miss Marbury, and she added, as though in self-congratulatory monologue, that there were some compensations in being single. "Nothing of the kind; you know nothing about it," said Mrs. Cunningham tartly. She did not choose to hear the institution of holy matrimony traduced by a mere spinster; moreover, her nerves were on edge because of her solicitude lest the most appalling possibility of all were true--that Lydia really cared. For, granting the hypothesis, what might not Lydia do? What would Lydia do? And as yet, though conjecture ran riot and all Westfield was holding its breath, no one could speak with authority as to what the truth was. Nevertheless, Mrs. Cunningham, as an observer, was disposed to take a pessimistic view as to what the future had in store for the colony, the good repute of which was precious to her. On the other hand, many of the younger spirits among the women were inclined to regard the mother of the hunt as a croaker, and as they chatted apart from her on this occasion they cited her late opposition to the recent innovations at the club as typical of her mental attitude. "Yet to-day, if a vote were taken whether we should go back to the old primitive order of things," added Mrs. Miller, "she would be one of the most strenuous defenders of the extra space and improved service which we now enjoy. She can't keep her eyes off that portrait of her husband. Look at her now." The stricture, so far as it related to Mrs. Cunningham's change of front regarding the alterations, was just. Yet her frank acceptance and enjoyment of the more decorative rooms and ampler creature-comforts, even though they wore a radiance reflected from her husband's full-length figure, revealed a broad and accommodating mind. There are some persons who will continue to glorify the superseded past even in the face of a manifestly more charming present. These are the real old fogies, and there is no help for us, or them, but to ignore them. But Mrs. Cunningham was of the sort which, though conservative, is ready to be convinced even against its will; and, having been convinced, she was able to draw her husband after her. A week's occupation of the new quarters having made clear to her that, though more luxurious, they were vastly more convenient, she had sighed and given in. Now there were no two more resolute defenders of the results of the radical policy than she and Andrew. Nevertheless she drew the line there, and still, suspicious of what others defined as the march of progress, she was prepared like a faithful sentinel to challenge developments which aroused her distrust. Because the new club-house was a success, and the inroad of multi-millionnaires had not been so subversive of the best interests of the colony as she had feared, there was no occasion to relax her vigilance. Thus she argued, and hence her genuine and somewhat foreboding solicitude as to Lydia's behavior. But though Harry Spencer continued to dog the footsteps of Mrs. Maxwell, so that he appeared in her society on all occasions, and people wondered more and more how the husband could permit this triangular household to continue without open demur, there were no new developments during the late autumn and winter. Rumors of every description were rife, but no one of the three interested parties deigned to provide a solution of the enigma. Maxwell's demeanor on the surface was so far unruffled that certain observers continued to maintain that his wife's state of mind was entirely platonic; in other words, that he trusted Lydia, and, though he might have preferred more of her society, was willing she should amuse herself in her own way--which was not apt to be the conventional way. And if he did not object, why should anyone else, especially as the Maxwells were now in their town house and local censorship by Westfield was suspended? But the majority shook their heads, and repeated that though Maxwell held his peace, he was out of sorts and still drinking more than his wont. Then, just as the community was getting a little weary of the whole subject because nothing did happen, the breaking out of the war with Spain drove it out of everyone's mind. For the Westfield Hunt Club was up in arms at the first suggestion of powder. All the small talk that spring bore on the matter of enlisting, or on the men who had enlisted. Everyone wished to be a rough rider, and if a commission in that favorite corps had been the certain prerogative of an offer of service, all the able-bodied bachelors in the colony would have enrolled themselves. As it was, there were numerous applicants for this particular aggregation of fighters, but only Kenneth Post, the master of the hounds, succeeded in joining it. Half a dozen obtained billets elsewhere: Guy Perry on one of the war vessels despatched to Cuban waters, young Joe Marbury in another of the volunteer regiments, and Dick Weston, pretty Mrs. Baxter's brother, on one of the yachts converted into a coast guard for the protection of our Atlantic cities against bombardment by the battle-ships of Spain. Harry Spencer was also one of the half dozen. When he promptly proffered his services to the Government, it was somehow taken for granted that he would get a good post; and presently he justified his reputation by receiving an invitation to join the staff of a brigade on the eve of embarking for Cuba. No one at Westfield impugned his courage or questioned his patriotism, but some of the women in discussing the matter later agreed that he had to go. Mrs. Cole put it in a nutshell when she said: "If by any chance Lydia cares for him, she would never have spoken to him again had he remained at home." But there were cases, too, of disappointment. Andrew Cunningham, who, in spite of conjugal bonds, was eager to go to the front, was rejected on account of his age and weight, much to his chagrin and to the secret satisfaction of his better-half. Douglas Hale was discarded on the plea of color-blindness, though, as he pathetically informed his acquaintance, the doctor who examined him declared that he had never seen a finer physical specimen in other respects. Hence it will be perceived that there was a nucleus left for the maintenance of a steady fire of conversation at the club-house for the benefit of the stay-at-homes. At first, in keeping with the course of events, it centred on the possibilities of the destruction of New York, Boston, or Portland by the enemy's fleet; and after that bogy was laid, and the phantom fleet located, it reverted to that ever-fresh topic for controversy, the cause of the blowing up of the Maine. Then it turned to Manila, and when the events of that splendid victory had been threshed threadbare, scented trouble with Germany. The victory at Santiago set every tongue a-wagging and raised enthusiasm to fever pitch; but presently the struggles of our poorly rationed troops prompted an inquiry into the merits of General Shafter as a commander, and one heard the hum of speculation as to what would have happened if Cervera had not come out when he did. Some of the members showed themselves positive arsenals of statistics and secret information from the scene of action. Instead of dwelling on his misfortunes at golf, Douglas Hale's shibboleth all summer was the letter which he carried in his pocket from Guy Perry, who had the good fortune to be in the van of the battle of Santiago. This he read to every man or woman of his acquaintance who would let him, and cherished as an historical document which put him in close touch with the authorities at Washington. Andrew Cunningham tried to make the best of his disappointment by showing himself an audible authority on the size and equipment, identity and immediate location of every battle-ship, cruiser, and torpedo-boat in the navy, and as to our future needs to fit us to cope with the naval armaments of the other great powers of the world. As to the women, they were utterly absorbed in making bandages and comfort bags. Such were the diversions of the spring and early summer. By August the heroes returned from the front and began to reappear on their native heath. Other sporting garb gave place to regimental attire, and, to be in fashion, both men and women wore army slouch hats and suits akin to khaki. One of the first of the Westfield colony to reach home was Guy Perry, looking brown as an Indian from his long exposure to the sun outside the harbor at Santiago. On the day after his return his engagement to Miss Peggy Blake was formally announced, much to the delight of everybody, but to no one's surprise--a fact which slightly dismayed the radiant couple, who were apparently under the delusion that their tryst had been kept a profound secret. They were certainly an attractive-looking pair as they dashed about the country on Guy's dog-cart, proclaiming their good fortune to the world. Peggy's rough rider hat, perched on the back of her head, suited her style of beauty; and as they bubbled over with health and happiness, more than one camera fiend took a shot at them as a charming epitome of the strenuous life. On the other hand, Kenneth Post returned on a litter, almost a skeleton from fever; and Gerald Marcy, who against his own doctor's advice had finally succeeded in getting stalled in camp in Florida, was limping with rheumatism. Nevertheless, he was able to be about, and, though on ordinary occasions a socially tactful spirit, he did not attempt to conceal his pride at being the only one of the middle-aged men who had succeeded in dodging the authorities and serving his country. But the hero who brought back the stateliest palm of glory from Cuba was Harry Spencer, for he had his arm in a sling from a flesh wound caused by a Spanish bullet at San Juan Hill, and had been subsequently in the hospital, threatened with blood poisoning. He was emaciated and interesting-looking, so Mrs. Cole, who had a glimpse of him, declared, and he went straight to the small cottage at Westfield where he had spent the previous summer. Two days subsequent to his return the spirit moved Mrs. Cole to call on Lydia, and on the afternoon of the day she paid this visit it was noticed that she sat pensive and silent while the other women at the club were drinking tea. It was Mrs. Barker who called attention to the circumstance by asking: "What are you incubating on, Fannie?" Mrs. Cole hesitated for a moment, then she said tragically, "I am afraid she cares for him." No one had to ask who was meant. "What did I tell you?" exclaimed Mrs. Cunningham. "What makes you think so?" asked the practical Miss Marbury. Fannie Cole shook her head. "Not from anything she said. She didn't mention the subject. It was from what she didn't say. She made me think of a pent-up volcano." Proceeding from the intimate source it did, this testimony, though metaphorical, was felt to be most interesting. "And if the volcano bursts, what will become of poor Herbert?" murmured Mrs. Baxter. "That's it, of course. Yet it isn't the only thing," responded Mrs. Cole. "What will become of Lydia? What will become of all three of them?" The sociological vista which opened before her was evidently so appalling that she leaned back limply in the straw chair on which she was sitting. But the attitude was productive of philosophy, for she suddenly said with the air of one rhapsodizing, but who nevertheless utters an indictment against Providence: "If the divinity which shapes our ends really intended Lydia to be happy, why was Harry Spencer allowed to return when he did?" Warming to the vividness of her imagination, she continued briskly, "The ideal course of events would have been this: First, the baby should never have been born; secondly, Herbert Maxwell should have felt an uncontrollable patriotic call to go to the war; he should have fought with distinguished valor and brilliancy--sufficient to inscribe his name on the pages of history--and he should have been shot dead. That would have satisfied him. Then would have been the time for Harry Spencer to come home. With him and Herbert's fortune Lydia might have been radiantly happy. As it is--" Mrs. Cole paused, palsied by the perplexities of reality, and unwilling to venture on prophecy. But Mrs. Baxter saw fit to finish the sentence for her by a not altogether logical utterance: "As it is, it was Mr. Spencer who went to the war and has come back alive and a hero. If Lydia liked him before, it is of course all the harder for her not to like him now." Mrs. Cunningham uttered a sort of groan. Then she said emphatically, "There can be but one end to it, in my opinion. Sooner or later she will leave her husband and run away with him." There was a general nodding of heads--all but Mrs. Cole's. "And what will they do with that poor baby?" interjected Miss Marbury. Fannie Cole sat up by way of protest. "My dears," she said with gasping alertness, "that would be comparatively normal, and it cannot be the correct solution. Don't you see it's impossible? Neither of them has any money. If she would, he wouldn't, and neither of them would." She looked around the circle with a smile of triumph, knowing that her stricture was unanswerable. "I never thought of that," said Mrs. Baxter, voicing the general perplexity. VI Late one afternoon, about a month after, Lydia Maxwell was sitting in her drawing-room at Westfield. An exquisite tea service stood on a table close at hand. But tea had been served. At least the visitor who had been spending the afternoon with her had drunk his and had been gone about ten minutes. Her baby, left by the nurse on the way to her own evening meal, was cooing on the sofa at her side, fended by pillows from toppling over on its head, and provided with the latest novelties in costly toys. The child was now nearly two, and her wardrobe was a credit to her mother's decorative instincts. Lydia enjoyed the combination of the infant and herself and spared no pains to produce an effective picture on all occasions, whether the setting were the drawing-room, a victoria, or a village cart. She counted on mounting Guendolen at the earliest possible day on the tiniest of ponies as a picturesque hunting attendant. Nor had her husband failed to appreciate what an opportunity was here afforded for the artist. Six months earlier he had threatened--the phrase was Lydia's--to have her and baby done by Sargent on his next visit; in fact, Herbert had written to him. The offer had been tempting from the point of view of immortality, but left alone with the child, she had shaken her head and said: "It would be lovely if it were just right, Guen, but he might take it into his head to form a vicious conception of mamma. And as for you, he couldn't help making you the speaking image of Grandma Maxwell. Living pictures are safest for us, dear, for we can control the canvas." Now she sat pensive and tense, her hands clasped in her lap. "Why do I love him so?" she murmured under her breath, rebelling against the consciousness which gripped her. Yet in another moment she asserted with the abandonment of one defending his faith against all comers, "But how I do love him!" A jocund, inarticulate effort at conversation by the child reminded her of its presence. Reaching out her hand, she felt the silky softness of the delicate infantile locks, and then the dainty texture of the frilled dress. Again she said, talking to herself: "The problem is, what will become of you, cherub? You must go with me, of course--if I go." Her baby cooed by way of response. There was a noise in the hall as of someone arriving. "A visitor for you, Guen," she said. Hurriedly leaning over, she raised her finger as one would to hold the attention of a dancing dog, and gave this cue for imitation. "Say pa-a-pa--pa-a-pa." The earlier lessons had been fairly learned, for after a brief struggle the dawning intelligence freed itself in an unequivocal if throaty reproduction of the pious salutation. "You little pet! Now again." "Pa-a-pa." "At last. A sop to Cerberus," Lydia murmured. The door opened and the master of the house entered. He had just come back from an afternoon ride, and in the few minutes which had elapsed since his return Lydia knew that he had been to the sideboard in the dining-room--a man's way of alleviating despondency. His glance, avoiding or ignoring his wife, sought eagerly the object which he expected to find--his infant daughter. This was the bright spot in his day. The baby acknowledged his advent by a crow and by shaking a solid silver rattle. Maxwell, walking across to the other side of the room, sat down and held out his arms invitingly. But Lydia intervened to defer the customary toddling journey in order to exhibit her pupil's latest accomplishment. "Listen to her now, Herbert," she said, and gave the necessary signal. "Pa-a-pa." The verisimilitude was undeniable. Something very like a groan escaped Maxwell, though his countenance lighted up. Was he thinking how happy he might have been had fate so willed? The performance was repeated successfully a second time; then the child was despatched on her travels across the carpet. When she ran staggering into her father's arms he folded her to his breast and pressed his lips against the fair, silky tresses. She was accustomed to be thus cuddled by him, though to-night there was an added fervor in his endearments, owing to her efforts at speech. Meanwhile Lydia from her angle of the sofa observed them in demure silence. She had given him an entrancing quarter of an hour, for which she was thankful. Besides, it might put off the evil day--the day of rupture, decision, breaking up of the present anomalous domestic relations--which was impending. He had been devoted, forbearing, unselfish, he had lavished on her every luxury, but he was impassible. He did not divert or interest her; his serious side lacked originality; his gayer moods were noisy and deficient in subtlety; the reddish inelegance of his physique repelled her. But what was to be the end? This was the riddle which for diverse reasons she had yet failed to solve. Its solution must depend on the future words of both of them, and she had had no final explanation with either. For the present she would fain have things remain as they were, until she could find the key. The return of the nurse interrupted Maxwell's happiness. Grudgingly he gave up his treasure. As soon as the child had been carried off, he rose, and standing with his back to the blaze of the wood-fire, which the first sharpness of autumn made agreeable, he faced his wife. "I met Spencer coming from here." "He stayed to tea." "And was here all the afternoon?" "You know he comes every afternoon." "And nearly every morning?" "Yes." "What is to be the end of this, Lydia?" She was preparing his tea, which he was accustomed to take after the departure of Guendolen. "How do you wish to have it end?" she asked presently. "I would have you promise me never to see him again, and to go abroad with me for two years. Let us change the scene entirely. You owe it to me, Lydia, and to our child." This was no new discussion, but he was making one last determined effort to counteract the influences working against him. "But you know I love him." "So you have informed me. You have informed me also that it has stopped there." "It is true. Why, I scarcely know. Perhaps it would have been juster to you if I had left you and gone to him." "I do not understand." "No matter, then." "But you loved me once," he exclaimed resolutely. "That is, you told me so." "Yes, I told you so. And I did love you as I understood loving then. I liked you, that's what it really was, and I liked the things which a marriage with you brought me." "You mean you married me for my money?" "I did not know it at the time." "What do you mean, then?" Lydia clasped her hands behind her head and leaned back in her seat. "I am trying to be frank with you," she said. "I am trying to make you the only reparation in my power--to let you see me just as I am, just as I see myself. We are what we are. I discovered that long ago." He caught up this appeal to fatalism with a quicker appreciation of her significance than he was wont to show. "You need never see this man again unless you choose. You are my wife; I am your husband. Does that stand for nothing?" "I should choose to see him," she answered with low precision, ignoring the rest. "There is the trouble." He winced as though from a buffet. "Good God, Lydia, what have I done? Is there anything within my power which you desired which I haven't given you?" "You have been very generous." "Generous!" The word evidently galled him. "Do you realize that to regain your love I would gladly sacrifice every dollar of the five million I own?" For a moment she made no response. The idea of living with a penniless Maxwell was one which she had never entertained, and it made clearer to her the hopelessness of her plight. "I am not worth it, Herbert," she said gently. He, too, paused, baffled and at a loss how to proceed. "You are so cold," he asserted with an access of indignation. "Cold?" The quality of the interrogation expressed the incredulity of newly discovered self-knowledge. "To me." "Yes, to you, Herbert." He bent his brow upon her. "I suppose if I had devoted myself to some other woman I might not have lost you. I had hints enough from our kind friends, which I ignored because I did not choose to soil our wedlock by such a foul pretense." His conclusion betrayed the loyalty of his emotions, but there was the sneer of gathering temper in his tone. Lydia shook her head with a fastidious smile. "With some women that might have been the remedy. It could have made no difference with me." "It is not too late yet," he cried with loud-mouthed menace. "You forget that I am human--that I am a man." She raised the pages of a book beside her and let them fall gradually. "You must do as you choose about that." "Then what is the remedy?" he shouted. "I used an inappropriate word. There is no remedy in our case." "Lydia, you are goading me to ruin." Striding up and down the room, he struck his leather breeches smartly with his riding-crop--which he had brought from the hall because the baby liked to play with it--so that they resounded. He halted before his wife and exclaimed hoarsely: "What are we to do, then?" She had been warned by feminine innuendoes before marriage of the Maxwell vehemence below the surface, and she perceived that their affairs had reached a crisis. "Sit down, Herbert, please. I cannot bear noise. If we are to arrange matters, we must talk quietly in order to decide what is really best under all the circumstances." He gave an impatient twist to his head. "I wish you to know that I am master here after this," he announced. Nevertheless, he walked to the chair near the fireplace, which he had first occupied, and sitting down, folded his arms. "Well, what have you to say?" "To begin with, Herbert, there is no escape for either of us from this calamity. And you must not suppose that I do not realize how dreadful it is for us both. So far as there is fault, it is mine. I ought never to have married you. But the past is the past; I do not love you now; I can never love you again." "One way out of it," he said between his teeth, "would be to kill the man you do love." "How would that avail?" "I have thought more than once of shooting him down like a dog," he blurted. Lydia shook her head. "You never could do that when it came to the point. And in case of a duel, he is more handy than you. Besides, who fights duels nowadays? And think of the newspapers! You know as well as I that such a thing is out of the question--on Guen's account if for no other reason. It would be blazoned all over the country." "On Guen's account! Why did you not think of her before you sacrificed us both?" She looked back at him unruffled. "I am thinking of her now," she replied with her finished modulation. "I have told you I am what I am." "Do not repeat that shallow sophistry," he exclaimed fiercely. "You are what you choose to be." But in the same breath he fell back in his seat with the air of one confounded. Then, resting his elbow on the arm of the chair and his cheek on his hand, he gazed at her from under his reddish, beetling brows as one might gaze at the sphinx. "What, then, do you suggest?" he asked wearily. Lydia had shrugged her shoulders at his last stricture. Now raising again the cover of the book beside her and letting the leaves slip through her fingers, she replied slowly, "I suppose if you were a foreign husband you would accept the inevitable and console yourself as best you could. We should go our respective ways and ask no questions. I should be discreet and--and things would remain as they are so far as Guen is concerned." "I see. But I am an American husband, and, though they have the reputation of being the most accommodating in the world, they draw the line at such an arrangement as you suggest." "I thought very likely that you would. Then we must separate. Sooner or later, I suppose, you will be entitled to a divorce, if you wish it." There was a pause. "Where will you go?" he asked in a hollow tone. "I have not thought," she answered. It was the truth. Clever and discerning as she was, she had put off the inevitable from day to day, basking in the glamour of the present. What would her lover say? Would he be ready to venture all for her sake? to throw convention to the winds and glory in their passion? She did not know; she had never asked him. They had never discussed the future. She needed time--time to think and time to ascertain. Then a sudden thought seized her, and she spoke: "I shall take Guen." "Guen?" There were agony and revolting consternation in his exclamation. "I am her mother. She is a mere baby. Am I not her natural guardian?" He sprang to his feet. "I should not permit it!" he thundered. "I should go to law; I should appeal to the courts." [Illustration: "I should not permit it!" he thundered. "I should go to law; I should appeal to the courts."] Her wits showed themselves her allies. "But if you drive me from this house, the courts will give her to me," she said triumphantly. "What, after all, have I done? You are jealous, and you dismiss me. They will let me have my baby." The horror inspired by her cool, confident declaration choked his utterance. He raised his riding crop in his clenched fist as though he were impelled to strike her. "You--you--" he articulated, but no suitable stigma was evolved by his seething brain. His arm fell, but he stood with set teeth and bristling mien, like a wild boar at bay. His fury had the effect of enhancing Lydia's appearance of calm. "There is no use in getting excited. I'm only telling you what is likely to happen if we have recourse to desperate measures. She's a girl, and I brought her into the world--had all the stress of doing so. Why shouldn't I have her? I've heard lawyers say that when parents separate the courts consider what is for the best good of the children. Surely it is for the best good of a baby girl of two that she should go with her mother. That's the modern social view, Herbert, and a man has to make the best of it." As she proceeded Lydia had warmed to the plausible justice of her argument. Recognizing that she had put herself in the best possible position for the time being, she rose to go. Maxwell, gnawing at his lips, stood pondering her dire words. The appalling intimation that he might lose his precious child had numbed his senses with dread. He knew his wife's cleverness, and that there must be some truth in her statement. Might she not even at the moment be premeditating an attempt to carry her away? Every other thought became at once subordinate to his resolve to safeguard his treasure. As though he suspected that his wife had risen under a crafty impulse to get the start of him, he blocked her pathway by stepping between her and the door. "I forbid you to touch her," he said frowningly. "She shall never leave this house. I am going to give my orders now and they will be obeyed." Maxwell stood for a moment as though waiting to see what response this challenge would elicit, then, with a forbidding nod, he strode from the room and shut the door after him. His departure was a relief to Lydia. All she had desired was to be alone. She dropped again upon the sofa and sat looking into space. There was only one course: she must have an understanding with Harry Spencer. What would he say? What was he prepared to do for her sake? She thought to herself, "He said once that my time would come. It has come, and, as he prophesied, I am just like the others--only more so. More so because they might be ready to give him up; they might not have the courage to persevere and sacrifice everything else for the one thing which is worth while--love. And I thought it would never come--that I was cold, as Herbert says, and likely to be bored all my life. Now, against my creed, against my will it has come, and I cannot do without him." For a moment she sat in reverie, then murmuring, "I must know--and the sooner the better," she stepped to the desk with an impulsive movement and wrote. VII Lydia's note was a summons to Spencer to go to drive with her on the following morning. When he arrived she was ready with her village cart and a fast cob. Regardless of appearances, her project was to seek some distant spot where they would not be interrupted. The woods near Duck Pond--in which they had passed pleasant hours together twice already--commended themselves to her, and thither she directed their course under the mellow October sunshine. She spoke of their jaunt as a picnic, the edible manifestations of which she disclosed to him stowed in neat packages behind. But she vouchsafed no immediate explanation of the true purpose of this impromptu expedition. She was biding her time until they should walk together in the sylvan paths, free from all danger of interference. Since matters were approaching a climax, she was glad also to give herself up for the moment to the glamour of sitting at his side and realizing their affinity. Of all the men of her acquaintance he was the only one who had never bored her; who seemed to divine and cater to her moods; who amused her when she craved entertainment, and was alive to the precious value of opportune silence. He seemed to her possessed of infinite tact--and Lydia experienced an increasing repugnance when her social sensibilities were jarred. That had been one great trouble with Maxwell; he was forever doing the right thing in the wrong way. His very endearments were awkward, whereas her present companion's slightest gallantry gave a pleasant fillip to her blood. Spencer, on his part, was quite content to ask no questions. He was with the woman who exercised a subtler and more permanent fascination over him than anyone he had hitherto met, not excepting Miss Wilford, and this drive was only cumulative proof of favor on her part, one more sign that their relations were approaching a crisis. What the precise and ultimate result of their growing intimacy was to be he had not felt the need to consider. For the moment it sufficed to know that, though both her partiality for him and his influence over her were unmistakable, she had up to this point kept him at bay--eluded him when she seemed on the point of throwing herself into his arms. This skilful restraint on her part had served to heighten the interest of his pursuit, and also to deepen the ardor of his attachment. Before they had gone beyond the limits of Westfield several of their mutual acquaintance were encountered, all of whom were too well-bred to betray the vivid interest which the meeting aroused. Mrs. Cole, on her way to play golf at the club, nodded to them blithely from her phaeton, as though it were the most natural thing in the world they should be together, and so concealed from them her dire suspicions which were thus afforded fresh material to batten on. Gerald Marcy, sportsman-like and dignified on his grizzled hunter, saluted them with the off-hand decorum of a man of the world. "Glorious weather for man and beast," he asserted, as much as to say that he knew how to mind his own business. When they had passed him, however, he tugged nervously at his mustache and wagged his head like a soothsayer. The newly engaged couple, sitting side by side in a village cart of similar pattern to theirs, managed to conceal that they did not know which way to look, and sustained the ordeal creditably, though the girl was conscious that her cheeks were flushing. As they left the culprits behind, Peggy clutched her lover's arm and whispered hoarsely, "Did you see that?" "It's too bad," said Guy, who, being neither blind nor imbecile, had not failed to take in the full import of the situation. "I for one am all in the dark as to how this thing is going to end." "I knew they would be great friends, but I never supposed for a minute that it would come to anything like this," mused the maiden sadly. "Even when she chaperoned us that night I took for granted it was nothing really serious." Mrs. Gordon Wallace, who, being a new-comer from the West, was less of an adept, perhaps, in disguising her real feelings, put up her eye-glass a little feverishly as she bowed. Whereupon it pleased Lydia to whisk her head round a moment later. "She was staring after us with all her eyes!" she exclaimed. "I knew she would; she couldn't resist the temptation. She will report that I have a guilty conscience, whereas I was merely studying human nature in violation of my own social instincts." "What did she see, after all?" queried Spencer, supposing that his companion stood in need of a little soothing. "Everyone is talking about us, as you know," Lydia answered, ignoring the query. "We have been for months the burning topic at Westfield, and the fame of our misdeeds has spread abroad. Everything considered, people have been wonderfully forbearing to our faces--perfect moles, in fact--but behind our backs they are chattering like magpies. Fannie Cole intimated as much, though I had guessed it." "Why need we care what they say?" he asked sedulously. What better opportunity would he have than this for feeling his way? "We know that there have been no misdeeds." She touched the horse with the tip of her whip, and he bounded forward. "Is it not the prince of misdeeds that we love one another?" she said after a moment. "We cannot help that." "But since it is true, what are we going to do about it, my friend?" "Do? Lydia," he whispered eagerly and bent his cheek toward hers, "it is for you to say." She recoiled chastely from his endearment, though she thrilled at the proximity. "Is it? I am not sure. I asked you to come with me this morning in order to find out. It appears that we have reached the parting of the ways." "The parting?" he queried apprehensively. "Not for us, unless we choose." "Ah." It was the sigh of an ardent lover. "Wait. I will tell you by and by when we can talk it out freely." She turned and smiled on him with an effulgent grace such as she had never in her life lavished on Maxwell. Therein she threw wide open for a moment the casement of her soul and let him perceive the completeness of the havoc he had wrought. "You angel!" he answered, breathing softly, and he pressed her hand. He divined that her dainty spirit was in the mood when all it asked of him was his presence, and that speech would be a discord. They were passing now beyond the confines of Westfield and the influence of its colony into a more distinctly rural country--stretches of wilder uplands, now pastures, now woods, alternating with small farm buildings around which the fields lay stubbly with the party-colored remains of the harvest, and redolent of autumn odors. Presently they reached a village with a shady main street and old-fashioned white-faced houses, most of the treasures of which, quaint andirons and other picturesque relics of a simpler past, had been sent to market owing to the lure of fancy prices. Then more fields, and at length they branched off from the main road along a winding lane, on either side of which the view was partially shut off by clusters of bushes gay with the colors of the changing season. The perfume of the wild flowers was in the air, and everywhere the blazon of the golden-rod was visible. They had exchanged an occasional word of comment on the sights and sounds of the varying landscape, yet wholly impersonal. Now once more she turned toward him with the same lustrous smile, and said, like one exalted: "Love and the world are mine to-day." Thrilled by this confession of faith, he looked into her eyes ardently, and encircling her waist sought to draw her toward him. "And they will be mine when you are mine. You must be mine; you shall be mine." She freed herself from his grasp. "Patience, my friend." Her voice had the tantalizing exultation of an elusive fay. "What should I gain by that? Would you love me any more than you do now?" "Yes, yes indeed," he answered, disregarding logic. "I doubt it much," she asserted archly. "But wait." On they went, and finally the bushes along the winding lane became trees and the sky above their heads was obscured by patches of foliage. They were in an expanse of woods which, in spite of the proximity of civilization, still smacked of luxuriant and elfish nature. The road, though yet wide enough for a vehicle, wound gracefully between oaks and pines stately with age. Some reverent hand had protected them. Their trunks were scarred with weird growths, and on the carpet of the soil big fungi flourished unmolested. It was a wild region to the imaginative and uninitiated, yet there were evidences now and again of the nearness of man and his devices, such as an occasional sign-post or rustic seat. After half a mile of travel over a soft brown carpet sprinkled with fragrant pine needles they brought up at their destination, a sort of sylvan camp--a picnic-ground in reality, a favorite resort of the masses in midsummer. Now it was deserted for the season. Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang, though the simile was applicable to the dismantled wooden buildings rather than to the face of nature. The band-stand and eating pavilion stood like starving ghosts amid the forest mysteries. But there was a hitching-post at hand. Lydia knew her locality, and after the willing cob had been secured and blanketed, she led the way down a short vista to an arbor or summer house, to which clustering vines still imparted some semblance of vernal cosiness. The view from it commanded through a narrow clearing a picturesque outlook on the glistening waters of Duck Pond, while the crackling underbrush furnished a cordon of alert sentinels. On the rustic bench, where many inelegant predecessors had carved their initials, there was ample room for two. Nor was it the first time this pair had made use of it. Settling herself in her corner with folded arms so as to face her companion, Lydia broke the silence. "Herbert says we cannot go on as we are." "He has intimated as much several times before." "But this time he is in earnest. He has put down his foot. He introduced the subject yesterday after you had gone. I told him again the truth--the truth he already knew--that I love you, and not him, and that I can never love him." She paused. Was it to pique his curiosity, or was she feeling her way while she revelled for the moment in her declaration? He accepted her avowal complacently as a twice-told tale, but he was interested obviously in what was to follow. "Well?" "He declines absolutely to be accommodating and resign himself to the situation. The customary foreign point of view in such a case does not appeal to him. When it came to the point I never supposed it would." "We were getting along so nicely, too. What brought this on?" Spencer remarked parenthetically. The triangular footing had been submitted to by Maxwell for so many months without an outbreak that the logic of events seemed to him to demand some special incident as a justification for this sudden revolt. "One can never tell when a volcano will assert itself. He simply exploded, that's all," she answered. "The wonder is that he has put up with it so long." "And what is it that he requires?" "He implored me never to see you again and to go abroad with him for two years. When I declined, he said that he and I must separate." "A divorce?" "We did not discuss precise terms. The idea uppermost in his mind was much less complex than that. He invited me to leave the house." Spencer made an ejaculation of astonishment. "At once?" "That was his meaning." "And what did you reply?" Under the spur of her disclosure he had risen. Resting his arm on one of the spiky knobs of the rustic pillar in front of him, he looked down at her inquiringly. Yet his long, athletic, indolent figure still shrank from the conclusion that the status of their affairs had been permanently disturbed. "I managed not to commit myself at the moment." She paused briefly. "I desired to talk with you first, Harry. I felt that I must know what you would like me to do." He straightened himself as from surprise. "I could not like you to do that--leave the house." "It would only be possible provided I went to you." For a moment he seemed dumfounded. "From his house to me? But, Lydia"--the boldness of the proposition was so staggering to Spencer, he felt that he must have misunderstood her, and was groping for her meaning. His consternation was evidently not unexpected, nor did it elicit reproach. "No one would call on me, of course," she said dryly. Then she added with cumulating tenseness, as one pleading a cause which she suspects to be hopeless, "It would mean the end of everything else in the world which I care for except one--my love for you. We could leave this place forever, Harry, go to Australia, the world's end, wherever you will, and be happy." A scampering squirrel with a nut in its mouth hopped into view on the path, scanned them for an instant, then bounded into the underbrush. But only just in time. It seemed to Spencer that the little animal was grinning at him, and he had reached for a missile as an outlet for his doubly harassed feelings. "My dear girl, you are crazy." "Very likely, Harry." "I love you to distraction, God knows, but that sort of thing is out of date. Why, Lydia, you would be the first to tire of it. Happy? We should neither of us be happy, for what would we have to live on?" The final inflection of his voice was veritable triumph, so irrefutable appeared his logic. Lydia gave a profound sigh. "I knew you would say that," she answered quickly. "But it was our only chance. Suppose I get my divorce and we marry here, what have we to live on? I have three thousand a year of my own. And you?" "Not quite so much--assured." "Exactly. And there you are!--as Henry James's characters are so fond of saying." They gazed at each other mutely. "We should be beggars with our tastes," she resumed. "It would never do, would it, dear? You see, I have considered the subject." "I perceive that you have." The pensiveness of his tone was a virtual admission that he had failed to recognize how subtle she had been. "The other was our only chance," she repeated. "I would have gone with you, probably, if you had consented." "But I do consent, if you wish it," he asserted eagerly; and falling on his knee he reached for her hand and pressed it to his lips. For the first time in his life he had yielded to the intoxication of love against his reason. The charm of this elusive, chameleon-like being had got the better for the moment both of his discretion and his inherent selfishness. Though the capitulation entranced Lydia, it had come too slowly and too late. She shook her head. "It is you who have convinced _me_. You are perfectly right. I should tire without things--of living on next to nothing. It would be impossible. You knew me better than I did myself." She freed her hand gently from his blandishments and smiled in his face. He rose and looked down at her again from the rustic pillar. "We might manage somehow. I should be ready to try." He was nerved for the sacrifice. "On six thousand? Oh, no, you wouldn't. At any rate, I should not." It was futile to pretend that it would be adequate. "We might live abroad. Things are cheaper there," he suggested. "But I don't wish to live abroad. I wish to remain here, and I could not hold up my head on much less than I have now, for, under the circumstances, no one would call on us if we were poor." He showed that he saw the point, but it suited her to enlarge upon it. "If one has millions and good manners one can do anything in America; everything else is forgiven. But I would never put myself in the position where I might be snubbed or pitied. That's why I must be rich. And as for you, Harry," she continued, "unless you had a stable, steam yacht, and at least two establishments, you would feel, after you had cooled off, that you had thrown yourself away, and, consequently, we should both be miserable." He laughed a little sceptically, but he did not deny the impeachment. "What a clever woman you are, Lydia! That's one reason I love you so. The thing to do," he said in his caressing voice, "is to prevent matters from reaching the desperate stage. You must patch it up somehow with Maxwell, and--and we shall find ways to see each other," he added meaningly. She appeared not to hear his suggestion. "One million is the very least that you and I could marry on--and be perfectly happy. And, if we had it, we might be very happy." Her sigh of regret encouraged his alert warmth. He leaned toward her and whispered, "Let us, then, be happy in the only way which is possible." She raised a warning hand. It was clear that she had understood his previous innuendo. "To be happy under the rose is respectable abroad, but here it may mean social ostracism," she replied demurely. "I tell you that Herbert is dreadfully in earnest. Besides," she added after one of her deliberate pauses, "Do you not love me? That is what I crave. That is the essential thing for me." "You are mocking me," he said with choler. "No; only showing myself conservative and sensible like yourself. Neither of us can afford to sacrifice everything, yet it would be infinitely preferable to live together. You must find our million." Spencer shrugged his shoulders. "Where? In the stock-market? One plunge, and drink wormwood if I lost? I will make you listen to me yet," he said with the rising energy of one who feels himself at bay. His eyes gleamed ardently, and the lines of his dark countenance, little accustomed to brook opposition, grew rigid as they did in the moments when he concentrated all his nerves on accomplishment. The charm of his mastering mood was not lost on Lydia, but its effect was to fix her wits still more closely on the problem of their future. Where was the necessary escape or remedy to be found? She lifted her eyes to meet her lover's gaze, but they stared beyond him into the realm of speculation. Suddenly she started as one who sees a spectre--something weird and forbidden. Yet her stricken vision seemed to gather fascination from a longer look, and she moved her lips as though she were bandying words with doubts which fell like nine-pins before her intelligence. Then, with a transport which revealed that she had taken the intruder, however terrible, to her breast as the bringer of a dispensation, she exclaimed: "Harry, I have found a way." "A way?" he ejaculated, for to him there now seemed only one course open consistent with their necessities, and he feared some radical proposal as the outcome of her trance. "For us to marry. We shall have enough." "Where is the gold mine?" he asked indulgently. She looked at him musingly with bright, searching eyes. In that moment she concluded not to reveal her secret. "Yes, a gold mine," she answered. "We shall have our million--perhaps two. Why not two?" She asked the question of herself, and it was plain that she saw no stable obstacle to her now widening ambition. Meanwhile Spencer surveyed her with scrutinizing wonder. Evidently her transport was genuine. He knew her too well to doubt that there was some basis for her specific statement as to the money. "Two would be better than one, Lydia. Let it be two, by all means," he said jauntily. "It shall be two," she replied with the assurance of a necromancer confident of compelling respect for his magic wand by the performance of the marvels he has foretold. "You may kiss me, Harry--once." VIII The nuptials between Guy Perry and Miss Peggy Blake took place the following summer--midway in June, the month of brides. They were married in the little Episcopal church at Westfield, which since the advent of the colony and of millionnaires had thriven like the traditional bay tree, for most of the sporting element belonged, nominally at least, to that fashionable persuasion. Hence the rector, the Rev. Percy Ward, who had assumed this cure of souls with modest expectations regarding numbers and revenues, had been pleasantly astonished by the rapid increase in both. This had not made him proud, but appropriately ambitious. It had allowed him to keep the appearance and properties of the church up to the mark, æsthetically speaking, by vines, flowers and fresh paint, and at the proper moment it had encouraged him to ask for a new house of worship adapted to the needs of his growing congregation. Success had crowned his efforts. Plans were being drawn for an artistic and sufficiently spacious building to take the place of the rustic quarters in use. But the bride had expressed herself as devoutly thankful that she could be married in the original building, for she had pious associations with it, and its smaller proportions seemed to her more in keeping with a country wedding. For Peggy desired that the ceremony should be an out-of-door affair. She had even thought at first of being married under a bell of roses on her father's lawn. Yet, when it came to the point she adhered to a ceremony in church. She wished to be wedded to her true love as securely as possible, consequently she invoked for the purpose full religious rites at the altar, but her energies respecting the other features of the occasion were bent on the production of open-air effects. They were to be simple and rurally picturesque. The guests of the happy pair endeavored to comply with the wishes of the bride consistently with regard for their own personal appearance. That is, the women came in light summer attire, but with frocks of fascinating shades, and straw hats of the latest dainty design with gay feathers. The little church was packed to the doors, and on the green fronting the vestibule stood those of the men for whom there was no room inside. The leading members of the hunt were in pink, at Peggy's suggestion; among them Andrew Cunningham with an immaculate stock and a new waistcoat of festal pattern. It was a radiant, rare June day; not a cloud was in the sky. The ceremony went off without a hitch save the momentary hesitation occasioned by the bridegroom's diving into the wrong pocket for the ring. All Peggy's family had expressed fears lest her veil should fall off in keeping with her tendencies, so it had been more than securely pinned to forestall such a calamity. She walked, on her father's arm, modestly yet firmly up the aisle as became a strenuous spirit; her responses were agreeably audible; and on her way down, though she obeyed the instructions given her to keep her eyes straight ahead--on the ball, as one of her friends had cautioned her--it was clear from her blissful, confident expression that she found difficulty in not nodding to her friends right and left by way of letting them know how happy she was. She was dressed as nearly like a village maiden as prevailing fashions in wedding garments would allow, and the simplicity of her garb set off her fine physique and hue of health, which not even the conventional pallor of brides was able wholly to dispel. Four bridesmaids tripped behind her, the picture of dainty shepherdesses. On reaching the portal, however, Mrs. Peggy was unable to repress her exuberance; and, before jumping into the carriage which was to carry them to the breakfast at "Valley Farm," her father's residence, she grasped and shook ecstatically a half dozen of the nearest hands. Then as the vehicle containing the happy pair rolled away, while the bride threw a kiss to the group of friends at the door, the swell of a horn rose melodiously above other sounds, and along the meadow flanking one side of the foreground the pack of hounds belonging to the Westfield Hunt came into view headed by the Master, and every hound wore a wedding favor. This feature had been devised as a surprise to the couple and a tribute to their devotion to equestrian sport. Besides, it had a special touch of interest for the women in that everyone knew that Kenneth Post, the Master, would fain have been in the shoes of the fortunate bridegroom. Yet he played his part with so much dignity and spirit, as he led the way toward their destination, that the contagion of his demeanor spread to the entire retinue of guests which followed in their various equipages and the omnibuses or so-called "barges" provided, and the procession swept along on the wings of gayety. In the midst of the confusion of getting away, the pole of pretty Mrs. Baxter's village cart was broken through collision with the champing steeds bearing the phaeton containing Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Wallace. Among the many proffers of succor the first and most acceptable emanated from Mrs. Walter Cole, who had obviously a spare seat in her neat oak station wagon. The fact was that Mrs. Cole's husband, having been detained in town by pressing business, had telephoned his wife at the last moment to go without him to the ceremony, and that he would follow by the next train. Consequently she had arrived only barely in time to get a seat, and that by dint of crowding the pew a little. She had sat there as in a trance, unable to fasten her attention on the charming spectacle as fixedly as it deserved. Her mind kept wandering elsewhere; reverting to certain amazing news of which she had become possessed only the afternoon before, and which she had had no opportunity to impart to the many who would be thrilled by it. She was revelling in the thought of the sensation it would produce, and her own intelligence was agreeably busy with the clever novelty of the procedure and with trying to decide whether, in spite of the heartlessness displayed, the solution devised was not perhaps the best under the peculiar circumstances. She had felt that she should burst if she could not tell some kindred soul soon; but such an astounding piece of information was not to be wasted on people whose faculties were already fully occupied; it merited a single mind. Therefore the moment she became aware of Mrs. Baxter's mishap, she exclaimed with almost hysterical eagerness: "Rachel, there's a seat for you here. Do come with me; I'm all alone." When the invitation was accepted, Mrs. Cole pressed her hand and leaned back with a happy mien. There was no use in speaking until they were free from the concourse and were sweeping along the road toward "Valley Farm." That auspicious moment having arrived, she turned to her friend and said: "Well, dear, the mystery is solved." "About Lydia?" asked Mrs. Baxter with breathless animation. "Yes. She sent for me as soon as she returned. I went to town to see her yesterday." "Where has she been all this time?" "Nominally, as we were told, travelling in Mexico for two months with her cousins; in reality coming to terms with Maxwell in regard to a divorce." "Then they are really to be divorced? How pitiful! But I suppose it was the only solution. Do go on, dear," she added, fearing lest this crude philosophic digression might be the reason for the pause on Mrs. Cole's part. But the narrator, though she regarded the comment as superficial, was merely arranging her material with a view to dramatic effect. "We had a heart-to-heart talk. She told me everything. She wishes people to know--and to try to understand her point of view. Yes, Rachel, they are to be divorced. The papers are already filed. The lawyers say that it is simple enough, if both the parties are agreed, and it seems they are--all three of the parties rather. The court proceedings will be as secret as possible. Herbert is to let her obtain it from him--for cruel and abusive treatment or gross and confirmed habits of intoxication--to save Lydia's reputation on the child's account. Then Lydia is to marry Harry Spencer and live happily ever after--if she can." "She never would have been happy with Maxwell," remarked Mrs. Baxter pensively. "Poor fellow! When one reflects that he probably was never cruel or abused her in his life, and that his confirmed habits, if he has them, are due to her neglect! What is to become of him?" Mrs. Cole had been waiting for some such question. "The law is queer, you know," she said, by way of disposing of the rest of the plaint. Then she added, with significant emphasis, "He is to have Guen." "Altogether?" "Altogether. That is the way Lydia got him to consent to a divorce." Not being so clever as some women, Mrs. Baxter looked puzzled. "I don't think I quite understand." Mrs. Cole, who was enjoying thoroughly the gradual climax, sat upright, and facing her companion laid her hand on Mrs. Baxter's arm. "Rachel," she said, "Lydia has sold Guendolen to her husband for two million dollars!" Mrs. Baxter gave a gasp and a smothered shriek. "Two million dollars! The poor, dear child!" The two ejaculations were not entirely consistent, for they revealed a divided interest. Mrs. Cole proceeded to face the second first. "I've thought it all over and over,--I did not sleep until four, I was so excited--and there can't be any doubt that, under the circumstances, it's the best thing for the child. Her father dotes on her, and Lydia never has been able to forget that she is the living image of his mother. It was probably a struggle--she intimated as much--for it sounds so revolting, and a woman is supposed to be a lioness where her own flesh and blood are concerned. But when it came to a choice between Guen and Harry Spencer, she chose the one she cared for most." "And she really gets two millions? Why, she will be as rich as before." "Exactly. That's one of the interesting phases of the case. You see, they couldn't afford to marry, for neither of them had any money to speak of, though they were dead in love with each other. On the other hand, they had never done anything--so Lydia swears, and I believe her--which would entitle Herbert Maxwell to a divorce; so when Herbert invited her to leave the house, she replied that she would, and that she would take Guendolen with her. It just happened to occur to her, but the effect was marvellous. It enabled her to hold over Herbert's head the menace that, when parents who can't get on agree to separate, the courts are likely to give a baby girl to the mother, and oblige the father to be content with occasional reasonable visits. That frightened Herbert nearly to death. It seems he raged like a bull--poor man!--and threatened to shoot anyone who laid a finger on the child. Now comes the really clever part," continued Mrs. Cole, with an appreciative sigh. "Lydia had threatened to take Guen merely to gain time to think, but when she realized that she and Harry Spencer could never be happy unless she were willing to lead what the newspapers call a double life, she was at her wits' end. Then the idea suddenly occurred to her, and--horrible as it was at the first glance--it seemed the solution of everything. So she engaged a lawyer to open negotiations with her husband, and she went away to Mexico to give Herbert a chance to think over the proposal. She lived in terror of centipedes while she was gone, but there were lots of interesting old relics there, and one day she got a telegram from her lawyer announcing that the whole thing was settled. The necessary papers have been drawn, and as soon as the divorce is granted she will get the money. What do you think of that? Isn't it original and revolting, and yet, seeing that she is Lydia, comprehensible? And the most extraordinary thing of all is that, when one considers the matter dispassionately, it is not clear that it isn't the most sensible arrangement all round." Rachel Baxter, being of a less philosophical turn of mind, was still aghast. "What will people say?" she added naively, as one in monologue. "Of course, they have their money." "They have their money, and Lydia proposes to come back here as soon as she has--er--changed husbands. That's just like her, too. She intends that Westfield shall treat her precisely as though nothing had happened." "Really!" Mrs. Baxter's surprise showed a touch of consternation. "It will be very awkward, won't it? Though, after all," she murmured, "it isn't anything criminal, like--" She found difficulty in hitting on an appropriate simile. Meanwhile Mrs. Cole added, dispassionately: "She would have come to-day, but she felt that she might be thought indelicate, considering that it is a wedding, and that her own affairs are still at sixes and sevens so far as appearances go. But she sent her love to Peggy." At the moment they were dashing up the driveway of "Valley Farm." Mrs. Baxter, who had been nursing her emotions as one whose ethical sensibilities had received a blow in the solar plexus, made this attempt at a summary: "It is diabolical, but interesting. I wonder what people will say." No time was lost by either of them in spreading the abnormal news. But it suited pretty Mrs. Baxter's temperament better to follow in her companion's wake, supplementing the narrative by ingenuous cooing speeches rather than by an independent excursion. They joined at first the procession of guests making snail-like progress toward the bride and groom, who were holding court in the drawing-room of the decorative modern mansion built for occupation from May to December. As chance would have it, they found themselves next in line behind Mrs. Andrew Cunningham, into whose ear Fannie Cole, bending forward, whispered simply the fell words: "Lydia has sold Guendolen to her husband for two million dollars, and is to marry Harry Spencer on the proceeds as soon as the divorce is granted." The mother of the hunt made no sign for a moment, like one stunned. Then, as comprehension of the facts dawned upon her, the blood mounted to her face so that the crab-apples in her cheeks were very much in evidence, and she bounced completely round. "That caps the climax! That is the most up-to-date, highly evolved performance yet. Who told you?" The sardonic ire in her voice was formidable. "Lydia--yesterday." Incredulity snatching at the chance of exaggeration was thus baffled. "It's monstrous! I shall never speak to her again." Appalled by the bluntness of the threat, Mrs. Baxter interposed naively, "But she is going to live here after she is married." "So much the better." Whereupon Mrs. Cunningham turned her back upon them, in search of her husband, to whom she felt the urgent need of imparting the information. Mrs. Cole nodded her head, as much as to say that she understood the point of view, but her perspicuous philosophy prompted her to take a much broader view of the situation. "It's dreadful, May, of course, and disconcerting to maternal notions," she began; "but--" Then realizing that for the moment the indignant censor was otherwise occupied, she decided to reserve her ameliorating comments for a more favorable opportunity than the promiscuous line afforded. After all, the episode was not meat for babes, and undeniably deserved more than flippant treatment. The news thus unbosomed spread like wildfire. After kissing the bride, Mrs. Cole, during her progress to the piazza and lawn, where many of the guests were beginning to partake of refreshments appropriate to the occasion, had the satisfaction of throwing it like a bombshell into successive groups; while the Cunninghams lost no time in revealing what they had heard. Wherever it was uttered it took the place of every other topic, so that presently all the adults and many of the minors of the company were feverishly discussing the social drama presented. The course of the wedding breakfast, thus enlivened, proceeded according to programme. It was a felicitous scene, what with the balmy, brilliant day, the brightly dressed assembly, and the picturesque addition of the pack of hounds, which danced attendance at a respectful distance within proper limits previously prepared for them. After everybody had congratulated the happy pair, they showed themselves at an angle of the piazza to cut the wedding-cake which stood festal and massive on an adjacent table. Then at the proper moment the bride's health was proposed by Gerald Marcy with dignity and grace, in pledge of which everybody's glass of champagne was lifted and drained. The bridegroom, goaded into speech, made a few halting remarks expressive of his own happiness and good fortune, ending in a serious tag of chivalrous, if slightly involved, sentiment, which evoked fresh enthusiasm. Toasts were drunk to the bridesmaids, the parents of the bride, and the Hunt Club. In response to the last of these Mrs. Baxter's brother, Dick Weston, who possessed a deep-toned voice, started the club-song, the words of which had been composed by Andrew Cunningham in his salad days under the inspiration of five Scotches and soda, and been adopted on the occasion of its first delivery as the property of the colony: Across the uplands brown we ride, And our pulses bound with life's ruddy tide, As we follow the hounds o'er the country-side In the brisk October morning. So he sang, and everybody joined in the refrain with genial gusto, not excepting the bride--"Miss West Wind" still, in spite of her veil and satin attire--who waved her glass and carolled with the rest, until even the hounds seemed to catch the infection and added their notes to the general jubilation. Then it transpired that stout Miss Marbury had found the ring in her piece of wedding-cake. This was the source of some merriment, amid which the bride slipped away to change her dress, and the guests, left to their own devices, returned to their discussion of the half-digested news. Gerald Marcy, who had heard it, like everybody else, with mingled revolt and bewilderment, passed from his functions as toast-master to what might be called the storm-centre of the animadversion, a small summer-house or arbor on the trellis of which June roses were blowing, and where the Andrew Cunninghams, Mrs. Cole, the Rev. Percy Ward, and several others were congregated. He arrived just as the rector was exclaiming, with pained fervor: "We have here the logical fruits of the present-day degenerate readiness to put off one husband or wife in order to marry another. If every clergyman in the land were to bind himself never to perform the marriage service in the case of any recently divorced person, some headway might be made against this social pest--the canker-worm of modern family life." The symbolic allusion to canker-worms caused nimble-minded Mrs. Cole to glance up involuntarily at the vines to meet some impending danger to her summer finery at the same moment that she replied: "I don't think it would make much difference, if you'll pardon my saying so, Mr. Ward--with Lydia, I mean. She would be content with a justice of the peace if a clergyman were not forthcoming. But," she continued, with increasing volubility, "what, of course, you wish to know is whether there is anything which will keep people of our sort--not the wives of the toiling masses whose husbands beat them and who feel that they ought to be allowed to solace themselves with a second, but the four hundred, so to speak, and their friends--from trifling with the marriage relation. There's only one remedy, in my opinion, though I don't wish to be understood as advocating it in Lydia's case, for I'm her closest friend, and she isn't here to defend herself. But if, as appearances indicate, she has overstepped the limit--though you all admit that the situation was a tremendous one--the only thing which would cut her to the quick would be if the people whose friendship she values were to turn the cold shoulder on her. That's the only criticism she would really care for, Mr. Ward," she concluded alertly, with her head poised on one side. Mrs. Cole's interest in philosophical discussion was not to be repressed even by her loyalty. "Ah!" exclaimed the clergyman approvingly. "The force of public opinion! The Church is merely trying to lead public opinion. If public opinion will act of its own accord, so much the better." Mr. Ward, though faithful to his principles, was not averse to let this section of his flock perceive that he welcomed righteousness from whatever source it proceeded, as became a liberal-minded Christian. "What constitutes public opinion in this country?" asked Gerald Marcy. "One of the evils of universal liberty is that there are no recognized standards of behavior. It is all go-as-you-please." "Amen," ejaculated the rector. "Consequently," continued Gerald, pursuing the thread of his contemplation, "a social boycott, such as Mrs. Cole suggests, becomes effective only when the particular set to which an offender belongs chooses to take the initiative--which is awkward, for where exactly is one to draw the line?" "I, for one, feel as though I never wished to speak to her again," said Mrs. Cunningham. "She certainly deserves to be cut," said her husband, doughtily. Yet he added, "It would be precious hard to manage, though--not to mention inconvenient--if she comes to live at Norrey's Knoll and everything is patched up according to law." "There you are, you see!" exclaimed Gerald. "I tell you," he said, with a tug at his mustache, "that it's very difficult to cut people whom one has known all one's life, unless they've committed murder or embezzled." "It isn't as though she were a bigamist or living in--in violation of the seventh commandment," remarked Mrs. Baxter dreamily, remembering just in time to round out her sentence with decorum for the benefit of Mr. Ward. The rector jumped at the opportunity offered. "Isn't that just what she is doing? It is precisely that from the Church's point of view." "If the Church would only pass a canon forbidding us to call on women who get divorced in order to marry someone else, it would be easier to take such a stand," remarked Mrs. Cole. "But it isn't the divorce I mind so much. It's her selling Guendolen," exclaimed Mrs. Cunningham, with the honesty of her temperament. "We couldn't ostracize her simply because she has got a divorce and married again, for there are so many others." Her tone showed that she realized the impracticability of a social crusade based solely on the existence in the flesh of a previous wife or husband. Yet she yearned for action in this particular case. But what could one woman do alone? "On the contrary, it seems to me a grand opportunity, ladies," said the clergyman stoutly. "The conduct of the offending parties in this instance represents individual selfishness and license carried to the culminating point. Because you may have neglected to do your duty in respect to the others is no justification for flinching now. It's the whole degraded system, root and branch, which I am fulminating against; but here we have a concrete, monstrous instance which invites action. Is ostracism never to be invoked, as Mr. Marcy intimates, except in the case of the taking of life or where the pocket is affected?" There was a painful silence. For a wedding reception the discussion was becoming decidedly forensic. "We must think it over," said Mrs. Cunningham. "If none of us women were to invite her to our houses or go to hers--" She paused without completing her sentence, evidently appalled by the vista of social complications which it opened up. "There's nothing else in the wide world which Lydia would mind," said Mrs. Cole ruminantly. "But it would break her heart." "Even a stone can break," Gerald could not refrain from whispering in the speaker's shell-like ear. "That's not fair. You do not understand her, my friend. She sold Guen to make sure of Harry Spencer." Mrs. Cole answered in the same undertone, "When he is concerned she is a perfect volcano." "Theoretically," continued the grizzled satirist aloud, with a bow of deference in the direction of the clergyman, "I should like, as a censor of modern social degeneracy, to see it tried, but--but practically it seems to me to be out of the question." "One woman alone couldn't do it, anyway," blurted out Mrs. Cunningham, in the accents of dogged distress. Just then the murmurs of a small commotion broke in upon their dialogue, and all eyes were turned in the direction of the front door. "The bride is going to start, and she has dropped a comb. If she isn't careful, her hair will come down after all!" exclaimed Mrs. Baxter by way of elucidation. * * * * * * One forenoon in the month of July, a year later, the lawn-tennis courts of the Westfield Hunt Club were all occupied. The reason was clear; tennis had become the fashionable sport. Some of the younger spirits, who found golf too gentle a form of exercise, had rebelled successfully against the predominance of that pastime. Consequently all the people of every age who try to do what the rest of the world is doing had consigned their golf clubs to the recesses of their hall closets and bought rackets. Until the present year two courts, both of dirt, had amply supplied the needs of the members; indeed, they had often remained vacant for days at a time. Now even four additional courts failed to meet current demands, and everybody wished to play on those made of grass, of which there were but two. On this particular morning these were in the possession of two pairs of women players, who might be said to represent the antipodes of feminine skill at the game. A couple of the younger matrons, Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Miller, both adepts, were engaged in a close, fast contest. Their balls flew low and swiftly, and their long rallies called forth frequent applause from the spectators, chiefly women, sitting on benches along the side lines or on the piazza, as one or the other of the lithe young women, whose restricted, dainty, diaphanous white skirts seemed almost glued to their figures, would pick up the ball when it appeared to be out of reach by dint of a brilliant dash. The other pair of opponents were Miss Marbury, looking stouter than ever in flannels, and Mrs. Gordon Wallace. They were tossing slow, high lobs and getting very warm in the process. They puffed and panted audibly, although the ball struck the net or flew out of bounds much of the time. Yet they had the satisfaction of knowing that they were in fashion; moreover, they had the sanction of their physicians, who advised the exercise as an antidote against corpulency and rheumatism. Most of the men had gone to the city. Douglas Hale and Gerald Marcy were on one of the dirt courts, and Walter Cole, who was taking his vacation, was playing golf with Kenneth Post. One solitary woman, Mrs. Cunningham, was on the links with her husband. She had demurred stoutly at the contagion of the new fever, and still remained faithful to the fascination of the royal and ancient game. The centre of club life was undeniably the tennis courts, and thither all those who arrived directed their footsteps. Mrs. Reynolds and Mrs. Miller having finished three sets, repaired to an isolated bench to enjoy a soda-lemonade and to cool off under the influences of a friendly chat. Mrs. Reynolds, who, as has been intimated, wore the breath of life in her nostrils, had got slightly the better of her adversary, and was inclined therefore to be on the alert, if not perky. Her ears were the first to detect the whir of an automobile, and she pricked them up. Then the toot of a horn fixed everyone's attention on the approaching monster, for automobiles were still more or less of a novelty, and engendered curiosity. In another instant a huge machine, of bridal white, as Mrs. Baxter subsequently described it, tore around the corner of the road, and, dashing past the occupants of the tennis courts, swept up to the ladies' entrance of the club-house, where it paused, snorting like a huge dragon. It was the largest and most imposing "bubble" which Westfield had gazed upon. Many of the spectators left their places to examine it, and everyone's head was turned in that direction. [Illustration: A huge machine of bridal white ... tore around the corner.] "It is they!" said Mrs. Reynolds with emphasis; then, after a pause, she asked: "Are you going to-morrow afternoon?" "I suppose so. As it was a 'request the pleasure,' I had to answer, and we didn't have an engagement. Besides, she has brought home some lovely new tapestries, and we are asked to meet an Eastern soothsayer, who is said to be a marvel at mind-reading. Mrs. Charles Haviland and half a dozen women, who are supposed to be fastidious, are coming from town, so my husband seemed to think we had better go." "It's because she's artistic that she is forgiven, so my husband says, and of course if everyone else is going to 'Norrey's Knoll' there is no sense in our turning up our noses at the new master and mistress." "Is Mrs. Cunningham going?" asked Mrs. Miller. "I hear that Dick Weston has bet Mr. Douglas Hale fifty dollars to twenty-five that she does." "I suppose Lydia and her husband have come to lunch and play bridge," said Mrs. Miller musingly. "They say she plays wonderfully--almost as well as he does. My husband objects to my playing for money." "So does mine. He says it is bad form--vulgar for women--and that it is bringing American society down to the level of the four Georges. But how about men? I obey him, because I am of the dutiful kind. But how about men?" she reiterated trenchantly. Mrs. Miller dodged the question. "I should fall in a fit if I lost seventy-five dollars in an afternoon, as some of them do." "They say one gets used to it. I have made Alfred promise to give me an automobile as an indemnity for refusing to play. I must be in fashion to that extent anyway." Mrs. Miller laughed. They were now practically alone. The occupants of the tennis courts, both women and men, had drifted toward the club entrance, where they stood admiring the new machine and exchanging greetings with the newly married owners. The Spencers had been in possession of "Norrey's Knoll"--which Herbert Maxwell had sold to Lydia--about three weeks, and on the morrow were to hold an afternoon reception for the latest social novelty, an Eastern sorceress. From where they sat the two young women were able to perceive what was going on, and presumably it was the sight of the grizzled Gerald Marcy bandying persiflage with Mrs. Spencer which furnished the cue to Mrs. Miller's next remark: "Mr. Marcy says that 'bridge' is essentially a gambling game," she responded a little mournfully, "and that to play it properly one should play for money, if at all." "Mr. Marcy says also, my dears, that there are no recognized standards of behavior in this country. It is all go-as-you-please," said a sardonic voice close behind them. They turned in surprise. So absorbed had they been in their dialogue and in watching the arrival of the Spencers that they had failed to notice the approach of Mrs. Andrew Cunningham. "And he is right," continued that lady, tossing her golf clubs on the grass with a somewhat dejected air. "I am going to surrender." Thereupon she accepted the space which the others made for her on the bench, and folding her arms turned her gaze in the direction of the white monster and its satellites. The elder matron vouchsafed no immediate key to the riddle she had just enunciated. Mrs. Reynolds stooped, and picking up the bag of golf clubs examined them with an air of one who scans ancient, fusty relics. "I can't imagine," she said, "how you can keep on playing golf now that everyone is crazy about tennis." Mrs. Cunningham smiled wanly. "That's what I meant," she answered. "I'm going to begin tennis to-morrow--and I'm also going to Lydia Spencer's reception. My spirit of opposition is broken." "Yes," continued the mother of the hunt, in an apostrophizing tone, as though she still felt herself on the defensive, "every one is going, and most of the nice people are coming from town. So why should I be stuffy and bite my own nose off? Which goes far to prove, my dears," she added, sententiously, "that the only unpardonable social sin in this country is to lose one's money. Nothing else really counts." "Oh!" exclaimed the two young women together with animation, as each reflected that Dick Weston had won his bet. BOOKS BY ROBERT GRANT "As an observer of American men and women and things Judge Grant is without a rival."--_The Critic._ "He has proved himself a domestic and social philosopher, happily commingling sharp vision with a good deal of rational philosophy touching practical matters and every-day relationships."--_The Outlook._ The Undercurrent Illustrated by F. C. 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News and Courier._ CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK 
11143	----	Team. MARY MARIE BY ELEANOR H. PORTER _With Illustrations by Helen Mason Grose_ 1920 TO MY FRIEND ELIZABETH S. BOWEN CONTENTS PREFACE, WHICH EXPLAINS THINGS I. I AM BORN II. NURSE SARAH'S STORY III. THE BREAK IS MADE IV. WHEN I AM MARIE V. WHEN I AM MARY VI. WHEN I AM BOTH TOGETHER VII. WHEN I AM NEITHER ONE VIII. WHICH IS THE REAL LOVE STORY IX. WHICH IS THE TEST ILLUSTRATIONS "IF I CONSULTED NO ONE'S WISHES BUT MY OWN, I SHOULD KEEP HER HERE ALWAYS" "I TOLD HER NOT TO WORRY A BIT ABOUT ME" "WHY MUST YOU WAIT, DARLING?" THEN I TOLD HIM MY IDEA. From drawings by HELEN MASON GROSE MARY MARIE PREFACE WHICH EXPLAINS THINGS Father calls me Mary. Mother calls me Marie. Everybody else calls me Mary Marie. The rest of my name is Anderson. I'm thirteen years old, and I'm a cross-current and a contradiction. That is, Sarah says I'm that. (Sarah is my old nurse.) She says she read it once--that the children of unlikes were always a cross-current and a contradiction. And my father and mother are unlikes, and I'm the children. That is, I'm the child. I'm all there is. And now I'm going to be a bigger cross-current and contradiction than ever, for I'm going to live half the time with Mother and the other half with Father. Mother will go to Boston to live, and Father will stay here--a divorce, you know. I'm terribly excited over it. None of the other girls have got a divorce in their families, and I always did like to be different. Besides, it ought to be awfully interesting, more so than just living along, common, with your father and mother in the same house all the time--especially if it's been anything like my house with my father and mother in it! That's why I've decided to make a book of it--that is, it really will be a book, only I shall have to call it a diary, on account of Father, you know. Won't it be funny when I don't have to do things on account of Father? And I won't, of course, the six months I'm living with Mother in Boston. But, oh, my!--the six months I'm living here with him--whew! But, then, I can stand it. I may even like it--some. Anyhow, it'll be _different_. And that's something. Well, about making this into a book. As I started to say, he wouldn't let me. I know he wouldn't. He says novels are a silly waste of time, if not absolutely wicked. But, a diary--oh, he loves diaries! He keeps one himself, and he told me it would be an excellent and instructive discipline for me to do it, too--set down the weather and what I did every day. The weather and what I did every day, indeed! Lovely reading that would make, wouldn't it? Like this: "The sun shines this morning. I got up, ate my breakfast, went to school, came home, ate my dinner, played one hour over to Carrie Heywood's, practiced on the piano one hour, studied another hour. Talked with Mother upstairs in her room about the sunset and the snow on the trees. Ate my supper. Was talked _to_ by Father down in the library about improving myself and taking care not to be light-minded and frivolous. (He meant like Mother, only he didn't say it right out loud. You don't have to say some things right out in plain words, you know.) Then I went to bed." * * * * * Just as if I was going to write my novel like that! Not much I am. But I shall call it a diary. Oh, yes, I shall call it a diary--till I take it to be printed. Then I shall give it its true name--a novel. And I'm going to tell the printer that I've left it for him to make the spelling right, and put in all those tiresome little commas and periods and question marks that everybody seems to make such a fuss about. If I write the story part, I can't be expected to be bothered with looking up how words are spelt, every five minutes, nor fussing over putting in a whole lot of foolish little dots and dashes. As if anybody who was reading the story cared for that part! The story's the thing. I love stories. I've written lots of them for the girls, too--little short ones, I mean; not a long one like this is going to be, of course. And it'll be so exciting to be living a story instead of reading it--only when you're _living_ a story you can't peek over to the back to see how it's all coming out. I shan't like that part. Still, it may be all the more exciting, after all, _not_ to know what's coming. I like love stories the best. Father's got--oh, lots of books in the library, and I've read stacks of them, even some of the stupid old histories and biographies. I had to read them when there wasn't anything else to read. But there weren't many love stories. Mother's got a few, though--lovely ones--and some books of poetry, on the little shelf in her room. But I read all those ages ago. That's why I'm so thrilled over this new one--the one I'm living, I mean. For of course this will be a love story. There'll be _my_ love story in two or three years, when I grow up, and while I'm waiting there's Father's and Mother's. Nurse Sarah says that when you're divorced you're free, just like you were before you were married, and that sometimes they marry again. That made me think right away: what if Father or Mother, or both of them, married again? And I should be there to see it, and the courting, and all! Wouldn't that be some love story? Well, I just guess! And only think how all the girls would envy me--and they just living along their humdrum, everyday existence with fathers and mothers already married and living together, and nothing exciting to look forward to. For really, you know, when you come right down to it, there _aren't_ many girls that have got the chance I've got. And so that's why I've decided to write it into a book. Oh, yes, I know I'm young--only thirteen. But I _feel_ really awfully old; and you know a woman is as old as she feels. Besides, Nurse Sarah says I am old for my age, and that it's no wonder, the kind of a life I've lived. And maybe that is so. For of course it _has_ been different, living with a father and mother that are getting ready to be divorced from what it would have been living with the loving, happy-ever-after kind. Nurse Sarah says it's a shame and a pity, and that it's the children that always suffer. But I'm not suffering--not a mite. I'm just enjoying it. It's so exciting. Of course if I was going to lose either one, it would be different. But I'm not, for I am to live with Mother six months, then with Father. So I still have them both. And, really, when you come right down to it, I'd _rather_ take them separate that way. Why, separate they're just perfectly all right, like that--that--what-do-you-call-it powder?--sedlitzer, or something like that. Anyhow, it's that white powder that you mix in two glasses, and that looks just like water till you put them together. And then, oh, my! such a fuss and fizz and splutter! Well, it's that way with Father and Mother. It'll be lots easier to take them separate, I know. For now I can be Mary six months, then Marie six months, and not try to be them both all at once, with maybe only five minutes between them. And I think I shall love both Father and Mother better separate, too. Of course I love Mother, and I know I'd just adore Father if he'd let me--he's so tall and fine and splendid, when he's out among folks. All the girls are simply crazy over him. And I am, too. Only, at home--well, it's so hard to be Mary always. And you see, he named me Mary-- But I mustn't tell that here. That's part of the story, and this is only the Preface. I'm going to begin it to-morrow--the real story--Chapter One. But, there--I mustn't call it a "chapter" out loud. Diaries don't have chapters, and this is a diary. I mustn't forget that it's a diary. But I can write it down as a chapter, for it's _going to be_ a novel, after it's got done being a diary. CHAPTER I I AM BORN The sun was slowly setting in the west, casting golden beams of light into the somber old room. That's the way it ought to begin, I know, and I'd like to do it, but I can't. I'm beginning with my being born, of course, and Nurse Sarah says the sun wasn't shining at all. It was night and the stars were out. She remembers particularly about the stars, for Father was in the observatory, and couldn't be disturbed. (We never disturb Father when he's there, you know.) And so he didn't even know he had a daughter until the next morning when he came out to breakfast. And he was late to that, for he stopped to write down something he had found out about one of the consternations in the night. He's always finding out _something_ about those old stars just when we want him to pay attention to something else. And, oh, I forgot to say that I know it is "constellation," and not "consternation." But I used to call them that when I was a little girl, and Mother said it was a good name for them, anyway, for they were a consternation to _her_ all right. Oh, she said right off afterward that she didn't mean that, and that I must forget she said it. Mother's always saying that about things she says. Well, as I was saying, Father didn't know until after breakfast that he had a little daughter. (We never tell him disturbing, exciting things just _before_ meals.) And then Nurse told him. I asked what he said, and Nurse laughed and gave her funny little shrug to her shoulders. "Yes, what did he say, indeed?" she retorted. "He frowned, looked kind of dazed, then muttered: 'Well, well, upon my soul! Yes, to be sure!'" Then he came in to see me. I don't know, of course, what he thought of me, but I guess he didn't think much of me, from what Nurse said. Of course I was very, very small, and I never yet saw a little bit of a baby that was pretty, or looked as if it was much account. So maybe you couldn't really blame him. Nurse said he looked at me, muttered, "Well, well, upon my soul!" again, and seemed really quite interested till they started to put me in his arms. Then he threw up both hands, backed off, and cried, "Oh, no, no!" He turned to Mother and hoped she was feeling pretty well, then he got out of the room just as quick as he could. And Nurse said that was the end of it, so far as paying any more attention to me was concerned for quite a while. He was much more interested in his new star than he was in his new daughter. We were both born the same night, you see, and that star was lots more consequence than I was. But, then, that's Father all over. And that's one of the things, I think, that bothers Mother. I heard her say once to Father that she didn't see why, when there were so many, many stars, a paltry one or two more need to be made such a fuss about. And _I_ don't, either. But Father just groaned, and shook his head, and threw up his hands, and looked _so_ tired. And that's all he said. That's all he says lots of times. But it's enough. It's enough to make you feel so small and mean and insignificant as if you were just a little green worm crawling on the ground. Did you ever feel like a green worm crawling on the ground? It's not a pleasant feeling at all. Well, now, about the name. Of course they had to begin to talk about naming me pretty soon; and Nurse said they did talk a lot. But they couldn't settle it. Nurse said that that was about the first thing that showed how teetotally utterly they were going to disagree about things. Mother wanted to call me Viola, after her mother, and Father wanted to call me Abigail Jane after his mother; and they wouldn't either one give in to the other. Mother was sick and nervous, and cried a lot those days, and she used to sob out that if they thought they were going to name her darling little baby that awful Abigail Jane, they were very much mistaken; that she would never give her consent to it--never. Then Father would say in his cold, stern way: "Very well, then, you needn't. But neither shall I give my consent to my daughter's being named that absurd Viola. The child is a human being--not a fiddle in an orchestra!" And that's the way it went, Nurse said, until everybody was just about crazy. Then somebody suggested "Mary." And Father said, very well, they might call me Mary; and Mother said certainly, she would consent to Mary, only she should pronounce it Marie. And so it was settled. Father called me Mary, and Mother called me Marie. And right away everybody else began to call me Mary Marie. And that's the way it's been ever since. Of course, when you stop to think of it, it's sort of queer and funny, though naturally I didn't think of it, growing up with it as I did, and always having it, until suddenly one day it occurred to me that none of the other girls had two names, one for their father, and one for their mother to call them by. I began to notice other things then, too. Their fathers and mothers didn't live in rooms at opposite ends of the house. Their fathers and mothers seemed to like each other, and to talk together, and to have little jokes and laughs together, and twinkle with their eyes. That is, most of them did. And if one wanted to go to walk, or to a party, or to play some game, the other didn't always look tired and bored, and say, "Oh, very well, if you like." And then both not do it, whatever it was. That is, I never saw the other girls' fathers and mothers do that way; and I've seen quite a lot of them, too, for I've been at the other girls' houses a lot for a long time. You see, I don't stay at home much, only when I have to. We don't have a round table with a red cloth and a lamp on it, and children 'round it playing games and doing things, and fathers and mothers reading and mending. And it's lots jollier where they do have them. Nurse says my father and mother ought never to have been married. That's what I heard her tell our Bridget one day. So the first chance I got I asked her why, and what she meant. "Oh, la! Did you hear that?" she demanded, with the quick look over her shoulder that she always gives when she's talking about Father and Mother. "Well, little pitchers do have big ears, sure enough!" "Little pitchers," indeed! As if I didn't know what that meant! I'm no child to be kept in the dark concerning things I ought to know. And I told her so, sweetly and pleasantly, but with firmness and dignity. I made her tell me what she meant, and I made her tell me a lot of other things about them, too. You see, I'd just decided to write the book, so I wanted to know everything she could tell me. I didn't tell her about the book, of course. I know too much to tell secrets to Nurse Sarah! But I showed my excitement and interest plainly; and when she saw how glad I was to hear everything she could tell, she talked a lot, and really seemed to enjoy it, too. You see, she was here when Mother first came as a bride, so she knows everything. She was Father's nurse when he was a little boy; then she stayed to take care of Father's mother, Grandma Anderson, who was an invalid for a great many years and who didn't die till just after I was born. Then she took care of me. So she's always been in the family, ever since she was a young girl. She's awfully old now--'most sixty. First I found out how they happened to marry--Father and Mother, I'm talking about now--only Nurse says she can't see yet how they did happen to marry, just the same, they're so teetotally different. But this is the story. Father went to Boston to attend a big meeting of astronomers from all over the world, and they had banquets and receptions where beautiful ladies went in their pretty evening dresses, and my mother was one of them. (Her father was one of the astronomers, Nurse said.) The meetings lasted four days, and Nurse said she guessed my father saw a lot of my mother during that time. Anyhow, he was invited to their home, and he stayed another four days after the meetings were over. The next thing they knew here at the house, Grandma Anderson had a telegram that he was going to be married to Miss Madge Desmond, and would they please send him some things he wanted, and he was going on a wedding trip and would bring his bride home in about a month. It was just as sudden as that. And surprising!--Nurse says a thunderclap out of a clear blue sky couldn't have astonished them more. Father was almost thirty years old at that time, and he'd never cared a thing for girls, nor paid them the least little bit of attention. So they supposed, of course, that he was a hopeless old bachelor and wouldn't ever marry. He was bound up in his stars, even then, and was already beginning to be famous, because of a comet he'd discovered. He was a professor in our college here, where his father had been president. His father had just died a few months before, and Nurse said maybe that was one reason why Father got caught in the matrimonial net like that. (Those are _her_ words, not mine. The idea of calling my mother a net! But Nurse never did half appreciate Mother.) But Father just worshipped his father, and they were always together--Grandma being sick so much; and so when he died my father was nearly beside himself, and that's one reason they were so anxious he should go to that meeting in Boston. They thought it might take his mind off himself, Nurse said. But they never thought of its putting his mind on a wife! So far as his doing it right up quick like that was concerned, Nurse said that wasn't so surprising. For all the way up, if Father wanted anything he insisted on having it, and having it right away then. He never wanted to wait a minute. So when he found a girl he wanted, he wanted her right then, without waiting a minute. He'd never happened to notice a girl he wanted before, you see. But he'd found one now, all right; and Nurse said there was nothing to do but to make the best of it, and get ready for her. There wasn't anybody to go to the wedding. Grandma Anderson was sick, so of course she couldn't go, and Grandpa was dead, so of course he couldn't go, and there weren't any brothers or sisters, only Aunt Jane in St. Paul, and she was so mad she wouldn't come on. So there was no chance of seeing the bride till Father brought her home. Nurse said they wondered and wondered what kind of a woman it could be that had captured him. (I told her I wished she _wouldn't_ speak of my mother as if she was some kind of a hunter out after game; but she only chuckled and said that's about what it amounted to in some cases.) The very idea! The whole town was excited over the affair, and Nurse Sarah heard a lot of their talk. Some thought she was an astronomer like him. Some thought she was very rich, and maybe famous. Everybody declared she must know a lot, anyway, and be wonderfully wise and intellectual; and they said she was probably tall and wore glasses, and would be thirty years old, at least. But nobody guessed anywhere near what she really was. Nurse Sarah said she should never forget the night she came, and how she looked, and how utterly flabbergasted everybody was to see her--a little slim eighteen-year-old girl with yellow curly hair and the merriest laughing eyes they had ever seen. (Don't I know? Don't I just love Mother's eyes when they sparkle and twinkle when we're off together sometimes in the woods?) And Nurse said Mother was so excited the day she came, and went laughing and dancing all over the house, exclaiming over everything. (I can't imagine that so well. Mother moves so quietly now, everywhere, and is so tired, 'most all the time.) But she wasn't tired then, Nurse says--not a mite. "But how did Father act?" I demanded. "Wasn't he displeased and scandalized and shocked, and everything?" Nurse shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows--the way she does when she feels particularly superior. Then she said: "Do? What does any old fool--beggin' your pardon an' no offense meant, Miss Mary Marie--but what does any man do what's got bejuggled with a pretty face, an' his senses completely took away from him by a chit of a girl? Well, that's what he did. He acted as if he was bewitched. He followed her around the house like a dog--when he wasn't leadin' her to something new; an' he never took his eyes off her face except to look at us, as much as to say: 'Now ain't she the adorable creature?'" "My father did that?" I gasped. And, really, you know, I just couldn't believe my ears. And you wouldn't, either, if you knew Father. "Why, _I_ never saw him act like that!" "No, I guess you didn't," laughed Nurse Sarah with a shrug. "And neither did anybody else--for long." "But how long did it last?" I asked. "Oh, a month, or maybe six weeks," shrugged Nurse Sarah. "Then it came September and college began, and your father had to go back to his teaching. Things began to change then." "Right then, so you could see them?" I wanted to know. Nurse Sarah shrugged her shoulders again. "Oh, la! child, what a little question-box you are, an' no mistake," she sighed. But she didn't look mad--not like the way she does when I ask why she can take her teeth out and most of her hair off and I can't; and things like that. (As if I didn't know! What does she take me for--a child?) She didn't even look displeased--Nurse Sarah _loves_ to talk. (As if I didn't know that, too!) She just threw that quick look of hers over her shoulder and settled back contentedly in her chair. I knew then I should get the whole story. And I did. And I'm going to tell it here in her own words, just as well as I can remember it--bad grammar and all. So please remember that I am not making all those mistakes. It's Nurse Sarah. I guess, though, that I'd better put it into a new chapter. This one is yards long already. How _do_ they tell when to begin and end chapters? I'm thinking it's going to be some job, writing this book--diary, I mean. But I shall love it, I know. And this is a _real_ story--not like those made-up things I've always written for the girls at school. CHAPTER II NURSE SARAH'S STORY And this is Nurse Sarah's story. As I said, I'm going to tell it straight through as near as I can in her own words. And I can remember most of it, I think, for I paid very close attention. * * * * * "Well, yes, Miss Mary Marie, things did begin to change right there an' then, an' so you could notice it. _We_ saw it, though maybe your pa an' ma didn't, at the first. "You see, the first month after she came, it was vacation time, an' he could give her all the time she wanted. An' she wanted it all. An' she took it. An' he was just as glad to give it as she was to take it. An' so from mornin' till night they was together, traipsin' all over the house an' garden, an' trampin' off through the woods an' up on the mountain every other day with their lunch. "You see she was city-bred, an' not used to woods an' flowers growin' wild; an' she went crazy over them. He showed her the stars, too, through his telescope; but she hadn't a mite of use for them, an' let him see it good an' plain. She told him--I heard her with my own ears--that his eyes, when they laughed, was all the stars she wanted; an' that she'd had stars all her life for breakfast an' luncheon an' dinner, anyway, an' all the time between; an' she'd rather have somethin' else, now--somethin' alive, that she could love an' live with an' touch an' play with, like she could the flowers an' rocks an' grass an' trees. "Angry? Your pa? Not much he was! He just laughed an' caught her 'round the waist an' kissed her, an' said she herself was the brightest star of all. Then they ran off hand in hand, like two kids. An' they _was_ two kids, too. All through those first few weeks your pa was just a great big baby with a new plaything. Then when college began he turned all at once into a full-grown man. An' just naturally your ma didn't know what to make of it. "He couldn't explore the attic an' rig up in the old clothes there any more, nor romp through the garden, nor go lunchin' in the woods, nor none of the things _she_ wanted him to do. He didn't have time. An' what made things worse, one of them comet-tails was comin' up in the sky, an' your pa didn't take no rest for watchin' for it, an' then studyin' of it when it got here. "An' your ma--poor little thing! I couldn't think of anything but a doll that was thrown in the corner because somebody'd got tired of her. She _was_ lonesome, an' no mistake. Anybody'd be sorry for her, to see her mopin' 'round the house, nothin' to do. Oh, she read, an' sewed with them bright-colored silks an' worsteds; but 'course there wasn't no real work for her to do. There was good help in the kitchen, an' I took what care of your grandma was needed; an' she always gave her orders through me, so I practically run the house, an' there wasn't anything _there_ for her to do. "An' so your ma just had to mope it out alone. Oh, I don't mean your pa was unkind. He was always nice an' polite, when he was in the house, an' I'm sure he meant to treat her all right. He said yes, yes, to be sure, of course she was lonesome, an' he was sorry. 'T was too bad he was so busy. An' he kissed her an' patted her. But he always began right away to talk of the comet; an' ten to one he didn't disappear into the observatory within the next five minutes. Then your ma would look so grieved an' sorry an' go off an' cry, an' maybe not come down to dinner, at all. "Well, then, one day things got so bad your grandma took a hand. She was up an' around the house, though she kept mostly to her own rooms. But of course she saw how things was goin'. Besides, I told her--some. 'T was no more than my duty, as I looked at it. She just worshipped your pa, an' naturally she'd want things right for him. So one day she told me to tell her son's wife to come to her in her room. "An' I did, an' she came. Poor little thing! I couldn't help bein' sorry for her. She didn't know a thing of what was wanted of her, an' she was so glad an' happy to come. You see, she _was_ lonesome, I suppose. "'Me? Want me?--Mother Anderson?' she cried. 'Oh, I'm so glad!' Then she made it worse by runnin' up the stairs an' bouncin' into the room like a rubber ball, an' cryin': 'Now, what shall I do, read to you, or sing to you, or shall we play games? I'd _love_ to do any of them!' Just like that, she said it. I heard her. Then I went out, of course, an' left them. But I heard 'most everything that was said, just the same, for I was right in the next room dustin', and the door wasn't quite shut. "First your grandmother said real polite--she was always polite--but in a cold little voice that made even me shiver in the other room, that she did not desire to be read to or sung to, and that she did not wish to play games. She had called her daughter-in-law in to have a serious talk with her. Then she told her, still very polite, that she was noisy an' childish, an' undignified, an' that it was not only silly, but very wrong for her to expect to have her husband's entire attention; that he had his own work, an' it was a very important one. He was going to be president of the college some day, like his father before him; an' it was her place to help him in every way she could--help him to be popular an' well-liked by all the college people an' students; an' he couldn't be that if she insisted all the time on keepin' him to herself, or lookin' sour an' cross if she couldn't have him. "Of course that ain't all she said; but I remember this part particular on account of what happened afterward. You see--your ma--she felt awful bad. She cried a little, an' sighed a lot, an' said she'd try, she really would try to help her husband in every way she could; an' she wouldn't ask him another once, not once, to stay with her. An' she wouldn't look sour an' cross, either. She'd promise she wouldn't. An' she'd try, she'd try, oh, so hard, to be proper an' dignified. "She got up then an' went out of the room so quiet an' still you wouldn't know she was movin'. But I heard her up in her room cryin' half an hour later, when I stopped a minute at her door to see if she was there. An' she was. "But she wasn't cryin' by night. Not much she was! She'd washed her face an' dressed herself up as pretty as could be, an' she never so much as looked as if she wanted her husband to stay with her, when he said right after supper that he guessed he'd go out to the observatory. An' 't was that way right along after that. I know, 'cause I watched. You see, I knew what she'd _said_ she'd do. Well, she did it. "Then, pretty quick after that, she began to get acquainted in the town. Folks called, an' there was parties an' receptions where she met folks, an' they began to come here to the house, 'specially them students, an' two or three of them young, unmarried professors. An' she began to go out a lot with them--skatin' an' sleigh-ridin' an' snowshoein'. "Like it? Of course she liked it! Who wouldn't? Why, child, you never saw such a fuss as they made over your ma in them days. She was all the rage; an' of course she liked it. What woman wouldn't, that was gay an' lively an' young, an' had been so lonesome like your ma had? But some other folks didn't like it. An' your pa was one of them. This time 't was him that made the trouble. I know, 'cause I heard what he said one day to her in the library. "Yes, I guess I was in the next room that day, too--er--dustin', probably. Anyway, I heard him tell your ma good an' plain what he thought of her gallivantin' 'round from mornin' till night with them young students an' professors, an' havin' them here, too, such a lot, till the house was fairly overrun with them. He said he was shocked an' scandalized, an' didn't she have any regard for _his_ honor an' decency, if she didn't for herself! An', oh, a whole lot more. "Cry? No, your ma didn't cry this time. I met her in the hall right after they got through talkin', an' she was white as a sheet, an' her eyes was like two blazin' stars. So I know how she must have looked while she was in the library. An' I must say she give it to him good an' plain, straight from the shoulder. She told him _she_ was shocked an' scandalized that he could talk to his wife like that; an' didn't he have any more regard for _her_ honor and decency than to accuse her of runnin' after any man living--much less a dozen of them! An' then she told him a lot of what his mother had said to her, an' she said she had been merely tryin' to carry out those instructions. She was tryin' to make her husband and her husband's wife an' her husband's home popular with the college folks, so she could help him to be president, if he wanted to be. But he answered back, cold an' chilly, that he thanked her, of course, but he didn't care for any more of that kind of assistance; an' if she would give a little more time to her home an' her housekeepin', as she ought to, he would be considerably better pleased. An' she said, very well, she would see that he had no further cause to complain. An' the next minute I met her in the hall, as I just said, her head high an' her eyes blazin'. "An' things did change then, a lot, I'll own. Right away she began to refuse to go out with the students an' young professors, an' she sent down word she wasn't to home when they called. And pretty quick, of course, they stopped comin'. "Housekeepin'? Attend to that? Well, y-yes, she did try to at first, a little; but of course your grandma had always given the orders--through me, I mean; an' there really wasn't anything your ma could do. An' I told her so, plain. Her ways were new an' different an' queer, an' we liked ours better, anyway. So she didn't bother us much that way very long. Besides, she wasn't feelin' very well, anyway, an' for the next few months she stayed in her room a lot, an' we didn't see much of her. Then by an' by _you_ came, an'--well, I guess that's all--too much, you little chatterbox!" CHAPTER III THE BREAK IS MADE And that's the way Nurse Sarah finished her story, only she shrugged her shoulders again, and looked back, first one way, then another. As for her calling me "chatterbox"--she always calls me that when _she's_ been doing all the talking. As near as I can remember, I have told Nurse Sarah's story exactly as she told it to me, in her own words. But of course I know I didn't get it right all the time, and I know I've left out quite a lot. But, anyway, it's told a whole lot more than _I_ could have told why they got married in the first place, and it brings my story right up to the point where I was born; and I've already told about naming me, and what a time they had over that. Of course what's happened since, up to now, I don't know _all_ about, for I was only a child for the first few years. Now I'm almost a young lady, "standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet." (I read that last night. I think it's perfectly beautiful. So kind of sad and sweet. It makes me want to cry every time I think of it.) But even if I don't know all of what's happened since I was born, I know a good deal, for I've seen quite a lot, and I've made Nurse tell me a lot more. I know that ever since I can remember I've had to keep as still as a mouse the minute Father comes into the house; and I know that I never could imagine the kind of a mother that Nurse tells about, if it wasn't that sometimes when Father has gone off on a trip, Mother and I have romped all over the house, and had the most beautiful time. I know that Father says that Mother is always trying to make me a "Marie," and nothing else; and that Mother says she knows Father'll never be happy until he's made me into a stupid little "Mary," with never an atom of life of my own. And, do you know? it does seem sometimes, as if Mary and Marie were fighting inside of me, and I wonder which is going to beat. Funny, isn't it? Father is president of the college now, and I don't know how many stars and comets and things he's discovered since the night the star and I were born together. But I know he's very famous, and that he's written up in the papers and magazines, and is in the big fat red "Who's Who" in the library, and has lots of noted men come to see him. Nurse says that Grandma Anderson died very soon after I was born, but that it didn't make any particular difference in the housekeeping; for things went right on just as they had done, with her giving the orders as before; that she'd given them all alone anyway, mostly, the last year Grandma Anderson lived, and she knew just how Father liked things. She said Mother tried once or twice to take the reins herself, and once Nurse let her, just to see what would happen. But things got in an awful muddle right away, so that even Father noticed it and said things. After that Mother never tried again, I guess. Anyhow, she's never tried it since I can remember. She's always stayed most of the time up in her rooms in the east wing, except during meals, or when she went out with me, or went to the things she and Father had to go to together. For they did go to lots of things, Nurse says. It seems that for a long time they didn't want folks to know there was going to be a divorce. So before folks they tried to be just as usual. But Nurse Sarah said _she_ knew there was going to be one long ago. The first I ever heard of it was Nurse telling Nora, the girl we had in the kitchen then; and the minute I got a chance I asked Nurse what it was--a divorce. My, I can remember now how scared she looked, and how she clapped her hand over my mouth. She wouldn't tell me--not a word. And that's the first time I ever saw her give that quick little look over each shoulder. She's done it lots of times since. As I said, she wouldn't tell me, so I had to ask some one else. I wasn't going to let it go by and not find out--not when Nurse Sarah looked so scared, and when it was something my father and mother were going to have some day. I didn't like to ask Mother. Some way, I had a feeling, from the way Nurse Sarah looked, that it was something Mother wasn't going to like. And I thought if maybe she didn't know yet she was going to have it, that certainly _I_ didn't want to be the one to tell her. So I didn't ask Mother what a divorce was. I didn't even think of asking Father, of course. I never ask Father questions. Nurse says I did ask him once why he didn't love me like other papas loved their little girls. But I was very little then, and I don't remember it at all. But Nurse said Father didn't like it very well, and maybe I _did_ remember that part, without really knowing it. Anyhow, I never think of asking Father questions. I asked the doctor first. I thought maybe 't was some kind of a disease, and if he knew it was coming, he could give them some sort of a medicine to keep it away--like being vaccinated so's not to have smallpox, you know. And I told him so. He gave a funny little laugh, that somehow didn't sound like a laugh at all. Then he grew very, very sober, and said: "I'm sorry, little girl, but I'm afraid I haven't got any medicine that will prevent--a divorce. If I did have, there'd be no eating or drinking or sleeping for me, I'm thinking--I'd be so busy answering my calls." "Then it _is_ a disease!" I cried. And I can remember just how frightened I felt. "But isn't there any doctor anywhere that _can_ stop it?" He shook his head and gave that queer little laugh again. "I'm afraid not," he sighed. "As for it's being a disease--there are people that call it a disease, and there are others who call it a cure; and there are still others who say it's a remedy worse than the disease it tries to cure. But, there, you baby! What am I saying? Come, come, my dear, just forget it. It's nothing you should bother your little head over now. Wait till you're older." Till I'm older, indeed! How I hate to have folks talk to me like that! And they do--they do it all the time. As if I was a child now, when I'm almost standing there where the brook and river meet! But that was just the kind of talk I got, everywhere, nearly every time I asked any one what a divorce was. Some laughed, and some sighed. Some looked real worried 'cause I'd asked it, and one got mad. (That was the dressmaker. I found out afterward that she'd _had_ a divorce already, so probably she thought I asked the question on purpose to plague her.) But nobody would answer me--really answer me sensibly, so I'd know what it meant; and 'most everybody said, "Run away, child," or "You shouldn't talk of such things," or, "Wait, my dear, till you're older"; and all that. Oh, how I hate such talk when I really want to know something! How do they expect us to get our education if they won't answer our questions? I don't know which made me angriest--I mean angrier. (I'm speaking of two things, so I must, I suppose. I hate grammar!) To have them talk like that--not answer me, you know--or have them do as Mr. Jones, the storekeeper, did, and the men there with him. It was one day when I was in there buying some white thread for Nurse Sarah, and it was a little while after I had asked the doctor if a divorce was a disease. Somebody had said something that made me think you could buy divorces, and I suddenly determined to ask Mr. Jones if he had them for sale. (Of course all this sounds very silly to me now, for I know that a divorce is very simple and very common. It's just like a marriage certificate, only it _un_marries you instead of marrying you; but I didn't know it then. And if I'm going to tell this story I've got to tell it just as it happened, of course.) Well, I asked Mr. Jones if you could buy divorces, and if he had them for sale; and you ought to have heard those men laugh. There were six of them sitting around the stove behind me. "Oh, yes, my little maid" (above all things I abhor to be called a little maid!) one of them cried. "You can buy them if you've got money enough; but I don't reckon our friend Jones here has got them for sale." Then they all laughed again, and winked at each other. (That's another disgusting thing--_winks_ when you ask a perfectly civil question! But what can you do? Stand it, that's all. There's such a lot of things we poor women have to stand!) Then they quieted down and looked very sober--the kind of sober you know is faced with laughs in the back--and began to tell me what a divorce really was. I can't remember them all, but I can some of them. Of course I understand now that these men were trying to be smart, and were talking for each other, not for me. And I knew it then--a little. We know a lot more things sometimes than folks think we do. Well, as near as I can remember it was like this: "A divorce is a knife that cuts a knot that hadn't ought to ever been tied," said one. "A divorce is a jump in the dark," said another. "No, it ain't. It's a jump from the frying-pan into the fire," piped up Mr. Jones. "A divorce is the comedy of the rich and the tragedy of the poor," said a little man who wore glasses. "Divorce is a nice smushy poultice that may help but won't heal," cut in a new voice. "Divorce is a guidepost marked, 'Hell to Heaven,' but lots of folks miss the way, just the same, I notice," spoke up somebody with a chuckle. "Divorce is a coward's retreat from the battle of life." Captain Harris said this. He spoke slow and decided. Captain Harris is old and rich and not married. He's the hotel's star boarder, and what he says, goes, 'most always. But it didn't this time. I can remember just how old Mr. Carlton snapped out the next. "Speak from your own experience, Tom Harris, an' I'm thinkin' you ain't fit ter judge. I tell you divorce is what three fourths of the husbands an' wives in the world wish was waitin' for 'em at home this very night. But it ain't there." I knew, of course, he was thinking of his wife. She's some cross, I guess, and has two warts on her nose. There was more, quite a lot more, said. But I've forgotten the rest. Besides, they weren't talking to me then, anyway. So I picked up my thread and slipped out of the store, glad to escape. But, as I said before, I didn't find many like them. Of course I know now--what divorce is, I mean. And it's all settled. They granted us some kind of a decree or degree, and we're going to Boston next Monday. It's been awful, though--this last year. First we had to go to that horrid place out West, and stay ages and ages. And I hated it. Mother did, too. I know she did. I went to school, and there were quite a lot of girls my age, and some boys; but I didn't care much for them. I couldn't even have the fun of surprising them with the divorce we were going to have. I found _they_ were going to have one, too--every last one of them. And when everybody has a thing, you know there's no particular fun in having it yourself. Besides, they were very unkind and disagreeable, and bragged a lot about their divorces. They said mine was tame, and had no sort of snap to it, when they found Mother didn't have a lover waiting in the next town, or Father hadn't run off with his stenographer, or nobody had shot anybody, or anything. That made me mad, and I let them see it, good and plain. I told them our divorce was perfectly all right and genteel and respectable; that Nurse Sarah said it was. Ours was going to be incompatibility, for one thing, which meant that you got on each other's nerves, and just naturally didn't care for each other any more. But they only laughed, and said even more disagreeable things, so that I didn't want to go to school any longer, and I told Mother so, and the reason, too, of course. But, dear me, I wished right off that I hadn't. I supposed she was going to be superb and haughty and disdainful, and say things that would put those girls where they belonged. But, my stars! How could I know that she was going to burst into such a storm of sobs and clasp me to her bosom, and get my face all wet and cry out: "Oh, my baby, my baby--to think I have subjected you to this, my baby, my baby!" And I couldn't say a thing to comfort her, or make her stop, even when I told her over and over again that I wasn't a baby. I was almost a young lady; and I wasn't being subjected to anything bad. I _liked_ it--only I didn't like to have those girls brag so, when our divorce was away ahead of theirs, anyway. But she only cried more and more, and held me tighter and tighter, rocking back and forth in her chair. She took me out of school, though, and had a lady come to teach me all by myself, so I didn't have to hear those girls brag any more, anyway. That was better. But she wasn't any happier herself. I could see that. There were lots of other ladies there--beautiful ladies--only she didn't seem to like them any better than I did the girls. I wondered if maybe _they_ bragged, too, and I asked her; but she only began to cry again, and moan, "What have I done, what have I done?"--and I had to try all over again to comfort her. But I couldn't. She got so she just stayed in her room lots and lots. I tried to make her put on her pretty clothes, and do as the other ladies did, and go out and walk and sit on the big piazzas, and dance, and eat at the pretty little tables. She did, some, when we first came, and took me, and I just loved it. They were such beautiful ladies, with their bright eyes, and their red cheeks and jolly ways; and their dresses were so perfectly lovely, all silks and satins and sparkly spangles, and diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and silk stockings, and little bits of gold and silver slippers. And once I saw two of them smoking. They had the cutest little cigarettes (Mother said they were) in gold holders, and I knew then that I was seeing life--real life; not the stupid kind you get back in a country town like Andersonville. And I said so to Mother; and I was going to ask her if Boston was like that. But I didn't get the chance. She jumped up so quick I thought something had hurt her, and cried, "Good Heavens, Baby!" (How I hate to be called "Baby"!) Then she just threw some money on to the table to pay the bill and hurried me away. It was after that that she began to stay in her room so much, and not take me anywhere except for walks at the other end of the town where it was all quiet and stupid, and no music or lights, or anything. And though I teased and teased to go back to the pretty, jolly places, she wouldn't ever take me; not once. Then by and by, one day, we met a little black-haired woman with white cheeks and very big sad eyes. There weren't any spangly dresses and gold slippers about _her_, I can tell you! She was crying on a bench in the park, and Mother told me to stay back and watch the swans while she went up and spoke to her. (Why do old folks always make us watch swans or read books or look into store windows or run and play all the time? Don't they suppose we understand perfectly well what it means--that they're going to say something they don't want us to hear?) Well, Mother and the lady on the bench talked and talked ever so long, and then Mother called me up, and the lady cried a little over me, and said, "Now, perhaps, if I'd had a little girl like that--!" Then she stopped and cried some more. We saw this lady real often after that. She was nice and pretty and sweet, and I liked her; but she was always awfully sad, and I don't believe it was half so good for Mother to be with her as it would have been for her to be with those jolly, laughing ladies that were always having such good times. But I couldn't make Mother see it that way at all. There are times when it seems as if Mother just _couldn't_ see things the way I do. Honestly, it seems sometimes almost as if _she_ was the cross-current and contradiction instead of me. It does. Well, as I said before, I didn't like it very well out there, and I don't believe Mother did, either. But it's all over now, and we're back home packing up to go to Boston. Everything seems awfully queer. Maybe because Father isn't here, for one thing. He wrote very polite and asked us to come to get our things, and he said he was going to New York on business for several days, so Mother need not fear he should annoy her with his presence. Then, another thing, Mother's queer. This morning she was singing away at the top of her voice and running all over the house picking up things she wanted; and seemed so happy. But this afternoon I found her down on the floor in the library crying as if her heart would break with her head in Father's big chair before the fireplace. But she jumped up the minute I came in and said, no, no, she didn't want anything. She was just tired; that's all. And when I asked her if she was sorry, after all, that she was going to Boston to live, she said, no, no, no, indeed, she guessed she wasn't. She was just as glad as glad could be that she was going, only she wished Monday would hurry up and come so we could be gone. And that's all. It's Saturday now, and we go just day after to-morrow. Our trunks are 'most packed, and Mother says she wishes she'd planned to go to-day. I've said good-bye to all the girls, and promised to write loads of letters about Boston and everything. They are almost as excited as I am; and I've promised, "cross my heart and hope to die," that I won't love those Boston girls better than I do them--specially Carrie Heywood, of course, my dearest friend. Nurse Sarah is hovering around everywhere, asking to help, and pretending she's sorry we're going. But she isn't sorry. She's glad. I know she is. She never did appreciate Mother, and she thinks she'll have everything her own way now. But she won't. _I_ could tell her a thing or two if I wanted to. But I shan't. Father's sister, Aunt Jane Anderson, from St. Paul, is coming to keep house for him, partly on account of Father, and partly on account of me. "If that child is going to be with her father six months of the time, she's got to have some woman there beside a meddling old nurse and a nosey servant girl!" They didn't know I heard that. But I did. And now Aunt Jane is coming. My! how mad Nurse Sarah would be if she knew. But she doesn't. I guess I'll end this chapter here and begin a fresh one down in Boston. Oh, I do so wonder what it'll be like--Boston, Mother's home, Grandpa Desmond, and all the rest. I'm so excited I can hardly wait. You see, Mother never took me home with her but once, and then I was a very small child. I don't know why, but I guess Father didn't want me to go. It's safe to say he didn't, anyway. He never wants me to do anything, hardly. That's why I suspect him of not wanting me to go down to Grandpa Desmond's. And Mother didn't go only once, in ages. Now this will be the end. And when I begin again it will be in Boston. Only think of it--really, truly Boston! CHAPTER IV WHEN I AM MARIE BOSTON. Yes, I'm here. I've been here a week. But this is the first minute I've had a chance to write a word. I've been so busy just being here. And so has Mother. There's been such a lot going on since we came. But I'll try now to begin at the beginning and tell what happened. Well, first we got into Boston at four o'clock Monday afternoon, and there was Grandpa Desmond to meet us. He's lovely--tall and dignified, with grayish hair and merry eyes like Mother's, only his are behind glasses. At the station he just kissed Mother and me and said he was glad to see us, and led us to the place where Peter was waiting with the car. (Peter drives Grandpa's automobile, and _he's_ lovely, too.) Mother and Grandpa talked very fast and very lively all the way home, and Mother laughed quite a lot. But in the hall she cried a little, and Grandpa patted her shoulder, and said, "There, there!" and told her how glad he was to get his little girl back, and that they were going to be very happy now and forget the past. And Mother said, yes, yes, indeed, she knew she was; and she was _so_ glad to be there, and that everything _was_ going to be just the same, wasn't it? Only--then, all of a sudden she looked over at me and began to cry again--only, of course, things couldn't be "just the same," she choked, hurrying over to me and putting both arms around me, and crying harder than ever. Then Grandpa came and hugged us both, and patted us, and said, "There, there!" and pulled off his glasses and wiped them very fast and very hard. But it wasn't only a minute or two before Mother was laughing again, and saying, "Nonsense!" and "The idea!" and that this was a pretty way to introduce her little Marie to her new home! Then she hurried me to the dearest little room I ever saw, right out of hers, and took off my things. Then we went all over the house. And it's just as lovely as can be--not at all like Father's in Andersonville. Oh, Father's is fine and big and handsome, and all that, of course; but not like this. His is just a nice place to eat and sleep in, and go to when it rains. But this--this you just want to live in all the time. Here there are curtains 'way up and sunshine, and flowers in pots, and magazines, and cozy nooks with cushions everywhere; and books that you've just been reading laid down. (_All_ Father's books are in bookcases, _always_, except while one's in your hands being read.) Grandpa's other daughter, Mother's sister, Hattie, lives here and keeps house for Grandpa. She has a little boy named Lester, six years old; and her husband is dead. They were away for what they called a week-end when we came, but they got here a little after we did Monday afternoon; and they're lovely, too. The house is a straight-up-and-down one with a back and front, but no sides except the one snug up to you on the right and left. And there isn't any yard except a little bit of a square brick one at the back where they have clothes and ash barrels, and a little grass spot in front at one side of the steps, not big enough for our old cat to take a nap in, hardly. But it's perfectly lovely inside; and it's the insides of houses that really count just as it is the insides of people--their hearts, I mean; whether they're good and kind, or hateful and disagreeable. We have dinner at night here, and I've been to the theater twice already in the afternoon. I've got to go to school next week, Mother says, but so far I've just been having a good time. And so's Mother. Honestly, it has just seemed as if Mother couldn't crowd the days full enough. She hasn't been still a minute. Lots of her old friends have been to see her; and when there hasn't been anybody else around she's taken Peter and had him drive us all over Boston to see things;--all kinds of things; Bunker Hill and museums, and moving pictures, and one play. But we didn't stay at the play. It started out all right, but pretty soon a man and a woman on the stage began to quarrel. They were married (not really, but in the play, I mean), and I guess it was some more of that incompatibility stuff. Anyhow, as they began to talk more and more, Mother began to fidget, and pretty soon I saw she was gathering up our things; and the minute the curtain went down after the first act, she says: "Come, dear, we're going home. It--it isn't very warm here." As if I didn't know what she was really leaving for! Do old folks honestly think they are fooling us all the time, I wonder? But even if I hadn't known then, I'd have known it later, for that evening I heard Mother and Aunt Hattie talking in the library. No, I didn't listen. I _heard_. And that's a very different matter. You listen when you mean to, and that's sneaking. You hear when you can't help yourself, and that you can't be blamed for. Sometimes it's your good luck, and sometimes it's your bad luck--just according to what you hear! Well, I was in the window-seat in the library reading when Mother and Aunt Hattie came in; and Mother was saying: "Of course I came out! Do you suppose I'd have had that child see that play, after I realized what it was? As if she hasn't had enough of such wretched stuff already in her short life! Oh, Hattie, Hattie, I want that child to laugh, to sing, to fairly tingle with the joy of living every minute that she is with me. I know so well what she _has_ had, and what she will have--in that--tomb. You know in six months she goes back--" Mother saw me then, I know; for she stopped right off short, and after a moment began to talk of something else, very fast. And pretty quick they went out into the hall again. Dear little Mother! Bless her old heart! Isn't she the ducky dear to want me to have all the good times possible now so as to make up for the six months I've got to be with Father? You see, she knows what it is to live with Father even better than I do. Well, I guess she doesn't dread it for me any more than I do for myself. Still, I'll have the girls there, and I'm dying to see them again--and I won't have to stay home much, only nights and meals, of course, and Father's always pretty busy with his stars and comets and things. Besides, it's only for six months, then I can come back to Boston. I can keep thinking of that. But I know now why I've been having such a perfectly beautiful time all this week, and why Mother has been filling every minute so full of fun and good times. Why, even when we're at home here, she's always hunting up little Lester and getting him to have a romp with us. But of course next week I've got to go to school, and it can't be quite so jolly then. Well, I guess that's all for this time. * * * * * _About a month later_. I didn't make a chapter of that last. It wasn't long enough. And, really, I don't know as I've got much to add to it now. There's nothing much happened. I go to school now, and don't have so much time for fun. School is pretty good, and there are two or three girls 'most as nice as the ones at Andersonville. But not quite. Out of school Mother keeps things just as lively as ever, and we have beautiful times. Mother is having a lovely time with her own friends, too. Seems as if there is always some one here when I get home, and lots of times there are teas and parties, and people to dinner. There are gentlemen, too. I suppose one of them will be Mother's lover by and by; but of course I don't know which one yet. I'm awfully interested in them, though. And of course it's perfectly natural that I should be. Wouldn't _you_ be interested in the man that was going to be your new father? Well, I just guess you would! Anybody would. Why, most folks have only one father, you know, and they have to take that one just as he is; and it's all a matter of chance whether they get one that's cross or pleasant; or homely or fine and grand-looking; or the common kind you can hug and kiss and hang round his neck, or the stand-off-don't-touch-me-I-mustn't-be-disturbed kind like mine. I mean the one I _did_ have. But, there! that doesn't sound right, either; for of course he's still my father just the same, only--well, he isn't Mother's husband any more, so I suppose he's only my father by order of the court, same as I'm his daughter. Well, anyhow, he's the father I've grown up with, and of course I'm used to him now. And it's an altogether different matter to think of having a brand-new father thrust upon you, all ready-made, as you might say, and of course I _am_ interested. There's such a whole lot depends on the father. Why, only think how different things would have been at home if _my_ father had been different! There were such a lot of things I had to be careful not to do--and just as many I had to be careful _to_ do--on account of Father. And so now, when I see all these nice young gentlemen (only they aren't all young; some of them are quite old) coming to the house and talking to Mother, and hanging over the back of her chair, and handing her tea and little cakes, I can't help wondering which, if any, is going to be her lover and my new father. And I am also wondering what I'll have to do on account of him when I get him, if I get him. There are quite a lot of them, and they're all different. They'd make very different kinds of fathers, I'm sure, and I'm afraid I wouldn't like some of them. But, after all, it's Mother that ought to settle which to have--not me. _She's_ the one to be pleased. 'T would be such a pity to have to change again. Though she could, of course, same as she did Father, I suppose. As I said, they're all different. There are only two that are anywhere near alike, and they aren't quite the same, for one's a lawyer and the other's in a bank. But they both carry canes and wear tall silk hats, and part their hair in the middle, and look at you through the kind of big round eyeglasses with dark rims that would make you look awfully homely if they didn't make you look so stylish. But I don't think Mother cares very much for either the lawyer or the bank man, and I'm glad. I wouldn't like to live with those glasses every day, even if they are stylish. I'd much rather have Father's kind. Then there's the man that paints pictures. He's tall and slim, and wears queer ties and long hair. He's always standing back and looking at things with his head on one side, and exclaiming "Oh!" and "Ah!" with a long breath. He says Mother's coloring is wonderful. I heard him. And I didn't like it very well, either. Why, it sounded as if she put it on herself out of a box on her bureau, same as some other ladies do! Still, he's not so bad, maybe; though I'm not sure but what his paints and pictures would be just as tiresome to live with as Father's stars, when it came right down to wanting a husband to live with you and talk to you every day in the year. You know you have to think of such things when it comes to choosing a new father--I mean a new husband. (I keep forgetting that it's Mother and not me that's doing the choosing.) Well, to resume and go on. There's the violinist. I mustn't forget him. But, then, nobody could forget him. He's lovely: so handsome and distinguished-looking with his perfectly beautiful dark eyes and white teeth. And he plays--well, I'm simply crazy over his playing. I only wish Carrie Heywood could hear him. She thinks her brother can play. He's a traveling violinist with a show; and he came home once to Andersonville. And I heard him. But he's not the real thing at all. Not a bit. Why, he might be anybody, our grocer, or the butcher, up there playing that violin. His eyes are little and blue, and his hair is red and very short. I wish she could hear _our_ violinist play! And there's another man that comes to the parties and teas;--oh, of course there are others, lots of them, married men with wives, and unmarried men with and without sisters. But I mean another man specially. His name is Harlow. He's a little man with a brown pointed beard and big soft brown eyes. He's really awfully good-looking, too. I don't know what he does do; but he's married. I know that. He never brings his wife, though; but Mother's always asking for her, clear and distinct, and she always smiles, and her voice kind of tinkles like little silver bells. But just the same he never brings her. He never takes her anywhere. I heard Aunt Hattie tell Mother so at the very first, when he came. She said they weren't a bit happy together, and that there'd probably be a divorce before long. But Mother asked for her just the same the very next time. And she's done it ever since. I think I know now why she does. I found out, and I was simply thrilled. It was so exciting! You see, they were lovers once themselves--Mother and this Mr. Harlow. Then something happened and they quarreled. That was just before Father came. Of course Mother didn't tell me this, nor Aunt Hattie. It was two ladies. I heard them talking at a tea one day. I was right behind them, and I couldn't get away, so I just couldn't help hearing what they said. They were looking across the room at Mother. Mr. Harlow was talking to her. He was leaning forward in his chair and talking so earnestly to Mother; and he looked just as if he thought there wasn't another soul in the room but just they two. But Mother--Mother was just listening to be polite to company. Anybody could see that. And the very first chance she got she turned and began to talk to a lady who was standing near. And she never so much as looked toward Mr. Harlow again. The ladies in front of me laughed then, and one of them said, with a little nod of her head, "I guess Madge Desmond Anderson can look out for herself all right." Then they got up and went away without seeing me. And all of a sudden I felt almost sorry, for I wanted them to see me. I wanted them to see that I knew my mother could take care of herself, too, and that I was proud of it. If they had turned I'd have said so. But they didn't turn. I shouldn't like Mr. Harlow for a father. I know I shouldn't. But then, there's no danger, of course, even if he and Mother were lovers once. He's got a wife now, and even if he got a divorce, I don't believe Mother would choose him. But of course there's no telling which one she will take. As I said before, I don't know. It's too soon, anyway, to tell. I suspect it isn't any more proper to hurry up about getting married again when you've been _un_married by a divorce than it is when you've been unmarried by your husband's dying. I asked Peter one day how soon folks did get married after a divorce, but he didn't seem to know. Anyway, all he said was to stammer: "Er--yes, Miss--no, Miss. I mean, I don't know, Miss." Peter is awfully funny. But he's nice. I like him, only I can't find out much by him. He's very good-looking, though he's quite old. He's almost thirty. He told me. I asked him. He takes me back and forth to school every day, so I see quite a lot of him. And, really, he's about the only one I _can_ ask questions of here, anyway. There isn't anybody like Nurse Sarah used to be. Olga, the cook, talks so funny I can't understand a word she says, hardly. Besides, the only two times I've been down to the kitchen Aunt Hattie sent for me; and she told me the last time not to go any more. She didn't say why. Aunt Hattie never says _why_ not to do things. She just says, "Don't." Sometimes it seems to me as if my whole life had been made up of "don'ts." If they'd only tell us part of the time things to "_do_," maybe we wouldn't have so much time to do the "_don'ts_." (That sounds funny, but I guess folks'll know what I mean.) Well, what was I saying? Oh, I know--about asking questions. As I said, there isn't anybody like Nurse Sarah here. I can't understand Olga, and Theresa, the other maid, is just about as bad. Aunt Hattie's lovely, but I can't ask questions of her. She isn't the kind. Besides, Lester's always there, too; and you can't discuss family affairs before children. Of course there's Mother and Grandpa Desmond. But questions like when it's proper for Mother to have lovers I can't ask of _them_, of course. So there's no one but Peter left to ask. Peter's all right and very nice, but he doesn't seem to know _anything_ that I want to know. So he doesn't amount to so very much, after all. I'm not sure, anyway, that Mother'll want to get married again. From little things she says I rather guess she doesn't think much of marriage, anyway. One day I heard her say to Aunt Hattie that it was a very pretty theory that marriages were made in heaven, but that the real facts of the case were that they were made on earth. And another day I heard her say that one trouble with marriage was that the husband and wife didn't know how to play together and to rest together. And lots of times I've heard her say little things to Aunt Hattie that showed how unhappy _her_ marriage had been. But last night a funny thing happened. We were all in the library reading after dinner, and Grandpa looked up from his paper and said something about a woman that was sentenced to be hanged and how a whole lot of men were writing letters protesting against having a woman hanged; but there were only one or two letters from women. And Grandpa said that only went to prove how much more lacking in a sense of fitness of things women were than men. And he was just going to say more when Aunt Hattie bristled up and tossed her chin, and said, real indignantly: "A sense of fitness of things, indeed! Oh, yes, that's all very well to say. There are plenty of men, no doubt, who are shocked beyond anything at the idea of hanging a woman; but those same men will think nothing of going straight home and making life for some other woman so absolutely miserable that she'd think hanging would be a lucky escape from something worse." "Harriet!" exclaimed Grandpa in a shocked voice. "Well, I mean it!" declared Aunt Hattie emphatically. "Look at poor Madge here, and that wretch of a husband of hers!" And just here is where the funny thing happened. Mother bristled up--_Mother_--and even more than Aunt Hattie had. She turned red and then white, and her eyes blazed. "That will do, Hattie, please, in my presence," she said, very cold, like ice. "Dr. Anderson is not a wretch at all. He is an honorable, scholarly gentleman. Without doubt he meant to be kind and considerate. He simply did not understand me. We weren't suited to each other. That's all." And she got up and swept out of the room. Now wasn't that funny? But I just loved it, all the same. I always love Mother when she's superb and haughty and disdainful. Well, after she had gone Aunt Hattie looked at Grandpa and Grandpa looked at Aunt Hattie. Grandpa shrugged his shoulders, and gave his hands a funny little flourish; and Aunt Hattie lifted her eyebrows and said: "Well, what do you know about that?" (Aunt Hattie forgot I was in the room, I know, or she'd never in the world have used slang like that!) "And after all the things she's said about how unhappy she was!" finished Aunt Hattie. Grandpa didn't say anything, but just gave his funny little shrug again. And it was kind of queer, when you come to think of it--about Mother, I mean, wasn't it? * * * * * _One month later_. Well, I've been here another whole month, and it's growing nicer all the time. I just love it here. I love the sunshine everywhere, and the curtains up to let it in. And the flowers in the rooms, and the little fern-dish on the dining-room table, the books and magazines just lying around ready to be picked up; Baby Lester laughing and singing all over the house, and lovely ladies and gentlemen in the drawing-room having music and tea and little cakes when I come home from school in the afternoon. And I love it not to have to look up and watch and listen for fear Father's coming in and I'll be making a noise. And best of all I love Mother with her dancing eyes and her laugh, and her just being happy, with no going in and finding her crying or looking long and fixedly at nothing, and then turning to me with a great big sigh, and a "Well, dear?" that just makes you want to go and cry because it's so hurt and heart-broken. Oh, I do just love it all! And Mother _is_ happy. I'm sure she is. Somebody is doing something for her every moment--seems so. They are so glad to get her back again. I know they are. I heard two ladies talking one day, and they said they were. They called her "Poor Madge," and "Dear Madge," and they said it was a shame that she should have had such a wretched experience, and that they for one should try to do everything they could to make her forget. And that's what they all seem to be trying to do--to make her forget. There isn't a day goes by but that somebody sends flowers or books or candy, or invites her somewhere, or takes her to ride or to the theater, or comes to see her, so that Mother is in just one whirl of good times from morning till night. Why, she'd just have to forget. She doesn't have any time to remember. I think she _is_ forgetting, too. Oh, of course she gets tired, and sometimes rainy days or twilights I find her on the sofa in her room not reading or anything, and her face looks 'most as it used to sometimes after they'd been having one of their incompatibility times. But I don't find her that way very often, and it doesn't last long. So I really think she is forgetting. About the prospective suitors--I found that "prospective suitor" in a story a week ago, and I just love it. It means you probably will want to marry her, you know. I use it all the time now--in my mind--when I'm thinking about those gentlemen that come here (the unmarried ones). I forgot and used it out loud one day to Aunt Hattie; but I shan't again. She said, "Mercy!" and threw up her hands and looked over to Grandpa the way she does when I've said something she thinks is perfectly awful. But I was firm and dignified--but very polite and pleasant--and I said that I didn't see why she should act like that, for of course they were prospective suitors, the unmarried ones, anyway, and even some of the married ones, maybe, like Mr. Harlow, for of course they could get divorces, and-- "Ma_rie_!" interrupted Aunt Hattie then, before I could say another word, or go on to explain that of course Mother couldn't be expected to stay unmarried _always_, though I was very sure she wouldn't get married again until she'd waited long enough, and until it was perfectly proper and genteel for her to take unto herself another husband. But Aunt Hattie wouldn't even listen. And she threw up her hands and said "Ma_rie_!" again with the emphasis on the last part of the name the way I simply loathe. And she told me never, never to let her hear me make such a speech as that again. And I said I would be very careful not to. And you may be sure I shall. I don't want to go through a scene like that again! She told Mother about it, though, I think. Anyhow, they were talking very busily together when they came into the library after dinner that night, and Mother looked sort of flushed and plagued, and I heard her say, "Perhaps the child does read too many novels, Hattie." And Aunt Hattie answered, "Of course she does!" Then she said something else which I didn't catch, only the words "silly" and "romantic," and "pre-co-shus." (I don't know what that last means, but I put it down the way it sounded, and I'm going to look it up.) Then they turned and saw me, and they didn't say anything more. But the next morning the perfectly lovely story I was reading, that Theresa let me take, called "The Hidden Secret," I couldn't find anywhere. And when I asked Mother if she'd seen it, she said she'd given it back to Theresa, and that I mustn't ask for it again. That I wasn't old enough yet to read such stories. There it is again! I'm not old enough. When _will_ I be allowed to take my proper place in life? Echo answers when. Well, to resume and go on. What was I talking about? Oh, I know--the prospective suitors. (Aunt Hattie can't hear me when I just _write_ it, anyway.) Well, they all come just as they used to, only there are more of them now--two fat men, one slim one, and a man with a halo of hair round a bald spot. Oh, I don't mean that any of them are really suitors yet. They just come to call and to tea, and send her flowers and candy. And Mother isn't a mite nicer to one than she is to any of the others. Anybody can see that. And she shows very plainly she's no notion of picking anybody out yet. But of course I can't help being interested and watching. It won't be Mr. Harlow, anyway. I'm pretty sure of that, even if he has started in to get his divorce. (And he has. I heard Aunt Hattie tell Mother so last week.) But Mother doesn't like him. I'm sure she doesn't. He makes her awfully nervous. Oh, she laughs and talks with him--seems as if she laughs even more with him than she does with anybody else. But she's always looking around for somebody else to talk to; and I've seen her get up and move off just as he was coming across the room toward her, and I'm just sure she saw him. There's another reason, too, why I think Mother isn't going to choose him for her lover. I heard something she said to him one day. She was sitting before the fire in the library, and he came in. There were other people there, quite a lot of them; but Mother was all alone by the fireplace, her eyes looking fixed and dreamy into the fire. I was in the window-seat around the corner of the chimney reading; and I could see Mother in the mirror just as plain as could be. She could have seen me, too, of course, if she'd looked up. But she didn't. I never even thought of hearing anything I hadn't ought, and I was just going to get down to go and speak to Mother myself, when Mr. Harlow crossed the room and sat down on the sofa beside her. "Dreaming, Madge?" he said, low and soft, his soulful eyes just devouring her lovely face. (I read that, too, in a book last week. I just loved it!) Mother started and flushed up. "Oh, Mr. Harlow!" she cried. (Mother always calls him "Mr." That's another thing. He always calls her "Madge," you know.) "How do you do?" Then she gave her quick little look around to see if there wasn't somebody else near for her to talk to. But there wasn't. "But you _do_ dream, of the old days, sometimes, Madge, don't you?" he began again, soft and low, leaning a little nearer. "Of when I was a child and played dolls before this very fireplace? Well, yes, perhaps I do," laughed Mother. And I could see she drew away a little. "There was one doll with a broken head that--" "_I_ was speaking of broken hearts," interrupted Mr. Harlow, very meaningfully. "Broken hearts! Nonsense! As if there were such things in the world!" cried Mother, with a little toss to her head, looking around again with a quick little glance for some one else to talk to. But still there wasn't anybody there. They were all over to the other side of the room talking, and paying no attention to Mother and Mr. Harlow, only the violinist. He looked and looked, and acted nervous with his watch-chain. But he didn't come over. I felt, some way, that I ought to go away and not hear any more; but I couldn't without showing them that I had been there. So I thought it was better to stay just where I was. They could see me, anyway, if they'd just look in the mirror. So I didn't feel that I was sneaking. And I stayed. Then Mr. Harlow spoke again. His eyes grew even more soulful and devouring. I could see them in the mirror. "Madge, it seems so strange that we should both have had to trail through the tragedy of broken hearts and lives before we came to our real happiness. For we _shall_ be happy, Madge. You know I'm to be free, too, soon, dear, and then we--" But he didn't finish. Mother put up her hand and stopped him. Her face wasn't flushed any more. It was very white. "Carl," she began in a still, quiet voice, and I was so thrilled. I knew something was going to happen--this time she'd called him by his first name. "I'm sorry," she went on. "I've tried to show you. I've tried very hard to show you--without speaking. But if you make me say it I shall have to say it. Whether you are free or not matters not to me. It can make no difference in our relationship. Now, will you come with me to the other side of the room, or must I be so rude as to go and leave you?" She got up then, and he got up, too. He said something--I couldn't hear what it was; but it was sad and reproachful--I'm sure of that by the look in his eyes. Then they both walked across the room to the others. I was sorry for him. I do not want him for a father, but I couldn't help being sorry for him, he looked so sad and mournful and handsome; and he's got perfectly beautiful eyes. (Oh, I do hope mine will have nice eyes, when I find him!) As I said before, I don't believe Mother'll choose Mr. Harlow, anyway, even when the time comes. As for any of the others--I can't tell. She treats them all just exactly alike, as far as I can see. Polite and pleasant, but not at all lover-like. I was talking to Peter one day about it, and I asked him. But he didn't seem to know, either, which one she will be likely to take, if any. Peter's about the only one I can ask. Of course I couldn't ask Mother, or Aunt Hattie, after what _she_ said about my calling them prospective suitors. And Grandfather--well, I should never think of asking Grandpa a question like that. But Peter--Peter's a real comfort. I'm sure I don't know what I should do for somebody to talk to and ask questions about things down here, if it wasn't for him. As I think I've said already, he takes me to school and back again every day; so of course I see him quite a lot. Speaking of school, it's all right, and of course I like it, though not quite so well as I did. There are some of the girls--well, they act queer. I don't know what is the matter with them. They stop talking--some of them--when I come up, and they make me feel, sometimes, as if I didn't _belong_. Maybe it's because I came from a little country town like Andersonville. But they've known that all along, from the very first. And they didn't act at all like that at the beginning. Maybe it's just their way down here. If I think of it I'll ask Peter to-morrow. Well, I guess that's all I can think of this time. * * * * * '_Most four months later_. It's been ages since I've written here, I know. But there's nothing special happened. Everything has been going along just about as it did at the first. Oh, there is one thing different--Peter's gone. He went two months ago. We've got an awfully old chauffeur now. One with gray hair and glasses, and homely, too. His name is Charles. The very first day he came, Aunt Hattie told me never to talk to Charles, or bother him with questions; that it was better he should keep his mind entirely on his driving. She needn't have worried. I should never dream of asking him the things I did Peter. He's too stupid. Now Peter and I got to be real good friends--until all of a sudden Grandpa told him he might go. I don't know why. I don't see as I'm any nearer finding out who Mother's lover will be than I was four months ago. I suppose it's still too soon. Peter said one day he thought widows ought to wait at least a year, and he guessed grass-widows were just the same. My, how mad I was at him for using that name about my mother! Oh, I knew what he meant. I'd heard it at school. (I know now what it was that made those girls act so queer and horrid.) There was a girl--I never liked her, and I suspect she didn't like me, either. Well, she found out Mother had a divorce. (You see, _I_ hadn't told it. I remembered how those girls out West bragged.) And she told a lot of the others. But it didn't work at all as it had in the West. None of the girls in this school here had a divorce in their families; and, if you'll believe it, they acted--some of them--as if it was a _disgrace_, even after I told them good and plain that ours was a perfectly respectable and genteel divorce. Nothing I could say made a mite of difference, with some of the girls, and then is when I first heard that perfectly horrid word, "grass-widow." So I knew what Peter meant, though I was furious at him for using it. And I let him see it good and plain. Of course I changed schools. I knew Mother'd want me to, when she knew, and so I told her right away. I thought she'd be superb and haughty and disdainful sure this time. But she wasn't. First she grew so white I thought she was going to faint away. Then she began to cry, and kiss and hug me. And that night I heard her talking to Aunt Hattie and saying, "To think that that poor innocent child has to suffer, too!" and some more which I couldn't hear, because her voice was all choked up and shaky. Mother is crying now again quite a lot. You see, her six months are 'most up, and I've got to go back to Father. And I'm afraid Mother is awfully unhappy about it. She had a letter last week from Aunt Jane, Father's sister. I heard her read it out loud to Aunt Hattie and Grandpa in the library. It was very stiff and cold and dignified, and ran something like this: DEAR MADAM: Dr. Anderson desires me to say that he trusts you are bearing in mind the fact that, according to the decision of the court, his daughter Mary is to come to him on the first day of May. If you will kindly inform him as to the hour of her expected arrival, he will see that she is properly met at the station. Then she signed her name, Abigail Jane Anderson. (She was named for her mother, Grandma Anderson, same as Father wanted them to name me. Mercy! I'm glad they didn't. "Mary" is bad enough, but "Abigail Jane"--!) Well, Mother read the letter aloud, then she began to talk about it--how she felt, and how awful it was to think of giving me up six whole months, and sending her bright little sunny-hearted Marie into that tomb-like place with only an Abigail Jane to flee to for refuge. And she said that she almost wished Nurse Sarah was back again--that she, at least, was human. "'And see that she's properly met,' indeed!" went on Mother, with an indignant little choke in her voice. "Oh, yes, I know! Now if it were a star or a comet that he expected, he'd go himself and sit for hours and hours watching for it. But when his daughter comes, he'll send John with the horses, like enough, and possibly that precious Abigail Jane of his. Or, maybe that is too much to expect. Oh, Hattie, I can't let her go--I can't, I can't!" I was in the window-seat around the corner of the chimney, reading; and I don't know as she knew I was there. But I was, and I heard. And I've heard other things, too, all this week. I'm to go next Monday, and as it comes nearer the time Mother's getting worse and worse. She's so unhappy over it. And of course that makes me unhappy, too. But I try not to show it. Only yesterday, when she was crying and hugging me, and telling me how awful it was that her little girl should have to suffer, too, I told her not to worry a bit about me; that I wasn't suffering at all. I _liked_ it. It was ever so much more exciting to have two homes instead of one. But she only cried all the more, and sobbed, "Oh, my baby, my baby!"--so nothing I could say seemed to do one mite of good. But I meant it, and I told the truth. I _am_ excited. And I can't help wondering how it's all going to be at Father's. Oh, of course, I know it won't be so much fun, and I'll have to be "Mary," and all that; but it'll be something _different_, and I always did like different things. Besides, there's Father's love story to watch. Maybe _he's_ found somebody. Maybe he didn't wait a year. Anyhow, if he did find somebody I'm sure he wouldn't be so willing to wait as Mother would. You know Nurse Sarah said Father never wanted to wait for anything. That's why he married Mother so quick, in the first place. But if there is somebody, of course I'll find out when I'm there. So that'll be interesting. And, anyway, there'll be the girls. I shall have _them_. [Illustration: "I TOLD HER NOT TO WORRY A BIT ABOUT ME"] I'll close now, and make this the end of the chapter. It'll be Andersonville next time. CHAPTER V WHEN I AM MARY ANDERSONVILLE. Well, here I am. I've been here two days now, and I guess I'd better write down what's happened so far, before I forget it. First, about my leaving Boston. Poor, dear Mother did take on dreadfully, and I thought she just wouldn't let me go. She went with me to the junction where I had to change, and put me on the parlor car for Andersonville, and asked the conductor to look out for me. (As if I needed that--a young lady like me! I'm fourteen now. I had a birthday last week.) But I thought at the last that she just wouldn't let me go, she clung to me so, and begged me to forgive her for all she'd brought upon me; and said it was a cruel, cruel shame, when there were children, and people ought to stop and think and remember, and be willing to stand anything. And then, in the next breath, she'd beg me not to forget her, and not to love Father better than I did her. (As if there was any danger of that!) And to write to her every few minutes. Then the conductor cried, "All aboard!" and the bell rang, and she had to go and leave me. But the last I saw of her she was waving her handkerchief, and smiling the kind of a smile that's worse than crying right out loud. Mother's always like that. No matter how bad she feels, at the last minute she comes up bright and smiling, and just as brave as can be. I had a wonderful trip to Andersonville. Everybody was very kind to me, and there were lovely things to see out the window. The conductor came in and spoke to me several times--not the way you would look after a child, but the way a gentleman would tend to a lady. I liked him very much. There was a young gentleman in the seat in front, too, who was very nice. He loaned me a magazine, and bought some candy for me; but I didn't see much more of him, for the second time the conductor came in he told me he'd found a nice seat back in the car on the shady side. He noticed the sun came in where I sat, he said. (_I_ hadn't noticed it specially.) But he picked up my bag and magazine--but I guess he forgot the candy-box the nice young gentleman in front had just put on my window-sill, for when I got into my new seat the candy wasn't anywhere; and of course I didn't like to go back for it. But the conductor was very nice and kind, and came in twice again to see if I liked my new seat; and of course I said I did. It was very nice and shady, and there was a lady and a baby in the next seat, and I played with the baby quite a lot. It was heaps of fun to be grown up and traveling alone like that! I sat back in my seat and wondered and wondered what the next six months were going to be like. And I wondered, too, if I'd forgotten how to be "Mary." "Dear me! How shall I ever remember not to run and skip and laugh loud or sing, or ask questions, or do _anything_ that Marie wants to do?" I thought to myself. And I wondered if Aunt Jane would meet me, and what she would be like. She came once when I was a little girl, Mother said; but I didn't remember her. Well, at last we got to Andersonville. John was there with the horses, and Aunt Jane, too. Of course I knew she must be Aunt Jane, because she was with John. The conductor was awfully nice and polite, and didn't leave me till he'd seen me safe in the hands of Aunt Jane and John. Then he went back to his train, and the next minute it had whizzed out of the station, and I was alone with the beginning of my next six months. The first beginning was a nice smile, and a "Glad to see ye home, Miss," from John, as he touched his hat, and the next was a "How do you do, Mary?" from Aunt Jane. And I knew right off that first minute that I wasn't going to like Aunt Jane--just the way she said that "Mary," and the way she looked me over from head to foot. Aunt Jane is tall and thin, and wears black--not the pretty, stylish black, but the "I-don't-care" rusty black--and a stiff white collar. Her eyes are the kind that says, "I'm surprised at you!" all the time, and her mouth is the kind that never shows any teeth when it smiles, and doesn't smile much, anyway. Her hair is some gray, and doesn't kink or curl anywhere; and I knew right off the first minute she looked at me that she didn't like mine, 'cause it did curl. I was pretty sure she didn't like my clothes, either. I've since found out she didn't--but more of that anon. (I just love that word "anon.") And I just knew she disapproved of my hat. But she didn't say anything--not in words--and after we'd attended to my trunk, we went along to the carriage and got in. My stars! I didn't suppose horses _could_ go so slow. Why, we were _ages_ just going a block. You see I'd forgotten; and without thinking I spoke right out. "My! Horses _are_ slow, aren't they?" I cried. "You see, Grandpa has an auto, and--" "Mary!"--just like that she interrupted--Aunt Jane did. (Funny how old folks can do what they won't let you do. Now if I'd interrupted anybody like that!) "You may as well understand at once," went on Aunt Jane, "that we are not interested in your grandfather's auto, or his house, or anything that is his." (I felt as if I was hearing the catechism in church!) "And that the less reference you make to your life in Boston, the better we shall be pleased. As I said before, we are not interested. Besides, while under your father's roof, it would seem to me very poor taste, indeed, for you to make constant reference to things you may have been doing while _not_ under his roof. The situation is deplorable enough, however you take it, without making it positively unbearable. You will remember, Mary?" Mary said, "Yes, Aunt Jane," very polite and proper; but I can tell you that inside of Mary, _Marie_ was just boiling. Unbearable, indeed! We didn't say anything more all the way home. Naturally, _I_ was not going to, after that speech; and Aunt Jane said nothing. So silence reigned supreme. Then we got home. Things looked quite natural, only there was a new maid in the kitchen, and Nurse Sarah wasn't there. Father wasn't there, either. And, just as I suspected, 't was a star that was to blame, only this time the star was the moon--an eclipse; and he'd gone somewhere out West so he could see it better. He isn't coming back till next week; and when I think how he made me come on the first day, so as to get in the whole six months, when all the time he did not care enough about it to be here himself, I'm just mad--I mean, the righteously indignant kind of mad--for I can't help thinking how poor Mother would have loved those extra days with her. Aunt Jane said I was to have my old room, and so, as soon as I got here, I went right up and took off my hat and coat, and pretty quick they brought up my trunk, and I unpacked it; and I didn't hurry about it either. I wasn't a bit anxious to get downstairs again to Aunt Jane. Besides, I may as well own up, I was crying--a little. Mother's room was right across the hall, and it looked so lonesome; and I couldn't help remembering how different this homecoming was from the one in Boston, six months ago. Well, at last I had to go down to dinner--I mean supper--and, by the way, I made another break on that. I _called_ it dinner right out loud, and never thought--till I saw Aunt Jane's face. "_Supper_ will be ready directly," she said, with cold and icy emphasis. "And may I ask you to remember, Mary, please, that Andersonville has dinner at _noon_, not at six o'clock." "Yes, Aunt Jane," said Mary, polite and proper again. (I shan't say what Marie said inside.) We didn't do anything in the evening but read and go to bed at nine o'clock. I _wanted_ to run over to Carrie Heywood's; but Aunt Jane said no, not till morning. (I wonder why young folks _never_ can do things when they _want_ to do them, but must always wait till morning or night or noon, or some other time!) In the morning I went up to the schoolhouse. I planned it so as to get there at recess, and I saw all the girls except one that was sick, and one that was away. We had a perfectly lovely time, only everybody was talking at once so that I don't know now what was said. But they seemed glad to see me. I know that. Maybe I'll go to school next week. Aunt Jane says she thinks I ought to, when it's only the first of May. She's going to speak to Father when he comes next week. She was going to speak to him about my clothes; then she decided to attend to those herself, and not bother him. As I suspected, she doesn't like my dresses. I found out this morning for sure. She came into my room and asked to see my things. My! But didn't I hate to show them to her? Marie said she wouldn't; but Mary obediently trotted to the closet and brought them out one by one. Aunt Jane turned them around with the tips of her fingers, all the time sighing and shaking her head. When I'd brought them all out, she shook her head again and said they would not do at all--not in Andersonville; that they were extravagant, and much too elaborate for a young girl; that she would see the dressmaker and arrange that I had some serviceable blue and brown serges at once. Blue and brown serge, indeed! But, there, what's the use? I'm Mary now, I keep forgetting that; though I don't see how I can forget it--with Aunt Jane around. But, listen. A funny thing happened this morning. Something came up about Boston, and Aunt Jane asked me a question. Then she asked another and another, and she kept me talking till I guess I talked 'most a whole half-hour about Grandpa Desmond, Aunt Hattie, Mother, and the house, and what we did, and, oh, a whole lot of things. And here, just two days ago, she was telling me that she wasn't interested in Grandpa Desmond, his home, or his daughter, or anything that was his! There's something funny about Aunt Jane. * * * * * _One week later_. Father's come. He came yesterday. But I didn't know it, and I came running downstairs, ending with a little bounce for the last step. And there, right in front of me in the hall was--_Father_. I guess he was as much surprised as I was. Anyhow, he acted so. He just stood stock-still and stared, his face turning all kinds of colors. "You?" he gasped, just above his breath. Then suddenly he seemed to remember. "Why, yes, yes, to be sure. You are here, aren't you? How do you do, Mary?" He came up then and held out his hand, and I thought that was all he was going to do. But after a funny little hesitation he stooped and kissed my forehead. Then he turned and went into the library with very quick steps, and I didn't see him again till at the supper-table. At the supper-table he said again, "How do you do, Mary?" Then he seemed to forget all about me. At least he didn't say anything more to me; but three or four times, when I glanced up, I found him looking at me. But just as soon as I looked back at him he turned his eyes away and cleared his throat, and began to eat or to talk to Aunt Jane. After dinner--I mean supper--he went out to the observatory, just as he always used to. Aunt Jane said her head ached and she was going to bed. I said I guessed I would step over to Carrie Heywood's; but Aunt Jane said, certainly not; that I was much too young to be running around nights in the dark. Nights! And it was only seven o'clock, and not dark at all! But of course I couldn't go. Aunt Jane went upstairs, and I was left alone. I didn't feel a bit like reading; besides, there wasn't a book or a magazine anywhere _asking_ you to read. They just shrieked, "Touch me not!" behind the glass doors in the library. I hate sewing. I mean _Marie_ hates it. Aunt Jane says Mary's got to learn. For a time I just walked around the different rooms downstairs, looking at the chairs and tables and rugs all _just so_, as if they 'd been measured with a yardstick. Marie jerked up a shade and pushed a chair crooked and kicked a rug up at one corner; but Mary put them all back properly--so there wasn't any fun in that for long. After a while I opened the parlor door and peeked in. They used to keep it open when Mother was here; but Aunt Jane doesn't use it. I knew where the electric push button was, though, and I turned on the light. It used to be an awful room, and it's worse now, on account of its shut-up look. Before I got the light on, the chairs and sofas loomed up like ghosts in their linen covers. And when the light did come on, I saw that all the old shiver places were there. Not one was missing. Great-Grandfather Anderson's coffin plate on black velvet, the wax cross and flowers that had been used at three Anderson funerals, the hair wreath made of all the hair of seventeen dead Andersons and five live ones--no, no, I don't mean _all_ the hair, but hair from all seventeen and five. Nurse Sarah used to tell me about it. Well, as I said, all the shiver places were there, and I shivered again as I looked at them; then I crossed over to Mother's old piano, opened it, and touched the keys. I love to play. There wasn't any music there, but I don't need music for lots of my pieces. I know them by heart--only they're all gay and lively, and twinkly-toe dancy. _Marie_ music. I don't know a one that would be proper for _Mary_ to play. But I was just tingling to play _something_, and I remembered that Father was in the observatory, and Aunt Jane upstairs in the other part of the house where she couldn't possibly hear. So I began to play. I played the very slowest piece I had, and I played softly at first; but I know I forgot, and I know I hadn't played two pieces before I was having the best time ever, and making all the noise I wanted to. Then all of a sudden I had a funny feeling as if somebody somewhere was watching me; but I just couldn't turn around. I stopped playing, though, at the end of that piece, and then I looked; but there wasn't anybody in sight. But the wax cross was there, and the coffin plate, and that awful hair wreath; and suddenly I felt as if that room was just full of folks with great staring eyes. I fairly shook with shivers then, but I managed to shut the piano and get over to the door where the light was. Then, a minute later, out in the big silent hall, I crept on tiptoe toward the stairs. I knew then, all of a sudden, why I'd felt somebody was listening. There was. Across the hall in the library in the big chair before the fire sat--_Father_! And for 'most a whole half-hour I had been banging away at that piano on marches and dance music! My! But I held my breath and stopped short, I can tell you. But he didn't move nor turn, and a minute later I was safely by the door and halfway up the stairs. I stayed in my room the rest of that evening; and for the second time since I've been here I cried myself to sleep. * * * * * _Another week later_, Well, I've got them--those brown and blue serge dresses and the calfskin boots. My, but I hope they're stiff and homely enough--all of them! And hot, too. Aunt Jane did say to-day that she didn't know but what she'd made a mistake not to get gingham dresses. But, then, she'd have to get the gingham later, anyway, she said; then I'd have both. Well, they can't be worse than the serge. That's sure. I hate the serge. They're awfully homely. Still, I don't know but it's just as well. Certainly it's lots easier to be Mary in a brown serge and clumpy boots than it is in the soft, fluffy things Marie used to wear. You couldn't be Marie in _these_ things. Honestly, I'm feeling real Maryish these days. I wonder if that's why the girls seem so queer at school. They _are_ queer. Three times lately I've come up to a crowd of girls and heard them stop talking right off short. They colored up, too; and pretty quick they began to slip away, one by one, till there wasn't anybody left but just me, just as they used to do in Boston. But of course it can't be for the same reason here, for they've known all along about the divorce and haven't minded it at all. I heard this morning that Stella Mayhew had a party last night. But _I_ didn't get invited. Of course, you can't always ask everybody to your parties, but this was a real big party, and I haven't found a girl in school, yet, that wasn't invited--but me. But I guess it wasn't anything, after all. Stella is a new girl that has come here to live since I went away. Her folks are rich, and she's very popular, and of course she has loads of friends she had to invite; and she doesn't know me very well. Probably that was it. And maybe I just imagine it about the other girls, too. Perhaps it's the brown serge dress. Still, it can't be that, for this is the first day I've worn it. But, as I said, I feel Maryish already. I haven't dared to touch the piano since that night a week ago, only once when Aunt Jane was at a missionary meeting, and I knew Father was over to the college. But didn't I have a good time then? I just guess I did! Aunt Jane doesn't care for music. Besides, it's noisy, she says, and would be likely to disturb Father. So I'm not to keep on with my music lessons here. She's going to teach me to sew instead. She says sewing is much more sensible and useful. Sensible and useful! I wonder how many times I've heard those words since I've been here. And durable, too. And nourishing. That's another word. Honestly, Marie is getting awfully tired of Mary's sensible sewing and dusting, and her durable clumpy shoes and stuffy dresses, and her nourishing oatmeal and whole-wheat bread. But there, what can you do? I'm trying to remember that it's _different_, anyway, and that I said I liked something different. I don't see much of Father. Still, there's something kind of queer about it, after all. He only speaks to me about twice a day--just "Good-morning, Mary," and "Good-night." And so far as most of his actions are concerned you wouldn't think by them that he knew I was in the house, Yet, over and over again at the table, and at times when I didn't even know he was 'round, I've found him watching me, and with such a queer, funny look in his eyes. Then, very quickly always, he looks right away. But last night he didn't. And that's especially what I wanted to write about to-day. And this is the way it happened. It was after supper, and I had gone into the library. Father had gone out to the observatory as usual, and Aunt Jane had gone upstairs to her room as usual, and as usual I was wandering 'round looking for something to do. I wanted to play on the piano, but I didn't dare to--not with all those dead-hair and wax-flower folks in the parlor watching me, and the chance of Father's coming in as he did before. I was standing in the window staring out at nothing--it wasn't quite dark yet--when again I had that queer feeling that somebody was looking at me. I turned--and there was Father. He had come in and was sitting in the big chair by the table. But this time he didn't look right away as usual and give me a chance to slip quietly out of the room, as I always had before. Instead he said: "What are you doing there, Mary?" "N-nothing." I know I stammered. It always scares me to talk to Father. "Nonsense!" Father frowned and hitched in his chair. Father always hitches in his chair when he's irritated and nervous. "You can't be doing nothing. Nobody but a dead man does nothing--and we aren't so sure about him. What are you doing, Mary?" "Just l-looking out the window." "Thank you. That's better. Come here. I want to talk to you." "Yes, Father." I went, of course, at once, and sat down in the chair near him. He hitched again in his seat. "Why don't you do something--read, sew, knit?" he demanded. "Why do I always find you moping around, doing nothing?" Just like that he said it; and when he had just told me-- "Why, Father!" I cried; and I know that I showed how surprised I was. "I thought you just said I couldn't do nothing--that nobody could!" "Eh? What? Tut, tut!" He seemed very angry at first; then suddenly he looked sharply into my face. Next, if you'll believe it, he laughed--the queer little chuckle under his breath that I've heard him give two or three times when there was something he thought was funny. "Humph!" he grunted. Then he gave me another sharp look out of his eyes, and said: "I don't think you meant that to be quite so impertinent as it sounded, Mary, so we'll let it pass--this time. I'll put my question this way: Don't you ever knit or read or sew?" "I do sew every day in Aunt Jane's room, ten minutes hemming, ten minutes seaming, and ten minutes basting patchwork squares together. I don't know how to knit." "How about reading? Don't you care for reading?" "Why, of course I do. I love it!" I cried. "And I do read lots--at home." "At--_home_?" I knew then, of course, that I'd made another awful break. There wasn't any smile around Father's eyes now, and his lips came together hard and thin over that last word. "At--at _my_ home," I stammered. "I mean, my _other_ home." "Humph!" grunted Father. Then, after a minute: "But why, pray, can't you read here? I'm sure there are--books enough." He flourished his hands toward the bookcases all around the room. "Oh, I do--a little; but, you see, I'm so afraid I'll leave some of them out when I'm through," I explained, "Well, what of it? What if you do?" he demanded. "Why, _Father_!" I tried to show by the way I said it that he knew--of course he knew. But he made me tell him right out that Aunt Jane wouldn't like it, and that he wouldn't like it, and that the books always had to be kept exactly where they belonged. "Well, why not? Why shouldn't they?" he asked then, almost crossly, and hitching again in his chair. "Aren't books down there--in Boston--kept where they belong, pray?" It was the first time since I'd come that he'd ever mentioned Boston; and I almost jumped out of my chair when I heard him. But I soon saw it wasn't going to be the last, for right then and there he began to question me, even worse than Aunt Jane had. He wanted to know everything, _everything_; all about the house, with its cushions and cozy corners and curtains 'way up, and books left around easy to get, and magazines, and Baby Lester, and the fun we had romping with him, and everything. Only, of course, I didn't mention Mother. Aunt Jane had told me not to--not anywhere; and to be specially careful before Father. But what can you do when he asks you himself, right out plain? And that's what he did. He'd been up on his feet, tramping up and down the room all the time I'd been talking; and now, all of a sudden, he wheels around and stops short. "How is--your mother, Mary?" he asks. And it was just as if he'd opened the door to another room, he had such a whole lot of questions to ask after that. And when he'd finished he knew everything: what time we got up and went to bed, and what we did all day, and the parties and dinners and auto rides, and the folks that came such a lot to see Mother. Then all of a sudden he stopped--asking questions, I mean. He stopped just as suddenly as he'd begun. Why, I was right in the middle of telling about a concert for charity we got up just before I came away, and how Mother had practiced for days and days with the young man who played the violin, when all of a sudden Father jerked his watch from his pocket and said: "There, there, Mary, it's getting late. You've talked enough--too much. Now go to bed. Good-night." Talked too much, indeed! And who'd been making me do all the talking, I should like to know? But, of course, I couldn't _say_ anything. That's the unfair part of it. Old folks can say anything, _anything_ they want to to _you_, but you can't say a thing back to them--not a thing. And so I went to bed. And the next day all that Father said to me was, "Good-morning, Mary," and, "Good-night," just as he had ever since I came. And that's all he's said yesterday and to-day. But he's looked at me. He's looked at me a lot. I know, because at mealtimes and others, when he's been in the room with me, I've looked up and found his eyes on me. Funny, isn't it? * * * * * _Two weeks later_. Well, I don't know as I have anything very special to say. Still, I suppose I ought to write something; so I'll put down what little there is. Of course, there doesn't so much happen here, anyway, as there does at home--I mean in Boston. (I _must_ stop calling it home down to Boston as if this wasn't home at all. It makes Aunt Jane very, very angry, and I don't think Father likes it very well.) But, as I was saying, there really doesn't so much happen here as there does down to Boston; and it isn't nearly so interesting. But, there! I suppose I mustn't expect it to be interesting. I'm Mary now, not Marie. There aren't any teas and dinners and pretty ladies and music and soulful-eyed prospective suitors _here_. My! Wouldn't Aunt Jane have four fits? And Father, too. But I'd just like to put one of Mother's teas with the little cakes and flowers and talk and tinkling laughs down in Aunt Jane's parlor, and then watch what happened. Oh, of course, the party couldn't stand it long--not in there with the hair wreath and the coffin plate. But they could stand it long enough for Father to thunder from the library, "Jane, what in Heaven's name is the meaning of all this?" And for Aunt Jane to give one look at the kind of clothes _real_ folks wear, and then flee with her hands to her ears and her eyes upraised to the ceiling. Wouldn't it be fun? But, there! What's the use of imagining perfectly crazy, impossible things like that? We haven't had a thing here in that parlor since I came but one missionary meeting and one Ladies' Aid Sewing Circle; and after the last one (the Sewing Circle) Aunt Jane worked a whole day picking threads off the carpet, and smoothing down the linen covers because they'd got so mussed up. And I heard her tell the hired girl that she shouldn't have that Sewing Circle here again in a hurry, and when she did have them they'd have to sew in the dining-room with a sheet spread down to catch the threads. My! but I would like to see Aunt Jane with one of Mother's teas in her parlor! I can't see as Father has changed much of any these last two weeks. He still doesn't pay much of any attention to me, though I do find him looking at me sometimes, just as if he was trying to make up his mind about something. He doesn't say hardly anything to me, only once or twice when he got to asking questions again about Boston and Mother. The last time I told him all about Mr. Harlow, and he was so interested! I just happened to mention his name, and he wanted to know right away if it was Mr. Carl Harlow, and if I knew whether Mother had ever known him before. And of course I told him right away that it was--the same one she was engaged to before she was engaged to him. Father looked funny and kind of grunted and said, yes, yes, he knew. Then he said, "That will do, Mary." And he began to read his book again. But he never turned a page, and it wasn't five minutes before he got up and walked around the room, picking out books from the bookcases and putting them right back, and picking up things from the mantel and putting _them_ right back. Then he turned to me and asked with a kind of of-course-I-don't-care air: "Did you say you saw quite a little of--this Harlow fellow?" But he did care. I know he did. He was _real_ interested. I could see that he was. And so I told him everything, all about how he came there to the teas, and sent her flowers and candy, and was getting a divorce himself, and what he said on the sofa that day, and how Mother answered. As I said, I told him everything, only I was careful not to call Mr. Harlow a prospective suitor, of course. I remembered too well what Aunt Hattie had said. Father didn't say anything when I got through. He just got up and left the room, and pretty quick I saw him crossing the lawn to the observatory. I guess there aren't any prospective suitors here. I mean, I guess Father isn't a prospective suitor--anyhow, not yet. (Of course, it's the man that has to be the suitor.) He doesn't go anywhere, only over to the college and out to the observatory. I've watched so to see. I wanted specially to know, for of course if he was being a prospective suitor to any one, she'd be my new mother, maybe. And I'm going to be awfully particular about any new mother coming into the house. A whole lot more, even, depends on mothers than on fathers, you know; and if you're going to have one all ready-made thrust upon you, you are sort of anxious to know what kind she is. Some way, I don't think I'd like a new mother even as well as I'd like a new father; and I don't believe I'd like _him_ very well. Of course, there are quite a lot of ladies here that Father _could_ have. There are several pretty teachers in the schools, and some nice unmarried ladies in the church. And there's Miss Parmelia Snow. She's Professor Snow's sister. She wears glasses and is terribly learned. Maybe he _would_ like her. But, mercy! I shouldn't. Then there's Miss Grace Ann Sanborn. She's fat, and awfully jolly. She comes here a lot lately to see Aunt Jane. I don't know why. They don't belong to the same church, or anything. But she "runs over," as she calls it, almost every afternoon just a little before dinner--I mean supper. Mrs. Darling used to come then, too, when I first came; but she comes over evenings now more. Maybe it's because she doesn't like Miss Grace Ann. I don't think she _does_ like her, for every time she saw her, she'd say: "Oh, _you_? So you're here!" And then she'd turn and talk to Aunt Jane and simply ignore Miss Grace Ann. And pretty quick she'd get up and go. And now she comes evenings. She's fixing over her house, and she runs and asks Aunt Jane's advice about every little thing. She asks Father's, too, every chance she gets, when she sees him in the hall or on the front steps. I heard her tell Aunt Jane she considered Professor Anderson a man of most excellent taste and judgment. I suppose Mrs. Darling _could_ be my new mother. She's a widow. Her husband died last year. She is very well off now that her husband is dead, I heard Aunt Jane say one day. She meant well off in money--quite a lot of it, you know. I _thought_ she meant well off because he was dead and she didn't have to live with him any more, and I said so to Aunt Jane. (He was a cross man, and very stern, as everybody knew.) But, dear suz me! Aunt Jane was awfully shocked, and said certainly not; that she meant Mr. Darling had left his wife a great deal of money. Then she talked very stern and solemn to me, and said that I must not think just because my poor dear father's married life had ended in such a wretched tragedy that every other home had such a skeleton in the closet. _I_ grew stern and dignified and solemn then. I knew, of course, what she meant. I'm no child. She meant Mother. She meant that Mother, my dear blessed mother, was the skeleton in their closet. And of course I wasn't going to stand there and hear that, and not say a word. But I didn't say just a word. I said a good many words. I won't try to put them all down here; but I told her quietly, in a firm voice, and with no temper (showing), that I guessed Father was just as much of a skeleton in Mother's closet as she was in his; and that if she could see how perfectly happy my mother was now she'd understand a little of what my father's skeleton had done to her all those years she'd had to live with it. I said a lot more, but before I'd got half finished with what I wanted to say, I got to crying, so I just had to run out of the room. That night I heard Aunt Jane tell Mrs. Darling that the worst feature of the whole deplorable situation was the effect on the child's mind, and the wretched conception it gave her of the sacredness of the marriage tie, or something like that. And Mrs. Darling sighed, and said, oh, and ah, and the pity of it. I don't like Mrs. Darling. Of course, as I said before, Mrs. Darling could be my new mother, being a widow, so. But, mercy! I hope she won't. I'd rather have Miss Grace Ann than her, and I shouldn't be crazy about having Miss Grace Ann. Well, I guess there's nothing more to write. Things at school are just the same, only more so. The girls are getting so they act almost as bad as those down to Boston in the school where I went before I changed. Of course, maybe it's the divorce here, same as it was there. But I don't see how it can be that here. Why, they've known it from the very first! Oh, dear suz me! How I do wish I could see Mother to-night and have her take me in her arms and kiss me. I'm so tired of being Mary 'way off up here where nobody cares or wants me. Even Father doesn't want me, not really want me. I know he doesn't. I don't see why he keeps me, only I suppose he'd be ashamed not to take me his six months as long as the court gave me to him for that time. * * * * * _Another two weeks later_. I'm so angry I can hardly write, and at the same time I'm so angry I've just got to write. I can't talk. There isn't anybody to talk to; and I've got to tell somebody. So I'm going to tell it here. I've found out now what's the matter with the girls--you know I said there _was_ something the matter with them; that they acted queer and stopped talking when I came up, and faded away till there wasn't anybody but me left; and about the party Stella Mayhew had and didn't invite me. Well, it's been getting worse and worse. Other girls have had parties, and more and more often the girls have stopped talking and have looked queer when I came up. We got up a secret society and called it the "Tony Ten," and I was going to be its president. Then all of a sudden one day I found there wasn't any Tony Ten--only Carrie Heywood and me. The other eight had formed another society and Stella Mayhew was their president. I told Carrie we wouldn't care; that we'd just change it and call it the "Tony Two"; and that two was a lot more exclusive than ten, anyway. But I did care, and Carrie did. I knew she did. And I know it better now because last night--she told me. You see things have been getting simply unbearable these last few days, and it got so it looked as if I wasn't even going to have Carrie left. _She_ began to act queer and I accused her of it, and told her if she didn't want to belong to the Tony Two she needn't. That I didn't care; that I'd be a secret society all by myself. But I cried. I couldn't help crying; and she knew I did--care. Then she began to cry; and to-day, after school, we went to walk up on the hill to the big rock; and there--she told me. And it _was_ the divorce. And it's all that Stella Mayhew--the new girl. Her mother found out I was divorced (I mean Mother was) and she told Stella not to play with me, nor speak to me, nor have a thing to do with me. And I said to Carrie, all right! Who cared? _I_ didn't. That I never had liked that Mayhew girl, anyway. But Carrie said that wasn't all. She said Stella had got to be real popular before I came; that her folks had lots of money, and she always had candy and could treat to ice-cream and auto rides, and everybody with her was sure of a good time. She had parties, too--lots of them; and of course, all the girls and boys liked that. Well, when I came everything was all right till Stella's mother found out about the divorce, and then--well, then things were different. First Stella contented herself with making fun of me, Carrie said. She laughed at the serge dresses and big homely shoes, and then she began on my name, and said the idea of being called Mary by Father and Marie by Mother, and that 't was just like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (That's a story, Carrie says. I'm going to read it, if Father's got it. If there ever was another Mary and Marie all in one in the world I want to know what she did.) But Carrie says the poking fun at me didn't make much difference with the girls, so Stella tried something else. She not only wouldn't speak to me herself, or invite me, or anything, but she told all the girls that they couldn't go with her and me, too. That they might take their choice. And Carrie said some of them did choose and stayed with me; but they lost all the good times and ice-cream and parties and rides and everything; and so one by one they dropped me and went back to Stella, and now there wasn't anybody left, only her, Carrie. And then she began to cry. And when she stopped speaking, and I knew all, and saw her crying there before me, and thought of my dear blessed mother, I was so angry I could scarcely speak. I just shook with righteous indignation. And in my most superb, haughty, and disdainful manner I told Carrie Heywood to dry her tears; that she needn't trouble herself any further, nor worry about losing any more ice-cream nor parties. That I would hereto declare our friendship null and void, and this day set my hand and seal to never speak to her again, if she liked, and considered that necessary to keeping the acquaintance of the precious Stella. But she cried all the more at that, and flung herself upon me, and, of course, I began to cry, too--and you can't stay superb and haughty and disdainful when you're all the time trying to hunt up a handkerchief to wipe away the tears that are coursing down your wan cheeks. And of course I didn't. We had a real good cry together, and vowed we loved each other better than ever, and nobody could come between us, not even bringing a chocolate-fudge-marshmallow college ice--which we both adore. But I told her that she would be all right, just the same, for of course I should never step my foot inside of that schoolhouse again. That I couldn't, out of respect to Mother. That I should tell Aunt Jane that to-morrow morning. There isn't any other school here, so they can't send me anywhere else. But it's 'most time for school to close, anyway. There are only two weeks more. But I don't think that will make any difference to Aunt Jane. It's the principle of the thing. It's always the principle of the thing with Aunt Jane. She'll be very angry, I know. Maybe she'll send me home. Oh, I _hope_ she will! Well, I shall tell her to-morrow, anyway. Then--we'll see. * * * * * _One day later_. And, dear, dear, what a day it has been! I told her this morning. She was very angry. She said at first: "Nonsense, Mary, don't be impertinent. Of course you'll go to school!" and all that kind of talk. But I kept my temper. I did not act angry. I was simply firm and dignified. And when she saw I really meant what I said, and that I would not step my foot inside that schoolroom again--that it was a matter of conscience with me--that I did not think it was _right_ for me to do it, she simply stared for a minute, as if she couldn't believe her eyes and ears. Then she gasped: "Mary, what do you mean by such talk to me? Do you think I shall permit this sort of thing to go on for a moment?" I thought then she was going to send me home. Oh, I did so hope she was. But she didn't. She sent me to my room. "You will stay there until your father comes home this noon," she said. "This is a matter for him to settle." _Father_! And I never even thought of her going to _him_ with it. She was always telling me never to bother Father with anything, and I knew she didn't usually ask him anything about me. She settled everything herself. But _this_--and the very thing I didn't want her to ask him, too. But of course I couldn't help myself. That's the trouble. Youth is _so_ helpless in the clutches of old age! Well, I went to my room. Aunt Jane told me to meditate on my sins. But I didn't. I meditated on other people's sins. _I_ didn't have any to meditate on. Was it a sin, pray, for me to stand up for my mother and refuse to associate with people who wouldn't associate with _me_ on account of _her_? I guess not! I meditated on Stella Mayhew and her mother, and on those silly, faithless girls that thought more of an ice-cream soda than they did of justice and right to their fellow schoolmate. And I meditated on Aunt Jane and her never giving me so much as a single kiss since I came. And I meditated on how much better Father liked stars and comets than he did his own daughter; and I meditated on what a cruel, heartless world this is, anyway, and what a pity it was that I, so fair and young, should have found it out so soon--right on the bank, as it were, or where that brook and river meet. And I wondered, if I died if anybody would care; and I thought how beautiful and pathetic I would look in my coffin with my lily-white hands folded on my breast. And I _hoped_ they 'd have the funeral in the daytime, because if it was at night-time Father'd be sure to have a star or something to keep _him_ from coming. And I _wanted_ him to come. I _wanted_ him to feel bad; and I meditated on how bad he would feel--when it was too late. But even with all this to meditate on, it was an awfully long time coming noon; and they didn't call me down to dinner even then. Aunt Jane sent up two pieces of bread without any butter and a glass of water. How like Aunt Jane--making even my dinner a sin to meditate on! Only she would call it _my_ sin, and I would call it hers. Well, after dinner Father sent for me to come down to the library. So I knew then, of course, that Aunt Jane had told him. I didn't know but she would wait until night. Father usually spends his hour after dinner reading in the library and mustn't be disturbed. But evidently to-day Aunt Jane thought I was more consequence than his reading. Anyhow, she told him, and he sent for me. My, but I hated to go! Fathers and Aunt Janes are two different propositions. Fathers have more rights and privileges, of course. Everybody knows that. Well, I went into the library. Father stood with his back to the fireplace and his hands in his pockets. He was plainly angry at being disturbed. Anybody could see that. He began speaking at once, the minute I got into the room--very cold and dignified. "Mary, your aunt tells me you have been disobedient and disrespectful to her. Have you anything to say?" I shook my head and said, "No, sir." What could I say? Old folks ask such senseless questions, sometimes. Naturally I wasn't going to say I _had_ been disrespectful and disobedient when I hadn't; and of course, I couldn't say I _hadn't_ been when Aunt Jane said I _had_. That would be just like saying Aunt Jane lied. So, of course, I had nothing to say. And I said so. "But she declares you refused to go back to school, Mary," said Father then. "Yes, sir." "Then you did refuse?" "Yes, sir." "Well, you may go and tell her now, please, that you are sorry, and that you will go to school this afternoon. You may go now." And he turned to the table and picked up his book. I didn't go, of course. I just stood there twisting my handkerchief in my fingers; and, of course, right away he saw me. He had sat down then. "Mary, didn't you hear me?" he demanded. "Yes, sir, but--Father, I _can't_ go back to that school," I choked. And I began to cry. "But I tell you that you must." I shook my head. "I can't." "Do you mean that you defy me as you did your Aunt Jane this morning?--that you refuse to go back to school?" "Yes, sir." For a minute he sat and stared at me just as Aunt Jane had done; then he lifted his head and threw back his shoulders as if he was throwing off a heavy weight. "Come, come, Mary," he said sternly. "I am not a patient man, and my temper has reached the breaking point. You will go back to school and you will go now. I mean that, Mary." "But, Father, I _can't_" I choked again; and I guess there was something in my face this time that made even him see. For again he just stared for a minute, and then said: "Mary, what in the world does this mean? Why can't you go back? Have you been--expelled?" "Oh, no, sir." "Then you mean you won't go back." "I mean I _can't_--on account of Mother." I wouldn't have said it if I hadn't had to. I didn't want to tell him, but I knew from the very first that I'd have to tell him before I got through. I could see it in his face. And so, now, with his eyes blazing as he jumped almost out of his chair and exclaimed, "Your mother!" I let it out and got it over as soon as possible. "I mean, on account of Mother--that not for you, or Aunt Jane, or anybody will I go back to that school and associate with folks that won't associate with me--on account of Mother." And then I told it--all about the girls, Stella Mayhew, Carrie, and how they acted, and what they said about my being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because I was a Mary and a Marie, and the ice-cream, and the parties they had to give up if they went with _me_. And I know I was crying so I could hardly speak before I finished; and Father was on his feet tramping up and down the room muttering something under his breath, and looking--oh, I can't begin to tell how he looked. But it was awful. "And so that's why I wish," I finished chokingly, "that it would hurry up and be a year, so Mother could get married." "_Married!_" Like a flash he turned and stopped short, staring at me. "Why, yes," I explained; "for if she _did_ get married, she wouldn't be divorced any longer, would she?" But he wouldn't answer. With a queer little noise in his throat he turned again and began to walk up and down, up and down, until I thought for a minute he'd forgotten I was there. But he hadn't. For after a while he stopped again right in front of me. "So your mother is thinking of getting married," he said in a voice so queer it sounded as if it had come from away off somewhere. But I shook my head and said no, of course; and that I was very sure she wouldn't till her year was up, and even then I didn't know which she'd take, so I couldn't tell for sure anything about it. But I hoped she'd take one of them, so she wouldn't be divorced any longer. "But you don't know _which_ she'll take," grunted Father again. He turned then, and began to walk up and down again, with his hands in his pockets; and I didn't know whether to go away or to stay, and I suppose I'd have been there now if Aunt Jane hadn't suddenly appeared in the library doorway. "Charles, if Mary is going to school at all to-day it is high time she was starting," she said. But Father didn't seem to hear. He was still tramping up and down the room, his hands in his pockets. "Charles!" Aunt Jane raised her voice and spoke again. "I said if Mary is going to school at all to-day it is high time she was starting." "Eh? What?" If you'll believe it, that man looked as dazed as if he'd never even _heard_ of my going to school. Then suddenly his face changed. "Oh, yes, to be sure. Well, er--Mary is not going to school to-day," he said. Then he looked at his watch, and without another word strode into the hall, got his hat, and left the house, leaving Aunt Jane and me staring into each other's faces. But I didn't stay much longer than Father did. I strode into the hall, too, by Aunt Jane. But I didn't leave the house. I came up here to my own room; and ever since I've been writing it all down in my book. Of course, I don't know now what's going to happen next. But I _wish_ you could have seen Aunt Jane's face when Father said I wasn't going to school to-day! I don't believe she's sure yet that she heard aright--though she didn't try to stop me, or even speak when I left and came upstairs. But I just know she's keeping up a powerful thinking. For that matter, so am I. What _is_ going to happen next? Have I got to go to school to-morrow? But then, of course, I shan't do that. Besides, I don't believe Father'll ask me to, after what I said about Mother. _He_ didn't like that--what those girls said--any better than I did. I'm sure of that. Why, he looked simply furious. But there isn't any other school here that I can be sent to, and-- But what's the use? I might surmise and speculate all day and not come anywhere near the truth. I must await--what the night will bring forth, as they say in really truly novels. * * * * * _Four days later_. And what did the night bring forth? Yes, what did it bring! Verily it brought forth one thing I thought nothing ever could have brought forth. It was like this. That night at the supper-table Aunt Jane cleared her throat in the I-am-determined-I-will-speak kind of a way that she always uses when she speaks to Father. (Aunt. Jane doesn't talk to Father much more than Mother used to.) "Charles," she began. Father had an astronomy paper beside his plate, and he was so busy reading he didn't hear, so Aunt Jane had to speak again--a little louder this time. "Charles, I have something to say to you." "Eh? What? Oh--er--yes. Well, Jane, what is it?" Father was looking up with his I'll-be-patient-if-it-kills-me air, and with his forefinger down on his paper to keep his place. As if anybody could talk to a person who's simply tolerating you for a minute like that, with his forefinger holding on to what he _wants_ to tend to! Why, I actually found myself being sorry for Aunt Jane. She cleared her throat again. "It is understood, of course, that Mary is to go to school to-morrow morning, I suppose," she said. "Why, of course, of course," began Father impatiently, looking down at his paper. "Of course she'll go to--" he stopped suddenly. A complete change came to his face. He grew red, then white. His eyes sort of flashed. "School?" he said then, in a hard, decided voice. "Oh, no; Mary is not going to school to-morrow morning." He looked down to his paper and began to read again. For him the subject was very evidently closed. But for Aunt Jane it was _not_ closed. "You don't mean, Charles, that she is not to go to school at all, any more," she gasped. "Exactly." Father read on in his paper without looking up. "But, Charles, to stop her school like this!" "Why not? It closes in a week or two, anyway." Aunt Jane's lips came together hard. "That's not the question at all," she said, cold like ice. "Charles, I'm amazed at you--yielding to that child's whims like this--that she doesn't want to go to school! It's the principle of the thing that I'm objecting to. Do you realize what it will lead to--what it--" "Jane!" With a jerk Father sat up straight. "I realize some things that perhaps you do not. But that is neither here nor there. I do not wish Mary to go to school any more this spring. That is all; and I think--it is sufficient." "Certainly." Aunt Jane's lips came together again grim and hard. "Perhaps you will be good enough to say what she _shall_ do with her time." "Time? Do? Why--er--what she always does; read, sew, study--" "Study?" Aunt Jane asked the question with a hateful little smile that Father would have been blind not to have understood. And he was equal to it--but I 'most fell over backward when I found _how_ equal to it he was. "Certainly," he says, "study. I--I'll hear her lessons myself--in the library, after I come home in the afternoon. Now let us hear no more about it." With that he pushed back his plate, stuffed his astronomy paper into his pocket, and left the table, without waiting for dessert. And Aunt Jane and I were left alone. I didn't say anything. Victors shouldn't boast--and I was a victor, of course, about the school. But when I thought of what Father had said about my reciting my lessons to him every day in the library--I wasn't so sure whether I'd won out or not. Recite lessons to my father? Why, I couldn't even imagine such a thing! Aunt Jane didn't say anything either. I guess she didn't know what to say. And it was kind of a queer situation, when you came right down to it. Both of us sitting there and knowing I wasn't going back to school any more, and I knowing why, and knowing Aunt Jane didn't know why. (Of course I hadn't told Aunt Jane about Mother and Mrs. Mayhew.) It would be a funny world, wouldn't it, if we all knew what each other was thinking all the time? Why, we'd get so we wouldn't do anything _but_ think--for there wouldn't any of us _speak_ to each other, I'm afraid, we'd be so angry at what the other was thinking. Well, Aunt Jane and I didn't speak that night at the supper-table. We finished in stern silence; then Aunt Jane went upstairs to her room and I went up to mine. (You see what a perfectly wildly exciting life Mary is living! And when I think of how _full_ of good times Mother wanted every minute to be. But that was for Marie, of course.) The next morning after breakfast Aunt Jane said: "You will spend your forenoon studying, Mary. See that you learn well your lessons, so as not to annoy your father." "Yes, Aunt Jane," said Mary, polite and proper, and went upstairs obediently; but even Mary didn't know exactly how to study those lessons. Carrie had brought me all my books from school. I had asked her to when I knew that I was not going back. There were the lessons that had been assigned for the next day, of course, and I supposed probably Father would want me to study those. But I couldn't imagine Father teaching _me_ all alone. And how was I ever going to ask him questions, if there were things I didn't understand? Besides, I couldn't imagine myself reciting lessons to Father--_Father_! But I needn't have worried. If I could only have known. Little did I think--But, there, this is no way to tell a story. I read in a book, "How to Write a Novel," that you mustn't "anticipate." (_I_ thought folks always anticipated novels. I do. I thought you wanted them to.) Well, to go on. Father got home at four o'clock. I saw him come up the walk, and I waited till I was sure he'd got settled in the library, then I went down. _He wasn't there_. A minute later I saw him crossing the lawn to the observatory. Well, what to do I didn't know. Mary said to go after him; but Marie said nay, nay. And in spite of being Mary just now, I let Marie have her way. Rush after him and tell him he'd forgotten to hear my lessons? _Father_? Well, I guess not! Besides, it wasn't my fault. _I_ was there all ready. It wasn't my blame that he wasn't there to hear me. But he might remember and come back. Well, if he did, _I'd_ be there. So I went to one of those bookcases and pulled out a touch-me-not book from behind the glass door. Then I sat down and read till the supper-bell rang. Father was five minutes late to supper. I don't know whether he looked at me or not. I didn't dare to look at him--until Aunt Jane said, in her chilliest manner: "I trust your daughter had good lessons, Charles." I _had_ to look at him then. I just couldn't look anywhere else. So I was looking straight at him when he gave that funny little startled glance into my eyes. And into his eyes then there crept the funniest, dearest little understanding twinkle--and I suddenly realized that Father, _Father_, was laughing with me at a little secret between _us_. But 't was only for a second. The next moment his eyes were very grave and looking at Aunt Jane. "I have no cause to complain--of my daughter's lessons to-day," he said very quietly. Then he glanced over at me again. But I had to look away _quick_, or I would have laughed right out. When he got up from the table he said to me: "I shall expect to see you to-morrow in the library at four, Mary." And Mary answered, "Yes, Father," polite and proper, as she should; but Marie inside was just chuckling with the joke of it all. The next day I watched again at four for Father to come up the walk; and when he had come in I went down to the library. He was there in his pet seat before the fireplace. (Father always sits before the fireplace, whether there's a fire there or not. And sometimes he looks _so_ funny sitting there, staring into those gray ashes just as if it was the liveliest kind of a fire he was watching.) As I said, he was there, but I had to speak twice before he looked up. Then, for a minute, he stared vaguely. "Eh? Oh! Ah--er--yes, to be sure," he muttered then, "You have come with your books. Yes, I remember." But there wasn't any twinkle in his eyes, nor the least little bit of an understanding smile; and I _was_ disappointed. I _had_ been looking for it. I knew then, when I felt so suddenly lost and heart-achey, that I had been expecting and planning all day on that twinkly understanding smile. You know you feel worse when you've just found a father and then lost him! And I had lost him. I knew it the minute he sighed and frowned and got up from his seat and said, oh, yes, to be sure. He was just Dr. Anderson then--the man who knew all about the stars, and who had been unmarried to Mother, and who called me "Mary" in an of-course-you're-my-daughter tone of voice. Well, he took my books and heard my lessons, and told me what I was to study next day. He's done that two days now. Oh, I'm so tired of being Mary! And I've got more than four whole months of it left. I didn't get Mother's letter to-day. Maybe that's why I'm specially lonesome to-night. * * * * * _July first_. School is done, both the regular school and my school. Not that my school has amounted to much. Really it hasn't. Oh, for three or four days he asked questions quite like just a teacher. Then he got to talking. Sometimes it would be about something in the lessons; sometimes it would be about a star, or the moon. And he'd get so interested that I'd think for a minute that maybe the understanding twinkle would come into his eyes again. But it never did. Sometimes it wasn't stars and moons, though, that he talked about. It was Boston, and Mother. Yes, he did. He talked a lot about Mother. As I look back at it now, I can see that he did. He asked me all over again what she did, and about the parties and the folks that came to see her. He asked again about Mr. Harlow, and about the concert, and the young man who played the violin, and what was his name, and how old was he, and did I like him. And then, right in the middle of some question, or rather, right in the middle of some _answer_ I was giving _him_, he would suddenly remember he was hearing my lessons, and he would say, "Come, come, Mary, what has this to do with your lessons?" Just as if I was to blame! (But, then, we women always get the blame, I notice.) And then he'd attend strictly to the books for maybe five whole minutes--before he asked another question about that party, or the violinist. Naturally the lessons haven't amounted to much, as you can imagine. But the term was nearly finished, anyway; and my _real_ school is in Boston, of course. It's vacation now. I do hope _that_ will amount to something! * * * * * _August first._ It hasn't, so far--I mean vacation. Really, what a world of disappointment this is! How on earth I'm going to stand being Mary for three months more I don't know. But I've got to, I suppose. I've been here May, June, and July; and that leaves August, September, and October yet to come. And when I think of Mother and Boston and Marie, and the darling good times down there where you're really _wanted_, I am simply crazy. If Father wanted me, really wanted me, I wouldn't care a bit. I'd be willing to be Mary six whole months. Yes, I'd be _glad_ to. But he doesn't. I'm just here by order of the court. And what can you do when you're nothing but a daughter by order of the court? Since the lessons have stopped, Father's gone back to his "Good-morning, Mary," and "Good-night," and nothing else, day in and day out. Lately he's got so he hangs around the house an awful lot, too, so I can't even do the things I did the first of the month. I mean that I'd been playing some on the piano, along at the first, after school closed. Aunt Jane was out in the garden a lot, and Father out to the observatory, so I just reveled in piano-playing till I found almost every time I did it that he had come back, and was in the library with the door open. So I don't dare to play now. And there isn't a blessed thing to do. Oh, I have to sew an hour, and now I have to weed an hour, too; and Aunt Jane tried to have me learn to cook; but Susie (in the kitchen) flatly refused to have me "messing around," so Aunt Jane had to give that up. Susie's the one person Aunt Jane's afraid of, you see. She always threatens to leave if anything goes across her wishes. So Aunt Jane has to be careful. I heard her tell Mrs. Small next door that good hired girls were awfully scarce in Andersonville. As I said before, if only there was somebody here that wanted me. But there isn't. Of course Father doesn't. That goes without saying. And Aunt Jane doesn't. That goes, too, without saying. Carrie Heywood has gone away for all summer, so I can't have even her; and of course, I wouldn't associate with any of the other girls, even if they would associate with me--which they won't. That leaves only Mother's letters. They are dear, and I love them. I don't know what I'd do without them. And yet, sometimes I think maybe they're worse than if I didn't have them. They make me so homesick, and I always cry so after I get them. Still, I know I just couldn't live a minute if 'twasn't for Mother's letters. Besides being so lonesome there's another thing that worries me, too; and that is, _this_--what I'm writing, I mean. The novel. It's getting awfully stupid. Nothing happens. _Nothing!_ Of course, if 'twas just a story I could make up things--lots of them--exciting, interesting things, like having Mother elope with the violinist, and Father shoot him and fall in love with Mother all over again, or else with somebody else, and shoot that one's lover. Or maybe somebody'd try to shoot Father, and I'd get there just in time to save him. Oh, I'd _love_ that! But this is a real story, so, of course, I can't put in anything only just what happens; and _nothing happens_. And that's another thing. About the love story--I'm afraid there isn't going to be one. Anyway, there isn't a bit of a sign of one, yet, unless it's Mother. And of course, I haven't seen her for three months, so I can't say anything about that. Father hasn't got one. I'm sure of that. He doesn't like ladies. I know he doesn't. He always runs away from them. But they don't run away from him! Listen. As I said before, quite a lot of them call here to see Aunt Jane, and they come lots of times evenings and late afternoons, and I know now why they do it. They come then because they think Father'll be at home at that time; and they want to see him. I know it now, but I never thought of it till the other day when I heard our hired girl, Susie, talking about it with Bridget, the Smalls' hired girl, over the fence when I was weeding the garden one day. Then I knew. It was like this: Mrs. Darling had been over the night before as usual, and had stayed an awfully long time talking to Aunt Jane on the front piazza. Father had been there, too, awhile. She stopped him on his way into the house. I was there and I heard her. She said: "Oh, Mr. Anderson, I'm so glad I saw you! I wanted to ask your advice about selling poor dear Mr. Darling's law library." And then she went on to tell him how she'd had an offer, but she wasn't sure whether it was a good one or not. And she told him how highly she prized his opinion, and he was a man of such splendid judgment, and she felt so alone now with no strong man's shoulder to lean upon, and she would be so much obliged if he only would tell her whether he considered that offer a good one or not. Father hitched and ahemmed and moved nearer the door all the time she was talking, and he didn't seem to hear her when she pushed a chair toward him and asked him to please sit down and tell her what to do; that she was so alone in the world since poor dear Mr. Darling had gone. (She always calls him poor dear Mr. Darling now, but Susie says she didn't when he was alive; she called him something quite different. I wonder what it was.) Well, as I said, Father hitched and fidgeted, and said he didn't know, he was sure; that she'd better take wiser counsel than his, and that he was very sorry, but she really must excuse him. And he got through the door while he was talking just as fast as he could himself, so that she couldn't get in a single word to keep him. Then he was gone. Mrs. Darling stayed on the piazza two whole hours longer, but Father never came out at all again. It was the next morning that Susie said this over the back-yard fence to Bridget: "It does beat all how popular this house is with the ladies--after college hours!" And Bridget chuckled and answered back: "Sure it is! An' I do be thinkin' the Widder Darlin' is a heap fonder of Miss Jane now than she would have been had poor dear Mr. Darlin' lived!" And she chuckled again, and so did Susie. And then, all of a sudden, I knew. It was Father all those ladies wanted. It was Father Mrs. Darling wanted. They came here to see him. They wanted to marry him. _They_ were the prospective suitors. As if I didn't know what Susie and Bridget meant! I'm no child! But all this doesn't make Father like _them_. I'm not sure but it makes him dislike them. Anyhow, he won't have anything to do with them. He always runs away over to the observatory, or somewhere, and won't see them; and I've heard him say things about them to Aunt Jane, too--words that sound all right, but that don't mean what they say, and everybody knows they don't. So, as I said before, I don't see any chance of Father's having a love story to help out this book--not right away, anyhow. As for _my_ love story--I don't see any chance of that's beginning, either. Yet, seems as if there ought to be the beginning of it by this time--I'm going on fifteen. Oh, there have been _beginnings_, lots of them--only Aunt Jane wouldn't let them go on and be endings, though I told her good and plain that I thought it perfectly all right; and I reminded her about the brook and river meeting where I stood, and all that. But I couldn't make her see it at all. She said, "Stuff and nonsense"--and when Aunt Jane says _both_ stuff and nonsense I know there's nothing _doing_. (Oh, dear, that's slang! Aunt Jane says she does wish I would eliminate the slang from my vocabulary. Well, I wish _she'd_ eliminate some of the long words from _hers_. Marie said that--not Mary.) Well, Aunt Jane said stuff and nonsense, and that I was much too young to run around with silly boys. You see, Charlie Smith had walked home from school with me twice, but I had to stop that. And Fred Small was getting so he was over here a lot. Aunt Jane stopped _him_. Paul Mayhew--yes, _Paul Mayhew_, Stella's brother!--came home with me, too, and asked me to go with him auto-riding. My, how I did want to go! I wanted the ride, of course, but especially I wanted to go because he was Mrs. Mayhew's son. I just wanted to show Mrs. Mayhew! But Aunt Jane wouldn't let me. That's the time she talked specially about running around with silly boys. But she needn't have. Paul is no silly boy. He's old enough to get a license to drive his own car. But it wasn't just because he was young that Aunt Jane refused. I found out afterward. It was because he was any kind of a man paying me attention. I found that out through Mr. Claude Livingstone. Mr. Livingstone brings our groceries. He's a _real_ young gentleman--tall, black mustache, and lovely dark eyes. He goes to our church, and he asked me to go to the Sunday-School picnic with him. I was _so_ pleased. And I supposed, of course, Aunt Jane would let me go with _him. He's_ no silly boy! Besides, I knew him real well, and liked him. I used to talk to him quite a lot when he brought the groceries. But did Aunt Jane let me go? She did not. Why, she seemed almost more shocked than she had been over Charlie Smith and Fred Small, and the others. "Mercy, child!" she exclaimed. "Where in the world do you pick up these people?" And she brought out that "these people" _so_ disagreeably! Why, you'd think Mr. Livingstone was a foreign Japanese, or something. I told her then quietly, and with dignity, and with no temper (showing), that Mr. Livingstone was not a foreign Japanese, but was a very nice gentleman; and that I had not picked him up. He came to her own door himself, almost every day. "My own door!" exclaimed Aunt Jane. And she looked absolutely frightened. "You mean to tell me that that creature has been coming here to see you, and I not know it?" I told her then--again quietly and with dignity, and without temper (showing)--that he had been coming, not to see me, but in the natural pursuance of his profession of delivering groceries. And I said that he was not a creature. On the contrary, he was, I was sure, an estimable young man. He went to her own church and Sunday-School. Besides, I could vouch for him myself, as I knew him well, having seen and talked with him almost every day for a long while, when he came to the house. But nothing I could say seemed to have the least effect upon her at all, only to make her angrier and angrier, if anything. In fact _I_ think she showed a great deal of temper for a Christian woman about a fellow Christian in her own church. But she wouldn't let me go to the picnic; and not only that, but I think she changed grocers, for Mr. Livingstone hasn't been here for a long time, and when I asked Susie where he was she looked funny, and said we weren't getting our groceries where Mr. Livingstone worked any longer. Well, of course, that ended that. And there hasn't been any other since. That's why I say _my_ love story doesn't seem to be getting along very well. Naturally, when it gets noised around town that your Aunt Jane won't let you go anywhere with a young man, or let a young man come to see you, or even walk home with you after the first time--why, the young men aren't going to do very much toward making your daily life into a love story. * * * * * _Two weeks later._ A queer thing happened last night. It was like this: I think I said before what an awfully stupid time Mary is having of it, and how I couldn't play now, or make any noise, 'cause Father has taken to hanging around the house so much. Well, listen what happened. Yesterday Aunt Jane went to spend the day with her best friend. She said for me not to leave the house, as some member of the family should be there. She told me to sew an hour, weed an hour, dust the house downstairs and upstairs, and read some improving book an hour. The rest of the time I might amuse myself. Amuse myself! A jolly time I could have all by myself! Even Father wasn't to be home for dinner, so I wouldn't have _that_ excitement. He was out of town, and was not to come home till six o'clock. It was an awfully hot day. The sun just beat down, and there wasn't a breath of air. By noon I was simply crazy with my stuffy, long-sleeved, high-necked blue gingham dress and my great clumpy shoes. It seemed all of a sudden as if I couldn't stand it--not another minute--not a single minute more--to be Mary, I mean. And suddenly I determined that for a while, just a little while, I'd be Marie again. Why couldn't I? There wasn't anybody going to be there but just myself, _all day long_. I ran then upstairs to the guest-room closet where Aunt Jane had made me put all my Marie dresses and things when the Mary ones came. Well, I got out the very fluffiest, softest white dress there was there, and the little white slippers and the silk stockings that I loved, and the blue silk sash, and the little gold locket and chain that Mother gave me that Aunt Jane wouldn't let me wear. And I dressed up. My, didn't I dress up? And I just _threw_ those old heavy shoes and black cotton stockings into the corner, and the blue gingham dress after them (though Mary went right away and picked the dress up, and hung it in the closet, of course); but I had the fun of throwing it, anyway. Oh, how good those Marie things did feel to Mary's hot, tired flesh and bones, and how I did dance and sing around the room in those light little slippers! Then Susie rang the dinner-bell and I went down to the dining-room feeling like a really truly young lady, I can tell you. Susie stared, of course and said, "My, how fine we are to-day!" But I didn't mind Susie. After dinner I went out into the hall and I sang; I sang all over the house. And I ran upstairs and I ran down; and I jumped all the last three steps, even if it was so warm. Then I went into the parlor and played every lively thing that I could think of on the piano. And I sang there, too--silly little songs that Marie used to sing to Lester. And I tried to think I was really down there to Boston, singing to Lester; and that Mother was right in the next room waiting for me. Then I stopped and turned around on the piano-stool. And there was the coffin plate, and the wax cross, and the hair wreath; and the room was just as still as death. And I knew I wasn't in Boston. I was there in Andersonville, And there wasn't any Baby Lester there, nor any mother waiting for me in the next room. And all the fluffy white dresses and silk stockings in the world wouldn't make me Marie. I was really just Mary, and I had got to have three whole months more of it. And then is when I began to cry. And I cried just as hard as I'd been singing a minute before. I was on the floor with my head in my arms on the piano-stool when Father's voice came to me from the doorway. "Mary, Mary, what in the world does this mean?" I jumped up and stood "at attention," the way you have to, of course, when fathers speak to you. I couldn't help showing I had been crying--he had seen it. But I tried very hard to stop now. My first thought, after my startled realization that he was there, was to wonder how long he had been there--how much of all that awful singing and banging he had heard. "Yes, sir." I tried not to have my voice shake as I said it; but I couldn't quite help that. "What is the meaning of this, Mary? Why are you crying?" I shook my head. I didn't want to tell him, of course; so I just stammered out something about being sorry I had disturbed him. Then I edged toward the door to show him that if he would step one side I would go away at once and not bother him any longer. But he didn't step one side. He asked more questions, one right after another. "Are you sick, Mary?" I shook my head. "Did you hurt yourself?" I shook my head again. "It isn't--your mother--you haven't had bad news from her?" And then I blurted it out without thinking--without thinking at all what I was saying: "No, no--but I wish I had, I wish I had; 'cause then I could go to her, and go away from here!" The minute I'd said it I _knew_ what I'd said, and how awful it sounded; and I clapped my fingers to my lips. But 'twas too late. It's always too late, when you've once said it. So I just waited for him to thunder out his anger; for, of course, I thought he _would_ thunder in rage and righteous indignation. But he didn't. Instead, very quietly and gently he said: "Are you so unhappy, then, Mary--here?" And I looked at him, and his eyes and his mouth and his whole face weren't angry at all. They were just sorry, actually sorry. And somehow, before I knew it, I was crying again, and Father, with his arm around me--_with his arm around me!_ think of that!--was leading me to the sofa. And I cried and cried there, with my head on the arm of the sofa, till I'd made a big tear spot on the linen cover; and I wondered if it would dry up before Aunt Jane saw it, or if it would change color or leak through to the red plush underneath, or some other dreadful thing. And then, some way, I found myself telling it all over to Father--about Mary and Marie, I mean, just as if he was Mother, or some one I loved--I mean, some one I loved and _wasn't afraid of_; for of course I love Father. Of course I do! Well, I told him everything (when I got started there was no stopping)--all about how hard it was to be Mary, and how to-day I had tried to be Marie for just a little while, to rest me. He interrupted here, and wanted to know if that was why I looked so different to-day--more as I had when I first came; and I said yes, that these were Marie things that Mary couldn't wear. And when he asked, "Why, pray?" in a voice almost cross, I told him, of course, that Aunt Jane wouldn't let me; that Mary had to wear brown serge and calfskin boots that were durable, and that would wear well. And when I told him how sorry I was about the music and such a noise as I'd been making, he asked if _that_ was Marie's fault, too; and I said yes, of course--that Aunt Jane didn't like to have Mary play at all, except hymns and funeral marches, and Mary didn't know any. And he grunted a queer little grunt, and said, "Well, well, upon my soul, upon my soul!" Then he said, "Go on." And I did go on. I told him how I was afraid it _was_ going to be just like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (I forgot to say I've read it now. I found it in Father's library.) Of course not _just_ like it, only one of me was going to be bad, and one good, I was afraid, if I didn't look out. I told him how Marie always wanted to kick up rugs, and move the chairs out of their sockets in the carpet, and leave books around handy, and such things. And so to-day it seemed as if I'd just got to have a vacation from Mary's hot gingham dresses and clumpy shoes. And I told him how lonesome I was without anybody, not _anybody_; and I told about Charlie Smith and Paul Mayhew and Mr. Claude Livingstone, and how Aunt Jane wouldn't let me have them, either, even if I was standing where the brook and river meet. Father gave another funny little grunt here, and got up suddenly and walked over to the window. I thought at first he was angry; but he wasn't. He was even more gentle when he came back and sat down again, and he seemed interested, very much interested in everything I told him. But I stopped just in time from saying again how I wished I could go back to Boston; but I'm not sure but he knew I was going to say it. But he was very nice and kind and told me not to worry about the music--that he didn't mind it at all. He'd been in several times and heard it. And I thought almost, by the way he spoke, that he'd come in on purpose to hear it; but I guess that was a mistake. He just put it that way so I wouldn't worry over it--about its bothering him, I mean. He was going to say more, maybe; but I don't know, I had to run. I heard Aunt Jane's voice on the piazza saying good-bye to the lady that had brought her home; so, of course, I had to run and hang Marie in the closet and get out Mary from the corner before she saw me. And I did. By dinner-time I had on the gingham dress and the hot clumpy shoes again; and I had washed my face in cold water so I had got most of the tear spots off. I didn't want Aunt Jane to see them and ask questions, of course. And I guess she didn't. Anyway, she didn't say anything. Father didn't say anything either, but he acted queer. Aunt Jane tried to tell him something about the missionary meeting and the heathen, and a great famine that was raging. At first he didn't say anything; then he said, oh, yes, to be sure, how very interesting, and he was glad, very glad. And Aunt Jane was so disgusted, and accused him of being even more absent-minded than usual, which was entirely unnecessary, she said. But even that didn't move Father a mite. He just said, yes, yes, very likely; and went on scowling to himself and stirring his coffee after he'd drank it all up--I mean, stirring where it had been in the cup. I didn't know but after supper he'd speak to me and ask me to come to the library. I _hoped_ he would. There were lots more things I'd like to have said to him. But he didn't. He never said a word. He just kept scowling, and got up from the table and went off by himself. But he didn't go out to the observatory, as he most generally does. He went into the library and shut the door. He was there when the telephone message came at eight o'clock. And what do you think? He'd _forgotten_ he was going to speak before the College Astronomy Club that evening! Forgotten his old stars for once. I don't know why. I did think, for a minute, 'twas 'cause of me--what I'd told him. But I knew, of course, right away that it couldn't be that. He'd never forget his stars for _me_! Probably he was just reading up about some other stars, or had forgotten how late it was, or something. (Father's always forgetting things.) But, anyway, when Aunt Jane called him he got his hat and hurried off without so much as one word to me, who was standing near, or to Aunt Jane, who was following him all through the hall, and telling him in her most I'm-amazed-at-you voice how shockingly absent-minded he was getting to be. * * * * * _One week later._ Father's been awfully queer this whole week through. I can't make him out at all. Sometimes I think he's glad I told him all those things in the parlor that day I dressed up in Marie's things, and sometimes I think he's sorry and wished I hadn't. The very next morning he came down to breakfast with such a funny look on his face. He said good-morning to me three times, and all through breakfast he kept looking over at me with a kind of scowl that was not cross at all--just puzzled. After breakfast he didn't go out to the observatory, not even into the library. He fidgeted around the dining-room till Aunt Jane went out into the kitchen to give her orders to Susie; then he burst out, all of a sudden: "Well, Mary, what shall we do to-day?" Just like that he said it, as if we'd been doing things together every day of our lives. "D-do?" I asked; and I know I showed how surprised I was by the way I stammered and flushed up. "Certainly, do," he answered, impatient and scowling. "What shall we do?" "Why, Father, I--I don't know," I stammered again. "Come, come, of course you know!" he cried. "You know what you want to do, don't you?" I shook my head. I was so astonished I couldn't even think. And when you can't think you certainly can't talk. "Nonsense, Mary," scowled Father again. "Of course you know what you want to do! What are you in the habit of doing with your young friends--your Carries and Charlies, and all the rest?" I guess I just stood and stared and didn't say anything; for after a minute he cried: "Well--well--well? I'm waiting." "Why, we--we walk--and talk--and play games," I began; but right away he interrupted. "Good! Very well, then, we'll walk. I'm not Carrie or Charlie, but I believe I can walk and talk--perhaps even play games. Who knows? Come, get your hat." And I got my hat, and we went. But what a funny, funny walk that was! He meant to make it a good one; I know he did. And he tried. He tried real hard. But he walked so fast I couldn't half keep up with him; then, when he saw how I was hurrying, he'd slow down, 'way down, and look so worried--till he'd forget and go striding off again, way ahead of me. We went up on the hill through the Benton woods, and it was perfectly lovely up there. He didn't say much at first. Then, all of a sudden, he began to talk, about anything and everything. And I knew, by the way he did it, that he'd just happened to think he'd got to talk. And how he talked! He asked me was I warmly clad (and here it is August!), and did I have a good breakfast, and how old was I, and did I enjoy my studies--which shows how little he was really thinking what he was saying. He knows school closed ages ago. Wasn't he teaching me himself the last of it, too? All around us were flowers and birds, and oh, so many, many lovely things. But he never said a word about them. He just talked--because he'd got to talk. I knew it, and it made me laugh inside, though all the while it made me sort of want to cry, too. Funny, wasn't it? After a time he didn't talk any more, but just walked on and on; and by and by we came home. Of course, it wasn't awfully jolly--that walk wasn't; and I guess Father didn't think it was either. Anyhow, he hasn't asked me to go again this week, and he looked tired and worried and sort of discouraged when he got back from that one. But he's asked me to do other things. The next day after the walk he asked me to play to him. Yes, he _asked_ me to; and he went into the parlor and sat down on one of the chairs and listened while I played three pieces. Of course, I didn't play loud ones, nor very fast ones, and I was so scared I'm afraid I didn't play them very well. But he was very polite and said, "Thank you, Mary," and, "That that was very nice"; then he stood up and said, "Thank you" again and went away into the library, very polite, but stiff, like company. The next evening he took me out to the observatory to see the stars. That was lovely. Honestly I had a perfectly beautiful time, and I think Father did, too. He wasn't stiff and polite one bit. Oh, I don't mean that he was _impolite_ or rude. It's just that he wasn't stiff as if I was company. And he was so happy with his stars and his telescope, and so glad to show them to me--oh, I had a beautiful time, and I told him so; and he looked real pleased. But Aunt Jane came for me before I'd had half enough, and I had to go to bed. The next morning I thought he'd be different, somehow, because we'd had such a lovely time together the night before. But he wasn't. He just said, "Good-morning, Mary," and began to read his paper. And he read his paper all through breakfast without saying another word to me. Then he got up and went into the library, and I never saw him again all day except at dinner-time and supper-time, and _then_ he didn't talk to me. But after supper he took me out again to see the stars, and he was just as nice and friendly as could be. Not a bit like a man that's only a father by order of the court. But the next day--! Well--and that's the way it's been all the week. And that's why I say he's been so queer. One minute he'll be just as nice and folksy as you could ask anybody to be, and the very next he's looking right through you as if he didn't see you at all, and you wonder and wonder what's the matter, and if you've done anything to displease him. Sometimes he seems almost glad and happy, and then he'll look so sorry and sad! I just can't understand my father at all. * * * * * _Another week later_. I'm so excited I don't know what to do. The most wonderful thing has happened. I can't hardly believe it yet myself. Yet it's so. My trunk is all packed, and I'm to go home to-morrow. _To-morrow!_ This is the way it happened. Mother wrote Aunt Jane and asked if I might not be allowed to come home for the opening of school in September. She said she understood quite well that she had no _right_ to ask this, and, of course, if they saw fit, they were entirely within their rights to refuse to allow me to go until the allotted time. But that she could not help asking it for my sake, on account of the benefit to be derived from being there at the opening of the school year. Of course, I didn't know Mother was going to write this. But she knew all about the school here, and how I came out, and everything. I've always told Mother everything that has happened. Oh, of course, I haven't written "every few minutes," as she asked me to. (That was a joke, anyway, of course.) But I have written every few days, and, as I said before, I told her everything. Well, when the letter came I took it to Aunt Jane myself; and I was _crazy_ to know what was in it, for I recognized the writing, of course. But Aunt Jane didn't tell me. She opened it, read it, kind of flushed up, and said, "Humph! The idea!" under her breath, and put the letter in her pocket. Marie wanted to make a scene and insist on knowing what was in her own mother's letter; but Mary contented herself with looking superb and haughty and disdainful, and marching out of the room without giving Aunt Jane the satisfaction of even being asked what was in that letter. But at the table that noon Aunt Jane read it to Father out loud. So that's how I came to know just what was in it. She started first to hand it over to him to read; but as he put out his hand to take it I guess he saw the handwriting, for he drew back quickly, looking red and queer. "From Mrs. Anderson to you?" he asked. And when Aunt Jane nodded her head he sat still farther back in his chair and said, with a little wave of his hand, "I never care to read--other people's letters." Aunt Jane said, "Stuff and nonsense, Charles, don't be silly!" But she pulled back the letter and read it--after giving a kind of an uneasy glance in my direction. Father never looked up once while she was reading it. He kept his eyes on his plate and the baked beans he was eating. I watched him. You see, I knew, by Aunt Jane's reading the letter to him, that it was something he had got to decide; and when I found out what it was, of course, I was just crazy. I wanted to go so. So I watched Father's face to see if he was going to let me go. But I couldn't make out. I couldn't make out at all. It changed--oh, yes, it changed a great deal as she read; but I couldn't make out what kind of a change it was at all. Aunt Jane finished the letter and began to fold it up. I could see she was waiting for Father to speak; but he never said a word. He kept right on--eating beans. Then Aunt Jane cleared her throat and spoke. "You will not let her go, of course, Charles; but naturally I had to read the letter to you. I will write to Mrs. Anderson to-night." Father looked up then. "Yes," he said quietly; "and you may tell her, please, that Mary _will_ go." "Charles!" Aunt Jane said that. But I--I almost ran around the table and hugged him. (Oh, how I wish he was the kind of a father you could do that to!) "Charles!" said Aunt Jane again. "Surely you aren't going to give in so tamely as this to that child and her mother!" "I'm not giving in at all, Jane," said Father, very quietly again. "I am consulting my own wishes in the matter. I prefer to have her go." _I_ 'most cried out then. Some way, it _hurt_ to have him say it like that, right out--that he _wanted_ me to go. You see, I'd begun to think he was getting so he didn't mind so very much having me here. All the last two weeks he'd been different, really different. But more of that anon. I'll go on with what happened at the table. And, as I said, I did feel bad to have him speak like that. And I can remember now just how the lump came right up in my throat. Then Aunt Jane spoke, stiff and dignified. "Oh, very well, of course, if you put it that way. I can quite well understand that you would want her to go--for _your_ sake. But I thought that, under the circumstances, you would manage somehow to put up with the noise and--" "Jane!" Just like that he interrupted, and he thundered, too, so that Aunt Jane actually jumped. And I guess I did, too. He had sprung to his feet. "Jane, let us close this matter once for all. I am not letting the child go for _my_ sake. I am letting her go for her own. So far as I am concerned, if I consulted no one's wishes but my own, I should--keep her here always." With that he turned and strode from the room, leaving Aunt Jane and me just staring after him. But only for a minute did _I_ stare. It came to me then what he had said--that he would like to keep me here _always_. For I had heard it, even if he had said the last word very low, and in a queer, indistinct voice. I was sure I had heard it, and I suddenly realized what it meant. So I ran after him; and that time, if I had found him, I think I _would_ have hugged him. But I didn't find him. He must have gone quite away from the house. He wasn't even out to the observatory. I went out to see. He didn't come in all the afternoon. I watched for that, too. And when he did come--well, I wouldn't have dared to hug him then. He had his very sternest I-am-not-thinking-of-you-at-all air, and he just came in to supper and then went into the library without saying hardly anything. Yet, some way, the look on his face made me cry. I don't know why. The next day he was more as he has been since we had that talk in the parlor. And he _has_ been different since then, you know. He really has. He has talked quite a lot with me, as I have said, and I think he's been trying, part of the time, to find something I'll be interested in. Honestly, I think he's been trying to make up for Carrie Heywood and Stella Mayhew and Charlie Smith and Mr. Livingstone. I think that's why he took me to walk that day in the woods, and why he took me out to the observatory to see the stars quite a number of times. Twice he's asked me to play to him, and once he asked me if Mary wasn't about ready to dress up in Marie's clothes again. But he was joking then, I knew, for Aunt Jane was right there in the house. Besides, I saw the twinkle in his eyes that I've seen there once or twice before. I just love that twinkle in Father's eyes! But that hasn't come any since Mother's letter to Aunt Jane arrived. He's been the same in one way, yet different in another. Honestly, if it didn't seem too wildly absurd for anything, I should say he was actually sorry to have me go. But, of course, that isn't possible. Oh, yes, I know he said that day at the dinner-table that he should like to keep me always. But I don't think he really meant it. He hasn't acted a mite like that since, and I guess he said it just to hush up Aunt Jane, and make her stop arguing the matter. Anyway, I'm _going_ to-morrow. And I'm so excited I can hardly breathe. CHAPTER VI WHEN I AM BOTH TOGETHER BOSTON AGAIN. Well, I came last night. Mother and Grandfather and Aunt Hattie and Baby Lester all met me at the station. And, my! wasn't I glad to see them? Well, I just guess I was! I was specially glad on account of having such a dreadful time with Father that morning. I mean, I was feeling specially lonesome and homesick, and not-belonging-anywhere like. You see, it was this way: I'd been sort of hoping, I know, that at the last, when I came to really go, Father would get back the understanding smile and the twinkle, and show that he really _did_ care for me, and was sorry to have me go. But, dear me! Why, he never was so stern and solemn, and you're-my-daughter-only-by-the-order-of-the-court sort of way as he was that morning. He never even spoke at the breakfast-table. (He wasn't there hardly long enough to speak, anyway, and he never ate a thing, only his coffee--I mean he drank it.) Then he pushed his chair back from the table and stalked out of the room. He went to the station with me; but he didn't talk there much, only to ask if I was sure I hadn't forgotten anything, and was I warmly clad. Warmly clad, indeed! And there it was still August, and hot as it could be! But that only goes to show how absent-minded he was, and how little he was really thinking of _me_! Well, of course, he got my ticket and checked my trunk, and did all those proper, necessary things; then we sat down to wait for the train. But did he stay with me and talk to me and tell me how glad he had been to have me with him, and how sorry he was to have me go, and all the other nice, polite things 'most everybody thinks they've got to say when a visitor goes away? He did not. He asked me again if I was sure I had not left anything, and was I warmly clad; then he took out his newspaper and began to read. That is, he pretended to read; but I don't believe he read much, for he never turned the sheet once; and twice, when I looked at him, he was looking fixedly at me, as if he was thinking of something. So I guess he was just pretending to read, so he wouldn't have to talk to me. But he didn't even do that long, for he got up and went over and looked at a map hanging on the wall opposite, and at a big time-table near the other corner. Then he looked at his watch again with a won't-that-train-ever-come? air, and walked back to me and sat down. And how do you suppose _I_ felt, to have him act like that before all those people--to show so plainly that he was just longing to have me go? I guess he wasn't any more anxious for that train to come than _I_ was. And it did seem as if it never would come, too. And it didn't come for ages. It was ten minutes late. Oh, I did so hope he wouldn't go down to the junction. It's so hard to be taken care of "because it's my duty, you know"! But he went. I told him he needn't, when he was getting on the train with me. I told him I just knew I could do it beautifully all by myself, almost-a-young lady like me. But he only put his lips together hard, and said, cold, like ice: "Are you then so eager to be rid of me?" Just as if _I_ was the one that was eager to get rid of somebody! Well, as I said, he went. But he wasn't much better on the train than he had been in the station. He was as nervous and fidgety as a witch, and he acted as if he did so wish it would be over and over quick. But at the junction--at the junction a funny thing happened. He put me on the train, just as Mother had done, and spoke to the conductor. (How I hated to have him do that! Why, I'm six whole months older, 'most, than I was when I went up there!) And then when he'd put me in my seat (Father, I mean; not the conductor), all of a sudden he leaned over and kissed me; _kissed me--Father_! Then, before I could speak, or even look at him, he was gone; and I didn't see him again, though it must have been five whole minutes before that train went. I had a nice trip down to Boston, though nothing much happened. This conductor was not near so nice and polite as the one I had coming up; and there wasn't any lady with a baby to play with, nor any nice young gentleman to loan me magazines or buy candy for me. But it wasn't a very long ride from the junction to Boston, anyway. So I didn't mind. Besides, I knew I had Mother waiting for me. And wasn't I glad to get there? Well, I just guess I was! And _they_ acted as if they were glad to see me--Mother, Grandfather, Aunt Hattie, and even Baby Lester. He knew me, and remembered me. He'd grown a lot, too. And they said I had, and that I looked very nice. (I forgot to say that, of course, I had put on the Marie clothes to come home in--though I honestly think Aunt Jane wanted to send me home in Mary's blue gingham and calfskin shoes. As if I'd have appeared in Boston in _that_ rig!) My, but it was good to get into an automobile again and just _go_! And it was so good to have folks around you dressed in something besides don't-care black alpaca and stiff collars. And I said so. And Mother seemed so pleased. "You did want to come back to me, darling, didn't you?" she cried, giving me a little hug. And she looked so happy when I told her all over again how good it seemed to be Marie again, and have her and Boston, and automobiles, and pretty dresses and folks and noise again. She didn't say anything about Father then; but later, when we were up in my pretty room alone, and I was taking off my things, she made me tell her that Father _hadn't_ won my love away from her, and that I _didn't_ love him better than I did her; and that I _wouldn't_ rather stay with him than with her. Then she asked me a lot of questions about what I did there, and Aunt Jane, and how she looked, and Father, and was he as fond of stars as ever (though she must have known 'most everything, 'cause I'd already written it, but she asked me just the same). And she seemed real interested in everything I told her. And she asked was he lonesome; and I told her no, I didn't think so; and that, anyway, he could have all the ladies' company he wanted by just being around when they called. And when she asked what I meant, I told her about Mrs. Darling, and the rest, and how they came evenings and Sundays, and how Father didn't like them, but would flee to the observatory. And she laughed and looked funny, for a minute. But right away she changed and looked very sober, with the kind of expression she has when she stands up in church and says the Apostles' Creed on Sunday; only this time she said she was very sorry, she was sure; that she hoped my father would find some estimable woman who would make a good home for him. Then the dinner-gong sounded, and she didn't say any more. There was company that evening. The violinist. He brought his violin, and he and Mother played a whole hour together. He's awfully handsome. I think he's lovely. Oh, I do so hope he's _the_ one! Anyhow, I hope there's _some_ one. I don't want this novel to all fizzle out without there being _any_ one to make it a love story! Besides, as I said before, I'm particularly anxious that Mother shall find somebody to marry her, so she'll stop being divorced, anyway. * * * * * _A month later_. Yes, I know it's been _ages_ since I've written here in this book; but there just hasn't been a minute's time. First, of course, school began, and I had to attend to that. And, of course, I had to tell the girls all about Andersonville--except the parts I didn't want to tell, about Stella Mayhew, and my coming out of school. I didn't tell _that_. And right here let me say how glad I was to get back to this school--a real school--so different from that one up in Andersonville! For that matter, _everything's_ different here from what it is in Andersonville. I'd so much rather be Marie than Mary. I know I won't ever be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here. I'll be the good one all the time. It's funny how much easier it is to be good in silk stockings and a fluffy white dress than it is in blue gingham and calfskin. Oh, I'll own up that Marie forgets sometimes and says things Mary used to say; like calling Olga a hired girl instead of a maid, as Aunt Hattie wants, and saying dinner instead of luncheon at noon, and some other things. I heard Aunt Hattie tell Mother one day that it was going to take about the whole six months to break Mary Marie of those outlandish country ways of hers. (So, you see, it isn't all honey and pie even for Marie. This trying to be Mary and Marie, even six months apart, isn't the easiest thing ever was!) I don't think Mother liked it very well--what Aunt Hattie said about my outlandish ways. I didn't hear all Mother said, but I knew by the way she looked and acted, and the little I did hear, that she didn't care for that word "outlandish" applied to her little girl--not at all. Mother's a dear. And she's so happy! And, by the way, I think it _is_ the violinist. He's here a lot, and she's out with him to concerts and plays, and riding in his automobile. And she always puts on her prettiest dresses, and she's very particular about her shoes, and her hats, that they're becoming, and all that. Oh, I'm so excited! And I'm having such a good time watching them! Oh, I don't mean watching them in a disagreeable way, so that they _see_ it; and, of course, I don't listen--not the sneak kind of listening. But, of course, I have to get all I can--for the book, you know; and, of course, if I just happen to be in the window-seat corner in the library and hear things accidentally, why, that's all right. And I have heard things. He says her eyes are lovely. He likes her best in blue. He's very lonely, and he never found a woman before who really understood him. He thinks her soul and his are tuned to the same string. (Oh, dear! That sounds funny and horrid, and not at all the way it did when _he_ said it. It was beautiful then. But--well, that is what it meant, anyway.) She told him she was lonely, too, and that she was very glad to have him for a friend; and he said he prized her friendship above everything else in the world. And he looks at her, and follows her around the room with his eyes; and she blushes up real pink and pretty lots of times when he comes into the room. Now, if that isn't making love to each other, I don't know what _is_. I'm sure he's going to propose. Oh, I'm so excited! Oh, yes, I know if he does propose and she says yes, he'll be my new father. I understand that. And, of course, I can't help wondering how I'll like it. Sometimes I think I won't like it at all. Sometimes I almost catch myself wishing that I didn't have to have any new father or mother. I'd _never_ need a new mother, anyway, and I wouldn't need a new father if my father-by-order-of-the-court would be as nice as he was there two or three times in the observatory. But, there! After all, I must remember that I'm not the one that's doing the choosing. It's Mother. And if she wants the violinist I mustn't have anything to say. Besides, I really like him very much, anyway. He's the best of the lot. I'm sure of that. And that's something. And then, of course, I'm glad to have something to make this a love story, and best of all I would be glad to have Mother stop being divorced, anyway. Mr. Harlow doesn't come here any more, I guess. Anyway, I haven't seen him here once since I came back; and I haven't heard anybody mention his name. Quite a lot of the others are here, and there are some new ones. But the violinist is here most, and Mother seems to go out with him most to places. That's why I say I think it's the violinist. I haven't heard from Father. Now just my writing that down that way shows that I _expected_ to hear from him, though I don't really see why I should, either. Of course, he never _has_ written to me; and, of course, I understand that I'm nothing but his daughter by order of the court. But, some way, I did think maybe he'd write me just a little bit of a note in answer to mine--my bread-and-butter letter, I mean; for of course, Mother had me write that to him as soon as I got here. But he hasn't. I wonder how he's getting along, and if he misses me any. But of course, he doesn't do _that_. If I was a star, now--! * * * * * _Two days after Thanksgiving_. The violinist has got a rival. I'm sure he has. It's Mr. Easterbrook. He's old--much as forty--and bald-headed and fat, and has got lots of money. And he's a very estimable man. (I heard Aunt Hattie say that.) He's awfully jolly, and I like him. He brings me the loveliest boxes of candy, and calls me Puss. (I don't like _that_, particularly. I'd prefer him to call me Miss Anderson.) He's not nearly so good-looking as the violinist. The violinist is lots more thrilling, but I shouldn't wonder if Mr. Easterbrook was more comfortable to live with. The violinist is the kind of a man that makes you want to sit up and take notice, and have your hair and finger nails and shoes just right; but with Mr. Easterbrook you wouldn't mind a bit sitting in a big chair before the fire with a pair of old slippers on, if your feet were tired. Mr. Easterbrook doesn't care for music. He's a broker. He looks awfully bored when the violinist is playing, and he fidgets with his watch-chain, and clears his throat very loudly just before he speaks every time. His automobile is bigger and handsomer than the violinist's. (Aunt Hattie says the violinist's automobile is a hired one.) And Mr. Easterbrook's flowers that he sends to Mother are handsomer, too, and lots more of them, than the violinist's. Aunt Hattie has noticed that, too. In fact, I guess there isn't anything about Mr. Easterbrook that she doesn't notice. Aunt Hattie likes Mr. Easterbrook lots better than she does the violinist. I heard her talking to Mother one day. She said that any one that would look twice at a lazy, shiftless fiddler with probably not a dollar laid by for a rainy day, when all the while there was just waiting to be picked an estimable gentleman of independent fortune and stable position like Mr. Easterbrook--well, she had her opinion of her; that's all. She meant Mother, of course. _I_ knew that. I'm no child. Mother knew it, too; and she didn't like it. She flushed up and bit her lip, and answered back, cold, like ice. "I understand, of course, what you mean, Hattie; but even if I acknowledged that this very estimable, unimpeachable gentleman was waiting to be picked (which I do not), I should have to remind you that I've already had one experience with an estimable, unimpeachable gentleman of independent fortune and stable position, and I do not care for another." "But, my dear Madge," began Aunt Hattie again, "to marry a man without _any_ money--" "I haven't married him yet," cut in Mother, cold again, like ice. "But let me tell you this, Hattie. I'd rather live on bread and water in a log cabin with the man I loved than in a palace with an estimable, unimpeachable gentleman who gave me the shivers every time he came into the room." And it was just after she said this that I interrupted. I was right in plain, sight in the window-seat reading; but I guess they'd forgotten I was there, for they both jumped a lot when I spoke. And yet I'll leave it to you if what I said wasn't perfectly natural. "Of course, you would, Mother!" I cried. "And, anyhow, if you did marry the violinist, and you found out afterward you didn't like him, that wouldn't matter a mite, for you could _un_marry him at any time, just as you did Father, and--" But they wouldn't let me finish. They wouldn't let me say anything more. Mother cried, "_Marie_!" in her most I'm-shocked-at-you voice; and Aunt Hattie cried, "Child--child!" And she seemed shocked, too. And both of them threw up their hands and looked at each other in the did-you-ever-hear-such-a-dreadful-thing? way that old folks do when young folks have displeased them. And them they both went right out of the room, talking about the unfortunate effect on a child's mind, and perverted morals, and Mother reproaching Aunt Hattie for talking about those things before that child (meaning me, of course). Then they got too far down the hall for me to hear any more. But I don't see why they needed to have made such a fuss. It wasn't any secret that Mother got a divorce; and if she got one once, of course she could again. (That's what I'm going to do when I'm married, if I grow tired of him--my husband, I mean.) Oh, yes, I know Mrs. Mayhew and her crowd don't seem to think divorces are very nice; but there needn't anybody try to make me think that anything my mother does isn't perfectly nice and all right. And _she_ got a divorce. So, there! * * * * * _One week later_. There hasn't much happened--only one or two things. But maybe I'd better tell them before I forget it, especially as they have a good deal to do with the love part of the story. And I'm always so glad to get anything of that kind. I've been so afraid this wouldn't be much of a love story, after all. But I guess it will be, all right. Anyhow, I _know_ Mother's part will be, for it's getting more and more exciting--about Mr. Easterbrook and the violinist, I mean. They both want Mother. Anybody can see that now, and, of course, Mother sees it. But which she'll take I don't know. Nobody knows. It's perfectly plain to be seen, though, which one Grandfather and Aunt Hattie want her to take! It's Mr. Easterbrook. And he is awfully nice. He brought me a perfectly beautiful bracelet the other day--but Mother wouldn't let me keep it. So he had to take it back. I don't think he liked it very well, and I didn't like it, either. I _wanted_ that bracelet. But Mother says I'm much too young to wear much jewelry. Oh, will the time ever come when I'll be old enough to take my proper place in the world? Sometimes it seems as if it never would! Well, as I said, it's plain to be seen who it is that Grandfather and Aunt Hattie favor; but I'm not so sure about Mother. Mother acts funny. Sometimes she won't go with either of them anywhere; then she seems to want to go all the time. And she acts as if she didn't care which she went with, so long as she was just going--somewhere. I think, though, she really likes the violinist the best; and I guess Grandfather and Aunt Hattie think so, too. Something happened last night. Grandfather began to talk at the dinner-table. He'd heard something he didn't like about the violinist, I guess, and he started in to tell Mother. But they stopped him. Mother and Aunt Hattie looked at him and then at me, and then back to him, in their most see-who's-here!--you-mustn't-talk-before-her way. So he shrugged his shoulders and stopped. But I guess he told them in the library afterwards, for I heard them all talking very excitedly, and some loud; and I guess Mother didn't like what they said, and got quite angry, for I heard her say, when she came out through the door, that she didn't believe a word of it, and she thought it was a wicked, cruel shame to tell stories like that just because they didn't like a man. This morning she broke an engagement with Mr. Easterbrook to go auto-riding and went with the violinist to a morning musicale instead; and after she'd gone Aunt Hattie sighed and looked at Grandfather and shrugged her shoulders, and said she was afraid they'd driven her straight into the arms of the one they wanted to avoid, and that Madge always _would_ take the part of the under dog. I suppose they thought I wouldn't understand. But I did, perfectly. They meant that by telling stories about the violinist they'd been hoping to get her to give him up, but instead of that, they'd made her turn to him all the more, just because she was so sorry for him. Funny, isn't it? * * * * * _One week later_. Well, I guess now something has happened all right! And let me say right away that _I_ don't like that violinist now, either, any better than Grandfather and Aunt Hattie. And it's not entirely because of what happened last night, either. It's been coming on for quite a while--ever since I first saw him talking to Theresa in the hall when she let him in one night a week ago. Theresa is awfully pretty, and I guess he thinks, so. Anyhow, I heard him telling her so in the hall, and she laughed and blushed and looked sideways at him. Then they saw me, and he stiffened up and said, very proper and dignified, "Kindly hand my card to Mrs. Anderson." And Theresa said, "Yes, sir." And she was very proper and dignified, too. Well, that was the beginning. I can see now that it was, though, I never thought of its meaning anything then, only that he thought Theresa was a pretty girl, just as we all do. But four days ago I saw them again. He tried to put his arm around her that time, and the very next day he tried to kiss her, and after a minute she let him. More than once, too. And last night I heard him tell her she was the dearest girl in all the world, and he'd be perfectly happy if he could only marry her. Well, you can imagine how I felt, when I thought all the time it was Mother he was coming to see! And now to find out that it was Theresa he wanted all the time, and he was only coming to see Mother so he could see Theresa! At first I was angry,--just plain angry; and I was frightened, too, for I couldn't help worrying about Mother--for fear she would mind, you know, when she found out that it was Theresa that he cared for, after all. I remembered what a lot Mother had been with him, and the pretty dresses and hats she'd put on for him, and all that. And I thought how she'd broken engagements with Mr. Easterbrook to go with him, and it made me angry all over again. And I thought how _mean_ it was of him to use poor Mother as a kind of shield to hide his courting of Theresa! I was angry, too, to have my love story all spoiled, when I was getting along so beautifully with Mother and the violinist. But I'm feeling better now. I've been thinking it over. I don't believe Mother's going to care so very much. I don't believe she'd _want_ a man that would pretend to come courting her, when all the while he was really courting the hired girl--I mean maid. Besides, there's Mr. Easterbrook left (and one or two others that I haven't said much about, as I didn't think they had much chance). And so far as the love story for the book is concerned, _that_ isn't spoiled, after all, for it will be ever so much more exciting to have the violinist fall in love with Theresa than with Mother, for, of course, Theresa isn't in the same station of life at all, and that makes it a--a mess-alliance. (I don't remember exactly what that word is; but I know it means an alliance that makes a mess of things because the lovers are not equal to each other.) Of course, for the folks who have to live it, it may not be so nice; but for my story here this makes it all the more romantic and thrilling. So _that's_ all right. Of course, so far, I'm the only one that knows, for I haven't told it, and I'm the only one that's seen anything. Of course, I shall warn Mother, if I think it's necessary, so she'll understand it isn't her, but Theresa, that the violinist is really in love with and courting. _She_ won't mind, I'm sure, after she thinks of it a minute. And won't it be a good joke on Aunt Hattie and Grandfather when they find out they've been fooled all the time, supposing it's Mother, and worrying about it? Oh, I don't know! This is some love story, after all! * * * * * _Two days later._ Well, I should say it was! What do you suppose has happened now? Why, that wretched violinist is nothing but a deep-dyed villain! Listen what he did. He proposed to Mother--actually proposed to her--and after all he'd said to that Theresa girl, about his being perfectly happy if he could marry _her_. And Mother--Mother all the time not knowing! Oh, I'm so glad I was there to rescue her! I don't mean at the proposal--I didn't hear that. But afterward. It was like this. They had been out automobiling--Mother and the violinist. He came for her at three o'clock. He said it was a beautiful warm day, and maybe the last one they'd have this year; and she must go. And she went. I was in my favorite window-seat, reading, when they came home and walked into the library. They never looked my way at all, but just walked toward the fireplace. And there he took hold of both her hands and said: "Why must you wait, darling? Why can't you give me my answer now, and make me the happiest man in all the world?" "Yes, yes, I know," answered Mother; and I knew by her voice that she was all shaky and trembly. "But if I could only be sure--sure of myself." "But, dearest, you're sure of me!" cried the violinist. "You _know_ how I love you. You know you're the only woman I have ever loved, or ever could love!" Yes, just like that he said it--that awful lie--and to my mother. My stars! Do you suppose I waited to hear any more? I guess not! [Illustration: "WHY MUST YOU WAIT, DARLING?"] I fairly tumbled off my seat, and my book dropped with a bang, as I ran forward. Dear, dear, but how they did jump--both of them! And I guess they _were_ surprised. I never thought how 'twas going to affect them--my breaking in like that. But I didn't wait--not a minute. And I didn't apologize, or say "Excuse me," or any of those things that I suppose I ought to have done. I just started right in and began to talk. And I talked hard and fast, and lots of it. I don't know now what I said, but I know I asked him what he meant by saying such an awful lie to my mother, when he'd just said the same thing, exactly 'most, to Theresa, and he'd hugged her and kissed her, and everything. I'd _seen_ him. And-- But I didn't get a chance to say half I wanted to. I was going on to tell him what I thought of him; but Mother gasped out, "Marie! _Marie! Stop_!" And then I stopped. I had to, of course. Then she said that would do, and I might go to my room. And I went. And that's all I know about it, except that she came up, after a little, and said for me not to talk any more about it, to her, or to any one else; and to please try to forget it. I tried to tell her what I'd seen, and what I'd heard that wicked, deep-dyed villain say; but she wouldn't let me. She shook her head, and said, "Hush, hush, dear"; and that no good could come of talking of it, and she wanted me to forget it. She was very sweet and very gentle, and she smiled; but there were stern corners to her mouth, even when the smile was there. And I guess she told him what was what. Anyhow, I know they had quite a talk before she came up to me, for I was watching at the window for him to go; and when he did go he looked very red and cross, and he stalked away with a never-will-I-darken-this-door-again kind of a step, just as far as I could see him. I don't know, of course, what will happen next, nor whether he'll ever come back for Theresa; but I shouldn't think even _she_ would want him, after this, if she found out. And now where's _my_ love story coming in, I should like to know? * * * * * _Two days after Christmas_. Another wonderful thing has happened. I've had a letter from Father--from _Father_--a _letter_--ME! It came this morning. Mother brought it in to me. She looked queer--a little. There were two red spots in her cheeks, and her eyes were very bright. "I think you have a letter here from--your father," she said, handing it out. She hesitated before the "your father" just as she always does. And 'tisn't hardly ever that she mentions his name, anyway. But when she does, she always stops a funny little minute before it, just as she did to-day. And perhaps I'd better say right here, before I forget it, that Mother has been different, some way, ever since that time when the violinist proposed. I don't think she _cares_ really--about the violinist, I mean--but she's just sort of upset over it. I heard her talking to Aunt Hattie one day about it, and she said: "To think such a thing could happen--to _me_! And when for a minute I was really hesitating and thinking that maybe I _would_ take him. Oh, Hattie!" And Aunt Hattie put her lips together with her most I-told-you-so air, and said: "It was, indeed, a narrow escape, Madge; and it ought to show you the worth of a real man. There's Mr. Easterbrook, now--" But Mother wouldn't even listen then. She pooh-poohed and tossed her head, and said, "Mr. Easterbrook, indeed!" and put her hands to her ears, laughing, but in earnest just the same, and ran out of the room. And she doesn't go so much with Mr. Easterbrook as she did. Oh, she goes with him some, but not enough to make it a bit interesting--for this novel, I mean--nor with any of the others, either. In fact, I'm afraid there isn't much chance now of Mother's having a love story to make this book right. Only the other day I heard her tell Grandfather and Aunt Hattie that _all_ men were a delusion and a snare. Oh, she laughed as she said it. But she was in earnest, just the same. I could see that. And she doesn't seem to care much for any of the different men that come to see her. She seems to ever so much rather stay with me. In fact, she stays with me a lot these days--almost all the time I'm out of school, indeed. And she talks with me--oh, she talks with me about lots of things. (I love to have her talk with me. You know there's a lot of difference between talking _with_ folks and _to_ folks. Now, Father always talks _to_ folks.) One day it was about getting married that Mother talked with me, and I said I was so glad that when you didn't like being married, or got tired of your husband, you could get _un_married, just as she did, and go back home and be just the same as you were before. But Mother didn't like that, at all. She said no, no, and that I mustn't talk like that, and that you _couldn't_ go back and be the same. And that she'd found it out. That she used to think you could. But you couldn't. She said it was like what she read once, that you couldn't really be the same any more than you could put the dress you were wearing back on the shelf in the store, and expect it to turn back into a fine long web of cloth all folded up nice and tidy, as it was in the first place. And, of course, you couldn't do that--after the cloth was all cut up into a dress! She said more things, too; and after Father's letter came she said still more. Oh, and I haven't told yet about the letter, have I? Well, I will now. As I said at first, Mother brought it in and handed it over to me, saying she guessed it was from Father. And I could see she was wondering what could be in it. But I guess she wasn't wondering any more than _I_ was, only I was gladder to get it than she was, I suppose. Anyhow, when she saw _how_ glad I was, and how I jumped for the letter, she drew back, and looked somehow as if she'd been hurt, and said: "I did not know, Marie, that a letter from--your father would mean so much to you." I don't know what I did say to that. I guess I didn't say anything. I'd already begun to read the letter, and I was in such a hurry to find out what he'd said. I'll copy it here. It wasn't long. It was like this: MY DEAR MARY: Some way Christmas has made me think of you. I wish I had sent you some gift. Yet I have not the slightest idea what would please you. To tell the truth, I tried to find something--but had to give it up. I am wondering if you had a good time, and what you did. After all, I'm pretty sure you did have a good time, for you are Marie now. You see I have not forgotten how tired you got of being--Mary. Well, well, I do not know as I can blame you. And now that I have asked what you did for Christmas, I suspect it is no more than a fair turnabout to tell you what I did. I suppose I had a very good time. Your Aunt Jane says I did. I heard her telling one of the neighbors that last night. She said she left no stone unturned to give me a good time. So, of course, I must have had a good time. She had a very fine dinner, and she invited Mrs. Darling and Miss Snow and Miss Sanborn to eat it with us. She said she didn't want me to feel lonesome. But you can feel real lonesome in a crowd sometimes. Did you know that, Mary? But I left them to their chatter after dinner and went out to the observatory. I think I must have fallen asleep on the couch there, for it was quite dark when I awoke. But I didn't mind that, for there were some observations I wanted to take. It was a beautifully clear night, so I stayed there till nearly morning. How about it? I suppose Marie plays the piano every day now, doesn't she? The piano here hasn't been touched since you went away. Oh, yes, it was touched once. Your aunt played hymns on it for a missionary meeting. Well, what did you do Christmas? Suppose you write and tell Your FATHER I'd been reading the letter out loud, and when I got through Mother was pacing up and down the room. For a minute she didn't say anything; then she whirled 'round suddenly and faced me, and said, just as if something inside of her was _making_ her say it: "I notice there is no mention of your mother in that letter, Marie. I suppose--your father has quite forgotten that there is such a person in the world as--I." But I told her no, oh, no, and that I was sure he remembered her, for he used to ask me questions often about what she did, and the violinist and all. "The violinist!" cried Mother, whirling around on me again. (She'd begun to walk up and down once more.) "You don't mean to say you ever told your father about _him_!" "Oh, no, not everything," I explained, trying to show how patient I was, so she would be patient, too. (But it didn't work.) "I couldn't tell him everything because everything hadn't happened then. But I told about his being here, and about the others, too; but, of course, I said I didn't know which you'd take, and--" "You told him you didn't know _which I'd take_!" gasped Mother. Just like that she interrupted, and she looked so shocked. And she didn't look much better when I explained very carefully what I did say, even though I assured her over and over again that Father was interested, very much interested. When I said that, she just muttered, "Interested, indeed!" under her breath. Then she began to walk again, up and down, up and down. Then, all of a sudden, she flung herself on the couch and began to cry and sob as if her heart would break. And when I tried to comfort her, I only seemed to make it worse, for she threw her arms around me and cried: "Oh, my darling, my darling, don't you see how dreadful it is, how dreadful it is?" And then is when she began to talk some more about being married, and _un_married as we were. She held me close again and began to sob and cry. "Oh, my darling, don't you see how dreadful it all is--how unnatural it is for us to live--this way? And for you--you poor child!--what could be worse for you? And here I am, jealous--jealous of your own father, for fear you'll love him better than you do me! "Oh, I know I ought not to say all this to you--I know I ought not to. But I can't--help it. I want you! I want you every minute; but I have to give you up--six whole months of every year I have to give you up to him. And he's your father, Marie. And he's a good man. I know he's a good man. I know it all the better now since I've seen--other men. And I ought to tell you to love him. But I'm so afraid--you'll love him better than you do me, and want to leave--me. And I can't give you up! I can't give you up!" Then I tried to tell her, of course, that she wouldn't have to give me up, and that I loved her a whole lot better than I did Father. But even that didn't comfort her, 'cause she said I _ought_ to love _him_. That he was lonesome and needed me. He needed me just as much as she needed me, and maybe more. And then she went on again about how unnatural and awful it was to live the way we were living. And she called herself a wicked woman that she'd ever allowed things to get to such a pass. And she said if she could only have her life to live over again she'd do so differently--oh, so differently. Then she began to cry again, and I couldn't do a thing with her; and of course, that worked me all up and I began to cry. She stopped then, right off short, and wiped her eyes fiercely with her wet ball of a handkerchief. And she asked what was she thinking of, and didn't she know any better than to talk like this to me. Then she said, come, we'd go for a ride. And we did. And all the rest of that day Mother was so gay and lively you'd think she didn't know how to cry. Now, wasn't that funny? Of course, I shall answer Father's letter right away, but I haven't the faintest idea _what_ to say. * * * * * _One week later._ I answered it--Father's letter, I mean--yesterday, and it's gone now. But I had an awful time over it. I just didn't know what in the world to say. I'd start out all right, and I'd think I was going to get along beautifully. Then, all of a sudden, it would come over me, what I was doing--_writing a letter to my father_! And I could imagine just how he'd look when he got it, all stern and dignified, sitting in his chair in the library, and opening the letter _just so_ with his paper-cutter; and I'd imagine his eyes looking down and reading what I wrote. And when I thought of that, my pen just wouldn't go. The idea of _my_ writing anything my father would want to read! And so I'd try to think of things that I could write--big things--big things that would interest big men: about the President, and our-country-'tis-of-thee, and the state of the weather and the crops. And so I'd begin: "Dear Father: I take my pen in hand to inform you that--" Then I'd stop and think and think, and chew my pen-handle. Then I'd put down _something_. But it was awful, and I knew it was awful. So I'd have to tear it up and begin again. Three times I did that; then I began to cry. It did seem as if I never could write that letter. Once I thought of asking Mother what to say, and getting her to help me. Then I remembered how she cried and took on and said things when the letter came, and talked about how dreadful and unnatural it all was, and how she was jealous for fear I'd love Father better than I did her. And I was afraid she'd do it again, and so I didn't like to ask her. And so I didn't do it. Then, after a time, I got out his letter and read it again. And all of a sudden I felt all warm and happy, just as I did when I first got it; and some way I was back with him in the observatory and he was telling me all about the stars. And I forgot all about being afraid of him, and about the crops and the President and my-country-'tis-of-thee. And I just remembered that he'd asked me to tell him what I did on Christmas Day; and I knew right off that that would be easy. Why, just the easiest thing in the world! And so I got out a fresh sheet of paper and dipped my pen in the ink and began again. And this time I didn't have a bit of trouble. I told him all about the tree I had Christmas Eve, and the presents, and the little colored lights, and the fun we had singing and playing games. And then how, on Christmas morning, there was a lovely new snow on the ground, and Mr. Easterbrook came with a perfectly lovely sleigh and two horses to take Mother and me to ride, and what a splendid time we had, and how lovely Mother looked with her red cheeks and bright eyes, and how, when we got home, Mr. Easterbrook said we looked more like sisters than mother and daughter, and wasn't that nice of him. Of course, I told a little more about Mr. Easterbrook, too, so Father'd know who he was--a new friend of Mother's that I'd never known till I came back this time, and how he was very rich and a most estimable man. That Aunt Hattie said so. Then I told him that in the afternoon another gentleman came and took us to a perfectly beautiful concert. And I finished up by telling about the Christmas party in the evening, and how lovely the house looked, and Mother, and that they said I looked nice, too. And that was all. And when I had got it done, I saw that I had written a long letter, a great long letter. And I was almost afraid it was too long, till I remembered that Father had asked me for it; he had _asked_ me to tell him all about what I did on Christmas Day. So I sent it off. * * * * * _March_. Yes, I know it's been quite a while, but there hasn't been a thing to say--nothing new or exciting, I mean. There's just school, and the usual things; only Mr. Easterbrook doesn't come any more. (Of course, the violinist hasn't come since that day he proposed.) I don't know whether Mr. Easterbrook proposed or not. I only know that all of a sudden he stopped coming. I don't know the reason. I don't overhear so much as I used to, anyway. Not but that I'm in the library window-seat just the same; but 'most everybody that comes in looks there right off, now; and, of course, when they see me they don't hardly ever go on with what they are saying. So it just naturally follows that I don't overhear things as I used to. Not that there's much to hear, though. Really, there just isn't anything going on, and things aren't half so lively as they used to be when Mr. Easterbrook was here, and all the rest. They've all stopped coming, now, 'most. I've about given up ever having a love story of Mother's to put in. And mine, too. Here I am fifteen next month, going on sixteen. (Why, that brook and river met long ago!) But Mother is getting to be almost as bad as Aunt Jane was about my receiving proper attentions from young men. Oh, she lets me go to places, a little, with the boys at school; but I always have to be chaperoned. And whenever are they going to have a chance to say anything really _thrilling_ with Mother or Aunt Hattie right at my elbow? Echo answers never! So I've about given up _that's_ amounting to anything, either. Of course, there's Father left, and of course, when I go back to Andersonville this summer, there may be something doing there. But I doubt it. I forgot to say I haven't heard from Father again. I answered his Christmas letter, as I said, and wrote just as nice as I knew how, and told him all he asked me to. But he never answered, nor wrote again. I am disappointed, I'll own up. I thought he would write. I think Mother did, too. She's asked me ever so many times if I hadn't heard from him again. And she always looks so sort of funny when I say no--sort of glad and sorry together, all in one. But, then, Mother's queer in lots of ways now. For instance: One week ago she gave me a perfectly lovely box of chocolates--a whole two-pound box all at once; and I've never had more than a half-pound at once before. But just as I was thinking how for once I was going to have a real feast, and all I wanted to eat--what do you think she told me? She said I could have three pieces, and only three pieces a day; and not one little tiny one more. And when I asked her why she gave me such a big box for, then, if that was all I could have, she said it was to teach me self-discipline. That self-discipline was one of the most wonderful things in the world. That if she'd only been taught it when she was a girl, her life would have been very, very different. And so she was giving me a great big box of chocolates for my very own, just so as to teach me to deny myself and take only three pieces every day. Three pieces!--and all that whole big box of them just making my mouth water all the while; and all just to teach me that horrid old self-discipline! Why, you'd think it was Aunt Jane doing it instead of Mother! * * * * * _One week later._ It's come--Father's letter. It came last night. Oh, it was short, and it didn't say anything about what _I_ wrote. But I was proud of it, just the same. I just guess I was! There wasn't much in it but just that I might stay till the school closed in June, and then come. But _he wrote it_. He didn't get Aunt Jane to write to Mother, as he did before. And then, besides, he must have forgotten his stars long enough to think of me a _little_--for he remembered about the school, and that I couldn't go there in Andersonville, and so he said I had better stay here till it finished. And I was so glad to stay! It made me very happy--that letter. It made Mother happy, too. She liked it, and she thought it was very, very kind of Father to be willing to give me up almost three whole months of his six, so I could go to school here. And she said so. She said once to Aunt Hattie that she was almost tempted to write and thank him. But Aunt Hattie said, "Pooh," and it was no more than he ought to do, and that _she_ wouldn't be seen writing to a man who so carefully avoided writing to _her_. So Mother didn't do it, I guess. But I wrote. I had to write three letters, though, before I got one that Mother said would do to send. The first one sounded so _glad_ I was staying that Mother said she was afraid he would feel hurt, and that would be too bad--when he'd been so kind. And the second one sounded as if I was so _sorry_ not to go to Andersonville the first of April that Mother said that would never do in the world. He'd think I didn't _want_ to stay in Boston. But the third letter I managed to make just glad enough to stay, and just sorry enough not to go. So that Mother said it was all right. And I sent it. You see I _asked_ Mother to help me about this letter. I knew she wouldn't cry and moan about being jealous this time. And she didn't. She was real excited and happy over it. * * * * * _April_. Well, the last chocolate drop went yesterday. There were just seventy-six pieces in that two-pound box. I counted them that first day. Of course, they were fine and dandy, and I just loved them; but the trouble is, for the last week I've been eating such snippy little pieces. You see, every day, without thinking, I'd just naturally pick out the biggest pieces. So you can imagine what they got down to toward the last--mostly chocolate almonds. As for the self-discipline--I don't see as I feel any more disciplined than I did before, and I _know_ I want chocolates just as much as ever. And I said so to Mother. But Mother _is_ queer. Honestly she is. And I can't help wondering--is she getting to be like Aunt Jane? Now, listen to this: Last week I had to have a new party dress, and we found a perfect darling of a pink silk, all gold beads, and gold slippers to match. And I knew I'd look perfectly divine in it; and once Mother would have got it for me. But not this time. She got a horrid white muslin with dots in it, and a blue silk sash, suitable for a child--for any child. Of course, I was disappointed, and I suppose I did show it--some. In fact, I'm afraid I showed it a whole lot. Mother didn't say anything _then_; but on the way home in the car she put her arm around me and said: "I'm sorry about the pink dress, dear. I knew you wanted it. But it was not suitable at all for you--not until you're older, dear." She stopped a minute, then went on with another little hug: "Mother will have to look out that her little daughter isn't getting to be vain, and too fond of dress." I knew then, of course, that it was just some more of that self-discipline business. But Mother never used to say anything about self-discipline. _Is_ she getting to be like Aunt Jane? * * * * * _One week later._ She is. I _know_ she is now. I'm learning to cook--_to cook_! And it's Mother that says I must. She told Aunt Hattie--I heard her--that she thought every girl should know how to cook and to keep house; and that if she had learned those things when she was a girl, her life would have been quite different, she was sure. Of course, I'm not learning in Aunt Hattie's kitchen. Aunt Hattie's got a new cook, and she's worse than Olga used to be--about not wanting folks messing around, I mean. So Aunt Hattie said right off that we couldn't do it there. I am learning at a Domestic Science School, and Mother is going with me. I didn't mind so much when she said she'd go, too. And, really, it is quite a lot of fun--really it is. But it _is_ queer--Mother and I going to school together to learn how to make bread and cake and boil potatoes! And, of course, Aunt Hattie laughs at us. But I don't mind. And Mother doesn't, either. But, oh, how Aunt Jane would love it, if she only knew! * * * * * _May_. Something is the matter with Mother, certainly. She's acting queerer and queerer, and she _is_ getting to be like Aunt Jane. Why, only this morning she hushed me up from laughing so loud, and stopped my romping up and down the stairs with Lester. She said it was noisy and unladylike--and only just a little while ago she just loved to have me laugh and play and be happy! And when I said so to her this morning, she said, yes, yes, of course, and she wanted me to be happy now, only she wished to remind me that very soon I was going back to my father in Andersonville, and that I ought to begin now to learn to be more quiet, so as not to trouble him when I got there. Now, what do you think of that? And another thing. What _do_ you suppose I am learning about _now_? You'd never guess. Stars. Yes, _stars_! And that is for Father, too. Mother came into my room one day with a book of Grandfather's under her arm. She said it was a very wonderful work on astronomy, and she was sure I would find it interesting. She said she was going to read it aloud to me an hour a day. And then, when I got to Andersonville and Father talked to me, I'd _know_ something. And he'd be pleased. She said she thought we owed it to Father, after he'd been so good and kind as to let me stay here almost three whole months of his six, so I could keep on with my school. And that she was very sure this would please him and make him happy. And so, for 'most a week now, Mother has read to me an hour a day out of that astronomy book. Then we talk about it. And it _is_ interesting. Mother says it is, too. She says she wishes _she'd_ known something about astronomy when she was a girl; that she's sure it would have made things a whole lot easier and happier all around, when she married Father; for then she would have known something about something _he_ was interested in. She said she couldn't help that now, of course; but she could see that _I_ knew something about such things. And that was why she was reading to me now. Then she said again that she thought we owed it to Father, when he'd been so good to let me stay. It seems so funny to hear her talk such a lot about Father as she does, when before she never used to mention him--only to say how afraid she was that I would love him better than I did her, and to make me say over and over again that I didn't. And I said so one day to her--I mean, I said I thought it was funny, the way she talked now. She colored up and bit her lip, and gave a queer little laugh. Then she grew very sober and grave, and said: "I know, dear. Perhaps I am talking more than I used to. But, you see, I've been thinking quite a lot, and I--I've learned some things. And now, since your father has been so kind and generous in giving you up to me so much of his time, I--I've grown ashamed; and I'm trying to make you forget what I said--about your loving me more than him. That wasn't right, dear. Mother was wrong. She shouldn't try to influence you against your father. He is a good man; and there are none too many good men in the world--No, no, I won't say that," she broke off. But she'd already said it, and, of course, I knew she was thinking of the violinist. I'm no child. She went on more after that, quite a lot more. And she said again that I must love Father and try to please him in every way; and she cried a little and talked a lot about how hard it was in my position, and that she was afraid she'd only been making it harder, through her selfishness, and I must forgive her, and try to forget it. And she was very sure she'd do better now. And she said that, after all, life wasn't in just being happy yourself. It was in how much happiness you could give to others. Oh, it was lovely! And I cried, and she cried some more, and we kissed each other, and I promised. And after she went away I felt all upraised and holy, like you do when you've been to a beautiful church service with soft music and colored windows, and everybody kneeling. And I felt as if I'd never be naughty or thoughtless again. And that I'd never mind being Mary now. Why, I'd be glad to be Mary half the time, and even more--for Father. But, alas! Listen. Would you believe it? Just that same evening Mother stopped me again laughing too loud and making too much noise playing with Lester; and I felt real cross. I just boiled inside of me, and said I hated Mary, and that Mother _was_ getting to be just like Aunt Jane. And yet, just that morning-- Oh, if only that hushed, stained-window-soft-music feeling _would_ last! * * * * * _June_. Well, once more school is done, my trunk is all packed, and I'm ready to go to Andersonville. I leave to-morrow morning. But not as I left last year. Oh, no. It is very, very different. Why, this year I'm really _going_ as Mary. Honestly, Mother has turned me into Mary _before I go_. Now, what do you think of that? And if I've got to be Mary there and Mary here, too, when can I ever be _Marie_? Oh, I know I _said_ I'd be willing to be Mary half, and maybe more than half, the time. But when it comes to really _being_ Mary out of turn extra time, that is quite another thing. And I am Mary. Listen: I've learned to cook. That's Mary. I've been studying astronomy. That's Mary. I've learned to walk quietly, speak softly, laugh not too loudly, and be a lady at all times. That's Mary. And now, to add to all this, Mother has had me _dress_ like Mary. Yes, she began two weeks ago. She came into my room one morning and said she wanted to look over my dresses and things; and I could see, by the way she frowned and bit her lip and tapped her foot on the floor, that she wasn't suited. And I was glad; for, of course, I always like to have new things. So I was pleased when she said: "I think, my dear, that on Saturday we'll have to go in town shopping. Quite a number of these things will not do at all." And I was so happy! Visions of new dresses and hats and shoes rose before me, and even the pink beaded silk came into my mind--though I didn't really have much hopes of that. Well, we went shopping on Saturday, but--did we get the pink silk? We did not. We did get--you'd never guess what. We got two new gingham dresses, very plain and homely, and a pair of horrid, thick low shoes. Why, I could have cried! I did 'most cry as I exclaimed: "Why, Mother, those are _Mary_ things!" "Of course, they're Mary things," answered Mother, cheerfully--the kind of cheerfulness that says: "I'm being good and you ought to be." Then she went on. "That's what I meant to buy--Mary things, as you call them. Aren't you going to be Mary just next week? Of course, you are! And didn't you tell me last year, as soon as you got there, Miss Anderson objected to your clothing and bought new for you? Well, I am trying to see that she does not have to do that this year." And then she bought me a brown serge suit and a hat so tiresomely sensible that even Aunt Jane will love them, I know. And to-morrow I've got to put them on to go in. Do you wonder that I say I am Mary already? CHAPTER VII WHEN I AM NEITHER ONE ANDERSONVILLE. Well, I came last night. I had on the brown suit and the sensible hat, and every turn of the wheels all day had been singing: "Mary, Mary, now you're Mary!" Why, Mother even _called_ me Mary when she said good-bye. She came to the junction with me just as she had before, and put me on the other train. "Now, remember, dear, you're to try very hard to be a joy and a comfort to your father--just the little Mary that he wants you to be. Remember, he has been very kind to let you stay with me so long." She cried when she kissed me just as she did before; but she didn't tell me this time to be sure and not love Father better than I did her. I noticed that. But, of course, I didn't say anything, though I might have told her easily that I knew nothing could ever make me love _him_ better than I did _her_. But I honestly tried, as long as I was dressed like Mary, to feel like Mary; and I made up my mind that I would _be_ Mary, too, just as well as I knew how to be, so that even Aunt Jane couldn't find any fault with me. And I'd try to please Father, and make him not mind my being there, even if I couldn't make him love me. And as I got to thinking of it, I was _glad_ that I had on the Mary things, so I wouldn't have to make any change. Then I could show Aunt Jane that I was really going to be Mary, right along from the start, when she met me at the station. And I would show Father, too, if he was at home. And I couldn't help hoping he _would_ be home this time, and not off to look at any old stars or eclipses. When we got to Andersonville, and the train rolled into the station, I 'most forgot, for a minute, and ran down the aisle, so as to get out quick. I was so excited! But right away I thought of Aunt Jane and that she might see me; so I slowed down to a walk, and I let quite a lot of other folks get ahead of me, as I was sure Mary ought to. You see, I was determined to be a good little Mary from the very start, so that even Aunt Jane couldn't find a word of fault--not even with my actions. I knew she couldn't with my clothes! Well, I stepped down from the cars and looked over to where the carriages were to find John and Aunt Jane. But they weren't there. There wasn't even the carriage there; and I can remember now just how my heart sort of felt sick inside of me when I thought that even Aunt Jane had forgotten, and that there wasn't anybody to meet me. There was a beautiful big green automobile there, and I thought how I wished _that_ had come to meet me; and I was just wondering what I should do, when all of a sudden somebody spoke my name. And who do you think it was? You'd never guess it in a month. It was _Father_. Yes, FATHER! Why, I could have hugged him, I was so glad. But of course I didn't, right before all those people. But he was so tall and handsome and splendid, and I felt so proud to be walking along the platform with him and letting folks see that he'd come to meet me! But I couldn't say anything--not anything, the way I wanted to; and all I could do was to stammer out: "Why, where's Aunt Jane?" And that's just the thing I didn't _want_ to say; and I knew it the minute I'd said it. Why, it sounded as if I missed Aunt Jane, and wanted _her_ instead of _him_, when all the time I was so pleased and excited to see him that I could hardly speak. I don't know whether Father liked it, or minded it. I couldn't tell by his face. He just kind of smiled, and looked queer, and said that Aunt Jane--er--couldn't come. Then _I_ felt sorry; for I saw, of course, that that was why _he_ had come; not because he wanted to, but because Aunt Jane couldn't, so he had to. And I could have cried, all the while he was fixing it up about my trunk. He turned then and led the way straight over to where the carriages were, and the next minute there was John touching his cap to me; only it was a brand-new John looking too sweet for anything in a chauffeur's cap and uniform. And, what do you think? He was helping me into that beautiful big green car before I knew it. "Why, Father, Father!" I cried. "You don't mean"--I just couldn't finish; but he finished for me. "It is ours--yes. Do you like it?" "Like it!" I guess he didn't need to have me say any more. But I did say more. I just raved and raved over that car until Father's eyes crinkled all up in little smile wrinkles, and he said: "I'm glad. I hoped you'd like it." "I guess I do like it!" I cried. Then I went on to tell him how I thought it was the prettiest one I ever saw, and 'way ahead of even Mr. Easterbrook's. "And, pray, who is Mr. Easterbrook?" asked Father then. "The violinist, perhaps--eh?" Now, wasn't it funny he should have remembered that there was a violinist? But, of course, I told him no, it wasn't the violinist. It was another one that took Mother to ride, the one I told him about in the Christmas letter; and he was very rich, and had two perfectly beautiful cars; and I was going on to tell more--how he didn't take Mother now--but I didn't get a chance, for Father interrupted, and said, "Yes, yes, to be sure." And he _showed_ he wasn't interested, for all the little smile wrinkles were gone, and he looked stern and dignified, more like he used to. And he went on to say that, as we had almost reached home, he had better explain right away that Aunt Jane was no longer living there; that his cousin from the West, Mrs. Whitney, was keeping house for him now. She was a very nice lady, and he hoped I would like her. And I might call her "Cousin Grace." And before I could even draw breath to ask any questions, we were home; and a real pretty lady, with a light-blue dress on, was helping me out of the car, and kissing me as she did so. Now, do you wonder that I have been rubbing my eyes and wondering if I was really I, and if this was Andersonville? Even now I'm not sure but it's a dream, and I shall wake up and find I've gone to sleep on the cars, and that the train is just drawing into the station, and that John and the horses, and Aunt Jane in her I-don't-care-how-it-looks black dress are there to meet me. * * * * * _One week later_. It isn't a dream. It's all really, truly true--everything: Father coming to meet me, the lovely automobile, and the pretty lady in the light-blue dress, who kissed me. And when I went downstairs the next morning I found out it was real, 'specially the pretty lady; for she kissed me again, and said she hoped I'd be happy there. And she never said one word about dusting one hour and studying one hour and weeding one hour. (Of course, she couldn't say anything about my clothes, for I was already in a Mary blue-gingham dress.) She just told me to amuse myself any way I liked, and said, if I wanted to, I might run over to see some of the girls, but not to make any plans for the afternoon, for she was going to take me to ride. Now, what do you think of that? Go to see the girls in the morning, and take a ride--an automobile ride!--in the afternoon. _In Andersonville_! Why, I couldn't believe my ears. Of course, I was wild and crazy with delight--but it was all so different. Why, I began to think almost that I was Marie, and not Mary at all. And it's been that way the whole week through. I've had a beautiful time. I've been so excited! And Mother is excited, too. Of course, I wrote her and told her all about it right away. And she wrote right back and wanted to know everything--everything I could tell her; all the little things. And she was so interested in Cousin Grace, and wanted to know all about her; said _she_ never heard of her before, and was she Father's own cousin, and how old was she, and was she pretty, and was Father around the house more now, and did I see a lot of him? She thought from something I said that I did. I've just been writing her again, and I could tell her more now, of course, than I could in that first letter. I've been here a whole week, and, of course, I know more about things, and have done more. I told her that Cousin Grace wasn't really Father's cousin at all, so it wasn't any wonder she hadn't ever heard of her. She was the wife of Father's third cousin who went to South America six years ago and caught the fever and died there. So this Mrs. Whitney isn't really any relation of his at all. But he'd always known her, even before she married his cousin; and so, when her husband died, and she didn't have any home, he asked her to come here. I don't know why Aunt Jane went away, but she's been gone 'most four months now, they say here. Nellie told me. Nellie is the maid--I mean hired girl--here now. (I _will_ keep forgetting that I'm Mary now and must use the Mary words here.) I told Mother that she (Cousin Grace) was quite old, but not so old as Aunt Jane. (I asked Nellie, and Nellie said she guessed she was thirty-five, but she didn't look a day over twenty-five.) And she _is_ pretty, and everybody loves her. I think even Father likes to have her around better than he did his own sister Jane, for he sometimes stays around quite a lot now--after meals, and in the evening, I mean. And that's what I told Mother. Oh, of course, he still likes his stars the best of anything, but not quite as well as he used to, maybe--not to give _all_ his time to them. I haven't anything especial to write. I'm just having a beautiful time. Of course, I miss Mother, but I know I'm going to have her again in just September--I forgot to say that Father is going to let me go back to school again this year ahead of his time, just as he did last year. So you see, really, I'm here only a little bit of a while, as it is now, and it's no wonder I keep forgetting I am Mary. I haven't got anything new for the love part of my story. I _am_ sorry about that. But there just isn't anything, so I'm afraid the book never will be a love story, anyway. Of course, I'm not with Mother now, so I don't know whether there's anything there, or not; but I don't think there will be. And as for Father--I've pretty nearly given him up. Anyhow, there never used to be any signs of hope for me there. As for myself--well, I've about given that up, too. I don't believe they're going to give me any chance to have anybody till I'm real old--probably not till I'm twenty-one or two. And I can't wait all that time to finish this book. * * * * * _One week later_. Things are awfully funny here this time. I wonder if it's all Cousin Grace that makes it so. Anyhow, she's just as different as different can be from Aunt Jane. And _things_ are different, everywhere. Why, I forget half the time that I'm Mary. Honestly, I do. I try to be Mary. I try to move quietly, speak gently, and laugh softly, just as Mother told me to. But before I know it I'm acting natural again--just like Marie, you know. And I believe it _is_ Cousin Grace. She never looks at you in Aunt Jane's I'm-amazed-at-you way. And she laughs herself a lot, and sings and plays, too--real pretty lively things; not just hymn tunes. And the house is different. There are four geraniums in the dining-room window, and the parlor is open every day. The wax flowers are there, but the hair wreath and the coffin plate are gone. Cousin Grace doesn't dress like Aunt Jane, either. She wears pretty white and blue dresses, and her hair is curly and fluffy. And so I think all this is why I keep forgetting to be Mary. But, of course, I understand that Father expects me to be Mary, and so I try to remember--only I can't. Why, I couldn't even show him how much I knew about the stars. I tried to the other night. I went out to the observatory where he was, and asked him questions about the stars. I tried to seem interested, and was going to tell him how I'd been studying about them, but he just laughed kind of funny, and said not to bother my pretty head about such things, but to come in and play to him on the piano. So, of course, I did. And he sat and listened to three whole pieces. Now, wasn't that funny? * * * * * _Two weeks later_. I understand it all now--everything: why the house is different, and Father, and everything. And it _is_ Cousin Grace, and it _is_ a love story. _Father is in love with her_. _Now_ I guess I shall have something for this book! It seems funny now that I didn't think of it at first. But I didn't--not until I heard Nellie and her beau talking about it. Nellie said she wasn't the only one in the house that was going to get married. And when he asked her what she meant, she said it was Dr. Anderson and Mrs. Whitney. That anybody could see it that wasn't as blind as a bat. My, but wasn't I excited? I just guess I was. And, of course, I saw then that I had been blind as a bat. But I began to open my eyes after that, and watch--not disagreeably, you know, but just glad and interested, and on account of the book. And I saw: That father stayed in the house a lot more than he used to. That he talked more. That he never thundered--I mean spoke stern and uncompromising to Cousin Grace the way he used to to Aunt Jane. That he smiled more. That he wasn't so absent-minded at meals and other times, but seemed to know we were there--Cousin Grace and I. That he actually asked Cousin Grace and me to play for him several times. That he went with us to the Sunday-School picnic. (I never saw Father at a picnic before, and I don't believe he ever saw himself at one.) That--oh, I don't know, but a whole lot of little things that I can't remember; but they were all unmistakable, very unmistakable. And I wondered, when I saw it all, that I _had_ been as blind as a bat before. Of course, I was glad--glad he's going to marry her, I mean. I was glad for everybody; for Father and Cousin Grace, for they would be happy, of course, and he wouldn't be lonesome any more. And I was glad for Mother because I knew she'd be glad that he'd at last found the good, kind woman to make a home for him. And, of course, I was glad for myself, for I'd much rather have Cousin Grace here than Aunt Jane, and I knew she'd make the best new mother of any of them. And last, but not least, I'm glad for the book, because now I've got a love story sure. That is, I'm pretty sure. Of course, it may not be so; but I think it is. When I wrote Mother I told her all about it--the signs and symptoms, I mean, and how different and thawed-out Father was; and I asked if she didn't think it was so, too. But she didn't answer that part. She didn't write much, anyway. It was an awfully snippy letter; but she said she had a headache and didn't feel at all well. So that was the reason, probably, why she didn't say more--about Father's love affair, I mean. She only said she was glad, she was sure, if Father had found an estimable woman to make a home for him, and she hoped they'd be happy. Then she went on talking about something else. And she didn't write much more, anyway, about anything. * * * * * _August_. Well, of all the topsy-turvy worlds, this is the topsy-turviest, I am sure. What _do_ they want me to do, and which do they want me to be? Oh, I wish I was just a plain Susie or Bessie, and not a cross-current and a contradiction, with a father that wants me to be one thing and a mother that wants me to be another! It was bad enough before, when Father wanted me to be Mary, and Mother wanted me to be Marie. But now-- Well, to begin at the beginning. It's all over--the love story, I mean, and I know now why it's been so hard for me to remember to be Mary and why everything is different, and all. _They don't want me to be Mary_. _They want me to be Marie_. And now I don't know what to think. If Mother's going to want me to be Mary, and Father's going to want me to be Marie, how am I going to know what anybody wants, ever? Besides, it was getting to be such a beautiful love story--Father and Cousin Grace. And now-- But let me tell you what happened. It was last night. We were on the piazza, Father, Cousin Grace, and I. And I was thinking how perfectly lovely it was that Father _was_ there, and that he was getting to be so nice and folksy, and how I _did_ hope it would last, even after he'd married her, and not have any of that incompatibility stuff come into it. Well, just then she got up and went into the house for something--Cousin Grace, I mean--and all of a sudden I determined to tell Father how glad I was, about him and Cousin Grace; and how I hoped it would last--having him out there with us, and all that. And I told him. I don't remember what I said exactly. But I know I hurried on and said it fast, so as to get in all I could before he interrupted; for he had interrupted right at the first with an exclamation; and I knew he was going to say more right away, just as soon as he got a chance. And I didn't want him to get a chance till I'd said what _I_ wanted to. But I hadn't anywhere near said what I wanted to when he did stop me. Why, he almost jumped out of his chair. "Mary!" he gasped. "What in the world are you talking about?" "Why, Father, I was telling you," I explained. And I tried to be so cool and calm that it would make him calm and cool, too. (But it didn't calm him or cool him one bit.) "It's about when you're married, and--" "Married!" he interrupted again. (They never let _me_ interrupt like that!) "To Cousin Grace--yes. But, Father, you--you _are_ going to marry Cousin Grace, aren't you?" I cried--and I did 'most cry, for I saw by his face that he was not. "That is not my present intention," he said. His lips came together hard, and he looked over his shoulder to see if Cousin Grace was coming back. "But you're going to _sometime_," I begged him. "I do not expect to." Again he looked over his shoulder to see if she was coming. I looked, too, and we both saw through the window that she had gone into the library and lighted up and was sitting at the table reading. I fell back in my chair, and I know I looked grieved and hurt and disappointed, as I almost sobbed: "Oh, Father, and when I _thought_ you were going to!" "There, there, child!" He spoke, stern and almost cross now. "This absurd, nonsensical idea has gone quite far enough. Let us think no more about it." "It isn't absurd and nonsensical!" I cried. And I could hardly say the words, I was choking up so. "Everybody said you were going to, and I wrote Mother so; and--" "You wrote that to your mother?" He did jump from his chair this time. "Yes; and she was glad." "Oh, she was!" He sat down sort of limp-like and queer. "Yes. She said she was glad you'd found an estimable woman to make a home for you." "Oh, she did." He said this, too, in that queer, funny, quiet kind of way. "Yes." I spoke, decided and firm. I'd begun to think, all of a sudden, that maybe he didn't appreciate Mother as much as she did him; and I determined right then and there to make him, if I could. When I remembered all the lovely things she'd said about him-- "Father," I began; and I spoke this time, even more decided and firm. "I don't believe you appreciate Mother." "Eh? What?" He made _me_ jump this time, he turned around with such a jerk, and spoke so sharply. But in spite of the jump I still held on to my subject, firm and decided. "I say I don't believe you appreciate my mother. You acted right now as if you didn't believe she meant it when I told you she was glad you had found an estimable woman to make a home for you. But she did mean it. I know, because she said it before, once, last year, that she hoped you _would_ find one." "Oh, she did." He sat back in his chair again, sort of limp-like. But I couldn't tell yet, from his face, whether I'd convinced him or not. So I went on. "Yes, and that isn't all. There's another reason, why I know Mother always has--has your best interest at heart. She--she tried to make me over into Mary before I came, so as to please you." "She did _what_?" Once more he made me jump, he turned so suddenly, and spoke with such a short, sharp snap. But in spite of the jump I went right on, just as I had before, firm and decided. I told him everything--all about the cooking lessons, and the astronomy book we read an hour every day, and the pink silk dress I couldn't have, and even about the box of chocolates and the self-discipline. And how she said if she'd had self-discipline when she was a girl, her life would have been very different. And I told him about how she began to hush me up from laughing too loud, or making any kind of noise, because I was soon to be Mary, and she wanted me to get used to it, so I wouldn't trouble him when I got here. I talked very fast and hurriedly. I was afraid he'd interrupt, and I wanted to get in all I could before he did. But he didn't interrupt at all. I couldn't see how he was taking it, though--what I said--for after the very first he sat back in his chair and shaded his eyes with his hand; and he sat like that all the time I was talking. He did not even stir until I said how at the last she bought me the homely shoes and the plain dark suit so I could go as Mary, and be Mary when Aunt Jane first saw me get off the train. When I said that, he dropped his hand and turned around and stared at me. And there was such a funny look in his eyes. "I _thought_ you didn't look the same!" he cried; "not so white and airy and--and--I can't explain it, but you looked different. And yet, I didn't think it could be so, for I knew you looked just as you did when you came, and that no one had asked you to--to put on Mary's things this year." He sort of smiled when he said that; then he got up and began to walk up and down the piazza, muttering: "So you _came_ as Mary, you _came_ as Mary." Then, after a minute, he gave a funny little laugh and sat down. Mrs. Small came up the front walk then to see Cousin Grace, and Father told her to go right into the library where Cousin Grace was. So we were left alone again, after a minute. It was 'most dark on the piazza, but I could see Father's face in the light from the window; and it looked--well, I'd never seen it look like that before. It was as if something that had been on it for years had dropped off and left it clear where before it had been blurred and indistinct. No, that doesn't exactly describe it either. I _can't_ describe it. But I'll go on and say what he said. After Mrs. Small had gone into the house, and he saw that she was sitting down with Cousin Grace in the library, he turned to me and said: "And so you came as Mary?" I said yes, I did. "Well, I--I got ready for Marie." But then I didn't quite understand, not even when I looked at him, and saw the old understanding twinkle in his eyes. "You mean--you thought I was coming as Marie, of course," I said then. "Yes," he nodded. "But I came as Mary." "I see now that you did." He drew in his breath with a queer little catch to it; then he got up and walked up and down the _piazza_ again. (Why do old folks always walk up and down the room like that when they're thinking hard about something? Father always does; and Mother does lots of times, too.) But it wasn't but a minute this time before Father came and sat down. "Well, Mary," he began; and his voice sounded odd, with a little shake in it. "You've told me your story, so I suppose I may as well tell you mine--now. You see, I not only got ready for Marie, but I had planned to keep her Marie, and not let her be Mary--at all." And then he told me. He told me how he'd never forgotten that day in the parlor when I cried (and made a wet spot on the arm of the sofa--_I_ never forgot that!), and he saw then how hard it was for me to live here, with him so absorbed in his work and Aunt Jane so stern in her black dress. And he said I put it very vividly when I talked about being Marie in Boston, and Mary here, and he saw just how it was. And so he thought and thought about it all winter, and wondered what he could do. And after a time it came to him--he'd let me be Marie here; that is, he'd try to make it so I could be Marie. And he was just wondering how he was going to get Aunt Jane to help him when she was sent for and asked to go to an old friend who was sick. And he told her to go, by all means to go. Then he got Cousin Grace to come here. He said he knew Cousin Grace, and he was very sure she would know how to help him to let me stay Marie. So he talked it over with her--how they would let me laugh, and sing and play the piano all I wanted to, and wear the clothes I brought with me, and be just as near as I could be the way I was in Boston. "And to think, after all my preparation for Marie, you should _be_ Mary already, when you came," he finished. "Yes. Wasn't it funny?" I laughed. "All the time _you_ were getting ready for Marie, Mother was getting me ready to be Mary. It _was_ funny!" And it did seem funny to me then. But Father was not laughing. He had sat back in his chair, and had covered his eyes with his hand again, as if he was thinking and thinking, just as hard as he could. And I suppose it did seem queer to him, that he should be trying to make me Marie, and all the while Mother was trying to make me Mary. And it seemed so to me, as I began to think it over. It wasn't funny at all, any longer. "And so your mother--did that," Father muttered; and there was the queer little catch in his breath again. He didn't say any more, not a single word. And after a minute he got up and went into the house. But he didn't go into the library where Mrs. Small and Cousin Grace were talking. He went straight upstairs to his own room and shut the door. I heard it. And he was still there when I went up to bed afterwards. Well, I guess he doesn't feel any worse than I do. I thought at first it was funny, a good joke--his trying to have me Marie while Mother was making me over into Mary. But I see now that it isn't. It's awful. Why, how am I going to know at all who to be--now? Before, I used to know just when to be Mary, and when to be Marie--Mary with Father, Marie with Mother. Now I don't know at all. Why, they can't even seem to agree on that! I suppose it's just some more of that incompatibility business showing up even when they are apart. And poor me--I have to suffer for it. I'm beginning to see that the child does suffer--I mean the child of unlikes. Now, look at me right now--about my clothes, for instance. (Of course clothes are a little thing, you may think; but I don't think anything's little that's always with you like clothes are!) Well, here all summer, and even before I came, I've been wearing stuffy gingham and clumpy shoes to please Father. And Father isn't pleased at all. He wanted me to wear the Marie things. And there you are. How do you suppose Mother's going to feel when I tell her that after all her pains Father didn't like it at all. He wanted me to be Marie. It's a shame, after all the pains she took. But I won't write it to her, anyway. Maybe I won't have to tell her, unless she _asks_ me. But _I_ know it. And, pray, what am I to do? Of course, I can _act_ like Marie here all right, if that is what folks want. (I guess I have been doing it a good deal of the time, anyway, for I kept forgetting that I was Mary.) But I can't _wear_ Marie, for I haven't a single Marie thing here. They're all Mary. That's all I brought. Oh, dear suz me! Why couldn't Father and Mother have been just the common live-happy-ever-after kind, or else found out before they married that they were unlikes? * * * * * _September_. Well, vacation is over, and I go back to Boston to-morrow. It's been very nice and I've had a good time, in spite of being so mixed up as to whether I was Mary or Marie. It wasn't so bad as I was afraid it would be. Very soon after Father and I had that talk on the piazza, Cousin Grace took me down to the store and bought me two new white dresses, and the dearest little pair of shoes I ever saw. She said Father wanted me to have them. And that's all--every single word that's been said about that Mary-and-Marie business. And even that didn't really _say_ anything--not by name. And Cousin Grace never mentioned it again. And Father never mentioned it at all. Not a word. But he's been queer. He's been awfully queer. Some days he's been just as he was when I first came this time--real talky and folksy, and as if he liked to be with us. Then for whole days at a time he'd be more as he used to--stern, and stirring his coffee when there isn't any coffee there; and staying all the evening and half the night out in his observatory. Some days he's talked a lot with me--asked me questions just as he used to, all about what I did in Boston, and Mother, and the people that came there to see her, and everything. And he spoke of the violinist again, and, of course, this time I told him all about him, and that he didn't come any more, nor Mr. Easterbrook, either; and Father was _so_ interested! Why, it seemed sometimes as if he just couldn't hear enough about things. Then, all of a sudden, at times, he'd get right up in the middle of something I was saying and act as if he was just waiting for me to finish my sentence so he could go. And he did go, just as soon as I _had_ finished my sentence. And after that, maybe, he wouldn't hardly speak to me again for a whole day. And so that's why I say he's been so queer since that night on the piazza. But most of the time he's been lovely, perfectly lovely. And so has Cousin Grace, And I've had a beautiful time. But I do wish they _would_ marry--Father and Cousin Grace, I mean. And I'm not talking now entirely for the sake of the book. It's for their sakes--especially for Father's sake. I've been thinking what Mother used to say about him, when she was talking about my being Mary--how he was lonely, and needed a good, kind woman to make a home for him. And while I've been thinking of it, I've been watching him; and I think he does need a good, kind woman to make a home for him. I'd be _willing_ to have a new mother for his sake! Oh, yes, I know he's got Cousin Grace, but he may not have her always. Maybe she'll be sent for same as Aunt Jane was. _Then_ what's he going to do, I should like to know? CHAPTER VIII WHICH IS THE REAL LOVE STORY BOSTON. _Four days later_. Well, here I am again in Boston. Mother and the rest met me at the station, and everybody seemed glad to see me, just as they did before. And I was glad to see them. But I didn't feel anywhere near so excited, and sort of crazy, as I did last year. I tried to, but I couldn't. I don't know why. Maybe it was because I'd been Marie all summer, anyway, so I wasn't so crazy to be Marie now, not needing any rest from being Mary. Maybe it was 'cause I sort of hated to leave Father. And I did hate to leave him, especially when I found he hated to have me leave him. And he did. He told me so at the junction. You see, our train was late, and we had to wait for it; and there was where he told me. He had come all the way down there with me, just as he had before. But he hadn't acted the same at all. He didn't fidget this time, nor walk over to look at maps and time-tables, nor flip out his watch every other minute with such a bored air that everybody knew he was seeing me off just as a duty. And he didn't ask if I was warmly clad, and had I left anything, either. He just sat and talked to me, and he asked me had I been a little happier there with him this year than last; and he said he hoped I had. And I told him, of course, I had; that it had been perfectly beautiful there, even if there had been such a mix-up of him getting ready for Marie, and Mother sending Mary. And he laughed and looked queer--sort of half glad and half sorry; and said he shouldn't worry about that. Then the train came, and we got on and rode down to the junction. And there, while we were waiting for the other train, he told me how sorry he was to have me go. He said I would never know how he missed me after I went last year. He said you never knew how you missed things--and people--till they were gone. And I wondered if, by the way he said it, he wasn't thinking of Mother more than he was of me, and of her going long ago. And he looked so sort of sad and sorry and noble and handsome, sitting there beside me, that suddenly I 'most wanted to cry. And I told him I _did_ love him, I loved him dearly, and I had loved to be with him this summer, and that I'd stay his whole six months with him next year if he wanted me to. He shook his head at that; but he did look happy and pleased, and said I'd never know how glad he was that I'd said that, and that he should prize it very highly--the love of his little daughter. He said you never knew how to prize love, either, till you'd lost it; and he said he'd learned his lesson, and learned it well. I knew then, of course, that he was thinking of Mother and the long ago. And I felt so sorry for him. "But I'll stay--I'll stay the whole six months next year!" I cried again. But again he shook his head. "No, no, my dear; I thank you, and I'd love to have you; but it is much better for you that you stay in Boston through the school year, and I want you to do it. It'll just make the three months I do have you all the dearer, because of the long nine months that I do not," he went on very cheerfully and briskly; "and don't look so solemn and long-faced. You're not to blame--for this wretched situation." The train came then, and he put me on board, and he kissed me again--but I was expecting it this time, of course. Then I whizzed off, and he was left standing all alone on the platform. And I felt so sorry for him; and all the way down to Boston I kept thinking of him--what he said, and how he looked, and how fine and splendid and any-woman-would-be-proud-of-him he was as he stood on the platform waving good-bye. And so I guess I was still thinking of him and being sorry for him when I got to Boston. That's why I couldn't be so crazy and hilariously glad when the folks met me, I suspect. Some way, all of a sudden, I found myself wishing _he_ could be there, too. Of course, I knew that that was bad and wicked and unkind to Mother, and she'd feel so grieved not to have me satisfied with her. And I wouldn't have told her of it for the world. So I tried just as hard as I could to forget him--on account of Mother, so as to be loyal to her. And I did 'most forget him by the time I'd got home. But it all came back again a little later when we were unpacking my trunk. You see, Mother found the two new white dresses, and the dear little shoes. I knew then, of course, that she'd have to know all--I mean, how she hadn't pleased Father, even after all her pains trying to have me go as Mary. "Why, Marie, what in the world is this?" she demanded, holding up one of the new dresses. I could have cried. I suppose she saw by my face how awfully I felt 'cause she'd found it. And, of course, she saw something was the matter; and she thought it was-- Well, the first thing _I_ knew she was looking at me in her very sternest, sorriest way, and saying: "Oh, Marie, how could you? I'm ashamed of you! Couldn't you wear the Mary dresses one little three months to please your father?" I did cry, then. After all I'd been through, to have her accuse _me_ of getting those dresses! Well, I just couldn't stand it. And I told her so as well as I could, only I was crying so by now that I could hardly speak. I told her how it was hard enough to be Mary part of the time, and Marie part of the time, when I _knew_ what they wanted me to be. But when she tried to have me Mary while he wanted me Marie, and he tried to have me Marie while she wanted me Mary--I did not know what they wanted; and I wished I had never been born unless I could have been born a plain Susie or Bessie, or Annabelle, and not a Mary Marie that was all mixed up till I didn't know what I was. And then I cried some more. Mother dropped the dress then, and took me in her arms over on the couch, and she said, "There, there," and that I was tired and nervous, and all wrought up, and to cry all I wanted to. And by and by, when I was calmer I could tell Mother all about it. And I did. I told her how hard I tried to be Mary all the way up to Andersonville and after I got there; and how then I found out, all of a sudden one day, that father had got ready for _Marie_, and he didn't want me to be Mary, and that was why he had got Cousin Grace and the automobile and the geraniums in the window, and, oh, everything that made it nice and comfy and homey. And then is when they bought me the new white dresses and the little white shoes. And I told Mother, of course, it was lovely to be Marie, and I liked it, only I knew _she_ would feel bad to think, after all _her_ pains to make me Mary, Father didn't want me Mary at all. "I don't think you need to worry--about that," stammered Mother. And when I looked at her, her face was all flushed, and sort of queer, but not a bit angry. And she went on in the same odd little shaky voice: "But, tell me, why--why did--your father want you to be Marie and not Mary?" And then I told her how he said he'd remembered what I'd said to him in the parlor that day--how tired I got being Mary, and how I'd put on Marie's things just to get a little vacation from her; and he said he'd never forgotten. And so when it came near time for me to come again, he determined to fix it so I wouldn't have to be Mary at all. And so that was why. And I told Mother it was all right, and of course I liked it; only it _did_ mix me up awfully, not knowing which wanted me to be Mary now, and which Marie, when they were both telling me different from what they ever had before. And that it was hard, when you were trying just the best you knew how. And I began to cry again. And she said there, there, once more, and patted me on my shoulder, and told me I needn't worry any more. And that _she_ understood it, if I didn't. In fact, she was beginning to understand a lot of things that she'd never understood before. And she said it was very, very dear of Father to do what he did, and that I needn't worry about her being displeased at it. That she was pleased, and that she believed he meant her to be. And she said I needn't think any more whether to be Mary or Marie; but to be just a good, loving little daughter to both of them; and that was all she asked, and she was very sure it was all Father would ask, too. I told her then how I thought he _did_ care a little about having me there, and that I knew he was going to miss me. And I told her why--what he'd said that morning in the junction--about appreciating love, and not missing things or people until you didn't have them; and how he'd learned his lesson, and all that. And Mother grew all flushed and rosy again, but she was pleased. I knew she was. And she said some beautiful things about making other people happy, instead of looking to ourselves all the time, just as she had talked once, before I went away. And I felt again that hushed, stained-window, soft-music, everybody-kneeling kind of a way; and I was so happy! And it lasted all the rest of that evening till I went to sleep. And for the first time a beautiful idea came to me, when I thought how Mother was trying to please Father, and he was trying to please her. Wouldn't it be perfectly lovely and wonderful if Father and Mother should fall in love with each other all over again, and get married? I guess _then_ this would be a love story all right, all right! * * * * * _October._ Oh, how I wish that stained-window, everybody-kneeling feeling _would_ last. But it never does. Just the next morning, when I woke up, it rained. And I didn't feel pleased a bit. Still I remembered what had happened the night before, and a real glow came over me at the beautiful idea I had gone to sleep with. I wanted to tell Mother, and ask her if it couldn't be, and wouldn't she let it be, if Father would. So, without waiting to dress me, I hurried across the hall to her room and told her all about it--my idea, and everything. But she said, "Nonsense," and, "Hush, hush," when I asked her if she and Father couldn't fall in love all over again and get married. And she said not to get silly notions into my head. And she wasn't a bit flushed and teary, as she had been the night before, and she didn't talk at all as she had then, either. And it's been that way ever since. Things have gone along in just the usual humdrum way, and she's never been the same as she was that night I came. Something--a little something--_did_ happen yesterday, though. There's going to be another big astronomy meeting here in Boston this month, just as there was when Father found Mother years ago; and Grandfather brought home word that Father was going to be one of the chief speakers. And he told Mother he supposed she'd go and hear him. I couldn't make out whether he was joking or not. (I never can tell when Grandfather's joking.) But Aunt Hattie took it right up in earnest, and said, "Pooh, pooh," she guessed not. She could _see_ Madge going down to that hall to hear Dr. Anderson speak! And then a funny thing happened. I looked at Mother, and I saw her head come up with a queer little jerk. "Well, yes, I am thinking of going," she said, just as calm and cool as could be. "When does he speak, Father?" And when Aunt Hattie pooh-poohed some more, and asked how _could_ she do such a thing, Mother answered: "Because Charles Anderson is the father of my little girl, and I think she should hear him speak. Therefore, Hattie, I intend to take her." And then she asked Grandfather again when Father was going to speak. I'm so excited! Only think of seeing my father up on a big platform with a lot of big men, and hearing him speak! And he'll be the very smartest and handsomest one there, too. You see if he isn't! * * * * * _Two weeks and one day later_. Oh, I've got a lot to write this time--I mean, a lot has happened. Still, I don't know as it's going to take so very long to tell it. Besides, I'm almost too excited to write, anyway. But I'm going to do the best I can to tell it, just as it happened. Father's here--right here in Boston. I don't know when he came. But the first day of the meeting was day before yesterday, and he was here then. The paper said he was, and his picture was there, too. There were a lot of pictures, but his was away ahead of the others. It was the very best one on the page. (I told you it would be that way.) Mother saw it first. That is, I think she did. She had the paper in her hand, looking at it, when I came into the room; but as soon as she saw me she laid it right down quick on the table. If she hadn't been quite so quick about it, and if she hadn't looked quite so queer when she did it, I wouldn't have thought anything at all. But when I went over to the table after she had gone, and saw the paper with Father's picture right on the first page--and the biggest picture there--I knew then, of course, what she'd been looking at. I looked at it then, and I read what it said, too. It was lovely. Why, I hadn't any idea Father was so big. I was prouder than ever of him. It told all about the stars and comets he'd discovered, and the books he'd written on astronomy, and how he was president of the college at Andersonville, and that he was going to give an address the next day. And I read it all--every word. And I made up my mind right there and then that I'd cut out that piece and save it. But that night, when I went to the library cupboard to get the paper, I couldn't do it, after all. Oh, the paper was there, but that page was gone. There wasn't a bit of it left. Somebody had taken it right out. I never thought then of Mother. But I believe now that it _was_ Mother, for-- But I mustn't tell you that part now. Stories are just like meals. You have to eat them--I mean tell them--in regular order, and not put the ice-cream in where the soup ought to be. So I'm not going to tell yet why I suspect it was Mother that cut out that page of the paper with Father's picture in it. Well, the next morning was Father's lecture, and I went with Mother. Of course Grandfather was there, too, but he was with the other astronomers, I guess. Anyhow, he didn't sit with us. And Aunt Hattie didn't go at all. So Mother and I were alone. We sat back--a long ways back. I wanted to go up front, real far front--the front seat, if I could get it; and I told Mother so. But she said, "Mercy, no!" and shuddered, and went back two more rows from where she was, and got behind a big post. I guess she was afraid Father would see us, but that's what _I_ wanted. I wanted him to see us. I wanted him to be right in the middle of his lecture and look down and see right there before him his little girl Mary, and she that had been the wife of his bosom. Now _that_ would have been what I called thrilling, real thrilling, especially if he jumped or grew red, or white, or stammered, or stopped short, or anything to show that he'd seen us--and cared. I'd have loved that. But we sat back where Mother wanted to, behind the post. And, of course, Father never saw us at all. It was a lovely lecture. Oh, of course, I don't mean to say that I understood it. I didn't. But his voice was fine, and he looked just too grand for anything, with the light on his noble brow, and he used the loveliest big words that I ever heard. And folks clapped, and looked at each other, and nodded, and once or twice they laughed. And when he was all through they clapped again, harder than ever. And I was so proud of him I wanted to stand right up and holler, "He's my father! He's my father!" just as loud as I could. But, of course, I didn't. I just clapped like the rest; only I wished my hands were big like the man's next to me, so I could have made more noise. Another man spoke then, a little (not near so good as Father), and then it was all over, and everybody got up to go; and I saw that a lot of folks were crowding down the aisle, and I looked and there was Father right in front of the platform shaking hands with folks. I looked at Mother then. Her face was all pinky-white, and her eyes were shining. I guess she thought I spoke, for all of a sudden she shook her head and said: "No, no, I couldn't, I couldn't! But _you_ may, dear. Run along and speak to him; but don't stay. Remember, Mother is waiting, and come right back." I knew then that it must have been just my eyes that spoke, for I _did_ want to go down there and speak to Father. Oh, I did want to go! And I went then, of course. He didn't see me at first. There was a long line of us, and a big fat man was doing a lot of talking to him so we couldn't move at all, for a time. Then it came to when I was just three people away from him. And I was looking straight at him. He saw me then. And, oh, how I did love the look that came to his face; it was so surprised and glad, and said, "Oh! _You_!" in such a perfectly lovely way that I choked all up and wanted to _cry_. (The idea!--cry when I was so _glad_ to see him!) I guess the two folks ahead of me didn't think they got much attention, and the next minute he had drawn me out of the line, and we were both talking at once, and telling each other how glad we were to see each other. But he was looking for Mother--I know he was; for the next minute after he saw me, he looked right over my head at the woman back of me. And all the while he was talking with me, his eyes would look at me and then leap as swift as lightning first here, and then there, all over the hall. But he didn't see her. I knew he didn't see her, by the look on his face. And pretty quick I said I'd have to go. And then he said: "Your mother--perhaps she didn't--_did_ she come?" And his face grew all red and rosy as he asked the question. And I said yes, and she was waiting, and that was why I had to go back right away. And he said, "Yes, yes, to be sure," and, "good-bye." But he still held my hand tight, and his eyes were still roving all over the house. And I had to tell him again that I really had to go; and I had to pull real determined at my hand, before I could break away. And I don't believe I could have gone even then if some other folks hadn't come up at that minute. I went back to Mother then. The hall was almost empty, and she wasn't anywhere in sight at all; but I found her just outside the door. I knew then why Father's face showed that he hadn't found her. She wasn't there to find. I suspect she had looked out for that. Her face was still pinky-white, and her eyes were shining; and she wanted to know everything we had said--everything. So she found out, of course, that he had asked if she was there. But she didn't say anything herself, not anything. She didn't say anything, either, at the luncheon table, when Grandfather was talking with Aunt Hattie about the lecture, and telling some of the things Father had said. Grandfather said it was an admirable address, scholarly and convincing, or something like that. And he said that he thought Dr. Anderson had improved greatly in looks and manner. And he looked straight at Mother when he said that; but still Mother never said a word. In the afternoon I went to walk with one of the girls; and when I came in I couldn't find Mother. She wasn't anywhere downstairs, nor in her room, nor mine, nor anywhere else on that floor. Aunt Hattie said no, she wasn't out, but that she was sure she didn't know where she was. She must be somewhere in the house. I went upstairs then, another flight. There wasn't anywhere else to go, and Mother must be _somewhere_, of course. And it seemed suddenly to me as if I'd just _got_ to find her. I _wanted_ her so. And I found her. In the little back room where Aunt Hattie keeps her trunks and moth-ball bags, Mother was on the floor in the corner crying. And when I exclaimed out and ran over to her, I found she was sitting beside an old trunk that was open; and across her lap was a perfectly lovely pale-blue satin dress all trimmed with silver lace that had grown black. And Mother was crying and crying as if her heart would break. Of course, I tried and tried to stop her, and I begged her to tell me what was the matter. But I couldn't do a thing, not a thing, not for a long time. Then I happened to say what a lovely dress, only what a pity it was that the lace was all black. She gave a little choking cry then, and began to talk--little short sentences all choked up with sobs, so that I could hardly tell what she was talking about. Then, little by little, I began to understand. She said yes, it was all black--tarnished; and that it was just like everything that she had had anything to do with--tarnished: her life and her marriage, and Father's life, and mine--everything was tarnished, just like that silver lace on that dress. And she had done it by her thoughtless selfishness and lack of self-discipline. And when I tried and tried to tell her no, it wasn't, and that I didn't feel tarnished a bit, and that she wasn't, nor Father either, she only cried all the more, and shook her head and began again, all choked up. She said this little dress was the one she wore at the big reception where she first met Father. It was a beautiful blue then, all shining and spotless, and the silver lace glistened like frost in the sunlight. And she was so proud and happy when Father--and he was fine and splendid and handsome then, too, she said--singled her out, and just couldn't seem to stay away from her a minute all the evening. And then four days later he asked her to marry him; and she was still more proud and happy. And she said their married life, when they started out, was just like that beautiful dress, all shining and spotless and perfect; but that it wasn't two months before a little bit of tarnish appeared, and then another and another. She said she was selfish and willful and exacting, and wanted Father all to herself; and she didn't stop to think that he had his work to do, and his place to make in the world; and that all of living, to him, wasn't just in being married to her, and attending to her every whim. She said she could see it all now, but that she couldn't then, she was too young, and undisciplined, and she'd never been denied a thing in the world she wanted. As she said that, right before my eyes rose that box of chocolates she made me eat one at a time; but, of course, I didn't say anything! Besides, Mother hurried right on talking. She said things went on worse and worse--and it was all her fault. She grew sour and cross and disagreeable. She could see now that she did. But she did not realize at all then what she was doing. She was just thinking of herself--always herself; her rights, her wrongs, her hurt feelings, her wants and wishes. She never once thought that _he_ had rights and wrongs and hurt feelings, maybe. And so the tarnish kept growing more and more. She said there was nothing like selfishness to tarnish the beautiful fabric of married life. (Isn't that a lovely sentence? I said that over and over to myself so as to be sure and remember it, so I could get it into this story. I thought it was beautiful.) She said a lot more--oh, ever so much more; but I can't remember it all. (I lost some while I was saying that sentence over and over, so as to remember it.) I know that she went on to say that by and by the tarnish began to dim the brightness of my life, too; and that was the worst of all, she said--that innocent children should suffer, and their young lives be spotted by the kind of living I'd had to have, with this wretched makeshift of a divided home. She began to cry again then, and begged me to forgive her, and I cried and tried to tell her I didn't mind it; but, of course, I'm older now, and I know I do mind it, though I'm trying just as hard as I can not to be Mary when I ought to be Marie, or Marie when I ought to be Mary. Only I get all mixed up so, lately, and I said so, and I guess I cried some more. Mother jumped up then, and said, "Tut, tut," what was she thinking of to talk like this when it couldn't do a bit of good, but only made matters worse. And she said that only went to prove how she was still keeping on tarnishing my happiness and bringing tears to my bright eyes, when certainly nothing of the whole wretched business was my fault. She thrust the dress back into the trunk then, and shut the lid. Then she took me downstairs and bathed my eyes and face with cold water, and hers, too. And _she_ began to talk and laugh and tell stories, and be gayer and jollier than I'd seen her for ever so long. And she was that way at dinner, too, until Grandfather happened to mention the reception to-morrow night, and ask if she was going. She flushed up red then, oh, so red! and said, "Certainly not." Then she added quick, with a funny little drawing-in of her breath, that she should let Marie go, though, with her Aunt Hattie. There was an awful fuss then. Aunt Hattie raised her eyebrows and threw up her hands, and said: "That child--in the evening! Why, Madge, are you crazy?" And Mother said no, she wasn't crazy at all; but it was the only chance Father would have to see me, and she didn't feel that she had any right to deprive him of that privilege, and she didn't think it would do me any harm to be out this once late in the evening. And she intended to let me go. Aunt Hattie still didn't approve, and she said more, quite a lot more; but Grandfather spoke up and took my part, and said that, in his opinion, Madge was right, quite right, and that it was no more than fair that the man should have a chance to talk with his own child for a little while, and that he would be very glad to take me himself and look after me, if Aunt Hattie did not care to take the trouble. Aunt Hattie bridled up at that, and said that that wasn't the case at all; that she'd be very glad to look after me; and if Mother had quite made up her mind that she wanted me to go, they'd call the matter settled. And Mother said she had, and so it was settled. And I'm going. I'm to wear my new white dress with the pink rosebud trimming, and I'm so excited I can hardly wait till to-morrow night. But--oh, if only Mother would go, too! * * * * * _Two days later_. Well, _now_ I guess something's doing all right! And my hand is shaking so I can hardly write--it wants to get ahead so fast and _tell_. But I'm going to keep it sternly back and tell it just as it happened, and not begin at the ice-cream instead of the soup. Very well, then. I went last night with Grandfather and Aunt Hattie to the reception; and Mother said I looked very sweet, and any-father-ought-to-be-proud-of me in my new dress. Grandfather patted me, put on his glasses, and said, "Well, well, bless my soul! Is this our little Mary Marie?" And even Aunt Hattie said if I acted as well as I looked I'd do very well. Then Mother kissed me and ran upstairs _quick_. But I saw the tears in her eyes, and I knew why she hurried so. At the reception I saw Father right away, but he didn't see me for a long time. He stood in a corner, and lots of folks came up and spoke to him and shook hands; and he bowed and smiled--but in between, when there wasn't anybody noticing, he looked so tired and bored. After a time he stirred and changed his position, and I think he was hunting for a chance to get away, when all of a sudden his eyes, roving around the room, lighted on me. My! but just didn't I love the way he came through that crowd, straight toward me, without paying one bit of attention to the folks that tried to stop him on the way. And when he got to me, he looked so glad to see me, only there was the same quick searching with his eyes, beyond and around me, as if he was looking for somebody else, just as he had done the morning of the lecture. And I knew it was Mother, of course. So I said: "No, she didn't come." "So I see," he answered. And there was such a hurt, sorry look away back in his eyes. But right away he smiled, and said: "But _you_ came! I've got _you_." Then he began to talk and tell stories, just as if I was a young lady to be entertained. And he took me over to where they had things to eat, and just heaped my plate with chicken patties and sandwiches and olives and pink-and-white frosted cakes and ice-cream (not all at once, of course, but in order). And I had a perfectly beautiful time. And Father seemed to like it pretty well. But after a while he grew sober again, and his eyes began to rove all around the room. He took me to a little seat in the corner then, and we sat down and began to talk--only Father didn't talk much. He just listened to what I said, and his eyes grew deeper and darker and sadder, and they didn't rove around so much, after a time, but just stared fixedly at nothing, away out across the room. By and by he stirred and drew a long sigh, and said, almost under his breath: "It was just such another night as this." And of course, I asked what was--and then I knew, almost before he had told me. "That I first saw your mother, my dear." "Oh, yes, I know!" I cried, eager to tell him that I _did_ know. "And she must have looked lovely in that perfectly beautiful blue silk dress all silver lace." He turned and stared at me. "How did _you_ know that?" he demanded. "I saw it." "You saw it!" "Yesterday, yes--the dress," I nodded. "But how _could_ you?" he asked, frowning, and looking so surprised. "Why, that dress must be--seventeen years old, or more." I nodded again, and I suppose I did look pleased: it's such fun to have a secret, you know, and watch folks guess and wonder. And I kept him guessing and wondering for quite a while. Then, of course, I told him that it was upstairs in Grandfather's trunk-room; that Mother had got it out, and I saw it. "But, what--was your mother doing with that dress?" he asked then, looking even more puzzled and mystified. And then suddenly I thought and remembered that Mother was crying. And, of course, she wouldn't want Father to know she was crying over it--that dress she had worn when he first met her long ago! (I don't think women ever want men to know such things, do you? I know I shouldn't!) So I didn't tell. I just kind of tossed it off, and mumbled something about her looking it over; and I was going to say something else, but I saw that Father wasn't listening. He had begun to talk again, softly, as if to himself. "I suppose to-night, seeing you, and all this, brought it back to me so vividly." Then he turned and looked at me. "You are very like your mother to-night, dear." "I suppose I am, maybe, when I'm Marie," I nodded. He laughed with his lips, but his eyes didn't laugh one bit as he said: "What a quaint little fancy of yours that is, child--as if you were two in one." "But I am two in one," I declared. "That's why I'm a cross-current and a contradiction, you know," I explained. I thought he'd understand. But he didn't. I supposed, of course, he knew what a cross-current and a contradiction was. But he turned again and stared at me. "A--_what_?" he demanded. "A cross-current and a contradiction," I explained once more. "Children of unlikes, you know. Nurse Sarah told me that long ago. Didn't you ever hear that--that a child of unlikes was a cross-current and a contradiction?" "Well, no--I--hadn't," answered Father, in a queer, half-smothered voice. He half started from his seat. I think he was going to walk up and down, same as he usually does. But in a minute he saw he couldn't, of course, with all those people around there. So he sat back again in his chair. For a minute he just frowned and stared at nothing; then he spoke again, as if half to himself. "I suppose, Mary, we were--unlikes, your mother and I. That's just what we were; though I never thought of it before, in just that way." He waited, then went on, still half to himself, his eyes on the dancers: "She loved things like this--music, laughter, gayety. I abhorred them. I remember how bored I was that night here--till I saw her." "And did you fall in love with her right away?" I just couldn't help asking that question. Oh, I do so adore love stories! A queer little smile came to Father's lips. "Well, yes, I think I did, Mary. There'd been dozens and dozens of young ladies that had flitted by in their airy frocks--and I never looked twice at them. I never looked twice at your mother, for that matter, Mary." (A funny little twinkle came into Father's eyes. I _love_ him with that twinkle!) "I just looked at her once--and then kept on looking till it seemed as if I just couldn't take my eyes off her. And after a little her glance met mine--and the whole throng melted away, and there wasn't another soul in the room but just us two. Then she looked away, and the throng came back. But I still looked at her." "Was she so awfully pretty, Father?" I could feel the little thrills tingling all over me. _Now_ I was getting a love story! "She was, my dear. She was very lovely. But it wasn't just that--it was a joyous something that I could not describe. It was as if she were a bird, poised for flight. I know it now for what it was--the very incarnation of the spirit of youth. And she _was_ young. Why, Mary, she was not so many years older than you yourself, now." I nodded, and I guess I sighed. "I know--where the brook and river meet," I said; "only they won't let _me_ have any lovers at all." "Eh? What?" Father had turned and was looking at me so funny. "Well, no, I should say not," he said then. "You aren't sixteen yet. And your mother--I suspect _she_ was too young. If she hadn't been quite so young--" He stopped, and stared again straight ahead at the dancers--without seeing one of them, I knew. Then he drew a great deep sigh that seemed to come from the very bottom of his boots. "But it was my fault, my fault, every bit of it," he muttered, still staring straight ahead. "If I hadn't been so thoughtless--As if I could imprison that bright spirit of youth in a great dull cage of conventionality, and not expect it to bruise its wings by fluttering against the bars!" I thought that was perfectly beautiful--that sentence. I said it right over to myself two or three times so I wouldn't forget how to write it down here. So I didn't quite hear the next things that Father said. But when I did notice, I found he was still talking--and it was about Mother, and him, and their marriage, and their first days at the old house. I knew it was that, even if he did mix it all up about the spirit of youth beating its wings against the bars. And over and over again he kept repeating that it was his fault, it was his fault; and if he could only live it over again he'd do differently. And right there and then it came to me that Mother said it was her fault, too; and that if only she could live it over again, _she'd_ do differently. And here was Father saying the same thing. And all of a sudden I thought, well, why can't they try it over again, if they both want to, and if each says it, was their--no, his, no, hers--well, his and her fault. (How does the thing go? I hate grammar!) But I mean, if she says it's her fault, and he says it's his. That's what I thought, anyway. And I determined right then and there to give them the chance to try again, if speaking would do it. I looked up at Father. He was still talking half under his breath, his eyes looking straight ahead. He had forgotten all about me. That was plain to be seen. If I'd been a cup of coffee without any coffee in it, he'd have been stirring me. I know he would. He was like that. "Father. _Father!_" I had to speak twice, before he heard me. "Do you really mean that you would like to try again?" I asked. "Eh? What?" And just the way he turned and looked at me showed how many _miles_ he'd been away from me. "Try it again, you know--what you said," I reminded him. "Oh, that!" Such a funny look came to his face, half ashamed, half vexed. "I'm afraid I _have_ been--talking, my dear." "Yes, but would you?" I persisted. He shook his head; then, with such an oh-that-it-could-be! smile, he said: "Of course;--we all wish that we could go back and do it over again--differently. But we never can." "I know; like the cloth that's been cut up into the dress," I nodded. "Cloth? Dress?" frowned Father. "Yes, that Mother told me about," I explained. Then I told him the story that Mother had told me--how you couldn't go back and be unmarried, just as you were before, any more than you could put the cloth back on the shelf, all neatly folded in a great long web after it had been cut up into a dress. "Did your mother say--that?" asked Father. His voice was husky, and his eyes were turned away, but they were not looking at the dancers. He was listening to me now. I knew that, and so I spoke quick, before he could get absent-minded again. "Yes, but, Father, you can go back, in this case, and so can Mother, 'cause you both want to," I hurried on, almost choking in my anxiety to get it all out quickly. "And Mother said it was _her_ fault. I heard her." "_Her_ fault!" I could see that Father did not quite understand, even yet. "Yes, yes, just as you said it was yours--about all those things at the first, you know, when--when she was a spirit of youth beating against the bars." Father turned square around and faced me. "Mary, what are you talking about?" he asked then. And I'd have been scared of his voice if it hadn't been for the great light that was shining in his eyes. But I looked into his eyes, and wasn't scared; and I told him everything, every single thing--all about how Mother had cried over the little blue dress that day in the trunk-room, and how she had shown the tarnished lace and said that _she_ had tarnished the happiness of him and of herself and of me; and that it was all her fault; that she was thoughtless and willful and exacting and a spoiled child; and, oh, if she could only try it over again, how differently she would do! And there was a lot more. I told everything--everything I could remember. Some way, I didn't believe that Mother would mind _now_, after what Father had said. And I just knew she wouldn't mind if she could see the look in Father's eyes as I talked. He didn't interrupt me--not long interruptions. He did speak out a quick little word now and then, at some of the parts; and once I know I saw him wipe a tear from his eyes. After that he put up his hand and sat with his eyes covered all the rest of the time I was talking. And he didn't take it down till I said: "And so, Father, that's why I told you; 'cause it seemed to me if _you_ wanted to try again, and _she_ wanted to try again, why can't you do it? Oh, Father, think how perfectly lovely 'twould be if you did, and if it worked! Why, I wouldn't care whether I was Mary or Marie, or what I was. I'd have you and Mother both together, and, oh, how I should love it!" It was just here that Father's arm came out and slipped around me in a great big hug. "Bless your heart! But, Mary, my dear, how are we going to--to bring this about?" And he actually stammered and blushed, and he looked almost young with his eyes so shining and his lips so smiling. And then is when my second great idea came to me. "Oh, Father!" I cried, "couldn't you come courting her again--calls and flowers and candy, and all the rest? Oh, Father, couldn't you? Why, Father, of course, you could!" This last I added in my most persuasive voice, for I could see the "no" on his face even before he began to shake his head. "I'm afraid not, my dear," he said then. "It would take more than a flower or a bonbon to to win your mother back now, I fear." "But you could try," I urged. He shook his head again. "She wouldn't see me--if I called, my dear," he answered. He sighed as he said it, and I sighed, too. And for a minute I didn't say anything. Of course, if she wouldn't _see_ him-- Then another idea came to me. "But, Father, if she _would_ see you--I mean, if you got a chance, you _would_ tell her what you told me just now; about--about its being your fault, I mean, and the spirit of youth beating against the bars, and all that. You would, wouldn't you?" He didn't say anything, not anything, for such a long time I thought he hadn't heard me. Then, with a queer, quick drawing-in of his breath, he said: "I think--little girl--if--if I ever got the chance I would say--a great deal more than I said to you to-night." "Good!" I just crowed the word, and I think I clapped my hands; but right away I straightened up and was very fine and dignified, for I saw Aunt Hattie looking at me from across the room, as I said: "Very good, then. You shall have the chance." He turned and smiled a little, but he shook his head. "Thank you, child; but I don't think you know quite what you're promising," he said. "Yes, I do." Then I told him my idea. At first he said no, and it couldn't be, and he was very sure she wouldn't see him, even if he called. But I said she would if he would do exactly as I said. And I told him my plan. And after a time and quite a lot of talk, he said he would agree to it. And this morning we did it. At exactly ten o'clock he came up the steps of the house here, but he didn't ring the bell. I had told him not to do that, and I was on the watch for him. I knew that at ten o'clock Grandfather would be gone, Aunt Hattie probably downtown shopping, and Lester out with his governess. I wasn't so sure of Mother, but I knew it was Saturday, and I believed I could manage somehow to keep her here with me, so that everything would be all right there. And I did. I had a hard time, though. Seems as if she proposed everything to do this morning--shopping, and a walk, and a call on a girl I knew who was sick. But I said I did not feel like doing anything but just to stay at home and rest quietly with her. (Which was the truth--I _didn't_ feel like doing _anything else_!) But that almost made matters worse than ever, for she said that was so totally unlike me that she was afraid I must be sick; and I had all I could do to keep her from calling a doctor. [Illustration: THEN I TOLD HIM MY IDEA] But I did it; and at five minutes before ten she was sitting quietly sewing in her own room. Then I went downstairs to watch for Father. He came just on the dot, and I let him in and took him into the library. Then I went upstairs and told Mother there was some one downstairs who wanted to see her. And she said, how funny, and wasn't there any name, and where was the maid. But I didn't seem to hear. I had gone into my room in quite a hurry, as if I had forgotten something I wanted to do there. But, of course, I didn't do a thing--except to make sure that she went downstairs to the library. They're there now _together_. And he's been here a whole hour already. Seems as if he ought to say _something_ in that length of time! After I was sure Mother was down, I took out this, and began to write in it. And I've been writing ever since. But, oh, I do so wonder what's going on down there. I'm so excited over-- * * * * * _One week later_. At just that minute Mother came into the room. I wish you could have seen her. My stars, but she looked pretty!--with her shining eyes and the lovely pink in her cheeks. And _young_! Honestly, I believe she looked younger than I did that minute. She just came and put her arms around me and kissed me; and I saw then that her eyes were all misty with tears. She didn't say a word, hardly, only that Father wanted to see me, and I was to go right down. And I went. I thought, of course, that she was coming too. But she didn't. And when I got down the stairs I found I was all alone; but I went right on into the library, and there was Father waiting for me. _He_ didn't say much, either, at first; but just like Mother he put his arms around me and kissed me, and held me there. Then, very soon, he began to talk; and, oh, he said such beautiful things--_such_ tender, lovely, sacred things; too sacred even to write down here. Then he kissed me again and went away. But he came back the next day, and he's been here some part of every day since. And, oh, what a wonderful week it has been! They're going to be married. It's to-morrow. They'd have been married right away at the first, only they had to wait--something about licenses and a five-day notice, Mother said. Father fussed and fumed, and wanted to try for a special dispensation, or something; but Mother laughed, and said certainly not, and that she guessed it was just as well, for she positively _had_ to have a few things; and he needn't think he could walk right in like that on a body and expect her to get married at a moment's notice. But she didn't mean it. I know she didn't; for when Father reproached her, she laughed softly, and called him an old goose, and said, yes, of course, she'd have married him in two minutes if it hadn't been for the five-day notice, no matter whether she ever had a new dress or not. And that's the way it is with them all the time. They're too funny and lovely together for anything. (Aunt Hattie says they're too silly for anything; but nobody minds Aunt Hattie.) They just can't seem to do enough for each other. Father was going next week to a place 'way on the other side of the world to view an eclipse of the moon, but he said right off he'd give it up. But Mother said, "No, indeed," she guessed he _wouldn't_ give it up; that he was going, and that she was going, too--a wedding trip; and that she was sure she didn't know a better place to go for a wedding trip than the moon! And Father was _so_ pleased. And he said he'd try not to pay all his attention to the stars this time; and Mother laughed and said, "Nonsense," and that she adored stars herself, and that he _must_ pay attention to the stars. It was his business to. Then she looked very wise and got off something she'd read in the astronomy book. And they both laughed, and looked over to me to see if I was noticing. And I was. And so then we all laughed. And, as I said before, it is all perfectly lovely and wonderful. So it's all settled, and they're going right away on this trip and call it a wedding trip. And, of course, Grandfather had to get off his joke about how he thought it was a pretty dangerous business; and to see that _this_ honeymoon didn't go into an eclipse while they were watching the other one. But nobody minds Grandfather. I'm to stay here and finish school. Then, in the spring, when Father and Mother come back, we are all to go to Andersonville and begin to live in the old house again. Won't it be lovely? It just seems too good to be true. Why, I don't care a bit now whether I'm Mary or Marie. But, then, nobody else does, either. In fact, both of them call me the whole name now, Mary Marie. I don't think they ever _said_ they would. They just began to do it. That's all. Of course, anybody can see why: _now_ each one is calling me the other one's name along with their own. That is, Mother is calling me Mary along with her pet Marie, and Father is calling me Marie along with his pet Mary. Funny, isn't it? But one thing is sure, anyway. How about this being a love story _now_? Oh, I'm so excited! CHAPTER IX WHICH IS THE TEST ANDERSONVILLE. _Twelve years later_. _Twelve years_--yes. And I'm twenty-eight years old. Pretty old, little Mary Marie of the long ago would think. And, well, perhaps to-day I feel just as old as she would put it. I came up into the attic this morning to pack away some things I shall no longer need, now that I am going to leave Jerry. (Jerry is my husband.) And in the bottom of my little trunk I found this manuscript. I had forgotten that such a thing existed; but with its laboriously written pages before me, it all came back to me; and I began to read; here a sentence; there a paragraph; somewhere else a page. Then, with a little half laugh and half sob, I carried it to an old rocking-chair by the cobwebby dormer window, and settled myself to read it straight through. And I have read it. Poor little Mary Marie! Dear little Mary Marie! To meet you like this, to share with you your joys and sorrows, hopes and despairs, of those years long ago, is like sitting hand in hand on a sofa with a childhood's friend, each listening to an eager "And do you remember?" falling constantly from delighted lips that cannot seem to talk half fast enough. But you have taught me much, little Mary Marie. I understand--oh, I understand so many things so much better, now, since reading this little story in your round childish hand. You see, I had almost forgotten that I was a Mary and a Marie--Jerry calls me Mollie--and I had wondered what were those contending forces within me. I know now. It is the Mary and the Marie trying to settle their old, old quarrel. It was almost dark when I had finished the manuscript. The far corners of the attic were peopled with fantastic shadows, and the spiders in the window were swaying, lazy and full-stomached, in the midst of the day's spoils of gruesome wings and legs. I got up slowly, stiffly, shivering a little. I felt suddenly old and worn and ineffably weary. It is a long, long journey back to our childhood--sometimes, even though one may be only twenty-eight. I looked down at the last page of the manuscript. It was written on the top sheet of a still thick pad of paper, and my fingers fairly tingled suddenly, to go on and cover those unused white sheets--tell what happened next--tell the rest of the story; not for the sake of the story--but for my sake. It might help me. It might make things clearer. It might help to justify myself in my own eyes. Not that I have any doubts, of course (about leaving Jerry, I mean), but that when I saw it in black and white I could be even more convinced that I was doing what was best for him and best for me. So I brought the manuscript down to my own room, and this evening I have commenced to write. I can't finish it to-night, of course. But I have to-morrow, and still to-morrow. (I have so many to-morrows now! And what do they all amount to?) And so I'll just keep writing, as I have time, till I bring it to the end. I'm sorry that it must be so sad and sorry an end. But there's no other way, of course. There can be but one ending, as I can see. I'm sorry. Mother'll be sorry, too. She doesn't know yet. I hate to tell her. Nobody knows--not even Jerry himself--yet. They all think I'm just making a visit to Mother--and I am--till I write that letter to Jerry. And then-- I believe now that I'll wait till I've finished writing this. I'll feel better then. My mind will be clearer. I'll know more what to say. Just the effort of writing it down-- Of course, if Jerry and I hadn't-- But this is no way to begin. Like the little Mary Marie of long ago I am in danger of starting my dinner with ice-cream instead of soup! And so I must begin where I left off, of course. And that was at the wedding. I remember that wedding as if it were yesterday. I can see now, with Mary Marie's manuscript before me, why it made so great an impression upon me. It was a very quiet wedding, of course--just the members of the family present. But I shall never forget the fine, sweet loveliness of Mother's face, nor the splendid strength and tenderness of Father's. And the way he drew her into his arms and kissed her, after it was all over--well, I remember distinctly that even Aunt Hattie choked up and had to turn her back to wipe her eyes. They went away at once, first to New York for a day or two, then to Andersonville, to prepare for the real wedding trip to the other side of the world. I stayed in Boston at school; and because nothing of consequence happened all those weeks and months is the reason, I suspect, why the manuscript got tossed into the bottom of my little trunk and stayed there. In the spring, when Father and Mother returned, and we all went back to Andersonville, there followed another long period of just happy girlhood, and I suspect I was too satisfied and happy to think of writing. After all, I've noticed it's when we're sad or troubled over something that we have that tingling to cover perfectly good white paper with "confessions" and "stories of my life." As witness right now what I'm doing. And so it's not surprising, perhaps, that Mary Marie's manuscript still lay forgotten in the little old trunk after it was taken up to the attic. Mary Marie was happy. And it _was_ happy--that girlhood of mine, after we came back to Andersonville. I can see now, as I look back at it, that Father and Mother were doing everything in their power to blot out of my memory those unhappy years of my childhood. For that matter, they were also doing everything in their power to blot out of their _own_ memories those same unhappy years. To me, as I look back at it, it seems that they must have succeeded wonderfully. They were very happy, I believe--Father and Mother. Oh, it was not always easy--even I could see that. It took a lot of adjusting--a lot of rubbing off of square corners to keep the daily life running smoothly. But when two persons are determined that it shall run smoothly--when each is steadfastly looking to the _other's_ happiness, not at his own--why, things just can't help smoothing out then. But it takes them both. One can't do it alone. Now, if Jerry would only-- But it isn't time to speak of Jerry yet. I'll go back to my girlhood. It was a trying period--it must have been--for Father and Mother, in spite of their great love for me, and their efforts to create for me a happiness that would erase the past from my mind. I realize it now. For, after all, I was just a girl--a young girl, like other girls; high-strung, nervous, thoughtless, full of my whims and fancies; and, in addition, with enough of my mother and enough of my father within me to make me veritably a cross-current and a contradiction, as I had said that I was in the opening sentence of my childish autobiography. I had just passed my sixteenth birthday when we all came back to live in Andersonville. For the first few months I suspect that just the glory and the wonder and joy of living in the old home, with Father and Mother _happy together_, was enough to fill all my thoughts. Then, as school began in the fall, I came down to normal living again, and became a girl--just a growing girl in her teens. How patient Mother was, and Father, too! I can see now how gently and tactfully they helped me over the stones and stumbling-blocks that strew the pathway of every sixteen-year-old girl who thinks, because she has turned down her dresses and turned up her hair, that she is grown up, and can do and think and talk as she pleases. I well remember how hurt and grieved and superior I was at Mother's insistence upon more frequent rubbers and warm coats, and fewer ice-cream sodas and chocolate bonbons. Why, surely I was old enough _now_ to take care of myself! Wasn't I ever to be allowed to have my own opinions and exercise my own judgment? It seemed not! Thus spoke superior sixteen. As for clothes!--I remember distinctly the dreary November rainstorm of the morning I reproachfully accused Mother of wanting to make me back into a stupid little Mary, just because she so uncompromisingly disapproved of the beaded chains and bangles and jeweled combs and spangled party dresses that "every girl in school" was wearing. Why, the idea! Did she want me to dress like a little frump of a country girl? It seems she did. Poor mother! Dear mother! I wonder how she kept her patience at all. But she kept it. I remember that distinctly, too. It was that winter that I went through the morbid period. Like our childhood's measles and whooping cough, it seems to come to most of us--us women children. I wonder why? Certainly it came to me. True to type I cried by the hour over fancied slights from my schoolmates, and brooded days at a time because Father or Mother "didn't understand," I questioned everything in the earth beneath and the heavens above; and in my dark despair over an averted glance from my most intimate friend, I meditated on whether life was, or was not, worth the living, with a preponderance toward the latter. Being plunged into a state of settled gloom, I then became acutely anxious as to my soul's salvation, and feverishly pursued every ism and ology that caught my roving eye's attention, until in one short month I had become, in despairing rotation, an incipient agnostic, atheist, pantheist, and monist. Meanwhile I read Ibsen, and wisely discussed the new school of domestic relationships. Mother--dear mother!--looked on aghast. She feared, I think, for my life; certainly for my sanity and morals. It was Father this time who came to the rescue. He pooh-poohed Mother's fears; said it was indigestion that ailed me, or that I was growing too fast; or perhaps I didn't get enough sleep, or needed, maybe, a good tonic. He took me out of school, and made it a point to accompany me on long walks. He talked with me--not _to_ me--about the birds and the trees and the sunsets, and then about the deeper things of life, until, before I realized it, I was sane and sensible once more, serene and happy in the simple faith of my childhood, with all the isms and ologies a mere bad dream in the dim past. I was seventeen, if I remember rightly, when I became worried, not over my heavenly estate now, but my earthly one. I must have a career, of course. No namby-pamby everyday living of dishes and dusting and meals and babies for me. It was all very well, of course, for some people. Such things had to be. But for me-- I could write, of course; but I was not sure but that I preferred the stage. At the same time there was within me a deep stirring as of a call to go out and enlighten the world, especially that portion of it in darkest Africa or deadliest India. I would be a missionary. Before I was eighteen, however, I had abandoned all this. Father put his foot down hard on the missionary project, and Mother put hers down on the stage idea. I didn't mind so much, though, as I remember, for on further study and consideration, I found that flowers and applause were not all of an actor's life, and that Africa and India were not entirely desirable as a place of residence for a young woman alone. Besides, I had decided by then that I could enlighten the world just as effectually (and much more comfortably) by writing stories at home and getting them printed. So I wrote stories--but I did not get any of them printed, in spite of my earnest efforts. In time, therefore, that idea, also, was abandoned; and with it, regretfully, the idea of enlightening the world at all. Besides, I had just then (again if I remember rightfully) fallen in love. Not that it was the first time. Oh, no, not at eighteen, when at thirteen I had begun confidently and happily to look for it! What a sentimental little piece I was! How could they have been so patient with me--Father, Mother, everybody! I think the first real attack--the first that I consciously called love, myself--was the winter after we had all come back to Andersonville to live. I was sixteen and in the high school. It was Paul Mayhew--yes, the same Paul Mayhew that had defied his mother and sister and walked home with me one night and invited me to go for an automobile ride, only to be sent sharply about his business by my stern, inexorable Aunt Jane. Paul was in the senior class now, and the handsomest, most admired boy in school. He didn't care for girls. That is, he said he didn't. He bore himself with a supreme indifference that was maddening, and that took (apparently) no notice of the fact that every girl in school was a willing slave to the mere nodding of his head or the beckoning of his hand. This was the condition of things when I entered school that fall, and perhaps for a week thereafter. Then one day, very suddenly, and without apparent reason, he awoke to the fact of my existence. Candy, flowers, books--some one of these he brought to me every morning. All during the school day he was my devoted gallant, dancing attendance every possible minute outside of session hours, and walking home with me in the afternoon, proudly carrying my books. Did I say "_home_ with me"? That is not strictly true--he always stopped just one block short of "home"--one block short of my gate. He evidently had not forgotten Aunt Jane, and did not intend to take any foolish risks! So he said good-bye to me always at a safe distance. That this savored of deception, or was in any way objectionable, did not seem to have occurred to me. Even if it had, I doubt very much if my course would have been altered, for I was bewitched and fascinated and thrilled with the excitement of it all. I was sixteen, remember, and this wonderful Adonis and woman-hater had chosen me, _me!_--and left all the other girls desolate and sighing, looking after us with longing eyes. Of course, I was thrilled! This went on for perhaps a week. Then he asked me to attend a school sleigh-ride and supper with him. I was wild with delight. At the same time I was wild with apprehension. I awoke suddenly to the fact of the existence of Father and Mother, and that their permission must be gained. And I had my doubts--I had very grave doubts. Yet it seemed to me at that moment that I just _had_ to go on that sleigh-ride. That it was the only thing in the whole wide world worth while. I can remember now, as if it were yesterday, the way I debated in my mind as to whether I should ask Father, Mother, or both together; and if I should let it be seen how greatly I desired to go, and how much it meant to me; or if I should just mention it as in passing, and take their permission practically for granted. I chose the latter course, and I took a time when they were both together. At the breakfast-table I mentioned casually that the school was to have a sleigh-ride and supper the next Friday afternoon and evening, and that Paul Mayhew had asked me to go with him, I said I hoped it would be a pleasant night, but that I should wear my sweater under my coat, anyway, and I'd wear my leggings, too, if they thought it necessary. (Sweater and leggings! Two of Mother's hobbies. Artful child!) But if I thought that a sweater and a pair of leggings could muffle their ears as to what had gone before, I soon found my mistake. "A sleigh-ride, supper, and not come home until evening?" cried Mother. "And with whom, did you say?" "Paul Mayhew," I answered. I still tried to speak casually; at the same time I tried to indicate by voice and manner something of the great honor that had been bestowed upon their daughter. Father was impressed--plainly impressed; but not at all in the way I had hoped he would be. He gave me a swift, sharp glance; then looked straight at Mother. "Humph! Paul Mayhew! Yes, I know him," he said grimly. "And I'm dreading the time when he comes into college next year." "You mean--" Mother hesitated and stopped. "I mean I don't like the company he keeps--already," nodded Father. "Then you don't think that Mary Marie--" Mother hesitated again, and glanced at me. "Certainly not," said Father decidedly. I knew then, of course, that he meant I couldn't go on the sleigh-ride, even though he hadn't said the words right out. I forgot all about being casual and indifferent and matter-of-course then. I thought only of showing them how absolutely necessary it was for them to let me go on that sleigh-ride, unless they wanted my life forever-more hopelessly blighted. I explained carefully how he was the handsomest, most popular boy in school, and how all the girls were just crazy to be asked to go anywhere with him; and I argued what if Father had seen him with boys he did not like--then that was all the more reason why nice girls like me, when he asked them, should go with him, so as to keep him away from the bad boys! And I told them, that this was the first and last, and only sleigh-ride of the school that year; and I said I'd be heart-broken, just heart-broken, if they did not let me go. And I reminded them again that he was the very handsomest, most popular boy in school; and that there wasn't a girl I knew who wouldn't be crazy to be in my shoes. Then I stopped, all out of breath, and I can imagine just how pleading and palpitating I looked. I thought Father was going to refuse right away, but I saw the glance that Mother threw him--the glance that said, "Let me attend to this, dear." I'd seen that glance before, several times, and I knew just what it meant; so I wasn't surprised to see Father shrug his shoulders and turn away as Mother said to me: "Very well, dear. Ill think it over and let you know to-night." But I was surprised that night to have Mother say I could go, for I'd about given up hope, after all that talk at the breakfast-table. And she said something else that surprised me, too. She said she'd like to know Paul Mayhew herself; that she always wanted to know the friends of her little girl. And she told me to ask him to call the next evening and play checkers or chess with me. Happy? I could scarcely contain myself for joy. And when the next evening came bringing Paul, and Mother, all prettily dressed as if he were really truly company, came into the room and talked so beautifully to him, I was even more entranced. To be sure, it did bother me a little that Paul laughed so much, and so loudly, and that he couldn't seem to find anything to talk about only himself, and what he was doing, and what he was going to do. Some way, he had never seemed like that at school. And I was afraid Mother wouldn't like that. All the evening I was watching and listening with her eyes and her ears everything he did, everything he said. I so wanted Mother to like him! I so wanted Mother to see how really fine and splendid and noble he was. But that evening--Why _couldn't_ he stop talking about the prizes he'd won, and the big racing car he'd just ordered for next summer? There was nothing fine and splendid and noble about that. And _were_ his finger nails always so dirty? Why, Mother would think-- Mother did not stay in the room all the time; but she was in more or less often to watch the game; and at half-past nine she brought in some little cakes and lemonade as a surprise. I thought it was lovely; but I could have shaken Paul when he pretended to be afraid of it, and asked Mother if there was a stick in it. The idea--Mother! A stick! I just knew Mother wouldn't like that. But if she didn't, she never showed a thing in her face. She just smiled, and said no, there wasn't any stick in it; and passed the cakes. When he had gone I remember I didn't like to meet Mother's eyes, and I didn't ask her how she liked Paul Mayhew. I kept right on talking fast about something else. Some way, I didn't want Mother to talk then, for fear of what she would say. And Mother didn't say anything about Paul Mayhew--then. But only a few days later she told me to invite him again to the house (this time to a chafing-dish supper), and to ask Carrie Heywood and Fred Small, too. We had a beautiful time, only again Paul Mayhew didn't "show off" at all in the way I wanted him to--though he most emphatically "showed off" in _his_ way! It seemed to me that he bragged even more about himself and his belongings than he had before. And I didn't like at all the way he ate his food. Why, Father didn't eat like that--with such a noisy mouth, and such a rattling of the silverware! And so it went--wise mother that she was! Far from prohibiting me to have anything to do with Paul Mayhew, she let me see all I wanted to of him, particularly in my own home. She let me go out with him, properly chaperoned, and she never, by word or manner, hinted that she didn't admire his conceit and braggadocio. And it all came out exactly as I suspect she had planned from the beginning. When Paul Mayhew asked to be my escort to the class reception in June, I declined with thanks, and immediately afterwards told Fred Small I would go with _him_. But even when I told Mother nonchalantly, and with carefully averted eyes, that I was going to the reception with Fred Small--even then her pleasant "Well, that's good!" conveyed only cheery mother interest; nor did a hasty glance into her face discover so much as a lifted eyebrow to hint, "I thought you'd come to your senses _sometime_!" Wise little mother that she was! In the days and weeks that followed (though nothing was said) I detected a subtle change in certain matters, however. And as I look back at it now, I am sure I can trace its origin to my "affair" with Paul Mayhew. Evidently Mother had no intention of running the risk of any more block-away courtships; also evidently she intended to know who my friends were. At all events, the old Anderson mansion soon became the rendezvous of all the boys and girls of my acquaintance. And such good times as we had, with Mother always one of us, and ever proposing something new and interesting! And because boys--not _a_ boy, but boys--were as free to come to the house as were girls, they soon seemed to me as commonplace and matter-of-course and free from sentimental interest as were the girls. Again wise little mother! But, of course, even this did not prevent my falling in love with some one older than myself, some one quite outside of my own circle of intimates. Almost every girl in her teens at some time falls violently in love with some remote being almost old enough to be her father--a being whom she endows with all the graces and perfections of her dream Adonis. For, after all, it isn't that she is in love with _him_, this man of flesh and blood before her; it is that she is in love with _love_. A very different matter. My especial attack of this kind came to me when I was barely eighteen, the spring I was being graduated from the Andersonville High School. And the visible embodiment of my adoration was the head master, Mr. Harold Hartshorn, a handsome, clean-shaven, well-set-up man of (I should judge) thirty-five years of age, rather grave, a little stern, and very dignified. But how I adored him! How I hung upon his every word, his every glance! How I maneuvered to win from him a few minutes' conversation on a Latin verb or a French translation! How I thrilled if he bestowed upon me one of his infrequent smiles! How I grieved over his stern aloofness! By the end of a month I had evolved this: his stern aloofness meant that he had been disappointed in love; his melancholy was loneliness--his heart was breaking. How I longed to help, to heal, to cure! How I thrilled at the thought of the love and companionship _I_ could give him somewhere in a rose-embowered cottage far from the madding crowd! (He boarded at the Andersonville Hotel alone now.) What nobler career could I have than the blotting out of his stricken heart the memory of that faithless woman who had so wounded him and blighted his youth? What, indeed? If only he could see it as I saw it. If only by some sign or token he could know of the warm love that was his but for the asking! Could he not see that no longer need he pine alone and unappreciated in the Andersonville Hotel? Why, in just a few weeks I was to be through school. And then-- On the night before commencement Mr. Harold Hartshorn ascended our front steps, rang the bell, and called for my father. I knew because I was upstairs in my room over the front door; and I saw him come up the walk and heard him ask for Father. Oh, joy! Oh, happy day! He knew. He had seen it as I saw it. He had come to gain Father's permission, that he might be a duly accredited suitor for my hand! During the next ecstatic ten minutes, with my hand pressed against my wildly beating heart, I planned my wedding dress, selected with care and discrimination my trousseau, furnished the rose-embowered cottage far from the madding crowd--and wondered _why_ Father did not send for me. Then the slam of the screen door downstairs sent me to the window, a sickening terror within me, Was he _going_--without seeing me, his future bride? Impossible! Father and Mr. Harold Hartshorn stood on the front steps below, talking. In another minute Mr. Harold Hartshorn had walked away, and Father had turned back on to the piazza. As soon as I could control my shaking knees, I went downstairs. Father was in his favorite rocking-chair. I advanced slowly. I did not sit down. "Was that Mr. Hartshorn?" I asked, trying to keep the shake out of my voice. "Yes." "Mr. H-Hartshorn," I repeated stupidly. "Yes. He came to see me about the Downer place," nodded Father. "He wants to rent it for next year." "To rent it--the Downer place!" (The Downer place was no rose-embowered cottage far from the madding crowd! Why, it was big, and brick, and _right next_ to the hotel! I didn't want to live there.) "Yes--for his wife and family. He's going to bring them back with him next year," explained Father. "His wife and family!" I can imagine about how I gasped out those four words. "Yes. He has five children, I believe, and--" But I had fled to my room. After all, my recovery was rapid. I was in love with love, you see; not with Mr. Harold Hartshorn. Besides, the next year I went to college. And it was while I was at college that I met Jerry. Jerry was the brother of my college friend, Helen Weston. Helen's elder sister was a senior in that same college, and was graduated at the close of my freshman year. The father, mother, and brother came on to the graduation. And that is where I met Jerry. If it might be called meeting him. He lifted his hat, bowed, said a polite nothing with his lips, and an indifferent "Oh, some friend of Helen's," with his eyes, and turned to a radiant blonde senior at my side. And that was all--for him. But for me-- All that day I watched him whenever opportunity offered; and I suspect that I took care that opportunity offered frequently. I was fascinated. I had never seen any one like him before. Tall, handsome, brilliant, at perfect ease, he plainly dominated every group of which he was a part. Toward him every face was turned--yet he never seemed to know it. (Whatever his faults, Jerry is _not_ conceited. I will give him credit for that!) To me he did not speak again that day. I am not sure that he even looked at me. If he did there must still have been in his eyes only the "Oh, some friend of Helen's," that I had seen at the morning introduction. I did not meet Jerry Weston again for nearly a year; but that did not mean that I did not hear of him. I wonder if Helen ever noticed how often I used to get her to talk of her home and her family life; and how interested I was in her gallery of portraits on the mantel--there were two fine ones of her brother there. Helen was very fond of her brother. I soon found that she loved to talk about him--if she had a good listener. Needless to say she had a very good one in me. Jerry was an artist, it seemed. He was twenty-eight years old, and already he had won no small distinction. Prizes, medals, honorable mention, and a special course abroad--all these Helen told me about. She told me, too, about the wonderful success he had just had with the portrait of a certain New York society woman. She said that it was just going to "make" Jerry; that he could have anything he wanted now--anything. Then she told me how popular he always was with everybody. Helen was not only very fond of her brother, but very proud of him. That was plain to be seen. In her opinion, evidently, there was none to be compared with him. And apparently, in my own mind, I agreed with her--there was none to be compared with him. At all events, all the other boys that used to call and bring me candy and send me flowers at about this time suffered woefully in comparison with him! I remember that. So tame they were--so crude and young and unpolished! I saw Jerry myself during the Easter vacation of my second year in college. Helen invited me to go home with her, and Mother wrote that I might go. Helen had been home with me for the Christmas vacation, and Mother and Father liked her very much. There was no hesitation, therefore, in their consent that I should visit Helen at Easter-time. So I went. Helen lived in New York. Their home was a Fifth-Avenue mansion with nine servants, four automobiles, and two chauffeurs. Naturally such a scale of living was entirely new to me, and correspondingly fascinating. From the elaborately uniformed footman that opened the door for me to the awesome French maid who "did" my hair, I adored them all, and moved as in a dream of enchantment. Then came Jerry home from a week-end's trip--and I forgot everything else. I knew from the minute his eyes looked into mine that whatever I had been before, I was now certainly no mere "Oh, some friend of Helen's." I was (so his eyes said) "a deucedly pretty girl, and one well worth cultivating." Whereupon he began at once to do the "cultivating." And just here, perversely enough, I grew indifferent. Or was it only feigned--not consciously, but unconsciously? Whatever it was, it did not endure long. Nothing could have endured, under the circumstances. Nothing ever endures--with Jerry on the other side. In less than thirty-six hours I was caught up in the whirlwind of his wooing, and would not have escaped it if I could. When I went back to college he held my promise that if he could gain the consent of Father and Mother, he might put the engagement ring on my finger. Back at college, alone in my own room, I drew a long breath, and began to think. It was the first chance I had had, for even Helen now had become Jerry--by reflection. The more I thought, the more frightened, dismayed, and despairing I became. In the clear light of calm, sane reasoning, it was all so absurd, so impossible! What could I have been thinking of? Of Jerry, of course. With hot cheeks I answered my own question. And even the thought of him then cast the spell of his presence about me, and again I was back in the whirl of dining and dancing and motoring, with his dear face at my side. Of Jerry; yes, of Jerry I was thinking. But I must forget Jerry. I pictured Jerry in Andersonville, in my own home. I tried to picture him talking to Father, to Mother. Absurd! What had Jerry to do with learned treatises on stars, or with the humdrum, everyday life of a stupid small town? For that matter, what had Father and Mother to do with dancing and motoring and painting society queens' portraits? Nothing. Plainly, even if Jerry, for the sake of the daughter, liked Father and Mother, Father and Mother certainly would not like Jerry. That was certain. Of course I cried myself to sleep that night. That was to be expected. Jerry was the world; and the world was lost. There was nothing left except, perhaps, a few remnants and pieces, scarcely worth the counting--excepting, of course, Father and Mother. But one could not always have one's father and mother. There would come a time when-- Jerry's letter came the next day--by special delivery. He had gone straight home from the station and begun to write to me. (How like Jerry that was--particularly the special-delivery stamp!) The most of his letter, aside from the usual lover's rhapsodies, had to do with plans for the summer--what we would do together at the Westons' summer cottage in Newport. He said he should run up to Andersonville early--very early; just as soon as I was back from college, in fact, so that he might meet Father and Mother, and put that ring on my finger. And while I read the letter, I just knew he would do it. Why, I could even see the sparkle of the ring on my finger. But in five minutes after the letter was folded and put away, I knew, with equal certitude--that he wouldn't. It was like that all that spring term. While under the spell of the letters, as I read them, I saw myself the adored wife of Jerry Weston, and happy ever after. All the rest of the time I knew myself to be plain Mary Marie Anderson, forever lonely and desolate. I had been at home exactly eight hours when a telegram from Jerry asked permission to come at once. As gently as I could I broke the news to Father and Mother. He was Helen's brother. They must have heard me mention him, I knew him well, very well, indeed. In fact, the purpose of this visit was to ask them for the hand of their daughter. Father frowned and scolded, and said, "Tut, tut!" and that I was nothing but a child. But Mother smiled and shook her head, even while she sighed, and reminded him that I was twenty--two whole years older than she was when she married him; though in the same breath she admitted that I _was_ young, and she certainly hoped I'd be willing to wait before I married, even if the young man was all that they could ask him to be. Father was still a little rebellious, I think; but Mother--bless her dear sympathetic heart!--soon convinced him that they must at least consent to see this Gerald Weston. So I sent the wire inviting him to come. More fearfully than ever then I awaited the meeting between my lover and my father and mother. With the Westons' mansion and manner of living in the glorified past, and the Anderson homestead, and _its_ manner of living, very much in the plain, unvarnished present, I trembled more than ever for the results of that meeting. Not that I believed Jerry would be snobbish enough to scorn our simplicity, but that there would be no common meeting-ground of congeniality. I need not have worried--but I did not know Jerry then so well as I do now. Jerry came--and he had not been five minutes in the house before it might easily have seemed that he had always been there. He _did_ know about stars; at least, he talked with Father about them, and so as to hold Father's interest, too. And he knew a lot about innumerable things in which Mother was interested. He stayed four days; and all the while he was there, I never so much as thought of ceremonious dress and dinners, and liveried butlers and footmen; nor did it once occur to me that our simple kitchen Nora, and Old John's son at the wheel of our one motorcar, were not beautifully and entirely adequate, so unassumingly and so perfectly did Jerry unmistakably "fit in." (There are no other words that so exactly express what I mean.) And in the end, even his charm and his triumph were so unobtrusively complete that I never thought of being surprised at the prompt capitulation of both Father and Mother. Jerry had brought the ring. (Jerry always brings his "rings"--and he never fails to "put them on.") And he went back to New York with Mother's promise that I should visit them in July at their cottage in Newport. They seemed like a dream--those four days--after he had gone; and I should have been tempted to doubt the whole thing had there not been the sparkle of the ring on my finger, and the frequent reference to Jerry on the lips of both Father and Mother. They loved Jerry, both of them. Father said he was a fine, manly young fellow; and Mother said he was a dear boy, a very dear boy. Neither of them spoke much of his painting. Jerry himself had scarcely mentioned it to them, as I remembered, after he had gone. I went to Newport in July. "The cottage," as I suspected, was twice as large and twice as pretentious as the New York residence; and it sported twice the number of servants. Once again I was caught in the whirl of dinners and dances and motoring, with the addition of tennis and bathing. And always, at my side, was Jerry, seemingly living only upon my lightest whim and fancy. He wished to paint my portrait; but there was no time, especially as my visit, in accordance with Mother's inexorable decision, was of only one week's duration. But what a wonderful week that was! I seemed to be under a kind of spell. It was as if I were in a new world--a world such as no one had ever been in before. Oh, I knew, of course, that others had loved--but not as we loved. I was sure that no one had ever loved as we loved. And it was so much more wonderful than anything I had ever dreamed of--this love of ours. Yet all my life since my early teens I had been thinking and planning and waiting for it--love. And now it had come--the real thing. The others--all the others had been shams and make-believes and counterfeits. To think that I ever thought those silly little episodes with Paul Mayhew and Freddy Small and Mr. Harold Hartshorn were love! Absurd! But now-- And so I walked and moved and breathed in this spell that had been cast upon me; and thought--little fool that I was!--that never had there been before, nor could there be again, a love quite so wonderful as ours. At Newport Jerry decided that he wanted to be married right away. He didn't want to wait two more endless years until I was graduated. The idea of wasting all that valuable time when we might be together! And when there was really no reason for it, either--no reason at all! I smiled to myself, even as I thrilled at his sweet insistence. I was pretty sure I knew two reasons--two very good reasons--why I could not marry before graduation. One reason was Father; the other reason was Mother. I hinted as much. "Ho! Is that all?" He laughed and kissed me. "I'll run down and see them about it," he said jauntily. I smiled again. I had no more idea that anything he could say would-- But I didn't know Jerry--_then_. I had not been home from Newport a week when Jerry kept his promise and "ran down." And _he_ had not been there two days before Father and Mother admitted that, perhaps, after all, it would not be so bad an idea if I shouldn't graduate, but should be married instead. And so I was married. (Didn't I tell you that Jerry always brought his rings and put them on?) And again I say, and so we were married. But what did we know of each other?--the real other? True, we had danced together, been swimming together, dined together, played tennis together. But what did we really know of each other's whims and prejudices, opinions and personal habits and tastes? I knew, to a word, what Jerry would say about a sunset; and he knew, I fancy, what I would say about a dreamy waltz song. But we didn't either of us know what the other would say to a dinnerless home with the cook gone. We were leaving a good deal to be learned later on; but we didn't think of that. Love that is to last must be built upon the realization that troubles and trials and sorrows are sure to come, and that they must be borne together--if one back is not to break under the load. We were entering into a contract, not for a week, but, presumedly, for a lifetime--and a good deal may come to one in a lifetime--not all of it pleasant. We had been brought up in two distinctly different social environments, but we didn't stop to think of that. We liked the same sunsets, and the same make of car, and the same kind of ice-cream; and we looked into each other's eyes and _thought_ we knew the other--whereas we were really only seeing the mirrored reflection of ourselves. And so we were married. It was everything that was blissful and delightful, of course, at first. We were still eating the ice-cream and admiring the sunsets. I had forgotten that there were things other than sunsets and ice-cream, I suspect. I was not twenty-one, remember, and my feet fairly ached to dance. The whole world was a show. Music, lights, laughter--how I loved them all! _Marie_, of course. Well, yes, I suspect Marie _was_ in the ascendancy about that time. But I never thought of it that way. Then came the baby, Eunice, my little girl; and with one touch of her tiny, clinging fingers, the whole world of sham--the lights and music and glare and glitter just faded all away into nothingness, where it belonged. As if anything counted, with _her_ on the other side of the scales! I found out then--oh, I found out lots of things. You see, it wasn't that way at all with Jerry. The lights and music and the glitter and the sham didn't fade away a mite, to him, when Eunice came. In fact, sometimes it seemed to me they just grew stronger, if anything. He didn't like it because I couldn't go with him any more--to dances and things, I mean. He said the nurse could take care of Eunice. As if I'd leave my baby with any nurse that ever lived, for any old dance! The idea! But Jerry went. At first he stayed with me; but the baby cried, and Jerry didn't like that. It made him irritable and nervous, until I was _glad_ to have him go. (Who wouldn't be, with his eternal repetition of "Mollie, _can't_ you stop that baby's crying?" As if that wasn't exactly what I was trying to do, as hard as ever I could!) But Jerry didn't see it that way. Jerry never did appreciate what a wonderful, glorious thing just being a father is. I think it was at about this time that Jerry took up his painting again. I guess I have forgotten to mention that all through the first two years of our marriage, before the baby came, he just tended to me. He never painted a single picture. But after Eunice came-- But, after all, what is the use of going over these last miserable years like this? Eunice is five now. Her father is the most popular portrait painter in the country, I am almost tempted to say that he is the most popular _man_, as well. All the old charm and magnetism are there. Sometimes I watch him (for, of course, I _do_ go out with him once in a while), and always I think of that first day I saw him at college. Brilliant, polished, witty--he still dominates every group of which he is a member. Men and women alike bow to his charm. (I'm glad it's not _only_ the women. Jerry isn't a bit of a flirt. I will say that much for him. At any rate, if he does flirt, he flirts just as desperately with old Judge Randlett as he does with the newest and prettiest _debutante_: with serene impartiality he bestows upon each the same glances, the same wit, the same adorable charm.) Praise, attention, applause, music, laughter, lights--they are the breath of life to him. Without them he would--But, there, he never _is_ without them, so I don't know what he would be. After all, I suspect that it's just that Jerry still loves the ice-cream and the sunsets, and I don't. That's all. To me there's something more to life than that--something higher, deeper, more worth while. We haven't a taste in common, a thought in unison, an aspiration in harmony. I suspect--in fact I _know_--that I get on his nerves just as raspingly as he does on mine. For that reason I'm sure he'll be glad--when he gets my letter. But, some way, I dread to tell Mother. * * * * * Well, it's finished. I've been about four days bringing this autobiography of Mary Marie's to an end. I've enjoyed doing it, in a way, though I'll have to admit I can't see as it's made things any clearer. But, then, it was clear before. There isn't any other way. I've got to write that letter. As I said before, I regret that it must be so sorry an ending. I suppose to-morrow I'll have to tell Mother. I want to tell her, of course, before I write the letter to Jerry. It'll grieve Mother. I know it will. And I'm sorry. Poor Mother! Already she's had so much unhappiness in her life. But she's happy now. She and Father are wonderful together--wonderful. Father is still President of the college. He got out a wonderful book on the "Eclipses of the Moon" two years ago, and he's publishing another one about the "Eclipses of the Sun" this year. Mother's correcting proof for him. Bless her heart. She loves it. She told me so. Well, I shall have to tell her to-morrow, of course. * * * * * _To-morrow_--_which has become to-day._ I wonder if Mother _knew_ what I had come into her little sitting-room this morning to say. It seems as if she must have known. And yet--I had wondered how I was going to begin, but, before I knew it, I was right in the middle of it--the subject, I mean. That's why I thought perhaps that Mother-- But I'm getting as bad as little Mary Marie of the long ago. I'll try now to tell what did happen. I was wetting my lips, and swallowing, and wondering how I was going to begin to tell her that I was planning not to go back to Jerry, when all of a sudden I found myself saying something about little Eunice. And then Mother said: "Yes, my dear; and that's what comforts me most of anything--because you _are_ so devoted to Eunice. You see, I have feared sometimes--for you and Jerry; that you might separate. But I know, on account of Eunice, that you never will." "But, Mother, that's the very reason--I mean, it would be the reason," I stammered. Then I stopped. My tongue just wouldn't move, my throat and lips were so dry. To think that Mother suspected--_knew already_--about Jerry and me; and yet to say that _on account_ of Eunice I would not do it. Why, it was _for_ Eunice, largely, that I was _going_ to do it. To let that child grow up thinking that dancing and motoring was all of life, and-- But Mother was speaking again. "Eunice--yes. You mean that you never would make her go through what you went through when you were her age." "Why, Mother, I--I--" And then I stopped again. And I was so angry and indignant with myself because I had to stop, when there were so many, many things that I wanted to say, if only my dry lips could articulate the words. Mother drew her breath in with a little catch. She had grown rather white. "I wonder if you remember--if you ever think of--your childhood," she said. "Why, yes, of--of course--sometimes." It was my turn to stammer. I was thinking of that diary that I had just read--and added to. Mother drew in her breath again, this time with a catch that was almost a sob. And then she began to talk--at first haltingly, with half-finished sentences; then hurriedly, with a rush of words that seemed not able to utter themselves fast enough to keep up with the thoughts behind them. She told of her youth and marriage, and of my coming. She told of her life with Father, and of the mistakes she made. She told much, of course, that was in Mary Marie's diary; but she told, too, oh, so much more, until like a panorama the whole thing lay before me. Then she spoke of me, and of my childhood, and her voice began to quiver. She told of the Mary and the Marie, and of the dual nature within me. (As if I didn't know about that!) But she told me much that I did not know, and she made things much clearer to me, until I saw-- You can see things so much more clearly when you stand off at a distance like this, you know, than you can when you are close to them! She broke down and cried when she spoke of the divorce, and of the influence it had upon me, and of the false idea of marriage it gave me. She said it was the worst kind of thing for me--the sort of life I had to live. She said I grew pert and precocious and worldly-wise, and full of servants' talk and ideas. She even spoke of that night at the little cafe table when I gloried in the sparkle and spangles and told her that now we were seeing life--real life. And of how shocked she was, and of how she saw then what this thing was doing to me. But it was too late. She told more, much more, about the later years, and the reconciliation; then, some way, she brought things around to Jerry and me. Her face flushed up then, and she didn't meet my eyes. She looked down at her sewing. She was very busy turning a hem _just so_. She said there had been a time, once, when she had worried a little about Jerry and me, for fear we would--separate. She said that she believed that, for her, that would have been the very blackest moment of her life; for it would be her fault, all her fault. I tried to break in here, and say, "No, no," and that it wasn't her fault; but she shook her head and wouldn't listen, and she lifted her hand, and I had to keep still and let her go on talking. She was looking straight into my eyes then, and there was such a deep, deep hurt in them that I just had to listen. She said again that it would be her fault; that if I had done that she would have known that it was all because of the example she herself had set me of childish willfulness and selfish seeking of personal happiness at the expense of everything and everybody else. And she said that that would have been the last straw to break her heart. But she declared that she was sure now that she need not worry. Such a thing would never be. I guess I gasped a little at this. Anyhow, I know I tried to break in and tell her that we _were_ going to separate, and that that was exactly what I had come into the room in the first place to say. But again she kept right on talking, and I was silenced before I had even begun. She said how she knew it could never be--on account of Eunice. That I would never subject my little girl to the sort of wretchedly divided life that I had had to live when I was a child. (As she spoke I was suddenly back in the cobwebby attic with little Mary Marie's diary, and I thought--what if it _were_ Eunice--writing that!) She said I was the most devoted mother she had ever known; that I was _too_ devoted, she feared sometimes, for I made Eunice _all_ my world, to the exclusion of Jerry and everything and everybody else. But that she was very sure, because I _was_ so devoted, and loved Eunice so dearly, that I would never deprive her of a father's love and care. I shivered a little, and looked quickly into Mother's face. But she was not looking at me. I was thinking of how Jerry had kissed and kissed Eunice a month ago, when we came away, as if he just couldn't let her go. Jerry _is_ fond of Eunice, now that she's old enough to know something, and Eunice adores her father. I knew that part was going to be hard. And now to have Mother put it like that-- I began to talk then of Jerry. I just felt that I'd got to say something. That Mother must listen. That she didn't understand. I told her how Jerry loved lights and music and dancing, and crowds bowing down and worshiping him all the time. And she said yes, she remembered; that _he'd been that way when I married him_. She spoke so sort of queerly that again I glanced at her; but she still was looking down at the hem she was turning. I went on then to explain that _I_ didn't like such things; that _I_ believed that there were deeper and higher things, and things more worth while. And she said yes, she was glad, and that that was going to be my saving grace; for, of course, I realized that there couldn't be anything deeper or higher or more worth while than keeping the home together, and putting up with annoyances, for the ultimate good of all, especially of Eunice. She went right on then quickly, before I could say anything. She said that, of course, I understood that I was still Mary and Marie, even if Jerry did call me Mollie; and that if Marie had married a man that wasn't always congenial with Mary, she was very sure Mary had enough stamina and good sense to make the best of it; and she was very sure, also, that if Mary would only make a little effort to be once in a while the Marie he had married, things might be a lot easier--for Mary. Of course, I laughed at that. I had to. And Mother laughed, too. But we understood. We both understood. I had never thought of it before, but I _had_ been Marie when I married Jerry. _I_ loved lights and music and dancing and gay crowds just exactly as well as he did. And it wasn't his fault that I suddenly turned into Mary when the baby came, and wanted him to stay at home before the fire every evening with his dressing-gown and slippers. No wonder he was surprised. He hadn't married Mary--he never knew Mary at all. But, do you know? I'd never thought of that before--until Mother said what she did. Why, probably Jerry was just as much disappointed to find his Marie turned into a Mary as I-- But Mother was talking again. She said that she thought Jerry was a wonderful man, in some ways; that she never saw a man with such charm and magnetism, or one who could so readily adapt himself to different persons and circumstances. And she said she was very sure if Mary could only show a little more interest in pictures (especially portraits), and learn to discuss lights and shadows and perspectives, that nothing would be lost, and that something might be gained; that there was nothing, anyway, like a community of interest or of hobbies to bring two people together; and that it was safer, to say the least, when it was the wife that shared the community of interest than when it was some other woman, though, of course, she knew as well as I knew that Jerry never would--She didn't finish her sentence, and because she didn't finish it, it made me think all the more. And I wondered if she left it unfinished--on purpose. Then, in a minute, she was talking again. She was speaking of Eunice. She said once more that because of her, she knew that she need never fear any serious trouble between Jerry and me, for, after all, it's the child that always pays for the mother's mistakes and short-sightedness, just as it is the soldier that pays for his commanding officer's blunders. That's why she felt that I had had to pay for her mistakes, and why she knew that I'd never compel my little girl to pay for mine. She said that the mother lives in the heart of the child long after the mother is gone, and that was why the mother always had to be--so careful. Then, before I knew it, she was talking briskly and brightly about something entirely different; and two minutes later I found myself alone outside of her room. And I hadn't told her. But I wasn't even thinking of that. I was thinking of Eunice, and of that round, childish scrawl of a diary upstairs in the attic trunk. And I was picturing Eunice, in the years to come, writing _her_ diary; and I thought, what if she should have to-- I went upstairs then and read that diary again. And all the while I was reading I thought of Eunice. And when it was finished I knew that I'd never tell Mother, that I'd never write to Jerry--not the letter that I was going to write. I knew that-- * * * * * They brought Jerry's letter to me at just that point. What a wonderful letter that man can write--when he wants to! He says he's lonesome and homesick, and that the house is like a tomb without Eunice and me, and when _am_ I coming home? * * * * * I wrote him to-night that I was going--to-morrow. THE END 
22455	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 22455-h.htm or 22455-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/2/4/5/22455/22455-h/22455-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/2/4/5/22455/22455-h.zip) The Complete Works of F. Marion Crawford ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON by F. MARION CRAWFORD With Frontispiece [Illustration: "I SOMETIMES THINK THAT ONE'S PAST LIFE IS WRITTEN IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE," SAID MRS. BOWRING, SHUTTING THE BOOK SHE HELD.] P. F. Collier & Son New York Copyright 1895, 1896, 1897 by F. Marion Crawford All Rights Reserved ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON CHAPTER I "I sometimes think that one's past life is written in a foreign language," said Mrs. Bowring, shutting the book she held, but keeping the place with one smooth, thin forefinger, while her still, blue eyes turned from her daughter's face towards the hazy hills that hemmed the sea thirty miles to the southward. "When one wants to read it, one finds ever so many words which one cannot understand, and one has to look them out in a sort of unfamiliar dictionary, and try to make sense of the sentences as best one can. Only the big things are clear." Clare glanced at her mother, smiling innocently and half mechanically, without much definite expression, and quite without curiosity. Youth can be in sympathy with age, while not understanding it, while not suspecting, perhaps, that there is anything to understand beyond the streaked hair and the pale glance and the little torture-lines which paint the portrait of fifty years for the eyes of twenty. Every woman knows the calendar of her own face. The lines are years, one for such and such a year, one for such and such another; the streaks are months, perhaps, or weeks, or sometimes hours, where the tear-storms have bleached the brown, the black, or the gold. "This little wrinkle--it was so very little then!" she says. "It came when I doubted for a day. There is a shadow there, just at each temple, where the cloud passed, when my sun went out. The bright hair grew lower on my forehead. It is worn away, as though by a crown, that was not of gold. There are hollows there, near the ears, on each side, since that week when love was done to death before my eyes and died--intestate--leaving his substance to be divided amongst indifferent heirs. They wrangle for what he has left, but he himself is gone, beyond hearing or caring, and, thank God, beyond suffering. But the marks are left." Youth looks on and sees alike the ill-healed wounds of the martyrdom and the rough scars of sin's scourges, and does not understand. Clare Bowring smiled, without definite expression, just because her mother had spoken and seemed to ask for sympathy; and then she looked away for a few moments. She had a bit of work in her hands, a little bag which she was making out of a piece of old Italian damask, to hold a needle-case and thread and scissors. She had stopped sewing, and instinctively waited before beginning again, as though to acknowledge by a little affectionate deference that her mother had said something serious and had a right to expect attention. But she did not answer, for she could not understand. Her own young life was vividly clear to her; so very vividly clear, that it sometimes made her think of a tiresome chromolithograph. All the facts and thoughts of it were so near that she knew them by heart, as people come to know the patterns of the wall-paper in the room they inhabit. She had nothing to hide, nothing to regret, nothing which she thought she should care very much to recall, though she remembered everything. A girl is very young when she can recollect distinctly every frock she has had, the first long one, and the second, and the third; and the first ball gown, and the second, and no third, because that is still in the future, and a particular pair of gloves which did not fit, and a certain pair of shoes she wore so long because they were so comfortable, and the precise origin of every one of the few trinkets and bits of jewellery she possesses. That was Clare Bowring's case. She could remember everything and everybody in her life. But her father was not in her memories, and there was a little motionless grey cloud in the place where he should have been. He had been a soldier, and had been killed in an obscure skirmish with black men, in one of England's obscure but expensive little wars. Death is always very much the same thing, and it seems unfair that the guns of Balaclava should still roar "glory" while the black man's quick spear-thrust only spells "dead," without comment. But glory in death is even more a matter of luck than fame in life. At all events, Captain Bowring, as brave a gentleman as ever faced fire, had perished like so many other brave gentlemen of his kind, in a quiet way, without any fuss, beyond killing half a dozen or so of his assailants, and had left his widow the glory of receiving a small pension in return for his blood, and that was all. Some day, when the dead are reckoned, and the manner of their death noted, poor Bowring may count for more than some of his friends who died at home from a constitutional inability to enjoy all the good things fortune set before them, complicated by a disposition incapable of being satisfied with only a part of the feast. But at the time of this tale they counted for more than he; for they had been constrained to leave behind them what they could not consume, while he, poor man, had left very little besides the aforesaid interest in the investment of his blood, in the form of a pension to his widow, and the small grey cloud in the memory of his girl-child, in the place where he should have been. For he had been killed when she had been a baby. The mother and daughter were lonely, if not alone in the world; for when one has no money to speak of, and no relations at all, the world is a lonely place, regarded from the ordinary point of view--which is, of course, the true one. They had no home in England, and they generally lived abroad, more or less, in one or another of the places of society's departed spirits, such as Florence. They had not, however, entered into Limbo without hope, since they were able to return to the social earth when they pleased, and to be alive again, and the people they met abroad sometimes asked them to stop with them at home, recognising the fact that they were still socially living and casting shadows. They were sure of half a hundred friendly faces in London and of half a dozen hospitable houses in the country; and that is not little for people who have nothing wherewith to buy smiles and pay for invitations. Clare had more than once met women of her mother's age and older, who had looked at her rather thoughtfully and longer than had seemed quite natural, saying very quietly that her father had been "a great friend of theirs." But those were not the women whom her mother liked best, and Clare sometimes wondered whether the little grey cloud in her memory, which represented her father, might not be there to hide away something more human than an ideal. Her mother spoke of him, sometimes gravely, sometimes with a far-away smile, but never tenderly. The smile did not mean much, Clare thought. People often spoke of dead people with a sort of faint look of uncertain beatitude--the same which many think appropriate to the singing of hymns. The absence of anything like tenderness meant more. The gravity was only natural and decent. "Your father was a brave man," Mrs. Bowring sometimes said. "Your father was very handsome," she would say. "He was very quick-tempered," she perhaps added. But that was all. Clare had a friend whose husband had died young and suddenly, and her friend's heart was broken. She did not speak as Mrs. Bowring did. When the latter said that her past life seemed to be written in a foreign language, Clare did not understand, but she knew that the something of which the translation was lost, as it were, belonged to her father. She always felt an instinctive desire to defend him, and to make her mother feel more sympathy for his memory. Yet, at the same time, she loved her mother in such a way as made her feel that if there had been any trouble, her father must have been in the wrong. Then she was quite sure that she did not understand, and she held her tongue, and smiled vaguely, and waited a moment before she went on with her work. Besides, she was not at all inclined to argue anything at present. She had been ill, and her mother was worn out with taking care of her, and they had come to Amalfi to get quite well and strong again in the air of the southern spring. They had settled themselves for a couple of months in the queer hotel, which was once a monastery, perched high up under the still higher overhanging rocks, far above the beach and the busy little town; and now, in the May afternoon, they sat side by side under the trellis of vines on the terraced walk, their faces turned southward, in the shade of the steep mountain behind them; the sea was blue at their feet, and quite still, but farther out the westerly breeze that swept past the Conca combed it to crisp roughness; then it was less blue to southward, and gradually it grew less real, till it lost colour and melted into a sky-haze that almost hid the southern mountains and the lizard-like head of the far Licosa. A bit of coarse faded carpet lay upon the ground under the two ladies' feet, and the shady air had a soft green tinge in it from the young vine-leaves overhead. At first sight one would have said that both were delicate, if not ill. Both were fair, though in different degrees, and both were pale and quiet, and looked a little weary. The young girl sat in the deep straw chair, hatless, with bare white hands that held her work. Her thick flaxen hair, straightly parted and smoothed away from its low growth on the forehead, half hid small fresh ears, unpierced. Long lashes, too white for beauty, cast very faint light shadows as she looked down; but when she raised the lids, the dark-blue eyes were bright, with wide pupils and a straight look, quick to fasten, slow to let go, never yet quite softened, and yet never mannishly hard. But, in its own way, perhaps, there is no look so hard as the look of maiden innocence can be. There can even be something terrible in its unconscious stare. There is the spirit of God's own fearful directness in it. Half quibbling with words perhaps, but surely with half truth, one might say that youth "is," while all else "has been"; and that youth alone possesses the present, too innocent to know it all, yet too selfish even to doubt of what is its own--too sure of itself to doubt anything, to fear anything, or even truly to pray for anything. There is no equality and no community in virtue; it is only original sin that makes us all equal and human. Old Lucifer, fallen, crushed, and damned, knows the worth of forgiveness--not young Michael, flintily hard and monumentally upright in his steel coat, a terror to the devil himself. And youth can have something of that archangelic rigidity. Youth is not yet quite human. But there was much in Clare Bowring's face which told that she was to be quite human some day. The lower features were not more than strong enough--the curved lips would be fuller before long, the small nostrils, the gentle chin, were a little sharper than was natural, now, from illness, but round in outline and not over prominent; and the slender throat was very delicate and feminine. Only in the dark-blue eyes there was still that unabashed, quick glance and long-abiding straightness, and innocent hardness, and the unconscious selfishness of the uncontaminated. Standing on her feet, she would have seemed rather tall than short, though really but of average height. Seated, she looked tall, and her glance was a little downward to most people's eyes. Just now she was too thin, and seemed taller than she was. But the fresh light was already in the young white skin, and there was a soft colour in the lobes of the little ears, as the white leaves of daisies sometimes blush all round their tips. The nervous white hands held the little bag lightly, and twined it and sewed it deftly, for Clare was clever with her fingers. Possibly they looked even a little whiter than they were, by contrast with the dark stuff of her dress, and illness had made them shrink at the lower part, robbing them of their natural strength, though not of their grace. There is a sort of refinement, not of taste, nor of talent, but of feeling and thought, and it shows itself in the hands of those who have it, more than in any feature of the face, in a sort of very true proportion between the hand and its fingers, between each finger and its joints, each joint and each nail; a something which says that such a hand could not do anything ignoble, could not take meanly, nor strike cowardly, nor press falsely; a quality of skin neither rough and coarse, nor over smooth like satin, but cool and pleasant to the touch as fine silk that is closely woven. The fingers of such hands are very straight and very elastic, but not supple like young snakes, as some fingers are, and the cushion of the hand is not over full nor heavy, nor yet shrunken and undeveloped as in the wasted hands of old Asiatic races. In outward appearance there was that sort of inherited likeness between mother and daughter which is apt to strike strangers more than persons of the same family. Mrs. Bowring had been beautiful in her youth--far more beautiful than Clare--but her face had been weaker, in spite of the regularity of the features and their faultless proportion. Life had given them an acquired strength, but not of the lovely kind, and the complexion was faded, and the hair had darkened, and the eyes had paled. Some faces are beautified by suffering. Mrs. Bowring's face was not of that class. It was as though a thin, hard mask had been formed and closely moulded upon it, as the action of the sea overlays some sorts of soft rock with a surface thin as paper but as hard as granite. In spite of the hardness, the features were not really strong. There was refinement in them, however, of the same kind which the daughter had, and as much, though less pleasing. A fern--a spray of maiden's-hair--loses much of its beauty but none of its refinement when petrified in limestone or made fossil in coal. As they sat there, side by side, mother and daughter, where they had sat every day for a week or more, they had very little to say. They had exhausted the recapitulation of Clare's illness, during the first days of her convalescence. It was not the first time that they had been in Amalfi, and they had enumerated its beauties to each other, and renewed their acquaintance with it from a distance, looking down from the terrace upon the low-lying town, and the beach and the painted boats, and the little crowd that swarmed out now and then like ants, very busy and very much in a hurry, running hither and thither, disappearing presently as by magic, and leaving the shore to the sun and the sea. The two had spoken of a little excursion to Ravello, and they meant to go thither as soon as they should be strong enough; but that was not yet. And meanwhile they lived through the quiet days, morning, meal times, evening, bed time, and round again, through the little hotel's programme of possibility; eating what was offered them, but feasting royally on air and sunshine and spring sweetness; moistening their lips in strange southern wines, but drinking deep draughts of the rich southern air-life; watching the people of all sorts and of many conditions, who came and stayed a day and went away again, but social only in each other's lives, and even that by sympathy rather than in speech. A corner of life's show was before them, and they kept their places on the vine-sheltered terrace and looked on. But it seemed as though nothing could ever possibly happen there to affect the direction of their own quietly moving existence. Seeing that her daughter did not say anything in answer to the remark about the past being written in a foreign language, Mrs. Bowring looked at the distant sky-haze thoughtfully for a few moments, then opened her book again where her thin forefinger had kept the place, and began to read. There was no disappointment in her face at not being understood, for she had spoken almost to herself and had expected no reply. No change of expression softened or accentuated the quiet hardness which overspread her naturally gentle face. But the thought was evidently still present in her mind, for her attention did not fix itself upon her book, and presently she looked at her daughter, as the latter bent her head over the little bag she was making. The young girl felt her mother's eyes upon her, looked up herself, and smiled faintly, almost mechanically, as before. It was a sort of habit they both had--a way of acknowledging one another's presence in the world. But this time it seemed to Clare that there was a question in the look, and after she had smiled she spoke. "No," she said, "I don't understand how anybody can forget the past. It seems to me that I shall always remember why I did things, said things, and thought things. I should, if I lived a hundred years, I'm quite sure." "Perhaps you have a better memory than I," answered Mrs. Bowring. "But I don't think it is exactly a question of memory either. I can remember what I said, and did, and thought, well--twenty years ago. But it seems to me very strange that I should have thought, and spoken, and acted, just as I did. After all isn't it natural? They tell us that our bodies are quite changed in less time than that." "Yes--but the soul does not change," said Clare with conviction. "The soul--" Mrs. Bowring repeated the word, but said nothing more, and her still, blue eyes wandered from her daughter's face and again fixed themselves on an imaginary point of the far southern distance. "At least," said Clare, "I was always taught so." She smiled again, rather coldly, as though admitting that such teaching might not be infallible after all. "It is best to believe it," said her mother quietly, but in a colourless voice. "Besides," she added, with a change of tone, "I do believe it, you know. One is always the same, in the main things. It is the point of view that changes. The best picture in the world does not look the same in every light, does it?" "No, I suppose not. You may like it in one light and not in another, and in one place and not in another." "Or at one time of life, and not at another," added Mrs. Bowring, thoughtfully. "I can't imagine that." Clare paused a moment. "Of course you are thinking of people," she continued presently, with a little more animation. "One always means people, when one talks in that way. And that is what I cannot quite understand. It seems to me that if I liked people once I should always like them." Her mother looked at her. "Yes--perhaps you would," she said, and she relapsed into silence. Clare's colour did not change. No particular person was in her thoughts, and she had, as it were, given her own general and inexperienced opinion of her own character, quite honestly and without affectation. "I don't know which are the happier," said Mrs. Bowring at last, "the people who change, or the people who can't." "You mean faithful or unfaithful people, I suppose," observed the young girl with grave innocence. A very slight flush rose in Mrs. Bowring's thin cheeks, and the quiet eyes grew suddenly hard, but Clare was busy with her work again and did not see. "Those are big words," said the older woman in a low voice. "Well--yes--of course!" answered Clare. "So they ought to be! It is always the main question, isn't it? Whether you can trust a person or not, I mean." "That is one question. The other is, whether the person deserves to be trusted." "Oh--it's the same thing!" "Not exactly." "You know what I mean, mother. Besides, I don't believe that any one who can't trust is really to be trusted. Do you?" "My dear Clare!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowring. "You can't put life into a nutshell, like that!" "No. I suppose not, though if a thing is true at all it must be always true." "Saving exceptions." "Are there any exceptions to truth?" asked Clare incredulously. "Truth isn't grammar--nor the British Constitution." "No. But then, we don't know everything. What we call truth is what we know. It is only what we know. All that we don't know, but which is, is true, too--especially, all that we don't know about people with whom we have to live." "Oh--if people have secrets!" The young girl laughed idly. "But you and I, for instance, mother--we have no secrets from each other, have we? Well? Why should any two people who love each other have secrets? And if they have none, why, then, they know all that there is to be known about one another, and each trusts the other, and has a right to be trusted, because everything is known--and everything is the whole truth. It seems to me that is simple enough, isn't it?" Mrs. Bowring laughed in her turn. It was rather a hard little laugh, but Clare was used to the sound of it, and joined in it, feeling that she had vanquished her mother in argument, and settled one of the most important questions of life for ever. "What a pretty steamer!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowring suddenly. "It's a yacht," said Clare after a moment. "The flag is English, too. I can see it distinctly." She laid down her work, and her mother closed her book upon her forefinger again, and they watched the graceful white vessel as she glided slowly in from the Conca, which she had rounded while they had been talking. "It's very big, for a yacht," observed Mrs. Bowring. "They are coming here." "They have probably come round from Naples to spend a day," said Clare. "We are sure to have them up here. What a nuisance!" "Yes. Everybody comes up here who comes to Amalfi at all. I hope they won't stay long." "There is no fear of that," answered Clare. "I heard those people saying the other day that this is not a place where a vessel can lie any length of time. You know how the sea sometimes breaks on the beach." Mrs. Bowring and her daughter desired of all things to be quiet. The visitors who came, stayed a few days at the hotel, and went away again, were as a rule tourists or semi-invalids in search of a climate, and anything but noisy. But people coming in a smart English yacht would probably be society people, and as such Mrs. Bowring wished that they would keep away. They would behave as though the place belonged to them, so long as they remained; they would get all the attention of the proprietor and of the servants for the time being; and they would make everybody feel shabby and poor. The Bowrings were poor, indeed, but they were not shabby. It was perhaps because they were well aware that nobody could mistake them for average tourists that they resented the coming of a party which belonged to what is called society. Mrs. Bowring had a strong aversion to making new acquaintances, and even disliked being thrown into the proximity of people who might know friends of hers, who might have heard of her, and who might talk about her and her daughter. Clare said that her mother's shyness in this respect was almost morbid; but she had unconsciously caught a little of it herself, and, like her mother, she was often quite uselessly on her guard against strangers, of the kind whom she might possibly be called upon to know, though she was perfectly affable and at her ease with those whom she looked upon as undoubtedly her social inferiors. They were not mistaken in their prediction that the party from the yacht would come up to the Cappuccini. Half an hour after the yacht had dropped anchor the terrace was invaded. They came up in twos and threes, nearly a dozen of them, men and women, smart-looking people with healthy, sun-burnt faces, voices loud from the sea as voices become on a long voyage--or else very low indeed. By contrast with the frequenters of Amalfi they all seemed to wear overpoweringly good clothes and perfectly new hats and caps, and their russet shoes were resplendent. They moved as though everything belonged to them, from the wild crests of the hills above to the calm blue water below, and the hotel servants did their best to foster the agreeable illusion. They all wanted chairs, and tables, and things to drink, and fruit. One very fair little lady with hard, restless eyes, and clad in white serge, insisted upon having grapes, and no one could convince her that grapes were not ripe in May. "It's quite absurd!" she objected. "Of course they're ripe! We had the most beautiful grapes at breakfast at Leo Cairngorm's the other day, so of course they must have them here. Brook! Do tell the man not to be absurd!" "Man!" said the member of the party she had last addressed. "Do not be absurd!" "Sì, Signore," replied the black-whiskered Amalfitan servant with alacrity. "You see!" cried the little lady triumphantly. "I told you so! You must insist with these people. You can always get what you want. Brook, where's my fan?" She settled upon a straw chair--like a white butterfly. The others walked on towards the end of the terrace, but the young man whom she called Brook stood beside her, slowly lighting a cigarette, not five paces from Mrs. Bowring and Clare. "I'm sure I don't know where your fan is," he said, with a short laugh, as he threw the end of the match over the wall. "Well then, look for it!" she answered, rather sharply. "I'm awfully hot, and I want it." He glanced at her before he spoke again. "I don't know where it is," he said quietly, but there was a shade of annoyance in his face. "I gave it to you just as we were getting into the boat," answered the lady in white. "Do you mean to say that you left it on board?" "I think you must be mistaken," said the young man. "You must have given it to somebody else." "It isn't likely that I should mistake you for any one else--especially to-day." "Well--I haven't got it. I'll get you one in the hotel, if you'll have patience for a moment." He turned and strode along the terrace towards the house. Clare Bowring had been watching the two, and she looked after the man as he moved rapidly away. He walked well, for he was a singularly well-made young fellow, who looked as though he were master of every inch of himself. She had liked his brown face and bright blue eyes, too, and somehow she resented the way in which the little lady ordered him about. She looked round and saw that her mother was watching him too. Then, as he disappeared, they both looked at the lady. She too had followed him with her eyes, and as she turned her face sideways to the Bowrings Clare thought that she was biting her lip, as though something annoyed her or hurt her. She kept her eyes on the door. Presently the young man reappeared, bearing a palm-leaf fan in his hand and blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke into the air. Instantly the lady smiled, and the smile brightened as he came near. "Thank you--dear," she said as he gave her the fan. The last word was spoken in a lower tone, and could certainly not have been heard by the other members of the party, but it reached Clare's ears, where she sat. "Not at all," answered the young man quietly. But as he spoke he glanced quickly about him, and his eyes met Clare's. She fancied that she saw a look of startled annoyance in them, and he coloured a little under his tan. He had a very manly face, square and strong. He bent down a little and said something in a low voice. The lady in white half turned her head, impatiently, but did not look quite round. Clare saw, however, that her expression had changed again, and that the smile was gone. "If I don't care, why should you?" were the next words Clare heard, spoken impatiently and petulantly. The man who answered to the name of Brook said nothing, but sat down on the parapet of the terrace, looking out over his shoulder to seaward. A few seconds later he threw away his half-smoked cigarette. "I like this place," said the lady in white, quite audibly. "I think I shall send on board for my things and stay here." The young man started as though he had been struck, and faced her in silence. He could not help seeing Clare Bowring beyond her. "I'm going indoors, mother," said the young girl, rising rather abruptly. "I'm sure it must be time for tea. Won't you come too?" The young man did not answer his companion's remark, but turned his face away again and looked seaward, listening to the retreating footsteps of the two ladies. On the threshold of the hotel Clare felt a strong desire to look back again and see whether he had moved, but she was ashamed of it and went in, holding her head high and looking straight before her. CHAPTER II The people from the yacht belonged to that class of men and women whose uncertainty, or indifference, about the future leads them to take possession of all they can lay hands on in the present, with a view to squeezing the world like a lemon for such enjoyment as it may yield. So long as they tarried at the old hotel, it was their private property. The Bowrings were forgotten; the two English old maids had no existence; the Russian invalid got no more hot water for his tea; the plain but obstinately inquiring German family could get no more information; even the quiet young French couple--a honeymoon couple--sank into insignificance. The only protest came from an American, whose wife was ill and never appeared, and who staggered the landlord by asking what he would sell the whole place for on condition of vacating the premises before dinner. "They will be gone before dinner," the proprietor answered. But they did not go. When it was already late somebody saw the moon rise, almost full, and suggested that the moonlight would be very fine, and that it would be amusing to dine at the hotel table and spend the evening on the terrace and go on board late. "I shall," said the little lady in white serge, "whatever the rest of you do. Brook! Send somebody on board to get a lot of cloaks and shawls and things. I am sure it is going to be cold. Don't go away! I want you to take me for a walk before dinner, so as to be nice and hungry, you know." For some reason or other, several of the party laughed, and from their tone one might have guessed that they were in the habit of laughing, or were expected to laugh, at the lady's speeches. And every one agreed that it would be much nicer to spend the evening on the terrace, and that it was a pity that they could not dine out of doors because it would be far too cool. Then the lady in white and the man called Brook began to walk furiously up and down in the fading light, while the lady talked very fast in a low voice, except when she was passing within earshot of some of the others, and the man looked straight before him, answering occasionally in monosyllables. Then there was more confusion in the hotel, and the Russian invalid expressed his opinion to the two English old maids, with whom he fraternised, that dinner would be an hour late, thanks to their compatriots. But they assumed an expression appropriate when speaking of the peerage, and whispered that the yacht must belong to the Duke of Orkney, who, they had read, was cruising in the Mediterranean, and that the Duke was probably the big man in grey clothes who had a gold cigarette case. But in all this they were quite mistaken. And their repeated examinations of the hotel register were altogether fruitless, because none of the party had written their names in it. The old maids, however, were quite happy and resigned to waiting for their dinner. They presently retired to attempt for themselves what stingy nature had refused to do for them in the way of adornment, for the dinner was undoubtedly to be an occasion of state, and their eyes were to see the glory of a lord. The party sat together at one end of the table, which extended the whole length of the high and narrow vaulted hall, while the guests staying in the hotel filled the opposite half. Most of the guests were more subdued than usual, and the party from the yacht seemed noisy by contrast. The old maids strained their ears to catch a name here and there. Clare and her mother talked little. The Russian invalid put up a single eyeglass, looked long and curiously at each of the new comers in turn, and then did not vouchsafe them another glance. The German family criticised the food severely, and then got into a fierce discussion about Bismarck and the Pope, in the course of which they forgot the existence of their fellow-diners, but not of their dinner. Clare could not help glancing once or twice at the couple that had attracted her attention, and she found herself wondering what their relation to each other could be, and whether they were engaged to be married. Somebody called the lady in white "Mrs. Crosby." Then somebody else called her "Lady Fan"--which was very confusing. "Brook" never called her anything. Clare saw him fill his glass and look at Lady Fan very hard before he drank, and then Lady Fan did the same thing. Nevertheless they seemed to be perpetually quarrelling over little things. When Brook was tired of being bullied, he calmly ignored his companion, turned from her, and talked in a low tone to a dark woman who had been a beauty and was the most thoroughly well-dressed of the extremely well-dressed party. Lady Fan bit her lip for a moment, and then said something at which all the others laughed--except Brook and the advanced beauty, who continued to talk in undertones. To Clare's mind there was about them all, except Brook, a little dash of something which was not "quite, quite," as the world would have expressed it. In her opinion Lady Fan was distinctly disagreeable, whoever she might be--as distinctly so as Brook was the contrary. And somehow the girl could not help resenting the woman's way of treating him. It offended her oddly and jarred upon her good taste, as something to which she was not at all accustomed in her surroundings. Lady Fan was very exquisite in her outward ways, and her speech was of the proper smartness. Yet everything she did and said was intensely unpleasant to Clare. The Bowrings and the regular guests finished their dinner before the yachting party, and rose almost in a body, with a clattering of their light chairs on the tiled floor. Only the English old maids kept their places a little longer than the rest, and took some more filberts and half a glass of white wine, each. They could not keep their eyes from the party at the other end of the table, and their faces grew a little redder as they sat there. Clare and her mother had to go round the long table to get out, being the last on their side, and they were also the last to reach the door. Again the young girl felt that strong desire to turn her head and look back at Brook and Lady Fan. She noticed it this time, as something she had never felt until that afternoon, but she would not yield to it. She walked on, looking straight at the back of her mother's head. Then she heard quick footsteps on the tiles behind her, and Brook's voice. "I beg your pardon," he was saying, "you have dropped your shawl." She turned quickly, and met his eyes as he stopped close to her, holding out the white chudder which had slipped to the floor unnoticed when she had risen from her seat. She took it mechanically and thanked him. Instinctively looking past him down the long hall, she saw that the little lady in white had turned in her seat and was watching her. Brook made a slight bow and was gone again in an instant. Then Clare followed her mother and went out. "Let us go out behind the house," she said when they were in the broad corridor. "There will be moonlight there, and those people will monopolise the terrace when they have finished dinner." At the western end of the old monastery there is a broad open space, between the buildings and the overhanging rocks, at the base of which there is a deep recess, almost amounting to a cave, in which stands a great black cross planted in a pedestal of whitewashed masonry. A few steps lead up to it. As the moon rose higher the cross was in the shadow, while the platform and the buildings were in the full light. The two women ascended the steps and sat down upon a stone seat. "What a night!" exclaimed the young girl softly. Her mother silently bent her head, but neither spoke again for some time. The moonlight before them was almost dazzling, and the air was warm. Beyond the stone parapet, far below, the tideless sea was silent and motionless under the moon. A crooked fig-tree, still leafless, though the little figs were already shaped on it, cast its intricate shadow upon the platform. Very far away, a boy was singing a slow minor chant in a high voice. The peace was almost disquieting--there was something intensely expectant in it, as though the night were in love, and its heart beating. Clare sat still, her hand upon her mother's thin wrist, her lips just parted a little, her eyes wide and filled with moon-dreams. She had almost lost herself in unworded fancies when her mother moved and spoke. "I had quite forgotten a letter I was writing," she said. "I must finish it. Stay here, and I will come back again presently." She rose, and Clare watched her slim dark figure and the long black shadow that moved with it across the platform towards the open door of the hotel. But when it had disappeared the white fancies came flitting back through the silent light, and in the shade the young eyes fixed themselves quietly to meet the vision and see it all, and to keep it for ever if she could. She did not know what it was that she saw, but it was beautiful, and what she felt was on a sudden as the realisation of something she had dimly desired in vain. Yet in itself it was nothing realised; it was perhaps only the certainty of longing for something all heart and no name, and it was happiness to long for it. For the first intuition of love is only an exquisite foretaste, a delight in itself, as far from the bitter hunger of love starving as a girl's faintness is from a cruel death. The light was dazzling, and yet it was full of gentle things that smiled, somehow, without faces. She was not very imaginative, perhaps, else the faces might have come too, and voices, and all, save the one reality which had as yet neither voice nor face, nor any name. It was all the something that love was to mean, somewhere, some day--the airy lace of a maiden life-dream, in which no figure was yet wrought amongst the fancy-threads that the May moon was weaving in the soft spring night. There was no sadness in it, at all, for there was no memory, and without memory there can be no sadness, any more than there can be fear where there is no anticipation, far or near. Most happiness is really of the future, and most grief, if we would be honest, is of the past. The young girl sat still and dreamed that the old world was as young as she, and that in its soft bosom there were exquisite sweetnesses untried, and soft yearnings for a beautiful unknown, and little pulses that could quicken with foretasted joy which only needed face and name to take angelic shape of present love. The world could not be old while she was young. And she had her youth and knew it, and it was almost all she had. It seemed much to her, and she had no unsatisfiable craving for the world's stuff in which to attire it. In that, at least, her mother had been wise, teaching her to believe and to enjoy, rather than to doubt and criticise, and if there had been anything to hide from her it had been hidden, even beyond suspicion of its presence. Perhaps the armour of knowledge is of little worth until doubt has shaken the heart and weakened the joints, and broken the terrible steadfastness of perfect innocence in the eyes. Clare knew that she was young, she felt that the white dream was sweet, and she believed that the world's heart was clean and good. All good was natural and eternal, lofty and splendid as an archangel in the light. God had made evil as a background of shadows to show how good the light was. Every one could come and stand in the light if he chose, for the mere trouble of moving. It seemed so simple. She wondered why everybody could not see it as she did. A flash of white in the white moonlight disturbed her meditations. Two people had come out of the door and were walking slowly across the platform side by side. They were not speaking, and their footsteps crushed the light gravel sharply as they came forward. Clare recognised Brook and Lady Fan. Seated in the shadow on one side of the great black cross and a little behind it, she could see their faces distinctly, but she had no idea that they were dazzled by the light and could not see her at all in her dark dress. She fancied that they were looking at her as they came on. The shadow of the rock had crept forward upon the open space, while she had been dreaming. The two turned, just before they reached it, and then stood still, instead of walking back. "Brook--" began Lady Fan, as though she were going to say something. But she checked herself and looked up at him quickly, chilled already by his humour. Clare thought that the woman's voice shook a little, as she pronounced the name. Brook did not turn his head nor look down. "Yes?" he said, with a sort of interrogation. "What were you going to say?" he asked after a moment's pause. She seemed to hesitate, for she did not answer at once. Then she glanced towards the hotel and looked down. "You won't come back with us?" she asked, at last, in a pleading voice. "I can't," he answered. "You know I can't. I've got to wait for them here." "Yes, I know. But they are not here yet. I don't believe they are coming for two or three days. You could perfectly well come on to Genoa with us, and get back by rail." "No," said Brook quietly, "I can't." "Would you, if you could?" asked the lady in white, and her tone began to change again. "What a question!" he laughed drily. "It is an odd question, isn't it, coming from me?" Her voice grew hard, and she stopped. "Well--you know what it means," she added abruptly. "You may as well answer it and have it over. It is very easy to say you would not, if you could. I shall understand all the rest, and you will be saved the trouble of saying things--things which I should think you would find it rather hard to say." "Couldn't you say them, instead?" he asked slowly, and looking at her for the first time. He spoke gravely and coldly. "I!" There was indignation, real or well affected, in the tone. "Yes, you," answered the man, with a shade less coldness, but as gravely as before. "You never loved me." Lady Fan's small white face was turned to his instantly, and Clare could see the fierce, hurt expression in the eyes and about the quivering mouth. The young girl suddenly realised that she was accidentally overhearing something which was very serious to the two speakers. It flashed upon her that they had not seen her where she sat in the shadow, and she looked about her hastily in the hope of escaping unobserved. But that was impossible. There was no way of getting out of the recess of the rock where the cross stood, except by coming out into the light, and no way of reaching the hotel except by crossing the open platform. Then she thought of coughing, to call attention to her presence. She would rise and come forward, and hurry across to the door. She felt that she ought to have come out of the shadows as soon as the pair had appeared, and that she had done wrong in sitting still. But then, she told herself with perfect justice that they were strangers, and that she could not possibly have foreseen that they had come there to quarrel. They were strangers, and she did not even know their names. So far as they were concerned, and their feelings, it would be much more pleasant for them if they never suspected that any one had overheard them than if she were to appear in the midst of their conversation, having evidently been listening up to that point. It will be admitted that, being a woman, she had a choice; for she knew that if she had been in Lady Fan's place she should have preferred never to know that any one had heard her. She fancied what she should feel if any one should cough unexpectedly behind her when she had just been accused by the man she loved of not loving him at all. And of course the little lady in white loved Brook--she had called him "dear" that very afternoon. But that Brook did not love Lady Fan was as plain as possible. There was certainly no mean curiosity in Clare to know the secrets of these strangers. But all the same, she would not have been a human girl, of any period in humanity's history, if she had not been profoundly interested in the fate of the woman before her. That afternoon she would have thought it far more probable that the woman should break the man's heart than that she should break her own for him. But now it looked otherwise. Clare thought there was no mistaking the first tremor of the voice, the look of the white face, and the indignation of the tone afterwards. With a man, the question of revealing his presence as a third person would have been a point of honour. In Clare's case it was a question of delicacy and kindness as from one woman to another. Nevertheless, she hesitated, and she might have come forward after all. Ten slow seconds had passed since Brook had spoken. Then Lady Fan's little figure shook, her face turned away, and she tried to choke down one small bitter sob, pressing her handkerchief desperately to her lips. "Oh, Brook!" she cried, a moment later, and her tiny teeth tore the edge of the handkerchief audibly in the stillness. "It's not your fault," said the man, with an attempt at gentleness in his voice. "I couldn't blame you, if I were brute enough to wish to." "Blame me! Oh, really--I think you're mad, you know!" "Besides," continued the young man, philosophically, "I think we ought to be glad, don't you?" "Glad?" "Yes--that we are not going to break our hearts now that it's over." Clare thought his tone horribly business-like and indifferent. "Oh no! We sha'n't break our hearts any more! We are not children." Her voice was thin and bitter, with a crying laugh in it. "Look here, Fan!" said Brook suddenly. "This is all nonsense. We agreed to play together, and we've played very nicely, and now you have to go home, and I have got to stay here, whether I like it or not. Let us be good friends and say good-bye, and if we meet again and have nothing better to do, we can play again if we please. But as for taking it in this tragical way--why, it isn't worth it." The young girl crouching in the shadow felt as though she had been struck, and her heart went out with indignant sympathy to the little lady in white. "Do you know? I think you are the most absolutely brutal, cynical creature I ever met!" There was anger in the voice, now, and something more--something which Clare could not understand. "Well, I'm sorry," answered the man. "I don't mean to be brutal, I'm sure, and I don't think I'm cynical either. I look at things as they are, not as they ought to be. We are not angels, and the millennium hasn't come yet. I suppose it would be bad for us if it did, just now. But we used to be very good friends last year. I don't see why we shouldn't be again." "Friends! Oh no!" Lady Fan turned from him and made a step or two alone, out through the moonlight, towards the house. Brook did not move. Perhaps he knew that she would come back, as indeed she did, stopping suddenly and turning round to face him again. "Brook," she began more softly, "do you remember that evening up at the Acropolis--at sunset? Do you remember what you said?" "Yes, I think I do." "You said that if I could get free you would marry me." "Yes." The man's tone had changed suddenly. "Well--I believed you, that's all." Brook stood quite still, and looked at her quietly. Some seconds passed before she spoke again. "You did not mean it?" she asked sorrowfully. Still he said nothing. "Because you know," she continued, her eyes fixed on his, "the position is not at all impossible. All things considered, I suppose I could have a divorce for the asking." Clare started a little in the dark. She was beginning to guess something of the truth she could not understand. The man still said nothing, but he began to walk up and down slowly, with folded arms, along the edge of the shadow before Lady Fan as she stood still, following him with her eyes. "You did not mean a word of what you said that afternoon? Not one word?" She spoke very slowly and distinctly. He was silent still, pacing up and down before her. Suddenly, without a word, she turned from him and walked quickly away, towards the hotel. He started and stood still, looking after her--then he also made a step. "Fan!" he called, in a tone she could hear, but she went on. "Mrs. Crosby!" he called again. She stopped, turned, and waited. It was clear that Lady Fan was a nickname, Clare thought. "Well?" she asked. Clare clasped her hands together in her excitement, watching and listening, and holding her breath. "Don't go like that!" exclaimed Brook, going forward and holding out one hand. "Do you want me?" asked the lady in white, very gently, almost tenderly. Clare did not understand how any woman could have so little pride, but she pitied the little lady from her heart. Brook went on till he came up with Lady Fan, who did not make a step to meet him. But just as he reached her she put out her hand to take his. Clare thought he was relenting, but she was mistaken. His voice came back to her clear and distinct, and it had a very gentle ring in it. "Fan, dear," he said, "we have been very fond of each other in our careless way. But we have not loved each other. We may have thought that we did, for a moment, now and then. I shall always be fond of you, just in that way. I'll do anything for you. But I won't marry you, if you get a divorce. It would be utter folly. If I ever said I would, in so many words--well, I'm ashamed of it. You'll forgive me some day. One says things--sometimes--that one means for a minute, and then, afterwards, one doesn't mean them. But I mean what I am saying now." He dropped her hand, and stood looking at her, and waiting for her to speak. Her face, as Clare saw it, from a distance now, looked whiter than ever. After an instant she turned from him with a quick movement, but not towards the hotel. She walked slowly towards the stone parapet of the platform. As she went, Clare again saw her raise her handkerchief and press it to her lips, but she did not bend her head. She went and leaned on her elbows on the parapet, and her hands pulled nervously at the handkerchief as she looked down at the calm sea far below. Brook followed her slowly, but just as he was near, she, hearing his footsteps, turned and leaned back against the low wall. "Give me a cigarette," she said in a hard voice. "I'm nervous--and I've got to face those people in a moment." Clare started again in sheer surprise. She had expected tears, fainting, angry words, a passionate appeal--anything rather than what she heard. Brook produced a silver case which gleamed in the moonlight. Lady Fan took a cigarette, and her companion took another. He struck a match and held it up for her in the still air. The little flame cast its red glare into their faces. The young girl had good eyes, and as she watched them she saw the man's expression was grave and stern, a little sad, perhaps, but she fancied that there was the beginning of a scornful smile on the woman's lips. She understood less clearly then than ever what manner of human beings these two strangers might be. For some moments they smoked in silence, the lady in white leaning back against the parapet, the man standing upright with one hand in his pocket, holding his cigarette in the other, and looking out to sea. Then Lady Fan stood up, too, and threw her cigarette over the wall. "It's time to be going," she said, suddenly. "They'll be coming after us if we stay here." But she did not move. Sideways she looked up into his face. Then she held out her hand. "Good-bye, Brook," she said, quietly enough, as he took it. "Good-bye," he murmured in a low voice, but distinctly. Their hands stayed together after they had spoken, and still she looked up to him in the moonlight. Suddenly he bent down and kissed her on the forehead--in an odd, hasty way. "I'm sorry, Fan, but it won't do," he said. "Again!" she answered. "Once more, please!" And she held up her face. He kissed her again, but less hastily, Clare thought, as she watched them. Then, without another word, they walked towards the hotel, side by side, close together, so that their hands almost touched. When they were not ten paces from the door, they stopped again and looked at each other. At that moment Clare saw her mother's dark figure on the threshold. The pair must have heard her steps, for they separated a little and instantly went on, passing Mrs. Bowring quickly. Clare sat still in her place, waiting for her mother to come to her. She feared lest, if she moved, the two might come back for an instant, see her, and understand that they had been watched. Mrs. Bowring went forward a few steps. "Clare!" she called. "Yes," answered the young girl softly. "Here I am." "Oh--I could not see you at all," said her mother. "Come down into the moonlight." The young girl descended the steps, and the two began to walk up and down together on the platform. "Those were two of the people from the yacht that I met at the door," said Mrs. Bowring. "The lady in white serge, and that good-looking young man." "Yes," Clare answered. "They were here some time. I don't think they saw me." She had meant to tell her mother something of what had happened, in the hope of being told that she had done right in not revealing her presence. But on second thoughts she resolved to say nothing about it. To have told the story would have seemed like betraying a confidence, even though they were strangers to her. "I could not help wondering about them this afternoon," said Mrs. Bowring. "She ordered him about in a most extraordinary way, as though he had been her servant. I thought it in very bad taste, to say the least of it. Of course I don't know anything about their relations, but it struck me that she wished to show him off, as her possession." "Yes," answered Clare, thoughtfully. "I thought so too." "Very foolish of her! No man will stand that sort of thing long. That isn't the way to treat a man in order to keep him." "What is the best way?" asked the young girl idly, with a little laugh. "Don't ask me!" answered Mrs. Bowring quickly, as they turned in their walk. "But I should think--" she added, a moment later, "I don't know--but I should think--" she hesitated. "What?" inquired Clare, with some curiosity. "Well, I was going to say, I should think that a man would wish to feel that he is holding, not that he is held. But then people are so different! One can never tell. At all events, it is foolish to wish to show everybody that you own a man, so to say." Mrs. Bowring seemed to be considering the question, but she evidently found nothing more to say about it, and they walked up and down in silence for a long time, each occupied with her own thoughts. Then all at once there was a sound of many voices speaking English, and trying to give orders in Italian, and the words "Good-bye, Brook!" sounded several times above the rest. Little by little, all grew still again. "They are gone at last," said Mrs. Bowring, with a sigh of relief. CHAPTER III Clare Bowring went to her room that night feeling as though she had been at the theatre. She could not get rid of the impression made upon her by the scene she had witnessed, and over and over again, as she lay awake, with the moonbeams streaming into her room, she went over all she had seen and heard on the platform. It had, at least, been very like the theatre. The broad, flat stage, the somewhat conventionally picturesque buildings, the strip of far-off sea, as flat as a band of paint, the unnaturally bright moonlight, the two chief figures going through a love quarrel in the foreground, and she herself calmly seated in the shadow, as in the darkened amphitheatre, and looking on unseen and unnoticed. But the two people had not talked at all as people talked on the stage in any piece Clare had ever seen. What would have been the "points" in a play had all been left out, and instead there had been abrupt pauses and awkward silences, and then, at what should have been the supreme moment, the lady in white had asked for a cigarette. And the two hasty little kisses that had a sort of perfunctory air, and the queer, jerky "good-byes," and the last stop near the door of the hotel--it all had an air of being very badly done. It could not have been a success on the stage, Clare thought. And yet this was a bit of life, of the real, genuine life of two people who had been in love, and perhaps were in love still, though they might not know it. She had been present at what must, in her view, have been a great crisis in two lives. Such things, she thought, could not happen more than once in a lifetime--twice, perhaps. Her mother had been married twice, so Clare admitted a second possibility. But not more than that. The situation, too, as she reviewed it, was nothing short of romantic. Here was a young man who had evidently been making love to a married woman, and who had made her believe that he loved her, and had made her love him too. Clare remembered the desperate little sob, and the handkerchief twice pressed to the pale lips. The woman was married, and yet she actually loved the man enough to think of divorcing her husband in order to marry him. Then, just when she was ready, he had turned and told her in the most heartless way that it had been all play, and that he would not marry her under any circumstances. It seemed monstrous to the innocent girl that they should even have spoken of marriage, until the divorce was accomplished. Then, of course, it would have been all right. Clare had been brought up with modern ideas about divorce in general, as being a fair and just thing in certain circumstances. She had learned that it could not be right to let an innocent woman suffer all her life because she had married a brute by mistake. Doubtless that was Lady Fan's case. But she should have got her divorce first, and then she might have talked of marriage afterwards. It was very wrong of her. But Lady Fan's thoughtlessness--or wickedness, as Clare thought she ought to call it--sank into insignificance before the cynical heartlessness of the man. It was impossible ever to forget the cool way in which he had said she ought not to take it so tragically, because it was not worth it. Yet he had admitted that he had promised to marry her if she got a divorce. He had made love to her, there on the Acropolis, at sunset, as she had said. He even granted that he might have believed himself in earnest for a few moments. And now he told her that he was sorry, but that "it would not do." It had evidently been all his fault, for he had found nothing with which to reproach her. If there had been anything, Clare thought, he would have brought it up in self-defence. She could not suspect that he would almost rather have married Lady Fan, and ruined his life, than have done that. Innocence cannot even guess at sin's code of honour--though sometimes it would be in evil case without it. Brook had probably broken Lady Fan's heart that night, thought the young girl, though Lady Fan had said with such a bitter, crying laugh that they were not children and that their hearts could not break. And it all seemed very unreal, as she looked back upon it. The situation was certainly romantic, but the words had been poor beyond her imagination, and the actors had halted in their parts, as at a first rehearsal. Then Clare reflected that of course neither of them had ever been in such a situation before, and that, if they were not naturally eloquent, it was not surprising that they should have expressed themselves in short, jerky sentences. But that was only an excuse she made to herself to account for the apparent unreality of it all. She turned her cheek to a cool end of the pillow and tried to go to sleep. She tried to bring back the white dreams she had dreamt when she had sat alone in the shadow before the other two had come out to quarrel. She did her best to bring back that vague, soft joy of yearning for something beautiful and unknown. She tried to drop the silver veil of fancy-threads woven by the May moon between her and the world. But it would not come. Instead of it, she saw the flat platform, the man and woman standing in the unnatural brightness, and the woman's desperate little face when he had told her that she had never loved him. The dream was not white any more. So that was life. That was reality. That was the way men treated women. She thought she began to understand what faithlessness and unfaithfulness meant. She had seen an unfaithful man, and had heard him telling the woman he had made love him that he never could love her any more. That was real life. Clare's heart went out to the little lady in white. By this time she was alone in her cabin, and her pillow was wet with tears. Brook doubtless was calmly asleep, unless he were drinking or doing some of those vaguely wicked things which, in the imagination of very simple young girls, fill up the hours of fast men, and help sometimes to make those very men "interesting." But after what she had seen Clare felt that Brook could never interest her under imaginable circumstances. He was simply a "brute," as the lady in white had told him, and Clare wished that some woman could make him suffer for his sins and expiate the misdeeds which had made that little face so desperate and that short laugh so bitter. She wished, though she hardly knew it, that she had done anything rather than have sat there in the shadow, all through the scene. She had lost something that night which it would be hard indeed to find again. There was a big jagged rent in the drop-curtain of illusions before her life-stage, and through it she saw things that troubled her and would not be forgotten. She had no memory of her own of which the vivid brightness or the intimate sadness could diminish the force of this new impression. Possibly, she was of the kind that do not easily fall in love, for she had met during the past two years more than one man whom many a girl of her age and bringing up might have fancied. Some of them might have fallen in love with her, if she had allowed them, or if she had felt the least spark of interest in them and had shown it. But she had not. Her manner was cold and over-dignified for her years, and she had very little vanity together with much pride--too much of the latter, perhaps, to be ever what is called popular. For "popular" persons are generally those who wish to be such; and pride and the love of popularity are at opposite poles of the character-world. Proud characters set love high and their own love higher, while a vain woman will risk her heart for a compliment, and her reputation for the sake of having a lion in her leash, if only for a day. Clare Bowring had not yet been near to loving, and she had nothing of her own to contrast with this experience in which she had been a mere spectator. It at once took the aspect of a generality. This man and this woman were probably not unlike most men and women, if the truth were known, she thought. And she had seen the real truth, as few people could ever have seen it--the supreme crisis of a love-affair going on before her very eyes, in her hearing, at her feet, the actors having no suspicion of her presence. It was, perhaps, the certainty that she could not misinterpret it all which most disgusted her, and wounded something in her which she had never defined, but which was really a sort of belief that love must always carry with it something beautiful, whether joyous, or tender, or tragic. Of that, there had been nothing in what she had seen. Only the woman's face came back to her, and hurt her, and she felt her own heart go out to poor Lady Fan, while it hardened against Brook with an exaggerated hatred, as though he had insulted and injured all living women. It was probable that she was to see this man during several days to come. The idea struck her when she was almost asleep, and it waked her again, with a start. It was quite certain that he had stayed behind, when the others had gone down to the yacht, for she had heard the voices calling out "Good-bye, Brook!" Besides he had said repeatedly to the lady in white that he must stay. He was expecting his people. It was quite certain that Clare must see him during the next day or two. It was not impossible that he might try to make her mother's acquaintance and her own. The idea was intensely disagreeable to her. In the first place, she hated him beforehand for what he had done, and, secondly, she had once heard his secret. It was one thing, so long as he was a total stranger. It would be quite another, if she should come to know him. She had a vague thought of pretending to be ill, and staying in her room as long as he remained in the place. But in that case she should have to explain matters to her mother. She should not like to do that. The thought of the difficulty disturbed her a little while longer. Then, at last, she fell asleep, tired with what she had felt, and seen, and heard. The yacht sailed before daybreak, and in the morning the little hotel had returned to its normal state of peace. The early sun blazed upon the white walls above, and upon the half-moon, beach below, and shot straight into the recess in the rocks where Clare had sat by the old black cross in the dark. The level beams ran through her room, too, for it faced south-east, looking across the gulf; and when she went to the window and stood in the sunshine, her flaxen hair looked almost white, and the good southern warmth brought soft colour to the northern girl's cheeks. She was like a thin, fair angel, standing there on the high balcony, looking to seaward in the calm air. That, at least, was what a fisherman from Praiano thought, as he turned his hawk-eyes upwards, standing to his oars and paddling slowly along, top-heavy in his tiny boat. But no native of Amalfi ever mistook a foreigner for an angel. Everything was quiet and peaceful again, and there seemed to be neither trace nor memory of the preceding day's invasion. The English old maids were early at their window, and saw with disappointment that the yacht was gone. They were never to know whether the big man with the gold cigarette case had been the Duke of Orkney or not. But order was restored, and they got their tea and toast without difficulty. The Russian invalid was slicing a lemon into his cup on the vine-sheltered terrace, and the German family, having slept on the question of the Pope and Bismarck, were ruddy with morning energy, and were making an early start for a place in the hills where the Professor had heard that there was an inscription of the ninth century. The young girl stood still on her balcony, happily dazed for a few moments by the strong sunshine and the clear air. It is probably the sensation enjoyed for hours together by a dog basking in the sun, but with most human beings it does not last long--the sun is soon too hot for the head, or too bright for the eyes, or there is a draught, or the flies disturb one. Man is not capable of as much physical enjoyment as the other animals, though perhaps his enjoyment is keener during the first moments. Then comes thought, restlessness, discontent, change, effort, and progress, and the history of man's superiority is the journal of his pain. For a little while, Clare stood blinking in the sunshine, smitten into a pleasant semi-consciousness by the strong nature around her. Then she thought of Brook and the lady in white, and of all she had been a witness of in the evening, and the colour of things changed a little, and she turned away and went between the little white and red curtains into her room again. Life was certainly not the same since she had heard and seen what a man and a woman could say and be. There were certain new impressions, where there had been no impression at all, but only a maiden readiness to receive the beautiful. What had come was not beautiful, by any means, and the thought of it darkened the air a little, so that the day was not to be what it might have been. She realised how she was affected, and grew impatient with herself. After all, it would be the easiest thing in the world to avoid the man, even if he stayed some time. Her mother was not much given to making acquaintance with strangers. And it would have been easy enough, if the man himself had taken the same view. He, however, had watched the Bowrings on the preceding evening, and had made up his mind that they were "human beings," as he put it; that is to say, that they belonged to his own class, whereas none of the people at the upper end of the table had any claim to be counted with the social blessed. He was young, and though he knew how to amuse himself alone, and had all manner of manly tastes and inclinations, he preferred pleasant society to solitude, and his experience told him that the society of the Bowrings would in all probability be pleasant. He therefore determined that he would try to know them at once, and the determination had already been formed in his mind when he had run after Clare to give her the shawl she had dropped. He got up rather late, and promptly marched out upon the terrace under the vines, smoking a briar-root pipe with that solemn air whereby the Englishman abroad proclaims to the world that he owns the scenery. There is something almost phenomenal about an Englishman's solid self-satisfaction when he is alone with his pipe. Every nation has its own way of smoking. There is a hasty and vicious manner about the Frenchman's little cigarette of pungent black tobacco; the Italian dreams over his rat-tail cigar; the American either eats half of his Havana while he smokes the other, or else he takes a frivolous delight in smoking delicately and keeping the white ash whole to the end; the German surrounds himself with a cloud, and, god-like, meditates within it; there is a sacrificial air about the Asiatic's narghileh, as the thin spire rises steadily and spreads above his head; but the Englishman's short briar-root pipe has a powerful individuality of its own. Its simplicity is Gothic, its solidity is of the Stone Age, he smokes it in the face of the higher civilisation, and it is the badge of the conqueror. A man who asserts that he has a right to smoke a pipe anywhere, practically asserts that he has a right to everything. And it will be admitted that Englishmen get a good deal. Moreover, as soon as the Englishman has finished smoking he generally goes and does something else. Brook knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and immediately went in search of the head waiter, to whom he explained with some difficulty that he wished to be placed next to the two ladies who sat last on the side away from the staircase at the public table. The waiter tried to explain that the two ladies, though they had been some time in the hotel, insisted upon being always last on that side because there was more air. But Brook was firm, and he strengthened his argument with coin, and got what he wanted. He also made the waiter point out to him the Bowrings' name on the board which held the names of the guests. Then he asked the way to Ravello, turned up his trousers round his ankles, and marched off at a swinging pace down the steep descent towards the beach, which he had to cross before climbing the hill to the old town. Nothing in his outward manner or appearance betrayed that he had been through a rather serious crisis on the preceding evening. That was what struck Clare Bowring when, to her dismay, he sat down beside her at the midday meal. She could not help glancing at him as he took his seat. His eyes were bright, his face, browned by the sun, was fresh and rested. There was not a line of care or thought on his forehead. The young girl felt that she was flushing with anger. He saw her colour, and took it for a sign of shyness. He made a sort of apologetic movement of the head and shoulders towards her which was not exactly a bow--for to an Englishman's mind a bow is almost a familiarity--but which expressed a kind of vague desire not to cause any inconvenience. The colour deepened a little in Clare's face, and then disappeared. She found something to say to her mother, on her other side, which it would hardly have been worth while to say at all under ordinary circumstances. Mrs. Bowring had glanced at the man while he was taking his seat, and her eyebrows had contracted a little. Later she looked furtively past her daughter at his profile, and then stared a long time at her plate. As for him, he began to eat with conscious strength, as healthy young men do, but he watched his opportunity for doing or saying anything which might lead to a first acquaintance. To tell the truth, however, he was in no hurry. He knew how to make himself comfortable, and it was an important element in his comfort to be seated next to the only persons in the place with whom he should care to associate. That point being gained, he was willing to wait for whatever was to come afterwards. He did not expect in any case to gain more than the chance of a little pleasant conversation, and he was not troubled by any youthful desire to shine in the eyes of the fair girl beside whom he found himself, beyond the natural wish to appear well before women in general, which modifies the conduct of all natural and manly young men when women are present at all. As the meal proceeded, however, he was surprised to find that no opportunity presented itself for exchanging a word with his neighbour. He had so often found it impossible to avoid speaking with strangers at a public table that he had taken the probability of some little incident for granted, and caught himself glancing surreptitiously at Clare's plate to see whether there were nothing wanting which he might offer her. But he could not think of anything. The fried sardines were succeeded by the regulation braised beef with the gluey brown sauce which grows in most foreign hotels. That, in its turn, was followed by some curiously dry slices of spongecake, each bearing a bit of pink and white sugar frosting, and accompanied by fresh orange marmalade, which Brook thought very good, but which Clare refused. And then there was fruit--beautiful oranges, uncanny apples, and walnuts--and the young man foresaw the near end of the meal, and wished that something would happen. But still nothing happened at all. He watched Clare's hands as she prepared an orange in the Italian fashion, taking off the peel at one end, then passing the knife twice completely round at right angles, and finally stripping the peel away in four neat pieces. The hands were beautiful in their way, too thin, perhaps, and almost too white from recent illness, but straight and elastic, with little blue veins at the sides of the finger-joints and exquisite nails that were naturally polished. The girl was clever with her fingers, she could not help seeing that her neighbour was watching her, and she peeled the orange with unusual skill and care. It was a good one, too, and the peel separated easily from the deep yellow fruit. "How awfully jolly!" exclaimed the young man, unconsciously, in genuine admiration. He was startled by the sound of his own voice, for he had not meant to speak, and the blood rushed to his sunburnt face. Clare's eyes flashed upon him in a glance of surprise, and the colour rose in her cheeks also. She was evidently not pleased, and he felt that he had been guilty of a breach of English propriety. When an Englishman does a tactless thing he generally hastens to make it worse, becomes suddenly shy, and flounders. "I--I beg your pardon," stammered Brook. "I really didn't mean to speak--that is--you did it so awfully well, you know!" "It's the Italian way," Clare answered, beginning to quarter the orange. She felt that she could not exactly be silent after he had apologised for admiring her skill. But she remembered that she had felt some vanity in what she had been doing, and had done it with some unnecessary ostentation. She hoped that he would not say anything more, for the sound of his voice reminded her of what she had heard him say to the lady in white, and she hated him with all her heart. But the young man was encouraged by her sufficiently gracious answer, and was already glad of what he had done. "Do all Italians do it that way?" he asked boldly. "Generally," answered the young girl, and she began to eat the orange. Brook took another from the dish before him. "Let me see," he said, turning it round and round. "You cut a slice off one end." He began to cut the peel. "Not too deep," said Clare, "or you will cut into the fruit." "Oh--thanks, awfully. Yes, I see. This way?" He took the end off, and looked at her for approval. She nodded gravely, and then turned away her eyes. He made the two cuts round the peel, crosswise, and looked to her again, but she affected not to see him. "Oh--might I ask you--" he began. She looked at his orange again, without a smile. "Please don't think me too dreadfully rude," he said. "But it was so pretty, and I'm tremendously anxious to learn. Was it this way?" His fingers teased the peel, and it began to come off. He raised his eyes with another look of inquiry. "Yes. That's all right," said Clare calmly. She was going to look away again, when she reflected that since he was so pertinacious it would be better to see the operation finished once for all. Then she and her mother would get up and go away, as they had finished. But he wished to push his advantage. "And now what does one do?" he asked, for the sake of saying something. "One eats it," answered Clare, half impatiently. He stared at her a moment and then broke into a laugh, and Clare, very much to her own surprise and annoyance, laughed too, in spite of herself. That broke the ice. When two people have laughed together over something one of them has said, there is no denying the acquaintance. "It was really awfully kind of you!" he exclaimed, his eyes still laughing. "It was horridly rude of me to say anything at all, but I really couldn't help it. If I could get anybody to introduce me, so that I could apologise properly, I would, you know, but in this place--" He looked towards the German family and the English old maids, in a helpless sort of way, and then laughed again. "I don't think it's necessary," said Clare rather coldly. "No--I suppose not," he answered, growing graver at once. "And I think it is allowed--isn't it?--to speak to one's neighbour at a table d'hôte, you know. Not but what it was awfully rude of me, all the same," he added hastily. "Oh no. Not at all." Clare stared at the wall opposite and leaned back in her chair. "Oh! thanks awfully! I was afraid you might think so, you know." Mrs. Bowring leaned forward as her daughter leaned back. Seeing that the latter had fallen into conversation with the stranger, she was too much a woman of the world not to speak to him at once in order to avoid any awkwardness when they next met, for he could not possibly have spoken first to her across the young girl. "Is it your first visit to Amalfi?" she inquired, with as much originality as is common in such cases. Brook leaned forward too, and looked over at the elder woman. "Yes," he answered, "I was with a party, and they dropped me here last night. I was to meet my people here, but they haven't turned up yet, so I'm seeing the sights. I went up to Ravello this morning--you know, that place on the hill. There's an awfully good view from there, isn't there?" Clare thought his fluency developed very quickly when he spoke to her mother. As he leaned forward she could not help seeing his face, and she looked at him closely, for the first time, and with some curiosity. He was handsome, and had a wonderfully frank and good-humoured expression. He was not in the least a "beauty" man--she thought he might be a soldier or a sailor, and a very good specimen of either. Furthermore, he was undoubtedly a gentleman, so far as a man is to be judged by his outward manner and appearance. In her heart she had already set him down as little short of a villain. The discrepancy between his looks and what she thought of him disturbed her. It was unpleasant to feel that a man who had acted as he had acted last night could look as fresh, and innocent, and unconcerned as he looked to-day. It was disagreeable to have him at her elbow. Either he had never cared a straw for poor Lady Fan, and in that case he had almost broken her heart out of sheer mischief and love of selfish amusement, or else, if he had cared for her at all, he was a pitiably fickle and faithless creature--something much more despicable in the eyes of most women than the most heartless cynic. One or the other he must be, thought Clare. In either case he was bad, because Lady Fan was married, and it was wicked to make love to married women. There was a directness about Clare's view which would either have made the man laugh or would have hurt him rather badly. She wondered what sort of expression would come over his handsome face if she were suddenly to tell him what she knew. The idea took her by surprise, and she smiled to herself as she thought of it. Yet she could not help glancing at him again and again, as he talked across her with her mother, making very commonplace remarks about the beauty of the place. Very much in spite of herself, she wished to know him better, though she already hated him. His face attracted her strangely, and his voice was pleasant, close to her ear. He had not in the least the look of the traditional lady-killer, of whom the tradition seems to survive as a moral scarecrow for the education of the young, though the creature is extinct among Anglo-Saxons. He was, on the contrary, a manly man, who looked as though he would prefer tennis to tea and polo to poetry--and men to women for company, as a rule. She felt that if she had not heard him talking with the lady in white she should have liked him very much. As it was, she said to herself that she wished she might never see him again--and all the time her eyes returned again and again to his sunburnt face and profile, till in a few minutes she knew his features by heart. CHAPTER IV A chance acquaintance may, under favourable circumstances, develop faster than one brought about by formal introduction, because neither party has been previously led to expect anything of the other. There is no surer way of making friendship impossible than telling two people that they are sure to be such good friends, and are just suited to each other. The law of natural selection applies to almost everything we want in the world, from food and climate to a wife. When Clare and her mother had established themselves as usual on the terrace under the vines that afternoon, Brook came and sat beside them for a while. Mrs. Bowring liked him and talked easily with him, but Clare was silent and seemed absent-minded. The young man looked at her from time to time with curiosity, for he was not used to being treated with such perfect indifference as she showed to him. He was not spoilt, as the phrase goes, but he had always been accustomed to a certain amount of attention, when he met new people, and, without being in the least annoyed, he thought it strange that this particular young lady should seem not even to listen to what he said. Mrs. Bowring, on the other hand, scarcely took her eyes from his face after the first ten minutes, and not a word he spoke escaped her. By contrast with her daughter's behaviour, her earnest attention was very noticeable. By degrees she began to ask him questions about himself. "Do you expect your people to-morrow?" she inquired. Clare looked up quickly. It was very unlike her mother to show even that small amount of curiosity about a stranger. It was clear that Mrs. Bowring had conceived a sudden liking for the young man. "They were to have been here to-day," he answered indifferently. "They may come this evening, I suppose, but they have not even ordered rooms. I asked the man there--the owner of the place, I suppose he is." "Then of course you will wait for them," suggested Mrs. Bowring. "Yes. It's an awful bore, too. That is--" he corrected himself hastily--"I mean, if I were to be here without a soul to speak to, you know. Of course, it's different, this way." "How?" asked Mrs. Bowring, with a brighter smile than Clare had seen on her face for a long time. "Oh, because you are so kind as to let me talk to you," answered the young man, without the least embarrassment. "Then you are a social person?" Mrs. Bowring laughed a little. "You don't like to be alone?" "Oh no! Not when I can be with nice people. Of course not. I don't believe anybody does. Unless I'm doing something, you know--shooting, or going up a hill, or fishing. Then I don't mind. But of course I would much rather be alone than with bores, don't you know? Or--or--well, the other kind of people." "What kind?" asked Mrs. Bowring. "There are only two kinds," answered Brook, gravely. "There is our kind--and then there is the other kind. I don't know what to call them, do you? All the people who never seem to understand exactly what we are talking about nor why we do things--and all that. I call them 'the other kind.' But then I haven't a great command of language. What should you call them?" "Cads, perhaps," suggested Clare, who had not spoken for a long time. "Oh no, not exactly," answered the young man, looking at her. "Besides, 'cads' doesn't include women, does it? A gentleman's son sometimes turns out a most awful cad, a regular 'bounder.' It's rare, but it does happen sometimes. A mere cad may know, and understand all right, but he's got the wrong sort of feeling inside of him about most things. For instance--you don't mind? A cad may know perfectly well that he ought not to 'kiss and tell'--but he will all the same. The 'other kind,' as I call them, don't even know. That makes them awfully hard to get on with." "Then, of the two, you prefer the cad?" inquired Clare coolly. "No. I don't know. They are both pretty bad. But a cad may be very amusing, sometimes." "When he kisses and tells?" asked the young girl viciously. Brook looked at her, in quick surprise at her tone. "No," he answered quietly. "I didn't mean that. The clowns in the circus represent amusing cads. Some of them are awfully clever, too," he added, turning the subject. "Some of those fiddling fellows are extraordinary. They really play very decently. They must have a lot of talent, when you think of all the different things they do besides their feats of strength--they act, and play the fiddle, and sing, and dance--" "You seem to have a great admiration for clowns," observed Clare in an indifferent tone. "Well--they are amusing, aren't they? Of course, it isn't high art, and that sort of thing, but one laughs at them, and sometimes they do very pretty things. One can't be always on one's hind legs, doing Hamlet, can one? There's a limit to the amount of tragedy one can stand during life. After all, it is better to laugh than to cry." "When one can," said Mrs. Bowring thoughtfully. "Some people always can, whatever happens," said the young girl. "Perhaps they are right," answered the young man. "Things are not often so serious as they are supposed to be. It's like being in a house that's supposed to be haunted--on All Hallow E'en, for instance--it's awfully gruesome and creepy at night when the wind moans and the owls screech. And then, the next morning, one wonders how one could have been such an idiot. Other things are often like that. You think the world's coming to an end--and then it doesn't, you know. It goes on just the same. You are rather surprised at first, but you soon get used to it. I suppose that is what is meant by losing one's illusions." "Sometimes the world stops for an individual and doesn't go on again," said Mrs. Bowring, with a faint smile. "Oh, I suppose people do break their hearts sometimes," returned Brook, somewhat thoughtfully. "But it must be something tremendously serious," he added with instant cheerfulness. "I don't believe it happens often. Most people just have a queer sensation in their throat for a minute, and they smoke a cigarette for their nerves, and go away and think of something else." Clare looked at him, and her eyes flashed angrily, for she remembered Lady Fan's cigarette and the preceding evening. He remembered it too, and was thinking of it, for he smiled as he spoke and looked away at the horizon as though he saw something in the air. For the first time in her life the young girl had a cruel impulse. She wished that she were a great beauty, or that she possessed infinite charm, that she might revenge the little lady in white and make the man suffer as he deserved. At one moment she was ashamed of the wish, and then again it returned, and she smiled as she thought of it. She was vaguely aware, too, that the man attracted her in a way which did not interfere with her resentment against him. She would certainly not have admitted that he was interesting to her on account of Lady Fan--but there was in her a feminine willingness to play with the fire at which another woman had burned her wings. Almost all women feel that, until they have once felt too much themselves. The more innocent and inexperienced they are, the more sure they are, as a rule, of their own perfect safety, and the more ready to run any risk. Neither of the women answered the young man's rather frivolous assertion for some moments. Then Mrs. Bowring looked at him kindly, but with a far-away expression, as though she were thinking of some one else. "You are young," she said gently. "It's true that I'm not very old," he answered. "I was five-and-twenty on my last birthday." "Five-and-twenty," repeated Mrs. Bowring very slowly, and looking at the distance, with the air of a person who is making a mental calculation. "Are you surprised?" asked the young man, watching her. She started a little. "Surprised? Oh dear no! Why should I be?" And again she looked at him earnestly, until, realising what she was doing, she suddenly shut her eyes, shook herself almost imperceptibly, and took out some work which she had brought out with her. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "I thought you might fancy I was a good deal older or younger. But I'm always told that I look just my age." "I think you do," answered Mrs. Bowring, without looking up. Clare glanced at his face again. It was natural, under the circumstances, though she knew his features by heart already. She met his eyes, and for a moment she could not look away from them. It was as though they fixed her against her will, after she had once met them. There was nothing extraordinary about them, except that they were very bright and clear. With an effort she turned away, and the faint colour rose in her face. "I am nineteen," she said quietly, as though she were answering a question. "Indeed?" exclaimed Brook, not thinking of anything else to say. Mrs. Bowring looked at her daughter in considerable surprise. Then Clare blushed painfully, realising that she had spoken without any intention of speaking, and had volunteered a piece of information which had certainly not been asked. It was very well, being but nineteen years old; but she was oddly conscious that if she had been forty she should have said so in just the same absent-minded way, at that moment. "Nineteen and six are twenty-five, aren't they?" asked Mrs. Bowring suddenly. "Yes, I believe so," answered the young man, with a laugh, but a good deal surprised in his turn, for the question seemed irrelevant and absurd in the extreme. "But I'm not good at sums," he added. "I was an awful idiot at school. They used to call me Log. That was short for logarithm, you know, because I was such a log at arithmetic. A fellow gave me the nickname one day. It wasn't very funny, so I punched his head. But the name stuck to me. Awfully appropriate, anyhow, as it turned out." "Did you punch his head because it wasn't funny?" asked Clare, glad of the turn in the conversation. "Oh--I don't know--on general principles. He was a diabolically clever little chap, though he wasn't very witty. He came out Senior Wrangler at Cambridge. I heard he had gone mad last year. Lots of those clever chaps do, you know. Or else they turn parsons and take pupils for a living. I'd much rather be stupid, myself. There's more to live for, when you don't know everything. Don't you think so?" Both women laughed, and felt that the man was tactful. They were also both reflecting, of themselves and of each other, that they were not generally silly women, and they wondered how they had both managed to say such foolish things, speaking out irrelevantly what was passing in their minds. "I think I shall go for a walk," said Brook, rising rather abruptly. "I'll go up the hill for a change. Thanks awfully. Good-bye!" He lifted his hat and went off towards the hotel. Mrs. Bowring looked after him, but Clare leaned back in her seat and opened a book she had with her. The colour rose and fell in her cheeks, and she kept her eyes resolutely bent down. "What a nice fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Bowring when the young man was out of hearing. "I wonder who he is." "What difference can it make, what his name is?" asked Clare, still looking down. "What is the matter with you, child?" Mrs. Bowring asked. "You talk so strangely to-day!" "So do you, mother. Fancy asking him whether nineteen and six are twenty-five!" "For that matter, my dear, I thought it very strange that you should tell him your age, like that." "I suppose I was absent-minded. Yes! I know it was silly, I don't know why I said it. Do you want to know his name? I'll go and see. It must be on the board by this time, as he is stopping here." She rose and was going, when her mother called her back. "Clare! Wait till he is gone, at all events! Fancy, if he saw you!" "Oh! He won't see me! If he comes that way I'll go into the office and buy stamps." Clare went in and looked over the square board with its many little slips for the names of the guests. Some were on visiting cards and some were written in the large, scrawling, illiterate hand of the head waiter. Some belonged to people who were already gone. It looked well, in the little hotel, to have a great many names on the list. Some seconds passed before Clare found that of the new-comer. "Mr. Brook Johnstone." Brook was his first name, then. It was uncommon. She looked at it fixedly. There was no address on the small, neatly engraved card. While she was looking at it a door opened quietly behind her, in the opposite side of the corridor. She paid no attention to it for a moment; then, hearing no footsteps, she instinctively turned. Brook Johnstone was standing on the threshold watching her. She blushed violently, in her annoyance, for he could not doubt but that she was looking for his name. He saw and understood, and came forward naturally, with a smile. He had a stick in his hand. "That's me," he said, with a little laugh, tapping his card on the board with the head of his stick. "If I'd had an ounce of manners I should have managed to tell you who I was by this time. Won't you excuse me, and take this for an introduction? Johnstone--with an E at the end--Scotch, you know." "Thanks," answered Clare, recovering from her embarrassment. "I'll tell my mother." She hesitated a moment. "And that's us," she added, laughing rather nervously and pointing out one of the cards. "How grammatical we are, aren't we?" she laughed, while he stooped and read the name which chanced to be at the bottom of the board. "Well--what should one say? 'That's we.' It sounds just as badly. And you can't say 'we are that,' can you? Besides, there's no one to hear us, so it makes no difference. I don't suppose that you--you and Mrs. Bowring--would care to go for a walk, would you?" "No," answered Clare, with sudden coldness. "I don't think so, thank you. We are not great walkers." They went as far as the door together. Johnstone bowed and walked off, and Clare went back to her mother. "He caught me," she said, in a tone of annoyance. "You were quite right. Then he showed me his name himself, on the board. It's Johnstone--Mr. Brook Johnstone, with an E--he says that he is Scotch. Why--mother! Johnstone! How odd! That was the name of--" She stopped short and looked at her mother, who had grown unnaturally pale during the last few seconds. "Yes, dear. That was the name of my first husband." Mrs. Bowring spoke in a low voice, looking down at her work. But her hands trembled violently, and she was clearly making a great effort to control herself. Clare watched her anxiously, not at all understanding. "Mother dear, what is it?" she asked. "The name is only a coincidence--it's not such an uncommon name, after all--and besides--" "Oh, of course," said Mrs. Bowring, in a dull tone. "It's a mere coincidence--probably no relation. I'm nervous, to-day." Her manner seemed unaccountable to her daughter, except on the supposition that she was ill. She very rarely spoke of her first husband, by whom she had no children. When she did, she mentioned his name gravely, as one speaks of dead persons who have been dear, but that was all. She had never shown anything like emotion in connection with the subject, and the young girl avoided it instinctively, as most children, of whose parents the one has been twice married, avoid the mention of the first husband or wife, who was not their father or mother. "I wish I understood you!" exclaimed Clare. "There's nothing to understand, dear," said Mrs. Bowring, still very pale. "I'm nervous--that's all." Before long she left Clare by herself and went indoors, and locked herself into her room. The rooms in the old hotel were once the cells of the monks, small vaulted chambers in which there is barely space for the most necessary furniture. During nearly an hour Mrs. Bowring paced up and down, a beat of fourteen feet between the low window and the locked door. At last she stopped before the little glass, and looked at herself, and smoothed her streaked hair. "Nineteen and six--are twenty-five," she said slowly in a low voice, and her eyes stared into their own reflection rather wildly. CHAPTER V Brook Johnstone's people did not come on the next day, nor on the day after that, but he expressed no surprise at the delay, and did not again say that it was a bore to have to wait for them. Meanwhile he spent a great deal of his time with the Bowrings, and the acquaintance ripened quickly towards intimacy, without passing near friendship, as such acquaintance sometimes will, when it springs up suddenly in the shallow ground of an out-of-the-way hotel on the Continent. "For Heaven's sake don't let that man fall in love with you, Clare!" said Mrs. Bowring one morning, with what seemed unnecessary vehemence. Clare's lip curled scornfully as she thought of poor Lady Fan. "There isn't the slightest danger of that!" she answered. "Any more than there is of my falling in love with him," she added. "Are you sure of that?" asked her mother. "You seem to like him. Besides, he is very nice, and very good-looking." "Oh yes--of course he is. But one doesn't necessarily fall in love with every nice and good-looking man one meets." Thereupon Clare cut the conversation short by going off to her own room. She had been expecting for some time that her mother would make some remark about the growing intimacy with young Johnstone. To tell the truth, Mrs. Bowring had not the slightest ground for anxiety in any previous attachment of her daughter. She was beginning to wonder whether Clare would ever show any preference for any man. But she did not at all wish to marry her at present, for she felt that life without the girl would be unbearably lonely. On the other hand, Clare had a right to marry. They were poor. A part of their little income was the pension that Mrs. Bowring had been fortunate enough to get as the widow of an officer killed in action, but that would cease at her death, as poor Captain Bowring's allowance from his family had ceased at his death. The family had objected to the marriage from the first, and refused to do anything for his child after he was gone. It would go hard with Clare if she were left alone in the world with what her mother could leave her. On the other hand, that little, or the prospect of it, was quite safe, and would make a great difference to her, as a married woman. The two lived on it, with economy. Clare could certainly dress very well on it if she married a rich man, but she could as certainly not afford to marry a poor one. As for this young Johnstone, he had not volunteered much information about himself, and, though Mrs. Bowring sometimes asked him questions, she was extremely careful not to ask any which could be taken in the nature of an inquiry as to his prospects in life, merely because that might possibly suggest to him that she was thinking of her daughter. And when an Englishman is reticent in such matters, it is utterly impossible to guess whether he be a millionaire or a penniless younger son. Johnstone never spoke of money, in any connection. He never said that he could afford one thing or could not afford another. He talked a good deal of shooting and sport, but never hinted that his father had any land. He never mentioned a family place in the country, nor anything of the sort. He did not even tell the Bowrings to whom the yacht belonged in which he had come, though he frequently alluded to things which had been said and done by the party during a two months' cruise, chiefly in eastern waters. The Bowrings were quite as reticent about themselves, and each respected the other's silence. Nevertheless they grew intimate, scarcely knowing how the intimacy developed. That is to say, they very quickly became accustomed, all three, to one another's society. If Johnstone was out of the hotel first, of an afternoon, he moped about with his pipe in an objectless way, as though he had lost something, until the Bowrings came out. If he was writing letters and they appeared first, they talked in detached phrases and looked often towards the door, until he came and sat down beside them. On the third evening, at dinner, he seemed very much amused at something, and then, as though he could not keep the joke to himself, he told his companions that he had received a telegram from his father, in answer to one of his own, informing him that he had made a mistake of a whole fortnight in the date, and must amuse himself as he pleased in the interval. "Just like me!" he observed. "I got the letter in Smyrna or somewhere--I forget--and I managed to lose it before I had read it through. But I thought I had the date all right. I'm glad, at all events. I was tired of those good people, and it's ever so much pleasanter here." Clare's gentle mouth hardened suddenly as she thought of Lady Fan. Johnstone had been thoroughly tired of her. That was what he meant when he spoke of "those good people." "You get tired of people easily, don't you?" she inquired coldly. "Oh no--not always," answered Johnstone. By this time he was growing used to her sudden changes of manner and to the occasional scornful speeches she made. He could not understand them in the least, as may be imagined, and having considerable experience he set them down to the score of a certain girlish shyness, which showed itself in no other way. He had known women whose shyness manifested itself in saying disagreeable things for which they were sometimes sorry afterwards. "No," he added reflectively. "I don't think I'm a very fickle person." Clare turned upon him the terrible innocence of her clear blue eyes. She thought she knew the truth about him too, and that he could not look her in the face. But she was mistaken. He met her glance fearlessly and quietly, with a frank smile and a little wonder at its fixed scrutiny. She would not look away, rude though she might seem, nor be stared out of countenance by a man whom she believed to be false and untrue. But his eyes were very bright, and in a few seconds they began to dazzle her, and she felt her eyelids trembling violently. It was a new sensation, and a very unpleasant one. It seemed to her that the man had suddenly got some power over her. She made a strong effort and turned away her face, and again she blushed with annoyance. "I beg your pardon," Johnstone said quickly, in a very low voice. "I didn't mean to be so rude." Clare said nothing as she sat beside him, but she looked at the opposite wall, and her hand made an impatient little gesture as the fingers lay on the edge of the table. Possibly, if her mother had not been on her other side, she might have answered him. As it was, she felt that she could not speak just then. She was very much disturbed, as though something new and totally unknown had got hold of her. It was not only that she hated the man for his heartlessness, while she felt that he had some sort of influence over her, which was more than mere attraction. There was something beyond, deep down in her heart, which was nameless, and painful, but which she somehow felt that she wanted. And aside from it all, she was angry with him for having stared her out of countenance, forgetting that when she had turned upon him she had meant to do the same by him, feeling quite sure that he could not look her in the face. They spoke little during the remainder of the meal, for Clare was quite willing to show that she was angry, though she had little right to be. After all, she had looked at him, and he had looked at her. After dinner she disappeared, and was not seen during the remainder of the evening. When she was alone, however, she went over the whole matter thoughtfully, and she made up her mind that she had been hasty. For she was naturally just. She said to herself that she had no claim to the man's secrets, which she had learned in a way of which she was not at all proud; and that if he could keep his own counsel, he, on his side, had a right to do so. The fact that she knew him to be heartless and faithless by no means implied that he was also indiscreet, though when an individual has done anything which we think bad we easily suppose that he may do every other bad thing imaginable. Johnstone's discretion, at least, was admirable, now that she thought of it. His bright eyes and frank look would have disarmed any suspicion short of the certainty she possessed. There had not been the least contraction of the lids, the smallest change in the expression of his mouth, not the faintest increase of colour in his young face. So much the worse, thought the young girl suddenly. He was not only bad. He was also an accomplished actor. No doubt his eyes had been as steady and bright and his whole face as truthful when he had made love to Lady Fan at sunset on the Acropolis. Somehow, the allusion to that scene had produced a vivid impression on Clare's mind, and she often found herself wondering what he had said, and how he had looked just then. Her resentment against him increased as she thought it all over, and again she felt a longing to be cruel to him, and to make him suffer just what he had made Lady Fan endure. Then she was suddenly and unexpectedly overcome by a shamed sense of her inability to accomplish any such act of justice. It was as though she had already tried, and had failed, and he had laughed in her face and turned away. It seemed to her that there could be nothing in her which could appeal to such a man. There was Lady Fan, much older, with plenty of experience, doubtless; and she had been deceived, and betrayed, and abandoned, before the young girl's very eyes. What chance could such a mere girl possibly have? It was folly, and moreover it was wicked of her to think of such things. She would be willingly lowering herself to his level, trying to do the very thing which she despised and hated in him, trying to outwit him, to out-deceive him, to out-betray him. One side of her nature, at least, revolted against any such scheme. Besides, she could never do it. She was not a great beauty; she was not extraordinarily clever--not clever at all, she said to herself in her sudden fit of humility; she had no "experience." That last word means a good deal more to most young girls than they can find in it after life's illogical surprises have taught them the terrible power of chance and mood and impulse. She glanced at her face in the mirror, and looked away. Then she glanced again. The third time she turned to the glass she began to examine her features in detail. Lady Fan was a fair woman, too. But, without vanity, she had to admit that she was much better-looking than Lady Fan. She was also much younger and fresher, which should be an advantage, she thought. She wished that her hair were golden instead of flaxen; that her eyes were dark instead of blue; that her cheeks were not so thin, and her throat a shade less slender. Nevertheless, she would have been willing to stand any comparison with the little lady in white. Of course, compared with the famous beauties, some of whom she had seen, she was scarcely worth a glance. Doubtless, Brook Johnstone knew them all. Then she gazed into her own eyes. She did not know that a woman, alone, may look into her own eyes and blush and turn away. She looked long and steadily, and quite quietly. After all, they looked dark, for the pupils were very large and the blue iris was of that deep colour which borders upon violet. There was something a little unusual in them, too, though she could not quite make out what it was. Why did not all women look straight before them as she did? There must be some mysterious reason. It was a pity that her eyelashes were almost white. Yet they, too, added something to the peculiarity of that strange gaze. "They are like periwinkles in a snowstorm!" exclaimed Clare, tired of her own face; and she turned from the mirror and went to bed. CHAPTER VI The first sign that two people no longer stand to each other in the relation of mere acquaintances is generally that the tones of their voices change, while they feel a slight and unaccountable constraint when they happen to be left alone together. Two days passed after the little incident which had occurred at dinner before Clare and Johnstone were momentarily face to face out of Mrs. Bowring's sight. At first Clare had not been aware that her mother was taking pains to be always present when the young man was about, but when she noticed the fact she at once began to resent it. Such constant watchfulness was unlike her mother, un-English, and almost unnatural. When they were all seated together on the terrace, if Mrs. Bowring wished to go indoors to write a letter or to get something she invented some excuse for making her daughter go with her, and stay with her till she came out again. A French or Italian mother could not have been more particular or careful, but a French or Italian girl would have been accustomed to such treatment, and would not have seen anything unusual in it. But Mrs. Bowring had never acted in such a way before now, and it irritated the young girl extremely. She felt that she was being treated like a child, and that Johnstone must see it and think it ridiculous. At last Clare made an attempt at resistance, out of sheer contrariety. "I don't want to write letters!" she answered impatiently. "I wrote two yesterday. It is hot indoors, and I would much rather stay here!" Mrs. Bowring went as far as the parapet, and looked down at the sea for a moment. Then she came back and sat down again. "It's quite true," she said. "It is hot indoors. I don't think I shall write, after all." Brook Johnstone could not help smiling a little, though he turned away his face to hide his amusement. It was so perfectly evident that Mrs. Bowring was determined not to leave Clare alone with him that he must have been blind not to see it. Clare saw the smile, and was angry. She was nineteen years old, she had been out in the world, the terrace was a public place, Johnstone was a gentleman, and the whole thing was absurd. She took up her work and closed her lips tightly. Johnstone felt the awkwardness, rose suddenly, and said he would go for a walk. Clare raised her eyes and nodded as he lifted his hat. He was still smiling, and her resentment deepened. A moment later, mother and daughter were alone. Clare did not lay down her work, nor look up when she spoke. "Really, mother, it's too absurd!" she exclaimed, and a little colour came to her cheeks. "What is absurd, my dear?" asked Mrs. Bowring, affecting not to understand. "Your abject fear of leaving me for five minutes with Mr. Johnstone. I'm not a baby. He was laughing. I was positively ashamed! What do you suppose could have happened, if you had gone in and written your letters and left us quietly here? And it happens every day, you know! If you want a glass of water, I have to go in with you." "My dear! What an exaggeration!" "It's not an exaggeration, mother--really. You know that you wouldn't leave me with him for five minutes, for anything in the world." "Do you wish to be left alone with him, my dear?" asked Mrs. Bowring, rather abruptly. Clare was indignant. "Wish it? No! Certainly not! But if it should happen naturally, by accident, I should not get up and run away. I'm not afraid of the man, as you seem to be. What can he do to me? And you have no idea how strangely you behave, and what ridiculous excuses you invent for me. The other day you insisted on my going in to look for a train in the time-tables when you know we haven't the slightest intention of going away for ever so long. Really--you're turning into a perfect duenna. I wish you would behave naturally, as you always used to do." "I think you exaggerate," said Mrs. Bowring. "I never leave you alone with men you hardly know--" "You can't exactly say that we hardly know Mr. Johnstone, when he has been with us, morning, noon, and night, for nearly a week, mother." "My dear, we know nothing about him--" "If you are so anxious to know his father's Christian name, ask him. It wouldn't seem at all odd. I will, if you like." "Don't!" cried Mrs. Bowring, with unusual energy. "I mean," she added in a lower tone and looking away, "it would be very rude--he would think it very strange. In fact, it is merely idle curiosity on my part--really, I would much rather not know." Clare looked at her mother in surprise. "How oddly you talk!" she exclaimed. Then her tone changed. "Mother dear--is anything the matter? You don't seem quite--what shall I say? Are you suffering, dearest? Has anything happened?" She dropped her work, and leaned forward, her hand on her mother's, and gazing into her face with a look of anxiety. "No, dear," answered Mrs. Bowring. "No, no--it's nothing. Perhaps I'm a little nervous--that's all." "I believe the air of this place doesn't suit you. Why shouldn't we go away at once?" Mrs. Bowring shook her head and protested energetically. "No--oh no! I wouldn't go away for anything. I like the place immensely, and we are both getting perfectly well here. Oh no! I wouldn't think of going away." Clare leaned back in her seat again. She was devotedly fond of her mother, and she could not but see that something was wrong. In spite of what she said, Mrs. Bowring was certainly not growing stronger, though she was not exactly ill. The pale face was paler, and there was a worn and restless look in the long-suffering, almost colourless eyes. "I'm sorry I made such a fuss about Mr. Johnstone," said Clare softly, after a short pause. "No, darling," answered her mother instantly. "I dare say I have been a little over careful. I don't know--I had a sort of presentiment that you might take a fancy to him." "I know. You said so the first day. But I sha'n't, mother. You need not be at all afraid. He is not at all the sort of man to whom I should ever take a fancy, as you call it." "I don't see why not," said Mrs. Bowring thoughtfully. "Of course--it's hard to explain." Clare smiled. "But if that is what you are afraid of, you can leave us alone all day. My 'fancy' would be quite, quite different." "Very well, darling. At all events, I'll try not to turn into a duenna." Johnstone did not appear again until dinner, and then he was unusually silent, only exchanging a remark with Clare now and then, and not once leaning forward to say a few words to Mrs. Bowring as he generally did. The latter had at first thought of exchanging places with her daughter, but had reflected that it would be almost a rudeness to make such a change after the second day. They went out upon the terrace, and had their coffee there. Several of the other people did the same, and walked slowly up and down under the vines. Mrs. Bowring, wishing to destroy as soon as possible the unpleasant impression she had created, left the two together, saying that she would get something to put over her shoulders, as the air was cool. Clare and Johnstone stood by the parapet and looked at each other. Then Clare leaned with her elbows on the wall and stared in silence at the little lights on the beach below, trying to make out the shapes of the boats which were hauled up in a long row. Neither spoke for a long time, and Clare, at least, felt unpleasantly the constraint of the unusual silence. "It is a beautiful place, isn't it?" observed Johnstone at last, for the sake of hearing his own voice. "Oh yes, quite beautiful," answered the young girl in a half-indifferent, half-discontented tone, and the words ended with a sort of girlish sniff. Again there was silence. Johnstone, standing up beside her, looked towards the hotel, to see whether Mrs. Bowring were coming back. But she was anxious to appear indifferent to their being together, and was in no hurry to return. Johnstone sat down upon the wall, while Clare leaned over it. "Miss Bowring!" he said suddenly, to call her attention. "Yes?" She did not look up; but to her own amazement she felt a queer little thrill at the sound of his voice, for it had not its usual tone. "Don't you think I had better go to Naples?" he asked. Clare felt herself start a little, and she waited a moment before she said anything in reply. She did not wish to betray any astonishment in her voice. Johnstone had asked the question under a sudden impulse; but a far wiser and more skilful man than himself could not have hit upon one better calculated to precipitate intimacy. Clare, on her side, was woman enough to know that she had a choice of answers, and to see that the answer she should choose must make a difference hereafter. At the same time, she had been surprised, and when she thought of it afterwards it seemed to her that the question itself had been an impertinent one, merely because it forced her to make an answer of some sort. She decided in favour of making everything as clear as possible. "Why?" she asked, without looking round. At all events she would throw the burden of an elucidation upon him. He was not afraid of taking it up. "It's this," he answered. "I've rather thrust my acquaintance upon you, and, if I stay here until my people come, I can't exactly change my seat and go and sit at the other end of the table, nor pretend to be busy all day, and never come out here and sit with you, after telling you repeatedly that I have nothing on earth to do. Can I?" "Why should you?" "Because Mrs. Bowring doesn't like me." Clare rose from her elbows and stood up, resting her hands upon the wall, but still looking down at the lights on the beach. "I assure you, you're quite mistaken," she answered, with quiet emphasis. "My mother thinks you're very nice." "Then why--" Johnstone checked himself, and crumbled little bits of mortar from the rough wall with his thumbs. "Why what?" "I don't know whether I know you well enough to ask the question, Miss Bowring." "Let's assume that you do--for the sake of argument," said Clare, with a short laugh, as she glanced at his face, dimly visible in the falling darkness. "Thanks awfully," he answered, but he did not laugh with her. "It isn't exactly an easy thing to say, is it? Only--I couldn't help noticing--I hope you'll forgive me, if you think I'm rude, won't you? I couldn't help noticing that your mother was most awfully afraid of leaving us alone for a minute, you know--as though she thought I were a suspicious character, don't you know? Something of that sort. So, of course, I thought she didn't like me. Do you see? Tremendously cheeky of me to talk in this way, isn't it?" "Do you know? It is, rather." Clare was more inclined to laugh than before, but she only smiled in the dark. "Well, it would be, of course, if I didn't happen to be so painfully respectable." "Painfully respectable! What an expression!" This time, Clare laughed aloud. "Yes. That's just it. Well, I couldn't exactly tell Mrs. Bowring that, could I? Besides, one isn't vain of being respectable. I couldn't say, Please, Mrs. Bowring, my father is Mr. Smith, and my mother was a Miss Brown, of very good family, and we've got five hundred a year in Consols, and we're not in trade, and I've been to a good school, and am not at all dangerous. It would have sounded so--so uncalled for, don't you know? Wouldn't it?" "Very. But now that you've explained it to me, I suppose I may tell my mother, mayn't I? Let me see. Your father is Mr. Smith, and your mother was a Miss Brown--" "Oh, please--no!" interrupted Johnstone. "I didn't mean it so very literally. But it is just about that sort of thing--just like anybody else. Only about our not being in trade, I'm not so sure of that. My father is a brewer. Brewing is not a profession, so I suppose it must be a trade, isn't it?" "You might call it a manufacture," suggested Clare. "Yes. It sounds better. But that isn't the question, you know. You'll see my people when they come, and then you'll understand what I mean--they really are tremendously respectable." "Of course!" assented the young girl. "Like the party you came with on the yacht. That kind of people." "Oh dear no!" exclaimed Johnstone. "Not at all those kind of people. They wouldn't like it at all, if you said so." "Ah! indeed!" Clare was inclined to laugh again. "The party I came with belong rather to a gay set. Awfully nice, you know," he hastened to add, "and quite the people one knows at home. But my father and mother--oh no! they are quite different--the difference between whist and baccarat, you know, if you understand that sort of thing--old port and brandy and soda--both very good in their way, but quite different." "I should think so." "Then--" Johnstone hesitated again. "Then, Miss Bowring--you don't think that your mother really dislikes me, after all?" "Oh dear no! Not in the least. I've heard her say all sorts of nice things about you." "Really? Then I think I'll stay here. I didn't want to be a nuisance, you know--always in the way." "You're not in the way," answered Clare. Mrs. Bowring came back with her shawl, and the rest of the evening passed off as usual. Later, when she was alone, the young girl remembered all the conversation, and she saw that it had been in her power to make Johnstone leave Amalfi. While she was wondering why she had not done so, since she hated him for what she knew of him, she fell asleep, and the question remained unanswered. In the morning she told the substance of it all to her mother, and ended by telling her that Johnstone's father was a brewer. "Of course," answered Mrs. Bowring absently. "I know that." Then she realised what she had said, and glanced at Clare with an odd, scared look. Clare uttered an exclamation of surprise. "Mother! Why, then--you knew all about him! Why didn't you tell me?" A long silence followed, during which Mrs. Bowring sat with her face turned from her daughter. Then she raised her hand and passed it slowly over her forehead, as though trying to collect her thoughts. "One comes across very strange things in life, my dear," she said at last. "I am not sure that we had not better go away, after all. I'll think about it." Beyond this Clare could get no information, nor any explanation of the fact that Mrs. Bowring should have known something about Brook Johnstone's father. The girl made a guess, of course. The elder Johnstone must be a relation of her mother's first husband; though, considering that Mrs. Bowring had never seen Brook before now, and that the latter had never told her anything about his father, it was hard to see how she could be so sure of the fact. Possibly, Brook strongly resembled his father's family. That, indeed, was the only admissible theory. But all that Clare knew and could put together into reasonable shape could not explain why her mother so much disliked leaving her alone with the man, even for five minutes. In this, however, Mrs. Bowring changed suddenly, after the first evening when she had left them on the terrace. She either took a totally different view of the situation, or else she was ashamed of seeming to watch them all the time, and the consequence was that during the next three or four days they were very often together without her. Johnstone enjoyed the young girl's society, and did not pretend to deny the fact in his own thoughts. Whatever mischief he might have been in while on the yacht, his natural instincts were simple and honest. In a certain way, Clare was a revelation to him of something to which he had never been accustomed, and which he had most carefully avoided. He had no sisters, and as a boy he had not been thrown with girls. He was an only son, and his mother, a very practical woman, had warned him as he grew up that he was a great match, and had better avoid young girls altogether until he saw one whom he should like to marry, though how he was to see that particular one, if he avoided all alike, was a question into which his mother did not choose to enter. Having first gone into society upon this principle, however, and having been at once taken up and made much of by an extremely fashionable young woman afflicted with an elderly and eccentric husband, it was not likely that Brook would return to the threshold of the schoolroom for women's society. He went on as he had begun in his first "salad" days, and at five-and-twenty he had the reputation of having done more damage than any of his young contemporaries, while he had never once shown the slightest inclination to marry. His mother, always a practical woman, did not press the question of marriage, deeming that with his disposition he would stand a better chance of married peace when he had expended a good deal of what she called his vivacity; and his father, who came of very long-lived people, always said that no man should take a wife before he was thirty. As Brook did not gamble immoderately, nor start a racing stable, nor propose to manage an opera troupe, the practical lady felt that he was really a very good young man. His father liked him for his own sake; but as Adam Johnstone had been gay in his youth, in spite of his sober Scotch blood, even beyond the bounds of ordinary "fastness," the fact of his being fond of Brook was not of itself a guarantee that the latter was such a very good young man as his mother said that he was. Somehow or other Brook had hitherto managed to keep clear of any entanglement which could hamper his life, probably by virtue of that hardness which he had shown to poor Lady Fan, and which had so strongly prejudiced Clare Bowring against him. His father said cynically that the lad was canny. Hitherto he had certainly shown that he could be selfish; and perhaps there is less difference between the meanings of the Scotch and English words than most people suppose. Daily and almost hourly intercourse with such a young girl as Clare was a totally new experience to Brook Johnstone, and there were moments when he hardly recognised himself for the man who had landed from the yacht ten days earlier, and who had said good-bye to Lady Fan on the platform behind the hotel. Hitherto he had always known in a day or two whether he was inclined to make love to a woman or not. An inclination to make love and the satisfaction of it had been, so far, his nearest approach to being in love at all. Nor, when he had felt the inclination, had he ever hesitated. Like a certain great English statesman of similar disposition, he had sometimes been repulsed, but he never remembered having given offence. For he possessed that tactful intuition which guides some men through life in their intercourse with women. He rarely spoke the first word too soon, and if he were going to speak at all he never spoke too late--which error is, of the two, by far the greater. He was young, perhaps, to have had such experience; but in the social world of to-day it is especially the fashion for men to be extremely young, even to youthfulness, and lack of years is no longer the atrocious crime which Pitt would neither attempt to palliate or deny. We have just emerged from a period of wrinkles and paint, during which we were told that age knew everything and youth nothing. The explosion into nonsense of nine tenths of all we were taught at school and college has given our children a terrible weapon against us; and women, who are all practical in their own way, prefer the blundering whole-heartedness of youth to the skilful tactics and over-effective effects of the middle-aged love-actor. In this direction, at least, the breeze that goes before the dawn of a new century is already blowing. Perhaps it is a good sign--but a sign of some sort it certainly is. Brook Johnstone felt that he was in an unfamiliar position, and he tried to analyse his own feelings. He was perfectly honest about it, but he had very little talent for analysis. On the other hand, he had a very keen sense of what we roughly call honour. Clare was not Lady Fan, and would probably never get into that category. Clare belonged amongst the women whom he respected, and he respected them all, with all his heart. They included all young girls, and his mother, and all young women who were happily married. It will be admitted that, for a man who made no pretence to higher virtues, Brook was no worse than his contemporaries, and was better than a great many. Be that as it may, in lack of any finer means of discrimination, he tried to define his own position with regard to Clare Bowring very simply and honestly. Either he was falling in love, or he was not. Secondly, Clare was either the kind of girl whom he should like to marry, spoken of by his practical mother--or she was not. So far, all was extremely plain. The trouble was that he could not find any answers to the questions. He could not in the least be sure that he was falling in love, because he knew that he had never really been in love in his life. And as for saying at once that Clare was, or was not, the girl whom he should like to marry, how in the world could he tell that, unless he fell in love with her? Of course he did not wish to marry her unless he loved her. But he conceived it possible that he might fall in love with her and then not wish to marry her after all, which, in his simple opinion, would have been entirely despicable. If there were any chance of that, he ought to go away at once. But he did not know whether there were any chance of it or not. He could go away in any case, in order to be on the safe side; but then, there was no reason in the world why he should not marry her, if he should love her, and if she would marry him. The question became very badly mixed, and under the circumstances he told himself that he was splitting hairs on the mountains he had made of his molehills. He determined to stay where he was. At all events, judging from all signs with which he was acquainted, Clare was very far indeed from being in love with him, so that in this respect his sense of honour was perfectly safe and undisturbed. Having set his mind at rest in this way, he allowed himself to talk with her as he pleased. There was no reason why he should hamper himself in conversation, so long as he said nothing calculated to make an impression--nothing which could come under the general head of "making love." The result was that he was much more agreeable than he supposed. Clare's innocent eyes watched him, and her mind was divided about him. She was utterly young and inexperienced, but she was a woman, and she believed him to be false, faithless, and designing. She had no idea of the broad distinction he drew between all good and innocent women like herself, and all the rest whom he considered lawful prey. She concluded therefore, very rashly, that he was simply pursuing his usual tactics, a main part of which consisted in seeming perfectly unaffected and natural while only waiting for a faint sign of encouragement in order then to play the part of the passionate lover. The generalisations of youth are terrible. What has failed once is despicably damned for ever. What is true to-day is true enough to-morrow to kill all other truths outright. The man whose hand has shaken once is a coward; he who has fought one battle is to be the hero of seventy. Life is a forest of inverted pyramids, for the young; upon every point is balanced a gigantic weight of top-heavy ideals, spreading base-upwards. To Clare, everything Johnstone said or did was the working of a faithless intention towards its end. It was clear enough that he sought her and stayed with her as long as he could, day by day. Therefore he intended to make love to her, sooner or later, and then, when he was tired, he would say good-bye to her just as he had said good-bye to Lady Fan, and break her heart, and have one story more to laugh over when he was alone. It was quite clear that he could not mean anything else, after what she had seen. All the same, he pleased her when he was with her, and attracted her oddly. She told herself that unless he had some unusual qualities he could not possibly break hearts for pastime, as he undoubtedly did, from year's end to year's end. She studied the question, and reached the conclusion that his strength was in his eyes. They were the most frank, brave, good-humoured, clear, unaffected eyes she had ever seen, but she could not look at them long. There was no reason why she should, indeed, but she hated to feel that she could not, if she chose. Whenever she tried, she at once had the feeling that he had power over her, to make her do things she did not wish to do. That was probably the way in which he had influenced Lady Fan and the other women, probably a dozen, thought Clare. If they were really as honest as they seemed, she thought she should have been able to meet them without the least sensation of nervousness. One day she caught herself wishing that he had never done the thing she so hated. She was too honest to attribute to him outward defects which he did not possess, and she could not help thinking what a fine fellow he would be if he were not so bad. She might have liked him very much, then. But as it was, it was impossible that she should ever not hate him. Then she smiled to herself, as she thought how surprised he would be if he could guess what she thought of him. But there was no probability of that, for she felt that she had no right to know what she knew, and so she treated him always, as she thought, with the same even, indifferent civility. But not seldom she knew that she was wickedly wishing that he might really fall in love with her and find out that men could break their hearts as well as women. She should like to fight with him, with his own weapons, for the glory of all her sex, and make him thoroughly miserable for his sins. It could not be wrong to wish that, after what she had seen, but it would be very wrong to try and make him fall in love, just with that intention. That would be almost as bad as what he had done; not quite so bad, of course, because it would serve him right, but yet a deed which she might be ashamed to remember. She herself felt perfectly safe. She was neither sentimental nor susceptible, for if she had been one or the other she must by this time have had some "experience," as she vaguely called it. But she had not. She had never even liked any man so much as she liked this man whom she hated. This was not a contradiction of facts, which, as Euclid teaches us, is impossible. She liked him for what she saw, and she hated him for what she knew. One day, when Mrs. Bowring was present, the conversation turned upon a recent novel in which the hero, after making love to a woman, found that he had made a mistake, and promptly made love to her sister, whom he married in the end. "I despise that sort of man!" cried Clare, rather vehemently, and flashing her eyes upon Johnstone. For a moment she had thought that she could surprise him, that he would look away, or change colour, or in some way betray his most guilty conscience. But he did not seem in the least disturbed, and met her glance as calmly as ever. "Do you?" he asked with an indifferent laugh. "Why? The fellow was honest, at all events. He found that he didn't love the one to whom he was engaged, and that he did love the other. So he set things straight before it was too late, and married the right one. He was a very sensible man, and it must have taken courage to be so honest about it." "Courage!" exclaimed the young girl in high scorn. "He was a brute and a coward!" "Dear me!" laughed Brook. "Don't you admit that a man may ever make a mistake?" "When a man makes a mistake of that sort, he should either cut his throat, or else keep his word to the woman and try to make her happy." "That's a violent view--really! It seems to me that when a man has made a mistake the best thing to do is to go and say so. The bigger the mistake, the harder it is to acknowledge it, and the more courage it needs. Don't you think so, Mrs. Bowring?" "The mistake of all mistakes is a mistake in marriage," said the elder woman, looking away. "There is no remedy for that, but death." "Yes," answered Clare. "But don't you think that I'm right? It's what you say, after all--" "Not exactly, my dear. No man who doesn't love a woman can make her happy for long." "Well--a man who makes a woman think that he loves her, and then leaves her for some one else, is a brute, and a beast, and a coward, and a wretch, and a villain--and I hate him, and so do all women!" "That's categorical!" observed Brook, with a laugh. "But I dare say you are quite right in theory, only practice is so awfully different, you know. And a woman doesn't thank a man for pretending to love her." Clare's eyes flashed almost savagely, and her lip curled in scorn. "There's only one right," she said. "I don't know how many wrongs there are--and I don't want to know!" "No," answered Brook, gravely enough. "And there is no reason why you ever should." CHAPTER VII "You seemed to be most tremendously in earnest yesterday, when we were talking about that book," observed Brook on the following afternoon. "Of course I was," answered Clare. "I said just what I thought." They were walking together along the high road which leads from Amalfi towards Salerno. It is certainly one of the most beautiful roads in Europe, and in the whole world. The chain of rocky heights dashes with wild abruptness from its five thousand feet straight to the dark-blue sea, bristling with sharp needles and spikes of stone, rough with a chaos of brown boulders, cracked from peak to foot with deep torn gorges. In each gorge nestles a garden of orange and lemons and pomegranates, and out of the stones there blows a perfume of southern blossom through all the month of May. The sea lies dark and clear below, ever tideless, often still as a woodland pool; then, sometimes, it rises suddenly in deep-toned wrath, smiting the face of the cliff, booming through the low-mouthed caves, curling its great green curls and combing them out to frothing ringlets along the strips of beach, winding itself about the rock of Conca in a heavily gleaming sheet and whirling its wraith of foam to heaven, the very ghost of storm. And in the face of those rough rocks, high above the water, is hewn a way that leads round the mountain's base, many miles along it, over the sharp-jutting spurs, and in between the boulders and the needles, down into the gardens of the gorges and past the dark towers whence watchmen once descried the Saracen's ill-boding sail and sent up their warning beacon of smoke by day and fire by night. It is the most beautiful road in the world, in its infinite variety, in the grandeur above and the breadth below, and the marvellous rich sweetness of the deep gardens--passing as it does out of wilderness into splendour, out of splendour into wealth of colour and light and odour, and again out to the rugged strength of the loneliness beyond. Clare and Johnstone had exchanged idle phrases for a while, until they had passed Atrani and the turn where the new way leads up to Ravello, and were fairly out on the road. They were both glad to be out together and walking, for Clare had grown stronger, and was weary of always sitting on the terrace, and Johnstone was tired of taking long walks alone, merely for the sake of being hungry afterwards, and of late had given it up altogether. Mrs. Bowring herself was glad to be alone for once, and made little or no objection, and so the two had started in the early afternoon. Johnstone's remark had been premeditated, for his curiosity had been aroused on the preceding day by Clare's words and manner. But after she had given him her brief answer she said no more, and they walked on in silence for a few moments. "Yes," said Johnstone at last, as though he had been reflecting, "you generally say what you think. I didn't doubt it at the time. But you seem rather hard on the men. Women are all angels, of course--" "Not at all!" interrupted Clare. "Some of us are quite the contrary." "Well, it's a generally accepted thing, you know. That's what I mean. But it isn't generally accepted that men are. If you take men into consideration at all, you must make some allowances." "I don't see why. You are much stronger than we are. You all think that you have much more pride. You always say that you have a sense of honour which we can't understand. I should think that with all those advantages you would be much too proud to insist upon our making allowances for you." "That's rather keen, you know," answered Brook, with a laugh. "All the same, it's a woman's occupation to be good, and a man has a lot of other things to do besides. That's the plain English of it. When a woman isn't good she falls. When a man is bad, he doesn't--it's his nature." "Oh--if you begin by saying that all men are bad! That's an odd way out of it." "Not at all. Good men and bad women are the exceptions, that's all--in the way you mean goodness and badness." "And how do you think I mean goodness and badness? It seems to me that you are taking a great deal for granted, aren't you?" "Oh, I don't know," said Brook, growing vague on a sudden. "Those are rather hard things to talk about." "I like to talk about them. How do you think I understand those two words?" "I don't know," repeated Johnstone, still more vaguely. "I suppose your theory is that men and women are exactly equal, and that a man shouldn't do what a woman ought not to do--and all that, you know. I don't exactly know how to put it." "I don't see why what is wrong for a woman should be right for a man," said Clare. "The law doesn't make any difference, does it? A man goes to prison for stealing or forging, and so does a woman. I don't see why society should make any distinction about other things. If there were a law against flirting, it would send the men to prison just like the women, wouldn't it?" "What an awful idea!" laughed Brook. "Yes, but in theory--" "Oh, in theory it's all right. But in practice we men are not wrapped in cotton and tied up with pink ribbons from the day we are born to the day we are married. I--I don't exactly know how to explain what I mean, but that's the general idea. Among poor people--I believe one mustn't say the lower classes any more--well, with them it isn't quite the same. The women don't get so much care and looking after, when they are young, you know--that sort of thing. The consequence is, that there's much more equality between men and women. I believe the women are worse, and the men are better--it's my opinion, at all events. I dare say it isn't worth much. It's only what I see at home, you know." "But the working people don't flirt!" exclaimed Clare. "They drink, and that sort of thing--" "Yes, lots of them drink, men and women. And as for flirting--they don't call it flirting, but in their way I dare say it's very much the same thing. Only, in our part of the country, a man who flirts, if you call it so, gets just as bad a name as a woman. You see, they have all had about the same bringing up. But with us it's quite different. A girl is brought up in a cage, like a turtle dove, with nothing to do except to be good, while a boy is sent to a public school when he is eleven or twelve, which is exactly the same as sending him to hell, except that he has the certainty of getting away." "But boys don't learn to flirt at Eton," observed the young girl. "Well--no," answered Johnstone. "But they learn everything else, except Latin and Greek, and they go to a private tutor to learn those things before they go to the university." "You mean that they learn to drink and gamble, and all that?" asked Clare. "Oh--more or less--a little of everything that does no good--and then you expect us afterwards to be the same as you are, who have been brought up by your mothers at home. It isn't fair, you know." "No," answered Clare, yielding. "It isn't fair. That strikes me as the best argument you have used yet. But it doesn't make it right, for all that. And why shouldn't men be brought up to be good, just as women are?" Brook laughed. "That's quite another matter. Only a paternal government could do that--or a maternal government. We haven't got either, so we have to do the best we can. I only state the fact, and you are obliged to admit it. I can't go back to the reason. The fact remains. In certain ways, at a certain age, all men as a rule are bad, and all women, on the whole, are good. Most of you know it, and you judge us accordingly and make allowances. But you yourself don't seem inclined to be merciful. Perhaps you'll be less hard-hearted when you are older." "I'm not hard-hearted!" exclaimed Clare, indignantly. "I'm only just. And I shall always be the same, I'm sure." "If I were a Frenchman," said Brook, "I should be polite, and say that I hoped so. As I'm not, and as it would be rude to say that I didn't believe it, I'll say nothing. Only to be what you call just, isn't the way to be liked, you know." "I don't want to be liked," Clare answered, rather sharply. "I hate what are called popular people!" "So do I. They are generally awful bores, don't you know? They want to keep the thing up and be liked all the time." "Well--if one likes people at all, one ought to like them all the time," objected Clare, with unnecessary contrariety. "That was the original point," observed Brook. "That was your objection to the man in the book--that he loved first one sister and then the other. Poor chap! The first one loved him, and the second one prayed for him! He had no luck!" "A man who will do that sort of thing is past praying for!" retorted the young girl. "It seems to me that when a man makes a woman believe that he loves her, the best thing he can do is to be faithful to her afterwards." "Yes--but supposing that he is quite sure that he can't make her happy--" "Then he had no right to make love to her at all." "But he didn't know it at first. He didn't find out until he had known her a long time." "That makes it all the worse," exclaimed Clare with conviction, but without logic. "And while he was trying to find out, she fell in love with him," continued Brook. "That was unlucky, but it wasn't his fault, you know--" "Oh yes, it was--in that book at least. He asked her to marry him before he had half made up his mind. Really, Mr. Johnstone," she continued, almost losing her temper, "you defend the man almost as though you were defending yourself!" "That's rather a hard thing to say to a man, isn't it?" Johnstone was young enough to be annoyed, though he was amused. "Then why do you defend the man?" asked Clare, standing still at a turn of the road and facing him. "I won't, if we are going to quarrel about a ridiculous book," he answered, looking at her. "My opinion's not worth enough for that." "If you have an opinion at all, it's worth fighting for." "I don't want to fight, and I won't fight with you," he answered, beginning to laugh. "With me or with any one else--" "No--not with you," he said with sudden emphasis. "Why not with me?" "Because I like you very much," he answered boldly, and they stood looking at each other in the middle of the road. Clare had started in surprise, and the colour rose slowly to her face, but she would not take her eyes from his. For the first time it seemed to her that he had no power over her. "I'm sorry," she answered. "For I don't like you." "Are you in earnest?" He could not help laughing. "Yes." There was no mistaking her tone. Johnstone's face changed, and for the first time in their acquaintance he was the one to turn his eyes away. "I'm sorry too," he said quietly. "Shall we turn back?" he asked after a moment's pause. "No, I want to walk," answered Clare. She turned from him, and began to walk on in silence. For some time neither spoke. Johnstone was puzzled, surprised, and a little hurt, but he attributed what she had said to his own roughness in telling her that he liked her, though he could not see that he had done anything so very terrible. He had spoken spontaneously, too, without the least thought of producing an impression, or of beginning to make love to her. Perhaps he owed her an apology. If she thought so, he did, and it could do no harm to try. "I'm very sorry, if I have offended you just now," he said gently. "I didn't mean to." "You didn't offend me," answered Clare. "It isn't rude to say that one likes a person." "Oh--I beg your pardon--I thought perhaps--" He hesitated, surprised by her very unexpected answer. He could not imagine what she wanted. "Because I said that I didn't like you?" she asked. "Well--yes." "Then it was I who offended you," answered the young girl. "I didn't mean to, either. Only, when you said that you liked me, I thought you were in earnest, you know, and so I wanted to be quite honest, because I thought it was fairer. You see, if I had let you think that I liked you, you might have thought we were going to drift into being friends, and that's impossible, you know--because I never did like you, and I never shall. But that needn't prevent our walking together, and talking, and all that. At least, I don't mean that it should. That's the reason why I won't turn back just yet--" "But how in the world can you enjoy walking and talking with a man you don't like?" asked Johnstone, who was completely at sea, and began to think that he must be dreaming. "Well--you are awfully good company, you know, and I can't always be sitting with my mother on the terrace, though we love each other dearly." "You are the most extraordinary person!" exclaimed Johnstone, in genuine bewilderment. "And of course your mother dislikes me too, doesn't she?" "Not at all," answered Clare. "You asked me that before, and I told you the truth. Since then, she likes you better and better. She is always saying how nice you are." "Then I had better always talk to her," suggested Brook, feeling for a clue. "Oh, I shouldn't like that at all!" cried the young girl, laughing. "And yet you don't like me. This is like twenty questions. You must have some very particular reason for it," he added thoughtfully. "I suppose I must have done some awful thing without knowing it. I wish you would tell me. Won't you, please? Then I'll go away." "No," Clare answered. "I won't tell you. But I have a reason. I'm not capricious. I don't take violent dislikes to people for nothing. Let it alone. We can talk very pleasantly about other things. Since you are good enough to like me, it might be amusing to tell me why. If you have any good reason, you know, you won't stop liking me just because I don't like you, will you?" She glanced sideways at him as she spoke, and he was watching her and trying to understand her, for the revelation of her dislike had come upon him very suddenly. She was on the right as they walked, and he saw her against the light sky, above the line of the low parapet. Perhaps the light behind her dazzled him; at all events, he had a strange impression for a moment. She seemed to have the better of him, and to be stronger and more determined than he. She seemed taller than she was, too, for she was on the higher part of the road, in the middle of it. For an instant he felt precisely what she so often felt with him, that she had power over him. But he did not resent the sensation as she did, though it was quite as new to him. Nevertheless, he did not answer her, for she had spoken only half in earnest, and he himself was not just then inclined to joke for the mere sake of joking. He looked down at the road under his feet, and he knew all at once that Clare attracted him much more than he had imagined. The sidelong glance she had bestowed upon him had fascination in it. There was an odd charm about her girlish contrariety and in her frank avowal that she did not like him. Her dislike roused him. He did not choose to be disliked by her, especially for some absurd trifle in his behaviour, which he had not even noticed when he had made the mistake, whatever it might be. He walked along in silence, and he was aware of her light tread and the soft sound of her serge skirt as she moved. He wished her to like him, and wished that he knew what to do to change her mind. But that would not be easy, since he did not know the cause of her dislike. Presently she spoke again, and more gravely. "I should not have said that. I'm sorry. But of course you knew that I wasn't in earnest." "I don't know why you should not have said it," he answered. "As a matter of fact, you are quite right. I don't like you any the less because you don't like me. Liking isn't a bargain with cash on delivery. I think I like you all the more for being so honest. Do you mind?" "Not in the least. It's a very good reason." Clare smiled, and then suddenly looked grave again, wondering whether it would not be really honest to tell him then and there that she had overheard his last interview with Lady Fan. But she reflected that it could only make him feel uncomfortable. "And another reason why I like you is because you are combative," he said thoughtfully. "I'm not, you know. One always admires the qualities one hasn't oneself." "And you are not combative? You don't like to be in the opposition?" "Not a bit! I'm not fond of fighting. I systematically avoid a row." "I shouldn't have thought that," said Clare, looking at him again. "Do you know? I think most people would take you for a soldier." "Do I look as though I would seek the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth?" Brook laughed. "Am I full of strange oaths?" "Oh, that's ridiculous, you know!" exclaimed Clare. "I mean, you look as though you would fight." "I never would if I could help it. And so far I have managed 'to help it' very well. I'm naturally mild, I think. You are not, you know. I don't mean to be rude, but I think you are pugnacious--'combative' is prettier." "My father was a soldier," said the girl, with some pride. "And mine is a brewer. There's a lot of inheritable difference between handling gunpowder and brewing mild ale. Like father, like son. I shall brew mild ale too. If you could have charged at Balaclava, you would. By the way, it isn't the beer that you object to? Please tell me. I shouldn't mind at all, and I'd much rather know that it was only that." "How absurd!" cried Clare with scorn. "As though it made any difference!" "Well--what is it, then?" asked Brook with sudden impatience. "You have no right to hate me without telling me why." "No right?" The young girl turned on him half fiercely, and then laughed. "You haven't a standing order from Heaven to be liked by the whole human race, you know!" "And if I had, you would be the solitary exception, I suppose," suggested Johnstone with a rather discontented smile. "Perhaps." "Is there anything I could do to make you change your mind? Because, if it were anything in reason, I'd do it." "It's rather a pity that you should put in the condition of its being in reason," answered Clare, as her lip curled. "But there isn't anything. You may just as well give it up at once." "I won't." "It's a waste of time, I assure you. Besides, it's mere vanity. It's only because everybody likes you--so you think that I should too." "Between us, we are getting at my character at last," observed Brook with some asperity. "You've discovered my vanity, now. By-and-by we shall find out some more good qualities." "Perhaps. Each one will be a step in our acquaintance, you know. Steps may lead down, as well as up. We are walking down hill on this road just now, and it's steep. Look at that unfortunate mule dragging that cart up hill towards us! That's like trying to be friends, against odds. I wish the man would not beat the beast like that, though! What brutes these people are!" Her dark blue eyes fixed themselves keenly on the sight, and the pupils grew wide and angry. The cart was a hundred yards away, coming up the road, piled high with sacks of potatoes, and drawn by one wretched mule. The huge carter was sprawling on the front sacks, yelling a tuneless chant at the top of his voice. He was a black-haired man, with a hideous mouth, and his face was red with wine. As he yelled his song he flogged his miserable beast with a heavy whip, accenting his howls with cruel blows. Clare grew pale with anger as she came nearer and saw it all more distinctly. The mule's knees bent nearly double at every violent step, its wide eyes were bright red all round, its white tongue hung out, and it gasped for breath. The road was stony, too, besides being steep, for it had been lately mended and not rolled. "Brute!" exclaimed Clare, in a low voice, and her face grew paler. Johnstone said nothing, and his face did not change as they advanced. "Don't you see?" cried the young girl. "Can't you do anything? Can't you stop him?" "Oh yes. I think I can do that," answered Brook indifferently. "It is rather rough on the mule." "Rough! It's brutal, it's beastly, it's cowardly, it's perfectly inhuman!" At that moment the unfortunate animal stumbled, struggled to recover itself as the lash descended pitilessly upon its thin flanks, and then fell headlong and tumbled upon its side. The heavy cart pulled back, half turning, so that the shafts were dragged sideways across the mule, whose weight prevented the load from rolling down hill. The carrier stopped singing and swore, beating the beast with all his might, as it lay still gasping for breath. "Ah, assassin! Ah, carrion! I will teach thee! Curses on the dead of thy house!" he roared. Brook and Clare were coming nearer. "That's not very intelligent of the fellow," observed Johnstone indifferently. "He had much better get down." "Oh, stop it, stop it!" cried the young girl, suffering acutely for the helpless creature. But the man had apparently recognised the impossibility of producing any impression unless he descended from his perch. He threw the whip to the ground and slid off the sacks. He stood looking at the mule for a moment, and then kicked it in the back with all his might. Then, just as Johnstone and Clare came up, he went round to the back of the cart, walking unsteadily, for he was evidently drunk. The two stopped by the parapet and looked on. "He's going to unload," said Johnstone. "That's sensible, at all events." The sacks, as usual in Italy, were bound to the cart by cords, which were fast in front, but which wound upon a heavy spindle at the back. The spindle had three holes in it, in which staves were thrust as levers, to turn it and hold the ropes taut. Two of the staves were tightly pressed against the load, while the third stood nearly upright in its hole. The man took the third stave, a bar of elm four feet long and as thick as a man's wrist, and came round to the mule again on the side away from Clare and Johnstone. He lifted the weapon high in air, and almost before they realised what horror he was perpetrating he had struck three or four tremendous blows upon the creature's back, making as many bleeding wounds. The mule kicked and shivered violently, and its eyes were almost starting from its head. Johnstone came up first, caught the stave in air as it was about to descend again, wrenched it out of the man's hands, and hurled it over Clare's head, across the parapet and into the sea. The man fell back a step, and his face grew purple with rage. He roared out a volley of horrible oaths, in a dialect perfectly incomprehensible even to Clare, who knew Italian well. "You needn't yell like that, my good man," said Johnstone, smiling at him. The man was big and strong, and drunk. He clenched his fists, and made for his adversary, head down, in the futile Italian fashion. The Englishman stepped aside, landed a left-handed blow behind his ear, and followed it up with a tremendous kick, which sent the fellow upon his face in the ditch under the rocks. Clare looked on, and her eyes brightened singularly, for she had fighting blood in her veins. The man seemed stunned, and lay still where he had fallen. Johnstone turned to the fallen mule, which lay bleeding and gasping under the shafts, and he began to unbuckle the harness. "Could you put a big stone behind the wheel?" he asked, as Clare tried to help him. He knew that the cart must roll back if it were not blocked, for he had noticed how it stood. Clare looked about for a stone, picked one up by the roadside, and went to the back of the cart, while Johnstone patted the mule's head, and busied himself with the buckles of the harness, bending low as he did so. Clare also bent down, trying to force the stone under the wheel, and did not notice that the carter was sitting up by the roadside, feeling for something in his pocket. An instant later he was on his feet. When Clare stood up, he was stepping softly up behind Johnstone. As he moved, she saw that he had an open clasp-knife in his right hand. Johnstone was still bending down unconscious of his danger. The young girl was light on her feet and quick, and not cowardly. The man was before her, halfway between her and Brook. She sprang with all her might, threw her arms round the drunken man's neck from behind, and dragged him backward. He struck wildly behind him with the knife, and roared out curses. "Quick!" cried Clare, in her high, clear voice. "He's got a knife! Quick!" But Johnstone had heard their steps, and was already upon him from before, while the young girl's arms tightened round his neck from behind. The fellow struck about him wildly with his blade, staggering backwards as Clare dragged upon him. "Let go, or you'll fall!" Brook shouted to her. As he spoke, dodging the knife, he struck the man twice in the face, left and right, in an earnest, business-like way. Clare caught herself by the wheel of the cart as she sprang aside, almost falling under the man's weight. A moment later, Brook was kneeling on his chest, having the knife in his hand and holding it near the carter's throat. "Lie still!" he said rather quietly, in English. "Give me the halter, please!" he said to Clare, without looking up. "It's hanging to the shaft there in a coil." Kneeling on the man's chest--to tell the truth, he was badly stunned, though not unconscious--Brook took two half-hitches with the halter round one wrist, passed the line under his neck as he lay, and hauled on it till the arm came under his side, then hitched the other wrist, passed the line back, hauled on it, and finally took two turns round the throat. Clare watched the operation, very pale and breathing hard. "He's drunk," observed Johnstone. "Otherwise I wouldn't tie him up, you know. Now, if you move," he said in English to his prisoner, "you'll strangle yourself." Thereupon he rose, forced the fellow to roll over, and hitched the fall of the line round both wrists again, and made it fast, so that the man lay, with his head drawn back by his own hands, which he could not move without tightening the rope round his neck. "He's frightened now," said Brook. "Let's get the poor mule out of that." In a few minutes he got the wretched beast free. It was ready enough to rise as soon as it felt that it could do so, and it struggled to its feet, badly hurt by the beating and bleeding in many places, but not seriously injured. The carter watched them as he lay on the road, half strangled, and cursed them in a choking voice. "And now, what in the world are we going to do with them?" asked Brook, rubbing the mule's nose. "It's a pretty bad case," he continued, thoughtfully. "The mule can't draw the load, the carter can't be allowed to beat the mule, and we can't afford to let the carter have his head. What the dickens are we to do?" He laughed a little. Then he suddenly looked hard at Clare, as though remembering something. "It was awfully plucky of you to jump on him in that way," he said. "Just at the right moment, too, by Jove! That devil would have got at me if you hadn't stopped him. Awfully plucky, upon my word! And I'm tremendously obliged, Miss Bowring, indeed I am!" "It's nothing to be grateful for, it seems to me," Clare answered. "I suppose there's nothing to be done but to sit down and wait until somebody comes. It's a lonely road, of course, and we may wait a long time." "I say," exclaimed Johnstone, "you've torn your frock rather badly! Look at it!" She drew her skirt round with her hand. There were long, clean rents in the skirt, on her right side. "It was his knife," she said, thoughtfully surveying the damage. "He kept trying to get at me with it. I'm sorry, for I haven't another serge skirt with me." Then she felt herself blushing, and turned away. "I'll just pin it up," she said, and she disappeared behind the cart rather precipitately. "By Jove! You have pretty good nerves!" observed Johnstone, more to himself than to her. "Shut up!" he cried to the carter, who was swearing again. "Stop that noise, will you?" He made a step angrily towards the man, for the sight of the slit frock had roused him again, when he thought what the knife might have done. The fellow was silent instantly, and lay quite still, for he knew that he should strangle himself if he moved. "I'll have you in prison before night," continued Johnstone, speaking English to him. "Oh yes! the _carabinieri_ will come, and you will go to _galera_--do you understand that?" He had picked up the words somewhere. The man began to moan and pray. "Stop that noise!" cried Brook, with slow emphasis. He was not far wrong in saying that the carabineers would come. They patrol the roads day and night, in pairs, as they patrol every high road and every mountain path in Italy, all the year round. And just then, far up the road down which Johnstone and Clare had come, two of them appeared in sight, recognisable a mile away by their snow-white crossbelts and gleaming accoutrements. There are twelve or fourteen thousand of them in the country, trained soldiers and picked men, by all odds the finest corps in the army. Until lately no man could serve in the carabineers who could not show documentary evidence that neither he nor his father nor his mother had ever been in prison even for the smallest offence. They are feared and respected, and it is they who have so greatly reduced brigandage throughout the country. Clare came back to Johnstone's side, having done what she could to pin the rents together. "It's all right now," she cried. "Here come the carabineers. They will take the man and his cart to the next village. Let me talk to them--I can speak Italian, you know." She was pale again, and very quiet. She had noticed that her hands trembled violently when she was pinning her frock, though they had been steady enough when they had gone round the man's throat. When the patrol men came up, she stepped forward and explained what had happened, clearly and briefly. There was the bleeding mule, Johnstone standing before it and rubbing its dusty nose; there was the knife; there was the man. With a modest gesture she showed them where her frock had been cut to shreds. Johnstone made remarks in English, reflecting upon the Italian character, which she did not think fit to translate. The carabineers were silent fellows with big moustaches--the one very dark, the other as fair as a Swede--they were clean, strong, sober men, with frank eyes, and they said very little. They asked the strangers' names, and Johnstone, at Clare's request, wrote her name on his card, and the address in Amalfi. One of them knew the carter for a bad character. "We will take care of him and his cart," said the dark man, who was the superior. "The signori may go in quiet." They untied the rope that bound the man. He rose trembling, and stood on his feet, for he knew that he was in their power. But they showed no intention of putting him in handcuffs. "Turn the cart round!" said the dark man. They helped the carter to do it, and blocked it with stones. "Put in the mule!" was the next order, and the carabineers held up the shafts while the man obeyed. Then both saluted Johnstone and Clare, and shouldered their short carbines, which had stood against the parapet. "Forward!" said the dark man, quietly. The carter took the mule by the head and started it gently enough. The creature understood, and was glad to go down hill; the wheels creaked, the cart moved, and the party went off, one of the carabineers marching on either side. Clare drew a long breath as she stood looking after them for a moment. "Let us go home," she said at last, and turned up the road. For some minutes they walked on in silence. "I think you probably saved my life at the risk of yours, Miss Bowring," said Johnstone, at last, looking up. "Thank you very much." "Nonsense!" exclaimed the young girl, and she tried to laugh. "But you were telling me that you were not combative--that you always avoided a fight, you know, and that you were so mild, and all that. For a very mild man, Mr. Johnstone, who hates fighting, you are a good 'man of your hands,' as they say in the _Morte d'Arthur_." "Oh, I don't call that a fight!" answered Johnstone, contemptuously. "Why, my collar isn't even crumpled. As for my hands, if I could find a spring I would wash them, after touching that fellow." "That's the advantage of wearing gloves," observed Clare, looking at her own. They were both very young, and though they knew that they had been in great danger they affected perfect indifference about it to each other, after the manner of true Britons. But each admired the other, and Brook was suddenly conscious that he had never known a woman whom, in some ways, he thought so admirable as Clare Bowring, but both felt a singular constraint as they walked homeward. "Do you know?" Clare began, when they were near Amalfi, "I think we had better say nothing about it to my mother--that is, if you don't mind." "By all means," answered Brook. "I'm sure I don't want to talk about it." "No, and my mother is very nervous--you know--about my going off to walk without her. Oh, not about you--with anybody. You see, I'd been very ill before I came here." CHAPTER VIII In obedience to Clare's expressed wish, Johnstone made no mention that evening of the rather serious adventure on the Salerno road. They had fallen into the habit of shaking hands when they bade each other good-night. When it was time, and the two ladies rose to withdraw, Johnstone suddenly wished that Clare would make some little sign to him--the least thing to show that this particular evening was not precisely what all the other evenings had been, that they were drawn a little closer together, that perhaps she would change her mind and not dislike him any more for that unknown reason at which he could not even guess. They joined hands, and his eyes met hers. But there was no unusual pressure--no little acknowledgment of a common danger past. The blue eyes looked at him straight and proudly, without softening, and the fresh lips calmly said good-night. Johnstone remained alone, and in a singularly bad humour for such a good-tempered man. He was angry with Clare for being so cold and indifferent, and he was ashamed of himself for wishing that she would admire him a little for having knocked down a tipsy carter. It was not much of an exploit. What she had done had been very much more remarkable. The man would not have killed him, of course, but he might have given him a very dangerous wound with that ugly clasp-knife. Clare's frock was cut to pieces on one side, and it was a wonder that she had escaped without a scratch. He had no right to expect any praise for what he had done, when she had done so much more. To tell the truth, it was not praise that he wanted, but a sign that she was not indifferent to him, or at least that she no longer disliked him. He was ashamed to own to himself that he was half in love with a young girl who had told him that she did not like him and would never even be his friend. Women had not usually treated him in that way, so far. But the fact remained, that she had got possession of his thoughts, and made him think about his actions when she was present. It took a good deal to disturb Brook Johnstone's young sleep, but he did not sleep well that night. As for Clare, when she was alone, she regretted that she had not just nodded kindly to him, and nothing more, when she had said good-night. She knew perfectly well that he expected something of the sort, and that it would have been natural, and quite harmless, without any possibility of consequence. She consoled herself by repeating that she had done quite right, as the vision of Lady Fan rose distinctly before her in a flood of memory's moonlight. Then it struck her, as the vision faded, that her position was a very odd one. Personally, she liked the man. Impersonally, she hated and despised him. At least she believed that she did, and that she should, for the sake of all women. To her, as she had known him, he was brave, kind, gentle in manner and speech, boyishly frank. As she had seen him that once, she had thought him heartless, cowardly, and cynical. She could not reconcile the two, and therefore, in her thoughts, she unconsciously divided him into two individualities--her Mr. Johnstone and Lady Fan's Brook. There was very little resemblance between them. Oddly enough, she felt a sort of pang for him, that he could ever have been the other man whom she had first seen. She was getting into a very complicated frame of mind. They met in the morning and exchanged greetings with unusual coldness. Brook asked whether she were tired; she said that she had done nothing to tire her, as though she resented the question; he said nothing in answer, and they both looked at the sea and thought it extremely dull. Presently Johnstone went off for a walk alone, and Clare buried herself in a book for the morning. She did not wish to think, because her thoughts were so very contradictory. It was easier to try and follow some one else's ideas. She found that almost worse than thinking, but, being very tenacious, she stuck to it and tried to read. At the midday meal they exchanged commonplaces, and neither looked at the other. Just as they left the dining-room a heavy thunderstorm broke overhead with a deluge of rain. Clare said that the thunder made her head ache, and she disappeared on pretence of lying down. Mrs. Bowring went to write letters, and Johnstone hung about the reading-room, and smoked a pipe in the long corridor, till he was sick of the sound of his own footsteps. Amalfi was all very well in fine weather, he reflected, but when it rained it was as dismal as penny whist, Sunday in London, or a volume of sermons--or all three together, he added viciously, in his thoughts. The German family had fallen back upon the guide book, Mommsen's _History of Rome_, and the _Gartenlaube_. The Russian invalid was presumably in his room, with a teapot, and the two English old maids were reading a violently sensational novel aloud to each other by turns in the hotel drawing-room. They stopped reading and got very red, when Johnstone looked in. It was a dreary afternoon, and he wished that something would happen. The fight on the preceding day had stirred his blood--and other things perhaps had contributed to his restless state of mind. He thought of Clare's torn frock, and he wished he had killed the carter outright. He reflected that, as the man was attacking him with a knife, he himself would have been acquitted. Late in the afternoon the sky cleared and the red light of the lowering sun struck the crests of the higher hills to eastward. Brook went out and smelled the earth-scented air, and the damp odour of the orange-blossoms. But that did not please him either, so he turned back and went through the long corridor to the platform at the back of the hotel. To his surprise he came face to face with Clare, who was walking briskly backwards and forwards, and saw him just as he emerged from the door. They both stood still and looked at each other with an odd little constraint, almost like anxiety, in their faces. There was a short, awkward silence. "Well?" said Clare, interrogatively, and raising her eyebrows a very little, as though wondering why he did not speak. "Nothing," Johnstone answered, turning his face seaward. "I wasn't going to say anything." "Oh!--you looked as though you were." "No," he said. "I came out to get a breath of air, that's all." "So did I. I--I think I've been out long enough. I'll go in." And she made a step towards the door. "Oh, please, don't!" he cried suddenly. "Can't we walk together a little bit? That is, if you are not tired." "Oh no! I'm not tired," answered the young girl with a cold little laugh. "I'll stay if you like--just a few minutes." "Thanks, awfully," said Brook in a shy, jerky way. They began to walk up and down, much less quickly than Clare had been walking when alone. They seemed to have nothing to say to each other. Johnstone remarked that he thought it would not rain again just then, and after some minutes of reflection Clare said that she remembered having seen two thunderstorms within an hour, with a clear sky between, not long ago. Johnstone also thought the matter over for some time before he answered, and then said that he supposed the clouds must have been somewhere in the meantime--an observation which did not strike either Clare or even himself as particularly intelligent. "I don't think you know much about thunderstorms," said Clare, after another silence. "I? No--why should I?" "I don't know. It's supposed to be just as well to know about things, isn't it?" "I dare say," answered Brook, indifferently. "But science isn't exactly in my line, if I have any line." They recrossed the platform in silence. "What is your line--if you have any?" Clare asked, looking at the ground as she walked, and perfectly indifferent as to his answer. "It ought to be beer," answered Brook, gravely. "But then, you know how it is--one has all sorts of experts, and one ends by taking their word for granted about it. I don't believe I have any line--unless it's in the way of out-of-door things. I'm fond of shooting, and I can ride fairly, you know, like anybody else." "Yes," said Clare, "you were telling me so the other day, you know." "Yes," Johnstone murmured thoughtfully, "that's true. Please excuse me. I'm always repeating myself." "I didn't mean that." Her tone changed a little. "You can be very amusing when you like, you know." "Thanks, awfully. I should like to be amusing now, for instance, but I can't." "Now? Why now?" "Because I'm boring you to madness, little by little, and I'm awfully sorry too, for I want you to like me--though you say you never will--and of course you can't like a bore, can you? I say, Miss Bowring, don't you think we could strike some sort of friendly agreement--to be friends without 'liking,' somehow? I'm beginning to hate the word. I believe it's the colour of my hair or my coat--or something--that you dislike so. I wish you'd tell me. It would be much kinder. I'd go to work and change it--" "Dye your hair?" Clare laughed, glad that the ice was broken again. "Oh yes--if you like," he answered, laughing too. "Anything to please you." "Anything 'in reason'--as you proposed yesterday." "No--anything in reason or out of it. I'm getting desperate!" He laughed again, but in his laughter there was a little note of something new to the young girl, a sort of understreak of earnestness. "It isn't anything you can change," said Clare, after a moment's hesitation. "And it certainly has nothing to do with your appearance, or your manners, or your tailor," she added. "Oh well, then, it's evidently something I've done, or said," Brook murmured, looking at her. But she did not return his glance, as they walked side by side; indeed, she turned her face from him a little, and she said nothing, for she was far too truthful to deny his assertion. "Then I'm right," he said, with an interrogation, after a long pause. "Don't ask me, please! It's of no importance after all. Talk of something else." "I don't agree with you," Brook answered. "It is very important to me." "Oh, nonsense!" Clare tried to laugh. "What difference can it make to you, whether I like you or not?" "Don't say that. It makes a great difference--more than I thought it could, in fact. One--one doesn't like to be misjudged by one's friends, you know." "But I'm not your friend." "I want you to be." "I can't." "You won't," said Brook, in a lower tone, and almost angrily. "You've made up your mind against me, on account of something you've guessed at, and you won't tell me what it is, so I can't possibly defend myself. I haven't the least idea what it can be. I never did anything particularly bad, I believe, and I never did anything I should be ashamed of owning. I don't like to say that sort of thing, you know, about myself, but you drive me to it. It isn't fair. Upon my word, it's not fair play. You tell a man he's a bad lot, like that, in the air, and then you refuse to say why you think so. Or else the whole thing is a sort of joke you've invented--if it is, it's awfully one-sided, it seems to me." "Do you really think me capable of anything so silly?" asked Clare. "No, I don't. That makes it all the worse, because it proves that you have--or think you have--something against me. I don't know much about law, but it strikes me as something tremendously like libel. Don't you think so yourself?" "Oh no! Indeed I don't. Libel means saying things against people, doesn't it? I haven't done that--" "Indeed you have! I mean, I beg your pardon for contradicting you like that--" "Rather flatly," observed Clare, as they turned in their walk, and their eyes met. "Well, I'm sorry, but since we are talking about it, I've got to say what I think. After all, I'm the person attacked. I have a right to defend myself." "I haven't attacked you," answered the young girl, gravely. "I won't be rude, if I can help it," said Brook, half roughly. "But I asked you if you disliked me for something I had done or said, and you couldn't deny it. That means that I have done or said something bad enough to make you say that you will never be my friend--and that must be something very bad indeed." "Then you think I'm not squeamish? It would have to be something very, very bad." "Yes." "Thank you. Well, I thought it very bad. Anybody would, I should fancy." "I never did anything very, very bad, so you must be mistaken," answered Johnstone, exasperated. Clare said nothing, but walked along with her head rather high, looking straight before her. It had all happened before her eyes, on the very ground under her feet, on that platform. Johnstone knew that he had spoken roughly. "I say," he began, "was I rude? I'm awfully sorry." Clare stopped and stood still. "Mr. Johnstone, we sha'n't agree. I will never tell you, and you will never be satisfied unless I do. So it's a dead-lock." "You are horribly unjust," answered Brook, very much in earnest, and fixing his bright eyes on hers. "You seem to take a delight in tormenting me with this imaginary secret. After all, if it's something you saw me do, or heard me say, I must know of it and remember it, so there's no earthly reason why we shouldn't discuss it." There was again that fascination in his eyes, and she felt herself yielding. "I'll say one thing," she said. "I wish you hadn't done it!" She felt that she could not look away from him, and that he was getting her into his power. The colour rose in her face. "Please don't look at me!" she said suddenly, gazing helplessly into his eyes, but his steady look did not change. "Please--oh, please look away!" she cried, half-frightened and growing pale again. He turned from her, surprised at her manner. "I'm afraid you're not in earnest about this, after all," he said, thoughtfully. "If you meant what you said, why shouldn't you look at me?" She blushed scarlet again. "It's very rude to stare like that!" she said, in an offended tone. "You know that you've got something--I don't know what to call it--one can't look away when you look at one. Of course you know it, and you ought not to do it. It isn't nice." "I didn't know there was anything peculiar about my eyes," said Brook. "Indeed I didn't! Nobody ever told me so, I'm sure. By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I believe it's that! I've probably done it before--and that's why you--" he stopped. "Please don't think me so silly," answered Clare, recovering her composure. "It's nothing of the sort. As for that--that way you have of looking--I dare say I'm nervous since my illness. Besides--" she hesitated, and then smiled. "Besides, do you know? If you had looked at me a moment longer I should have told you the whole thing, and then we should both have been sorry." "I should not, I'm sure," said Brook, with conviction. "But I don't understand about my looking at you. I never tried to mesmerise any one--" "There is no such thing as mesmerism. It's all hypnotism, you know." "I don't know what they call it. You know what I mean. But I'm sure it's your imagination." "Oh yes, I dare say," answered the young girl with affected carelessness. "It's merely because I'm nervous." "Well, so far as I'm concerned, it's quite unconscious. I don't know--I suppose I wanted to see in your eyes what you were thinking about. Besides, when one likes a person, one doesn't think it so dreadfully rude to look at them--at him--I mean, at you--when one is in earnest about something--does one?" "I don't know," said Clare. "But please don't do it to me. It makes me feel awfully uncomfortable somehow. You won't, will you?" she asked, with a sort of appeal. "You would make me tell you everything--and then I should hate myself." "But I shouldn't hate you." "Oh yes, you would! You would hate me for knowing." "By Jove! It's too bad!" cried Brook. "But as for that," he added humbly, "nothing would make me hate you." "Nothing? You don't know!" "Yes, I do! You couldn't make me change my mind about you. I've grown to--to like you a great deal too much for that in this short time--a great deal more than is good for me, I believe," he added, with a sort of rough impulsiveness. "Not that I'm at all surprised, you know," he continued with an attempt at a laugh. "One can't see a person like you, most of the day, for ten days or a fortnight, without--well, you know, admiring you most tremendously--can one? I dare say you think that might be put into better English. But it's true all the same." A silence followed. The warm blood mantled softly in the girl's fair cheeks. She was taken by surprise with an odd little breath of happiness, as it were, suddenly blowing upon her, whence she knew not. It was so utterly new that she wondered at it, and was not conscious of the faint blush that answered it. "One gets awfully intimate in a few days," observed Brook, as though he had discovered something quite new. She nodded, but said nothing, and they still walked up and down. Then his words made her think of that sudden intimacy which had probably sprung up between him and Lady Fan on board the yacht, and her heart was hardened again. "It isn't worth while to be intimate, as you call it," she said at last, with a little sudden sharpness. "People ought never to be intimate, unless they have to live together--in the same place, you know. Then they can't exactly help it, I suppose." "Why should they? One can't exactly intrench oneself behind a wall with pistols and say 'Be my friend if you dare.' Life would be very uncomfortable, I should think." "Oh, you know what I mean! Don't be so awfully literal." "I was trying to understand," said Johnstone, with unusual meekness. "I won't, if you don't want me to. But I don't agree with you a bit. I think it's very jolly to be intimate--in this sort of way--or perhaps a little more so." "Intimate enemies? Enemies can be just as intimate as friends, you know." "I'd rather have you for my intimate enemy than not know you at all," said Brook. "That's saying a great deal, Mr. Johnstone." Again she was pleased in a new way by what he said. And a temptation came upon her unawares. It was perfectly clear that he was beginning to make love to her. She thought of her reflections after she had seen him alone with Lady Fan, and of how she had wished that she could break his heart, and pay him back with suffering for the pain he had given another woman. The possibility seemed nearer now than then. At least, she could easily let him believe that she believed him, and then laugh at him and his acting. For of course it was acting. How could such a man be earnest? All at once the thought that he should respect her so little as to pretend to make love to her incensed her. "What an extraordinary idea!" she exclaimed rather scornfully. "You would rather be hated, than not known!" "I wasn't talking generalities--I was speaking of you. Please don't misunderstand me on purpose. It isn't kind." "Are you in need of kindness just now? You don't exactly strike one in that way, you know. But your people will be coming in a day or two, I suppose. I've no doubt they'll be kind to you, as you call it--whatever that may mean. One speaks of being kind to animals and servants, you know--that sort of thing." Nothing can outdo the brutality of a perfectly unaffected young girl under certain circumstances. "I don't class myself with either, thank you," said Brook, justly offended. "You certainly manage to put things in a new light sometimes. I feel rather like that mule we saw yesterday." "Oh--I thought you didn't class yourself with animals!" she laughed. "Have you any particular reason for saying horridly disagreeable things?" asked Brook coldly. There was a pause. "I didn't mean to be disagreeable--at least not so disagreeable as all that," said Clare at last. "I don't know why it is, but you have a talent for making me seem rude." "Force of example," suggested Johnstone. "No, I'll say that for you--you have very good manners." "Thanks, awfully. Considering the provocation, you know, that's an immense compliment." "I thought I would be 'kind' for a change. By the bye, what are we quarrelling about?" She laughed. "You began by saying something very nice to me, and then I told you that you were like the mule, didn't I? It's very odd! I believe you hypnotise me, after all." "At all events, if we were not intimate, you couldn't possibly say the things you do," observed Brook, already pacified. "And I suppose you would not take the things I say, so meekly, would you?" "I told you I was a very mild person," said Johnstone. "We were talking about it yesterday, do you remember?" "Oh yes! And then you illustrated your idea of meekness by knocking down the first man we met." "It was your fault," retorted Brook. "You told me to stop his beating the mule. So I did. Fortunately you stopped him from sticking a knife into me. Do you know? You have awfully good nerves. Most women would have screamed and run up a tree--or something. They would have got out of the way, at all events." "I think most women would have done precisely what I did," said Clare. "Why should you say that most women are cowards?" "I didn't," answered Brook. "But I refuse to quarrel about it. I meant to say that I admired you--I mean, what you did--well, more than anything." "That's a sweeping sort of compliment. Am I to return it?" She glanced at him and smiled. "You couldn't, with truth." "Of course I could. I don't remember ever seeing anything of that sort before, but I don't believe that anybody could have done it better. I admired you more than anything just then, you know." She laughed once more as she added the last words. "Oh, I don't expect you to go on admiring me. I'm quite satisfied, and grateful, and all that." "I'm glad you're so easily satisfied. Couldn't we talk seriously about something or other? It seems to me that we've been chaffing for half an hour, haven't we?" "It hasn't been all chaff, Miss Bowring," said Johnstone. "At least, not on my side." "Then I'm sorry," Clare answered. They relapsed into silence, as they walked their beat, to and fro. The sun had gone down, and it was already twilight on that side of the mountains. The rain had cooled the air, and the far land to southward was darkly distinct beyond the purple water. It was very chilly, and Clare was without a shawl, and Johnstone was hatless, but neither of them noticed that it was cool. Johnstone was the first to speak. "Is this sort of thing to go on for ever, Miss Bowring?" he asked gravely. "What?" But she knew very well what he meant. "This--this very odd footing we are on, you and I--are we never going to get past it?" "Oh--I hope not," answered Clare, cheerfully. "I think it's very pleasant, don't you? And most original. We are intimate enough to say all sorts of things, and I'm your enemy, and you say you are my friend. I can't imagine any better arrangement. We shall always laugh when we think of it--even years hence. You will be going away in a few days, and we shall stay here into the summer and we shall never see each other again, in all probability. We shall always look back on this time--as something quite odd, you know." "You are quite mistaken if you think that we shall never meet again," said Johnstone. "I mean that it's very unlikely. You see we don't go home very often, and when we do we stop with friends in the country. We don't go much into society. And the rest of the time we generally live in Florence." "There is nothing to prevent me from coming to Florence--or living there, if I choose." "Oh no--I suppose not. Except that you would be bored to death. It's not very amusing, unless you happen to be fond of pictures, and you never said you were." "I should go to see you." "Oh--yes--you could call, and of course if we were at home we should be very glad to see you. But that would only occupy about half an hour of one day. That isn't much." "I mean that I should go to Florence simply for the sake of seeing you, and seeing you often--all the time, in fact." "Dear me! That would be a great deal, wouldn't it? I thought you meant just to call, don't you know?" "I'm in earnest, though it sounds very funny, I dare say," said Johnstone. "It sounds rather mad," answered Clare, laughing a little. "I hope you won't do anything of the kind, because I wouldn't see you more than once or twice. I'd have headaches and colds and concerts--all the things one has when one isn't at home to people. But my mother would be delighted. She likes you tremendously, you know, and you could go about to galleries together and read Ruskin and Browning--do you know the Statue and the Bust? And you could go and see Casa Guidi, where the Brownings lived, and you could drive up to San Miniato, and then, you know, you could drive up again and read more Browning and more Ruskin. I'm sure you would enjoy it to any extent. But I should have to go through a terrific siege of colds and headaches. It would be rather hard on me." "And harder on me," observed Brook, "and quite fearful for Mrs. Bowring." "Oh no! She would enjoy every minute of it. You forget that she likes you." "You are afraid I should forget that you don't." "I almost--oh, a long way from quite! I almost liked you yesterday when you thrashed the carter and tied him up so neatly. It was beautifully done--all those knots! I suppose you learned them on board of the yacht, didn't you?" "I've yachted a good deal," said Brook. "Generally with that party?" inquired Clare. "No. That was the first time. My father has an old tub he goes about in, and we sometimes go together." "Is he coming here in his 'old tub'?" "Oh no--he's lent her to a fellow who has taken her off to Japan, I believe." "Japan! Is it safe? In an 'old tub'!" "Oh, well--that's a way of talking, you know. She's a good enough boat, you know. My father went to New York in her, last year. She's a steamer, you know. I hate steamers. They are such dirty noisy things! But of course if you are going a long way, they are the only things." He spoke in a jerky way, annoyed and discomfited by her forcing the conversation off the track. Though he was aware that he had gone further than he intended, when he proposed to spend the winter in Florence. Moreover, he was very tenacious by nature, and had rarely been seriously opposed during his short life. Her persistent refusal to tell him the cause of her deep-rooted dislike exasperated him, while her frank and careless manner and good-fellowship fascinated him more and more. "Tell me all about the yacht," she said. "I'm sure she is a beauty, though you call her an old tub." "I don't want to talk about yachts," he answered, returning to the attack in spite of her. "I want to talk about the chances of seeing you after we part here." "There aren't any," replied the young girl carelessly. "What is the name of the yacht?" "Very commonplace--'Lucy,' that's all. I'll make chances if there are none--" "You mustn't say that 'Lucy' is commonplace. That's my mother's name." "I beg your pardon. I couldn't know that. It always struck me that it wasn't much of a name for a yacht, you know. That was all I meant. He's a queer old bird, my father; he always says he took it from the Bride of Lammermoor, Heaven knows why. But please--I really can't go away and feel that I'm not to see you again soon. You seem to think that I'm chaffing. I'm not. I'm very serious. I like you very much, and I don't see why one should just meet and then go off, and let that be the end--do you?" "I don't see why not," exclaimed Clare, hating the unexpected longing she felt to agree with him, and tell him to come and stay in Florence as much as he pleased. "Come--it's too cold here. I must be going in." CHAPTER IX Brook Johnstone had never been in the habit of observing his sensations nor of paying any great attention to his actions. He was not at all an actor, as Clare believed him to be, and the idea that he could ever have taken pleasure in giving pain would have made him laugh. Possibly, it would have made him very angry, but it certainly had no foundation at all in fact. He had been liked, loved, and made much of, not for anything he had ever taken the trouble to do, but partly for his own sake, and partly on account of his position. Such charm as he had for women lay in his frankness, good humour, and simplicity of character. That he had appeared to be changeable in his affection was merely due to the fact that he had never been in love. He vaguely recognised the fact in his inner consciousness, though he would have said that he had been in love half a dozen times; which only amounted to saying that women he had liked had been in love with him or had thought that they were, or had wished to have it thought that he loved them or had perhaps, like poor Lady Fan, been willing to risk a good deal on the bare chance of marrying one of the best of society's matches in the end. He was too young to look upon such affairs very seriously. When he had been tired of the game he had not lacked the courage to say so, and in most cases he had been forgiven. Lady Fan might prove an exception, but he hoped not. He was enormously far removed from being a saint, it is true, but it is due to him to repeat that he had drawn the line rigidly at a certain limit, and that all women beyond that line had been to him as his own mother, in thought and deed. Let those who have the right to cast stones--and the cruelty to do so--decide for themselves whether Brook Johnstone was a bad man at heart, or not. It need not be hinted that a proportion of the stone-throwing Pharisees owe their immaculate reputation to their conspicuous lack of attraction; the little band has a place apart and they stand there and lapidate most of us, and secretly wish that they had ever had the chance of being as bad as we are without being found out. But the great army of the pure in heart are mixed with us sinners in the fight, and though they may pray for us, they do not carp at our imperfections--and occasionally they get hit by the Pharisees just as we do, being rather whiter than we and therefore offering a more tempting mark for a jagged stone or a handful of pious mud. You may know the Pharisee by his intimate knowledge of the sins he has never committed. Besides, though the code of honour is not worth much as compared with the Ten Commandments, it is notably better than nothing, in the way of morality. It will keep a man from lying and evil speaking as well as from picking and stealing, and if it does not force him to honour all women as angels, it makes him respect a very large proportion of them as good women and therefore sacred, in a very practical way of sacredness. Brook Johnstone always was very careful in all matters where honour and his own feeling about honour were concerned. For that reason he had told Clare that he had never done anything very bad, whereas what she had seen him do was monstrous in her eyes. She had not reflected that she knew nothing about Lady Fan; and if she had heard half there was to be known she would not have understood. That night on the platform Lady Fan had given her own version of what had taken place on the Acropolis at sunset, and Brook had not denied anything. Clare did not reflect that Lady Fan might very possibly have exaggerated the facts very much in her statement of them, and that at such a time Brook was certainly not the man to argue the case, since it had manifestly been his only course to take all the apparent blame on himself. Even if he had known that Clare had heard the conversation, he could not possibly have explained the matter to her--not even if she had been an old woman--without telling all the truth about Lady Fan, and he was too honourable a man to do that, under any conceivable circumstances. He was decidedly and really in love with the girl. He knew it, because what he felt was not like anything he had ever felt before. It was anything but the pleasurable excitement to which he was accustomed. There might have been something of that if he had received even the smallest encouragement. But, do what he would, he could find none. The attraction increased, and the encouragement was daily less, he thought. Clare occasionally said things which made him half believe that she did not wholly dislike him. That was as much as he could say. He cudgelled his brains and wrung his memory to discover what he could have done to offend her, and he could not remember anything--which was not surprising. It was clear that she had never heard of him before he had come to Amalfi. He had satisfied himself of that by questions, otherwise he would naturally enough have come near the truth and guessed that she must have known of some affair in which he had been concerned, which she judged harshly from her own point of view. He was beginning to suffer, and he was not accustomed to suffering, least of all to any of the mental kind, for his life had always gone smoothly. He had believed hitherto that most people exaggerated, and worried themselves unnecessarily, but when he found it hard to sleep, and noticed that he had a dull, unsatisfied sort of misery with him all day long, he began to understand. He did not think that Clare could really enjoy teasing him, and, besides, it was not like mere teasing, either. She was evidently in earnest when she repeated that she did not like him. He knew her face when she was chaffing, and her tone, and the little bending of the delicate, swan-like throat, too long for perfect beauty, but not for perfect grace. When she was in earnest, her head rose, her eyes looked straight before her, and her voice sank to a graver note. He knew all the signs of truth, for with her it was always very near the surface, dwelling not in a deep well, but in clear water, as it were, open to the sky. Her truth was evidently truth, and her jesting was transparent as a child's. It looked a hopeless case, but he had no intention of considering it without hope, nor any inclination to relinquish his attempts. He did not tell himself in so many words that he wished to marry her, and intended to marry her, and would marry her, if it were humanly possible, and he assuredly made no such promises to himself. Nor did he look at her as he had looked at women in whom he had been momentarily interested, appreciating her good points of face and figure, cataloguing and compiling her attractions so as to admire them all in turn, forget none, and receive their whole effect. He had a restless, hungry craving that left him no peace, and that seemed to desire only a word, a look, the slightest touch of sympathy, to be instantly satisfied. And he could not get from her one softened glance, nor one sympathetic pressure of the hand, nor one word spoken more gravely than another, except the assurance of her genuine dislike. That was the only thing he had to complain of, but it was enough. He could not reproach her with having encouraged him, for she had told him the truth from the first. He had not quite believed her. So much the worse for him. If he had, and if he had gone to Naples to wait for his people, all this would not have happened, for he had not fallen in love at first sight. A fortnight of daily and almost hourly intercourse was very good and reasonable ground for being in love. He grew absent-minded, and his pipe went out unexpectedly, which always irritated him, and sometimes he did not take the trouble to light it again. He rose at dawn and went for long walks in the hills, with the idea that the early air and the lofty coolness would do him good, and with the acknowledged intention of doing his walking at an hour when he could not possibly be with Clare. For he could not keep away from her, whether Mrs. Bowring were with her or not. He was too much a man of the world to sit all day long before her, glaring at her in shy silence, as a boy might have done, and as he would have been content to do; so he took immense pains to be agreeable, when her mother was present, and Mrs. Bowring liked him, and said that he had really a most extraordinary talent for conversation. It was not that he ever said anything very memorable; but he talked most of the time, and always pleasantly, telling stories about people and places he had known, discussing the lighter books of the day, and affecting that profound ignorance of politics which makes some women feel at their ease, and encourages amusing discussion. Mrs. Bowring watched him when she was there with a persistency which might have made him nervous if he had not been wholly absorbed in her daughter. She evidently saw something in him which reminded her of some one or something. She had changed of late, and Clare was beginning to think that she must be ill, though she scouted the suggestion, and said that she was growing daily stronger. She had altogether relaxed her vigilance with regard to the two young people, and seemed willing that they should go where they pleased together, and sit alone together by the hour. "I dare say I watched him a good deal at first," she said to her daughter. "But I have made up my mind about him. He's a very good sort of young fellow, and I'm glad that you have a companion. You see I can't walk much, and now that you are getting better you need exercise. After all, one can always trust the best of one's own people. He's not falling in love with you, is he, dear? I sometimes fancy that he looks at you as though he were." "Nonsense, mother!" and Clare laughed intentionally. "But he's very good company." "It would be very unfortunate if he did," said Mrs. Bowring, looking away, and speaking almost to herself. "I am not sure that we should not have gone away--" "Really! If one is to be turned out of the most beautiful place in the world because a young Englishman chooses to stop in the same hotel! Besides, why in the world should he fall in love with me? He's used to a very different kind of people, I fancy." "What do you mean?" "Oh--the gay set--'a' gay set, I suppose, for there are probably more than one of them. They are quite different from us, you know." "That is no reason. On the contrary--men like variety and change--change, yes," repeated Mrs. Bowring, with an odd emphasis. "At all events, child, don't take a fancy to him!" she added. "Not that I'm much afraid of that. You are anything but 'susceptible,' my dear!" she laughed faintly. "You need not be in the least afraid," answered Clare. "But, after all, mother--just supposing the case--I can't see why it should be such an awful calamity if we took a fancy to each other. We belong to the same class of people, if not to the same set. He has enough money, and I'm not absolutely penniless, though we are as poor as church mice--" "For Heaven's sake, don't suggest such a thing!" cried Mrs. Bowring. Her face was white, and her lips trembled. There was a frightened look in her pale eyes, and she turned her face quickly to her daughter, and quickly away again. "Mother!" exclaimed the young girl, in surprise. "What in the world is the matter? I was only laughing--besides--" she stopped, puzzled. "Tell me the truth, mother," she continued suddenly. "You know about his people--his father is some connection of--of your first husband--there's some disgraceful story about them--tell me the truth. Why shouldn't I know?" "I hope you never will!" answered Mrs. Bowring, in a low voice that had a sort of horror in it. "Then there is something?" Clare herself turned a little paler as she asked the question. "Don't ask me--don't ask me!" "Something disgraceful?" The young girl leaned forward as she spoke, and her eyes were wide and anxious, forcing her mother to speak. "Yes--no," faltered Mrs. Bowring. "Nothing to do with this one--something his father did long ago." "Dishonourable?" asked Clare, her voice sinking lower and lower. "No--not as men look at it--oh, don't ask me! Please don't ask me--please don't, darling!" "Then his yacht is named after you," said the young girl in a flash of intelligence. "His yacht?" asked the elder woman excitedly. "What? I don't understand." "Mr. Johnstone told me that his father had a big steam yacht called the 'Lucy'--mother, that man loved you, he loves you still." "Me? Oh no--no, he never loved me!" She laughed wildly, with quivering lips. "Don't, child--don't! For God's sake don't ask questions--you'll drive me mad! It's the secret of my life--the only secret I have from you--oh, Clare, if you love me at all--don't ask me!" "Mother, sweet! Of course I love you!" The young girl, very pale and wondering, kneeled beside the elder woman and threw her arms round her and drew down her face, kissing the white cheeks and the starting tears and the faded flaxen hair. The storm subsided, almost without breaking, for Mrs. Bowring was a brave woman and, in some ways, a strong woman, and whatever her secret might be, she had kept it long and well from her daughter. Clare knew her, and inwardly decided that the secret must have been worth keeping. She loved her mother far too well to hurt her with questions, but she was amazed at what she herself felt of resentful curiosity to know the truth about anything which could cast a shadow upon the man she disliked, as she thought so sincerely. Her mind worked like lightning, while her voice spoke softly and her hands sought those thin, familiar, gentle fingers which were an integral part of her world and life. Two possibilities presented themselves. Johnstone's father was a brother or near connection of her mother's first husband. Either she had loved him, been deceived in him, and had married the brother instead; or, having married, this man had hated her and fought against her, and harmed her, because she was his elder brother's wife, and he coveted the inheritance. In either case it was no fault of Brook's. The most that could be said would be that he might have his father's character. She inclined to the first of her theories. Old Johnstone had made love to her mother and had half broken her heart, before she had married his brother. Brook was no better--and she thought of Lady Fan. But she was strangely glad that her mother had said "not dishonourable, as men look at it." It had been as though a cruel hand had been taken from her throat, when she had heard that. "But, mother," she said presently, "these people are coming to-morrow or the next day--and they mean to stay, he says. Let us go away, before they come. We can come back afterwards--you don't want to meet them." Mrs. Bowring was calm again, or appeared to be so, whatever was passing in her mind. "I shall certainly not run away," she answered in a low, steady voice. "I will not run away and leave Adam Johnstone's son to tell his father that I was afraid to meet him, or his wife," she added, almost in a whisper. "I've been weak, sometimes, my dear--" her voice rose to its natural key again, "and I've made a mistake in life. But I won't be a coward--I don't believe I am, by nature, and if I were I wouldn't let myself be afraid now." "It would not be fear, mother. Why should you suffer, if you are going to suffer in meeting him? We had much better go away at once. When they have all left, we can come back." "And you would not mind going away to-morrow, and never seeing Brook Johnstone again?" asked Mrs. Bowring, quietly. "I? No! Why should I?" Clare meant to speak the truth, and she thought that it was the truth. But it was not. She grew a little paler a moment after the words had passed her lips, but her mother did not see the change of colour. "I'm glad of that, at all events," said the elder woman. "But I won't go away. No--I won't," she repeated, as though spurring her own courage. "Very well," answered the young girl. "But we can keep very much to ourselves all the time they are here, can't we? We needn't make their acquaintance--at least--" she stopped short, realising that it would be impossible to avoid knowing Brook's people if they were stopping in the same hotel. "Their acquaintance!" Mrs. Bowring laughed bitterly at the idea. "Oh--I forgot," said Clare. "At all events, we need not meet unnecessarily. That's what I mean, you know." There was a short pause, during which her mother seemed to be thinking. "I shall see him alone, for I have something to say to him," she said at last, as though she had come to a decision. "Go out, my dear," she added. "Leave me alone a little while. I shall be all right when it is time for luncheon." Her daughter left her, but she did not go out at once. She went to her own room and sat down to think over what she had seen and heard. If she went out she should probably find Johnstone waiting for her, and she did not wish to meet him just then. It was better to be alone. She would find out why the idea of not seeing him any more had hurt her after she had spoken. But that was not an easy matter at all. So soon as she tried to think of herself and her own feelings, she began to think of her mother. And when she endeavoured to solve the mystery and guess the secret, her thoughts flew off suddenly to Brook, and she wished that she were outside in the sunshine talking to him. And again, as the probable conversation suggested itself to her, she was glad that she was not with him, and she tried to think again. Then she forced herself to recall the scene with Lady Fan on the terrace, and she did her best to put him in the worst possible light, which in her opinion was a very bad light indeed. And his father before him--Adam--her mother had told her the name for the first time, and it struck her as an odd one--old Adam Johnstone had been a heart-breaker, and a faith-breaker, and a betrayer of women before Brook was in the world at all. Her theory held good, when she looked at it fairly, and her resentment grew apace. It was natural enough, for in her imagination she had always hated that first husband of her mother's who had come and gone before her father; and now she extended her hatred to this probable brother, and it had much more force, because the man was alive and a reality, and was soon to come and be a visible talking person. There was one good point about him and his coming. It helped her to revive her hatred of Brook and to colour it with the inheritance of some harm done to her own mother. That certainly was an advantage. But she should be very sorry not to see Brook any more, never to hear him talk to her again, never to look into his eyes--which, all the same, she so unreasonably dreaded. It was beyond her powers of analysis to reconcile her like and dislike. All the little logic she had said that it was impossible to like and dislike the same person at the same time. She seemed to have two hearts, and the one cried "Hate," while the other cried "Love." That was absurd, and altogether ridiculous, and quite contemptible. There they were, however, the two hearts, fighting it out, or at least altercating and threatening to fight and hurt her. Of course "love" meant "like"--it was a general term, well contrasting with "hate." As for really caring, beyond a liking for Brook Johnstone, she was sure that it was impossible. But the liking was strong. She exploded her difficulty at last with the bomb of a splendidly youthful quibble. She said to herself that she undoubtedly hated him and despised him, and that he was certainly the very lowest of living men for treating Lady Fan so badly--besides being a black sinner, a point which had less weight. And then she told herself that the cry of something in her to "like" instead of hating was simply the expression of what she might have felt, and should have felt, and should have had a right to have felt, had it not been for poor Lady Fan; but also of something which she assuredly did not feel, never could feel, and never meant to feel. In other words, she should have liked Brook if she had not had good cause to dislike him. She was satisfied with this explanation of her feelings, and she suddenly felt that she could go out and see him and talk to him without being inconsistent. She had forgotten to explain to herself why she wished him not to go away. She went out accordingly, and sat down on the terrace in the soft air. She glanced up and down, but Johnstone was not to be seen anywhere, and she wished that she had not come out after all. He had probably waited some time and had then gone for a walk by himself. She thought that he might have waited just a little longer before giving it up, and she half unconsciously made up her mind to requite him by staying indoors after luncheon. She had not even brought a book or a piece of work, for she had felt quite sure that he would be walking up and down as usual, with his pipe, looking as though he owned the scenery. She half rose to go in, and then changed her mind. She would give him one more chance and count fifty, before she went away, at a good quick rate. She began to count. At thirty-five her pace slackened. She stopped a long time at forty-five, and then went slowly to the end. But Johnstone did not come. Once again, she reluctantly decided--and she began slowly; and again she slackened speed and dragged over the last ten numbers. But he did not come. "Oh, this is ridiculous!" she exclaimed aloud to herself, as she rose impatiently from her seat. She felt injured, for her mother had sent her away, and there was no one to talk to her, and she did not care to think any more, lest the questions she had decided should again seem open and doubtful. She went into the hotel and walked down the corridor. He might be in the reading-room. She walked quickly, because she was a little ashamed of looking for him when she felt that he should be looking for her. Suddenly she stopped, for she heard him whistling somewhere. Whistling was his solitary accomplishment, and he did it very well. There was no mistaking the shakes and runs, and pretty bird-like cadences. She listened, but she bit her lip. He was light-hearted, at all events, she thought. The sound came nearer, and Brook suddenly appeared in the corridor, his hat on the back of his head, his hands in his pockets. As he caught sight of Clare the shrill tune ceased, and one hand removed the hat. "I've been looking for you everywhere, for the last two hours," he cried as he came along. "Good morning," he said as he reached her. "I was just going back to the terrace in despair." "It sounded more as though you were whistling for me," answered Clare, with a laugh, for she was instantly happy, and pacified, and peaceful. "Well--not exactly!" he answered. "But I did hope that you would hear me and know that I was about--wishing you would come." "I always come out in the morning," she replied with sudden demureness. "Indeed--I wondered where you were. Let us go out, shall we?" "We might go for a walk," suggested Brook. "It is too late." "Just a little walk--down to the town and across the bridge to Atrani, and back. Couldn't we?" "Oh, we could, of course. Very well--I've got a hat on, haven't I? All right. Come along!" "My people are coming to-day," said Brook, as they passed through the door. "I've just had a telegram." "To-day!" exclaimed Clare in surprise, and somewhat disturbed. "Yes, you know I have been expecting them at any moment. I fancy they have been knocking about, you know--seeing Pæstum and all that. They are such queer people. They always want to see everything--as though it mattered!" "There are only the two? Mr. and Mrs. Johnstone?" "Yes--that's all." Brook laughed a little as though she had said something amusing. "What are you laughing at?" asked Clare, naturally enough. "Oh, nothing. It's ridiculous--but it sounded funny--unfamiliar, I mean. My father has fallen a victim to knighthood, that's all. The affliction came upon him some time ago, and his name is Adam--of all the names in the world." "It was the first," observed Clare reassuringly. "It doesn't sound badly either--Sir Adam. I beg his pardon for calling him 'Mr.'" She laughed in her turn. "Oh, he wouldn't mind," said Brook. "He's not at all that sort. Do you know? I think you'll like him awfully. He's a fine old chap in his way, though he is a brewer. He's much bigger than I am, but he's rather odd, you know. Sometimes he'll talk like anything, and sometimes he won't open his lips. We aren't at all alike in that way. I talk all the time, I believe--rain or shine. Don't I bore you dreadfully sometimes?" "No--you never bore me," answered Clare with perfect truth. "I mean, when I talk as I did yesterday afternoon," said Johnstone with a shade of irritation. "Oh, that--yes! Please don't begin again, and spoil our walk!" But the walk was not destined to be a long one. A narrow, paved footway leads down from the old monastery to the shore, in zigzag, between low whitewashed walls, passing at last under some houses which are built across it on arches. Just as they came in sight a tall old man emerged from this archway, walking steadily up the hill. He was tall and bony, with a long grey beard, shaggy bent brows, keen dark eyes, and an eagle nose. He wore clothes of rough grey woollen tweed, and carried a grey felt hat in one long hand. A moment after he had come out of the arch he caught sight of Brook, and his rough face brightened instantly. He waved the grey hat and called out. "Hulloa, my boy! There you are, eh!" His voice was thin, like many Scotch voices, but it carried far, and had a manly ring in it. Brook did not answer, but waved his hat. "That's my father," he said in a low tone to Clare. "May I introduce him? And there's my mother--being carried up in the chair." A couple of lusty porters were carrying Lady Johnstone up the steep ascent. She was a fat lady with bright blue eyes, like her son's, and a much brighter colour. She had a parasol in one hand and a fan in the other, and she shook a little with every step the porters made. In the rear, a moment later, came other porters, carrying boxes and bags of all sizes. Then a short woman, evidently Lady Johnstone's maid, came quietly along by herself, stopping occasionally to look at the sea. Clare looked curiously at the party as they approached. Her first impulse had been to leave Brook and go back alone to warn her mother. It was not far. But she realised that it would be much better and wiser to face the introduction at once. In less than five minutes Sir Adam had reached them. He shook hands with Brook vigorously, and looked at him as a man looks who loves his son. Clare saw the glance, and it pleased her. "Let me introduce you to Miss Bowring," said Brook. "Mrs. Bowring and Miss Bowring are staying here, and have been awfully good to me." Sir Adam turned his keen eyes to Clare, as she held out her hand. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but are you a daughter of Captain Bowring who was killed some years ago in Africa?" "Yes." She looked up to him inquiringly and distrustfully. His face brightened again and softened--then hardened singularly, all at once. She could not have believed that such features could change so quickly. "And my son says that your mother is here! My dear young lady--I'm very glad! I hope you mean to stay." The words were cordial. The tone was cold. Brook stared at his father, very much surprised to find that he knew anything of the Bowrings, for he himself had not mentioned them in his letters. But the porters, walking more slowly, had just brought his mother up to where the three stood, and waited, panting a little, and the chair swinging slightly from the shoulder-straps. "Dear old boy!" cried Lady Johnstone. "It is good to see you. No--don't kiss me, my dear--it's far too hot. Let me look at you." Sir Adam gravely introduced Clare. Lady Johnstone's fat face became stony as a red granite mummy case, and she bent her apoplectic neck stiffly. "Oh!" she ejaculated. "Very glad, I'm sure. Were you going for a walk?" she asked, turning to Brook, severely. "Yes, there was just time. I didn't know when to expect you. But if Miss Bowring doesn't mind, we'll give it up, and I'll install you. Your rooms are all ready." It was at once clear to Clare that Lady Johnstone had never heard the name of Bowring, and that she resented the idea of her son walking alone with any young girl. CHAPTER X Clare went directly to her mother's room. She had hardly spoken again during the few minutes while she had necessarily remained with the Johnstones, climbing the hill back to the hotel. At the door she had stood aside to let Lady Johnstone go in, Sir Adam had followed his wife, and Brook had lingered, doubtless hoping to exchange a few words more with Clare. But she was preoccupied, and had not vouchsafed him a glance. "They have come," she said, as she closed Mrs. Bowring's door behind her. Her mother was seated by the open window, her hands lying idly in her lap, her face turned away, as Clare entered. She started slightly, and looked round. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Already! Well--it had to come. Have you met?" Clare told her all that had happened. "And he said that he was glad?" asked Mrs. Bowring, with the ghost of a smile. "He said so--yes. His voice was cold. But when he first heard my name and asked about my father his face softened." "His face softened," repeated Mrs. Bowring to herself, just above a whisper, as the ghost of the smile flitted about her pale lips. "He seemed glad at first, and then he looked displeased. Is that it?" she asked, raising her voice again. "That was what I thought," answered Clare. "Why don't you have luncheon in your room, mother?" she asked suddenly. "He would think I was afraid to meet him," said the elder woman. A long silence followed, and Clare sat down on a stiff straw chair, looking out of the window. At last she turned to her mother again. "You couldn't tell me all about it, could you, mother dear?" she asked. "It seems to me it would be so much easier for us both. Perhaps I could help you. And I myself--I should know better how to act." "No. I can't tell you. I only pray that I may never have to. As for you, darling--be natural. It is a very strange position to be in, but you cannot know it--you can't be supposed to know it. I wish I could have kept my secret better--but I broke down when you told me about the yacht. You can only help me in one way--don't ask me questions, dear. It would be harder for me, if you knew--indeed it would. Be natural. You need not run after them, you know--" "I should think not!" cried Clare indignantly. "I mean, you need not go and sit by them and talk to them for long at a time. But don't be suddenly cold and rude to their son. There's nothing against--I mean, it has nothing to do with him. You mustn't think it has, you know. Be natural--be yourself." "It's not altogether easy to be natural under the circumstances," Clare answered, with some truth, and a great deal of repressed curiosity which she did her best to hide away altogether for her mother's sake. At luncheon the Johnstones were all three placed on the opposite side of the table, and Brook was no longer Clare's neighbour. The Bowrings were already in their places when the three entered, Sir Adam giving his arm to his wife, who seemed to need help in walking, or at all events to be glad of it. Brook followed at a little distance, and Clare saw that he was looking at her regretfully, as though he wished himself at her side again. Had she been less young and unconscious and thoroughly innocent, she must have seen by this time that he was seriously in love with her. Sir Adam held his wife's chair for her, with somewhat old-fashioned courtesy, and pushed it gently as she sat down. Then he raised his head, and his eyes met Mrs. Bowring's. For a few moments they looked at each other. Then his expression changed and softened, as it had when he had first met Clare, but Mrs. Bowring's face grew hard and pale. He did not sit down, but to his wife's surprise walked quietly all round the end of the table and up the other side to where Mrs. Bowring sat. She knew that he was coming, and she turned a little to meet his hand. The English old maids watched the proceedings with keen interest from the upper end. Sir Adam held out his hand, and Mrs. Bowring took it. "It is a great pleasure to me to meet you again," he said slowly, as though speaking with an effort. "Brook says that you have been very good to him, and so I want to thank you at once. Yes--this is your daughter--Brook introduced me. Excuse me--I'll get round to my place again. Shall we meet after luncheon?" "If you like," said Mrs. Bowring in a constrained tone. "By all means," she added nervously. "My dear," said Sir Adam, speaking across the table to his wife, "let me introduce you to my old friend Mrs. Bowring, the mother of this young lady whom you have already met," he added, glancing down at Clare's flaxen head. Again Lady Johnstone slightly bent her apoplectic neck, but her expression was not stony, as it had been when she had first looked at Clare. On the contrary, she smiled very pleasantly and naturally, and her frank blue eyes looked at Mrs. Bowring with a friendly interest. Clare thought that she heard a faint sigh of relief escape her mother's lips just then. Sir Adam's heavy steps echoed upon the tile floor, as he marched all round the table again to his seat. The table itself was narrow, and it was easy to talk across it, without raising the voice. Sir Adam sat on one side of his wife, and Brook on the other, last on his side, as Clare was on hers. There was very little conversation at first. Brook did not care to talk across to Clare, and Sir Adam seemed to have said all he meant to say for the present. Lady Johnstone, who seemed to be a cheerful, conversational soul, began to talk to Mrs. Bowring, evidently attracted by her at first sight. "It's a beautiful place when you get here," she said. "Isn't it? The view from my window is heavenly! But to get here! Dear me! I was carried up by two men, you know, and I thought they would have died. I hope they are enjoying their dinner, poor fellows! I'm sure they never carried such a load before!" And she laughed, with a sort of frank, half self-commiserating amusement at her own proportions. "Oh, I fancy they must be used to it," said Mrs. Bowring, reassuringly, for the sake of saying something. "They'll hate the sight of me in a week!" said Lady Johnstone. "I mean to go everywhere, while I'm here--up all the hills, and down all the valleys. I always see everything when I come to a new place. It's pleasant to sit still afterwards, and feel that you've done it all, don't you know? I shall ruin you in porters, Adam," she added, turning her large round face slowly to her husband. "Certainly, certainly," answered Sir Adam, nodding gravely, as he dissected the bones out of a fried sardine. "You're awfully good about it," said Lady Johnstone, in thanks for unlimited porters to come. Like many unusually stout people, she ate very little, and had plenty of time for talking. "You knew my husband a long time ago, then!" she began, again looking across at Mrs. Bowring. Sir Adam glanced at Mrs. Bowring sharply from beneath his shaggy brows. "Oh yes," she said calmly. "We met before he was married." The grey-headed man slowly nodded assent, but said nothing. "Before his first marriage?" inquired Lady Johnstone gravely. "You know that he has been married twice." "Yes," answered Mrs. Bowring. "Before his first marriage." Again Sir Adam nodded solemnly. "How interesting!" exclaimed Lady Johnstone. "Such old friends! And to meet in this accidental way, in this queer place!" "We generally live abroad," said Mrs. Bowring. "Generally in Florence. Do you know Florence?" "Oh yes!" cried the fat lady enthusiastically. "I dote on Florence. I'm perfectly mad about pictures, you know. Perfectly mad!" The vision of a woman cast in Lady Johnstone's proportions and perfectly mad might have provoked a smile on Mrs. Bowring's face at any other time. "I suppose you buy pictures, as well as admire them," she said, glad of the turn the conversation had taken. "Sometimes," answered the other. "Sometimes. I wish I could buy more. But good pictures are getting to be most frightfully dear. Besides, you are hardly ever sure of getting an original, unless there are all the documents--and that means thousands, literally thousands of pounds. But now and then I kick over the traces, you know." Clare could not help smiling at the simile, and bent down her head. Brook was watching her, he understood and was annoyed, for he loved his mother in his own way. "At all events you won't be able to ruin yourself in pictures here," said Mrs. Bowring. "No--but how about the porters?" suggested Sir Adam. "My dear Adam," said Lady Johnstone, "unless they are all Shylocks here, they won't exact a ducat for every pound of flesh. If they did, you would certainly never get back to England." It was impossible not to laugh. Lady Johnstone did not look at all the sort of person to say witty things, though she was the very incarnation of good humour--except when she thought that Brook was in danger of being married. And every one laughed, Sir Adam first, then Brook, and then the Bowrings. The effect was good. Lady Johnstone was really afflicted with curiosity, and her first questions to Mrs. Bowring had been asked purely out of a wish to make advances. She was strongly attracted by the quiet, pale face, with its excessive refinement and delicately traced lines of suffering. She felt that the woman had taken life too hard, and it was her instinct to comfort her, and warm her and take care of her, from the first. Brook understood and rejoiced, for he knew his mother's tenacity about her first impressions, and he wished to have her on his side. After that the ice was broken and the conversation did not flag. Sir Adam looked at Mrs. Bowring from time to time with an expression of uncertainty which sat strangely on his determined features, and whenever any new subject was broached he watched her uneasily until she had spoken. But Mrs. Bowring rarely returned his glances, and her eyes never lingered on his face even when she was speaking to him. Clare, for her part, joined in the conversation, and wondered and waited. Her theory was strengthened by what she saw. Clearly Sir Adam felt uncomfortable in her mother's presence; therefore he had injured her in some way, and doubted whether she had ever forgiven him. But to the girl's quick instinct it was clear that he did not stand to Mrs. Bowring only in the position of one who had harmed her. In some way of love or friendship, he had once been very fond of her. The youngest woman cannot easily mistake the signs of such bygone intercourse. When they rose, Mrs. Bowring walked slowly, on her side of the table, so as not to reach the door before Lady Johnstone, who could not move fast under any circumstances. They all went out together upon the terrace. "Brook," said the fat lady, "I must sit down, or I shall die. You know, my dear--get me one that won't break!" She laughed a little, as Brook went off to find a solid chair. A few minutes later she was enthroned in safety, her husband on one side of her and Mrs. Bowring on the other, all facing the sea. "It's too perfect for words!" she exclaimed, in solid and peaceful satisfaction. "Adam, isn't it a dream? You thin people don't know how nice it is to come to anchor in a pleasant place after a long voyage!" She sighed happily and moved her arms so that their weight was quite at rest without an effort. Clare and Johnstone walked slowly up and down, passing and repassing, and trying to talk as though neither were aware that there was something unusual in the situation, to say the least of it. At last they stopped at the end farthest away from the others. "I had no idea that my father had known your mother long ago," said Brook suddenly. "Had you?" "Yes--of late," answered Clare. "You see my mother wasn't sure, until you told me his first name," she hastened to add. "Oh--I see. Of course. Stupid of me not to try and bring it into the conversation sooner, wasn't it? But it seems to have been ever so long ago. Don't you think so?" "Yes. Ever so long ago." "When they were quite young, I suppose. Your mother must have been perfectly beautiful when she was young. I dare say my father was madly in love with her. It wouldn't be at all surprising, you know, would it? He was a tremendous fellow for falling in love." "Oh! Was he?" Clare spoke rather coldly. "You're not angry, are you, because I suggested it?" asked Brook quickly. "I don't see that there's any harm in it. There's no reason why a young man as he was shouldn't have been desperately in love with a beautiful young girl, is there?" "None whatever," answered Clare. "I was only thinking--it's rather an odd coincidence--do you mind telling me something?" "Of course not! What is it?" "Had your father ever a brother--who died?" "No. He had a lot of sisters--some of them are alive still. Awful old things, my aunts are, too. No, he never had any brother. Why do you ask?" "Nothing--it's a mere coincidence. Did I ever tell you that my mother was married twice? My father was her second husband. The first had your name." "Johnstone, with an E on the end of it?" "Yes--with an E." "Gad! that's funny!" exclaimed Brook. "Some connection, I dare say. Then we are connected too, you and I, not much though, when one thinks of it. Step-cousin by marriage, and ever so many degrees removed, too." "You can't call that a connection," said Clare with a little laugh, but her face was thoughtful. "Still, it is odd that she should have known your father well, and should have married a man of the same name--with the E--isn't it?" "He may have been an own cousin, for all I know," said Brook. "I'll ask. He's sure to remember. He never forgets anything. And it's another coincidence too, that my father should have been married twice, just like your mother, and that I should be the son of the second marriage, too. What odd things happen, when one comes to compare notes!" While they had walked up and down, Lady Johnstone had paid no attention to them, but she had grown restless as soon as she had seen that they stood still at a distance to talk, and her bright blue eyes turned towards them again and again, with sudden motherly anxiety. At last she could bear it no longer. "Brook!" she cried. "Brook, my dear boy!" Brook and Clare walked back towards the little group. "Brook, dear," said Lady Johnstone. "Please come and tell me the names of all the mountains and places we see from here. You know, I always want to know everything as soon as I arrive." Sir Adam rose from his chair. "Should you like to take a turn?" he asked, speaking to Mrs. Bowring and standing before her. She rose in silence and stepped forward, with a quiet, set face, as though she knew that the supreme moment had come. "Take our chairs," said Sir Adam to Clare and Brook. "We are going to walk about a little." Mrs. Bowring turned in the direction whence the young people had come, towards the end of the terrace. Sir Adam walked erect beside her. "Is there a way out at that end?" he asked in a low voice, when they had gone a little distance. "No." "We can't stand there and talk. Where can we go? Isn't there a quiet place somewhere?" "Do you want to talk to me?" asked Mrs. Bowring, looking straight before her. "Yes, please," answered Sir Adam, almost sharply, but still in a low tone. "I've waited a long time," he added. Mrs. Bowring said nothing in answer. They reached the end of the walk, and she turned without pausing. "The point out there is called the Conca," she said, pointing to the rocks far out below. "It curls round like a shell, you know. Conca means a sea-shell, I think. It seems to be a great place for fishing, for there are always little boats about it in fine weather." "I remember," replied Sir Adam. "I was here thirty years ago. It hasn't changed much. Are there still those little paper-mills in the valley on the way to Ravello? They used to be very primitive." They kept up their forced conversation as they passed Lady Johnstone and the young people. Then they were silent again, as they went towards the hotel. "We'll go through the house," said Mrs. Bowring, speaking low again. "There's a quiet place on the other side--Clare and your son will have to stay with your wife." "Yes, I thought of that, when I told them to take our chairs." In silence they traversed the long tiled corridor with set faces, like two people who are going to do something dangerous and disagreeable together. They came out upon the platform before the deep recess of the rocks in which stood the black cross. There was nobody there. "We shall not be disturbed out here," said Mrs. Bowring, quietly. "The people in the hotel go to their rooms after luncheon. We will sit down there by the cross, if you don't mind--I'm not so strong as I used to be, you know." They ascended the few steps which led up to the bench where Clare had sat on that evening which she could not forget, and they sat down side by side, not looking at each other's faces. A long silence followed. Once or twice Sir Adam shifted his feet uneasily, and opened his mouth as though he were going to say something, but suddenly changed his mind. Mrs. Bowring was the first to speak. "Please understand," she said slowly, glancing at him sideways, "I don't want you to say anything, and I don't know what you can have to say. As for my being here, it's very simple. If I had known that Brook Johnstone was your son before he had made our acquaintance, and that you were coming here, I should have gone away at once. As soon as I knew him I suspected who he was. You must know that he is like you as you used to be--except your eyes. Then I said to myself that he would tell you that he had met us, and that you would of course think that I had been afraid to meet you. I'm not. So I stayed. I don't know whether I did right or wrong. To me it seemed right, and I'm willing to abide the consequences, if there are to be any." "What consequences can there be?" asked the grey-bearded man, turning his eyes slowly to her face. "That depends upon how you act. It might have been better to behave as though we had never met, and to let your son introduce you to me as he introduced you to Clare. We might have started upon a more formal footing, then. You have chosen to say that we are old friends. It's an odd expression to use--but let it stand. I won't quarrel with it. It does well enough. As for the position, it's not pleasant for me, but it must be worse for you. There's not much to choose. But I don't want you to think that I expect you to talk about old times unless you like. If you have anything which you wish to say, I'll hear it all without interrupting you. But I do wish you to believe that I won't do anything nor say anything which could touch your wife. She seems to be happy with you. I hope she always has been and always will be. She knew what she was doing when she married you. God knows, there was publicity enough. Was it my fault? I suppose you've always thought so. Very well, then--say that it was my fault. But don't tell your wife who I am unless she forces you to it out of curiosity." "Do you think I should wish to?" asked Sir Adam, bitterly. "No--of course not. But she may ask you who I was and when we met, and all about it. Try and keep her off the subject. We don't want to tell lies, you know." "I shall say that you were Lucy Waring. That's true enough. You were christened Lucy Waring. She need never know what your last name was. That isn't a lie, is it?" "Not exactly--under the circumstances." "And your daughter knows nothing, of course? I want to know how we stand, you see." "No--only that we have met before. I don't know what she may suspect. And your son?" "Oh, I suppose he knows. Somebody must have told him." "He doesn't know who I am, though," said Mrs. Bowring, with conviction. "He seems to be more like his mother than like you. He couldn't conceal anything long." "I wasn't particularly good at that either, as it turned out," said Sir Adam, gravely. "No, thank God!" "Do you think it's something to be thankful for? I don't. Things might have gone better afterwards--" "Afterwards!" The suffering of the woman's life was in the tone and in her eyes. "Yes, afterwards. I'm an old man, Lucy, and I've seen a great many things since you and I parted, and a great many people. I was bad enough, but I've seen worse men since, who have had another chance and have turned out well." "Their wives did not love them. I am almost old, too. I loved you, Adam. It was a bad hurt you gave me, and the wound never healed. I married--I had to marry. He was an honest gentleman. Then he was killed. That hurt too, for I was very fond of him--but it did not hurt as the other did. Nothing could." Her voice shook, and she turned away her face. At least, he should not see that her lip trembled. "I didn't think you cared," said Sir Adam, and his own voice was not very steady. She turned upon him almost fiercely, and there was a blue light in her faded eyes. "I! You thought I didn't care? You've no right to say that--it's wicked of you, and it's cruel. Did you think I married you for your money, Adam? And if I had--should I have given it up to be divorced because you gave jewels to an actress? I loved you, and I wanted your love, or nothing. You couldn't be faithful--commonly, decently faithful, for one year--and I got myself free from you, because I would not be your wife, nor eat your bread, nor touch your hand, if you couldn't love me. Don't say that you ever loved me, except my face. We hadn't been divorced a year when you married again. Don't say that you loved me! You loved your wife--your second wife--perhaps. I hope so. I hope you love her now--and I dare say you do, for she looks happy--but don't say that you ever loved me--just long enough to marry me and betray me!" "You're hard, Lucy. You're as hard as ever you were twenty years ago," said Adam Johnstone. As he leaned forward, resting an elbow on his knee, he passed his brown hand across his eyes, and then stared vaguely at the white walls of the old hotel beyond the platform. "But you know that I'm right," answered Mrs. Bowring. "Perhaps I'm hard, too. I'm sorry. You said that you had been mad, I remember--I don't like to think of all you said, but you said that. And I remember thinking that I had been much more mad than you, to have married you, but that I should soon be really mad--raving mad--if I remained your wife. I couldn't. I should have died. Afterwards I thought it would have been better if I had died then. But I lived through it. Then, after the death of my old aunt, I was alone. What was I to do? I was poor and lonely, and a divorced woman, though the right had been on my side. Richard Bowring knew all about it, and I married him. I did not love you any more, then, but I told him the truth when I told him that I could never love any one again. He was satisfied--so we were married." "I don't blame you," said Sir Adam. "Blame me! No--it would hardly be for you to blame me, if I could make anything of the shreds of my life which I had saved from yours. For that matter--you were free too. It was soon done, but why should I blame you for that? You were free--by the law--to go where you pleased, to love again, and to marry at once. You did. Oh no! I don't blame you for that!" Both were silent for some time. But Mrs. Bowring's eyes still had an indignant light in them, and her fingers twitched nervously from time to time. Sir Adam stared stolidly at the white wall, without looking at his former wife. "I've been talking about myself," she said at last. "I didn't mean to, for I need no justification. When you said that you wanted to say something, I brought you here so that we could be alone. What was it? I should have let you speak first." "It was this." He paused, as though choosing his words. "Well, I don't know," he continued presently. "You've been saying a good many things about me that I would have said myself. I've not denied them, have I? Well, it's this. I wanted to see you for years, and now we've met. We may not meet again, Lucy, though I dare say we may live a long time. I wish we could, though. But of course you don't care to see me. I was your husband once, and I behaved like a brute to you. You wouldn't want me for a friend now that I am old." He waited, but she said nothing. "Of course you wouldn't," he continued. "I shouldn't, in your place. Oh, I know! If I were dying or starving, or very unhappy, you would be capable of doing anything for me, out of sheer goodness. You're only just to people who aren't suffering. You were always like that in the old days. It's so much the worse for us. I have nothing about me to excite your pity. I'm strong, I'm well, I'm very rich, I'm relatively happy. I don't know how much I cared for my wife when I married her, but she has been a good wife, and I'm very fond of her now, in my own way. It wasn't a good action, I admit, to marry her at all. She was the beauty of her year and the best match of the season, and I was just divorced, and every one's hand was against me. I thought I would show them what I could do, winged as I was, and I got her. No; it wasn't a thing to be proud of. But somehow we hit it off, and she stuck to me, and I grew fond of her because she did, and here we are as you see us, and Brook is a fine fellow, and likes me. I like him too. He's honest and faithful, like his mother. There's no justice and no logic in this world, Lucy. I was a good-for-nothing in the old days. Circumstances have made me decently good, and a pretty happy man besides, as men go. I couldn't ask for any pity if I tried." "No; you're not to be pitied. I'm glad you're happy. I don't wish you any harm." "You might, and I shouldn't blame you. But all that isn't what I wished to say. I'm getting old, and we may not meet any more after this. If you wish me to go away, I'll go. We'll leave the place tomorrow." "No. Why should you? It's a strange situation, as we were to-day at table. You with your wife beside, and your divorced wife opposite you, and only you and I knowing it. I suppose you think, somehow--I don't know--that I might be jealous of your wife. But twenty-seven years make a difference, Adam. It's half a lifetime. It's so utterly past that I sha'n't realise it. If you like to stay, then stay. No harm can come of it, and that was so very long ago. Is that what you want to say?" "No." He hesitated. "I want you to say that you forgive me," he said, in a quick, hoarse voice. His keen dark eyes turned quickly to her face, and he saw how very pale she was, and how the shadows had deepened under her eyes, and her fingers twitched nervously as they clasped one another in her lap. "I suppose you think I'm sentimental," he said, looking at her. "Perhaps I am; but it would mean a good deal to me if you would just say it." There was something pathetic in the appeal, and something young too, in spite of his grey beard and furrowed face. Still Mrs. Bowring said nothing. It meant almost too much to her, even after twenty-seven years. This old man had taken her, an innocent young girl, had married her, had betrayed her while she dearly loved him, and had blasted her life at the beginning. Even now it was hard to forgive. The suffering was not old, and the sight of his face had touched the quick again. Barely ten minutes had passed since the pain had almost wrung the tears from her. "You can't," said the old man, suddenly. "I see it. It's too much to ask, I suppose, and I've never done anything to deserve it." The pale face grew paler, but the hands were still, and grasped each other, firm and cold. The lips moved, but no sound came. Then a moment, and they moved again. "You're mistaken, Adam. I do forgive you." He caught the two hands in his, and his face shivered. "God bless you, dear," he tried to say, and he kissed the hands twice. When Mrs. Bowring looked up he was sitting beside her, just as before; but his face was terribly drawn, and strange, and a great tear had trickled down the furrowed brown cheek into the grey beard. CHAPTER XI Lady Johnstone was one of those perfectly frank and honest persons who take no trouble to conceal their anxieties. From the fact that when she had met him on the way up to the hotel Brook had been walking alone with Clare Bowring, she had at once argued that a considerable intimacy existed between the two. Her meeting with Clare's mother, and her sudden fancy for the elder woman, had momentarily allayed her fears, but they revived when it became clear to her that Brook sought every possible opportunity of being alone with the young girl. She was an eminently practical woman, as has been said, which perhaps accounted for her having made a good husband out of such a man as Adam Johnstone had been in his youth. She had never seen Brook devote himself to a young girl before now. She saw that Clare was good to look at, and she promptly concluded that Brook must be in love. The conclusion was perfectly correct, and Lady Johnstone soon grew very nervous. Brook was too young to marry, and even if he had been old enough his mother thought that he might have made a better choice. At all events he should not entangle himself in an engagement with the girl; and she began systematically to interfere with his attempts to be alone with her. Brook was as frank as herself. He charged her with trying to keep him from Clare, and she did not deny that he was right. This led to a discussion on the third day after the Johnstones' arrival. "You mustn't make a fool of yourself, Brook, dear," said Lady Johnstone. "You are not old enough to marry. Oh, I know, you are five-and-twenty, and ought to have come to years of discretion. But you haven't, dear boy. Don't forget that you are Adam Johnstone's son, and that you may be expected to do all the things that he did before I married him. And he did a good many things, you know. I'm devoted to your father, and if he were in the room I should tell you just what I am telling you now. Before I married him he had about a thousand flirtations, and he had been married too, and had gone off with an actress--a shocking affair altogether! And his wife had divorced him. She must have been one of those horrible women who can't forgive, you know. Now, my dear boy, you aren't a bit better than your father, and that pretty Clare Bowring looks as though she would never forgive anybody who did anything she didn't like. Have you asked her to marry you?" "Good heavens, no!" cried Brook. "She wouldn't look at me!" "Wouldn't look at you? That's simply ridiculous, you know! She'd marry you out of hand--unless she's perfectly idiotic. And she doesn't look that. Leave her alone, Brook. Talk to the mother. She's one of the most delightful women I ever met. She has a dear, quiet way with her--like a very thoroughbred white cat that's been ill and wants to be petted." "What extraordinary ideas you have, mother!" laughed Brook. "But on general principles I don't see why I shouldn't marry Miss Bowring, if she'll have me. Why not? Her father was a gentleman, you like her mother, and as for herself--" "Oh, I've nothing against her. It's all against you, Brook dear. You are such a dreadful flirt, you know! You'll get tired of the poor girl and make her miserable. I'm sure she isn't practical, as I am. The very first time you look at some one else she'll get on a tragic horse and charge the crockery--and there will be a most awful smash! It's not easy to manage you Johnstones when you think you are in love. I ought to know!" "I say, mother," said Brook, "has anybody been telling you stories about me lately?" "Lately? Let me see. The last I heard was that Mrs. Crosby--the one you all call Lady Fan--was going to get a divorce so as to marry you." "Oh--you heard that, did you?" "Yes--everybody was talking about it and asking me whether it was true. It seems that she was with that party that brought you here. She left them at Naples, and came home at once by land, and they said she was giving out that she meant to marry you. I laughed, of course. But people wouldn't talk about you so much, dear boy, if there were not so much to talk about. I know that you would never do anything so idiotic as that, and if Mrs. Crosby chooses to flirt with you, that's her affair. She's older than you, and knows more about it. But this is quite another thing. This is serious. You sha'n't make love to that nice girl, Brook. You sha'n't! I'll do something dreadful, if you do. I'll tell her all about Mrs. Leo Cairngorm or somebody like that. But you sha'n't marry her and ruin her life." "You're going in for philanthropy, mother," said Brook, growing red. "It's something new. You never made a fuss before." "No, of course not. You never were so foolish before, my dear boy. I'm not bad myself, I believe. But you are, every one of you, and I love you all, and the only way to do anything with you is to let you run wild a little first. It's the only practical, sensible way. And you've only just begun--how in the world do you dare to think of marrying? Upon my word, it's too bad. I won't wait. I'll frighten the girl to death with stories about you, until she refuses to speak to you! But I've taken a fancy to her mother, and you sha'n't make the child miserable. You sha'n't, Brook. Oh, I've made up my mind! You sha'n't. I'll tell the mother too. I'll frighten them all, till they can't bear the sight of you." Lady Johnstone was energetic, as well as original, in spite of her abnormal size, and Brook knew that she was quite capable of carrying out her threat, and more also. "I may be like my father in some ways," he answered. "But I'm a good deal like you too, mother. I'm rather apt to stick to what I like, you know. Besides, I don't believe you would do anything of the kind. And she isn't inclined to like me, as it is. I believe she must have heard some story or other. Don't make things any worse than they are." "Then don't lose your head and ask her to marry you after a fortnight's acquaintance, Brook, because she'll accept you, and you will make her perfectly wretched." He saw that it was not always possible to argue with his mother, and he said nothing more. But he reflected upon her point of view, and he saw that it was not altogether unjust, as she knew him. She could not possibly understand that what he felt for Clare Bowring bore not the slightest resemblance to what he had felt for Lady Fan, if, indeed, he had felt anything at all, which he considered doubtful now that it was over, though he would have been angry enough at the suggestion a month earlier. To tell the truth, he felt quite sure of himself at the present time, though all his sensations were more or less new to him. And his mother's sudden and rather eccentric opposition unexpectedly strengthened his determination. He might laugh at what he called her originality, but he could not afford to jest at the prospect of her giving Clare an account of his life. She was quite capable of it, and would probably do it. These preoccupations, however, were as nothing compared with the main point--the certainty that Clare would refuse him, if he offered himself to her, and when he left his mother he was in a very undetermined state of mind. If he should ask Clare to marry him now, she would refuse him. But if his mother interfered, it would be much worse a week hence. At last, as ill-luck would have it, he came upon her unexpectedly in the corridor, as he came out, and they almost ran against each other. "Won't you come out for a bit?" he asked quickly and in a low voice. "Thanks--I have some letters to write," answered the young girl. "Besides, it's much too hot. There isn't a breath of air." "Oh, it's not really hot, you know," said Brook, persuasively. "Then it's making a very good pretence!" laughed Clare. "It's ever so much cooler out of doors. If you'll only come out for one minute, you'll see. Really--I'm in earnest." "But why should I go out if I don't want to?" asked the young girl. "Because I asked you to--" "Oh, that isn't a reason, you know," she laughed again. "Well, then, because you really would, if I hadn't asked you, and you only refuse out of a spirit of opposition," suggested Brook. "Oh--do you think so? Do you think I generally do just the contrary of what I'm asked to do?" "Of course, everybody knows that, who knows you." Brook seemed amused at the idea. "If you think that--well, I'll come, just for a minute, if it's only to show you that you are quite wrong." "Thanks, awfully. Sha'n't we go for the little walk that was interrupted when my people came the other day?" "No--it's too hot, really. I'll walk as far as the end of the terrace and back--once. Do you mind telling me why you are so tremendously anxious to have me come out this very minute?" "I'll tell you--at least, I don't know that I can--wait till we are outside. I should like to be out with you all the time, you know--and I thought you might come, so I asked you." "You seem rather confused," said Clare gravely. "Well, you know," Brook answered as they walked along towards the dazzling green light that filled the door, "to tell the truth, between one thing and another--" He did not complete the sentence. "Yes?" said Clare, sweetly. "Between one thing and another--what were you going to say?" Brook did not answer as they went out into the hot, blossom-scented air, under the spreading vines. "Do you mean to say it's cooler here than indoors?" asked the young girl in a tone of resignation. "Oh, it's much cooler! There's a breeze at the end of the walk." "The sea is like oil," observed Clare. "There isn't the least breath." "Well," said Brook, "it can't be really hot, because it's only the first week in June after all." "This isn't Scotland. It's positively boiling, and I wish I hadn't come out. Beware of first impulses--they are always right!" But she glanced sideways at his face, for she knew that something was in the air. She was not sure what to expect of him just then, but she knew that there was something to expect. Her instinct told her that he meant to speak and to say more than he had yet said. It told her that he was going to ask her to marry him, then and there, in the blazing noon, under the vines, but her modesty scouted the thought as savouring of vanity. At all events she would prevent him from doing it if she could. "Lady Johnstone seems to like this place," she said, with a sudden effort at conversation. "She says that she means to make all sorts of expeditions." "Of course she will," answered Brook, in a half-impatient tone. "But, please--I don't want to talk about my mother or the landscape. I really did want to speak to you, because I can't stand this sort of thing any longer, you know." "What sort of thing?" asked Clare innocently, raising her eyes to his, as they reached the end of the walk. It was very hot and still. Not a breath stirred the young vine-leaves overhead, and the scent of the last orange-blossoms hung in the motionless air. The heat rose quivering from the sea to southward, and the water lay flat as a mirror under the glory of the first summer's day. They stood still. Clare felt nervous, and tried to think of something to say which might keep him from speaking, and destroy the effect of her last question. But it was too late now. He was pale, for him, and his eyes were very bright. "I can't live without you--it comes to that. Can't you see?" The short plain words shook oddly as they fell from his lips. The two stood quite still, each looking into the other's face. Brook grew paler still, but the colour rose in Clare's cheeks. She tried to meet his eyes steadily, without feeling that he could control her. "I'm sorry," she said, "I'm very sorry." "You sha'n't say that," he answered, cutting her words with his, and sharply. "I'm tired of hearing it. I'm glad I love you, whatever you do to me; and you must get to like me. You must. I tell you I can't live without you." "But if I can't--" Clare tried to say. "You can--you must--you shall!" broke in Brook, hoarsely, his eyes growing brighter and fiercer. "I didn't know what it was to love anybody, and now that I know, I can't live without it, and I won't." "But if--" "There is no 'if,'" he cried, in his low strong voice, fixing her eyes with his. "There's no question of my going mad, or dying, or anything half so weak, because I won't take no. Oh, you may say it a hundred times, but it won't help you. I tell you I love you. Do you understand what that means? I'm in God's own earnest. I'll give you my life, but I won't give you up. I'll take you somehow, whether you will or not, and I'll hide you somewhere, but you sha'n't get away from me as long as you live." "You must be mad!" exclaimed the young girl, scarcely above her breath, half-frightened, and unable to loose her eyes from the fascination of his. "No, I'm not mad; only you've never seen any one in earnest before, and you've been condemning me without evidence all along. But it must stop now. You must tell me what it is, for I have a right to know. Tell me what it all is. I will know--I will. Look at me; you can't look away till you tell me." Clare felt his power, and felt that his eyes were dazzling her, and that if she did not escape from them she must yield and tell him. She tried, and her eyelids quivered. Then she raised her hand to cover her own eyes, in a desperate attempt to keep her secret. He caught it and held it, and still looked. She turned pale suddenly. Then her words came mechanically. "I was out there when you said 'good-bye' to Lady Fan. I heard everything, from first to last." He started in surprise, and the colour rose suddenly to his face. He did not look away yet, but Clare saw the blush of shame in his face, and felt that his power diminished, while hers grew all at once, to overmaster him in turn. "It's scarcely a fortnight since you betrayed her," she said, slowly and distinctly, "and you expect me to like you and to believe that you are in earnest." His shame turned quickly to anger. "So you listened!" he exclaimed. "Yes, I listened," she answered, and her words came easily, then, in self-defence--for she had thought of it all very often. "I didn't know who you were. My mother and I had been sitting beside the cross in the shadow of the cave, and she went in to finish a letter, leaving me there. Then you two came out talking. Before I knew what was happening you had said too much. I felt that if I had been in Lady Fan's place I would far rather never know that a stranger was listening. So I sat still, and I could not help hearing. How was I to know that you meant to stay here until I heard you say so to her? And I heard everything. You are ashamed now that you know that I know. Do you wonder that I disliked you from the first?" "I don't see why you should," answered Brook stubbornly. "If you do--you do. That doesn't change matters--" "You betrayed her!" cried Clare indignantly. "You forgot that I heard all you said--how you promised to marry her if she could get a divorce. It was horrible, and I never dreamt of such things, but I heard it. And then you were tired of her, I suppose, and you changed your mind, and calmly told her that it was all a mistake. Do you expect any woman, who has seen another treated in that way, to forget? Oh, I saw her face, and I heard her sob. You broke her heart for your amusement. And it was only a fortnight ago!" She had the upper hand now, and she turned from him with a last scornful glance, and looked over the low wall at the sea, wondering how he could have held her with his eyes a moment earlier. Brook stood motionless beside her, and there was silence. He might have found much in self-defence, but there was not one word of it which he could tell her. Perhaps she might find out some day what sort of person Lady Fan was, but his own lips were closed. That was his view of what honour meant. Clare felt that her breath came quickly, and that the colour was deep in her cheeks as she gazed at the flat, hot sea. For a moment she felt a woman's enormous satisfaction in being absolutely unanswerable. Then, all at once, she had a strong sensation of sickness, and a quick pain shot sharply through her just below the heart. She steadied herself by the wall with her hands, and shut her lips tightly. She had refused him as well as accused him. He would go away in a few moments, and never try to be alone with her again. Perhaps he would leave Amalfi that very day. It was impossible that she should really care for him, and yet, if she did not care, she would not ask the next question. Then he spoke to her. His voice was changed and very quiet now. "I'm sorry you heard all that," he said. "I don't wonder that you've got a bad opinion of me, and I suppose I can't say anything just now to make you change it. You heard, and you think you have a right to judge. Perhaps I shouldn't even say this--you heard me then, and you have heard me now. There's a difference, you'll admit. But all that you heard then, and all that you have told me now, can't change the truth, and you can't make me love you less, whatever you do. I don't believe I'm that sort of man." "I should have thought you were," said Clare bitterly, and regretting the words as soon as they were spoken. "It's natural that you should think so. At the same time, it doesn't follow that because a man doesn't love one woman he can't possibly love another." "That's simply brutal!" exclaimed the young girl, angry with him unreasonably because the argument was good. "It's true, at all events. I didn't love Mrs. Crosby, and I told her so. You may think me a brute if you like, but you heard me say it, if you heard anything, so I suppose I may quote myself. I do love you, and I have told you so--the fact that I can't say it in choice language doesn't make it a lie. I'm not a man in a book, and I'm in earnest." "Please stop," said Clare, as she heard the hoarse strength coming back in his voice. "Yes--I know. I've said it before, and you don't care to hear it again. You can't kill it by making me hold my tongue, you know. It only makes it worse. You'll see that I'm in earnest in time--then you'll change your mind. But I can't change mine. I can't live without you, whatever you may think of me now." It was a strange wooing, very unlike anything she had ever dreamt of, if she had allowed herself to dream of such things. She asked herself whether this could be the same man who had calmly and cynically told Lady Fan that he did not love her and could not think of marrying her. He had been cool and quiet enough then. That gave strength to the argument he used now. She had seen him with another woman, and now she saw him with herself and heard him. She was surprised and almost taken from her feet by his rough vehemence. He surely did not speak as a man choosing his words, certainly not as one trying to produce an effect. But then, on that evening at the Acropolis--the thought of that scene pursued her--he had doubtless spoken just as roughly and vehemently to Lady Fan, and had seemed just as much in earnest. And suddenly Lady Fan was hateful to her, and she almost ceased to pity her at all. But for Lady Fan--well, it might have been different. She should not have blamed herself for liking him, for loving him perhaps, and his words would have had another ring. He still stood beside her, watching her, and she was afraid to turn to him lest he should see something in her face which she meant to hide. But she could speak quietly enough, resting her hands on the wall and looking out to sea. It would be best to be a little formal, she thought. The sound of his own name spoken distinctly and coldly would perhaps warn him not to go too far. "Mr. Johnstone," she said, steadying her voice, "this can't go on. I never meant to tell you what I knew, but you have forced me to it. I don't love you--I don't like a man who can do such things, and I never could. And I can't let you talk to me in this way any more. If we must meet, you must behave just as usual. If you can't, I shall persuade my mother to go away at once." "I shall follow you," said Brook. "I told you so the other day. You can't possibly go to any place where I can't go too." "Do you mean to persecute me, Mr. Johnstone?" she asked. "I love you." "I hate you!" "Yes, but you won't always. Even if you do, I shall always love you just as much." Her eyes fell before his. "Do you mean to say that you can really love a woman who hates you?" she asked, looking at one of her hands as it rested on the wall. "Of course. Why not? What has that to do with it?" The question was asked so simply and with such honest surprise that Clare looked up again. He was smiling a little sadly. "But--I don't understand--" she hesitated. "Do you think it's like a bargain?" he asked quietly. "Do you think it's a matter of exchange--'I will love you if you'll love me'? Oh no! It's not that. I can't help it. I'm not my own master. I've got to love you, whether I like it or not. But since I do--well, I've said the rest, and I won't repeat it. I've told you that I'm in earnest, and you haven't believed me. I've told you that I love you, and you won't even believe that--" "No--I can believe that, well enough, now. You do to-day, perhaps. At least you think you do." "Well--you don't believe it, then. What's the use of repeating it? If I could talk well, it would be different, but I'm not much of a talker, at best, and just now I can't put two words together. But I--I mean lots of things that I can't say, and perhaps wouldn't say, you know. At least, not just now." He turned from her and began to walk up and down across the narrow terrace, towards her and away from her, his hands in his pockets, and his head a little bent. She watched him in silence for some time. Perhaps if she had hated him as much as she said that she did, she would have left him then and gone into the house. Something, good or evil, tempted her to speak. "What do you mean, that you wouldn't say now?" she asked. "I don't know," he answered gruffly, still walking up and down, ten steps each way. "Don't ask me--I told you one thing. I shall follow you wherever you go." "And then?" asked Clare, still prompted by some genius, good or bad. "And then?" Brook stopped and stared at her rather wildly. "And then? If I can't get you in any other way--well, I'll take you, that's all! It's not a very pretty thing to say, is it?" "It doesn't sound a very probable thing to do, either," answered Clare. "I'm afraid you are out of your mind, Mr. Johnstone." "You've driven most things out of it since I loved you," answered Brook, beginning to walk again. "You've made me say things that I shouldn't have dreamed of saying to any woman, much less to you. And you've made me think of doing things that looked perfectly mad a week ago." He stopped before her. "Can't you see? Can't you understand? Can't you feel how I love you?" "Don't--please don't!" she said, beginning to be frightened at his manner again. "Don't what? Don't love you? Don't live, then--don't exist--don't anything! What would it all matter, if I didn't love you? Meanwhile, I do, and by the--no! What's the use of talking? You might laugh. You'd make a fool of me, if you hadn't killed the fool out of me with too much earnest--and what's left can't talk, though it can do something better worth while than a lot of talking." Clare began to think that the heat had hurt his head. And all the time, in a secret, shame-faced way, she was listening to his incoherent sentences and rough exclamations, and remembering them one by one, and every one. And she looked at his pale face, and saw the queer light in his blue eyes, and the squaring of his jaw--and then and long afterwards the whole picture, with its memory of words, hot, broken, and confused, meant earnest love in her thoughts. No man in his senses, wishing to play a part and produce an impression upon a woman, would have acted as he did, and she knew it. It was the rough, real thing--the raw strength of an honest man's uncontrolled passion that she saw--and it told her more of love in a few minutes than all she had heard or read in her whole life. But while it was before her, alive and throbbing and incoherent of speech, it frightened her. "Come," she said nervously, "we mustn't stay out here any longer, talking in this way." He stopped again, close before her, and his eyes looked dangerous for an instant. Then he straightened himself, and seemed to swallow something with an effort. "All right," he answered. "I don't want to keep you out here in the heat." He faced about, and they walked slowly towards the house. When they reached the door he stood aside. She saw that he did not mean to go in, and she paused an instant on the threshold, looked at him gravely, and nodded before she entered. Again he bent his head, and said nothing. She left him standing there, and went straight to her room. Then she sat down before a little table on which she wrote her letters, near the window, and she tried to think. But it was not easy, and everything was terribly confused. She rested her elbows upon the small desk and pressed her fingers to her eyes, as though to drive away the sight that would come back. Then she dropped her hands suddenly and opened her eyes wide, and stared at the wall-paper before her. And it came back very vividly between her and the white plaster, and she heard his voice again--but she was smiling now. She started violently, for she felt two hands laid unexpectedly upon her shoulders, and some one kissed her hair. She had not heard her mother's footstep, nor the opening and shutting of the door, nor anything but Brook Johnstone's voice. "What is it, my darling?" asked the elder woman, bending down over her daughter's shoulder. "Has anything happened?" Clare hesitated a moment, and then spoke, for the habit of her confidence was strong. "He has asked me to marry him, mother--" In her turn Mrs. Bowring started, and then rested one hand on the table. "You? You?" she repeated, in a low and troubled voice. "You marry Adam Johnstone's son?" "No, mother--never," answered the young girl. "Thank God!" And Mrs. Bowring sank into a chair, shivering as though she were cold. CHAPTER XII Brook felt in his pocket mechanically for his pipe, as a man who smokes generally takes to something of the sort at great moments in his life, from sheer habit. He went through the operation of filling and lighting with great precision, almost unconscious of what he was doing, and presently he found himself smoking and sitting on the wall just where Clare had leaned against it during their interview. In three minutes his pipe had gone out, but he was not aware of the fact, and sat quite still in his place, staring into the shrubbery which grew at the back of the terrace. He was conscious that he had talked and acted wildly, and quite unlike the self with which he had been long acquainted; and the consciousness was anything but pleasant. He wondered where Clare was, and what she might be thinking of him at that moment. But as he thought of her his former mood returned, and he felt that he was not ashamed of what he had done and said. Then he realised, all at once, for the second time, that Clare had been on the platform on that first night, and he tried to recall everything that Lady Fan and he had said to each other. No such thing had ever happened to him before, and he had a sensation of shame and distress and anger, as he went over the scene, and thought of the innocent young girl who had sat in the shadow and heard it all. She had accidentally crossed the broad, clear line of demarcation which he drew between her kind and all the tribe of Lady Fans and Mrs. Cairngorms whom he had known. He felt somehow as though it were his fault, and as though he were responsible to Clare for what she had heard and seen. The sensation of shame deepened, and he swore bitterly under his breath. It was one of those things which could not be undone, and for which there was no reparation possible. Yet it was like an insult to Clare. For a man who had lately been rough to the girl, almost to brutality, he was singularly sensitive perhaps. But that did not strike him. When he had told her that he loved her, he had been too much in earnest to pick and choose his expressions. But when he had spoken to Lady Fan, he might have chosen and selected and polished his phrases so that Clare should have understood nothing--if he had only known that she had been sitting up there by the cross in the dark. And again he cursed himself bitterly. It was not because her knowing the facts had spoilt everything and given her a bad impression of him from the first: that might be set right in time, even now, and he did not wish her to marry him believing him to be an angel of light. It was that she should have seen something which she should not have seen, for her innocence's sake--something which, in a sense, must have offended and wounded her maidenliness. He would have struck any man who could have laughed at his sensitiveness about that. The worst of it--and he went back to the idea again and again--was that nothing could be done to mend matters, since it was all so completely in the past. He sat on the wall and pulled at his briar-root pipe, which had gone out and was quite cold by this time, though he hardly knew it. He had plenty to think of, and things were not going straight at all. He had pretended indifference when his mother had told him how Lady Fan meant to get a divorce and how she was telling her intimate friends under the usual vain promises of secrecy that she meant to marry Adam Johnstone's son as soon as she should be free. Brook had told her plainly enough that he would not marry her in any case, but he asked himself whether the world might not say that he should, and whether in that case it might not turn out to be a question of honour. He had secretly thought of that before now, and in the sudden depression of spirits which came upon him as a reaction he cursed himself a third time for having told Clare Bowring that he loved her, while such a matter as Lady Fan's divorce was still hanging over him as a possibility. Sitting on the wall, he swung his legs angrily, striking his heels against the stones in his perplexed discontent with the ordering of the universe. Things looked very black. He wished that he could see Clare again, and that, somehow, he could talk it all over with her. Then he almost laughed at the idea. She would tell him that she disliked him--he was sick of the sound of the word--and that it was his duty to marry Lady Fan. What could she know of Lady Fan? He could not tell her that the little lady in the white serge, being rather desperate, had got herself asked to go with the party for the express purpose of throwing herself at his head, as the current phrase gracefully expresses it, and with the distinct intention of divorcing her husband in order to marry Brook Johnstone. He could not tell Clare that he had made love to Lady Fan to get rid of her, as another common expression put it, with a delicacy worthy of modern society. He could not tell her that Lady Fan, who was clever but indiscreet, had unfolded her scheme to her bosom friend Mrs. Leo Cairngorm, or that Mrs. Cairngorm, unknown to Lady Fan, had been a very devoted friend of Brook's, and was still fond of him, and secretly hated Lady Fan, and had therefore unfolded the whole plan to Brook before the party had started; or that on that afternoon at sunset on the Acropolis he had not at all assented to Lady Fan's mad proposal, as she had represented that he had when they had parted on the platform at Amalfi; he could not tell Clare any of these things, for he felt that they were not fit for her to hear. And if she knew none of them she must judge him out of her ignorance. Brook wished that some supernatural being with a gift for solving hard problems would suddenly appear and set things straight. Instead, he saw the man who brought the letters just entering the hotel, and he rose by force of habit and went to the office to see if there were anything for him. There was one, and it was from Lady Fan, by no means the first she had written since she had gone to England. And there were several for Sir Adam and two for Lady Johnstone. Brook took them all, and opened his own at once. He did not belong to that class of people who put off reading disagreeable correspondence. While he read he walked slowly along the corridor. Lady Fan was actually consulting a firm of solicitors with a view to getting a divorce. She said that she of course understood his conduct on that last night at Amalfi--the whole plan must have seemed unrealisable to him then--she would forgive him. She refused to believe that he would ruin her in cold blood, as she must be ruined if she got a divorce from Crosby, and if Brook would not marry her; and much more. Why should she be ruined? Brook asked himself. If Crosby divorced her on Brook's account, it would be another matter altogether. But she was going to divorce Crosby, who was undoubtedly a beast, and her reputation would be none the worse for it. People would only wonder why she had not done it before, and so would Crosby, unless he took it into his head to examine the question from a financial point of view. For Crosby was, or had been, rich, and Lady Fan had no money of her own, and Crosby was quite willing to let her spend a good deal, provided she left him in peace. How in the world could Clare ever know all the truth about such people? It would be an insult to her to think that she could understand half of it, and she would not think the better of him unless she could understand it all. The situation did not seem to admit of any solution in that way. All he could hope for was that Clare might change her mind. When she should be older she would understand that she had made a mistake, and that the world was not merely a high-class boarding-school for young ladies, in which all the men were employed as white-chokered professors of social righteousness. That seemed to be her impression, he thought, with a resentment which was not against her in particular, but against all young girls in general, and which did not prevent him from feeling that he would not have had it otherwise for anything in the world. He stuffed the letter into his pocket, and went in search of his father. He was strongly inclined to lay the whole matter before him, and to ask the old gentleman's advice. He had reason to believe that Sir Adam had been in worse scrapes than this when he had been a young man, and somehow or other nobody had ever thought the worse of him. He was sure to be in his room at that hour, writing letters. Brook knocked and went in. It was about eleven o'clock. Sir Adam, gaunt and grey, and clad in a cashmere dressing-jacket, was extended upon all the chairs which the little cell-like room contained, close by the open window. He had a very thick cigarette between his lips, and a half-emptied glass of brandy and soda stood on the corner of a table at his elbow. He had not failed to drink one brandy and soda every morning at eleven o'clock for at least a quarter of a century. His keen old eyes turned sharply to Brook as the latter entered, and a smile lighted up his furrowed face, but instantly disappeared again; for the young man's features betrayed something of what he had gone through during the last hour. "Anything wrong, boy?" asked Sir Adam quickly. "Have a brandy and soda and a pipe with me. Oh, letters! It's devilish hard that the post should find a man out in this place! Leave them there on the table." Brook relighted his pipe. His father took one leg from one of the chairs, which he pushed towards his son with his foot by way of an invitation to sit down. "What's the matter?" he asked, renewing his question. "You've got into another scrape, have you? Mrs. Crosby--of all women in the world. Your mother told me that ridiculous story. Wants to divorce Crosby and marry you, does she? I say, boy, it's time this sort of nonsense stopped, you know. One of these days you'll be caught. There are cleverer women in the world than Mrs. Crosby." "Oh! she's not clever," answered Brook thoughtfully. "Well, what's the foundation of the story? What the dickens did you go with those people for, when you found out that she was coming? You knew the sort of woman she was, I suppose? What happened? You made love to her, of course. That was what she wanted. Then she talked of eternal bliss together, and that sort of rot, didn't she? And you couldn't exactly say that you only went in for bliss by the month, could you? And she said, 'By Jove, as you don't refuse, you shall have it for the rest of your life,' and she said to herself that you were richer than Crosby, and a good deal younger, and better-looking, and better socially, and that if you were going to make a fool of yourself she might as well get the benefit of it as well as any other woman. Then she wrote to a solicitor--and now you are in the devil of a scrape. I fancy that's the history of the case, isn't it?" "I wish you wouldn't talk about women in that sort of way, Governor!" exclaimed Brook, by way of answer. "Don't be an ass!" answered Sir Adam. "There are women one can talk about in that way, and women one can't. Mrs. Crosby is one of the first kind. I distinguish between 'women' and 'woman.' Don't you? Woman means something to most of us--something a good deal better than we are, which we treat properly and would cut one another's throats for. We sinners aren't called upon to respect women who won't respect themselves. We are only expected to be civil to them because they are things in petticoats with complexions. Don't be an ass, Brook. I don't want to know what you said to Mrs. Crosby, nor what she said to you, and you wouldn't be a gentleman if you told me. That's your affair. But she's a woman with a consumptive reputation that's very near giving up the ghost, and that would have departed this life some time ago if Crosby didn't happen to be a little worse than she is. She wants to get a divorce and marry my son--and that's my affair. Do you remember the Arab and his slave? 'You've stolen my money,' said the sheikh. 'That's my business,' answered the slave. 'And I'm going to beat you,' said the sheikh. 'That's your business,' said the slave. It's a similar case, you know, only it's a good deal worse. I don't want to know anything that happened before you two parted. But I've a right to know what Mrs. Crosby has done since, haven't I? You don't care to marry her, do you, boy?" "Marry her! I'd rather cut my throat." "You needn't do that. Just tell me whether all this is mere talk, or whether she has really been to the solicitor's. If she has, you know, she will get her divorce without opposition. Everybody knows about Crosby." "It's true," said Brook. "I've just had a letter from her again. I wish I knew what to do!" "You can't do anything." "I can refuse to marry her, can't I?" "Oh--you could. But plenty of people would say that you had induced her to get the divorce, and then had changed your mind. She'll count on that, and make the most of it, you may be sure. She won't have a penny when she's divorced, and she'll go about telling everybody that you have ruined her. That won't be pleasant, will it?" "No--hardly. I had thought of it." "You see--you can't do anything without injuring yourself. I can settle the whole affair in half an hour. By return of post you'll get a letter from her telling you that she has abandoned all idea of proceedings against Crosby." "I'll bet you she doesn't," said Brook. "Anything you like. It's perfectly simple. I'll just make a will, leaving you nothing at all, if you marry her, and I'll send her a copy to-day. You'll get the answer fast enough." "By Jove!" exclaimed Brook, in surprise. Then he thoughtfully relighted his pipe and threw the match out of the window. "I say, Governor," he added after a pause, "do you think that's quite--well, quite fair and square, you know?" "What on earth do you mean?" cried Sir Adam. "Do you mean to tell me that I haven't a perfect right to leave my money as I please? And that the first adventuress who takes a fancy to it has a right to force you into a disgraceful marriage, and that it would be dishonourable of me to prevent it if I could? You're mad, boy! Don't talk such nonsense to me!" "I suppose I'm an idiot," said Brook. "Things about money so easily get a queer look, you know. It's not like other things, is it?" "Look here, Brook," answered the old man, taking his feet from the chair on which they rested, and sitting up straight in the low easy chair. "People have said a lot of things about me in my life, and I'll do the world the credit to add that it might have said twice as much with a good show of truth. But nobody ever said that I was mean, nor that I ever disappointed anybody in money matters who had a right to expect something of me. And that's pretty conclusive evidence, because I'm a Scotch-man, and we are generally supposed to be a close-fisted tribe. They've said everything about me that the world can say, except that I've told you about my first marriage. She--she got her divorce, you know. She had a perfect right to it." The old man lit another cigarette, and sipped his brandy and soda thoughtfully. "I don't like to talk about money," he said in a lower tone. "But I don't want you to think me mean, Brook. I allowed her a thousand a year after she had got rid of me. She never touched it. She isn't that kind. She would rather starve ten times over. But the money has been paid to her account in London for twenty-seven years. Perhaps she doesn't know it. All the better for her daughter, who will find it after her mother's death, and get it all. I only don't want you to think I'm mean, Brook." "Then she married again--your first wife?" asked the young man, with natural curiosity. "And she's alive still?" "Yes," answered Sir Adam, thoughtfully. "She married again six years after I did--rather late--and she had one daughter." "What an odd idea!" exclaimed Brook. "To think that those two people are somewhere about the world. A sort of stray half-sister of mine, the girl would be--I mean--what would be the relationship, Governor, since we are talking about it?" "None whatever," answered the old man, in a tone so extraordinarily sharp that Brook looked up in surprise. "Of course not! What relation could she be? Another mother and another father--no relation at all." "Do you mean to say that I could marry her?" asked Brook idly. Sir Adam started a little. "Why--yes--of course you could, as she wouldn't be related to you." He suddenly rose, took up his glass, and gulped down what was left in it. Then he went and stood before the open window. "I say, Brook," he began, his back turned to his son. "What?" asked Brook, poking his knife into his pipe to clean it. "Anything wrong?" "I can't stand this any longer. I've got to speak to somebody--and I can't speak to your mother. You won't talk, boy, will you? You and I have always been good friends." "Of course! What's the matter with you, Governor? You can tell me." "Oh--nothing--that is--Brook, I say, don't be startled. This Mrs. Bowring is my divorced wife, you know." "Good God!" Sir Adam turned on his heels and met his son's look of horror and astonishment. He had expected an exclamation of surprise, but Brook's voice had fear in it, and he had started from his chair. "Why do you say 'Good God'--like that?" asked the old man. "You're not in love with the girl, are you?" "I've just asked her to marry me." The young man was ghastly pale, as he stood stock-still, staring at his father. Sir Adam was the first to recover something of equanimity, but the furrows in his face had suddenly grown deeper. "Of course she has accepted you?" he asked. "No--she knew about Mrs. Crosby." That seemed sufficient explanation of Clare's refusal. "How awful!" exclaimed Brook hoarsely, his mind going back to what seemed the main question just then. "How awful for you, Governor!" "Well--it's not pleasant," said Sir Adam, turning to the window again. "So the girl refused you," he said, musing, as he looked out. "Just like her mother, I suppose. Brook"--he paused. "Yes?" "So far as I'm concerned, it's not so bad as you think. You needn't pity me, you know. It's just as well that we should have met--after twenty-seven years." "She knew you at once, of course?" "She knew I was your father before I came. And, I say, Brook--she's forgiven me at last." His voice was low and unsteady, and he resolutely kept his back turned. "She's one of the best women that ever lived," he said. "Your mother's the other." There was a long silence, and neither changed his position. Brook watched the back of his father's head. "You don't mind my saying so to you, Brook?" asked the old man, hitching his shoulders. "Mind? Why?" "Oh--well--there's no reason, I suppose. Gad! I wish--I suppose I'm crazy, but I wish to God you could marry the girl, Brook! She's as good as her mother." Brook said nothing, being very much astonished, as well as disturbed. "Only--I'll tell you one thing, Brook," said the voice at the window, speaking into space. "If you do marry her--and if you treat her as I treated her mother--" he turned sharply on both heels and waited a minute--"I'll be damned if I don't believe I'd shoot you!" "I'd spare you the trouble, and do it myself," said Brook, roughly. They were men, at all events, whatever their faults had been and might be, and they looked at the main things of life in very much the same way, like father like son. Another silence followed Brook's last speech. "It's settled now, at all events," he said in a decided way, after a long time. "What's the use of talking about it? I don't know whether you mean to stay here. I shall go away this afternoon." Sir Adam sat down again in his low easy chair, and leaned forward, looking at the pattern of the tiles in the floor, his wrists resting on his knees, and his hands hanging down. "I don't know," he said slowly. "Let us try and look at it quietly, boy. Don't do anything in a hurry. You're in love with the girl, are you? It isn't a mere flirtation? How the deuce do you know the difference, at your age?" "Gad!" exclaimed Brook, half angrily. "I know it! that's all. I can't live without her. That is--it's all bosh to talk in that way, you know. One goes on living, I suppose--one doesn't die. You know what I mean. I'd rather lose an arm than lose her--that sort of thing. How am I to explain it to you? I'm in earnest about it. I never asked any girl to marry me till now. I should think that ought to prove it. You can't say that I don't know what married life means." "Other people's married life," observed Sir Adam, grimly. "You know something about that, I'm afraid." "What difference does it make?" asked Brook. "I can't marry the daughter of my father's divorced wife." "I never heard of a case, simply because such cases don't arise often. But there's no earthly reason why you shouldn't. There is no relationship whatever between you. There's no mention of it in the table of kindred and affinity, I know, simply because it isn't kindred or affinity in any way. The world may make its observations. But you may do much more surprising things than marry the daughter of your father's divorced wife when you are to have forty thousand pounds a year, Brook. I've found it out in my time. You'll find it out in yours. And it isn't as though there were the least thing about it that wasn't all fair and square and straight and honourable and legal--and everything else, including the clergy. I supposed that the Archbishop of Canterbury wouldn't have married me the second time, because the Church isn't supposed to approve of divorces. But I was married in church all right, by a very good man. And Church disapproval can't possibly extend to the second generation, you know. Oh no! So far as its being possible goes, there's nothing to prevent your marrying her." "Except Mrs. Crosby," said Brook. "You'll prove that she doesn't exist either, if you go on. But all that doesn't put things straight. It's a horrible situation, no matter how you look at it. What would my mother say if she knew? You haven't told her about the Bowrings, have you?" "No," answered Sir Adam, thoughtfully. "I haven't told her anything. Of course she knows the story, but--I'm not sure. Do you think I'm bound to tell her that--who Mrs. Bowring is? Do you think it's anything like not fair to her, just to leave her in ignorance of it? If you think so, I'll tell her at once. That is, I should have to ask Mrs. Bowring first, of course." "Of course," assented Brook. "You can't do that, unless we go away. Besides, as things are now, what's the use?" "She'll have to know, if you are engaged to the daughter." "I'm not engaged to Miss Bowring," said Brook, disconsolately. "She won't look at me. What an infernal mess I've made of my life!" "Don't be an ass, Brook!" exclaimed Sir Adam, for the third time that morning. "It's all very well to tell me not to be an ass," answered the young man gravely. "I can't mend matters now, and I don't blame her for refusing me. It isn't much more than two weeks since that night. I can't tell her the truth--I wouldn't tell it to you, though I can't prevent your telling it to me, since you've guessed it. She thinks I betrayed Mrs. Crosby, and left her--like the merest cad, you know. What am I to do? I won't say anything against Mrs. Crosby for anything--and if I were low enough to do that I couldn't say it to Miss Bowring. I told her that I'd marry her in spite of herself--carry her off--anything! But of course I couldn't. I lost my head, and talked like a fool." "She won't think the worse of you for that," observed the old man. "But you can't tell her--the rest. Of course not! I'll see what I can do, Brook. I don't believe it's hopeless at all. I've watched Miss Bowring, ever since we first met you two, coming up the hill. I'll try something--" "Don't speak to her about Mrs. Crosby, at all events!" "I don't think I should do anything you wouldn't do yourself, boy," said Sir Adam, with a shade of reproval in his tone. "All I say is that the case isn't so hopeless as you seem to think. Of course you are heavily handicapped, and you are a dog with a bad name, and all the rest of it. The young lady won't change her mind to-day, nor to-morrow either, perhaps. But she wouldn't be a human woman if she never changed it at all." "You don't know her!" Brook shook his head and began to refill his refractory pipe. "And I don't believe you know her mother either, though you were married to her once. If she is at all what I think she is, she won't let her daughter marry your son. It's not as though anything could happen now to change the situation. It's an old one--it's old, and set, and hard, like a cast. You can't run it into a new mould and make anything else of it. Not even you, Governor--and you are as clever as anybody I know. It's a sheer question of humanity, without any possible outside incident. I've got two things against me which are about as serious as anything can be--the mother's prejudice against you, and the daughter's prejudice against me--both deuced well founded, it seems to me." "You forget one thing, Brook," said Sir Adam, thoughtfully. "What's that?" "Women forgive." Neither spoke for some time. "You ought to know," said Brook in a low tone, at last. "They forgive when they love--or have loved. That's the right way to put it, I think." "Well--put it in that way, if you like. It will just cover the ground. Whatever that young lady may say, she likes you very much. I've seen her watch you, and I'm sure of it." "How can a woman love a man and hate him at the same time?" "Why do jealous women sometimes kill their husbands? If they didn't love them they wouldn't care; and if they didn't hate them, they wouldn't kill them. You can't explain it, perhaps, but you can't deny it either. She'll never forgive Mrs. Crosby--perhaps--but she'll forgive you, when she finds out that she can't be happy without you. Stay here quietly, and let me see what I can do." "You can't do anything, Governor. But I'm grateful to you all the same. And--you know--if there's anything I can do on my side to help you, just now, I'll do it!" "Thank you, Brook," said the old man, leaning back, and putting up his feet again. Brook rose and left the room, slowly shutting the door behind him. Then he got his hat and went off for a solitary walk to think matters over. They were grave enough, and all that his father had said could not persuade him that there was any chance of happiness in his future. There was a sort of horror in the situation, too, and he could not remember ever to have heard of anything like it. He walked slowly, and with bent head. CHAPTER XIII Sir Adam sat still in his place and smoked another thick cigarette before he moved. Then he roused himself, got up, sat down at his table, and took a large sheet of paper from a big leather writing-case. He had no hesitation about what he meant to put down. In a quarter of an hour he had written out a new will, in which he left his whole fortune to his only son Brook, on condition that Brook did not marry Mrs. Crosby. But if he married her before his father's death he was to have nothing, and if he married her afterwards he was to forfeit the whole, to the uttermost farthing. In either of these cases the property was to go to a third person. Sir Adam hesitated a moment, and then wrote the name of one of his sisters as the conditional legatee. His wife had plenty of money of her own, and besides, the will was a mere formality, drawn up and to be executed solely with a view to checking Lady Fan's enthusiasm. He did not sign it, but folded it smoothly and put it into his pocket. He also took his own pen, for he was particular in matters appertaining to the mechanics of writing, and very neat in all he did. He went out and wandered up and down the terrace in the heat, but no one was there. Then he knocked at his wife's door, and found her absorbed in an interesting conversation with her maid in regard to matters of dress, as connected with climate. Lady Johnstone at once appealed to him, and the maid eyed him with suspicion, fearing his suggestions. He satisfied her, however, by immediately suggesting that she should go away, whereat she smiled and departed. Lady Johnstone at once understood that something very serious was in the air. A wonderful good fellowship existed between husband and wife; but they very rarely talked of anything which could not have been discussed, figuratively, on the housetops. "Brook has got himself into a scrape with that Mrs. Crosby, my dear," said Sir Adam. "What you heard is all more or less true. She has really been to a solicitor, and means to take steps to get a divorce. Of course she could get it easily enough. If she did, people would say that Brook had let her go that far, telling her that he would marry her, and then had changed his mind and left her to her fate. We can't let that happen, you know." Lady Johnstone looked at her husband with anxiety while he was speaking, and then was silent for a few seconds. "Oh, you Johnstones! You Johnstones!" she cried at last, shaking her head. "You're perfectly incorrigible!" "Oh no, my dear," answered Sir Adam; "don't forget me, you know." "You, Adam!" Her tone expressed an extraordinary conflict of varying sentiment--amusement, affection, reproach, a retrospective distrust of what might have been, but could not be, considering Sir Adam's age. "Never mind me, then," he answered. "I've made a will cutting Brook off with nothing if he marries Mrs. Crosby, and I'm going to send her a copy of it to-day. That will be enough, I fancy." "Adam!" "Yes--what? Do you disapprove? You always say that you are a practical woman, and you generally show that you are. Why shouldn't I take the practical method of stopping this woman as soon as possible? She wants my money--she doesn't want my son. A fortune with any other name would smell as sweet." "Yes--but--" "But what?" "I don't know--it seems--somehow--" Lady Johnstone was perplexed to express what she meant just then. "I mean," she added suddenly, "it's treating the woman like a mere adventuress, you know--" "That's precisely what Mrs. Crosby is, my dear," answered Sir Adam calmly. "The fact that she comes of decent people doesn't alter the case in the least. Nor the fact that she has one rich husband, and wishes to get another instead. I say that her husband is rich, but I'm very sure he has ruined himself in the last two years, and that she knows it. She is not the woman to leave him as long as he has money, for he lets her do anything she pleases, and pays her well to leave him alone. But he has got into trouble--and rats leave a sinking ship, you know. You may say that I'm cynical, my dear, but I think you'll find that I'm telling you the facts as they are." "It seems an awful insult to the woman to send her a copy of your will," said Lady Johnstone. "It's an awful insult to you when she tries to get rid of her husband to marry your only son, my dear." "Oh--but he'd never marry her!" "I'm not sure. If he thought it would be dishonourable not to marry her, he'd be quite capable of doing it, and of blowing out his brains afterwards." "That wouldn't improve her position," observed the practical Lady Johnstone. "She'd be the widow of an honest man, instead of the wife of a blackguard," said Sir Adam. "However, I'm doing this on my own responsibility. What I want is that you should witness the will." "And let Mrs. Crosby think I made you do this? No--" "Nonsense. I sha'n't copy the signatures--" "Then why do you need them at all?" "I'm not going to write to her that I've made a will, if I haven't," answered Sir Adam. "A will isn't a will unless it's witnessed. I'm not going to lie about it, just to frighten her. So I want you and Mrs. Bowring to witness it." "Mrs. Bowring?" "Yes--there are no men here, and Brook can't be a witness, because he's interested. You and Mrs. Bowring will do very well. But there's another thing--rather an extraordinary thing--and I won't let you sign with her until you know it. It's not a very easy thing to tell you, my dear." Lady Johnstone shifted her fat hands and folded them again, and her frank blue eyes gazed at her husband for a moment. "I can guess," she said, with a good-natured smile. "You told me you were old friends--I suppose you were in love with her somewhere!" She laughed and shook her head. "I don't mind," she added. "It's one more, that's all--one that I didn't know of. She's a very nice woman, and I've taken the greatest fancy to her!" "I'm glad you have," said Sir Adam, gravely. "I say, my dear--don't be surprised, you know--I warned you. We knew each other very well--it's not what you think at all, and she was altogether in the right and I was quite in the wrong about it. I say, now--don't be startled--she's my divorced wife--that's all." "She! Mrs. Bowring! Oh, Adam--how could you treat her so!" Lady Johnstone leaned back in her chair and slowly turned her head till she could look out of the window. She was almost rosy with surprise--a change of colour in her sanguine complexion which was equivalent to extreme pallor in other persons. Sir Adam looked at her affectionately. "What an awfully good woman you are!" he exclaimed, in genuine admiration. "I! No, I'm not good at all. I was thinking that if you hadn't been such a brute to her I could never have married you. I don't suppose that is good, is it? But you were a brute, all the same, Adam, dear, to hurt such a woman as that!" "Of course I was! I told you so when I told you the story. But I didn't expect that you'd ever meet." "No, it is an extraordinary thing. I suppose that if I had any nerves I should faint. It would be an awful thing if I did; you'd have to get those porters to pick me up!" She smiled meditatively. "But I haven't fainted, you see. And, after all, I don't see why it should be so very dreadful, do you? You see, you've rather broken me in to the idea of lots of other people in your life, and I've always pitied her sincerely. I don't see why I should stop pitying her because I've met her and taken such a fancy to her without knowing who she was. Do you?" "Most women would," observed Sir Adam. "It's lucky that you and she happen to be the two best women in the world. I told Brook so this morning." "Brook? Have you told him?" "I had to. He wants to marry her daughter." "Brook! It's impossible!" Lady Johnstone's tone betrayed so much more surprise and displeasure than when her husband had told her of Mrs. Bowring's identity that he stared at her in surprise. "I don't see why it's impossible," he said, "except that she has refused him once. That's nothing. The first time doesn't count." "He sha'n't!" said the fat lady, whose vivid colour had come back. "He'll make her miserable--just as you--no, I won't say that! But they are not in the least suited to one another--he's far too young; there are fifty reasons." "Brook won't act as I did, my dear," said Sir Adam. "He's like you in that. He'll make as good a husband as you have been a good wife--" "Nonsense!" interrupted Lady Johnstone. "You're all alike, you Johnstones! I was talking to him this morning about her--I knew there was the beginning of something--and I told him what I thought. You're all bad, and I love you all; but if you think that Clare Bowring is as practical as I am, you're very much mistaken, Adam, dear! She'll break her heart--" "If she does, I'll shoot him," answered the old man with a grim smile. "I told him so." "Did you? Well, I am glad you take that view of it," said Lady Johnstone, thoughtfully, and not at all realising what she was saying. "I'm glad I'm not a nervous woman," she added, beginning to fan herself. "I should be in my grave, you know." "No--you are not nervous, my dear, and I'm very glad of it. I suppose it really is rather a trying situation. But if I didn't know you, I wouldn't have told you all this. You've spoiled me, you know--you really have been so tremendously good to me--always, dear." There was a rough, half unwilling tenderness in his voice, and his big bony hand rested gently on the fat lady's shoulder, as he spoke. She bent her head to one side, till her large red cheek touched the brown knuckles. It was, in a way, almost grotesque. But there was that something in it which could make youth and beauty and passion ridiculous--the outspoken truthful old rake and the ever-forgiving wife. Who shall say wherein pathos lies? And yet it seems to be something more than a mere hack-writer's word, after all. The strangest acts of life sometimes go off in such an oddly quiet humdrum way, and then all at once there is the little quiver in the throat, when one least expects it--and the sad-eyed, faithful, loving angel has passed by quickly, low and soft, his gentle wings just brushing the still waters of our unwept tears. Sir Adam left his wife to go in search of Mrs. Bowring. He sent a message to her, and she came out and met him in the corridor. They went into the reading-room together, and he shut the door. In a few words he told her all that he had told his wife about Mrs. Crosby, and asked her whether she had any objection to signing the document as a witness, merely in order that he might satisfy himself by actually executing it. "It is high handed," said Mrs. Bowring. "It is like you--but I suppose you have a right to save your son from such trouble. But there is something else--do you know what has happened? He has been making love to Clare--he has asked her to marry him, and she has refused. She told me this morning--and I have told her the truth--that you and I were once married." She paused, and watched Sir Adam's furrowed face. "I'm glad of that," he said. "I'm glad that it has all come out on the same day. He knows everything, and he has told me everything. I don't know how it's all going to end, but I want you to believe one thing. If he had guessed the truth, he would never have said a word of love to her. He's not that kind of boy. You do believe me, don't you?" "Yes, I believe you. But the worst of it is that she cares for him too--in a way I can't understand. She has some reason, or she thinks she has, for disliking him, as she calls it. She wouldn't tell me. But she cares for him all the same. She has told him, though she won't tell me. There is something horrible in the idea of our children falling in love with each other." Mrs. Bowring spoke quietly, but her pale face and nervous mouth told more than her words. Sir Adam explained to her shortly what had happened on the first evening after Brook's arrival, and how Clare had heard it all, sitting in the shadow just above the platform. Mrs. Bowring listened in silence, covering her eyes with her hands. There was a long pause after he had finished speaking, but still she said nothing. "I should like him to marry her," said Sir Adam at last, in a low voice. She started and looked at him uneasily, remembering how well she had once loved him, and how he had broken her heart when she was young. He met her eyes quietly. "You don't know him," he said. "He loves her, and he will be to her--what I wasn't to you." "How can you say that he loves her? Three weeks ago he loved that Mrs. Crosby." "He? He never cared for her--not even at first." "He was all the more heartless and bad to make her think that he did." "She never thought so, for a moment. She wanted my money, and she thought that she could catch him." "Perhaps--I saw her, and I did not like her face. She had the look of an adventuress about her. That doesn't change the main facts. Your son and she were--flirting, to say the least of it, three weeks ago. And now he thinks himself in love with my daughter. It would be madness to trust such a man--even if there were not the rest to hinder their marriage. Adam--I told you that I forgave you. I have forgiven you--God knows. But you broke my life at the beginning like a thread. You don't know all there has been to forgive--indeed, you don't. And you are asking me to risk Clare's life in your son's hands, as I risked mine in yours. It's too much to ask." "But you say yourself that she loves him." "She cares for him--that was what I said. I don't believe in love as I did. You can't expect me to." She turned her face away from him, but he saw the bitterness in it, and it hurt him. He waited a moment before he answered her. "Don't visit my sins on your daughter, Lucy," he said at last. "Don't forget that love was a fact before you and I were born, and will be a fact long after we are dead. If these two love each other, let them marry. I hope that Clare is like you, but don't take it for granted that Brook is like me. He's not. He's more like his mother." "And your wife?" said Mrs. Bowring suddenly. "What would she say to this?" "My wife," said Sir Adam, "is a practical woman." "I never was. Still--if I knew that Clare loved him--if I could believe that he could love her faithfully--what could I do? I couldn't forbid her to marry him. I could only pray that she might be happy, or at least that she might not break her heart." "You would probably be heard, if anybody is. And a man must believe in God to explain your existence," added Sir Adam, in a gravely meditative tone. "It's the best argument I know." CHAPTER XIV Brook Johnstone had gone to his room when he had left his father, and was hastily packing his belongings, for he had made up his mind to leave Amalfi at once without consulting anybody. It is a special advantage of places where there is no railway that one can go away at a moment's notice, without waiting tedious hours for a train. Brook did not hesitate, for it seemed to him the only right thing to do, after Clare's refusal, and after what his father had told him. If she had loved him, he would have stayed in spite of every opposition. If he had never been told her mother's history, he would have stayed and would have tried to make her love him. As it was, he set his teeth and said to himself that he would suffer a good deal rather than do anything more to win the heart of Mrs. Bowring's daughter. He would get over it somehow in the end. He fancied Clare's horror if she should ever know the truth, and his fear of hurting her was as strong as his love. He made no phrases to himself, and he thought of nothing theatrical which he should like to say. He just set his teeth and packed his clothes alone. Possibly he swore rather unmercifully at the coat which would not fit into the right place, and at the starched shirt-cuffs which would not lie flat until he smashed them out of shape with unsteady hands. When he was ready, he wrote a few words to Clare. He said that he was going away immediately, and that it would be very kind of her to let him say good-bye. He sent the note by a servant, and waited in the corridor at a distance from her door. A moment later she came out, very pale. "You are not really going, are you?" she asked, with wide and startled eyes. "You can't be in earnest?" "I'm all ready," he answered, nodding slowly. "It's much better. I only wanted to say good-bye, you know. It's awfully kind of you to come out." "Oh--I wouldn't have--" but she checked herself, and glanced up and down the long corridor. "We can't talk here," she added. "It's so hot outside," said Brook, remembering how she had complained of the heat an hour earlier. "Oh no--I mean--it's no matter. I'd rather go out for a moment." She began to walk towards the door while she was speaking. They reached it in silence, and went out into the blazing sun. Clare had Brook's note still in her hand, and held it up to shield the glare from the side of her face as they crossed the platform. Then she realised that she had brought him to the very spot whereon he had said good-bye to Lady Fan. She stopped, and he stood still beside her. "Not here," she said. "No--not here," he answered. "There's too much sun--really," said she, as the colour rose faintly in her cheeks. "It's only to say good-bye," Brook answered sadly. "I shall always remember you just as you are now--with the sun shining on your hair." It was so bright that it dazzled him as he looked. In spite of the heat she did not move, and their eyes met. "Mr. Johnstone," Clare began, "please stay. Please don't let me feel that I have sent you away." There was a shade of timidity in the tone, and the eyes seemed brave enough to say something more. Brook hesitated. "Well--no--it isn't that exactly. I've heard something--my father has told me something since I saw you--" He stopped short and looked down. "What have you heard?" she asked. "Something dreadful about us?" "About us all--about him, principally. I can't tell you. I really can't." "About him--and my mother? That they were married and separated?" The steady innocent eyes had waited for him to look up again. He started as he heard her words. "You don't mean to say that you know it too?" he cried. "Who has dared to tell you?" "My mother--she was quite right. It's wrong to hide such things--she ought to have told me at once. Why shouldn't I have known it?" "Doesn't it seem horrible to you? Don't you dislike me more than ever?" "No. Why should I? It wasn't your fault. What has it to do with you? Or with me? Is that the reason why you are going away so suddenly?" Brook stared at her in surprise, and the dawn of returning gladness was in his face for a moment. "We have a right to live, whatever they did in their day," said Clare. "There is no reason why you should go away like this, at a moment's notice." With an older woman he would have understood the first time, but he did not dare to understand Clare, nor to guess that there was anything to be understood. "Of course we have a right to live," he answered, in a constrained tone. "But that does not mean that I may stay here and make your life a burden. So I'm going away. It was quite different before I knew all this. Please don't stay out here--you'll get a sunstroke. I only wanted to say good-bye." Man-like, having his courage at the striking-point, he wished to get it all over quickly and be off. The colour sank from Clare's face again, and she stood quite still for a moment, looking at him. "Good-bye," he said, holding out his hand, and trying hard to smile a little. Clare looked at him still, but her hand did not meet his, though he waited, holding it out to her. Her face hardened as though she were making an effort, then softened again, and still he waited. "Won't you say good-bye to me?" he asked unsteadily. She hesitated a moment longer. "No!" she answered suddenly. "I--I can't!" * * * * * And here the story comes to its conclusion, as many stories out of the lives of men and women seem to end at what is only their turning-point. For real life has no conclusion but real death, and that is a sad ending to a tale, and one which may as well be left to the imagination when it is possible. Stories of strange things, which really occur, very rarely have what used to be called a "moral" either. All sorts of things happen to people who afterwards go on living just the same, neither much better nor much worse than they were in the beginning. The story is a slice, as it were, cut from the most interesting part of a life, generally at the point where that life most closely touches another, so that the future of the two momentarily depends upon each separately, and upon both together. The happiness or unhappiness of both, for a long time to come, is founded upon the action of each just at those moments. And sometimes, as in the tale here told, the least promising of all the persons concerned is the one who helps matters out. The only logical thing about life is the certainty that it must end. If there were any logic at all about what goes between birth and death, men would have found it out long ago, and we should all know how to live as soon as we leave school; whereas we spend our lives under Fate's ruler, trying to understand, while she raps us over the knuckles every other minute because we cannot learn our lesson and sit up straight, and be good without being prigs, and do right without sticking it through other people's peace of mind as one sticks a pin through a butterfly. 
56455	----	[Frontispiece: "Peccavi."] Rebellion By Joseph Medill Patterson _Author of "A Little Brother of the Rich," etc._ _Illustrated by Walter Dean Goldbeck_ Publishers The Reilly & Britton Co. Chicago Copyright, 1911 by The Reilly & Britton Co. All rights reserved Entered At Stationers' Hall First Printing, September 1911 _REBELLION_ Published October 2, 1911 Illustrations "Peccavi" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece "He Doesn't Live Here Any More" "Georgia Laughed" Rebellion List of Chapters CHAPTER I Jim Connor II One Flesh III An Economic Unit IV The Head of the House V For Idle Hands to Do VI Triangulation VII A Sentimental Journey VIII The Life Force IX The Pretenders X Moxey XI Fusion XII Moxey's Sister XIII Reenter Jim XIV The Palace of the Unborn XV Mr. Silverman XVI Georgia Leaves Home XVII The Light Flickers XVIII The Priest XIX Sacred Heart XX Surrender XXI Worship XXII Kansas City XXIII The Last of the Old Man XXIV The New King XXV Jim Reenlists XXVI Eve XXVII The Naphthaline River XXVIII Albert Talbot Connor XXIX The Doctor Talks XXX Frankland & Connor XXXI The Stodgy Man XXXII Rebellion XXXIII The Ape XXXIV Which Begins Another Story _NOTE_ _I wish to thank Mr. Francis Hackett for reading the unrevised proofs of this story._ _J. M. Patterson._ I JIM CONNOR "Nope, promised to be home on time for supper." "Get panned last night!" "Yep." The group of men turned to the clock which was ticking high up on the wall between the smudgy painting of Leda and The Swan and the framed group photograph of famous pugilists from Paddy Ryan to the present day. "It's only nineteen past; plenty time for just one more." Jim Connor compared his watch with the clock and found they tallied. The grave bartender took the dice and box from behind the cigar counter and courteously placed them upon the bar. "Well," bargained Jim, "if it _is_ just one more." "J.O.M." they chorused, and the dice rolled upon the polished oak. "What'll it be, gents?" "Beer." "Scotch high." "Bourbon." "A small beer, Jack." "Beer." "Yours, Jim?" prompted the watchful bartender. "Well--I guess you can give me a cigar this time, Jack." The practiced bartender, standing by his beer pump, slid the whisky glasses along the slippery counter with a delicate touch, as a skillful dealer distributes cards. He set out the red and smoky whiskies, the charged water, the tumbler, with its cube of ice; drew two glasses of beer, scraped the top foam into the copper runway, and almost simultaneously, as if he had four hands, laid three open cigar boxes before Jim, who selected a dark "Joe Tinker." "Join us, Jack," invited the loser of the dice game, hospitably waving his hand. The efficient bartender drew a small half-glass of lithia for himself. Five feet rested upon the comfortable rail before the bar, there was the little pause imposed by etiquette, six glasses were raised to eye-level. "Here's whatever." "Happy days." "S'looking at you," ran the murmur. "The big fellow!" exclaimed one. Chorus: "Yes, the big fellow!" "I'll sure have to come in on that," said Jim, pressing between two shoulders to the bar. "A little bourbon, Jack," he asked briskly. The other glasses were lowered until Jim also received his. Then all were again raised to eye-level. Unanimously, "The big fellow!" Heads were thrown back and each ego there, except the bartender, received a charming little thrill. The beer men wandered to the back of the saloon and dipped into a large pink hemisphere of cheese. The whisky men suppressed coughs. Jim tipped his head back about five degrees and inquired, "Is the big fellow coming 'round to-night?" "He's due," replied Jack, wiping his bar dry again. "How's things looking to you?" "We--ell, there's always a lot of knockers about." "Yes, 'pikers' like Ben Birch and Coffey Neal, that line up with the big fellow for ten years and then throw him overnight because he won't let 'em name the alderman this time. And he always treated 'em right. Better than me. An' jou ever hear me kicking?" "Nary once, Jim." "That's because I am a white man with my friends. But these other Indians--well," said Jim earnestly, "God knows ingratitude gets my goat." Jim Connor was a ward heeler and the big fellow was his ward boss. Jim was allowed to handle some of the money in his precinct at primaries and elections; he landed on the public pay-roll now and then; he was expected to attend funerals, bowling matches, saloons, picnics, cigar shops and secret society meetings throughout the year; his influence lay in his strength with the big fellow. Did a storekeeper want an awning over the sidewalk, or did he not want vigorous building inspection, if he lived in Jim's precinct, he told Jim, and Jim told the big fellow, and the big fellow told the alderman, and the alderman arranged it with his colleagues on a basis of friendship. In return, the storekeeper voted with the organization, which was the big fellow, who was thus enabled always to nominate and usually to elect candidates who would do what he told them. He told them to line up with the interests who had subscribed to the campaign fund--and he was the campaign fund. The entire process is pretty well known nowadays through the efforts of Mr. Lincoln Steffens and his associate muckrakers. But there is no immediate cause for alarm; this is not a political novel. The clock pointed nearly to seven and Jim, when he saw it, sighed. That meant unpleasantness. His supper certainly would be cold, but he wasn't thinking of that. He was thinking of his wife. She was sure to make him uncomfortable in some way or other, because he had broken his promise about being home on time. Probably she would be silent. If there was anything he hated, it was one of her silent spells. Just "No" and "Yes," and when he asked her what in hell was the matter, she would say "Nothing." The trouble was, though, that he always knew what the matter was, even when she said "Nothing." What devil's power was there in wives, anyway, that enabled them to hurt by merely not speaking? He had tried silences on her a lot of times, but they never worked, not once. He liked the old days better, when she used to scold and plead and weep. He remembered the first time he had come home drunk, half a dozen years ago, when he had barely turned from bridegroom to husband. She helped him that night to undress and to go to bed. And she had done other things for him, too, that even now he was ashamed to remember. And the next day she hadn't scolded once, but had fetched him a cup of coffee in bed as soon as he woke up. It surprised him; overwhelmed him. It had made him very humble. He had never been so repentant before or since. She didn't reproach him that time--not a word. He didn't mean she had one of her silences--those didn't begin until much later; but she tried to talk about their usual affairs, as if nothing had happened. And everything had happened. They both knew that. It wasn't until the next evening, thirty-six hours later, that he came home to find her a miserable heap upon the front room sofa, her face buried. He stood in the middle of the room looking at her helplessly, his words of greeting cut short. Every now and then her small shoulders heaved up and he heard her sob. She must have been crying a long time. He implored her, "Oh, don't, Georgia, don't; please don't; won't you please not?" After a little while she stood up and put her arms about him and kissed him. He had never had such a feeling for her, it seemed to him, not even when they walked down the aisle together and she leaned on him so heavily. And then he kissed her solemnly, in a different way than ever before. He took the pledge that night, and he kept it, too, for a long time, nearly a year. That was the happy time of his life. When he did begin again, it was gradually. She knew, after a time, he wasn't teetotal any more, and she didn't seem to mind so much. He remembered they talked about it. He explained that he could drink moderately, that she could trust him now, and mustn't ever be afraid of any more--accidents. And that very same night he came home drunk. She cried again, but it wasn't as solemn and as terrible for either of them as the time before. There had been other times since, many of them. And she had grown so cursedly contemptuous and cold. Well--he didn't know that it was altogether his fault. He had heard that alcoholism was a disease. But she had said it was a curable disease, and if he couldn't cure it, he had better die. His own wife had told him that. God knows he had tried to cure it. He had put every pound he had into the fight; not once, but a hundred times. He had gone to Father Hervey and taken the pledge last Easter Day, and--here he was with a whiskey glass in his hand. He looked across into the high bar mirror. His eyes were yellow and his cheeks seemed to sag down. He put his hand to them to touch their flaccidity. His hair was thinning, there were red patches about his jaws where veins had broken, and his mouth seemed loose and ill-defined under the mustache which he wore to conceal it. He frowned fiercely, thrust his chin forward and gritted his teeth tightly to make of himself the reflection of a strong man--one who could domineer, like the big fellow. But it was no use--the mirror gave him back his lie. The afternoon rush was over, the evening trade had not begun, and the saloon was empty, save for a group of scat-players at the farther end. Jim's friends had gone, but he remained behind, in gloomy self-commiseration, his shoulders propped against the partition which marked off the cigar stand. He was thinking over his troubles, which was his commonest way of handling them. Whoever it was that invented the saying, "Life is just one damned thing after another"--he knew, he knew. Jim had bought three or four post-cards variously framing the sentiment and placed them upon his bureau, side by side, for Georgia to see. It was his criticism of life. You politicians and publicists, if you want to know what the public wants, linger at the rack in your corner drug store and look over the saws and sayings on the post-cards. Jim hoped that the ones he had picked out would subtly convey to his wife that all were adrift together upon a most perplexing journey and that it ill-behooved any of them to--well there was a post-card poem that just about hit it off--and he put it on the bureau with the others: "THERE IS SO MUCH BAD IN THE BEST OF US AND SO MUCH GOOD IN THE WORST OF US, THAT IT HARDLY BEHOOVES ANY OF US TO TALK ABOUT THE REST OF US." But she hadn't taken the least notice. She didn't seem to understand him at all. Oh, well--women were light creatures of clothes and moods and two-edged swords for tongues--or deadly silence. What could they know about the deep springs of life--about how a man felt when in trouble? Jim shifted his position slightly, for the hinge was beginning to trouble his shoulder blade, and fetched a sigh that was almost a moan. Such had been his life, merely that, and the future looked as bad or worse. The shilling bar grew a bit misty before him and he knew it wouldn't take much to make his eyes run over. "Anything wrong, Jim?" inquired the sympathetic bartender. "Just a little blue to-night, Jack, that's all." "Sometimes I get into those spells myself. Hell, ain't they?" Jim nodded. "I suppose they come from nervousness." The bartender nodded back. "Or liver," said he, setting out the red bottle. "Have a smile." "No, I don't want any more of that damned stuff. A man's a fool to let it get away with him, and sometimes I figure I better watch out--not but what I can't control myself, y'understand." There was the slightest interrogation in his tone. "Sure y'can, Jim; I know that. Still," dubiously, "like you say, a fellow ought to watch out. It'll land the K.O. on the stoutest lad in shoes, if he keeps a-fightin' it." "It's for use and not abuse. Ain't I right?" The bartender conspicuously helped himself to a swallow of lithia. "Yep, sure," he said. "D'you know, Jim, I'm kind of sorry you didn't go home to supper to-night." "So'm I, but I got to talking----" "Why don't you go now?" "Too blue, Jack, and home is fierce when I get there with a breath." "Remember the time the little woman come here after you?" "Oh, it's no use bringing that up now," said Jim sadly. "She liked me then. Give me a ginger ale." Jim took his glass and sat alone at a round table by the wall, under the painting of Pasiphae and The Shower of Gold. This saloon, like many others, in Chicago, ran to classical subjects. Jim relit his cigar and slowly turned the pages of a Fliegende Blätter, looking at the pictures and habitually picking out those letters in the text which resembled English letters. It was a frayed copy which had inhabited the saloon for many months, and showed it. Jim had thumbed it twenty times before, but he was doing it again to appease his subconsciousness, to give himself the appearance of activity of some sort. But he was looking through the German pages to the years behind him. Politics--maybe that was the trouble. Politicians, at least little fellows like him, got more feathers than chicken out of it. If he hadn't quit that job with the railroad--but no, they were drivers, and there was no future in the railroad business for a fellow like him, a bookkeeper. He might have stayed there all his life and not thirty men in the entire offices have been the wiser, or have ever heard of him. In fact, he had bettered himself by going with the publishing firm. He seemed to have prospects there. It wasn't his fault they blew up and he was out on the street again. That was how he got into politics--sort of drifted in after meeting the big fellow canvassing the saloons one night, when he, Jim, had nothing else to do. The big fellow was so attractive, so sure of himself, and Jim would have seemed a fool if he had refused the offer to clerk in an election precinct that fall. There was a little money in it, and a little importance. The big fellow had asked him to please see what he could do for the ticket that fall, and of course he had. It was agreeable to be consulted by the famous Ed Miles about plans and all that. He had never been consulted in the railroad office, or even by those publishers. After election, without solicitation, Miles had Jim appointed a deputy sheriff for the State of Illinois, County of Cook, ss. Of course, he took it. There was nothing else in sight just then. The pay was fair, the hours good, and besides, there was no time-clock to punch and no superintendent always hovering about. After a time the big fellow told Jim pleasantly, but firmly, that his job had to be passed around to some of the other boys, and Jim resigned. But the big fellow let it be known that Jim was still a trusted scout. That was an asset. The landlord knocked something off the rent of his flat, the street car company gave him a book of tickets, one of the bill-board companies sent him a nice check for Christmas; but he had done some rather particular work for them. He had respectable charge accounts in several places and wasn't pressed. But, after all, one cannot get rich on that sort of thing; so when the child died, his wife went back downtown as a stenographer in a life insurance office. She had been a stenographer before their marriage. II ONE FLESH The short swinging doors opened briskly and five tall men entered quietly. Jim tipped his chair forward upon its four legs. The scat game delayed itself. The five lined up at the bar. "Beer," said the one with the boiled shirt. The skillful bartender drew five glasses of foam. Jim sat still in his chair, hesitating to glance even obliquely toward the proceedings. What was one against five? The tall man with the boiled shirt pointed to his glass, but did not touch it. Nor did any of his companions touch theirs. The saloon knighthood has not abandoned symbolism. "Does that go?" "It goes, Coffey Neal." "And we don't get a lithograph in the front window?" "You don't." The five men withdrew a little for conference. Then Coffey Neal paid his reckoning with a quarter and a nickel. The bartender rang up twenty-five cents on the register. Neal pointed to the five-cent piece upon the bar. "That's for yourself, Jack." The sardonic bartender placed it between his teeth. "It's phony," said he. "Take it back and put it in your campaign fund." He smiled, keeping his right hand below the bar. "After election," Coffey Neal remarked through his nose, "your old man (he meant Jack's father-in-law) can't sell this place for the fixtures in it." Jack concealed a yawn with his left hand. "You're the twenty-second wop since the first of the year was going to put us out of business, and we're signing a lease for our new place next Monday. It's where your brother used to be located." One of the enemy, a stocky fellow with a brakeman's black shirt, was constructing sandwiches of sliced bologna and rye at the lunch counter. "I know you're not eating much lately, old boy, since you begun stringing with Coffey," smiled Jack from the corner of his mouth, "but those is for our customers." Blackshirt turned quickly about, sweeping the pink hemisphere of cheese upon the floor and shivering it. "Oh, dreadful!" he protested, falsetto. "My word, how sad!" He trod some of the cheese into the sawdust. "Mr. Barman, ah, Mr. Barman, you may charge the damages to me--at the Blackstone." There was a roar of laughter from the others. It looked like rough-housing, and damage to fixtures. The scat players had vanished, in their naïve Teutonic way, through the side door. Jack began to hope he wouldn't have to draw, for a shooting always black-eyes a saloon's good name and quiet scat custom shies at it. Neal delivered Jim a tremendous thump on the shoulder. "Why, if it isn't my dear old college chump." Another thump. "Maybe you can buy us a drink with the collar off." A third thump. "Now, can the comedy stuff, Coffey," Jim snarled, smilingly. If only he could steer Coffey away from the fight he seemed bent on picking. "I'll buy--sure. Why not?" "Then you'll go across the street to do it," Jack inserted. "This ain't a barrel house." Neal seized Jim's ear and lifted him to his feet. "You'll buy here, and now." Three of the men gathered about Jim. The other two, standing well apart, were watching Jack. There would be three pistols out, or none. Jim was being slowly propelled to the bar, when the straw doors swung briskly and the big fellow entered. His shoulders, hands, legs and jaw were thick, and his eyes were amazingly alert. Unspeakable peace spread through Jim. He knew that somehow or other the big fellow was going to get him out of this. Indeed, that was what the boss had come for. News of the foray on this citadel of his had been grapevined to him up the block and around a corner. He sized up the situation very quickly. There was Coffey Neal, the trouble-maker, the Judas who had refused to take his orders any longer. He was the one to be done for. The other four were merely Hessians, torsos, not headpieces. They slugged for a living, on either side of industrial disputes, according to the price--sometimes on both sides in the same strike. "Have a drink, boys," said the great Ed Miles. It surprised every man in the room. Jim's heart sank down again. Could it be that the big fellow was going to take water? Then it was the end of his reign and the end of Jim's days at court. There was a pause, a whispering. Ed, standing sidewise to the bar, held his open right hand, palm upwards, behind his coat so that only Jack could see it. "And what if we wouldn't!" Coffey spoke with slow bravado. "This." The big fellow flashed at him, and dropped the bung-starter heavily behind his ear. Coffey crumpled upon the floor. The sluggers hesitated half a second, then piled on Ed so quickly that Jack didn't dare use his gun. Instead, he ran around the bar and twisted his arm under the chin of blackshirt, pulling him away from the heap. He thrust him up in the air, using his own knee for a lever, then dropped him heavily on his back on the floor and kicked his head. There was no time for niceties. Meanwhile, Jim had taken futile hold of another slugger's foot, who easily shook him off. He was cautiously planning for another hold--very cautiously indeed, not being anxious to become too completely immersed in the proceedings, when all at once the place became full of people. Strong and willing arms eagerly and quickly unraveled the tangle. "This is a hell of a game for eight o'clock in the evenin'." It was the bass voice of public peace. "Oh!" concernedly, "is it you, Mr. Miles? Are you hurted?" The big fellow felt his shaven skull where, in the melee, a brass knuckle had struck him a glancing blow. He looked at his red fingers. "Just a scrape, Sarje, not cracked," he laughed. "What's the charge?" asked the detective sergeant, solicitously. "Tell 'em the facts," enjoined the big fellow. "Well," began the efficient bartender, "Mr. Miles and me was talking quietly together here; he was standing just there with his back to the door, and I heard an awful yelling going up and down in the street. I knew it was Coffey Neal, hunting trouble, and drunk. They come in the cigar stand, swearing and cursing, saying they were looking for Ed Miles--to cut his heart out. But Ed says to me he didn't want any trouble in the place, so's he'd walk out, and he started out the side door, when Coffey and this blackshirt fellow come running in and threw that bowl of cheese at him--see it there--and jumped him. Then these other bad actors began kicking him, too, and I went in to separate 'em--and I guess that's all. Lucky you came in or there might have been trouble." "What charge will I put agin 'em?" "Drunk and disorderly; assault; assault and battery; assault with intent to kill; unprovoked assault; mayhem; assault with a deadly weapon--and I guess they ain't got no visible means of support," suggested the big fellow. "Oh! yes, and conspiracy." "Let it go at that," said Jack. The sergeant wrote it down. The sluggers were silent. The case had become one for lawyers' fees. Their own talking couldn't do any good. "Any witnesses?" asked the sergeant. "Me," said Jim. "It was the way Jack says." "Put 'em in the wagon," commanded law and order. Coffey Neal was picking up his threads again at the place he had dropped them. "And what if we won't drink with you, Ed Miles!" he muttered, somewhat scattered. "Likely the Bridewell, Coffey," laughed the big fellow. The vanquished were escorted out into the night. The victor and his vassals, perhaps a dozen of them by this time, remained in possession of the field. "Good thing I had those coppers planted before I started anything," commented the big fellow. "Those strong-arm guys like to got me going at the end." "They certainly handled themselves very useful," Jack acknowledged. "They gotta be with us after this, or get out of town." The big fellow turned suddenly on Jim. "And you, you yellow pup," he roared, seizing him by the collar, "what were you doing while they was pounding me up? D'you think you were at a ball game, hey?" He shook him back and forth until his jaws cracked. "I--I was trying--I got one of 'em by the leg, and he----" "Yes, like you'd pick flowers in the spring--sweet and pretty--that's the way you grabbed his leg." He lifted Jim from the ground and flung him on the floor. "Yellow pup!" he repeated passionately, over and over again. Jim raised himself to his elbow, but did not dare to go further. The big fellow's eyes were still blazing. "Honest, Ed, I was trying to help." Miles took a step toward him. "You're a G--d d--d liar!" he shouted. Jim tried to meet his look. It was a wretched business to be called that name before a dozen others--it had happened to him before, but he always hated it. Still the big fellow seemed especially vicious and dangerous just now; Jim knew how senseless it was to cross him when he was having one of his spells, and besides, they never lasted long, anyway. Jim dropped his eyes again, acknowledging the justice of the discipline. Miles threw a ten-dollar bill on the bar and broke the tension with a jolly laugh. "Well, I guess we've put Coffey Neal out o' this primary," said he. "Plunge in, lads." Jack served each man, but nothing for Jim. The code provided for a final display of magnanimity by the fountainhead. "Come ahead, Jim," he growled, kindly. Serenity unfolded again her frightened wings and the smoke of peace increased and multiplied over a leader fitted to lead and followers fitted to follow. The ensuing celebration spread itself over many hours and into many taverns. There was some agreeable close harmony, to which Jim joined a pleasant baritone, and much revilement of all double-crossers, from Judas and Benedict Arnold down to Coffey Neal, and a certain Irish party whose name now escapes me, but who grievously misbehaved himself during a Fenian incident. Very frequently they reached the shank of the evening--as often, indeed, as anybody wanted to go home. And in the big fellow's mouth the shank was ever a cogent argument. Eventually the ultimate question as to their further destination was put, and here the big fellow stood aside, permitting perfect latitude of decision. He was a politician and he knew that he could not possibly afford to have it said by the wives of the ward that he influenced their husbands toward sin. He could afford to have almost everything else said about him, but not that. Jim wavered, then resisted temptation. His record in that particular respect had been almost absolutely clean. He walked home stiffly, fighting with the skill of the practiced alcoholic for the upright position and the shortest distance between two points. His early morbidity had vanished. If he had done one thing badly that evening, he had done another thing well. Whatever his wife, Georgia, might urge against him in regard to his conviviality, wasn't he, after all, one of the most faithful husbands he knew? For all her superior airs, she had much to be grateful for in him. He entered his flat with little scraping of the keyhole, and cautiously undressed in the front room. It was late--much later than he had hoped for. He could just make out the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece by the light from the street lamp. He opened the door to their bedroom so slowly, so slowly and steadily, and then--as usual, that cursed hinge betrayed him. The number of times he had determined to oil it--yet he always forgot to. To-morrow he wouldn't forget--that was his flaming purpose. Psychological flux and flow may be deduced from door hinges as well as from the second cup of coffee for breakfast or the plaintive lady standing immediately before your hard-won seat in the street car. Jim would never oil the hinge in the morning, because that would somehow imply he expected to come in very late again at night, and he never expected to--in the morning. But her breathing remained regular, absolutely regular; he had this time escaped the snare of the hinge. The gas jet burned in a tiny flame. She had fallen into the habit of keeping a night-light during the past three or four years. At first he had objected that it interfered with his sleep, but she had been singularly persistent about it. She hadn't given him her reasons; indeed, she had never analyzed them. It was nothing but a bit of preposterous feminism, which she kept to herself, that the light made a third in their room. She lay with her back to him, far over on her side of the bed. He could see where her hip rose, and vaguely through the covering the outline of her limbs. Her shoulders were crumpled forward, and the upper one responded to her breathing, and marked it. Under her arm, crossed in front of her, he knew was the swelling of her breast. And then at the neck was the place where the hair was parted and braided, the braids wound forward about her eyes--a very peculiar way to treat one's hair. What a different thing a woman was! He had seen her lying so countless times, and yet the strangeness had never worn off. Indeed, curiously enough, there seemed even more of it now than when they had just married, and she was entirely new. He often thought a woman didn't seem exactly a person--that is, not like him, and he was certainly a person--but something else; just as good, perhaps, but quite other. Her body, of course--well, agreeable as it might be, still he was glad he wasn't made that way, for it seemed so ineffective. And one of them could stand a good man on his head. He simply couldn't get the hang of that. If a man was angry and sulked, he didn't mind. In fact, he preferred it to being knocked about as the big fellow sometimes did to him. He had never cared what man sulked, his brother or father or any of them. And yet this woman, she----he looked at her intently, earnestly, as if finally to solve her--she was very beautiful. And she was his wife. He crept into bed, very softly, for she might wake up. But then, it briefly occurred to him, what if she did! He was perfectly sober--at least to all intents and purposes. He could talk perfectly straight; he felt sure of that. Perhaps she would now wake of her own accord. That would be the best solution, and then he could appear drowsy, as if he, too, had just been aroused from sleep. He sighed loudly and turned himself over in the bed, but she gave no sign. "Georgia," he whispered very low. Pause. "Georgia," a little louder, "are you awake?" No answer. He touched her, as if carelessly. She stirred. Ah, she would--no, her breathing was markedly the breathing of slumber. Perhaps she was pretending. Oh, well, what was the use of his trying, if she was going to act so? He turned noisily back to his side of the bed. He was disappointed in her. Was it fair of her to pretend--if she was pretending? After all, she was his wife. A husband has his rights. That was what the church said. Otherwise, what was the use of getting married and supporting a woman--well, most men supported their wives, and he intended to do so again soon, very soon. Yes, he had the teachings on his side. He wanted nothing beyond the bond. It was holy wedlock, wasn't it? He placed his hand upon her waist. And yet she would give no sign. More resolutely than before she counterfeited the presentment of sleep. "Georgia!" he spoke aloud. "What is it!" she said, quickly, sitting up, her black braids falling back on her slim shoulders. "I just wanted to say good night," he muttered, huskily. "Good night," she answered, curtly. "Please don't disturb me again. I am very tired." She was turning from him, when he placed his hand on her shoulder. "Georgia, I love you. You know I do." The foulness of his poisoned breath filled her with loathing. "No, Jim," she gasped, afraid. "Oh, no!" "Georgia, you dunno how I love you," he pleaded, almost tearfully, taking her in his arms. Quickly she jumped from the bed. "Where are you going?" asked the annoyed husband. "I can't sleep here, Jim; I can't." She took up her underskirt and her thin flannel dressing sack and passed from the room. She made her couch on the lounge in the front room and after a time fell asleep. Jim twitched with nightmare throughout the night, and long after she had gone downtown in the morning. III AN ECONOMIC UNIT Georgia's desk was in a rectangular room which was over one hundred feet long and half as wide. There was light on three sides. Near the ceiling was a series of little gratings, each with a small silkoline American flag in front of it. These flags were constantly fluttering, indicating forced ventilation; so that although the desks were near together and the place contained its full complement of busy people, there was plenty of oxygen for them. This arrangement was designed primarily for economic rather than philanthropic purposes. The increased average output of work due to the fresh air yielded a satisfactory interest on the cost of the ventilating apparatus; and, besides, it impressed customers favorably and had a tendency to hold employes. The office dealt in life insurance. The desks were mounted on castors so that they could be wheeled out of the way at night while the tiled floor was being washed down with hose and long-handled mops and brooms and sometimes sand, as sailors holystone a deck. Much of the hands-and-knees scrubbing was in this way done away with. Rubber disks hinged against the desks and set to the floor held them in place during working hours. Narrow black right-angular marks showed where each desk belonged and to what point, exactly, it must be moved back when the nightly cleaning was finished. These details were all of profound interest to Georgia, for her desk was the most important thing in the world to her at this time in her life. She delighted in neatness, order, precision, in the adjustment of the means to the end. Every morning just before nine, she punched the clock, which gave her a professional feeling; and hung her hat and jacket in locker 31, which seemed to her a better, a more self-respecting place for them to be than her small, untidy bedroom closet, all littered up with so many things--hers and Jim's. Her mother, who kept house for them, was a good deal at loose ends, in Georgia's opinion. And it didn't seem quite the decent thing that a woman who had nothing else in the world to do should fail to keep a six-room flat in order. Of course her mother was getting a little old, but hardly too old to do that. Georgia had lately had a trial promotion to "take" the general agent's letters--the previous functionary, a tall blonde girl, having married very well. It was the first stenographic position in the office and carried the best salary, so there was a good deal of human jealousy about it--much the same sort as freshmen feel who are out for the class eleven. Georgia had tried her hardest for five days. She had stayed overtime to rewrite whole pages for the sake of a single omitted letter; she had bought half a dozen severely plain shirt waists, and yielded up her puffs. Everyone knew how the old man hated the first sign of nonsense. But in spite of all that the day before he had called in Miss Gerson to take his dictation. Well--it was pretty hard, but she had done her best. And she was a better workman than Miss Gerson, she would stick to that. Only yesterday she had seen Miss G. twice hunting in a pocket dictionary hidden in her lap--and she never had to do that, practically. Life was just one damn thing after another, as Jim was always complaining--only he could never possibly have apprehended the full truth and implication of that saying--in spite of its rather common way of putting it. She knew that he never saw deeply, really fundamentally into the dreadful mystery of being here; he couldn't for he was coarse and masculine and he drank. Her fingers were working rapidly casting up purple letter after purple letter before her eyes, but the physiologists tell us that she was using only the front part of her brain for it. The rest of it was free to contemplate the Ultimate Purpose, or gross favoritism in the office especially in relation to Miss Gerson, or whether an ice cream soda was a silly thing to have before lunch, as she knew it was, but then one had to have some pleasure. Rat-tat-tat-tat went the keys; ding, there was her bell. Ten letters more on this line said the front part of her brain. One thing she was sure of, said the back, she devoutly hoped her young brother Al wouldn't develop into a mere white-collared clerk--though of course she certainly wanted him to be always a gentleman. She slid her carriage for the new line. Rat-tat-tat-tat--and again, ding. There, the end of the page. Single space and not an error. She would like to see Miss Gerson do that at her speed. The shuffle of the old man's office boy sounded behind her. Now, wait--what would to-day's verdict be? Would he pass or stop? "Miss Connor," a-a-ah--"the old man wants you to take some letters." (Georgia had let them suppose she was unmarried.) The benison of perfect peace now enfolded her. Poor little Miss Gerson--well, after all, life is a game, the loser pays, and the winner can be perfectly philosophical about it. Georgia went to the old man's private office and closed the door behind her. "Yes, sir." She stood at attention, pad and pencil ready. "Will you take these please, Miss Connor? Mr. James Serviss--here's his address," the old man tossed the letter he was answering over to her. "Dear Sir: Replying to yours of the 16th inst, we regret that----. Well, tell him it's impossible. Write the letter yourself. You understand!" He was observing her as if to probe her resourcefulness. "Perfectly, sir." "Miss Belmont saved me a great deal of trouble in that way. She could tell what I would want to say." Miss Belmont was the blonde girl who had married and left a vacancy. "I can do the same, sir." "Well, here are some more," continued the old man. "This--No." He tossed another letter to her. She made a shorthand notation in the corner of it. "This--By all means,--and be polite about it. This--An appointment to-morrow afternoon." "Yes, sir." "This--Routine. And these--Send them to the proper departments." More notations. "Yes, sir." "You can start on those. Bring them in when they're ready." "Yes, sir." Exit Georgia. She summoned the deeper layers of her vitality, settled to her work and her fingers flew. She knew the joy--if joy it be--of creation. Quietly she slipped back into the old man's office, without knocking. His secretary had entrance except at such times as he shut his telephone off. She seemed very slim and neat, and calm and steady--almost prim, perhaps, as she stood with pen and blotter in her hand to take the old man's signatures. But her being surged within her like that of a mother who waits to hear if her boy is to be expelled from school or forgiven. The old man had been going over a campaign plan for business with one of his quickest witted solicitors, and after Georgia had waited standing for a few moments, dismissed him with, "Yes, that's the right line, Stevens. Just keep plugging along it." As Stevens passed her on his way out he bowed slightly. He had been doing that for some time now, though he had not yet spoken to her. Stevens was still under thirty, she concluded, though she had heard he had been with the company for ten years. A silent, sharp-featured, tall young fellow with chilly blue eyes, who had the name in the office of keeping himself to himself and being all business. The old man, having glanced over and signed the letters, passed his verdict on her work--"Hmm, hmm, Miss Connor, you may move your things to Miss Belmont's desk. And here's a note----" When an author conquers a stage manager; or Atchison rises 4% the very next day; or the Cubs bat it out in the tenth on a darkening September afternoon; when on the third and last trial, it's a boy; or when Handsome Harry Matinee returns you his curled likeness _signed_; or you first sip Mai Wein, you know what it is to move your things to Miss Belmont's desk. "And here's a note," continued the old man, without the gap which we have made to put in analogues, "to Mr. Edward Miles--I'd better dictate this one myself--'Dear Mr. Miles: I should be happy to have you call--' No, strike that out. 'In response to your letter of even date, I should be glad to see you at any time that suits you, here in my office--' no, make it three o'clock to-morrow afternoon--'to confer over the subject of the Senatorial campaign in your district.' Read what you've got." Georgia did so. The old man changed his eyeglasses. "Maybe you'd better telephone him instead," he said. "It's Ed Miles, the politician. You can probably locate him at----" "Yes, sir, I know," suggested Georgia. "And get Mr. Somers on the phone--Mr. Somers does some of our legal work----" "Yes, sir." "And ask him to be here at the same time. Make a note of it on my list of appointments." "Yes, sir." "Tell him Miles is coming, and to get up a little résumé for me of the situation in those districts over there, and ah--perhaps an estimate in a general way of what we ought to do for, ah--Mr. Miles. You will indicate that to him." "Yes, sir." "Well, telephone him that." Georgia rose and went to the door. "Ah--Miss Connor----" She turned and looked at her employer, her head tilted forward, with a peculiar open-eyed, steady little stare, which was a trick of hers when wholly interested. "Did I indicate to you," said he, "that you are my _private_ secretary now?" "I understand, sir. Thank you." IV THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE Each morning as Georgia entered the elevated train and spread open her paper, she cast off the centuries, being transformed from a housewife to a "modern economic unit." She smiled at the morning cartoon or perhaps, in the celebrated phrase of Dr. Hackett, she sighed softly for the sake of its meticulous futility. Her penny to the news stand gave her full and free franchise upon the ever anxious question of the popularity of popular art. Other Georgias of Chicago were simultaneously passing like judgments in like elevated cars and the sum of their verdicts would ultimately readjust social distinctions in Cook and Lake counties, Illinois. She always turned to the Insurance Notes next. It was her Duty to be Well-informed and Interested in the Success of Her Employer, for His Success was Hers. She hadn't been to business college for eight weeks not to know that. Next a peek at Marion Jean Delorme's column of heart throbs, which she frankly regarded as dissipation, because she enjoyed it, and everybody who read it called it common. By this time, home and its squabbling; its everlasting question of how far a pay envelope can stretch; her sullen contemplation of Jim's alcoholism; and irritability at her mother's pottering way had vanished into the background of her mind, where they slept through her working day. She engaged herself with more appealing problems and a larger world. She deplored the litter of torn-up streets and the thunder of the loop, instead of the litter of the breakfast dishes and the squeak of the hinge. Not that clean dishes are less meritorious than clean streets, but, to such minds as hers had grown to be, less captivating. To change desks downtown was more fun than to change chairs at home. She felt her solidarity with the other people who streamed into the business district at eight forty-five, to get money by writing or talking. It was the master's end of the game and she belonged to it. Outside-the-loop worked with its arms and hands--she worked merely with her fingers. The time might come when she would need to work only with her tongue--and triple her income. She was in line for that. She was no mean citizen of no mean city throughout the day: at the lunch club where she coöperated; in the big white-tiled vestibule of her building where she exchanged ten words of weather prophecy with the elevator starter between clicks; in the rest room where they talked office politics, and shows, and woman suffrage, as well as beaux and hats; behind her machine which rattled "twenty dollars a week by your own ten fingers and no man's gratuity." There were no oaths, no bonds unbreakable, no church to tell her she couldn't change her job, as it tells the housed and covered women who get their bread by wifehood. If she didn't like the temperature of the room, or the size of her employer's ears, she could walk across the street and do as well--perhaps better. If he had sworn at her, or come ugly drunk into her presence--but that was inconceivable. Employers didn't do that, only husbands, because they knew they had you. It was the full life and the free life which she lived, she and her sisters of the skyscrapers. It was the emancipation of woman, and the curse of Eve was lifted from them. But the tide of her being which flowed regularly each work-morning, ebbed regularly each night. Her horizon became smaller and less bold after she had slid her nickel over the glass to the spectacled cashier in the L cage and was herded for home on the jammed platform. Her boldness continuously diminished as station after station was called and she stood to her strap, glancing from the direct imperatives, "Uneeda Union Suit and We Can Prove It," "Hasten to the House of Hoopelheimer," "Smart Set Collars for Swell Spenders," "Blemishes Blasted by Blackfeeto," to the limp, sallow people who, like herself, had left their vitality downtown. When she pushed away from the light of her home station into the gloom and up the ineffectually lighted street between rows upon rows of three and four story flats, her head slightly bent, scurrying along with the working woman's nightfall pace, like Lucifer, she felt the mighty distance. She had shrunk into a middle-class wife who had been a poor picker. So it usually happened. But the day of her triumph over Miss Gerson was an exception, and the corona of the office extended and enveloped her through the rows of flat buildings and up two flights of stairs to the door of her own apartment. She entered happily, gaily. And there was Jim sprawled in one chair, his dusty boots in another, without a coat to hide his soiled shirt sleeves, without a collar to apologize for his unshaven chin, a frazzled cigar between his fingers and a heap of ashes beside him where he had let them fall upon the carpet--her carpet that she had earned and paid for. Ashes had fallen, too, upon his protruding abdomen. He breathed very heavily, almost wheezed. He looked up to speak. His eyes were rather swinish in recovery from debauch. His teeth were bad and the gap which had come under the cut lip was not a scar of honor. She hoped he wouldn't speak--but of course he did. "Hello, Georgia." "Hello," she answered mechanically. "What you been doing?" What a stupid question. What did he suppose she had been doing? For when a husband doesn't suit, he doesn't suit at all--his very attempts at peacemaking become an offense in him. "Working," she said curtly and passed on to their bedroom. "Oh, hell! cut out the everlasting grouch," he called after her, and went to the window and looked out, kneeling moodily on the window seat. He was Henpecko the Monk, all right. What she needed was a firm hand. Women took all the rope you gave them--they took advantage of you. He ought to have begun long ago to shut down on her nonsense. Other husbands did, and by God, he would begin. Then he rubbed his prickly chin and smiled ruefully. For hadn't he begun a great many times and had he ever been able to finish? Besides, he was broke, and it was strictly necessary, most unfortunately in view of his present disfavor, for him to obtain a loan. Maybe Al would help him out and he wouldn't have to ask Georgia. There was an idea. It was more dignified, too. He didn't know whether Al had come in yet. He himself had occupied a twenty-five cent seat that afternoon near Mr. Frank Schulte, most graceful of Cubs, to get a little fresh air. It did a fellow good and took his mind off home, which a fellow had to do now and then if he was going to stand it at all. On the return trip, to be sure, he had suffered from a twinge of fans' conscience as he realized that his activities of the day had taken about fifty cents out instead of putting any cents in. A rather keen twinge, too, inasmuch as Matty had been strictly "right." There is no fun in giving up half a dollar to see the Cubs vivisected. "Oh, Al," he called to the back of the flat. "What?" came the call back. "Hear about the game?" "Nope." "I was out," said Jim. That ought to fetch him--and it did. Al entered expectant. He was an extremely good-looking boy of sixteen, with pink cheeks, clear blue eyes, and a kink to his hair. He might have been called pretty if his shoulders were not quite so broad. "Who win? I was north on an errand late and couldn't get a peek at an extra after the fifth." So Al apologized to his brother-in-law for his ignorance. "It was one and one then." "The Giants win, three to two, and believe me there was a rank decision at the plate against Johnny Evers. He beefed on it proper and got chased. That's what smeared us." "Johnny ought to learn to control himself," said Al pathetically. "Yep. He's got too much pep--that's what's the matter with that lad." "And all the umpires in the league have banded together against him. I heard it straight to-day. And believe me"--there was an element of mystery in the boy's voice, "there's something in it." Jim clenched his fist and brought it down hard. "If the Cubs win out against the empires this year," he stated his proposition with a vehement brandish of his fist, "they'll be going some," but his peroration rather flattened out--"believe me." "Yes, sir, Jim. That's no damn lie." "Say, Al, loan me a quarter?" Unhappy pause. All sportsmen, from polo players and tarpon fishers to Kaffirs in their kraals, like to talk it over afterwards. Al didn't want to interrupt his baseball palaver with Jim. It might last right through supper and until bedtime, as it often did when Jim stayed home. He had a vast fund of hypotheses to tell Jim again, and some new ones. If he refused Jim the loan their interesting talk would stop. But if he granted it he would be a boob. It was certainly one dilemma. Jim smiled and repeated his thought. "I'll do as much for you some time. Go on now." Georgia came in quickly and angrily. "I should think you'd be ashamed, Jim Connor, trying to do a boy." "Oh, so you've been rubbering, eh?" Jim sneered. She had; but this, her weakness, was one she shared with many other women--likewise men. In petty lives are petty deeds. Downtown she did not listen, or tattle, or read other people's letters. There were more important matters to attend to. "I got to have a little loan," said Jim--now was his time for boldness--"to tide me over till Monday." She was obstinately mute. "Let me have a two-dollar bill till then?" "No." "One?" "No." "What then?" "Nothing." "You didn't use to be such a tightwad." "You taught me that, too, Jim. I'll never give you another cent to drink. It isn't fair to the rest of us." Mrs. Talbot, Georgia's mother, the homebody of the household, came in from the kitchen to say that supper was now ready and she was sick and tired of the irregularity of the family meals, which she had never been accustomed to as a girl. "Oh, cheer up, mother. I've good news to-day--a raise." Georgia took her pay envelope from her handbag. "See!" Mrs. Talbot flattened out the creases in it and read it aloud. "Georgia Connor--weekly--twenty dollars." And drew forth a wonderful, round, golden double eagle. Whereupon Jim let his angry passions rise. His wife--this cold-blooded, high-and-mighty creature, with her chin in the air, refused him a loan on the very same day she was raised. It was plain viciousness. It was almost a form of perversion. Forbearance, even his, had its limits. "Why, Georgia," continued the mother, reading the inscription from the envelope in her hand, "how's this, they call you 'Miss,' Miss Georgia Connor--weekly--twenty dollars." "Oh--ho," exclaimed Jim roughly, for now he felt that it was his turn. "Passing yourself off as unmarried, eh? A little fly work--hey? If I am easy, I draw the line somewhere." "I was ashamed to let them know I was married and still had to work out," she responded evenly. That was just the way it always happened. Georgia invariably ended up with the best of it. "Well, well, let it pass, though it's not right. But you ought to let me have a dollar or two, considering. Why, I've got a right to some of your money. You've had plenty of mine in your time." "For value received." "You talk of marriage as if it was bargain and sale." Georgia's voice, which had been thin and colorless, grew suddenly thick with the bitter memories of seven years. "It is oftentimes," she said. "Bad bargain and cheap sale." "And now and then it's a damned high buy, too, when a man gives up his liberty for a daily panning from his wife, and his mother-in-law, and kid brother." "If I am a kid," the boy interrupted passionately, "I've brought in more and taken out less than you the last year." Blood called to blood, and the clan of Talbot closed around the lone Connor. "When he had to come out of school and go to work because you couldn't keep a job!" screamed the elder lady. "You big stiff," Al brought up the reënforcement half-crying with rage. "You shut up or I'll--" Jim answered hoarsely, drawing back his fist in menace. Al jumped for a light chair and swung it just off the ground, meeting the challenge. So standing, the two glowered at each other--Jim wishing that he was twenty years younger, Al that he was three years older. As Georgia stood back from them hoping that she would not have to interpose physically between the two, as had happened once or twice in the past year, she felt more intensely than she ever had before that her home life was very sordid and degrading to her. This eternal jangling which seemed to run on just the same whether she took part in it or not, was the life for snarling hyenas, not for a young woman with an ambition for "getting on," for rising in the social scale. The two males, finally impelled by a common doubt of the outcome, tacitly agreed upon verbal rather than physical violence. The raucous quarrel broke out anew. Mrs. Talbot--but you, gentle reader, undoubtedly can surmise substantially what followed. You must have friends who have family quarrels. Finally there was a lull, after all three had had their says several times over, and were trying to think up new ones. "Jim," said Georgia slowly and deliberately, for she felt that the hour had come, "why not make this our last quarrel?" "That's up to you," he returned belligerently. "By making it permanent." "What do you mean!" answered Jim, now a trifle alarmed. "I mean that the time has come for us to separate, for the good of all of us." She looked straight at him, until he dropped his red and watery eyes before her strong gray ones. There was a pause, a solemn pause in that poor family. "Children," said the older woman softly and timidly, "there is such a thing as carrying bitter words too far." "Mother, when two people come to the situation we're in, Jim and I," for the first time there was a semblance of sympathy for the man in her voice, "then I believe the only thing they can do, and stay decent, is to separate. To go on living together when they neither like nor love each other----" "How do you know? I never said that," Jim said humbly. "It is not what you say that counts. We don't love each other any more; that was over long ago; that's the whole trouble; that's why we quarrel; that's why you drink and I'm hateful to you--and it'll get worse and worse and more degrading if we keep on. Oh, I feel no better than a woman of the streets when I----" "Georgia," Mrs. Talbot raised her eyes significantly, glancing at Al, to warn her daughter against letting her son know a truth. "Oh, I have been thinking this over and over--for months," continued the wife, "and I kept putting it off. But now I'm glad I said it and it's done." "The church admits of only one ground for this," said Mrs. Talbot desperately, fighting for respectability; "do you mean that Jim has----" "I don't know----" "No," Jim denied indignantly, "you can't accuse me of that anyway." "And I don't care." "You don't care?" That was a most astounding remark, clear outside his calculations. Why--wives always cared tremendously. Every man knew that. "No, if need be I could forgive an act, but not a state of mind." Mrs. Talbot found herself literally forced to take sides with Jim. This was an attack on all tradition, on everything that she had been taught. "Why, I never heard of such talk in my life." But Georgia would not qualify. "Well, I think that's all." She walked to the door. "I suppose I have seemed very hard, but it was best to make the cut sharp and clean." There was no sign of relenting in the set of her mouth or in her narrowed eyes; and Jim knew it was nearly impossible to do anything with her when her nostrils grew wide like that. "All right," he mumbled, "have it your own way." "Try to brace up for your own sake, if you wouldn't for mine." That was her good-bye. She went from the room with Al. The mother waited behind. "She'll think better of this by and by, Jim. I'll speak to her about it now and then," she said, "and keep you in her mind. And I'm going to the priest about it, too. It's sin she's doing. And Jim----" "Yes?" he grieved humbly, almost crying. "You better go over to Father Hervey and tell him all about it." "Yes, I'll do that same." "Well, good-bye for now--you better go to some hotel to-night," she gave him a dollar from the purse in her bosom, "and try and get work. It'll make your coming back easier." "Thanks, mother, I'll do that same. Er--I guess I'll go in and change my collar. That'll be all right, won't it?" "Yes, Georgia's in the dining room." Mrs. Talbot left him. He rubbed his knuckles slowly across his eye, his breath catching quickly. Then he spied Georgia's hand bag. There was the trouble-money--twenty dollars, a round, golden double eagle. He opened the handbag to--well, to look at it. He spun it; he palmed it; he tossed it in the air, calling heads. It came tails. He tried it again and it came heads. That settled it. He slipped the coin into his pocket, and went out of the room. At least there was salvage in leaving one's wife. After supper Georgia packed up his things, every stick and stitch of them, and with the aid of Al drew them out into the hallway. Later in the evening a politician, one of Ed Miles', knocked at the door. "Good evening, ma'am, I'm from the Fortieth Ward Club. I have a message for Mr. Connor. He's wanted at headquarters right away." "He doesn't live here any more." [Illustration: "He doesn't live here any more."] The politician was perplexed. "Where does he live?" "I don't know," answered Georgia, shutting the door. It was not until the next morning that she discovered the loss of her money. V FOR IDLE HANDS TO DO The old man had gone to Europe for his summer vacation, leaving Georgia secure in her place with nothing to worry about. She had no more than half work to do. Business had slackened and the whole office was in the doldrums. Life's fitful fever had abated to subnormal placidity. Even her mother's chronic indignation over trifles had been quieted by the summer's drowse. The only interesting moments in Georgia's day were nine o'clock when she came and five o'clock when she left--noon on Saturdays. The Sundays were amazingly dull. So was her home. Al stayed away from it from breakfast unto bedtime, with a brief interval for supper. He was engrossed in prairie league baseball for one thing. That occupied him all day Sunday and half of Saturday. Of course he couldn't play after dark, but whenever Georgia asked him where he was going as he bolted from the table with his cap, he answered, "Out to see some fellahs." If she hoped that he would stay at home to-night, for he was out last night and the one before, he would explain, with as much conviction as if he offered a clinching argument, that "the fellahs" were a-calling and he must go. She was rather put out to find herself unable to speak with the same vehemence and authority to him as she had been able to use with Jim concerning the folly and wickedness of going out after supper. For when it comes to putting fingers on a man's destiny, a wife is a more effective agency than a sister. Even in unhappy marriages husband and wife are as two circles which intersect. They have common, identical ground between them. It may not be large, but such as it is it inevitably gives them moments of oneness. Brother and sister are as two circles, whose rims just touch. They may be very near each other, but at no time are they each other. Georgia's restlessness and discontent increased as the summer went on, probably because she was affecting nobody else's destiny to any calculable extent. Her young brother Al kept away, perhaps warned by a deep race instinct that sisters are not meant to affect destinies. Her old mother was a settled case already. She wouldn't change; she couldn't change; she could hardly be modified, except by the weather or the rheumatism; she would merely grow old and die. No satisfaction for a young adventurous woman in experimenting on such a soul. It has been said that neither the woman nor the man alone is the complete human being, but the man and the woman together. This woman, Georgia, who for seven years had been completed by the addition of the masculine element, was now made incomplete. She struggled in vain to find contentment in regular hours, regular sleep, regular work and regular pay. She had supposed for years that peace and quiet, and enough money, and never the smell of whiskey were all she wanted. And here was her subconsciousness, which she couldn't understand, making her perfectly wretched, though she couldn't tell why; calling insistently for another man, though she didn't in the least realize it. She only knew she was tired of being cooped up in the house evenings; she wanted to get out now and then for a change and to see people who had some ideas. She went for a Saturday evening supper to the Kaiser Wilhelm Zweite Beer and Music Garden with a school-girl friend and her husband. This pleasure-ground was well north, out of the smoke. The night was soft and the music lovely. She was much entertained by the husband's talk, and considered that she held up her end with him very well. The next time they invited her she spent some little time before hand, "fixing-up" for the occasion. Ribbons were put back where they used to be long ago when she first met Jim. Her hat underwent revolutionary readjustment, as the school friend made plain by heated compliments on Georgia's millinery skill. However, the husband seemed absolutely content with its effect and Georgia's animation increased throughout the evening, calling back a long neglected flush to her cheeks and a gay pace to her bearing. She was not asked a third time, however, which did not unflatter her. It was evidence that she had not slowed down completely--that she was not finished. Meanwhile Jim, after spreeing away his twenty dollars, had gone West. VI TRIANGULATION Mason Stevens, Sr., was a horse doctor in Rogersville, Peoria County, Illinois. He wore a gray mustache and imperial beard in tribute to that famous Chicago veterinarian who has made more race horses stand on four legs than any other man in the Mississippi Valley. Besides horses, Mr. Stevens knew cattle, hogs, sheep, tumbler and carrier pigeons, bred-to-type poultry, and whiskey. If he hadn't carried a bottle about with him in his buggy he might be alive now. Mason Stevens, Jr., wanted to be a real doctor, so he came up to Chicago to the Rush Medical College. After his first year, whiskey took his father, the funeral took the rest, and the young man after a brief fight gave up the vision of some day substituting "M.D." in place of "Jr." after his name. He had been a respected boy at school, green but positive. To help him out, some of his friends persuaded their fathers, uncles or other sources of supply to give "Old Mase" a chance to write their fire insurance. He took the opening. Presently his acquaintance was wide enough for him to branch out into life as well as fire. After ten years in the city he was able to go to the general agent of his company and ask for a regular salary, in addition to his commissions, on the ground that there wasn't another solicitor in the state he had to take his hat off to. He was a highly concentrated product, like most successful countrymen in the city. He hadn't been scattered in culture. He knew no foreign languages, no art save that on calendars, no music he could not hum, no drama save very occasionally a burlesque show when he felt that he needs must see women. He knew, if he hadn't forgotten, how to find a kingfisher's nest up a small tunnel in the river bank, or a red-winged blackbird's pendant above the swamp waters, or a butcher-bird's in a thornbush with beheaded field mice hanging from its spears. Even now, with farmer's instinct, he looked up quickly through the skyscrapers at a sudden shift in wind. He lived in a rooming house and ate where he happened to be. His bureau was bare of everything save the towel across the top, his derby hat, when he was in bed, and a handful of matches. His upper drawer, usually half-pulled out, was filled not with collars and ties, but with papers relating to his business; actuaries' figures; reports from all companies, his own and his rivals'; records of "prospects" that he had brought home for evening study; rough drafts of solicitation "literature" he was getting up for the company. He usually worked at night in his shirt sleeves, his hat cocked on the back of his head, his chair tilted back against the wall under a single gas jet with a ground glass globe that diverted most of the light upward toward the ceiling. Even after he reached the point where he could afford more expensive living, he did not change. He wore better clothes because a "front" was mere business intelligence, but otherwise his habits were within a hundred and fifty dollars of his first year. Pleasure he regarded as the enemy, not so much because of its money-cost, as because it was diverting. He didn't wish to be diverted; he wished to sell life insurance and more and more. That was as far as he went with his plans. He didn't want to get rich so as to gratify dreams, to have a beautiful wife and buy her a big house and motors. He simply wanted to get rich. He had had no romance since he left the Rogersville High School. That one had been sweet enough for awhile, but nothing came of it. And he remembered that on account of it he had neglected his studies senior year and not graduated at the top of the class. Indeed, the object of his affection, with fitting irony, had herself achieved that distinction, which cooled his fever for her. Mason was a great believer in the value of "bumps." When he made a failure in any enterprise, he was wont to analyze why, in order to double-guard himself against a repetition of it. None but a fool repeats a mistake. He drummed that into himself. Thus in the long run he was ready to turn every "bump" into an asset instead of a liability. It is a system of philosophy widespread in this nation, especially among country-bred people of Puritan tradition, strong, rugged people who believe in the supreme power of the individual will, who minimize luck and take no stock in fatalism. These are usually termed "the backbone of the American people," and though of course they know that God is everywhere and omnipotent, they likewise believe that He has appointed them His deputies, with a pretty free hand to act, in the conduct of the earth. Mason Stevens came of this stock. And though his father was a backslider, his mother was not, and she brought him up on the saying, "Maybe this will teach you a lesson, my son, next time you think of doing so-and-so." This shows why Mason Stevens did not fall in love with any woman, after the high school girl, until he fell most desperately in love with Georgia Connor. He resisted love from conviction. One female ten years before had defeated his brains and his purpose by her charm. He wanted no more of that. But he had to fight. Often enough as he walked through the long office through the double row of shirt-waisted figures bending over typewriters and desks, it seemed imperative for him to know them better, to wait for one of them after office hours and ride home with her on the car. Everything else was wiped out of him for the moment but just the question of riding home with a twelve-dollar-a-week girl. Then he would walk quickly on past the girl who absorbed his imagination, his mouth set and his brows scowling. And she would confide in her neighbor that he was crazy about himself. Sometimes when he was at home under the gas jet with his business papers on his knee, the vision of fair women would float before him, all the most beautiful in his imaginings as he had seen them in pictures or on the stage. He might dream for an hour before remembering that he was in the world to sell life insurance and that women would hamper his single-mindedness as surely as whiskey. Who was the man he was surest of making sign an application blank when he set out after him? The man who had a woman in his head, every time; the man with the wife, and children, which are the consequences of a wife; or one who was gibbering in a fool's heaven because a young girl had graciously promised to allow him to support her for the rest of her days. So he kept away from bad women as much as he could, and from good women always. Especially from those in the office. Their constant propinquity was a constant menace and he had known a lot of fellows to get tangled up that way, and he wouldn't--if he could help it. But he couldn't help it after he knew Georgia. She was so useful mentally and physically, and that was what he first noticed about her. He hated slackness of any sort, especially in women, because he had trained himself to dwell on women's faults rather than on men's. Her manners, he thought, were precisely perfect. She seemed to hit a happy medium between gushing and shyness, and to hit it in the dead center. Her teeth were white and good, and she smiled often, but not too often. She never overdid anything, and her voice was low and full. She knew what you were driving at before you half started telling her; also she could make a fresh clerk feel foolish in one minute by the clock. She had the charm of perfect health. About her dark irises the whites of her eyes were very white, touched with the faintest bluish tinge from the arterial blood beneath. There was a natural lustre in her hair, uncommon among indoor people. Her steps took her straight to where she wanted to go. She made no false motions. When she looked for something in her desk, she opened the drawer where it was, not the one above or below. Her muscles, nerves and proportions were so balanced that it was difficult for her to fall into an ungraceful posture. Considering these manifold excellent qualities, the most remarkable thing about her, he thought, was that she had not long before been invited to embellish the mansion and the motors of a millionaire. He wrote enthusiastically to his mother suggesting that it would be nice to invite her to Rogersville for a portion at least of her coming summer vacation, which brought a most unhappy smile to his mother's lips. But since he did not repeat his request, the invitation was not extended. The first time that he knew he regarded her as a woman rather than as a workwoman was one afternoon when the declining sun threw its light higher and higher into the big office. A ray shone on and from her patent leather belt and into his eyes. He looked up annoyed from his work. She was sitting a few desks ahead by the window, her back toward him. Before very long the thing had fascinated him and he found himself immensely concerned with the climb of the sun up her shirt waist. It reached her collar in a manner entirely marvelous and then precisely at the moment when he was finally to know its effect upon her hair, she lowered the shade. What luck! The next day was cloudy. The next was Saturday and she quit at twelve, before the sun got around to her window. Monday she lowered the shade before the light got even to her shoulder. Little did she know of the repressed anguish she was so bringing to the gloomy young hustler behind her. But on Tuesday the sunlight reached her hair momentarily as she leaned back in her chair and gleamed and glittered there, a coruscation of glory for fully thirty seconds--long enough to overturn in catastrophe his thirty years and their slowly built purposes. He resolved hereafter to deal primarily not in life insurance, but in life, which meant Georgia. VII A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY During the ensuing days Mason was hopeless for work. From the office books he found out where she lived, slyly as he supposed, but not so slyly that the information clerk didn't tell someone, who told someone who teased Georgia at the luncheon club, not thereby displeasing her. For he was a good-looking fellow and capable; furthermore, he had always kept himself to himself, so putting several noses out of joint, it was said. He had moments of anguished self-reproach as he sat in his room in his boarding house, his chair tilted against the wall under the gas jet, his coat on his bed, his derby hat tilted back on his head. He knew that his life had been utterly unworthy. He had drunk it to the lees, pretty near. But now he was through with all that. Hereafter, for her sake, he would conquer himself and others. His sense of beauty was limited by inheritance and by disuse, but now he began to draw upon all the poetry in his soul--not to write to her, but to think of her. His imagination, naturally fertile and strengthened by the practice of his profession, centered itself on the question of his first kiss from her--where, when and how should it happen? He called all great lovers from Romeo to Robert W. Chambers to his aid--it must be under the moon, the fragrance about them. And a lake, a little lake, for the moon to shine upon and magically increase its magic. He remembered the moon on the river back in Rogersville, with the other girl--the first one. What mere children they were. That was puppy love, but this was love; love such as no man ever felt before for a woman. He was hard hit. The lake suggested a train of thought, so he packed his bag on Saturday and went to southern Wisconsin. The resort dining room was full of noisy youths and maidens who, in his decided opinion had no proper reverence for love, though they seemed perfectly amorous whenever he suddenly came upon a pair of them as much as one hundred yards from the hotel. He chartered a flatbottom after supper to row out alone and contemplate the moon and her, but the voices of the night and the frogs were overwhelmed by the detestable mandolins tinkling "My Wife's Gone to the Country, Hurray." When finally he turned in he discovered there was a drummers' poker party on the other side of the pine partition, so it wasn't until nearly daylight he dozed off, to wake a couple of hours later when the dishes began to rattle. The boat concessionaire reported pickerel in the lake and he joined the Sunday piscatorial posse. He returned with two croppies and the record of many bites, mostly on himself. He concluded he wasn't interested in fishing anyway. It was just a device to cheat himself and make himself suppose he was having a good time. He couldn't have a good time and wouldn't if he could, until he knew her, until at least he knew her. Why he had never said ten words to her more than "Good morning" and "Good evening." He would call on her; he had her address. He would go to her apartment and ring the bell and say, "Miss Connor, I have come to call on you. Do you mind?" No, that would hardly do. It was too bold. He mustn't seem at all crude to her, but mannerly and suave and self-possessed. A girl, and especially one of her sort, would object to crudeness. He must be very courtly, knightly. Flowers on her desk every morning, perhaps, not a card, not a word. A handful of sweet blossoms each day to greet her and bear her silent testimony that there was one who---- She would know, of course, in due time whence they came. Not that he would ever so much as hint at his gifts, but her woman's intuition would tell her. And when she did realize in this way his silent though passionate devotion, she would thank him, gently and sadly, and a bond would be made between them. But then, what if the other people in the office had intuition, too, or saw him bringing in flowers! No, decidedly that wouldn't do. And then--just in time for him to catch the 3:40--a blinding flash of warning illumined his whole being. What if, while he was there shilly-shallying at a summer resort, some other fellow was with her in Chicago at that very moment! "What if"--a ridiculous way to put it. Wasn't it sure in the nature of things, that at that very moment some other man was with her? He caught the 3:40. He would call on her that very evening and if indeed he didn't declare himself bluntly in so many words--hadn't he heard of numberless women who had been won at first sight!--he would at least intimate to her strongly, unmistakably, that she was the object of his respectful consideration and attention. There were others in the field. It was time he declared himself in, too. It wasn't until 5:37, when the train reached Clybourn Junction, that he began to repent his precipitancy. He was going to see her again in the office to-morrow, wasn't he? Wouldn't it look queer if he went out to call on her to-night without warning? She might be wholly unprepared for callers and annoyed. But his presumable rival bobbed up again and spoiled his supper, so after dropping his bag at home, he walked presently into the entry way of 2667 Pearl Avenue. Her name was not on the left side; perhaps she had moved. No, here on the right, floor 3, in letters of glory--"Connor." Above it, "Talbot." Who was Talbot? Married sister, roommate or landlady from whom she sublet? He raised his thumb to the bell. He had never before experienced a moment of such acute consciousness. Wait a second--she might not be in. He walked out and looked up at the third floor right. There was certainly a light, a bright one, and the window was open and the curtain fluttering out. Somebody was in. It might be Talbot. In that case he wouldn't go up or leave his name either. It certainly was none of Talbot's business, whoever Talbot was. He pressed the button under her name. "Yes?" Heavens above, it was she, Georgia, the woman herself. "Yes, who is it!" came the voice once more. "Stevens." "Mr. Stevens?" with a decided tone of interrogation. Evidently she did not place him at all. Probably not, with so many other men about her. It would be absurd to suppose anything else. She didn't place him--might not even recognize him out of the office. "Mason Stevens of the office." "Oh, Mr. Stevens of the office. How do you do?" and she spoke with a delightful access of cordiality. "Will you come up?" "Just for a minute, if I may. I won't keep you long." "Wait, I'll let you in." The click-click-click sounded and he was on his way upstairs. She opened the door for him. A quick glance. There was no other man in the room, anyway. "Good evening," she said. "Won't you come in?" "Why, yes," then very apologetically; "that is, if I'm not putting you out." "No, indeed." He sat and paused. She smiled and did not help him. "You're nicely located here, Miss Connor." "Oh, yes, we like it." "Near the express station?" "Yes. I usually get a seat in the morning, but not coming back, of course." "About three blocks, isn't it?" "Three long ones." "A nice walk." "Yes, this time of year, but not so nice in winter when they don't clean the snow off the sidewalks." He felt that it was a bit jerky. Perhaps he should first have asked her permission to call. What a goat he was not to think of that beforehand instead of now. He paused until the pause grew uncomfortable. She tried to help him out, "We're out of the smoke belt, that's one thing." He was seated in a rocking chair and began to rock violently, then suddenly he stopped and leaned toward her, his elbows on his knees. "I've been slow getting to the point," he remarked abruptly, "but I came here on business." "Oh, I wasn't just sure what." Stevens took half a dozen life insurance advertising folders from his pocket. "You know this literature we're using," he said, running two or three through his fingers and indicating them by their titles, "'Do You Want Your Wife to Want When She's a Widow?' 'Friendship for the Fatherless,' 'Death's Dice Are Loaded.'" "Oh, yes." She took them from him and read aloud. "'Over the Hills to the Poorhouse,' with a photograph of it, 'Will Your Little Girl Have to Scrub?' with thumbnail pictures of scrub ladies. Ugh, what a gloomy trade we're in, aren't we, Mr. Stevens?" "This is the line of talk that gets the business." He spoke earnestly, tapping the folders. "You can't make papa dig up premiums for forty or fifty years unless you first scare him and scare him blue about his family." "Yes, I suppose so." "And what I came for is--well, will you--would you just as soon help me get up some more of these?" "You mean work with you on them?" She was truly surprised. "Exactly." She hesitated and then she said it was impossible, but that she appreciated his kind compliment, was flattered by it and thanked him deeply, deeply. For, of course, she realized that Mr. Stevens was one of the very best men in town at that sort of work and she was afraid she couldn't possibly be of any real use to him. "Not at all, not at all;" he was talking business now and waved aside her objections with his customary confidence. Everybody always objected to his plans for them when he began talking, but in the end he was apt to change their minds. That was why he was considered a premier solicitor. "You've a clear head and a good ear for words, that's what's needed, and----" "But--" she tried to interrupt. "And ideas, that's the point, ideas. You're clever." "What makes you think so?" "I don't think so; I know." "I'm flattered," she said firmly. "But no--really." "Well, I won't take that for a definite answer yet." Of course not. He never did. "I want you to think it over. I have the utmost confidence in the scheme and your ability to carry it out. You can tell me Monday in the office what you decide." "I can tell you now, Mr. Stevens." He rose. "Think it over anyway. You may change your mind." She rose, too, not encouraging him to stay. "Miss Connor," he spoke gravely, "there was something else I came to ask you. I'd like to know you personally as well as in a business way, if you'd just as soon. May I come to see you now and then?" She did not answer. She saw that it counted with him. He seemed really to care. She must not be brusque with him. He must not think her merely light-minded, unappreciative of the compliment of his interest. She must tell him of her marriage. "Of course, if you'd rather not for any reason, why, that settles it," there was a check in his voice, "and we'll say no more about it." Still she did not answer. He held out his hand. "Well, good-bye, then." "Good-bye." He went to the door and opened it. "Mr. Stevens." "Yes, Miss Connor." "I think you ought to know that isn't my name." "What is it, then?" "Mrs. Connor." "Mrs. Connor? Missis Connor?" "Yes." He came down into the room. His glance traveled rapidly to the four corners, like a wild animal dodging men and dogs. He had one question left, one chance of escape. "Are you a widow?" he said. "No, a married woman." Stevens went slowly out of the door without replying. The woman whom he loved belonged to another man. It was like the end of the world. VIII THE LIFE FORCE If Mason had been in the _jeunesse dorée_ he must now have gone to Monte Carlo to buck the tiger or to India to shoot him. As it was, he smoked all night and turned up at the office half an hour ahead of time in a voluble, erratic mood, brought about by suppressing so much excitement within himself. If he had known how to tell his troubles to a friend over a glass of beer he might have had an easier time of it in his life. But he wasn't that sort. He took things hard and kept them in. He decided that the best thing to do with his sentiment for Georgia was to strangle it. Whenever he caught himself thinking of her, which would certainly be often at first, he must turn his mind away. He must avoid seeing her; if they met accidentally he would give no further sign than a curt nod. He remembered the farmers used to say that there was one thing to do with Canada thistles--keep them under, never let the sun shine on them. His love for this other man's wife was like a thistle. He must keep it under, never let the sun shine on it. He did it thoroughly. He nodded to her in the most indifferent way in the world when they happened to meet, but he found no occasion to stop at her desk to chat an instant. Two weeks of his change of manner began to pique her. He was acting in a rather absurd way, she thought. After all they weren't lovers who had quarreled, but simply acquaintances, friends after a fashion, fellow workers. Why shouldn't they continue to be friends? It would be amusing to have some one besides the family and the girls to talk to. She would not let him treat her in this stiff way any longer, just because she had had the bad luck to marry a bad man years before. What rubbish that was. And what self-consciousness on his part. Men had a very guilty way of looking at things. They met quite or almost quite by accident in front of the office building during the noon hour of the following day. He was about to pass without stopping. "How do you do, Mr. Stevens?" Her voice was quite distinct. So he turned and lifted his hat. "How do you do!" She did not precisely move toward him, but she did so contrive the pause that it was up to him, if he weren't to be boorish, to stop for a moment and speak with her. She threw a disarming candor into her first question. "Is there any particular reason," said she, "why we are no longer friends?" "Friends?" "Yes. You've been frowning at me for about three weeks and I haven't the least idea how I've offended you." He did not answer immediately and his expression hardened. "There, you're doing it now," said she with apparent perplexity. "Why?" "You know," he spoke doggedly. "No, I don't." "Yes you do, too," he answered curtly and roughly. "You do." "Just as you please." She turned from him, apparently offended by his tone, slightly nodded and walked slowly away. She was of medium height, no more than that, and slender. A brute of a man bumped her with his shoulder as he passed her. Stevens waited for the brute of a man, dug his elbow into his ribs and overtook her at the Madison Street corner. "Miss--Mrs. Connor, I didn't mean to be rude." "You were a little, you know." "Will you excuse me?" "Why, of course." He didn't quite know what to do next, so he awkwardly extended his hand. She took it with a man-to-man shake of wiping out the score, which completely demolished his cynical attitude in reference to platonic friendship. "Where were you bound for?" he asked. "Nowhere, just strolling. Over to the lake front for a breath of air." "May I walk along?" "Surely." On their way back they reflected that they had been without lunch, so they stopped at a drug store for a malted milk with egg, chocolate flavor, nutmeg on top. They touched their glasses together. "It's very nourishing," said he with wonderment. "Very," she replied, delightedly; "very." They returned to their work in that state of high elation induced by interviews such as theirs, wherein the spoken words mean twenty times what they say--and more. IX THE PRETENDERS Georgia and Mason did not overpass the outward signs and boundaries of platonism, learning to avoid not merely evil, but the appearance of evil. When they met in the hundred-eyed office they were casual. During the autumn they took long walks together every Sunday. There had been a dry spell that year, lasting with hardly a break from the fore part of June, which baked the land and sucked out the wells and put the Northern woods in danger of their lives. The broad corn leaves withered yellow and the husbandmen of the great valley protested that the ears were but "lil' nubbins with three inches of nuthin' at the tips, taperin' down to a point, and where'll we get our seed next spring?" When the huge downpour came at last and by its miracle saved the crop which had been given up for lost a fortnight since, Mason cursed the day, for it fell on the first day of the week and cost him, item, one walk and talk with Georgia Connor. She stood so near his eyes as to hide from his sight a billion bushels parching in the valley--though he was country bred. To her their Sundays together brought not a joy as definite as his, but rather a sense of contentment, of relief from the precision of the other days of her week. It pleased her to wander to the big aviary and look at the condors and cockatoos and wonder about South America where they came from, then to stroll slowly over to the animals and have a vague difference of opinion with him about whether a lion could whip a tiger. She thought so because the lion was the king of beasts, but Mason didn't, because he'd read of a fight where it had been tried. Once he even grew a trifle heated because she wouldn't listen to reason and fact and stuck to the lion because he'd been called the king of beasts, whereas all naturalists knew the elephant and the gorilla and the rhinoc---- There she interrupted him with a laugh and called him a boy and too literal. Every Sunday they had this same dispute until finally they both learned to laugh about it and made it a joke between them, and she told him he was doing much better. They walked by the inside lake and wondered if the wild ducks and geese on the wooded isle liked to have to stay there, and they took lunch when they got good and ready, perhaps not until two or three or even four o'clock in the afternoon. She always went home for supper, but often she came out again afterwards, and took the car down town to a Sunday Evening Ethical Society which foregathered in an old-fashioned theatre building. There was almost always some well-known speaker whose name was often in the papers, perhaps a professor or a radical Ohio Mayor or a labor lawyer, to address them on up-to-date topics like Municipal Ownership in Europe or the Russian Revolution or the Androcentric World, which showed women had as much right to vote as men, or non-resistance, a kind of Christianity that wasn't practical. Stevens didn't like that lecture much. Jane Addams spoke once about the children that lived in her neighborhood. He thought her talk the best of all; so did Georgia. He said to her that Jane Addams was as much of a saint as any of those old-timers that were burnt and pulled to pieces and fed to lions, and a useful kind of a saint as well, because she helped children instead of just believing in something or other. Georgia didn't answer his remark at the time, but nearly half an hour later as she was bidding him good night she had him repeat it to her, and the next day she told him that what he had said about Miss Addams was very interesting. They had organ music at these meetings and a collection, so that he felt it was the next thing to going to church. But Georgia in arguing out the matter with herself concluded that there was so little religion in the services that in attending them she violated the Church's law against worshiping with heretics hardly more than if she went to a political meeting. She would never go to a regular Protestant service with Mason, even if he asked her. She made up her mind firmly on that point. So perhaps it was as well he didn't ask her. Her waking memories of Jim were now much fainter and dimmer. She tried not to think of him at all. She refused to let her mother or Al speak his name or make allusion to him. At the beginning, just after his departure, mama had harped on the subject until she thought it would drive her crazy. Over and over and over again she traversed the same ground--about his being her husband, and Christian charity, and one more trial, and the disgrace of it, and that it was the first time such a thing ever happened in the family. Finally in self-defense and to save herself from being upset every night when she was tired and worn out anyway, she told her mother that the next time she mentioned Jim's name she would leave the room. And she only had actually to do this three times before poor mama succumbed, as she always did when she was met firmly. However, she still managed to say a volume in Jim's favor with her deep sighs and her "Oh, Georgia's," but Georgia always pretended she didn't know the meaning of such signs and manifestations. Of course, especially at the beginning, her husband's face often came unbidden between her and her page, but she gathered up her will each time to banish it again, and it's surprising what a woman can do if she only makes up her mind and _sticks to it_. But her dreams were the trouble. Jim would enter them. She didn't know how to keep him out. And he always came, sometimes two or three nights in succession, to bring her pain. She usually appointed her Sunday rendezvous for an hour before noon at Shakespeare's statue in the Park, and sailed off cheerily in her best bib and tucker to meet Mason, leaving behind her a fine trail of excuses, a complete new set each week, to explain to mama why she couldn't go to mass. On this particular morning she said she had a date with a girl-friend from the office. With the best intention in the world she was never on time and always kept him waiting. She was so unalterably punctual for six days a week that the seventh day it was simply impossible. Stevens usually became slightly irritated during these few minutes--what business man wouldn't?--and referred to his watch at hundred-second intervals, determined to ask her once and for all why she wasted so much time in tardiness. But when finally he distinguished her slim little figure in the Sunday throng that was streaming toward him, his impatience left not a wrack behind. They started gayly northward, bantering each other in urban repartee. As they passed gray Columbus Hospital their mood swerved suddenly and they talked of sickness and death and immortality. Her belief was orthodox, but it did not hold her as vividly as it held the old folk in the old days. Had she lived nearer to the miracles of the sun going down in darkness and coming up in light; or thunderstorms and young oats springing green out of black, with wild mustard interspersed among them like deeds of sin; of the frost coming out of the ground; and the leaves dying and the trees sleeping; she would perhaps have lived nearer to the miracles of bread and wine, of Christ sleeping that the world may wake. But she lived in a place of obvious cause and effect. When the sun went down, the footlights came up for you if you had a ticket, and man's miracle banished God's even though you might be in the flying balcony and the tenor almost a block away. Thunderstorms meant that it was reckless to telephone; oats, wheat and corn, something they controlled on the board of trade; the melting of the snows showed the city hall was weak on the sewer side--what else could you expect of politicians?--the dying leaves presaged the end of the Riverview season and young Al's excitement over the world's series. Living in the country puts a God in one's thoughts, for man did not make the country and its changes, yet they are there. Farmers pray for rain or its cessation according to their needs. To live in the city is to diminish God and the seeming daily want of Him, for man built his own city of steel and steam and stone, unhelped, did he not? God may have made the pansies, but He did not make "the loop." His majesty is hidden from its people by their self-sufficing skill, and they turn their faces from Him. West-siders do not pray for universal transfers. Never had Georgia questioned her faith. Its extent remained as great as ever. She had consciously yielded no part of her creed. But its living quality was infected by the daily realism of her life, as spring ice is honeycombed throughout with tiny fissures before its final sudden disappearance. So she talked to Stevens of her convictions, but in a calm dispassionate way, without emotional fervor. Stevens' great-grandparents whenever they referred to the Romanist Church, which was often, spoke of "the scarlet woman" or "the whore of Babylon." His grandparents, products of a softer, weaker generation, stopped at adjectives, "papist," "Jesuitical," "idolatrous." His parents receded still further from the traditions of the Pilgrims. Indeed his father, being a popular horse doctor, kept his mouth shut altogether on the subject, and his mother seldom went beyond remarking that there was considerable superstition in the Catholic service and too much form to suit her. As for the son himself, he could as soon have quarreled about the rights and wrongs of the Mexican war as he would about religion. He wasn't especially interested in either. He thought there was a lot of flim-flam for women in all religion, especially in Catholicism. But it was an amiable weakness of the sex, like corsets. So he let Georgia run on, explaining her faith, without interruption. Then most wretched luck befell them. Georgia looked up from the tips of her toes, being vaguely engaged, as she talked, in stepping on each large pebble in the gravel path and her eyes rested squarely upon her mother. Mrs. Talbot mottled; Georgia blushed. All progress was temporarily arrested; then the older woman puffed out her chest and waddled away with all the dignity at her summons. But she could not resist the Parthian shot--what Celt can!--and she turned to throw back over her shoulder, "Who's your girl-friend, Georgia?" Her teeth clicked and she continued her departure. Stevens realized that there had been a contretemps of some sort and that it was his place, as a man of the world, to laugh it off. "Who's the old pouter pigeon?" he inquired. "Mama." "Oh!" Feeling that candor was now thrust upon her, Georgia proceeded to explain to Stevens that she had never explained about him to her mother, for mama couldn't possibly understand, being old-fashioned and prejudiced in some regards. "So you've made me fib for you," she finished. "Aren't you ashamed!" "Yes," said he, in truth much gratified by her clandestineness. "But what I don't see is----," he began, then broke off. "Is what?" "Is why you should be so disturbed about your _mother's_ knowing." "I've told you--for the sake of peace and a quiet life." "But what about your husband?" He blurted it out suddenly, the word which had crucified him since his one and only visit to her home; the word which he had kept dumb between them until now. "What about him? Doesn't he mind?" "He left me six months ago. You never supposed I would take a man's bread and--fool him, did you, Mason?" She called him by his name for the first time. "I didn't know," he muttered, "I've been to hell and back thinking of it." "How did you suppose it would come out?" she asked, fascinated objectively by the drama of her life. "I felt we were playing bean-bag with dynamite--and we ought to quit--made up my mind--while I was waiting for you this morning to tell you this must be the last time, because we were drifting straight into----" He paused. "Into what?" There was a touch of gentlest irony in her tone. "Into trouble, lots of it." There was a touch of apology in his. "And you didn't want trouble, lots of it?" Her irony was not less. "At least not on my account?" "I was thinking of what would be best for all of us. I was trying to do the square thing--the greatest happiness for the greatest number." There was a pause, unsympathetic. "Wasn't that right?" he ended with no great confidence. "Why, of course, perfectly right," she assented heartily. "It shows consideration. You considered the case systematically from all sides. Yours, and mine, and my husband's, and the rest of the family's, and the rest of yours, too, I suppose, didn't you?" She looked extremely efficient and spoke in her business voice with a little snap to her words. She was quite unfair in taking this tack with unhappy Stevens, who, however often he thought of his duty in these twisted premises, would surely not have done it if she beckoned him away. For she owned the only two hands in the world which he wanted to hold. A woman, however, prefers to be the custodian of her own morals and it gratifies her at most no more than slightly to find that her lover has been plotting with himself to preserve her virtue. It is for the man to ask and for her to deny, sadly but sweetly--and she doesn't care to be anticipated. Especially when she is self-perceptibly interested. "But since you are already separated from----" "Yes, that makes it pleasanter all around, doesn't it?" she led him on most treacherously. "Why, of course--that's what I was saying," he blundered. "Now I can ask you to----" "Mason, I've a frightful headache, the sun perhaps--and I think I will go home and lie down, if you don't mind." He looked up in some amazement at the lord of day half hidden by the haze in his November station, and it suddenly occurred to him that woman is a various and mutable proposition always. "What's the matter with you, anyway?" "Nothing," she responded with deliberate unconvincingness, "nothing in the world, but a headache." She held out her hand. "Don't bother to come with me. We might be seen. Good-bye." And she was off. It was a winding gravel path and she was lost behind a curving hedge before he started in pursuit. She quickened her pace when she heard his step behind and it was almost a walking race before he overtook her. "Georgia," he exclaimed, somewhat ruffled by her unreasonableness. She neither turned her head nor answered. "Georgia!" he repeated more loudly. Then he took her wrist and forcibly arrested her. "Please let me go," she requested with supreme dignity, "you are hurting me." "Not until you hear what I have to say. Will you marry me?" "Marry you?" She dropped her eyes before his frowning ones. The shoulders which had been thrown so squarely back seemed to yield like her will and drooped forward into softer lines. "Yes," he tightened his hold on her wrist, "will you?" "I am a Catholic." "But isn't there some way around that?" Your man of business believes there is some way around everything. "No. Divorce and remarriage aren't permitted to us." "Don't they ever annul a marriage?" "Not if it has been marriage." A look of misery came over his face. She perceived it and went steadily on. "I had a child once--that died." He dropped her hand, unconsciously to himself, but she felt it as a clear signal between them. "You see how little you have known me," she said softly. "Poor old fellow, I'm sorry. Too bad it had to end like this." Her eyes were now swimming in tears which she did not try to conceal. "Don't you see, dear, that is why I kept putting off telling you things about my affairs, and why I had tried to keep it--friendship, because I knew when we came as far as this we would have to stop." "It will never stop," he said tensely, "never." Response seemed to sweep through her suddenly, bewildering her by its unexpected strength. "Perhaps not," she assented slowly, "if--if we--dare." "Georgia," he pleaded, "you know that I----" "Yes," in a whisper, "I know." "And do you care, too?" She looked up, and her answer was plain for him to read. "More than you will ever know, Mason," she said. "Georgia, are you a devout Catholic? Does it mean all of life to you here and hereafter?" "No, not very devout. Nothing like mother, for instance. I have grown very careless about some things." "Would you always be governed by the teaching of the Church in this matter--always--never decide for yourself?" "When it came to such a big thing," she said slowly, "I don't think I'd dare disobey." "What are you afraid of--future punishment?" "Why, yes, partly that," she smiled; "it isn't a very jolly prospect, you know." He was truly astonished. He supposed that everybody nowadays, even Catholics, had tacitly agreed to give up hell. Hell was too ridiculously unreasonable to be believed in any more. "Georgia," he asked, "have you ever looked much at the stars?" "Why, yes; once in awhile. Last Sunday evening at Bismarck Garden Al and I found the dipper--it was just as plain--is that what you mean? Of course I don't pretend to be much of an astronomer." "Some nights," he said, "when it's clear I go up on the roof and lie on my back, and, well, it's a great course in personal modesty. Some of those stars, those little points of light, are as much bigger than our whole world as an elephant is bigger than a mosquito, and live as much longer." "Of course," she answered, "we know that everything is bigger than people used to think, but still couldn't God have made it all, just the same?" "Do you honestly believe," he rejoined, speaking very earnestly, intent on shaking her faith, if that were possible, "that Whoever or Whatever was big enough to put the stars in the sky is small enough to take revenge forever on a tiny little molecule like you--or me? Do you honestly suppose that after you are dead, perhaps a long time dead, this mighty God will hunt for you through all the heavens, and when he has found you, you poor little atom of a dead dot, that he will torment and pester you forever and ever because you had once for a space no longer than the wink of an eye acted according to the nature he gave you? If that is your God, he has put nothing in his universe as cruel as Himself." She frowned in a puzzled way for a few seconds, looking at him with an odd little wide-eyed stare, then shook her head slowly. "Yes," said he in answer. "Some day you will take your life in your own hands and use it. You're not the stuff they make nuns out of. There's too much vitality in you. "How old are you?" he asked suddenly. "Twenty-six." "Twenty-six and ready to quit? I don't believe it." "You don't understand, Mason," she answered, "you can't. You're not a Catholic. Catholicism is different from all other creeds. It is not just something you think and argue about, but it has you--you belong to it; it is as much a part of you as your blood and bones." There was a finality in her voice, a resignation of self, which bespoke the vast accumulated will of the Church operating upon and through her. Stevens knew suddenly that she was not an individualized woman in the same sense that he was an individualized man, with the private possibility of doing what he pleased so long as he did not interfere with the private possibilities of others; he realized that in certain important intimate matters such as the one which had arisen between them she was without power of decision, the decision having been made for her many centuries ago; and he felt the awe which comes to every man when first he is confronted by the Roman Catholic Church. "You mean there is no way out of it--but death?--your husband's death?" His self-confidence seemed to have departed as if he, too, had met fate in the road. "Yes," she answered gently, "that is the only way." And then she smiled with some little effort, but still she smiled, for she detested gloom on her day off. "Oh, Mason," said she, "why wasn't grandpa a Swede?" He looked at her with amazement and not without a trace of disapprobation, for her eyes were dancing. Was she actually making jokes about his misery--to say nothing of hers--if indeed she felt any? He was learning more about women every minute. Now she was practically giggling. He frowned deeper and sighed. Perhaps, perhaps everything was for the best, after all. He might as well tell her so, too. No reason to make himself wretched for something she seemed to think hilariously humorous. "Well, Georgia, I must say," he began portentously--'twas the voice of the husband--almost. She could hear him complain. Whereat she simply threw back her head and laughed again. He noticed, as he had often noticed, that her strong little teeth were white and regular, that her positive little nose was straight and slender, and the laughter creases about her eyes reminded him of the time she thought it such fun to be caught in Ravinia Park in the rain without an umbrella. So presently he tempered his frown, then put it away altogether, and his eyes twinkled and he turned the corners of his mouth up instead of down. "Oh, dear me," he mocked, half in fun and half not, "as the fellow says, 'we can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em.'" But she, who had been reading him like a book in plain print, asked, "Come, tell aunty your idea of a jolly Sunday in the park with your best girl. To sit her on a bench and make her listen while you mourn for the universe?" "But what are we going to do about it?" he asked solemnly, "that's what I want to know." "Do?" she responded with a certain gay definiteness, "do nothing." "You mean not see each other any more at all?" he asked desperately. "I absolutely refuse." "No, silly, of course I don't mean that. We'll go on just as before, friends, comrades, pals." "When we love each other--when we've told each other we love each other?" "Certainly. What's that got to do with it?" "It would be the merest pretense," he declared solemnly. "Then let's begin the pretense now, and go up and throw a peanut at the elephant. Come along." She hooked her arm into his. Her levity of behavior undoubtedly got past him at times. "Georgia"--he was once more on the verge of remonstrance--"if you cared as you say you do, if you _loved_ me as I l----" She unhooked her arm and now she was serious enough. "Don't you understand," she said, "what I mean? We can't talk about that any more." "You mean not at all?" "Precisely." "But what if I can't conceal the most important thing in my whole life? What if I can't smirk and smile about it? What if I am not as good an actor as you? What if I can't pretend? What then?" He was very, very fierce with her. "Then I suppose I'll have to go home." They stood irresolute, facing each other, neither wishing to carry it too far. "Not that that would be much fun---- Oh, come, don't be silly--let's go attack the elephant. What must be, must be, you know." She paused to allow him time to yield with grieved dignity, then she headed for the animal house; he trailed in silence about half a step behind her during the first hundred yards, but finally sighed and surrendered and then fell into step and pretended during the rest of the afternoon with quite decent success. So his education began. And though he was by no means pliable material, she managed, being vastly the more expert, to keep him pretending with hardly a lapse throughout the winter. She found it more difficult, however, to keep herself pretending. X MOXEY Moxey was a Jew boy and a catcher. His last name ended in sky, and he came from the West-side ghetto. His father and mother came from the pale in Russia when Moxey's elder brother Steve was in arms and before Moxey himself appeared. Moxey would have been captain of the Prairie View Semi-Pro. B. B. Club, if merit ruled the world. But there was the crime of nineteen centuries ago against him, so they made McClaughrey captain; Georgia's sixteen-year-old brother Al played third base. The Prairie Views had one triumph in the morning, it being Sunday, the day for two and sometimes three games. They had the use of one of the diamonds on a public playground from Donovan, the wise cop. I have seen Donovan keep peace and order among eighteen warring lads from sixteen to twenty years old by a couple of looks, a smile and a silence. When there was money on the game, too. There has been good material wasted in Donovan. Properly environed and taught the language, though he doesn't depend on language very much, he could have been presiding officer of the French Chamber of Deputies--and presided. It was the ninth inning, last half, tie score, two out, three on, with two and three on the batter. In other words, the precise moment when the fictionist is allowed to step in. Moxey up. He fouled off a couple, the coachers screeched; the umpire, who was also stakeholder, dripped a bit freer and hoped Donovan would stick around for a few seconds longer. The pitcher took a short wind-up and the ball, which seemed to start for the platter, reached Moxey in the neighborhood of the heart. He collapsed. They rallied round the umpire. "He done it on purpose--the sheeny--he done it on purpose, I tell you--he run into it----" "Naw, ye're a liar!" "Prove it." "It's a dead ball--take your base--come in there, youse," waving to the man on third. "We win. Give us our money." All participated but Moxey, who lay moaning on the ground by the home plate. Donovan strolled out to the debate and smiled his magic smile. "Take yer base," bawled the emboldened ump, and waved the run in. Al got five dollars for the day's playing and three dollars for the day's betting, and the Prairie Views walked off, bats conspicuous on shoulders, yelling, "Yah!" at the enemy. "Chee," said Moxey to his playmates when they reached the family entrance, "me for the big irrigation." And it was so. Moxey shifted his foot, called his little circle around him close and then inserted his dark, fleshless talon into his baseball shirt. "That gave me an awful wallop what win the game," he said; "if I hadn't slipped me little pad in after the eight', it might a' put me away, understand." He took out his protection against dead balls, an ingenious and inconspicuous felt arrangement to be worn under the left arm by right-handed batters. And all present felt again that there had been injustice in the preference of McClaughrey. Whenever they asked Moxey where he lived, he answered, "West," and let it go at that. He always turned up for the next game, no matter how often plans had been changed since he had last seen any of them. That was all they knew about him. He caught for them, often won for them, drank beer with them and then disappeared completely until the next half-holiday. Perhaps Al was his most intimate friend, and Al was the only one who learned his secret. "Say, Al," he blurted out almost fiercely one evening, "your folks is Irish, ain't they?" "Irish-American," corrected Al. "Well, mine's Yiddishers, and the most Yiddish Yiddishers y'ever see." Moxey seemed very bitter about it and Al waited for more. "My old man, well----" Moxey swallowed. It seemed to Al as if he would not go on, but finally it came out with a rush. "He pushes a cart--yes, sir--honest to God, he pushes a cart--I thought maybe I ought to tell you, Al." "He does?" It was a shock to the Irish-American, which showed in his tone. "Yes, sir, he does," Moxey answered defiantly, "and if you don't like it--why--well, I won't say nuthin' ugly to you, Al--you're only like the rest. S'long." Al threw his arm around the other's shoulder. "Forget it, Moxey." Which was the only oath ever taken in this particular David and Jonathan affair. Not long afterwards, Moxey proposed to Al attendance at a prizefight just across the State line, the Illinois laws being unfavorable to such exhibitions of manly skill or brutality, whichever it is. It was Al's first fight. They boarded a special train, filled with coarse men bent upon coarse pleasure. But then, if they had been bent upon refined pleasure they wouldn't have been coarse or it wouldn't have been pleasure. The prizefighting question illustrates well the gulf between the social and the individual conscience and demonstrates that the whole is sometimes considerably greater than the sum of its parts. Probably eight out of ten men in this country enjoy seeing two hearty young micks belt each other around a padded ring with padded gloves. But they hesitate to come out in the open and proclaim their enjoyment, for fear of writing themselves down brutes, and the deepest yearning of the American people at the present day is to be gentlemanly and ladylike. So whenever sparring matches are proposed the community works itself up into a state of fake indignation. All the softer and sweeter elements telegraph the Governor and if that isn't enough, pray for him; and inasmuch as the Governor gets no immoral support on the other side from those who are afraid of jeopardizing their gentlemanliness, he yields, and appears in the newspapers as a strong man who dared beard the sports, whereas, he was really a frightened politician who didn't dare beard the Christian Endeavorers. One of the most illuminating essays of the late and great William James concerned Chautauqua Lake. He spent a week at that beautiful camp, where sobriety and industry, intelligence and goodness, orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness pervade the air. There were popular lectures by popular lecturers, a chorus of seven hundred voices, kindergartens, secondary schools, every sort of refined athletics, and perpetually running soda fountains. There was neither zymotic disease, poverty, drunkenness, crime or police. There was culture, kindness, cheapness, equality, in short what mankind has been striving for under the name of civilization, a foretaste of what human society might be, were it all in the light, with no suffering and no dark corners. And yet when he left the camp he quotes himself as saying to himself: "Ouf! What a relief. Now for something primordial to set the balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninteresting. This human drama without a villain or a pang; this community so refined that ice cream soda is the utmost offering it can make to the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things--I cannot abide with them." But whether he could or not, the rest of us have to, and the country moves Chautauqua-ward with decorous haste. From anti-canteen and anti-racing to anti-fights and anti-tights, the aunties seem to have it, the aunties have it, and the bill is passed. Al viewed this national tendency with mixed feelings; with joy when he tasted forbidden fruit and sneaked off across the state line with Moxey in a special train full of bartenders and policemen off duty and gay brokers and butchers to see more than the law allowed; with sorrow when he considered the future of his country, as a gray, flat and feminine plain. The preliminaries had been fought off; there was the customary nervous pause before the wind-up. Young men with official caps forced their ways between the packed crowds with "peanuts, ham sandwiches and cold bottled beer." The announcer, a tall young man in shirt sleeves, who looked as if he might be a fairly useful citizen himself in case of a difference, made the customary appeal. "Gen-tul-men, on account of the smoke in the at-mos-phere, I am requested to request you to quit smoking." (Pause.) "The boxers find it difficult to box in this at-mos-phere, and you will wit-ness a better encounter if you do." (Applause, but no snuffing of torches.) "The final contest of this evening's proceedings," called the announcer, first to one side of the ring, then to the other, "will be between Johnny Fiteon and Kid O'Mara, both of Chicago, _fer th' bantamweight champ'nship o' th' world_." Handclappings and whistlings. But the announcer, being gifted with the dramatic instinct, knew how to work up his climaxes, which, so far as he personally was concerned, would culminate with the tap of the gong for the first round. It was his affair to have the house seething with excitement when that gong tapped. "Gen-tul-men," continued the announcer; then he spied two plumes waving in the middle distance and made the amend, to delighted sniggers: "Ladees and gen-tul-men, I take pleasure in in-ter-ducing Runt Keough of Phil-ur-del-fy-a." A diminutive youth with a wise face stepped in the ring and bobbed his head to the cheers, and muttered something to the announcer. "Runt Keough hereby challenges the winner of this bout, for the championship of th' world in the 115-poung class, _to a finish_." A tumult ensued. The Runt backed out of the ring to hoots of "fourflusher" and howls of approbation. "Ladees and gen-tul-men, I now take pleasure in in-ter-ducing to you Mr. Ed Fiteon, father and handler of Johnny Fiteon, who wears th' bantamweight crown _o' th' world_." The crowd made evident its vehement gratitude for Ed's share in Johnny's creation. "Chee," whispered Moxey to Al, as they sat close and rapt, with shining eyes, on the dollar seats high up and far away, "they'd tear up the chairs for Johnny's mother if they'd perduce her." But now something was happening by the east entrance. The cheering suddenly ceased, A low anxious buzzing whisper ran over the entire assemblage. Men stood up to look eastward regardless of monitions from behind to sit down. Something was cutting through the crowd from the east entrance to the ring. It was Kid O'Mara in his cotton bathrobe preceded by a gigantic mulatto and followed by two smaller Caucasians. Moxey's bony fingers dug suddenly into Al's biceps. "Kid, you gotta do it, Kid, you gotta," he whispered. "O, fer God's sake, Kid." Al was surprised. "Are you with O'Mara?" he asked. "Am I with him?" answered Moxey with a sob in his voice; "am I with him--he's me cousin." "O'Mara _your_ cousin?" "Lipkowsky's his right name--same as mine. Look at his beak and see." There was no doubt of it. "Kid O'Mara's" proboscis corroborated Moxey's claim. Johnny's entrance a few minutes later was still more effective and his reception warmer. Fight fans are courtiers, always with the king. When the two boys stripped, Johnny showed short and stocky, the Kid lank and lithe. Johnny depended on his punch, the Kid on his reach. They fought ten rounds and it was called a draw, probably a just decision inasmuch as the adherents of each contestant proclaimed that the referee had been corrupted against their man. Besides, a draw meant another fight between them with plenty of money in the house. This evening in fistiana was perhaps the most powerful single experience which influenced Al at this period of his life. For a long time he sat silent beside Moxey on the return trip, pondering the physical beauty of Johnny and the Kid and ruefully comparing their bodies with his own. He sighed, "And now I s'pose your cousin'll go out and kill it to-night!" "Not him," Moxey reassured; "he never touches it in any form or shape, understand." "He's training all the time?" continued Al, bent on deciphering the secret ways of greatness. "Yep. So you might say." "Oh," then Al relapsed into silence to wrestle with the angel of training all the time. Like most young fellows, Al regarded his body as the source of all the happiness that amounted to anything. The brain was merely its adjunct, its money maker and guide. Its operations might lead to life, but they were not life like the body's. It flashed upon him in the train bound home from the fight that he might achieve joy in either of two ways, by going in for sports or "sporting," by perfecting the animal in him or by abusing it, by getting into as good shape as Kid O'Mara or into as bad shape as the pale waster crumpled in the seat across the aisle. So began a struggle in him, not yet ended, between the Ormuzd and Ahriman of physical condition. His high achievement thus far has been sixth place in a river Marathon swimming race, his completest failure thirty-six successive drunken hours in the restricted district. XI FUSION Al wasn't much of a head at books. Georgia persuaded him to start in high school, but he soon came out, for he found that it interfered with the free expression of his personality. There were too many girls about one and he became extremely apprehensive lest he develop into a regular lah-de-dah. Georgia was more afraid of his developing into a regular rough and tough, so they had a very intense time of it in the flat while the question was under discussion. Mother Talbot sided with neither of them. She wanted Al to continue his instructions, but in the institutions under the direction of the Church. She couldn't reconcile herself to Al's getting his learning in a place where the very name of God was banned, as it was in the public schools. Indeed in her opinion, and you couldn't change it, no, not if you argued from now until the clap of doom, the main trouble with everything nowdays was impiety and weakening of faith, brought about how? Why, by these public schools, these atheist factories that were ashamed of the Saviour. For her part, she couldn't see her son going to one of them with any peace of mind, and she wanted them both to remember, that he would go against her consent and in spite of her prayers. What's more, if he was undutiful in this matter he'd probably find himself sitting between a Jew and a nigger, which she must say would serve him right. Did Georgia think, she inquired on another occasion, that the priests weren't up to teaching Al, or what? To be sure, learning was a fine thing for a boy starting out in the world and she approved of it as much as any one, but who ever heard of an ordinary priest who hadn't more wisdom in his little finger than a public school teacher had in her whole silly head! In a church school he would receive instructions not only in temporal, but also in divine learning. He would be taught not merely history and mathematics and such like, but also goodness and pure living, which were far more important for any young fellow. But Georgia could not be convinced. She said she had been to a convent and if she had it to do over again she would go to public high school--just as Al, who not only was a considerate and loving brother, but also could see clearly how sorry he would be in after life if he didn't, was about to decide to do. She finally had her way and Al picked up his burden--and found it not so difficult to carry after all. For he joined the Alpha Beta Gammas and rose rapidly in that order, becoming its most expert and weariless initiator, a very terror to novitiates. But precisely at the moment when the Alpha Bets reached the zenith of their glory, the skies fell upon them--the edict coming from above that all fraternities must go. Al went too. The place was indubitably fit for nothing but girls now. And whatever Georgia might say, this time he was going to stick, for in the last analysis she was a female and her words subject to discount. He stuck, discounting the female; and she was distressed like a mother robin in the tree, whose youngling, that has just fluttered down, persists in hopping out of the long grass upon the shaven lawn, when, as all robinhood knew, there were cats in the kitchen around the corner of the house. It is the impulse of youth to travel far in search of marvels, a vestige, so it is said, of the nomadic stage of human development, when the race itself was young. It was as member of a demonstration crew for a vacuum cleaning machine that Al enjoyed his _wanderjahre_. He went among strange people and heard the babbling of many tongues without passing out of Chicago. Like a reporter, or a mendicant friar of old, he knocked on all doors. The slouch, the slattern, the miser and the saint opened to him; the pale young mother with a child at her breast and another at her skirts and both her eyes black and blue; or the gray old sewing woman who for her plainness had known neither the bliss nor the horror of a man. One rolling-mill husky in South Chicago chased him down stairs with a stick of wood, and another heaved his big arm around him and made him come in and wait while little Jerry took the pail to the corner. He came upon a household where one life was coming as another was going, and a little girl of twelve who could no longer contain the excitement of the day beneath her small bosom followed him into the entry way as he hastily backed out, and whispered between gasps to catch her breath her version of family history in the making. He learned early the value of the smooth tongue, the timely bluff and the signed contract; and grew rapidly from boy to man in the forcing-bed of the city. Meanwhile Moxey, not yet twenty, was swimming in a sea of sentiment. There was a young Italian girl who worked in the paper-box factory. "Angelica," said he, "come to the dance to-night." "Nit," she responded. "Why?" "Oh, they'd give me the laugh, if I----" She paused tactfully. "Account of----," he drew a semi-circle about his nose and laughed unhappily. "We-ell." It was explicit enough. "Can't see a guinea has anything on a Yiddisher." Tit for tat in love's badinage. "I'm no guinea, I'm not," she exclaimed passionately. "I'm Amurrican." "So'm I," he answered briskly. "I'm Amurrican--and I don't wear no hoops in my ears." Perhaps that would hold her for a while. It did. She retreated in tears, thinking of her sire's shame. But her bosom was deep and her lips were as red as an anarchist flag, and her little nose tilted the other way. So why stay mad with her? Her eyebrows nearly met in the center, though she was only sixteen. And as for dancing--well, he'd looked 'em all over in vaudeville and he couldn't see where they had anything on her. More steps perhaps, but no more looks--or class. And Angelica went to dances with Irishers, loafers who'd never take care of her, and she wouldn't go with him. Well, he'd see if she wouldn't. He'd own that little nose of hers some day or know why. He'd make money, he'd be rich, he'd woo her with rings and pins and tickets of admission. He would be irresistible in his lavishness. Johnny Fiteon, bantamweight champion of the world, contributed to the discomforture of those members of his race who liked to dance with Angelica, for on his second time out with Moxey's cousin he lost the decision by a shade. Moxey knew he would beforehand. Johnny redeemed himself in their next encounter, however, and put the cousin away, so there could be no question about it. And again Moxey, knowing beforehand that he would, prospered and showered Angelica with brooches. Also he purchased an equity in a two-story frame cottage with Greeks in the basement and Hunkies above. One shouldn't, he reflected, depend too much on sports to keep up the supply of brooches. "Aggie," said he, as they returned from a dance together, "take a peep at this." He extracted a diamond solitaire pin from his tie and stopping under an arc light gave it to her to examine. "I seen it," she snapped. "You been flashing it at me all evening. Think I'm blind?" "Make up into a nice ring, wouldn't it?" Angelica was wise. She knew what men were after. She didn't work in a paper-box factory for nothing. She would let them go just so far, to be sure, if they were good fellows, but she could draw the line. Indeed she had already drawn it once or twice with five thick little fingers on astonished cheeks. She measured her distance from the ardent Hebrew unconscious of his danger, but still she paused for greater certainty. Did the diamond mean another proposition--or was it maybe a proposal this time? "I got my uncle in jail in Napoli," she said very quietly. "I'm sorry," he answered simply. "But what of it? They had my brother Steve in Pontiac once." "My uncle he killed the man that spoilt his daughter." "That ain't nothing to be ashamed of, Aggie," he spoke kindly, seeking to console her, and took her small and stubby hand gently in his long sinewy ones; "he done right." She never let him know, for her dignity, how low she once had feared he held her, and she kissed him goodnight many times. "They say you people are good to their women, Moxey," she whispered. "Ours ain't, always." She paused. "Gee, my pa'll have a fit." Moxey laughed. "Mine too, I guess," said he, "but we won't have to ask them for nothing, understand." XII MOXEY'S SISTER "You'll stand up with me, won't you?" Moxey asked, a bit anxiously. "Sure, of course," said Al. "It's at night, and"--here was to be at least one wedding where the groom was no lay figure--"dress suits de rigger, understand." "Sure, of course," Al assented impatiently. Did Moxey think he didn't know anything? "We ain't going to tell the old folks for a couple of weeks to save hard feelings on both sides, that's our motto. And the kids is to be Catholics, she stood pat on that." "Sure, of course, what did you expect 'em to be, kikes?" Perhaps Al spoke a trifle too explicitly, for Moxey flushed as he frequently did. It was his last remaining signal to the world that his hide wasn't as tough as he pretended. "I ain't marr'in' her just because she's a peach," Moxey rhapsodized, "but she is. Wait till you see her and I'll leave it to you. But she's got principle, too. Her uncle killed a fellow for wronging his daughter and Aggie says he done right, if he is still doing time in the old country. Oh, there's plenty of principle in dagoes, you can say what you like. When you go foolin' around their women you gotta take a chance." It was as if Moxey had pressed a bell in his friend's mind and opened a chamber there, where vague shapes appeared and suspicion had been gathering. For Al had observed Georgia's mysteries and evasions, her care before her mirror, her new hats and pretty ribbons, her day-long Sunday absences. Twice he had met her on the street, walking and chatting most gayly with some strange man. Besides his mother had plainly hinted that all might not be right. "What do you think a fellow ought to do if a man's after his sister?" Al asked slowly. "This unwritten law thing don't seem to work any more except down South." "You can't lay down no rule," said Moxey. "Depends on if you like your sister." "If you do?" "Then go the limit and take a chance with your jury." He paused and great shame came to his cheeks again. "I had a sister, oncet ... and she, well y' understand.... I sometimes thought I oughta of killed him ... but I never did ... I kept askin' myself 'what's the good of killing him now? Becky's done for anyhow, and it'd just do for me, too.' ... The time to look out for a girl is beforehand, not afterwards." There was no doubt about that, especially in theory. But Al contemplated somewhat dubiously the task of safeguarding Georgia. She was so blamed independent. She might say he was impertinent, or she might just laugh at him. She was fairly certain, at all events, not to acquiesce readily in any watch and ward policy which he might seek to institute for her benefit. Still--in a well conducted family the men were supposed to look out for the women and keep the breath of dishonor from them. He was the man of the family now, if he was only eighteen, and so it was up to him to find out if Georgia was in danger, and if she was, to get her out of it _beforehand_. "I seen your sister once," remarked Moxey, guessing his thoughts. Al was silent. "Looked like she could take care of herself." "Oh, she's got good sense," said Al, "but you know the riddle, 'Why's a woman like a ship? Because it takes a man to manage her.'" "Yes," assented Moxey, "and they have more respect, understand, for the fellow who can say no to 'em when it's right." So after supper that evening, instead of going over to the pool parlor, Al stayed at home waiting for his mother to go to bed, when he could have a talk with Georgia and pump her and find out about this strange man she knew, and if necessary say _no_. His mother drew up to the lamp and darned his socks and talked and talked on endlessly it seemed to him. He felt a little abused when nine o'clock came, which was her bed time, and still she made no move to go. She did get a little tiresome at times. He would acknowledge that frankly to himself, though he would not let her see it for worlds--except by staying away from her most of the time, and not paying attention to her when he was with her. If his most affectionate greeting of the day came as a rule when he said "Good night, mother dear," he didn't realize it; and it would have amazed him to know that sometimes she sniffled for as much as half an hour after she went to bed, because he had shown so plainly that he was glad to be rid of her. She supposed in her sadness that he was an unnatural, almost unparalleled example of unfilial ingratitude; not suspecting he was only a rear rank file in the Ever Victorious Army of Youth. Al wound his watch. "Gee, quarter of ten," he remarked, through a yawn. He stretched himself elaborately. Mother was certainly delaying the game. Until she went he couldn't have his round-up with Georgia, who was in one of her after-supper reading spells and had hardly said a word all evening. She now had a fad for those little books bound in imitation green leather that constituted the World's Epitome of Culture series and cost thirty-five cents apiece, or two magazines and an extra Sunday paper, as she put it. She had been through twenty of them already and was now on her twenty-first. He didn't deny that it was creditable to go in for culture. If that was the sort of thing she liked, why, as the fellow says, he supposed she liked that sort of thing. It's a free country. But as for him, when he was tired with the day's work, he thought he was entitled to a little recreation--a game of pool, a couple of glasses of beer, maybe a swim in a "nat"--he wasn't bad at the middle distances--and he couldn't see drawing up a chair under a lamp and going to work again, for that was what it amounted to, on a little green Epitome that you had to study over to get the meaning, or maybe look in the dictionary, as she was doing now. She had told him that they were more interesting than the other kind of books and had even got him to start on a couple she said he was sure to like, because they were so exciting--Marco Polo's Travels and Froissart's Chronicles--but they didn't excite him any, and he made only about thirty pages in each of them. Indeed, it was his private opinion that Georgia was more or less bunking herself with this upward and onward stuff. She fell for it because it helped her feel superior. And then she worked herself up to believing she really liked it because people were surprised she knew so much and said she had a naturally fine mind. A vicious circle. In all of which cogitations he was perhaps not entirely astray; though her chief incitement was more concrete than he supposed. She wanted to impress Stevens in particular, rather than people in general--she was determined to keep even with him so that he could never talk down to her as to a mere "womanly woman" who held him by sex and nothing more. When at last Mrs. Talbot arose, Al hastened to her, kissed her affectionately, slipped his arm around her, impelled her towards the door, opened it rapidly, kissed her again, closed it firmly behind her, lit a cigarette, and began: "Georgia, I want to have a heart to heart with you." "In a second." She read the last half page of her chapter so rapidly that she was compelled to read it over again for conscience' sake, then inserted her book-mark and turned to him: "Fire away." "Who's the mysterious stranger!" She had known it was coming for the last half hour. From the corner of her eye, she had spied the importance of the occasion actually oozing out of young Al. At first she thought of side-stepping the interview, but eventually decided not to, partly to please the lad and more still to hear how her case would stand when discussed aloud. She had been in a most chaotic state of mind ever since the agreement with Stevens to pretend; that which wasn't clear then was hazier now; she was of ten minds a day whether to give in to her lover or to give in to the Church. Now she would listen to Georgia and Al talk about the case as if they were two other people, in the hope of finding guidance in her eavesdropping. "He is a man in the office whom I like," she answered. "How much?" "A lot." "And he does, too?" "Yes, a lot." "Hmm--you know I hate to preach, but--" Hesitation. "You think you will, all the same. Go on, I'm listening." "You know I'm liberal. If you were just fooling with this fellow, I'd never peep, honest, I wouldn't." She smiled, "I'll promise to only fool with my next beau." "Now, this is no laughing matter," he rebuked her levity. "If you're really--stuck on each other--it may bust you all to pieces before you're done with it--unless you quit in time." "What do you mean by 'quit'?" "Give up seeing him altogether. It would be safer." "Yes, so it would. But what's that got to do with it?" "A woman can't afford to take chances," he retorted impressively. "It seems to me the people who get the most fun out of life are the ones who do take chances. Your little tin hero, Roosevelt, for instance--you like him because he'd rather hunt a lion or a trust than a sure thing. Jim Horan didn't eat smoke for the money in it, but because he thought a wall might fall on him some day--or might not. That's what he wanted to find out. Well, perhaps I want to find out if a wall will fall on me some day--or not." Al was astounded. There was something more than bold, something hardly decent in the comparison of her own dubious flirtation to a great fireman's martyrdom or a soldier-statesman-sportsman's courage and career. "But, Georgia," he expostulated, "you speak like a man in a manhole. Horan and Roosevelt did their duty taking chances." "Rubbish," she said. "They acted according to their natures and I will act according to mine--some day." He looked unutterably distressed, for he loved her, and foresaw ruin enfolding her. He knew that women aren't allowed to act according to their natures, if their natures are as natural as all that. "I haven't seen Jim for over a year," she went on, "nor heard of him for ten months. He may be dead. He is the same as dead to me. My heart is the heart of a widow--grateful for her weeds. The Church may say otherwise--and I might obey unwillingly--but my own being tells me that there is nothing wrong in my love for Mason Stevens--any more than it's sin to breathe air or drink water. That's how we're made. When I lived with Jim, I played no tricks. But that's over now, it's over for good. What's the difference whether he's under the sod or above it, so far as I'm concerned?" Her eyes were alight and she walked back and forth, gesticulating like a Beveridge, persuading herself that what she wished was just because she wished it. "I've got a few good years of youth left. I'll not throw them away for a religious quibble." "You mean divorce and marry again--openly!" "What does the ceremony matter? I'm not sure we'd take the trouble of going through it," she shrugged her shoulders, "the Church says that it means nothing anyway; that it makes the sin no less." "But, Georgia," he was beginning now to fear for her common sense, "for God's sake, if you do such a thing, first go through the civil form anyway." She laughed triumphantly. She had caught him. "There spoke your heart. Of course, we'll have a legal marriage. You see the Church hasn't convinced you, either, that divorce and remarriage is the same as adultery." She had crystallized her vague desires into positive determination by the daring sound of her own words. XIII REËNTER JIM Al reflected moodily that arguing with a woman never gets you anything. If he had been trying to interest Georgia in a vacuum cleaner, he would have known better than to start in by arousing her to a fervor for brooms. Now he would have to wait a few days until she had cooled out, and then try her on a different tack, appealing to her affection and begging her not to bring disgrace upon the whole family. She was half-sitting, half-kneeling on the window seat, her elbows on the sill, her cheeks in her hands, looking out into the dim urban night. Directly to the south, over the loop, where Chicago was wide awake and playing, the diffused electric radiance was brightest and highest--a man-made borealis. She took pride in her big city. It was unafraid. It followed no rules but its own, and didn't always follow them. It owned the future in fee and pitied the past. It said, not "Ought I?" but "I will." It was modern, just as she was modern. She was more characteristically the offspring of her city than of her mother. For she was new, like Chicago; and her mother was old, like the Church. So she pondered in the pleasant after-glow of decision, buttressing her resolve. The bell rang from the vestibule below and she went to the speaking tube to find out what was wanted. "Yes?" she inquired, then without saying anything more she walked slowly to her room. "Who was it!" asked Al, but she closed the door behind her without answering. Funny things, women. He went to the tube himself. "What you want?" "It's Jim." "Jim?--well, for the love of goodness godness Agnes--d'you want to come up?" "Yes, if it's all right." Al pressed the door-opener, but before climbing the stairs Jim shouted another question through the tube: "Wasn't that Georgia who spoke first?" "Yes." "Well, why did she--how is she, anyway!" "Fine. Come along." There was a great change in Jim. He must have taken off forty or fifty pounds. His eyes were clear, his skin healthily brown, and he had hardened up all over. He looked a good ten years younger than the last time Al saw him, except for one thing, that his hair had thinned out a great deal. He was almost bald on top. They shook hands and Jim gave him a solid grip. "Cheese," said the younger fellow heartily, "you look good--primed for a battle, almost." He put his fingers on the other's biceps. Jim drew up his clenched fist, showing a very respectable bunch of muscle. "More than there ever used to be, eh?" he asked, smiling broadly. Al whistled, stepped back for a better look at the miracle, and whistled. "And yet they say they never come back. Hm-m-m--how'd you do it?" "Working. Rousty on a dredge in Oklahoma." "Rousty?" "Toted coal to the firemen, later got to firing myself--on the night shift. We kept her going steady. Funny thing, irrigating way out there, t'hell an' gone, in the middle of the frogs barking and the cattle bawling feeding your old thirty-horse and watching the old scoop lifting out her yard of sludge every six minutes. You got so it seemed the most natural thing in the world, but it ain't, is it!" "What'd they pay!" "Fifty and board. But the money's being in the business. Me and our day trainman was talking of getting shares in a dredge. There's work there for a thousand years. Where's Georgia?" Al nodded his head toward her door. "So's not to see me!" Al nodded. "I came clear from there in the busy season for the sight of her and I didn't come alone. I've three hundred here," said Jim, taking a roll of bills from his pocket. "And to be turned down this way, with my heart full of love----" He was greatly moved and he showed it, for his lip trembled and his voice shook. Al was sorry for him. "Aw, she'll come around. She's got a stubborn streak, you know that, but she does right in the end. Give her time. I'll talk to her." Jim felt sure that she must have heard their conversation, especially the last part of it, for he had talked quite distinctly and he remembered from the old days how readily all the sounds in the flat penetrated into that room. He got on his hands and knees and looked at the crack beneath her door to see if her room was lighted. "She's sitting in the dark," he whispered, "Would it be all right to knock!" "I don't know," said Al uncertainly. Jim knocked softly, then a little more loudly, but there was no answer. He put his ear to the door to listen, then tip-toed away. "She's crying," he whispered to Al, "crying to beat the band. Those heavy deep kind of sobs. I could barely hear her. Must have her face in the pillow. Now what do you know about that!" "That's a good sign," said Al, "means she's coming around. When she just turns white and don't speak----" Jim privately opined that he understood Georgia's moods vastly better than Al ever would, and was in no need of instruction on this subject. "You mean when she has one of her silences," he said, giving the thing its proper name. "Yes, that's when you can't handle her. But now, she's begun to melt already. So to-morrow evening come for supper, and I bet my shirt you are all made up in thirty minutes." Jim wrung his hand. "You're a thoroughbred, Al--and take this from me now, I've learned sense. If I get her back, I'll keep her. No more booze, never one drop." He counted out four five-dollar bills upon the center table. "That's what I borrowed, when I quit," he explained. As he reached the door he turned to confirm his happy appointment. "Six thirty to-morrow evening?" XIV THE PALACE OF THE UNBORN The following morning brother and sister rode down-town together in the cars. "Don't you think you might have consulted me before asking Jim to supper?" she inquired. "Don't be foolish," he replied cheerfully, "you were locked in your room." She worked all day in that state of suppressed excitement which presages great events, from the first ride on the lodge goat to the codicil part of uncle's will. Everything she saw or touched was more vivid than usual to her senses. Her typewriter keys seemed picked out in the air against a deep perspective, their lettering very heavy, their clicking singularly loud. One of the little flags caught in a ventilation grill, and instead of fluttering out freely, flapped and bellied, making a small snapping noise. A flag wasn't meant to do that, so she crossed the big room, pulled up a chair and released it, somewhat to the surprise of the youth sitting directly beneath it. The old man, usually rapid enough with his letters, seemed hopelessly slow and awkward this morning, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from helping him out with the proper word when he got stuck. He was leaning back in his swivel chair, wasting interminable time with pauses and laryngeal interjections, the tips of his fingers together, his eyes half closed, droning out his sentences. He wore a little butterfly tie, to-day, blue spots on brown, just below his active Adam's apple and thin, corded neck. Under the point of his chin was a little patch which his razor had skipped, hopelessly white. She wondered what could be in it for him any more, and why he didn't retire. She rattled off her letters, then added a note for Stevens, "Dinner to-night?" and left it in the S compartment of the _Letters Received_ box. When he came in later for his afternoon mail he caught her eye and nodded, and on the way out of the old man's office stopped at her desk for a few hasty words: "What time, and where?" "Wherever you like--at six thirty." "Max's?" he suggested, "we'll have snails." "Oh, what a perfectly dear place--in every sense of the word." "My treat," he said. "No." "You never dined with me before; you might let me celebrate. "We'll celebrate anyway, Dutch. Make it Max's." He didn't prolong the argument. They had long before made a compact that the expenses of their expeditions should be shared. "I suppose," he inquired, "your six thirty really means seven. I've an appointment, might keep me till then, unless----" "I'll meet you on the stroke of half-past," she said, and was as good as her word. They had snails _à la Max_, whereof the frame is finer than the picture, as well as Maxian frogs' legs, boned and wrapped in lettuce leaves, and, not without misgivings, a bottle of claret. Stevens, unaware that it was their last time of pretending, abided by the rules. They talked shop and shows and vacations. Georgia slipped in a few appropriate words concerning her cultural progress. They were both somewhat severe upon the orchestra, because there was too much noise to the music, so Mason beckoned the head waiter and "requested" the barcarole from _Tales of Hoffman_, and they floated off in it toward the edge of what they knew. It is said that most people have at least two personalities. In this respect Georgia was like them. One side of her was the woman of 1850, and the times previous; whether mother, wife, daughter, maiden or mistress, primarily something in relation to man, her individuality submerged in this relationship, as a soldier's individuality is submerged in his uniform. The other aspect of Georgia's nature was that of the "new woman," the women hoped for in 1950. Bold, determined, taught to think, relentless in defense of her own personality, insistent that men shall have less and she shall have more sexual freedom, she is first of all herself and only next to that, something to a man. When the woman of 1850 managed to get in a word about Jim and his fruitless wait at home, the woman of 1950 answered, "Shall you now be absurd enough to leave the man you love for one you hate?" "Shall we take in a show?" he suggested when they had finished their coffee. "I believe I'd rather walk home." "Why, it's five miles." He was somewhat disconcerted by her energy, for he was distinctly let down, in reaction from his day's work, and his afternoon's excitement of looking forward to an unusual meeting with her, which had turned out after all to be more than commonly placid. "Five miles--and a heavenly night. The first of spring. Come, brace up." "You must be feeling pretty strong." "No," she said, "I am getting a bit headachy, I want some air, to get out of four walls and merge into the darkness--if you know what I mean." "You're not going to be sick?" he asked concernedly. "O, no--it's just a touch of spring fever, I imagine." There is a cement path with a sloping concrete breakwater which winds between Lake Michigan on one side and Lincoln Park on the other for a distance of several miles. Here come the people in endless procession from morning until midnight, two by two, male and female, walking slow and talking low, permeated by the souls of children begging life. It is a chamber of Maeterlinck's azure palace of the unborn. Presently, by good luck, Georgia and her lover came upon a bench just as another couple was quitting it--the supply of benches being inadequate to the demands of pleasant evenings in spring. The departing two passed, one around each end of the seat, and walked rapidly, several feet apart, across the strip of lawn and bridal path beyond. They were delayed at the curb by the stream of automobiles and stood out in clear relief against the passing headlights. It was evident they had been quarreling, for the man looked sullen and the woman, half turned away, shrugged her shoulders to what he was saying. Georgia had been watching them. "Too bad," said she, "they're having a row." "Perhaps they're not meant for each other." "Everyone quarrels sometimes," she answered, "meant or not." "Do you think we would, if----" "I'm sure of it," she replied sharply. "We're human beings, not angels." There was doubtless common sense in what she said, but nevertheless it delighted him not. He wished that she could in such moments as these, yield herself fully to the illusion which possessed him that their life together would be one sempiternal climax of joy. "I honestly believe," he asserted solemnly, "that sometimes two natures are so perfectly adjusted that there is no friction between them." "Rubbish," she replied, quoting a newly read Shaw preface, "people aren't meant to stew in love from the cradle to the grave." She couldn't understand her own mood. She had arranged this evening with Stevens to tell him that she was ready to marry him, and she found herself unable to. Her conscious purpose was the same as ever. Yet as often as she summoned herself to look the look or keep the silence which would put in train his declaration, it seemed as if she received from her depths a sudden and imperative mandate against it. It was her long silence while she was pondering over these strange things which gave him a false cue and he entered to the center of her consciousness. "This wasting of ourselves must go on until he dies?" "The only way out is death," she said slowly, "or apostasy." "Apostasy!" The word had an ugly sound even for him. "I know one woman who did it for love of a man." "And she is happy?" Georgia did not answer at once. "And she is happy," he repeated seriously, as if much depended on the question, "or not?" "She says she is," she answered, "but I don't think so. She doesn't look happy--about the eyes--one notices those things. She seems changed--and--reckless and--and she's not always been faithful to her husband. I found it out." "You found it out!" "Yes, she asked me to go to a dinner party. Her husband was away from town--there were four of us--and I could tell what it meant. She wanted me to do what she was doing--and we had been friends so long--we took our first communion together." "Georgia," he asked, chilled through with fright, "do you often have that sort of thing put in your way?" "I have plenty of chances to make a mess of life," she replied, "every woman does, who's passable looking, especially downtown women." "Dearest heart," he begged, "I can't go on thinking of that the rest of my life. Marry me and let me shield and shelter you from all this----" "This what?" "Temptation," he blurted, "and rotten, unwomanly down-town life. A woman ought to be taken care of, in her own home, by the man who loves her and respects and honors her." Georgia smiled. "Do you know," she asked, "that's almost exactly word for word the way he talked to this friend of mine and persuaded her to get her divorce and leave the Church and marry him--almost word for word--she told me about it at the time. And now she's--fooling him. It didn't shield her from temptation." "But I have known people to be divorced and marry again and live perfectly happy and respectable lives." "Protestants--weren't they?" she asked. "Yes." "Ah, that's the point. They do what they think is right, but a Catholic does what she knows is wrong, and begins her new marriage in a wilful sin, so what can grow from it but more sin?" Her voice, naturally full and resonant like a trained speaker's, was thin and uncertain as she told of the apostate. Her other self, the woman of the past, was ascendant, but she fought against what she conceived to be a momentary weakness, and forced her resolution as a skillful rider forces an unwilling horse over a jump. "But if you want me," she said in words that trembled, "you can have me." "If I want you----" He took her in his arms and kissed her. It seemed to her definitely in that instant that nothing could ever be quite the same with her again, that a certain fine purity had passed from her forever and she must live thereafter on a lower plane. All the modernistic teachings, books, lectures, pamphlets with which she had in recent years packed her head, on woman's right to selfhood, parasitic females, prostitution in marriage, endowed motherhood, sexual slavery; and all the practical philosophy of the success school which she had learned from years of contact with money-makers, that life is more for the daring than for the good, were washed away by the earlier-formed and deeper-lying impressions of her youth. She was aware of a fleeting return of her virginal feeling that to give herself to one man was humbleness sufficient for a lifetime; but to give herself to two would be the permanent lowering of pride. But she felt that for her the moving finger had writ and passed. There could be no more going back or shadow of turning. Henceforth, for good or evil, she belonged to this man. She yielded to his kisses, as many as he wished, in passive submission. "You will always be good to me--promise that, promise me, dear," she begged, "because if you're not I'll----" Her voice choked and two tears rolled down her cheeks. Gone was her freedom and her pride. She spoke, not as her ideal had been, partner speaking to partner on even terms, but as a servant to her master, asking not justice but mercy. Her solitary happiness in this hour was the feeling that the man was the stronger, that despite his greenness and awkwardness and the ease with which she had hitherto controlled him, fundamentally his nature was bigger than hers and that she was compelled to follow him. In her new feebleness she rejoiced that she sinned not boldly and resolutely, but because she had been taken in the traditional manner by the overpowering male. "I have been looking forward to this for longer than you suspect," said she, "and now that it's come, I feel as if I were at a play watching it happen to some one else." He put his hand on her shoulder, then quickly turned her white face to his. "Why, what is the matter?" he asked. "You are shaking like a leaf." "I think I'd better go home. It is damp and cold sitting here." After they had gone a few steps, she said, with a weak little laugh, "I've lost my enthusiasm for walking. Put me on the car." He began to be thoroughly frightened. "Don't worry, dear," she reassured him. "Nothing can change us now. We belong to each other--for keeps." They said little to each other in the brightly lighted street car. She sat slightly crumpled, her shoulders rounded, swaying to the stops and starts. She breathed slowly through her lips, and her eyes had the strange wide-open look of a young bird's, when you hold it in your hands. And he, but partly understanding, yearned for her helplessly, and covenanted with his nameless gods that no sorrow should ever come to her from him. She hung to his arm as they walked up the half-lighted street where she lived, between rows of three, four and five story flat buildings full of drama. Outside her own she stopped and looked up to her windows. They were brightly lighted. Instead of using her key, she rang the bell to her apartment. She heard Al's voice in answer. "Is Jim there?" she asked. "Yes." She turned to Stevens with a flash of her old positiveness. "I must go somewhere else. And I don't feel like telling my troubles to any friend to-night. So will you take me to a hotel?" They returned to the car line by an unusual street, lest Al should come looking after her, she driving her sick frame along by sheer will, her lover resolved that if need be he would save her from herself. She waited while he engaged her room, and when he came bringing her key, he said, "I have put you down as Miss Talbot." "Oh, you were nice to think of that. I like to imagine sometimes it still is so." She took his hand. "Good night, dear," she whispered. "I will be a true wife to you." XV MR. SILVERMAN Stevens called up Georgia's room in the morning to ask how she had slept and she reported, "Well--that is, pretty well," which wasn't true, for she had tossed wretchedly through the night. By careful brushing and buying a shirtwaist she managed to measurably freshen her appearance, though she reached the office with tired eyes and hectic splotches beneath her eyes. Al was there before her waiting with white face. "Georgia," he began miserably, "I've been hunting the town for you. Where have you been?" "Alone." "You've frightened us half to death. Mother's sick over it." "You can have Jim in the house, or me, but not both of us." She would give him no more satisfaction, and he was turning away angry at her obstinacy, when Mason came up to greet her. "Good morning." "Good morning." Al quickly divined that here was the man. It was written in the way he looked at her, and in Georgia's sudden sidelong glance at Al to see if he saw. "I'd like a word with you," said the brother to the lover, tapping him on the shoulder with studied rudeness, "now." Stevens didn't understand the situation, but he was properly resentful, and lowered at the stranger. In these subtle days of commerce, finger-tips on collar bones may convey all that was once meant by a glove in the face. "My brother, Mr. Stevens," she explained. They did not shake hands. Mason was not quite sure from the young fellow's expression just what might happen, but he was sure it had better not happen right there. "Let's get out of the office--and you can have as many words as you want," said he. Georgia arose to go with them. "No, don't you come," said Stevens. "I think perhaps it would be better." "But it wouldn't. You stay here," the man answered with great positiveness. She sank obediently in the chair, to the disgusted amazement of her brother, and let them go alone. "Were you out with her last night?" "Yes." The lad sunk his hand to his coat pocket, his wild young brain aflame with violence and romance and vengeance and the memory of Moxey's sweetheart's uncle who had slain the despoiler of his home. Stevens was near death and he knew it, but he never batted an eye as Al reported later to Moxey. "I knew it damned well. She said she was alone." His hand tightened on the automatic, pressing down the safety lock, and he pointed the gun, so that he could shoot through his pocket and kill. "She was, after eleven. I left her then." "Prove it. You've got to," insultingly. "Go look at the hotel register, for the name of Miss Georgia Talbot." Al grunted. Here was a concrete fact--subject to verification, yes or no. "All right," he vouchsafed curtly, "if it turns out that way--but one more thing--keep away from her after this altogether--understand." Al shot out his jaw and swung around his pocket with the barrel pointing straight at Stevens' middle. He looked just then a good deal like a young tough delivering a serious threat, which he was. Stevens shoved his derby hat back and laughed. "If you think you can run me around with the pop-gun, guess again. I'm going to marry Georgia and you're coming to the wedding," he stepped right up to the gun and tapped Al sharply on the shoulder, "understand." It was perhaps a chancy thing to do, for the lad had worked himself into a state of self-righteous anger, and his vanity was savagely exulted by the sensation of putting it over on a full-grown man to his face. But Stevens had acted instinctively as he frequently did in stressful moment and his instinct played him true this time. "She ain't allowed to marry again, so you keep off the grass," he answered loudly, but his voice broke and shot up an octave as he took his hand from his pocket to clench his fist and shake it in the other's face. Whereat Stevens knew he had him and answered quietly in his most matter-of-fact business tones, "That's for her to say--and she's said it." He smiled. "You know she's free, white, and twenty-one." Al, not sure just what his next step ought to be, walked away, probably to consult with Moxey, muttering as he went, "Well, remember I warned you." Stevens returned to the office and explained the incident briefly to Georgia, "Oh, the kid was excited at first, but I reassured him." While they were talking the old man rang her buzzer and asked her to have Mr. Stevens come in. A dark, beaked, heavy-browed, much-dressed gentleman was in the old man's office, introduced to Mason as Mr. Silverman. Mr. Silverman deserves a paragraph or two. He was said to be a Polish, a Russian or a Spanish Jew, but nobody knew for sure or dared ask him, for he didn't like it. At sixteen or thereabouts, he came to the company as an office boy, and in two months was indispensable. At thirty-seven, owing partly to the conscientious performance of his duties and more to his earnestness in pulling feet from the rungs above him, and stamping fingers from the rungs below, he was elected to a position especially created for him, to-wit, Executive Secretary to the President of The Eastern Life Insurance Company of New York, which gave him everything to say about the running of it except the very last word. Perhaps once a quarter he was reversed, and always on some extremely important matter involving the investment of funds. This galled him beyond measure, but he kept it to himself. At the last annual election, he would have presented himself as a candidate for president, or at least for first vice-president with power to act, but after sizing up the way the proxies were running for the new directorate, he knew that crowd would never stand for him, so he squelched his own boom for the time being, and waited. The title was re-conferred for the fifteenth time upon a charming but delicate plutocrat of the fourth generation of New Yorkers, who was compelled to spend his term health-hunting in European spas, where Mr. Silverman took delight in sending him for decision a copious stream of unimportant but vexatiously technical questions, which much disturbed the invalid's serenity, for he had entered the company at the top, and didn't know detail. Mr. Silverman himself settled the more important matters, inasmuch as there wasn't time to send to Europe and wait for an answer. Whenever he reached for a stronger hold, he had an incontrovertible excuse, and he got to know Mr. Morgan personally. He was stocky, with ample room for his digestion, and like most fighting men, he had a good thick neck that carried plenty of blood to his head. His unpleasantest trait was his shame of race, and his most agreeable one an understanding love of music. His only exercise was strong black cigars, and everyone on the company's payroll dreaded his seemingly preternatural knowledge of what was going on. "Mr. Stevens," said he, "sit down. I have heard of you." Then to allow that pregnant remark to sink in he turned to Georgia. "Take this, please: 'Mr. W. F. Plaisted, General Agent in charge S. W. Division, Eastern Life Insurance Company, Kansas City, Mo. Dear Sir: Please furnish the bearer, Mr. Mason Stevens, with whatever information he desires. He is my personal representative. With kind regards, Yours truly, Executive Secretary to the President.' "That is all." He nodded to Georgia, and she departed. The old man pussy-footed after her, leaving the other two together in his private office. "You are to take the nine o'clock train to-night for Kansas City to prepare a report for me on why we aren't getting more business in the town and our competitors less. Here are some letters from New York to certain banks there which will admit you to their confidence. Find out all you can about Plaisted and his office before you go to him. Send me a night letter to my hotel every night as to your progress. Use this code." He took a typewritten sheet of synonyms from his pocket. "Should you cross the trail of another investigator for the Eastern, you are not to reveal yourself to him. This point you are to bear in mind." He paused for an answer. "Yes, sir," said Stevens. "Your expense money will be liberal; and mind, no talk--not even a hint to your best girl. I suppose, of course, there is one." Mason smiled, but did not answer. "I am told you are not married." "No, sir." "Perhaps it is just as well. Women are to live with, not to travel with, and you're still traveling." Mr. Silverman lit a fifty-center, and then, being a natural-born commander, topped off his instructions with hopes of loot. "Good luck, young man. You're shaking hands with your future on this trip." Mason came from the interview consecrated to the task of getting the goods on Plaisted. Going after him was like going after ivory in Africa. Landing a prospect was as tame relatively as plugging ducks on the Illinois River. For Plaisted had been a big man in the company in his day, though getting a little old now. With solid connections through Missouri, Kansas and the Southwest, if he fell, he'd fall with a smash. Mason rather fancied that in company politics he could see as far through a grindstone as his neighbor, if it had a hole in it. He knew that there was a hidden but bitter fight for control of the business between the old New York society crowd who had inherited it, and the younger abler men, under the leadership of Silverman, who had grown up from the ranks. He knew that his own boss, the old man, lined up with Silverman, but that Plaisted had delivered the south-western proxies in a solid block, for the New York ticket. He therefore inferred that Silverman didn't feel strong enough to remove Plaisted without a pretty plausible reason and that he was being sent to Kansas City to find the reason; and failing that, to make one, which, as it turned out, was precisely what he did. He set out on his mission with as little compunction as a soldier who had received orders to shoot to kill. For, as he told himself, surely Plaisted had also pulled down men in his time. Life is a battle. Therefore is it not well to be with the conqueror and share in the cut? If he could now make good with Silverman, and, more especially, convince him that he was a live one who would keep on making good, the Jew would certainly recognize him in the reorganization. He had visions of tooling along the macadam in his Panno Six to a vined house in the suburbs, hidden by tall trees, where, in a trailing gown, Georgia would walk through her flowers to meet him, with a small hand clinging to each of hers. Plaisted had now become, to all intents and purposes, his competitor; and going after your competitors is the life of trade. As for Mrs. Plaisted--if there was one--who was she against Georgia? XVI GEORGIA LEAVES HOME He expected to be gone several weeks, so Georgia telephoned the janitor to tell mama that she would stay down for dinner, again, but would be home soon afterwards. Mason took her to the top of a tall building, where there was a sixty cent table d'hote. The topic, of course, was his forthcoming trip from routine to adventure and its probable effect upon their fortunes. For all the wise saws about not talking to women, one may hardly dine with his fiancée of a day without mention of the marvelous opportunity which dropped before one that morning as from the skies. Especially if she is in the same business and heard it drop. So, little by little, one thing leading to another, he told her everything he knew or guessed or hoped. He did not once forget Silverman's injunction to silence, as he babbled on. It stuck in his mind like a thorn in the foot; and, telling himself he was a fool to talk, he talked. The precise moment didn't seem to come when he could frankly say, without offense, "Georgia, that part of it is a secret." And he didn't see how to temporize widely, for it had become physically impossible for him to lie to her, though, of course, he retained the use of his faculties for commerce with others. So he passed on the ever heavy load of silence, hoping that she could hold her tongue if he couldn't. It was as much her affair as his anyway, so he felt, and if by her indiscretion she should cut him out of Silverman's confidence and future big things, she would in the same motion cut herself out of a Panno Six and a house in the trees and a richer circle of friends. But, inasmuch as she was a case-hardened private secretary, she kept her faith with him in this thing at least. If he never has a Panno Six it wasn't her fault. The most surprising thing to her in his narrative was that it did not more greatly interest her. It seemed to her a far-off affair, impersonal, like something she was reading in the papers. Stevens seemed to stand outside her area of life, which had become narrow and curiously uneasy, heavy with a future in which he was not concerned. At first he attributed the listlessness, which she tried to conceal but could not, to one of the widely advertised feminine moods, and he tried his best to divert her not merely with pictures of their future, blissful and automobileful, but also with quips and cranks and wanton wiles. No go. So when course VI of the table d'hote--nuts and pecans, three of each to the order--was ended, he suggested that perhaps she would better go directly home instead of waiting downtown with him until his train went. She acquiesced. They walked to the "L" in silence. Imagine the chagrin of a knight riding off to the bloody wars from a ladye who didn't care if he never came back. That was how it struck him. She took his arm to climb the steep iron stairs, and at the top stopped a moment to get her breath. "Dear heart," she said, "don't have all those awful thoughts about me--don't you suppose I know what you're thinking? I've been dull to-night, but my head is simply splitting. I believe I'm in for the grip." He looked at his watch. "I'm sure I can take you home and get back in time." "Bather than have you risk it, I'll stay down until your train goes." "Promise me then to get a doctor and go right to bed." "I'll go right to bed--I can barely hold my head up, and I'll get a doctor in the morning if I'm not better." There were only two or three other people on the long platform, so he kissed her good-bye. Then the screened iron gate was slapped to behind her, the guard jerked his cord, she smiled weakly and waved her hand back at him, and it was all over for a much longer time than he had any idea of. He watched her train until the tail lights turned the loop, then said "Hell," lit a cigar, pushed his hat back, sighed and went to check his trunk. He sat up in the smoking compartment gassing with drummers until the last of them turned in, sympathized for awhile with the Pullman porter, who suffered volubly as soon as Mason gave him permission to. He had been married that very afternoon and now he was off to Los Angeles and back, a ten-day journey, leaving behind him as a dark and shining mark for those who realized the devilishness of his itinerary an unprotected, young, gay-hearted bride. He appreciated the snares that would be set for her by his brothers of brush and berth. He'd been a bachelor himself. "Yas, sah, railroadin' is sure one yalla dawg's life for a fambly man." Stevens lay awake a long time that night thinking of the future, and Georgia lay awake a long time considering the past. She felt hot and thirsty; three or four times she got out of bed and ran the faucet until the water was cold and bathed her face and drank. After she had left Stevens she had taken a cross seat in the car facing homeward, and, placing her burning cheek against the window for coolness, had dozed off for many stations. When she awoke with a start at the one beyond her own, her personality had slipped to its earlier center as definitely as when a clutch slips from high to second speed. It is said that the last step gained by the individual or the race is the first step lost, in sickness, age and fear. So Georgia's illness began its attack on the topmost layer of her character, that part of it which had been built in the recent years. She was driven, as it were, to a lower floor of her own edifice and no longed saw so wide a view. Her pride and self-will crumbled--for the sick aren't proud--and her modernity trickled away. After all, was it not more peaceful to do what people thought you ought to, than to fight them constantly for your own way? Life was too short and human nature too weak for the stress and strain of such ceaseless resistance as she had made in the past few years against her family, the friends of her family, and the Church. For God's sake let her now have peace. Yes, for God's sake. The words had come irreverently to her mind. But after all, could she or anyone else have peace except from God? and was there any other gift as sweet? She knew there was one sure anodyne for her troubled spirit, and only one--the confessional. She had kept away too long already, for more than two years. She would go to-morrow, or perhaps the next day, and wash her soul clean. Father Hervey would talk to her as if to rip her heart strings out, but in the end he would leave her with peace, after she had promised and vowed to give up her mortal sin. Poor Mason, that meant him. She wept a few weak tears, then dried her eyes on the corner of the sheet. So this was to be the end of her spiritual adventuring, the end of the free expression of her free being, and selfhood, and all those other valorous things she had rejoiced in. She wasn't able any longer to go on with it. She must desert the army of women in the day of battle, the army led by Curie, Key, Pankhurst, Schreiner, Addams, Gilman, and cross over to the adversary, the encompassing Church. It would absorb her into its vast unity as a drop disappears in the sea. It would think for her and will for her. She would be animated with its life, not her own; but it would suffuse her with the comfort that is past understanding. She would eat the lotus and submit. She was not strong, like great people. Perhaps the priest would suggest her return to Jim. But that wasn't in the law. He could only suggest and urge it. He could not insist on it. She couldn't go back to Jim, she couldn't, she couldn't. She sobbed as if there were a presence in the room which she hoped to move by her tears. A clear vision of her husband came before her, as she had often seen him, sitting on the edge of this very bed, in undershirt and trousers, leaning forward, breathing abominably loud, his paunch sagging, unlacing his shoes. Right or wrong, good or bad, heaven or hell, that was one sight the priest should never make her see again. She hated Jim and loathed him forever. As she was dressing next morning she called to Al to please go down and telephone for the doctor, for she knew she could never go through the day's work without medicine. Presently Dr. Randall bowled up, a jolly stout man, smiling gayly and crinkling up the corners of his eyes, though he had slept just eight hours in the last seventy-two. The family was glumly finishing breakfast when he came. Throughout the meal Mrs. Talbot had been burningly aware of the contrast between decent, self-respecting women with a thought to themselves, and brazen young fly-by-nights in thin waists, who run after men and make themselves free; but she threw only a few pertinent remarks into the atmosphere, because the poor girl was so evidently out of sorts, with her high color and not touching a bite of food. Indeed, a body could hardly help feeling sorry for her, for all her wicked pride of will; very likely this sickness was a judgment on her for it. When Dr. Randall had considered her pulse, her temperature and her tongue, and asked half a dozen questions, he told Al to send for a carriage and take her immediately to Columbus Hospital. "Why, doctor," exclaimed Mrs. Talbot, terrorized, "is it anything serious?" "Typhoid--I'll go telephone to let 'em know you're coming." The doctor departed and Mrs. Talbot took Georgia on her lap and crooned over her until the carriage came. XVII THE LIGHT FLICKERS It was decided that Georgia was to have a bed in a ward at eight dollars a week. Private rooms were twenty-five and they couldn't afford that during the month she would be laid up, particularly since her pay would stop automatically after her third day of absence. The office rule was very strict on that point. She sat limply in the waiting room while Al was attending to her registration and her mother was upstairs with the nurse unpacking her things. On the opposite wall were a couple of windows, sharply framing vistas into the park across the street, and she saw two fragments of the path where she had often walked on Sunday mornings with Stevens. It was this same wall in front of her which had seemed so sullen gray and prison-color from the other side and which had sometimes turned their talk to sombre things--death and immortality. From the inside, as she now saw it, the wall was not gray but cheerfully reddish brown, patterned vertically like a thrasher's wing. Two pictures hung by the window, of the pope and of Frances Xavier Cabrini, founder of the order of nuns that conducted the hospital. They were photographs, she thought, or reproductions from photographs. She looked closely at them, first at the old man, then at the old woman. She saw in them more than she had ever seen in such pictures before. They offered at least one positive answer to the riddle, perhaps the safest answer for such as she--to submit oneself through one's lifetime so as to attain at the end of it the matchless serenity of those two untroubled faces. It came to her then in a moment of more than natural revelation, as it seemed, that she must seek the peace which these two had found. She crossed slowly to the desk in the corner, to write what she knew might be the last of the thousands of letters she had written. _My dear_, she began on the hospital paper, _I am here with_, not to cause him anxiety in the beginning of his great enterprise, _a touch of the grip. Nothing serious. In haste and headache. Georgia._ She paused. Even if it must end by her giving him up, she loved him. Should she, by an omission so significant, upset and distress him and perhaps hinder him in a task which, well performed, would bring great things to him, if never now to her! _I love you_, she added, _always_. A second note she dated a week forward. _My dear, I haven't pulled around again as soon as I expected, but the rest has done me a world of good. Don't worry about me--they say I've a constitution like a horse. For my sake, make good, Mason--you've got to. With love, lots of it, always, G._ A third she put two weeks ahead. _Dearest, I'm doing fine and will be out soon now. Your letters have been such a comfort. It's almost two thousand years since we've seen each other, isn't it? I love you, dear. Georgia._ She put them in their envelopes, addressed them, and wrote 1, 2 and 3 respectively in the upper right hand corners in such a way that the stamps would conceal them. Al came in as she was finishing, and she explained how she wanted them mailed a week apart. At first he refused, but at last was over-persuaded by her misery. He promised to do her errand as she asked, and kept his promise faithfully. A page boy chanting "Mis-ter Stev-uns, Mis-ter Riggle-hei-murr, Mis-ter An-droo Brown, Mis-ter Noise, Mis-ter Stevuns," caught Mason in the grill paying a lot of attention to a first vice-president over a planked tenderloin, German fried and large coffee. Accordingly he made his first report not to Silverman, but to the old man, thus: Night Letter 548 ch jf 63 Kansas City Mo 10/17 Fredk. Tatton, Eastern Life Insurance Co. 60 Monroe st., Chicago. Strict confidence am engaged marry your secretary Georgia Connor who now sick columbus hospital please arrange hospital authorities give her best care private room special trained nurse my expense don't let her know my participation say attention comes from company gratitude her fidelity ability also keep her name payroll until return duty charge my account confidential my progress here satisfactory wire answer collect. Stevens 814 AM The old man himself had not been entirely immune to Georgia's charm, although in the office and before him she had steadily veiled her personality behind her status as a precise, prompt and well-lubricated appanage of a Standard Typewriter No. 4. So it was only a well subdued charm that the old man sensed in her, stimulating as a small glass of syrupy liqueur. It seemed to him pathetic that the silent, presentable, self-respecting young woman, to whom for over a year now he had been revealing his most private, money-making thoughts almost as fast as they came to him, might never smile him another "good morning," agree with him pleasantly that it was hot or cold or wet, and get rapidly to work on his business. She was so accustomed to his ways, and he hated the thought of breaking in another one--but, damn it, that wasn't all by any means, he liked the girl on her own account--she was such a little lady. The old man did some rapid telephoning and was able to answer Stevens' wire half an hour after he got it. Chicago Ills. Oct. 18 Mr. Mason Stevens, Hotel Boston, K C Mo Best accommodations provided as stipulated salary continues your expense diagnosis simple case typical convalescense anticipated will wire promptly new developments regarding patient warm congratulations Fredk. Tatton 949 AM The old man naturally supposed that Mason knew the nature of Georgia's illness and was trying to reassure him, in a kindly way, that as typhoid cases go it was only a very little one. Indeed, the old man, if he was a little lax later on in wiring all the developments in the case--because he didn't want to frighten the young man into throwing up his investigation in the very middle of it--was more valuably helpful in another way. When the fever reached its crisis he got a great specialist out of bed for a three o'clock in the morning consultation over the little stenographer, and charged his costly loss of sleep to the company instead of to Mason Stevens, Mr. Silverman cordially approving. They said afterwards that Georgia could not have taken another small step toward death, without dying. She flickered and guttered like a lamp whose oil has been used up. For a few moments it seemed that her light had been put out altogether, but there must have been a tiny spark hidden somewhere in the charred wick, for the doctors brought her back by artificial stimulation, and you can not stimulate the dead. If specialists and private rooms and nurses give sick people more chance of getting well, then Stevens and the old man and Mr. Silverman saved Georgia by their care of her, for she could not have had less chance to live and lived. XVIII THE PRIEST The crisis of the fever came upon Georgia so suddenly that she had lapsed into semi-consciousness before the arrival of Father Hervey. She was able, in making her confession to him, barely to gasp out a few broken sentences of contrition. He anointed with holy oil her eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, hands and feet, absolving her in the name of the Trinity from those sins which she truly repented. When at last she came out of the shadow, her mother believed that it was the priest even more than the doctors who had saved her, for it is taught that the reception of Extreme Unction may restore health to the body when the same is beneficial to the soul. A few days later the priest came again to see her and was amazed at the rapidity of her convalescence. "You're out of the woods this time, Georgia," he said, "sure enough. But I can tell you you had us frightened." He spoke with just the barest shade of a tip of a brogue, too slight to indicate in print. His coat was shiny, his trousers slightly frayed at the bottom, and his shoes had been several times half-soled. A parish priest, throughout his life he had kept to the vow of personal poverty as faithfully as a Jesuit. He stayed for half an hour and made himself charming. He asked the nurse not to leave the room, saying that he needed an audience. He had some new stories, he said, and he wanted to test them, which he couldn't do on Georgia alone, she was so solemn. Besides, she was almost sure to hash them up in repeating them, and he had a reputation to preserve. There was a shepherd in County Clare whose wife was from County Mayo, with the head of the color of a fox, inside and out. And so forth. First the women smiled with him, then laughed, then roared. His touch was sure, his shading delicate, his technique perfected. He had them and he held them. It was excellent medicine for the sick he gave them. Then he told them a little parish gossip of wedding banns he thought he would shortly be requested to publish. His eyes twinkled at Georgia's astonished "You don't say--well, what she sees in him----" And he finished his pleasant visit with a couple of little anecdotes, each with a moral subtly introduced; simple tales of heroism and self-sacrifice that had lately come under his notice. When he arose to go Georgia and the nurse bent their heads. He offered a short little prayer, gave them his blessing and departed. He had not said a word in a serious way to Georgia of her affairs. But she knew that he was merely postponing. Before his decisive interview with her he prayed earnestly for strength; for strength rather than guidance, for he felt no shade of doubt that the path which he would urge her to take was the right one. The Church had pointed it out long ago, and that settled it. He never questioned the wisdom or the inspiration of the great policies of the Church. He was none of your modernists, questioners and babblers; he was a veteran soldier, a fighting private in the army which will make no peace but a victor's. "Georgia," he began, "do you feel strong enough for a serious talk? For if you don't I will come later." She was sitting up in bed. Her skin had the translucent pallor of one whose life has hung in the balance. Her hair, braided and coiled about her head, had lost its peculiar gloss and become dry and brittle. "Yes, Father; I am strong enough. As well have it over with now as any time." There was more of defiance in her words than in her heart, for she could not help being a little afraid of this gentle, gray old man with the Roman collar. Since her childhood he had stood in her mind for strange power and mystery. Even in her most rebellious days before her sickness she had not been willing to confront him. She had evaded him, run away from him. Now she could not run away. "I have seen Jim since I was here last," said he, "and----" "Father, I know what you're going to say--and a reconciliation is impossible. "You know that he has stopped drinking?" "Yes, I heard so." "It is true. He looks fine, fine. Brown and strong." "I didn't think he ever could do it," said she, shaking her head. "He is fighting a battle he has lost so often." "There is none who could help him so much in his struggle as you." "Oh, there," she answered quickly and bitterly, "I think you are mistaken. He has paid very little attention to me or my wishes for four or five years past." "Then," said the priest, "he has learned his lesson, for now he depends on you more than on any other person." She did not answer, but closed her eyes and clenched her fists as tightly as she could, summoning her will to resist. But she realized that her will, like her body, was not in health. The sick bed is the priest's harvest time. "My child," he said gently, "there is a human soul struggling for its salvation. Will you help or hinder it?" "I do not think that is quite a fair way to put it." "Not fair? With all my soul I believe it to be true. And, remember, in helping him to his salvation you are bringing your own nearer." "But must we consider everything, everything from the standpoint of salvation? Of course, I want to go to Heaven when I die, but I want to be as happy as I can here on earth, too. And that's impossible if I live with Jim." "If you had a child," he asked patiently, as if going clear back to the beginning again with a pupil that could not learn easily, "and he said to you, 'Mother, I don't want to go to school, for it makes me unhappy and I want to be as happy as I can,' would you let him have his way?" He paused, but she did not answer, so he went on to make his point clearer. "Of course you wouldn't if you loved your child. You would make him undergo discipline and accept instruction, if you wanted him to be a fine, strong, brave man. Our life on earth is but our school days--our preparation for the greater life to come. And we are not always allowed to seek immediate happiness any more than little children are." She felt that she was being overcome in argument by the priest, as everyone must be who accepts his fundamental premise, namely, that he is more intimately acquainted with the secrets of life and death than laymen are. But far below the reach of argument and theological dialectics, which are surface things, from the deep springs of her life the increasing warning flowed up to her consciousness that it was the abomination of a slave to embrace where she did not love. "Father," she said, not trying to argue any longer, but just to make him see, "Oh, don't you understand? Man and wife are so close together--like that." She placed her two palms together before her in the attitude of prayer. He raised his hand solemnly, to pronounce that phrase which perhaps more than any other has influenced human destinies, "_And they shall be two in one flesh_." "But to live so close with a man you don't love or care for, oh, that is vile, utterly, utterly vile." He could not entirely sympathize with the intensity of her point of view. If one's earthly love did not turn out as well as the dreams of it, in that it merely resembled other phases of mortal existence, to be submitted to. He knew many married couples that fell out at times, but if they tried to make the best of things as they were, on the whole they got along pretty well. He was inclined to deprecate the modern tendency to invest with too much dignity the varying shades of erotic emotion. It was one of the things which led to divorce--this beatification of earthly, fleshly love. Had not the highest and holiest lives been led in the entire absence of it, by its ruthless extirpation? Not merely saints, martyrs and great popes, but ordinary priests like himself, ordinary nuns like the hospital sisters, had yielded up that side of life freely and been the better for it, more single-minded in the service of the Lord. He did not believe that a woman who had met with disappointment in this regard should make of it such a monument of woe. Let her contemplate her position with a little more courage and resignation; let her not exaggerate the importance of her own personal feelings; let her yield up her pride and stubbornness and essay to do her duty in that relationship which she had chosen for herself, with the sanction of the Church. Father Hervey had sat in a confessional box for nearly fifty years. He knew a very great deal about marriage from without. He had seen its glories and its shames reflected in the hearts of thousands. But he never felt its meanings in his own heart, at first hand. Perhaps if its priesthood were not celibate, the Roman Church would not so unyieldingly insist upon the indissolubility of marriage. But if its priesthood were not celibate, the Roman Church would almost surely lose much of its grip upon the imagination. The mind of the average laymen, Catholic or not, cannot but be powerfully moved by the spectacle of a body of educated men, leaders in their communities, voluntarily renouncing the most appealing of human relationships for the sake of a supernatural ideal. It is because the average man does not and cannot live without women which causes him to regard a priest with a species of awe. Reason as you will about it, justify the married clergy with the words of St. Paul and God's promptings within us, the fact remains that the Roman priest alone does what we can't do, lives as we couldn't live; he alone demonstrates that he is of somewhat different clay; he alone mystifies us; and mystery is the essence of sacerdotalism and authority. "Georgia," resumed Father Hervey, "if all your pretty dreams have not come true, remember they never do in this life. You must learn to compromise." "I will compromise, Father--that I will do, but I won't surrender utterly." She drew herself straighter up in bed, leaning forward without the prop of the pillow. Her excitement seemed to invigorate her. "There is another man----" "Another man?" he asked sternly. "Yes, but I will give him up. I love him, but I will give him up. On the other side, I will never take Jim back. That is my compromise." "Is that not something like saying you would not commit murder, but would compromise on stealing?" "Father, that is the best I can do." "If he continued in his former evil ways," and there was an unusual tone of pleading rather than command in Father Hervey's voice, "I would not urge you to return to him. It is recognized that there are cases where living apart is advisable. But here is poor Jim, doing his best and needing every helping hand, and you won't extend yours. It is not fair, Georgia, and it is not kind--to him or to yourself." "I can't go back to him, Father. It is impossible. I hate him when I think of it. I can't live with him again. It is inconceivable. It is a horror to imagine." She averted her head and put her hands before her as if pushing away the image of her husband. "In the top drawer of the bureau," she said, "you will find some letters--one for every day I have been here. They are from the other man. You may take them if you wish--and I will give you my promise to receive no more from him." The priest felt as if he were touching unclean things when he took up Stevens' letters. There were more than twenty of them, and most of them were very thick. "You have read them all?" he asked. "Yes." Father Hervey wrapped and tied the letters in a newspaper and rang for an attendant. "Kindly put this package in the furnace," he directed, "just as it is, without undoing it." "You have wandered far," he said quietly, then took up his soft black hat and departed without prayer or blessing. She sank back among her pillows, exhausted from the conflict. She had won, she told herself, she had won, but it was without joy. She had definitely given up Mason, as she knew she must from the beginning of her sickness, from the day that she entered the hospital. Perhaps that had been part of the price of her getting well. But she had also stuck to her purpose about Jim. She had refused to violate her natural feelings to the extent of entering into life's deepest intimacies with the one person in all the world whom she most disliked. She had put her will against the priest, the holy man, and she had not given in. She knew that not many women could have done that so openly and so successfully. He had left her without prayer or blessing. She was not at peace with the Church which meant--her eyes fell upon the sacred picture on the wall opposite--which meant that she was not at peace with The Man whose mournful sufferings and woe had been for her. Fear slowly came over her. XIX SACRED HEART The picture which she saw on the wall opposite, across the foot of the bed, was of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was the thing which she had seen oftenest and looked at longest since she had been in the hospital. It hung directly before her eyes as she lay in bed with her head on the pillow. She saw it first on waking and last before sleeping. Sometimes when she awoke suddenly in the middle of the night she could feel the picture still there, watching her in the darkness with mournful eyes. When first she looked at it she realized how crude it was in execution. Its colors were glaring. The Man wore a shining white cloak which he drew back to show underneath a blue garment. On this, placed apparently on the outside of it, was a Sacred Heart of red, girt in thorns. Holy flames proceeded from it, and there was a nimbus of encircling light. She saw that it would have been better if the Sacred Heart had seemed to glow through His garment, instead of being obviously superposed upon it; that softer blue and grayer white and less scarlet red would have been truer tones for a religious picture. She took not a little pride in her critical perceptiveness. But as she lay watching the picture day after day, she appreciated the superficiality of her first judgment of it. She had been looking at colored inks and the marks made by copper plates, not at a symbol of eternity. Does one estimate a put-by baby's slipper, or a lock of someone's hair, or a wedding ring by its intrinsic worth? If the west side print shop which made the picture before her had failed, it could have done nothing else with that subject to portray. All attempts to represent Christ must fail. Rafael had failed. Everyone would fail. Even the Church had failed. There had been bad popes, had there not? But the Church had tried to represent Him. The Church had come nearer to doing so than any other enginery or person. The saintliest persons had belonged to her and died for her and in her. One Church, she knew, He had founded, and left behind Him. One and but one. "Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church." It was unequivocal. Christ did not say "churches," He said "church." There was but one which He had built. And she had defied it; she had hardened her heart against it; she had sent away its appointed minister in order to exalt herself. Her eyes were drawn again to the Sacred Heart, bound in the thorns which she and hers had placed there. So it had been, so it would be. Christ was crucified again each day, in the hearts of the people whom He loved. Had she not herself also given Him vinegar upon a sponge? She felt the tears trickling down her cheeks as she thought of her own supreme selfishness, and she looked through blurred eyes at the representation of the most supremely unselfish face that mankind has been able to conceive. Then suddenly divine forgiveness seemed to descend upon her and level the bounds and limits of her ego; the barriers of her nature gave way and she found herself at one with all creation; she, and humanity, and nature, and God were together. Her soul seemed to quicken itself within her and ineffable light shone about her. She fell on her knees at her bedside, her adoring eyes upon the pictured countenance of her Savior. Over and over again she repeated that wonderful word learned at the convent, which expresses all prayer in itself. "Peccavi," she prayed, "peccavi, peccavi." It seemed to her at last, when she arose from her knees that she had washed all her sins away with the passion of her contrition; that she had been born again in the spirit and become pure. In her ecstasy she thought that the face of her dear Lord regarded her now less mournfully, and that there was joy in His smile where there had been only sorrow. She knew for the first time in her self-willed life the peace unspeakable of entire self-surrender. Her tears continued, but they were tears of joy, and she sobbed as sometimes prisoners sob when pardoned unexpectedly. The miracle of deliverance rolled over her soul like a flood, washing away the barriers of self-control. During her weeks in the hospital she had lived in an atmosphere of perfect faith, as intense and vital, almost, as that of the middle ages. Those who had carried and comforted her through her sickness, nurses and gentle nuns, could not doubt that Christ had died to save them and to save her. She was environed with Catholicism. Sometimes she could see through her partly opened door a black-coated priest passing in the hall to shrive a dying sinner. The chimes and chants from the chapel came faintly to her ears with benediction. The picture of the Sacred Heart hung before her eyes in unceasing reminder of the whole marvelous fabric of the Church. Because of her lowered vitality and her days of idleness in bed, her receptivity to exterior impressions was greatly increased. The steady stream of suggestions of her ancient religion which had flowed in upon her welled higher and higher in her subconsciousness until they crossed the line of consciousness and took sudden and complete possession of her mind. XX SURRENDER The next morning Georgia sent for Jim. Before he came she wrote to Stevens: _Dear Mason--I am going to take my husband back. I have been here now for nearly a month, and I have had plenty of time to think things over, you may be sure. What I am going to do is best for both of us--for all three of us. There is no doubt of that in my mind. I know it._ _Please don't answer or try to see me. That would simply make things harder for us, but not change my plans._ _It is my religion that has done it, Mason. Do you remember that I once told you, when it came to the big things I didn't believe I would dare disobey? I was right in this respect that I can't bring myself to disobey, but it is not so much from fear as I thought it would be. It is a sense of "ought." That is the only way I can put it. I have a feeling, tremendously strong, but hard to define in words, that I ought not, that I must not go on with what we planned._ _This feeling is stronger than I am, Mason. That is all I can say about it._ _So good-bye. May God bless you and make you prosperous and happy in this life and the next one. This is my prayer, my dear._ _Georgia._ The nurse took the letter to the mail box in the office and when she returned, looked at her patient curiously, saying, "Your husband is waiting downstairs to see you." "Do you mind asking him to come up, nurse?" Jim, who had now been in the city for a month, had lost some of his open-air tan and regained a portion of his banished poundage, but still he looked far better than Georgia had seen him for years. He made a favorable impression upon her from the instant he crossed the threshold. He was the Jim of the earlier rather than of the later years of their married life. His aspect seemed to confirm the truth of the revelation which she had received concerning him. "How do you do," she asked formally. "Very well, thank you," he replied. "How do you do?" "Much better--won't you be seated?" Jim, first carefully placing his brown derby hat under the chair, sat where the priest had been the day before. She felt a certain numbness of emotion as she looked at him, but none of that loathing and disgust without which, as she had come to believe, he could not be in her presence. Doubtless, she reflected, she had exaggerated her dislike for Jim, to justify herself for Stevens. "Georgia," said Jim slowly, "I didn't act right before. I know it and I'm sorry and ashamed. It was drink that put the devil in me, same as it will for any man that goes against it hard enough........ Some people can drink in moderation--it doesn't seem to hurt them. But I can't. When I got started I tried to drink up all the whiskey in North Clark Street. Well, it can't be done. I'm onto that now. No more moderate drinking for me. From now on I'm going to chop it out altogether." He paused for a word of encouragement, but she remained silent. A little nodule of memory, which had been lying dormant in her brain, awoke at his words, "from now on I'm going to chop it out altogether." How many times she had heard him say that before--and every time he had thumped his right fist into his left palm, just as he was doing now. "All I ask from you is another chance," he continued. "You know about the prodigal son. That's me. I've come back repentant. I know I've brought you misery in my time--and plenty of it. So if you stick on your rights and never forgive me, you don't have to. What do you say, Georgia?" Again he paused, but she did not speak, sitting with her head bent, picking with her fingers at the coverlet. "It wasn't me that did you the harm," he pleaded, "it was the whiskey in me, and if I keep away from that why the rest of me isn't so bad. You used to think that yourself once, Georgia." She waited for him to continue, fearing what he would say next, and he said it. "But if you're through with me, I guess the only friend I've got left after all is whiskey. He put me to the bad all right, but he won't go back on me now I'm there. Whatever else you can say about him, he's faithful. He's always got a smile for you when you're blue, and he'll stick to you clear through to the finish." Yes, that was Jim of old, word for word and motive for motive, who thought the proper remedy for disappointment was drunkenness. "Oh, Jim," she cried, "why did you say that?" He misunderstood her completely. He felt that he was making a most effective threat. "I said it because it's true," he answered roughly, "that's why. You've showed me where I stand--you've given me my answer just as loud as if you'd been shouting it. Good-bye. Likely I'll be laying up in a barrel house on the river front pretty soon, and pretty soon after that they'll be taking me out to Dunning and planting me in the ground with just a little stick and a number on it, or else--" a catch came into his voice as the pathetic picture swam vividly before his eyes, for like most drunkards he possessed something of the artistic temperament, "or else maybe they'll cut me up to show the young internes and the trained nurses which side the heart's on." Yes, he was doing the baby act again, making excuses and threatening suicide. He might have deceived Al and Father Hervey for a month or more with his "reform," but he couldn't deceive her for ten consecutive minutes. She had seen into the core of his nature, that it was weak and unstable as ever. Sooner or later he would relapse. What had been would be again. He arose as if to leave, then hesitated to give her one last chance to relent. "S'long," he said, slowly opening the door. "You can come home, Jim--if you want." "If I want!" He went to her quickly and took her in his arms and pressed his lips to her cold ones until she shuddered in his embrace. When at last he left her she looked to the picture of the Sacred Heart as if for approval, and whispered, "Not my will, but Thine, be done." XXI WORSHIP A few days later Georgia was discharged from the hospital with the warning that she was convalescent, but not cured. She might by indiscretion in the ensuing weeks make herself a semi-invalid for the rest of her life; she might even bring about an acute relapse, in which case she would be likely to die. She telephoned the old man that she was ready to report the following Monday, but he ordered her to stay away for at least another week, saying that her place was absolutely safe and her salary running on. She thanked him so earnestly for his kindness that he was minded to break into her secret, congratulate her on her engagement, tell her it was Stevens who had been kind and generous, but according to his promise he refrained. He supposed she would quickly discover the facts after their marriage anyway. Jim was rodman with the surveying department of an important landscape gardening firm. Sometimes his employment kept him out in the country for two or three days at a time, but he turned in ten or twelve dollars every Saturday night and the family was more comfortable than it had ever been. Georgia had in fairness to acknowledge that Jim had shown unexpectedly decent feeling. During her fortnight of convalescence he had assumed no right of proprietorship, made no demands. He slept on a lounge in the front room and never went to her room without first knocking. She wished that things might go on so indefinitely, but she knew that it was now a question of days, perhaps of hours, before she must reassume all the obligations of wifehood. She was getting well so rapidly and so evidently that soon she would have no excuse for not meeting them. She was grateful to Jim for his courtesy; and they spoke to each other more kindly than ever before. They had ceased to act upon the theory that it did not much matter what one said to the other since the other had to stand it anyway. She had already taken over a year out of their lives together to show that she did not have to stand it. Their example was not without its influence upon the other members of the family, Al and Mrs. Talbot, and there was far less wrangling and friction in the household. Not without hesitating dread Georgia brought herself to the grilled shutter of Father Hervey's Gothic confessional box. She had been derelict in this as in other obligations; except for her brief and half delirious words of general contrition in the hospital, it was her first confession for three years. Sinking to her knees she whispered, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." She began the prayer of the penitent. "I confess to Almighty God, to blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to blessed Michael, the archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the saints, that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." As she told her secret sins and pettiness to the priest, it seemed that the poison of them was being drained from her memory where they had become encysted. Her heart was cleaned and purified and lightened by the process of the confessional. It is indeed doubtful whether any other ecclesiastical instrument since the world began has lifted so much sorrow from mankind. Georgia's conspicuous and mortal sins were two--Doubt and her continued entertainment of that feeling for Mason Stevens which, since it was unlawful, the Church denominated Lust. Doubt had followed naturally on absorption in worldly affairs, dangerous associations and reading, and neglect of her obligations to the Church. Especially reprehensible had been her frequent attendance at the Sunday Evening Ethical Club, where the very air was impregnated with dilute agnosticism. In future she must be more careful in her choice of reading. Materialism and atheism were skillfully concealed in many a so-called sociological treatise. Not that sociology lacked certain elements of truth, but the danger for untrained minds lay in exaggerating their importance until they overshadowed greater truths. She would do well hereafter to leave sociology to sociologists. The Sunday Evening Ethical Club was anathema. She must not go there again nor to any similar place where veiled socialism and anarchy were preached. The confessor was rejoiced that her duty toward her husband and toward herself, for the two duties were one, had been so unmistakably revealed to her. Did the image of the other man ever trouble her mind? Yes, Georgia acknowledged it did. That was to be expected, in the beginning. But it would cease to trouble her before long. Did this image occur to her often? Yes, she said, it did--very often, almost continually. It was not always actively before her, she explained, but it seemed never far away, as if it were just beneath the surface of her ordinary thoughts. In that case it would be impossible to absolve her and she would remain in a state of mortal sin unless she would promise solemnly to refrain from all further thoughts of that man, and if ever they arose unbidden to banish them immediately, as an evil spirit is cast out from one possessed. The priest waited, but the woman remained silent. Did she remember, he asked severely, the words of our Savior, that "he who looketh in lust, committeth adultery." If she kept this idol in her heart, no priest had power to forgive her sins in His name. Her choice was before her, her Lord or her flesh. Her head was bowed, her hands clasped before her, and she felt tears trickle slowly upon her knuckles. "Oh, I promise, Father," she whispered, "to try never to think of him any more, and to put him out of my mind--when--the thought comes--unbidden." The sincerity of her intention was evident in the tones of her voice and she was offered her penance; to be hereafter scrupulous in her religious observances; to hear one mass a week besides the Sunday mass for two months; to say her prayers night and morning always reverently on her knees, not standing or in bed; with the addition of five Our Fathers and Hail Marys night and morning until her penance was completed; to endeavor to influence her family to go with her to Sunday mass each week; and to examine her conscience daily. The wise and gentle old priest had not been harsh with her, and she accepted humbly and gratefully the penance he imposed. He prayed to God to regard her mercifully and to lead her to eternal life, then raising his right hand he recited over her the consecrated syllables of the sacrament, ending with the solemn words of peace, _Ego te absolvo a peccatis in nomine Patris_, here he made the sign of the cross, _et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen_. (I absolve thee from thy sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.) Georgia left the confessional and went to the other part of the church to pray for a clean and strengthened spirit. The Sunday following she went with Jim, Al and Mrs. Talbot to the cathedral where pontifical mass was celebrated. Encrusted with the accumulated observances of centuries of faith, it is, perhaps, the most intricate, aesthetic and impressive religious rite ever practiced by mankind. From the archbishop seated on his throne, wearing his two-horned mitre in sign of the two testaments, his emerald ring as spouse of the Church, his silken tunic and dalmatic, his gloves of purity; with his shepherd's crosier in his hand, his woolen pallium over his shoulders, bound with three golden pins in memory of the three nails which fastened Him; from the archbishop crowned with gold to the least acolyte in surplice of white to recall His life, and cassock of black to recall His sorrow, the hierarchical symbolism is complex, mysterious, complete, beautiful. When Georgia, genuflecting and signing herself with holy water, passed through the cathedral's double doors which prefigure the two sides of His being, she felt as if she were coming home again after a long, unhappy journey. The clustered shafts of the columns carried her eyes up to the high, darkened groins of the roof. The south sun streamed in colors through the saints of the windows. In the east, on the altar, the tall slender candles burned purely. The incense puffed from the swinging censer, like smoke, familiar and pleasing to her. When the priest nine times uttered Kyrie eleison, the prayer of fallen humanity, she felt as if a friend were interceding for her before a great judge. It made her proud to see the slow evolutions of the choir, regular and disciplined, to hear as if far away their solemn chants in stately Latin, to feel that she belonged to the same fabric of which they were a part. As the service proceeded, the priests passing back and forth before the altar making obeisance and kissing its holy stone in ancient and regular form, the world outside receded continuously further from the people in the church, and they became increasingly merged into one single, splendid act of worship. Holding the jewelled paten with its bread, above the jewelled chalice with its wine, the archbishop made three signs of the cross to commemorate the living hours of the crucifixion; then moving the paten he made two signs to signify the separation of His soul and body. The altar bell tinkled, a symbol of the convulsion of nature in that supreme hour. A great sigh went through the Church. XXII KANSAS CITY Kansas City is growing vain and beautiful. She has, within recent years, spent ten million dollars on her looks--not to increase her terminal facilities or make her transit rapider--but simply and solely on her looks, to clear up her complexion and improve her figure. Beauty pays dividends to towns, as to women and gardeners. Since Kansas City put in its park and boulevard system for ten million, adjoining real estate has advanced twelve, or according to the inhabitants, fifteen million. Mason Stevens decided he would like to get transferred to Kansas City, with a raise of salary. Then he could pick out a small house in the trees at the end of one of the new macadam roads, and eventually go back and forth in a Panno Six just as he had planned. He put in a good many odd hours with the maps and prospectuses of proposed, suggested or hoped for subdivisions. If he could arrange with Mr. Silverman to shift him, he would send for Georgia and they would scout for a lot near a boulevard end. The land out there was bound to appreciate in value as the town built up and the parkways were still further extended. He would like to buy one lot for himself and another for investment. He would have to buy on time, but that's an incentive to a young business man. He felt confident of Georgia's enchantment with the project. The view from the bluffs was finer than anything one could get in Chicago for the same money. Besides the process of social stratification was not so far along. Kansas City was to Chicago as Chicago to New York, and New York to London. Comers-up, like himself and Georgia, would be more important more quickly in the smaller city. Mason soon found out that there was not much to be said against Mr. Plaisted, the local agent in chief, except that he was getting old. In routine matters and methods he was excellent, but had ceased to be creative. In the terminology of a great art, he had lost his wallop. It was the time when the big life companies were beginning their drive to get business in block; to insure for one large premium paid in a lump sum, the entire working force of a bank or business house. When the employe was honorably retired, say at sixty or sixty-five, after a stipulated number of years of steady work, he would be pensioned until he died, which pension might in whole or in part be continued to his wife if she survived him. Or he might receive, upon superannuation, an endowment equaling three years' salary. If he died before retirement his relict might become the beneficiary of an ordinary life policy. There were still other plans and combinations and permutations thereof, whose details were more or less veiled in a haze of actuarial figures, but whose broad effects were alike calculated to incite fidelity in the employe by holding out to him the prospect of a comfortable decline if he stuck to his employer through youth and middle age. Mason quickly reported to Mr. Silverman that within six months the New England Life had written two such block policies for corporations and that three other rival companies had secured one each, while the Eastern had obtained none. Silverman telegraphed sharply to Plaisted, "Why don't you get any corporation business in bulk! Our competitors do." Mr. Plaisted responded with a laborious letter of explanation. Then it developed that the New England Life had things already in shape for a third big deal--the Phosphate National Bank. Mason got the first wind of it, not in Kansas City, but by a direct tip from Mr. Silverman in New York, with instructions to investigate promptly. Within six hours he was able to report back that the proposed premium would exceed five thousand dollars a year, and furthermore that the Phosphate Trust & Savings, being controlled by the same parties as the Phosphate National, was preparing to follow its lead. That would make four banks for the New England in half a year and greatly increase its already disturbing prestige. Silverman answered, "Immediately use all proper methods secure Phosphate business for us. We must maintain prestige. Authorize you act independently Plaisted your discretion. Draw on me in reason." Mason drew on him for one thousand dollars, and obtained two five hundred dollar bills, one of which, after duly cautious preliminaries, he handed to the cashier, the other to the auditor of the Phosphate National. Again, after duly cautious preliminaries, they accepted. These two gentlemen had been detailed a committee to draw up for the convenience of the bank's Board of Directors an analytical syllabus of the differing propositions offered by the competing insurance companies. The Eastern Life got the Phosphate National's business, followed by that of its subsidiary, the Trust & Savings Bank, and Mason got Mr. Silverman's congratulations. Two days later Silverman walked unexpectedly into Plaisted's office. Plaisted, who had just that instant signed his name to a letter addressed to his visitor in New York, was rattled. "Mr. Plaisted," said Mr. Silverman, biting off the end of a three-for-a-dollar, "I have found out what is the trouble, that is, the main trouble with your agency here." Plaisted winced. He hadn't realized that there was any trouble, and certainly not any main trouble with his agency. "Yes, Mr. Silverman." "You're undermanned." "Why, yes--perhaps. I've thought of breaking in a few new agents this winter." "No," said Silverman, "I mean you're undermanned at the top. Weak on the executive side." "Oh," said Plaisted. "You need new blood, new ideas, new life, hustle," he snapped his fingers with each successive word--"speed--force--energy--vigor-- enterprise--vitality--dynamics--do you get me?" "I--yes--I'm sure I do," answered Plaisted, in considerable apprehension. "I suggest therefore that you appoint young Stevens--you have met him?" "Yes," answered Plaisted, who detested the ground Mason walked on, "I have met him." "I suggest you appoint him as your first assistant," remarked Mr. Silverman, calmly eyeing Plaisted. "He will take the burden of details off your shoulders." "I--ah--don't know, Mr. Silverman, if that would be entirely wise. You see our methods--his and mine--" "I have made my suggestion, Mr. Plaisted," answered Silverman slowly. "In my judgment that would be the best thing to do." The two men looked at each other until at last Plaisted dropped his eyes murmuring, "I will think it over." "I leave at two. I should like to know your decision before then." Plaisted yielded by telephone within half an hour. He wasn't deprived of the corner room; he would continue to sign _General Agent_ after his name. But he realized bitterly that he had left to him only the shadow of his long authority. The substance had passed to the young stranger. At the beginning of the following year Plaisted was granted a six months' leave of absence with pay, and soon after his return resigned. He now travels peevishly from Palm Beach to Paris and back again in company with a valet-nurse. Georgia's letter of farewell came in the afternoon mail, just after Mr. Silverman's departure. Mason read it over every night for a month and found it bad medicine for sleep. The lines in his shrewd face deepened perceptibly. Finally he locked the letter up in his safe deposit vault, and seemed to rest better afterwards. He dickered with the hotel for room and bath by the year and got thirty-three per cent off. He was known by his office force as a hard man to please. XXIII THE LAST OF THE OLD MAN Georgia pressed the knob of the time clock at fifteen minutes to nine the next morning. When she opened her locker to hang up her hat and jacket she discovered a novel which she had drawn from a circulating library six weeks before and which had been costing her two cents a day ever since, a box of linen collars, an umbrella she thought she had lost, and a shirt waist done up in paper. She went from the locker hall into the room of the office, half expecting to find it changed in some way, but everything was the same. The same clerks were stoop-shouldered over the same desks, the same young auditor was lolling back in his swivel chair, pulling his stubby mustache, his elbow on the low mahogany railing that marked him off from his assistants. That was how he always began the day. At nine precisely he would ring for a stenographer and dictate from notes. He never dictated straight from his head, probably because his work was so full of figures. Georgia was taken back by the casual way in which she was greeted. Several arose and shook hands and were briefly glad to see her again; others simply nodded a good morning. An oldish bookkeeper asked, "Been away, haven't you?" The girls of the lunch club, however, welcomed her warmly as they came in one after the other and found her seated at her old desk, just outside the old man's door. But even they, she felt with a twinge of bitterness, failed to grasp the stupendousness of her experience. Since last she had been in the office she had knocked at the gate of death and lost her lover and found her faith, yet the people of the office seemingly perceived no change in her except that she was pale. All that they knew of her was the surface and that, she reflected, was all she knew of them. Perhaps during her absence the oldest bookkeeper had received notice to quit at the end of the year and dreaded to tell his invalid wife; perhaps he had had a daughter die, not recover, from typhoid; or his son had gone to prison or received a hero medal or become a licensed aviator. The young auditor might be frowning and pulling his mustache because he had recently acquired a chorus lady for a stepmother. The tall, red-puffed girl with the open-work waist and abrupt curves might, as had been suspected, be no better than she should be. It wouldn't surprise Georgia greatly if that was so. But, she reflected, what of it? None of them mattered to her, just as she mattered to none of them. For everyone she supposed it was much the same; four or five people one knew and the rest strangers. She slipped some paper into the machine to try her fingers. She wrote hadn't, "hand't" and stenographer, "stonegrapher." She was not pleased to find whoever had been subbing for her had put a black ribbon on her machine. She liked purple better. Mechanically she pulled at the upper left-hand drawer where she had kept her note books and pencils, but it was locked. And she didn't have the key. She had sent it by Al from the hospital. Miss Gerson walked briskly to the desk. "Oh," she said, "Miss Connor, you're back." "Yes. How do you do!" They shook hands. "That's fine--you do look a little pale--we were all so sorry to hear of your illness. I've been your understudy," she gave a little sigh, "using your desk. I'm afraid its cluttered up with my things. If I'd only known you were returning to-day I'd have left it spick and span for you." She took out the key and unlocked the master drawer, which released the others, and removed her notebook, pencils, erasers, some picture postal cards, a broken-crystalled lady's watch, an apple and a book on etiquette. "I think the old man's just fine to work for, don't you!" she asked as she collected her belongings. "Indeed I do," said Georgia jealously. "Will you be at the club for lunch to-day?" "Indeed I will," responded Miss Gerson, departing. The telephone tinkled on Georgia's desk. "Hello," came the voice, "is this Miss Gerson?" "Did you wish to speak to her personally?" "I wish to speak with Miss Gerson, Mr. Tatton's secretary." "This is his secretary," said Georgia. "This is St. Luke's hospital," said the voice. "Mr. Tatton wants you to take a cab and come right down here to see him, and say--hello--I'm not through--bring your typewriter. Right away." The old man was propped up in a chair, fully dressed, when Georgia arrived. "Oh, Miss Connor," he said when he saw her, "I wasn't expecting you. All the better, though. Glad you're well again. I'm not." He held his hand to his side and seemed to have difficulty with his breathing. "Take this," he said. "Date it and write: Codicil. And I hereby declare and publish, being of sound mind and body, and in the presence of witnesses, that I do now revoke and cancel and make of no effect and void, in whole and in part, the clause numbered seven--then put also figure seven in parenthesis--in the foregoing instrument, will and testament of date July second, nineteen hundred and five. I expressly withdraw and withhold all the bequests therein made, named and stipulated." Georgia took his words directly on the machine. A nurse and an interne witnessed his signature. "Now," said the old man, "take this in shorthand, to my wife, care Platz & Company, Bankers, 18 Rue Scribe, Paris, France. "Dear Marion: Except for those three pleasant days last summer we haven't seen each other for six years, and as you will know long before you read this, we shan't see each other alive again. "I deeply regret that, especially of later years, our marriage has been so unsuccessful. I apprehend clearly that the fault lay with me insofar as I--quote--had grown so very prosy--end quote--as you remarked last summer. "My last wish is that you will bring Elsie home and keep her here until she marries some decent American with an occupation. Underline those last three words, Miss Connor. She is now a young woman of seventeen, and it was evident to me last summer that her head is fast becoming stuffed with nonsense. She is learning to look down on her country and her countrymen and mark my words--underline mark my words, Miss Connor--if you encourage her to marry some foreign scamp she will be very unhappy. I know you don't agree with these views, but I know they are sound, and if you keep Elsie over there you will live to see that proved; although I hope not. "Give my love to Elsie and remind her of her old dad now and then. "Good-bye, Marion. You and Elsie are the only women I ever loved. "That's all, Miss Connor. Now what I want you to do is this: If I don't come out of this operation--appendicitis--please write that up and mail it. Just sign it Fred. If I do get well, destroy your notes and don't send the letter. "Oh, you better add a postscript--P.S. I am dictating this because I have neither the time nor the strength to write myself. I was attacked suddenly." Two nurses and a doctor who had been waiting now gathered about the old man, lifted him gently to the bed and began to undress him. He held out his hand. "Good-bye, Miss Connor," he said. He died, and Georgia sent the letter to his wife. XXIV THE NEW KING Samuel Cleever, a tall, thin dyspeptic with a pince-nez and English intonation, was moved from Newark, N.J., to succeed the old man. His first conference with Georgia was brief. "Good morning, Miss Ah-ah-" "Connor." "Quite so. Do you understand the Singer cross-filing reference system?" "I understand cross-indexing and card-catalogues." "The Singer system specifically, do you know that?" "No, sir." "So I feared." "But I could learn quickly." "Quite so. But to be frank," said Mr. Cleever, "I have brought my private secretary with me from Newark." New kings make new courts. "Yes, sir," said Georgia in a low voice. "I will assign you to the auditing department for the present." "Yes, sir." She felt many eyes upon her and her cheeks were burning as she walked down the long room carrying her business belongings to a narrow flat-top which the young auditor pointed out to her. It was next the inside wall. The color came to her face in waves as she passed Miss Gerson's desk and she had a furious sensation that her habit of blushing was damnable. Why, she asked herself angrily, couldn't she at least appear calm in unpleasant situations! Her new work was less interesting, more mechanical. There were rows on rows of figures in it, and much technical accounting jargon. She ceased to throw in overtime to the company, quitting sharply each night on the dot of five thirty. On pay night she found, as she had feared, that her salary had been standardized. She received the regular class A stenographer's $15 instead of the private secretary's $20. On Tuesday of her second week in the auditing department, Mr. Cleever sent for her. Hoping devoutly that the new secretary had sprained his wrist (Mr. Cleever's secretary was a young man, Mrs. Cleever having been a stenographer herself), Georgia took her notebook. But Mr. Cleever wanted instead to inform her that the system of bookkeeping whereof she was the apparent beneficiary disaccorded with his notions of system. Since that remark seemed to leave her in the dark, he tossed across his table to her a report from the auditor's department which showed that in the past seven weeks she had been credited with $140 which had been debited to Mason Stevens, also that Columbus Hospital bills for $129.60 (including extras) had been paid by the company and charged to Stevens, and that a doctor's statement for $300 had been settled by the company and charged to Mr. Silverman's private fund. As to the last item, Mr. Cleever explained he, of course, had nothing to say, but as to the other two, although he had neither the desire nor the right to inquire into her personal affairs or her conduct out of the office, he must henceforth make it an undeviating rule not to permit the use of the company's books to facilitate private financial transactions between employes. As Mr. Cleever's precise syllables clicked on, she looked from him to the two page report in her hand, and back again to him. Her lips were partly open and she breathed through them. When he spoke of his desire not to inquire into her conduct out of the office, she thought she distinguished a discreet sneer in his modulated voice. She knew instantly that it was out of the question for her to remain in the place. The report she held had been typewritten by a woman in her own department. It would spread from her to the other women and then to the men. Her engagement to marry Stevens could never now be announced in explanation. She would be construed as she herself had construed the tall, red-headed girl with the abundant figure. She felt a flood rush over her face, suffusing it to the roots of her hair. She saw that Cleever saw it, and that he took it for confirmation of his suspicions. "Mr. Cleever, I assure you I never knew anything of this until this moment." "Of course, Miss Connor," he responded drily. "Please understand I make no criticism of the method of my predecessor. But in future--" "It will stop, Mr. Cleever. I wish to hand in my resignation." "We are sorry to lose you, Miss Connor, but of course if that is your decision--" "Yes, sir, it is." He bowed slightly. "Then at the end of the week, Saturday?" "Yes, sir, Saturday night." He again bowed slightly to signify that it was understood and that their talk was ended. She took her lunch hour to write to Mason. She put many sheets in the machine and crumpled them into the waste basket in accomplishing this: _Dear Mason: I have just learned of your kindness to me at the hospital. Thank you for the thought._ _I find that I owe you $269.60, which I will repay in installments. I enclose $12 for first installment. I regret that I am unable to pay it all at once. I am leaving the office. Please don't write._ _Congratulations on your success._ _Sincerely, Georgia Connor._ She felt as she dropped the note in the mail chute that Mason was a man to love. Imagine Jim doing her a great service and keeping it quiet. Jim took his affections out in words and physical embrace. Jim--she caught herself up suddenly. This wasn't being resigned, as she had prayed God she might be. She answered half a dozen want ads before she could get the upset price she had determined on--eighteen dollars. She covenanted for this finally with a frowsy looking, bald little lawyer, in an old-fashioned five-story, pile-foundationed, gray stone building on Clark street, put up soon after the fire. The windows were seldom washed and there were two obsolete rope elevators. The little lawyer, Mr. Matthews, had a large single room in which he sublet desk-room to a pair of young real-estaters. Georgia didn't like the looks of the place, but inasmuch as Mr. Matthews didn't haggle an instant about her salary, she took it. She had nothing important to do. Mr. Matthews' mind was fussy and unsystematic. He had little business and set her to copying over his briefs of bygone years. "Codifying," he called it; why she never knew. She shrewdly suspected she was engaged rather as a "front" to impress clients than to work at her trade. Whenever a visitor, whether collector or suspender peddler, came to see Mr. Matthews, that attorney bade him sit a few minutes while he finished up a letter that had to catch the Twentieth Century or the five thirty Pennsylvania Limited, as the case might be. Then he would fake a letter and Georgia would help him at the end by inquiring, "Special delivery, I suppose, sir?" It answered her purpose for the time being, but she hadn't the vaguest intention of staying. She saw there was no future. Mr. Matthews each morning requested her to oblige the young real-estaters by "helping them out" with their correspondence. "Helping them out" meant doing it all. Mr. Matthews was brimming with euphemisms. Likewise they, the real estaters, got to asking her to "help out" their friends, which she good-naturedly did--in hours. Saturday Mr. Matthews didn't turn up, nor yet Monday. Tuesday when Georgia suggested her payment, he said he was expecting a check that afternoon. Thursday, when she insisted on it, he told her to collect half from the real-estaters, since she had been working for them as much as for him. She couldn't see it that way at all. He had engaged her. He fell into legal phraseology. "Qui facit per alium," or something of the sort; and she told him nettly she wasn't a fool and that if he didn't pay her immediately she would attach his furniture. He turned his pockets inside out, showing a ten-dollar bill and eighty-five cents. She took the bill and walked out. But it wasn't much of a triumph. Her wages during her employment by Mr. Matthews had averaged six dollars a week. She was therefore unable to send Mason another installment; and couldn't help being relieved because, despite her injunction, he had written her. "_Dear Mrs. Connor: Please do not hurry at all in that matter. Indeed, I would be pleased to consider it an investment bringing in 5%, or if you prefer, 6% a year. If you pay me $16.18 annually (or $4.18 more during the balance of the current year), that would be an advantageous business arrangement for me. I hope you may see your way clear to agreeing to this._ _"With kind regards,_ "_Very truly, "Mason Stevens._" XXV JIM REËNLISTS Georgia smiled a little woefully over the transparent intention of Stevens' letter. He was so obviously trying to do her a great kindness and disguise it as business by his talk of six per cent. She knew that with young men and small sums interest rates lose their meaning. Everybody would rather have a quarter down than a cent a year forever. Any young hustler on a salary would rather have $270 cash than an unsecured promise of $16 annually. Oh, he was naïve and boyish as ever to think she wouldn't promptly penetrate his little plan. She had always seen through his various tricks and stratagems in regard to her from the very beginning. She didn't remember one time when he had fooled her successfully. It was like having a young son who hardly needs to talk to you at all, you can read his mind so easily as it runs along from thing to thing. She went to a newspaper office to answer one advertisement and insert another. The one she answered was for "A rapid typist--beginners not wanted. State name, experience, age, education." A blind address was given. "Y 672," care of the paper. She wrote an appreciative account of her talents, but was grieved to discover that Y 672 was none other than the Eastern Life Assurance Company. Evidently Mr. Cleever was going in for many changes. Ten days later she was with a mail order house, in a huge reënforced concrete block-like building, just across the river on the west side. The roof of this enormous edifice, according to advertisement, covered 99 acres of floor space, or some such dimension. The firm didn't do a retail business in Chicago, so everything was rough and ready. The clerks worked in their shirt sleeves, usually blue ones. They were a bigger, thicker-necked lot than the downtowners, and freer-tongued before the women. She wasn't at all disconcerted, however, by any amount of the "damns" and "hells." She was described on the books of the company as "Stenographer; Class A; Female; First six months' of employment; salary $12." The understanding was that if she made good she would be promoted, and this she promised herself to do, but didn't. The advertisement which Georgia put in the paper was: TO RENT--2667 Pearl Ave., beautiful double front room, near lake and park; single gentleman; breakfast if desired; reasonable. Connor, third flat. Mrs. Talbot could not be brought to lowering caste by taking a roomer until Georgia explained about her debt to Mason. This veered the older woman's mind violently about, and she began immediately to figure if it wouldn't be possible to squeeze in two persons instead of one--which proposition Georgia promptly vetoed. Jim acquiesced gloomily in the loss of the front room. He didn't see why paying Stevens' interest at six per cent wouldn't satisfy the nicest sense of honor. Six per cent was a good investment for anybody. Lord knows he wished someone was paying it to him. He would feel ashamed to have a visitor shown back to the dining room instead of forward to the parlor. Al alone contemplated the subject with equanimity. He dismissed it by saying that it wouldn't get him anything one way or the other. To him the parlor meant the place where the family gathered together after supper to bore him. He'd rather sit in a back room and chin with the crowd across a round, yellow, slippery table, or go across to Jonas' and try to win a little beer money at Kelly pool. He seldom analyzed his emotions; he simply knew it was fun to squat down by the rectangular green cloth table, squint his eye, and sight his shot, while the crowd watched him through the cigarette smoke, then to straighten up decisively as if he had solved the problem, tip his hat back, whistle through his teeth, chalk his cue and put the ball in. Contrariwise it was darned little fun in the front room after supper. The applicant for lodging with whom Georgia finally agreed on terms was Mr. Cyrus Kane, copy reader on an afternoon newspaper. He was a widower of forty-five, quiet, neat and regular pay. He never once had a visitor to see him. He didn't kick. But to balance all these excellent qualities was one major drawback: his unalterable condition was that he should be served in bed with a pot of black coffee at five o'clock each morning. He explained he had to be at the office at six, and that he couldn't stir without coffee; in fact, he said he was a regular caffein fiend. Georgia hesitated, then added a dollar and a half to her price, which he accepted, agreeing to pay $5.50 a week. Mrs. Talbot paled a trifle when informed that she had been elected to arise at 4:45 A.M. every day and set Mr. Kane's coffee on the gas ring until it was hot enough to take in to him. But she agreed because she felt that so she was helping to clear Georgia's honor. On the first Sunday morning of this stay Mrs. Talbot missed the coffee because she knew that Mr. Kane's paper didn't publish that day and supposed, or anyway hoped, that he would sleep late. At six the whole family was awakened by his loud mutterings to himself which percolated through the flat. "They agreed to bring my coffee at five; they _agreed_; and here it is near seven and not a sign of it. _Not_ a _sign_ of it. ---- it. I'll leave, yes by ---- I'll leave!" He thrashed about furiously in his bed, turning over and over, and striking the pillow with clenched fists in his rage. Mrs. Talbot, in sack and skirt over her nightgown, stockingless, her gray hair loose, went running in to him with his pot of steaming black dope. He smiled cherubically when he saw her. It was the only trouble they ever had with him. On Mr. Kane's coming Jim had to clear out of the front room, so he went to Georgia's. That evening as she undressed rapidly in the light before his approving eyes she had a sudden strange relieved feeling that after what she had been through in the past few months a little more wouldn't greatly matter one way or the other. It would certainly be unpleasant to have Jim pawing her again, but she had successfully postponed it much longer than she expected, so now she had better be philosophical about it. As far as she could gather most women obliged their husbands and not themselves in the frequency of their embraces. Why, therefore, excite her imagination and her sense of horror, and try to make a tremendous hard luck story out of what after all was a perfectly common and commonplace situation? Let her avoid it whenever possible and accept it with calm equanimity when necessary. It was rather ridiculous to think herself a shrinking victim of masculine passion. She had borne this man a child, she was scarred with life, a matron of nearly ten years standing. "And I look every bit of it," she commented half aloud, as she stood before the mirror slipping off her corset cover. "What'd you say?" he asked, turning his eyes toward her. He was seated on the bed stooping over, trying to undo a hard knotted shoe lace with his blunt finger nails. "I said hurry up--I'm sleepy." "You just bet I will," he answered eagerly. Not long after this domestic readjustment Jim was smoking, his wife reading and his mother-in-law sewing in the dining room after supper when the doorbell rang from the vestibule below. Georgia pressed the opener and admitted Ed Miles, the boss of the ward, "the big fellow." She wasn't a bit glad to see him. She thought that to keep Jim away from politics and politicians was the only way to keep him away from drinking. The big fellow made a formal call. He sat on the edge of his chair, his gray derby hat pushed under it, and constantly addressed Georgia as ma'am. Although she mistrusted him every moment of his visit, she felt the power of him, the brusque charm of his vitality, the humor of his laugh. When he rose to go he said good-bye politely to the women and then to Jim, who could tell by the pressure of the big fellow's hand that he wanted a word alone with him. "I'll see you to the door, Ed," said Jim, and they walked out together. Georgia noticed thankfully that her husband did not take his hat and that he was wearing slippers. "I want you to do me a little favor, Jim. You know we have our ward club election the first Monday of the new year. "Yes." "Come around." "I ain't a member of the club any more." "I'll fix that--and your back dues, too." "I promised my wife to keep out of politics." "I don't blame her either. You were going some for a married man. But the fact is, they're trying under cover to take the organization away from us." "I heard there was a little battle on." "It's more than that. It goes deep. They've got backing. Now if my friends throw me down--" "You know damn well I wouldn't throw you down, Ed." "If you don't come to the front when I need you, it's the same thing. And I need you now. This is confidential, y'understand?" "Sure." "Because I wouldn't let it get out I was worried." The two men were standing side by side on the front stoop in a stream of arc light from the street lamp. "I want your vote," said Miles, "for old sake's sake." "I dassen't go into politics regular, Ed." "I don't ask you to." "But I might slip up to the ward meeting one night, just doing my duty as a citizen." "You're a good fellow, Jim." There was a trace of huskiness in the big fellow's bass voice and Jim felt himself again moved by his old loyalty to his leader. The two shook hands warmly, fervently, with the facile emotions of politicians. "One thing about me--I never quit on my friends when they need me." There was a perceptible huskiness in Jim's voice also. "I know it damn well," said the big fellow, throwing his arm about the other's shoulder, "because you're a thoroughbred." He thrust his hand into his side pocket and brought forth several dozen large glazed white cards bearing the legend, "For President Fortieth Ward Club, Carl Schroeder," with an oval half-tone of the fat-faced candidate. "I don't know's I've got time to make any canvass, Ed," said Jim, slipping the cards back and forth through his fingers. "So you're running Carl, eh?" The big fellow boomed a laugh. "You didn't know it--Reuben come to town. Sure we're running Carl, and he said only this morning if he could get you with him he'd walk in." Jim was pleased. "Did Carl say that, honest?" "Come on up to the corner and he'll tell you himself." "I haven't got my hat." "Take mine." The boss slipped his gray derby on Jim's head. It descended to his ears. "You're a regular pinhead," exclaimed the big fellow loudly, and they both laughed. They walked up to the saloon, Connor's slippers flapping against the pavement flags with every step. The saloon welcomed Jim as if he had been a conquering hero. It was light and warm and gay and full of men. Carl Schroeder and Jim went into the private office and whispered importantly together for half an hour. When they came out, Carl was smiling and announced, clapping Jim on the back, "This old scout's brought be the best news in a week. What'll you have, boys?" Jim took lithia, explaining he was wagoning, and they congratulated him and took whiskey themselves. He left reasonably early, half a dozen rounds of lithia having given him a rather sloppy-weather sensation within. Besides, the other fellows had got to feeling good and were talking to beat the band, and he just sat there like a bump on a log without a thing to say. Not that the drinkers seemed particularly wise or witty, for some of them began to sound increasingly foolish as he listened to them, cold sober. But the liquor put them on a different plane from him, lower perhaps, but also wilder, freer, less deliberate and restrained. Their thoughts didn't follow the same sequence as his and he couldn't meet their minds as they seemed able to meet each others. He was self-conscious and glum and awkward, like a new millionaire in the hands of his first valet. And he knew that one drink of whiskey would alter all that and put him in right. But he didn't take it. The big fellow saw him to the door, giving him a cap that he picked up in the private office to go home in. "You'll do what you can for the organization in your precinct?" "Sure." "And we won't forget you." "Thanks, Ed, that's mighty fine of you." They shook hands; then Jim felt his fingers closing over a ten-dollar bill which had been pressed into his palm. It was easy money, he thought, as he paddled home in his cap and slippers. All he'd have to do to earn it would be to get around among the neighbors evenings for a couple or three weeks. When Georgia, who had been waiting up for him with a peculiar fluttering of the heart each time that she heard a step on the stairs, found that he was entirely sober, she kissed him of her own accord. XXVI EVE Some six months later, on a hot, sticky afternoon in July, Georgia came away from a State Street department store carrying a paper-wrapped parcel under her arm. She had come down town to take advantage of an odds and ends sale of white goods advertised that morning. In spite of the heat which beat down from a cloudless, windless sky and radiated up from the stone pavements where it had stored itself, she wore a long bluish-gray pongee coat. There were dark rings under her eyes and she felt ill and dispirited as she waited at Dearborn and Randolph for a North Clark Street car, which would drop her a block nearer her flat than the L would. The car was slow in coming and a crowd of fifteen or twenty gathered to wait for it. Most of them were women homeward bound after the morning's shopping excitement. One of them also wore a long bluish-gray coat and Georgia remembered having seen her at the white goods remnant counter. They caught each other's eyes and smiled faintly but did not speak. When the car stopped there was the customary rush for seats and Georgia had to content herself with a strap. She balanced her bundle against her hip and shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot swaying to the motion of the car, envying men. A passenger who looked like an oldish maid, with gold-rimmed spectacles and tightly drawn thin hair, half rose and beckoned to Georgia. "I'm getting out at the next corner," she said, and sliding across the knees of the person next to her, gave Georgia a seat next the window on the shady side. "Thank you, thank you very much indeed," said Georgia gratefully. Several blocks later she turned and saw the maiden lady still standing on the back platform leaning against the controller-box and trying to write something on the back of a paper novel with a fountain pen. She had a sudden warm feeling for this unknown friend who had done her a small kindness with delicacy. Then, for she was nervously unstable and the hues and tinges of her emotions followed each other very rapidly like magic lantern slides, she became suddenly and deeply humiliated. Was she already so noticeable that strange women, much older than she, would offer her their seats! From day to day she had gone on, still hoping that she was able to deceive the casual eye. Henceforth she felt that she could not by any stretch of will bring herself to go out of the house except at night. The car made moving pictures for her as she looked through the heavy wire grill which kept people from putting their heads out of the windows, at the men slowly walking up and down the hot sidewalk in their shirt sleeves or stopping to talk under the projecting awnings of saloons and fruit stores, at the wrappered women sitting stupidly in the upper windows of run-down brick buildings devoted to light housekeeping, at children sucking hokey-pokey cones or playing ball in a side street. The children seemed to her the only ones with joy. Perhaps that was because they didn't know what they were up against. The motorman clanged his gong angrily twenty times, then had to slow down and stop behind a lumbering coal wagon while the driver, a much blackened and begrimed Irishman, climbed leisurely from his seat and fussed with the neck yokes of his team, swearing sulkily at the motorman the while. A messenger boy got back at him, in the opinion of the front platform, by hailing him as Jack Johnson, the hope of the dark race. The teamster responded with some dirty language. It was a bad, hot day for tempers. Georgia had time during the delay to become interested in a little drama which was then being enacted directly across the street from her. Its impelling power seemed to be a dead white horse which lay on the soft sticky asphalt, surrounded by a fringe of men and boys who stared quietly at a little pool of blood that came from a round hole above the animal's eye. The horse's mate stood stolidly in harness, hitched still to his wagon. She wondered if now he would have to pull it home alone. A man with a note book pushed through the crowd. He was evidently in authority of some sort. He asked a little boy something and the boy turned and pointed toward an alley entrance cat-a-corner from where he stood. Then a big man with a whip in his hand, a leather strap around his waist and a union button in his cap, probably the driver of the dead horse, threw his cap on the ground and stamped his foot, shook his fist at the boy and turned his back on the man with the note book and refused to answer his questions. She couldn't understand it at all. It seemed very unreasonable. Then a street car bound the other way rolled up and came to a stop between her and the white horse. Mason Stevens sat on the seat precisely opposite hers, so near that they could have shaken hands if the two grilled iron screens had not been in the way. She noticed that his jaw fell open, like a dead person's. She heard her conductor and the other conductor jerk simultaneously the go-ahead signals and the cars, quickly getting up speed, went in different directions. She did not turn her head, but she could feel the moment when he flipped onto the back platform. Then she heard him come up the aisle, breathing heavily from his run. The seat beside her had become vacant and she had placed her paper package of white goods on it. Now she took it into her lap and crossed her arms over it. He sat down. "How do you do!" he said. "How do you do?" They both stared straight ahead, not daring at first to look at each other. "It's--quite a while since we--saw each other," she ventured after a long pause. "Yes, quite a while, but--" he stopped. "But what!" "I don't know." Then Georgia, first to regain control of herself, laughed, breaking the tension. "What are you doing here!" she asked. "Where have you come from and where are you going!" "I got in from New York this morning and I'm going home--that is, to Kansas City, this evening. Had to see Cleever here." "Is everything going well with you!" "Yes, that is--yes." "Business good!" "Fine." "Happy!" "Oh, yes--are you!" "Oh, yes," she said, then added "very." They paused. "Don't let me keep you if you have business," she suggested. "I haven't," he answered. He thought that never in his life had he seen her look so ill, but doubted how to speak of it. "You got all over your typhoid, of course," was the way he put it. "Oh, yes, completely." She read him as usual, and saw what was in his mind, that her appearance had shocked him. "Oh, don't look at me that way, Mason," she exclaimed suddenly; "I know I've gone off a lot, but don't rub it in." "You're nothing of the sort. You are a bit fagged out, that's all." "Yes," she said, "a bit fagged. Besides, I'm a staid, settled-down old thing--and you, perhaps you're married by this time. Are you?" "No." "Engaged, then!" She spoke casually, but there was a beating at her heart. "Not even that." She pressed the button for the car to stop. She had a morbid hope that she might still keep her secret from him. But when he helped her off the car and they started to walk toward her home, she saw it in his eyes. "You understand now?" she faltered. "Yes." They walked a hundred steps in silence. "Tell me one thing, Georgia," he said, "you _are happy_?" "Yes," she answered firmly. "That's all I care about." When they reached her door he gave her the package of white goods which he had been carrying. "Georgia," he said, as they shook hands good-bye, "remember this--if you ever need me, I'll come." "What do you mean by that?" "I mean if you ever need me I'll come--from anywhere." She looked down at her ungainly figure in wonderment. "Surely you don't mean that now. I'm--I'm so ridiculous." His voice choked. "God bless and keep you. God bless and keep you always, my dearest," he said, then went away. She walked slowly and heavily up to the third flight, carrying her burden. When she opened the door with her latchkey she found her mother in blue gingham apron, cleaning Mr. Kane's room. Mrs. Talbot paused in her operations. "Well," she vouchsafed, "Jim has turned up--just after you left. He's asleep in your room." "Drunk?" asked Georgia. "Of course," said Mrs. Talbot, emptying her carpet sweeper. XXVII THE NAPHTHALINE RIVER And oh, of all tortures That torture the worst, The terrible, terrible torture of thirst For the naphthaline river Of Passion accurst. --Poe. Jim was a dipsomaniac, not a villain. His vice made no one else so abysmally wretched as it made himself. After each spree he descended into the deep hell of remorse. He thought of pistols, razors and the lake. Would not everyone he cared for be the better for his disappearance? Was it not decenter to die than to live on, a reeking beast, a stenchful sewer for whiskey? Then as his long enduring body began once more patiently to expel the poison he had thrust into it, he slowly cheered up. He wouldn't kill himself, he would swear off forever and ever, so help him God, amen. In a few days he was completely reassured, and not a little proud of his evident self-control. He bragged of it casually. He was Pharisaical. He pitied drinking men. "No," he would say, raising a deprecating hand when invited to smile with them, "I've cut it out for good. I don't like it, and," laughing, "it don't like me. I've had enough in my day to keep up my batting average for the rest of my life, and enough is sufficiency. A little ginger ale for mine, thank you." And the best of it was that the whiskey didn't seem to tempt him any more. It was almost too easy, this being good. Nothing to it, if a fellow simply made up his mind. Old Col. E. E. Morse had certainly stampeded him the other morning when he was getting over his headache. He smiled a trifle wryly. Yes, he'd actually gone so far as to contemplate suicide, which was a great sin, to avoid getting full, which was a less one--and now here he was, never feeling better in his life and not touching a drop. The old colonel certainly did make a goat of a fellow. He had acted more like a boy than a grown-up man. The blood curdling oaths he'd taken with eyes and hands raised to heaven, by his mother's soul and his hope of meeting her again. The memory of his hysterical state somewhat embarrassed him. Some drank and some didn't; just as some had blue eyes and some brown. Bismarck and Grant, for instance, drank. It was foolish on the face of it to suppose that those giants among men were in the habit of lying awake nights, agonizing over the question of a glass of beer or two with their evening meal. That wouldn't show they were strong, but weak. At this point he dropped from his vocabulary the word "drunk," with its essentially ugly sound, and substituted "loaded," which is pleasanter, then "jagged," which is pleasanter still, especially if one humorously places the accent on the final _ed_. A further alteration in his barroom terminology made it stewed, soused, plastered, anointed, all lit up, sprung, ossified. When a periodical gets around again to the point of calling intoxication by pet names his next spiflication is not very far ahead of him. In gradually divesting itself of the hideous and demonic character which he was wont to ascribe to it in the first moments of his passionate remorse after a debauch, alcohol achieved the necessary preliminary work preparatory to his next one. The curious thing was that he always realized in the heat of a new resolution precisely how the next attack would presently begin against him. "Never again," he would say to himself, "never again, Jim Connor, if you're worth the powder to blow you to hell. _Never again_, understand! Never mind about George Washington and Grover Cleveland. _You quit_. Don't you care if the doctors say it's a food. It isn't a food for you. _Leave it alone or die_. It's been your steady enemy since you got into long pants. Hate it." But in spite of efforts that were sometimes gallant he could not keep his hate hot. The further he got from his last spree, the less horrible and more amusing it seemed in retrospection. The furiously emotional character of his resolution gradually cooled off and lost its driving power. Only near the end of a period of abstinence did alcohol make a direct assault upon his body, and even then in skillful disguise. His digestion went back on him. He would conscientiously seek to fend off his misery by pills, powders, salts, extracts, soda and charcoal tablets, pepsin gum, by giving up smoking, coffee, dessert, by hot water before meals and brisk walks; but he adopted these measures dispiritedly. A still small voice had begun to whisper that they wouldn't do and that only one thing would. If that one thing were taken privately just before supper, say downtown where the crowd wasn't around to kid him for seeming backsliding and if it were immediately followed by half a teaspoonful of ground coffee from the receptacle made and provided for such contingencies, Georgia would be neither the worse nor the wiser and he would get his appetite back. "Mind," said the small voice, "_just one_." Why of course, he quickly agreed with himself, just one. That was all he needed. He didn't want the stuff for its own sake. He got no pleasure out of it. In fact he rather disliked the taste of it. But purely and simply for medicine, as a last resort. Hadn't he already tried every other damn thing on the market? Usually he escaped detection the first day or two and went to bed at night triumphant and respectable, his secret locked successfully in his breast, excitedly convinced that at last he had learned to drink like a gentleman. Presently he sensed the need of a more exact definition. How many drinks did a gentleman take a day? Two or three, or even more on special occasions? Was getting wet or cold a special occasion? What was a "drink" anyway--two fingers, three, or a whiskey-glassful? How much beer equaled how much spirits? Wasn't liquor mixed with seltzer less harmful to the lining of the stomach than the same amount taken straight? It ought to be, for a highball, according to test, averaged no more alcohol than the light wines of France and Italy, and as was well known, a drunken man was seldom seen over there. This being indisputable, might not one increase one's prescribed allowance of whiskey if one diluted it conscientiously? He never tired of these and similar questions. They fascinated him and centered his consciousness. His mind revolved around the whiskey proposition like a satellite around its principal. He might hate, loathe, abominate whiskey, or pooh-pooh it, or compromise with it, or succumb to it. But he thought of it most of the time, endlessly readjusting his relations with it, like an old man in the power of a harlot. Sometimes he would admit that there was much to be said against the cumulative effect of a drink every day. Twenty-four hours was hardly long enough to get wholly rid of the last one before you put the next one in on top of it. Would it not, possibly, be more advantageous to one's system, for instance, to get a slight skate on Saturday night, nothing serious, a mere jolly, harmless bun, and cut it out altogether for the rest of the week, than to go against it daily? This suggestion usually presented itself early on Saturday evening, after he had got a good start. After a little argument pro and con, the pros won. The pros always won without exception, yet Jim never once neglected to go through the form of argument. It was astonishing with what perfect regularity he repeated time after time the same mental sequence in his circlings around whiskey. He did not necessarily lose his job at each spree. He was not the explosive type of drunkard. He managed sometimes to drag himself wearily through the motions of work in the day time, slipping out every hour or two, on some excuse, to "baby it along." But from night to night his drunkenness would deepen until at last, with his nerves shattered and money gone, he stumbled home to his women folk to be nursed, to threaten suicide, while they telephoned lies to his employer, to take his solemn pledge, and to begin his cycle over again. Four times during his wife's second pregnancy he made the complete circle. She put up with his lapses more humbly than ever before in their married life. Each time that he renewed his pledge her sustaining hope returned that he would keep it this time, until at least the baby was born and she was well enough to return to work. Then she wouldn't be afraid any more. Disencumbered, her strength restored, she would be wholly able to take care of herself and her child. She could earn two livings. She knew precisely how to go about it. There was nothing haphazard in her plans. Either she would promptly find another first class secretarial position or else she would go into business on her own hook, get a small room about eight feet by eight, at $1.50 or $1.75 a square foot, in a big office building and put on the door G. CONNOR STENOGRAPHER--COURT REPORTER NOTARY PUBLIC She could see it in her mind's eye. It looked fine. But it was several months off yet, slow months of discomfort, culminating in hours of the acutest agony a human being can suffer and live. She knew. She had been through it once already. But she would never go through it again, after this time. Never. They might say what they liked about race suicide, this was the last for her. In the meantime she must keep Jim as straight as possible and get all she could out of him. For presently there would be some heavy bills to pay. She kissed and flattered him, and went through his pockets at night, racing the bartenders for his money. Wasn't a business woman a big fool, she often asked herself, to get in this fix for a man she didn't love? The Church--the Church took a pretty theoretical view of some things. XXVIII ALBERT TALBOT CONNOR When her grandson was eight days old, Mrs. Talbot took him to be baptized. Georgia, not yet out of bed, protested against the precipitancy, but her mother was armored in shining faith and prevailed. "You know your baby's sickly," she explained, "and not doing well. We cannot afford to take any chances--in case anything happened." So she dressed up the mite in his best white lace, and herself in her best black silk and sailed off to church in a closed carriage. He was named Albert Talbot. Until he was brought back to her, Georgia felt savagely that there was something ridiculously primitive, something almost grotesque in the proceeding. To take her baby from her, she could hear him crying all down stairs, to a church a mile away, to be breathed on by a priest and touched with spittle and anointed with oil and wetted with water--how could such things make her perfect babe more perfect! Why should this naïve physical rite send her son to Paradise if he died; and more especially why should the lack of it bar him out of Paradise forever? It was not fair to put such mighty conditions upon him. He was only a baby. When young Albert was returned to her arms and her breast, she forgot her grievance. Anyway, he was on the safe side of baptism now. It couldn't do him any harm and it might do him an eternal and supreme good. It was better to take no chances with the supernatural. She asked the doctor when she could wean him. "I am behind in my bills, you know," she explained, "especially yours, doctor. I'd better get to work." "I can't conscientiously advise you to do anything of the sort," he answered. "But why not? Most babies are put on a bottle nowadays." "This one is a delicate little fellow--not five pounds at birth. You want him to get strong--mother's milk is the best medicine." "That settles it," she said slowly. "How long will it be? Six months?" "Yes, six months anyway, perhaps more--perhaps a year. It depends on how he does. I won't disguise it from you--he's worried me once or twice." A year! She didn't know a child was ever nursed a year. A year more of humbleness to Jim, of asking money from her brother, now called big Al, of fear that Mr. Kane might get annoyed and leave, of contriving and skimping and bill dodging. Another year of "womanly" womanhood, clinging to males for support. The doctor saw her disappointment. "It's your sex' share of the world's work, you know," he said, "your duty to society." "I have a baby and we're poor. If I'd had none, we'd be well off this moment," she said sharply. "If I really have done a duty to society why does society punish me for it?" "I don't know," said the doctor. He came rather frequently to the flat at this time, partly on the baby's account, partly on Mrs. Talbot's. The river of life in the elder woman was becoming sluggish; rheumatism crippled her. The doctor veiled his explanation. "Synovial infusion," he called it, "but," he added reassuringly, "pericarditis is not in the least to be apprehended. I will stake my reputation on that." Which gave her new heart. The rivulet of life in the child trickled uncertainly, obstinately refusing to increase. "Hmm," he muttered once, "microcephalic." "What does that mean?" Georgia asked with quick suspicion. "It means that he has a rather small head," smiled the doctor, "but then he is a rather small boy." "Yes, he is tiny, isn't he?" said the mother pressing him to her soft, distended breast. "Little one--little one of mine." She looked at the doctor proudly. "He knows me," she said, "don't you think so?" "Of course he does," he answered, and she knew that nothing else which had ever been or ever would be really mattered. Whenever the doctor came to the flat he found time to tarry in the midst of his busy life of many patients and small fees for a chat with Georgia. He was a happy, crinkled, red faced, blue-gilled little man, who inevitably suggested outdoors, though he wasn't there much, for he drove a closed electric runabout. He always meant some day to write a novel, a true novel, something on the order of "The Old Wives' Tale," showing people as they really were. He thought he had the necessary information. He had seen all sorts of folks come and go for thirty years. But he never seemed to get around to the actual writing. He was so pressed for time. Georgia Connor, nicely disguised, would be a good character for his book. Change the color of her hair, for instance, put a couple of inches on her height, make her something else but a stenographer, say a cashier--and neither she nor anybody else would suspect. So he had many little talks with his model, getting material. Besides, he liked her. She was intelligent, she never bored him and she always had her own point of view, and half the time an unexpected one. She had been twice educated--first by the convent and next by the loop. One could never tell which side of her was going to speak next. Eventually one side would prevail. Which it would be depended on the baby question. If she had enough of them tugging at her skirts she'd revert to type. He knew. He'd seen 'em come and go for thirty years. Persistent mothers don't aviate. When little Al was a month old, shortly after midnight on the thirteenth of November--she will never forget the day--Georgia awoke suddenly as if a pistol had been shot off by her ear. The baby was wailing in a feeble little singsong. She looked at the clock. It wanted half an hour to his feeding time. She walked slowly up and down the room, whispering to her son. Sometimes she stopped at the open window to look out into the cool pleasant night, but nothing she knew how to do made any difference. He kept steadily on with his heart-breaking little singsong wail. At one precisely, before the single stroke of the small clock had stopped ringing through the room, she gave him breast. He took a little, then gasped and choked and "spit it up" again. She waited ten minutes as she had been instructed, then gave him a very little--not more than three or four swallows. He rejected it. After twenty minutes she tried again. The warm, white life-giving fluid ran over his lips and chin, and trickled down his neck, wetting the neckband and sleeve of his thin woolen garment. But he kept a little down she thought. And then after awhile a little more. She did not wish him to be as far from her as his crib, so he dozed off in the crook of her elbow, while she took short naps a few minutes at a time until dawn. At five she took in Mr. Kane's coffee. This duty now accrued to her, because the doctor had warned Mrs. Talbot not to overdo. When Georgia returned with her empty tray she dropped into a chair for just a moment's rest. An hour later when she awoke she found little Al lying rigid on the bed, his small fists clenched, his eyes rolled up until only the whites could be seen through his half-closed lids, his under lip sucked in between his gums. She was not sure that he breathed. Hastily she ran to the bathroom and turned the hot water tap on full. Hastily she ran back, and took the child in her arms. She knocked at the door of big Al's room. "Al," she cried, "Al, Al, Al--wake up." "What--eh, oh, what?" came a sleepy voice. "Telephone the doctor, quick, quick, quick, the baby is--Oh, hurry, Al." She ran to the bathroom and put her hand in the running stream from the faucet. Tepid, only tepid. Would it never get warm? If God ever wanted anything more from her--in the way of belief or devotion--let Him make this water hot, now, on the instant. Her wet hand and her dry one moved rapidly together at her baby's clothes, unpinning the safety pins. Even in her haste she put them in her mouth mechanically, one after another. Once more she plunged her hand into the water. Warmer now, yes, almost warm enough. She put the round rubber stopper in the escape. She lowered the stiff and naked little child into the tub, one hand behind his neck, the other held to shelter his face from the spray of the hot water which was pouring from the open tap. Al stood at the door in bare feet, his trousers slipped on over his nightshirt. "D'you want the doctor to come right away?" he asked. "Do you mean to say you haven't gone yet?" she said piteously without turning her head as she knelt by the bathtub, "of course, right away--now, this instant." The young fellow departed on the run for the janitor's telephone in the basement. The water had become quite hot, but still the child did not relax. Georgia tried to undo one tiny fist with her forefinger, but she felt with agony of heart that it would not unclench easily. She sensed a touch on her shoulder, then saw another older hand put in the water behind the child's head. "No, mother, you shan't," she said, "it is my baby, leave him to me." "Shall I ask Father Hervey to come?" said Mrs. Talbot. Georgia was too intent to answer. Mrs. Talbot walked slowly down stairs, stiff with rheumatism. She met Al coming up, four steps at a time. "How is he?" he shouted as he passed. She turned to explain, but he vanished out of sight around the turn at the landing, not waiting for an answer. When she got Father Hervey on the telephone he asked if she was speaking of the young child he had baptized a month or so back. "Three weeks come Tuesday," she said. "Ah, then he has been baptized. That, at least, is well." "But Father, if you could come, and pray, maybe it would save his life here, too." He hesitated but a moment. Truly there was no priestly obligation to visit sick infants who had already been baptized, whenever their grandparents became excited. To baptize dying babies or to administer the last rites to those who had reached the age of reason was his duty. This was not. But if he did it, it would be an act of human kindness. "I will come," he said over the wire, "at once." XXIX THE DOCTOR TALKS When the doctor arrived the convulsion had passed. Little Al was lying in his crib, asleep, breathing easily, the snarls in his nerves unravelled. Georgia explained what had happened. "You did just the right thing," said the physician. "Doctor," she asked slowly, "will he ever be well?" "What do you mean by well?" "I mean, when he grows up will he be as strong--and--and bright as other men?" "That is impossible to answer, Mrs. Connor, without the gift of prophecy." "Don't put me off," said she staring at him, "tell me the truth. I have a right to know." "I should first have to have a little more definite knowledge of his antecedents, his family history. Is there anything which might explain--" "Not on our side of the family," Mrs. Talbot interrupted quickly, "they're clean people, every one." "His father," said Georgia, "is a drunkard and the son of a drunkard." "In that case it is possible, mind you I only say possible, that he has inherited a--a nervous tendency." "Inherited, ah, I knew. There was something in me that warned me steadily not to go back to him. Something that made me shudder to think of it. But at last I gave in, because everyone in the world seemed in a conspiracy to make me." "Yes," the doctor answered drily, "we run into such histories frequently." "But," she pleaded suppliantly, as if he had the power to do or undo, "surely my baby can grow out of this--nervous tendency. Tell me he can grow out of it. With the right care and training, surely he can grow out of it." He placed his hand on her shoulder, and honesty seemed to her to be patent and apparent in his voice. "Yes," he said, "it is possible, it is probable. I have seen many a mother make her child over with love." "Ah, that's all I want," she gave a happy little sigh, "for I can do what they have done." There was a tap at the door. Mrs. Talbot opened it and Father Hervey came in. "Oh," she said, "Father, the baby's well again. I shouldn't have bothered you." "I'm glad for once it's an occasion for rejoicing," he said quietly. "Good morning, doctor." "Good morning, Father. Was the poor fellow long after I left?" "About half an hour." "Were you at a deathbed last night, you two?" asked Georgia. "Yes, Georgia, we were," said the priest. "It seems somehow strange," she pondered, "that you two, so different, should be called together at the end." "Oh, it happens often enough," explained the doctor. "Poor people. They want to keep them here a little longer, and the priest to bid them Godspeed in case they've got to go." "It must be terrible," reflected Mrs. Talbot, "to die without a priest." "Yes," answered the doctor, "Catholics have the best of us there. They always go hopefully, and they're the only ones that do. I've sometimes wished that I could accept the faith, but--" he shook his head slowly. "Why can't you?" said Georgia quickly. Father Hervey smiled. He and the doctor were trusted friends. There was no poaching on each other's preserves. "Do you honestly believe in a future life?" she asked again, staring at the man of science with her peculiar little wide-eyed stare. "Yes, I believe all of us here will probably have it--except perhaps Father Hervey." "Well, doctor," said Mrs. Talbot most indignantly, "I must say you've no call to be disrespectful. If any of us is certain to have it, it's him." "Oh, that's one of his little jokes," he said, "he means the rest of you'll likely leave children behind you to be carrying your living eyes and nose and mouth about the earth long after the headstones are atop of you--and that's denied me." "If they'd been denied me," its chronic undertone of humor momentarily leaving the doctor's voice, "or were taken now--I'd just as soon quit. I've four; one's learning to crawl, one to walk, one to read and the oldest," he made a vain effort to conceal his pride in such a son, "Oh--he's a boy. He can work his mother as easy as grease with a sore throat story whenever he wants to stay out of school. Pretty clever, eh, with a doctor right in the family? He'll be a great bunco steerer--or a great lawyer--some day and make his name--he's a junior--bristle in the headlines of 1950. That's the real life after death--our blood lives on, we don't." "Yes," said Georgia tenderly glancing at the crib, "our blood lives on, it lives on." "When a little shop girl takes the boat over to St. Joe," said the medical man, folding his arms, well started on his favorite eugenics, "she may be preparing a blend that will endure as long as the race--ten thousand or one hundred thousand years, while any of the descendants are alive. Marriage--true marriage, where children grow up and beget others--outlasts death by centuries, perhaps eons." He paused to let it sink in. "Whatever else there may be in addition," he said, bowing slightly in the direction of the priest, "this much is certain true--in our children we find immortality." "Yes," said Georgia softly, looking at the crib where lay her child, "in our children there is immortality. My sweet little lamb," she whispered, going to her child, "my sweet--" her voice changed suddenly, growing very harsh. "Doctor," she said, "come here." The doctor placed his ear to the child's heart, then took his stethoscope from his satchel to listen for the least fluttering. He heard none. As he straightened up again, she saw his answer in his face. "Is--he--dead!" she asked. "Yes." He spoke to the priest. "I will come this afternoon, in case I can be of any use," he whispered, and quietly withdrew. The priest sprinkled the small dead body with holy water. Mrs. Talbot and Al fell on their knees, but Georgia stood. She was unable to kneel to a God who had done that. The priest prayed, half murmuring. Then in a louder voice he said, "As for me, Thou hast received me because of mine innocence." "And hast set me before Thy face forever," muttered Mrs. Talbot, who knew the response. Al was silent, for he was not sure of the words. Georgia stood dumb, watching her child with her wide-eyed little stare. "The Lord be with thee--" came the deep musical voice of the priest. "And with thy spirit," muttered Mrs. Talbot. There was a moment of silence, then came a knock at the door. It was repeated twice, imperatively. Then the door was opened from outside and Carl Schroeder, president of the Fortieth Ward Club, entered, half carrying and half guiding Jim Connor, who was stupidly drunk. Schroeder placed Jim in a chair and quickly slunk out. Jim swayed an instant in the chair, trying to hold his balance, then fell forward out of it. His hand struck the crib as he lay inert, unknowing, obscene. Georgia looked at him for an instant, she began to giggle, to laugh. Her laughter grew louder and louder. It came in waves, each wilder and higher than the last. [Illustration: Georgia Laughed.] It was long before they could quiet her. XXX FRANKLAND & CONNOR Georgia and Jim Connor parted at the cemetery gate after the burial of their son. They have not, since then, seen each other. Exclusive of her debt to Stevens, Georgia owed more than two hundred dollars, nearly half of which was for the funeral. Mrs. Talbot had ordered eight carriages. Big Al behaved very well, turning in everything beyond carfare and lunch money for several weeks. Then he relaxed to the extent of five bright neckties and a pair of pointed patent leathers. But on the whole he was a very good boy, and Georgia told him so. Her own wardrobe was in no condition for effective job-hunting. "Old faithful," the tan suit, once the pride of her heart and the queen of her closet, had dated beyond hope. Time had robbed the tan, not so much of substance as of essence, of smartness and caste. The models of Paris hadn't worn a six yard pleated skirt for three years. So Georgia couldn't either, without proclaiming to her kind that she was either green or broke. As for the blue serge, that was out of the question too, because it was simply worn out. She bought a black broadcloth coat and skirt that fitted wonderfully, as if they had been made for her, and a half dozen ruffled shirt waists. To these she added a severe black toque and low laced shoes. The total outlay ran to eighty-five dollars, but she considered it essentially a business investment, as no doubt it was. She was pale, and her face had grown thin, which made her big eyes seem bigger. Her heavy black hair worn low on her forehead accentuated her pallor. She was what is frequently termed "interesting looking." At all events many people on the street were interested enough to turn and look again. She clung to the idea of an office of her own some day, but because of the impracticability of starting business with a capital of five hundred dollars less than nothing, concluded to begin as assistant to some already established stenographer. Thus, she could learn the game, make acquaintances, get a following. Then when it was time to take the plunge, it would be simple enough to circularize this trade and switch at least part of it over to herself from her former employer. She went up and down in many elevators and through many ground-glass doors in her hunt for work. One prosperous-looking, buxom, extreme blonde of thirty-eight, dressed a coquettish twenty-five, paid her a compliment. "Listen," she said in a stage whisper, motioning to Georgia with a stubby forefinger to bend her head nearer, "listen. I wouldn't hire you for a dollar a week." She laughed merrily. "You're too much of a doll-baby yourself." Georgia noted that the blonde lady's two assistants, hammering away in the dark inside corners of the room, were without menace, sallow and flat-chested. In a small suite in the newest, highest-rented building in town, she found three tall, thin young men, apparently brothers. They were all very busy, writing by touch, their eyes fixed steadily on their notes. She spoke to the nearest, but his flying fingers did not even pause for her. "No women," he replied succinctly. Many of the public stenographers had no employes; few more than one. Georgia found several places where they had just hired a girl. Apparently it was nowhere near so easy to find a place where they had just fired one. It was getting discouraging. But her luck turned at the sign of L. Frankland, room 1241, the Sixth National Building. 1241 had a single narrow window which gave upon eight hundred others in the tall rectangular court. The room was not strategically desirable because there was another stenographic office between it and the elevator bank. Georgia felt sure she had seen L. Frankland before, but couldn't just place her. "Do you need help? I am an expert stenographer." That was her formula. "Yes, I do," came the wholly surprising answer. Georgia promptly sat down. "But," continued L. Frankland, "I cannot afford to pay for it." Georgia rose. "In that case," she said stiffly, "good-day." "Why not," suggested L. Frankland, "go in with me as partner?" "Partner--that would be fine--but I haven't any money." "Neither have I--and I'll be turned out of here a week from to-morrow if I haven't twenty-seven fifty by then. That's how much I'm behind." She smiled cheerfully. Then Georgia remembered her. She was the nice old maid who had given her the seat in the car on the day she had met Mason. "What's your rent!" "Twenty-seven fifty." "What arrangements do you want to make?" "Fifty-fifty on everything." "I'll take a chance," said Georgia, removing her hat. "But," she exclaimed, looking around, "why you've only got one machine--and a double keyboard at that. I'm not used to them." "We can rent another for a dollar a week--any sort you want," L. Frankland suggested with ready resource. "We can't get it here to-day. Let's see, Miss, Miss ah--what is your name?" They told each other. "Miss Frankland, are you a fast writer?" "No," she answered, composedly rattling off a few test lines--"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party." It was true enough. She was slow. "How much work do you get?" "Four ten-cent letters and a short brief this morning. That's all to-day." "What's the idea now--wait?" asked Georgia, taking off her coat and leaning against the solitary desk. "Yep--like young lawyers." "No use our both waiting with one machine between us. I tell you what--you go over to the Standard Company, on Wabash Avenue, and order a number four sent here, then traipse around to some other public offices--you can find plenty in the back of the telephone book--and see if they won't sublet us some of their work at half rates. I'll hold down the place, and get the hang of this keyboard while you're gone." L. Frankland saluted. "Aye, aye, ma'am," said she. "I likewise do now promote you to be captain of this brig." When she returned she brought a sheaf, the manuscript of a drama. Georgia knocked it out in twenty-four hours, in triplicate, and took it back to the firm of origin in the Opera House Block. "Z. & Z.--Theatrical Typists" was the sign on the door. The room was small, and thick with smoke. There must have been a dozen men in it, all important-looking. Mr. Zingmeister, the senior partner, a fat young Hebrew, received Georgia's work. "Rotten," he said, glancing through it. "Why?" she asked sharply. "Wrong spacing. A script plays a minute to the page if typed right. How could anyone tell how long this would play?" He held it up between two fingers, contemptuously. "Give me a sample act for a guide and I'll do it over for nothing." He hesitated. "Too many novices in this profession already," he grumbled. "My time's up," said she, reaching for her work. "If you don't want to pay me for it, I'll take it back." He laid his hand on it. "Come, come," said she, impatiently. "Oh, keep your shirt on while I think it over," he answered. "All right, do it over again and do it right," he sighed plaintively, "and space it this way. Speeches solid. Drop two for character's name. Capitalize them--caps, understand?--with red underlines. Also red underline the business, so." He demonstrated with a spoiled page from the waste basket. "That'll give you the code, understand," he concluded, shoving it in her hand. "Now shake a foot." The important-looking beings in the room apparently neither saw nor heard. Save for the clouds of smoke that issued from them they might have been graven. When she got back to 1241 she was bursting with an idea. "How long does your lease run, Miss Frankland?" she asked. "Until May first." "You can't get out of it!" "No, I signed up." "Well, if we don't pay our rent they'll put us out." It proved to be a prophecy. Frankland & Connor found a bigger room for sixteen a month in the theatrical district, which for some unexplained reason converges from three sides upon the Court House. They described themselves as "experts in theatrical work," and presently they were. They learned to give a dramatic criticism with each receipted bill. The play they had just transcribed was deeply moving, especially in the big scene, or one long roar, sure-fire. Playwrights were as thick as July blackberries and the firm prospered. Occasionally Georgia sat up most of the night with a scared author and an impatient stage director, altering the script of a play after it had flivvered on the opening, and getting out new parts for it. At first, she and L. Frankland found themselves forced into overtime almost every evening, because the theatrical people were invariably in such a raging hurry to get their work done, vast enterprises apparently hanging upon the rapid, if not the immediate, completion thereof. With growing experience, however, the firm learned to promise impossibilities for the sake of peace, but not to attempt them. When the orders came in faster than they could handle them, Frankland & Connor jobbed them out again at fifty per cent. Georgia had three or four private stenographers on her list who were glad to pick up a little pin money on their employers' machines after hours. Perhaps in hours, too. She didn't know or care. At the end of a twelvemonth she had paid off her debts, except the one to Mason, on which she sent interest. She was also able to employ a woman to help her mother with the housework two afternoons a week. Early in the firm's second year of existence, L. Frankland came in one Monday morning with a long face, a rare thing for her. "I want to make a change," she said, "I'm not satisfied. I've been thinking it over. This isn't an impulse." "A change?" "Yes." Georgia was genuinely distressed, because she had grown very fond of Miss Frankland. There was no more cheerful person in the world, she thought, than this dry, twinkling old maid. And she had hoped her feeling was returned. Real friendships were too rare to be tossed away so suddenly. "I'm not satisfied," repeated L. Frankland, "because the present deal between us isn't fair. You've pulled the big half of the load ever since we started--so, give me a third interest instead of a half--I'd be better pleased, honest Injun, hope to die." "Oh, shut up, Frank, and get to work. I've no time for foolishness," responded Georgia, much relieved. "Fifty-fifty it started and fifty-fifty it sticks." Which it did. XXXI THE STODGY MAN Mrs. Talbot was beginning to break. Her bones ached barometrically before rain; she noticed that after she had been on her feet a great deal, on cleaning days for instance, her ankles began to puff. Also she learned to avoid short breath by taking the stairs more easily. Sometimes she grew dizzy and little black specks floated before her eyes. Fortunately she regarded her symptoms as a series of disconnected, unrelated phenomena. The heart was one thing, the liver another, rheumatism a third. Swollen joints were still different. That came from overdoing. For different diseases different remedies. She took her medicine very conscientiously, treating her symptoms, not her annodomini. She thought of her children as young, not of herself as old. She wasn't sixty yet, just the time when people learn at last to profit by experience--the same age as most of the people she knew, Mrs. Conway, for instance, and Mrs. Schweppe, Mrs. Keough and Mrs. Cochrane. The last two had recently been the victims of a sad and striking coincidence. They had lost their husbands within twenty-four hours of each other, in the preceding February, on the seventh and eighth of the month as Mrs. Talbot recalled it, anyway it was of a Tuesday and Wednesday. Dan Keough, to be sure, had been ailing some time, but it would have been a day's journey to find a heartier looking man than Jerry Cochrane, up to the very day he came home coughing. And a week after, they laid him out. They say a green Christmas makes a fat churchyard, and goodness knows last winter proved it. It had been very wet and sloppy, hardly any snow at all until January, and then it didn't last long. She had followed the hearse to Calvary one, two, three, four times in a twelvemonth. The climate had lately changed for the worse. She could remember when all the Christmases were white and didn't use to kill people. The first time that Georgia suggested giving up housekeeping, mama vehemently repudiated the idea. The third time she agreed to it, but on one sole condition, namely, that the change was to be only temporary. They were to take another flat as soon as she got to feeling more like herself again. The family moved to the parlor floor of a long and narrow gray block house farther north. What had been designed, in 1880, for the front parlor was now the living room of the suite. Georgia put a piano in it, and Al a rack of bulldog pipes and a row of steins, like college men. The back parlor became Mrs. Talbot's room, the dining room Georgia's, and Al took the small one in the rear, overlooking the back yard. The meals were served, 7 to 8:30, 1 to 2, 6 to 7, in the half-basement immediately under the front parlor. They were standardized--corned beef Thursday, fish Friday, roast beef Saturday, chicken Sunday. Mrs. Talbot and her children had their own private table, and they gave her the best seat with her back to the window, as titular head of the family. They had an arrangement that the young folks were never to be away from supper at the same time and leave mama alone. Georgia saw no reason why she should not now and then accept an invitation from some man or other to dine and go to the theatre, provided she had sized him up for a decent sort. She always made the condition, though, that she would provide the theatre seats, which she usually managed to do inexpensively, owing to her acquaintance with advance men and agents in a rush to get their Sunday flimsies written. At intervals she received an avowal which flattered her sufficiently, if made well. And she had plenty of hints that she might evoke a declaration without any serious difficulty. But she had very little trouble in keeping men where she wanted them, for she had the faculty of knowing what they were going to think before they thought it. A young, pink-cheeked, country lawyer lately moved in from Iowa, and famous there as a stump orator, gave her the biggest surprise. She liked him; she appreciated he had real brains. But on the very first evening that they ever went anywhere together, when he was driving her home from the play, he became suddenly and violently obsessed with the idea that a taxicab was liberty hall. After a few seconds' struggle, she rapped on the window, made the chauffeur stop, and went home in the car after a few pat words to her host. There came from him next morning by special messenger sixteen closely and cleverly written pages, which started with a graceful and humble expression of contrition and ended with an offer of marriage. The messenger was to wait an answer. He didn't have to wait long. She at once accepted the apology and rejected the proposal. She admitted frankly that as a rule she liked men much better than women (except, of course, L. Frankland). They had a bigger outlook. But she didn't want and wouldn't have even the mildest sort of a flirtation. She thought it would be cheap and cowardly and absurd, after murdering real love as she had done, to philander across its grave. When at last she was able to pay back Mason's loan in full, with accumulated interest, she was surprised to find how little happier it made her. For nearly three years she had lived with her debt on the assumption that it was life's most insupportable burden. Now that it was settled, she began to realize that she had entertained the angel of success in disguise. The debt had been her most dynamic inspiration. The man she loved had borrowed to lend to her. Quite possibly in so doing he had saved her life. In return she had broken her promise to marry him. Immediately he had begun to prosper and she to fall on evil days. Pride could not be more humiliated. To save her face before him, it was absolutely indispensable for her to prosper also in her turn, by her own will and skill; to pay him off to the last accumulated mill of interest; to prove to him that she had done as well without him as he had done without her; to make him know that she was very, very happy and content. When her hopes came true and she enlarged her quarters and took a third assistant and opened a checking account, and alternated Saturdays off with L. Frankland; when her hopes came true they weren't hopes any more, but history. For anyone with the gambler's instinct, and Georgia had more than a little of it, yesterday is a dull affair compared with to-morrow. It gives one a mighty respectable feeling to have the receiving teller smile and say, "What--you--again?" when you come to his window. Then he writes a new total in your book in purple ink and you peek at it once or twice on your way back to the office. Yes, success was very sweet and creditable. It did away with a heap of worry around the first of the month; any woman is happier for not having to make last year's suit do; and people are certainly more polite. Money's the oil of life. But it isn't life. If you're only thirty, and the dollar's all you want, or get--Georgia leaned back in her pivot chair and stretched her arms above her head and yawned, ho-ho-hum, the stodgy man will get you if you don't watch out. "Frank," she asked, "do you ever feel like an automaton that's been wound up and has to keep going till it runs down!" "Sure. Everybody does, now and then." "But what's the use? what's the answer?" continued Georgia querulously. L. Frankland looked over her spectacles and her shoulder, her hands still on the keyboard. "The answer," she said vivaciously, "for a woman is a man; for a man the answer is a woman. Whoever made us knew what he was about, and don't you forget it. What's your idea?" "Let's hear yours out first." "Once when I was a young thing," said L. Frankland, swinging around, "I waited for an hour in my wedding dress, but--he never came. He was killed on the way to the church by a runaway horse. I decided to remain true to his memory. I had other chances afterwards, when I was still a young thing," she smiled whimsically, "but I refused them. I'm sorry now." "Frank, you remember my telling you about that money I owed to the man I--spoke about?" "Yes." "And how it worried me?" "Yes." "Well, I paid it off last week, and I've been miserable ever since." "That's because you felt you were snapping the last thread. Is he still in love with you?" "No. At least I don't see how he could be. It's been so long, and the last time he saw me," Georgia laughed unhappily, "I wasn't very lovely." "If he saw you now, young lady, he'd have nothing to complain of," was the cheerful retort. "By the way, has he sent you a receipt for the money?" "No, not yet." "The best sign in the world," said L. Frankland, slapping her knee excitedly. "Why?" "Because it shows he's thinking about it. It's not routine to him. Georgia, if you have another chance given you, don't be afraid to take life in your own hands," the old maid said gently, "if you know that you love him." "I have always known that, since the beginning," the young woman answered slowly, "but even if by a miracle he still--does, it is too late now. I've taken three of the best years of my life away from him and wasted them, thrown them away. You know how it is with us women. We have only twenty years or so when men really want us. More than half of mine are gone. It wouldn't be fair to go to him now. He should marry a young girl. He is a young man." "You've wasted a lot of time already, and to make up for it you'll waste the rest. That's supreme logic. And yet," with heavy sarcasm, "man says we can't reason." Georgia smiled at her friend's earnestness. "Oh, I'm in the rut, Frank. What's the use of talking any more about me? Come on to lunch. The girls," she nodded in the direction of the three employes in the outer office, "can hold the fort for an hour. There isn't much doing." When their meal was finished they matched for the check, and L. Frankland was stuck. "Do one thing anyway," she said as she swept up her change, minus a quarter, "get your divorce. Then you can marry him straight off, if he asks you again--and you change your mind. You wouldn't like to go through all that rigmarole under his eyes, while he was standing by, waiting." "No--I guess I won't bother. What's the use? I won't change my mind. Here I be and here I stay." "You're a big fool," responded L. Frankland. "That's what I think." XXXII REBELLION Georgia walked home to the boarding house that evening, as was her custom when the weather was fair. It was quite a tramp, three miles, but then the fresh air and exercise made one feel so well. Besides, if one wants to be sure of staying slim-- Mrs. Plew, the landlady, was standing on the front stoop when she arrived, talking of carving knives to an old-fashioned scissor-grinding man, the sort who advertise with a bell and a chant. "Good evening, Mrs. Connor." "Good evening, Mrs. Plew." "Lovely weather we're having." "Yes indeed, isn't it? My partner--she lives in Woodlawn--saw two robins this morning. The buds ought to be out pretty soon now." Mrs. Plew laughed. "The German bands are out already. That's the surest sign I know. Oh, Mrs. Connor," Georgia, who was on the top step turned, "there was a young man came to see you this afternoon. He waited nearly an hour. He didn't leave his name." "Did he say anything about coming back?" "No." "And he didn't leave his name?" "No." "What did he look like?" "Well, he was tall, blue clothes, black derby hat. He had on a blue tie with white dots. I don't know as I can describe him exactly. It was kind of dark in the hall and I didn't get a good look at him." Georgia paused with her hand on the knob of the living room door, as she heard talking within, her mother's uninflected murmuring and a musical masculine voice, deeper than Al's. It must be Father Hervey, patient man, who came regularly once a fortnight, nominally to confer with Mrs. Talbot as to the activities of the ladies' advisory board of the children's summer-camp school. But his visits were less for the summer school than for mama, to cheer her in her feeble loneliness. Georgia slipped back to her own room, by way of the hall. An instinct has been growing in her of recent months to avoid falling into talk with the priest. He was so sure and strong and dominating; and she wanted to think for herself. Al was whistling loudly in his back little cubicle, performing sartorial miracles before his square pine-framed mirror, with a tall collar that lapped in front and a very Princeton tie, orange and black, broad stripes. She smiled reminiscently, regretfully, as she stood in the shadow and watched his gay evolutions through the partly opened door. He had so very much ahead of him that was behind her. He had the spring. "Why such splendor?" she asked finally. "Oh, I didn't know you were there. Why," he explained, amazed that explanation was necessary, "to-night is the big night. Our Bachelor's Dance. Don't you remember you were invited--as chaperone. I'm on the committee." "Hope you have a good time. Who are you taking?" He colored defiantly. "Annie Traeger." "Oh-ho, I thought it was Delia Williamson that you--" "It was, but she got too gay, so I thought I'd teach her a lesson." "Poor Delia," sighed Georgia, mischievously. "Oh, I'll have a dance or two with her," Al promised, putting on his coat and giving his hair a last pat with the tips of his fingers. He departed with the trill of a mocking bird. He had been a famous whistler from childhood. Georgia tiptoed to the door of the living room. There was no sound. Father Hervey must have gone. She turned the knob and went in. "Good evening, my child," said the priest, rising courteously and extending his hand. "I was resting a moment, hoping you might be home." "Good evening, Father. Thank you so much." "Your mother," he lowered his voice, "isn't as strong as her friends might hope, I'm afraid. She just had a faint spell, and she's in there now, lying down. It quite worried me, Georgia." "Yes, sometimes I'm afraid she won't get better." "She has told me she wished to resign from the advisory board of our summer school. That shows how she thinks she is. You know how much interest she always took in the work as long as she was able." "Yes--poor mama." "It would be a great comfort to her if you would take her place." "Me!" exclaimed Georgia, startled. "Yes. She is very anxious to keep it in the family, as it were," he explained, smiling. "Let's see," asked Georgia slowly, "who's on that board?" "Mrs. Conway." "Mrs. Conway," she repeated, picking up a newspaper and writing on the margin. "Mrs. Keough, Mrs. Schweppe, Mrs. Cochrane." Georgia wrote on the newspaper after each name. "And mama," she added. She footed the total. "Those five women aggregate more than two hundred and fifty years," she bitterly exclaimed. "They're an advisory board, because they can only advise about life. They're past living it. And I--am just thirty. No, Father, I won't go on the board--yet." She was curiously resentful, as if she had received an insult. She walked quickly to the window and threw it open, looking out and turning her back to the priest until she might collect herself and control her strange agitation. "Very well," he answered gently, "I only hoped that it might please your mother." He took his hat in his hand and stood up. "Before I go," he said, "I think I should tell you that I have had news from your husband." He took a letter from his pocket and held it out toward her. "No--I won't read it, thank you." "He's on a farm in Iowa," the priest said, "I managed it. He's been doing hard work--and is much better." "Yes, he may raise himself up a little, and then just when people are beginning to hope for the hundredth time, he'll relapse and--wallow." "Yes, I am afraid sometimes he is hopeless." The despondency was plain in his voice. "He's quite hopeless. He's incurable. It's a disease; but it works slowly on him, like leprosy." "Do you think a drunkard is wholly to blame--for his malady!" "Oh," said Georgia, "I'm not sure that anyone's ever to blame for anything. It just happens, that's all." Mrs. Plew knocked and half opened the door. "That young man's back," she said, "shall I show him in?" Before Georgia could answer Stevens came into the room. Without greeting of any kind, in rapid, mechanical words, as if he had learned his piece by heart, he explained his abrupt coming. "I have received a business offer," he began, "which if I accept will take me away from America for a term of years. It is to superintend, on behalf of Mr. Silverman, the reorganization of certain life companies along modern American lines in South America. Headquarters, Rio de Janiero, Brazil. I have come for your advice, and your advice will govern. Shall I or shall I not accept the offer?" He stopped abruptly, looking at her with a harsh, almost savage expression, as he waited for her reply. "You know what I mean," he burst out. "Answer me yes or no." "You know Father Hervey, Mr. Stevens," she said coolly. "I think I have heard of you before, Mr. Stevens," the priest bowed slightly. "And I have heard of you," answered the young man bitterly. He turned to Georgia. "Answer me," he repeated, "yes or no." "If it is an advantageous offer from a business point of view," she said gently, "I think you should go, Mason." "That settles it," said he between his teeth. "You'd made it plain enough with your silence. I said I'd come when you sent for me. I waited and waited, but you never sent. Every single day I've looked in the mail hoping, and the only thing I got from you was--money. And when I found that Connor had left you, had been gone a year, I had a little hope again that--Oh, Georgia," he exclaimed in his wretchedness, "you did care for me once. Why did you stop?" "I haven't stopped, Mason, but--" she motioned toward the priest in his black and solemn garments, standing beside them like a stern guardian, "but--" she said, and her shoulders seemed to droop forward irresolutely, "I'm helpless." Stevens took a step toward Father Hervey and there was almost a threat in his gesture. "Don't you see," he said, his two fists clenched, "that if someone in the barroom had cracked Jim Connor over the head with a whiskey bottle during his last spree or if DTs had hit him five per cent harder afterwards--I could have her with your blessing--and we'd be happy--oh, so happy as we'd be, Georgia! It isn't as if I wanted to break up a home. The home's broken up already. Don't you see? And you're telling her she can't move out of the wreck. She's got to sit in the rubbish as long as the man who made it is able to make more." "Young man," the priest answered not unkindly, "will you listen for a moment to an old man? I believe that you are a decent sort--that your love for Georgia is honest--" "If there is any honesty in me," and Stevens' voice caught and broke. "Yours, I am afraid," Father Hervey went on, including them both in his words, "is an example of those rare and exceptional cases where at the first sight marriage and divorce would seem almost permissible--" "Yes," Stevens interrupted eagerly. "But those cases, too," continued the priest in his melodious, resonant, trained voice, "have been thoroughly contemplated and considered by the deep wisdom of the Church." He waited an instant, then pronounced sentence. "They must be sacrificed for the rest. For if a single exception were once made, others would inevitably follow; and just as a trickle through a dike becomes a stream, and the stream a torrent, so whole people would be inundated in a flood of bestiality. If Georgia is, as you say--in any sense deprived of her womanhood, it is for the sake of millions on millions of others, who while the Church can raise her voice--and that, my friend, will be while the world lasts--shall not be abandoned in their helplessness." But Stevens, who had not been listening to the priest's words as soon as he saw what conclusion they were coming to, clapped his hands softly together and smiled. "I have it," he said, "I have it at last. I will give Jim Connor a job in the Rio branch--with good pay, too--to drink himself to death on. Why not," he asked himself vehemently, as if he would convince himself, "that's practical." "It would be murder," the priest spoke in a voice of horror. "Not by the letter of the law--and that's what you're enforcing." "Of course I shall warn him." "My pay will talk louder," said Stevens, knowing that the drunkard is always on ticket-of-leave, "and he'll have all the time off he wants for aguardiente, stronger than whiskey, and cheaper. No white man can go against it for long in that climate." Georgia stood back, fascinated by the duel of the two men. "You must be mad, Stevens," said the priest with a note of fear in his voice, as if he realized that for the first time he was losing control of the situation. "I'm a grown man. No other man can say 'No' to me forever. If Connor's the one obstacle to our marriage--I'll remove it." The two men looked at each other with steady and increasing anger. The woman laid her hand upon her lover's shoulder. "I will get an absolute divorce, Mason," she said. "What is the meaning of that?" the priest asked, and his deep voice shook. "I could give you my soul, Father, but not his, too." Stevens took her hands in his and they stood together, separated by nearly the width of the room from the old priest. He turned his eyes from them as from an impious spectacle, and looked upward, his lips moving silently as if in prayer. When he spoke, there was new force in his voice, as if he had received help and strength. "Georgia," he spoke with conscious dignity, in the full authority of his office, "for fifteen hundred years your people whoever they were, artisans, farmers, lords and beggars, have belonged to our faith. The tradition is in your blood. You cannot cast it out. And as you grow older, and your blood cools, the fifteen hundred years will speak to you; you will regret your sin bitterly; and in the end you will leave him or you will die in fear." "No, Father," she said, slowly as if feeling for her words. "It is all much plainer now. God is not a secret from the common people. He talks to each of us direct, not roundabout through priests and books and churches. He has put His purpose straight into our natures. He doesn't deal with us at second hand. And I begin to see His meaning--He gave us life to live--and to make again." "According to His ordinance." "Yes," her answer came quickly and boldly, "according to his ordinance, written in the heart of every woman--that the sin of sins for her is to live with a man in hate. When she does that--street girl or wife--she's much the same. Oh, there's many and many a degradation blessed by the wedding ring. That's against His plan, or why should He warn us so! Women--at least common, average women like me--were put here to love, not just to submit. If you forbid us to love in honor, you forbid us to live in honor. And the life God gave me, I will use and not refuse." "My child! If you do not repent in time--" the suffering was plain in the old man's voice. [Illustration: Rebellion.] "I cannot repent that I have become myself." "Then," he slowly uttered the inexorable words, "you cannot receive absolution." "Father," she answered, "the only thing I am sorry about, and I am sorrier than you know, is that it will make you, personally so unhappy!" For a few seconds there was neither movement nor sound in the room. Then the old priest, with trembling hands and bent shoulders, passed from the room, and forever from Georgia's sight. XXXIII THE APE Father Hervey went slowly and cautiously down the front steps, holding to the rail with his right hand and putting his left foot forward for each separate step. He did not remember being so weary and discouraged for many years. He walked back to the parish house, his head slightly bowed, his hands clasped behind him, unnoting, or nodding slightly and in silence to those who greeted him. Among all the backslidings that he could remember in his long pastorate there had been few, perhaps none, that had saddened him more than this one. He had grieved for many a vain and foolish sheep that had strayed away into the briers of sin, not to be found again, until, wounded and wasted, it stumbled home to die. For such is the nature of sheep and poor souls. But Georgia's case was not within that parable. She was not weak or will-less. Her sin had been with cold deliberation, in open, defiant rebellion against the Church, knowing the price of what she did. Very well, let her pay it. His old lips drew together in a thin bloodless line, as in his mind he condemned her in reprisal for her few years of rebellious happiness to eternal and infinite woe. God was merciful, but also he was just, and that was justice. Yet the priest could not persist in the mood. Presently, in spite of himself he softened toward her. That she--the little child whom he had held in his arms and breathed upon at the baptismal font, had come at last to this-- It was the age, this wicked age of atheism, he told himself fiercely, that had corrupted her. She could not be altogether, altogether to blame that the current had been too swift for her to swim against. Perhaps the gentle Savior would yet touch her spirit with His mercy and guide her at last to the foot of His throne. Doubt poisoned the very air she breathed; it broke out like boils and deep sores in the newspapers and books, symptoms of the corruption beneath; it was strident in the crass levity of the talk and slang of the street. It could not be escaped. America, save for the Catholic fifteen million, doubted. The faithful stood like an island rising out of the waters of agnosticism. Was it strange that where the waves beat hardest, some of the sand was washed away? Fifty years ago when he was a young man there had arisen in the world the great anti-Christ, who had been more harmful than Luther--Darwin, the monkey man. The Protestant churches, as ever uninspired, had first fought, then compromised with him. They tried to swallow and digest Darwinism. But Darwinism had digested them. The anthropoid ape had shaken the throne of Luther's Jehovan God. The greater anti-Christ had consumed the lesser. The Church alone stood firm. She had admitted no orang-outangs to her communion table, and now her policy was justified by its fruits. Her faithful remained the only Christians in Christendom. _Ecclesia Depopulata_, ran the old prophecy, the Church deserted. And the time was near upon them for the fulfillment of the words. France, Italy, Portugal, and even Spain, were in revolution against the Keys of Peter. The evil days were coming, _Ecclesia Depopulata_. But a new age of faith was to follow, so also it was prophesied. The deathless Church could not die. Once again she was to rule a pious world in might, majesty, dominion and power--and her sway would endure until the last day. He fell upon his knees in his bare ascetic study and presently arose refreshed, a fighting veteran in the army that will make no peace but a victor's. XXXIV WHICH BEGINS ANOTHER STORY MAKES DIVORCE SPEED RECORD Judge Peebles Sets New Pace for Untying Nuptial Knots. Cupid went down for the count in the courtroom of Circuit Judge James M. Peebles when five couples were legally separated yesterday afternoon between 3 and 4 o'clock--about ten minutes for each case. This is said to establish a new record in Cook county for rapid-fire divorce. The cases, which were uncontested, were as follows: Rachel Sieglinde vs. Max Sieglinde; abandonment. Harmon A. Darroch vs. Lottie Darroch; infidelity. Mary Stiles vs. Jonathan Stiles; drunkenness. Georgia Connor vs. James Connor; drunkenness. Sarah Bush vs. Oscar Bush; drunkenness and cruelty. None of the defendants appearing, the decrees were entered by default. Georgia read the item twice and smiled bitterly. So her divorce was one of the "rapid fire" variety! They said it had taken ten minutes. She knew it had taken ten years. And Bush, Darroch, those other people--might they not also have walked in Gethsemane? Was this what the papers meant by their humorous accounts of "divorce mills"? She had received an especially vivid impression of Mr. Darroch and never would forget him. His case had come just before her own. He had spoken in a nasal, penetrating voice and she heard plainly every word when he testified. He was a short middle-aged man whose young wife, after ruining him by her extravagance, had run away with a tall traveling salesman. Even after that Mr. Darroch had offered to forgive her and take her back. But she wouldn't come. Then finally he divorced her, as the reporter put it, with record-breaking speed. The day after her decree was granted Georgia Talbot Connor and Mason Stevens went by automobile to Crown Point, Indiana, where, with Albert Talbot and Leila Frankland as witnesses, they were presently assured by a justice of the peace that they now were man and wife. She was compelled to cross the state line for the ceremony because the laws of Illinois forbade her remarriage within a year; and she thought that she had waited long enough, the state legislature to the contrary notwithstanding. The party of four, when they returned to Chicago had a bridal dinner in a private room, with white ribbons and cake. When it was finished Georgia kissed L. Frankland for the second time in their lives. The first time was in the automobile on the way back from Crown Point. "Good-bye, Al," she said to her brother. "You must come to see us in Kansas City soon." "Yes, indeed," said Stevens. "I certainly will," promised Al. "And mama," she spoke a little wistfully, "tell her we'd like her to come too if she would. Tell her, Al." "Yes, all right." "I'll send you something every week for her. Maybe, I'm not sure, maybe I'll keep on working." "Maybe you won't," Mason interjected with conjugal promptitude. "Don't be too sure," she laughed, "and anyway, if you don't behave nicely I can always go back to L. Frankland." When the man and his wife were alone in their room he returned to the moment of their betrothal. "Dearest," he said, "when the priest went out and left us--" "Yes." "I felt almost as if he were trying to lay a curse on us." "Yes, that was the meaning of it." "When he said you couldn't receive absolution." "Yes, our--their teaching is that without absolution a soul in sin is damned eternally." "And you will never be afraid?" he asked, almost fearful of his wonderful new happiness. She pressed her husband's hand against her breast, so that he felt the strong and steady beating of her heart. "No," she answered him, "I will never be afraid. For I believe that God will understand everything." THE END. 
5951	----	RENO THE HOLY BIBLE I quote the following: "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it came to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. "And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife." From the fifth book of Moses, Deuteronomy, Chapter XXIV. [Illustration: Lilyan Stratton] A BOOK OF SHORT STORIES AND INFORMATION BY LILYAN STRATTON Author of "The Wife's Lesson" "Feminine Philosophy" Etc. Etc. SCENIC VIEWS by VAN-NOY INTERSTATE COMPANY OF SAN FRANCISCO 1921 Lilyan Stratton Corbin I dedicate this book to all good husbands and to my own in particular..... L.S. CHAPTER Part 1. Social and Industrial Life Part 2. Reno Tragedies Part 3. Reno Romance Part 4. Reno Comedies Part 5. Reno and its People Part 6. Nevada Divorce Laws Part 7. Sons of the Sagebrush I do not guarantee the statements and information contained in this book, but they are taken from sources which I believe to be accurate. LILYAN STRATTON. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Washoe County Court House, Reno, Nevada One of the Court Rooms in Famous Reno Court House Palisades Canyon Showing Humbolt River Lovers' Leap Blue Canyon Truckee River Canyon Off to Donner Lake Amid the Snow at Truckee, California Donner Lake Truckee River Dam Honeywood of the Wingfield Stables Views of Reno's Public Play Grounds University of Nevada General View of Reno, Looking N. W. Wingfield Home The Truckee from Riverside Drive Looking North of Virginia Street Glenbrook Cave Rock Lake Tahoe Lobby of the Golden Hotel Mt. Rose School Reno National Bank Building Interior of Reno National Bank Elk's Home Y. M. C. A. View of Nevada University Campus Facsimile of Round Trip Ticket from New York to San Francisco Renoites as Seen by a Reno Cartoonist Riverside Hotel, Reno, Nevada Captain J. P. Donnelly, Former State Police Superintendent Senator H. Walter Huskey Governor Emmett D. Boyle of Nevada Governor's Mansion at Carson City Frank Golden, Jr. INTRODUCTORY The magic little word "Reno" makes a smile creep over the face of anyone who hears it mentioned, as a rule in recognition of the one thing for which it is known. I have smiled myself with the rest of the world in the past; in the future my smile will have a different meaning. I have lived in Reno. I have felt the pulse of its secret soul, and have learned to understand its deeper meaning, and it is therefore that I am able to uphold my intimate conviction in an attempt to change the world's opinion of Reno and its laws from ridicule to admiration. And if my book has any reason for being, it lies in this attempt. Those whom fate forces to visit "the big little city on the Truckee River" will find in this book a great deal of carefully gathered information for which before my pilgrimage I would have been so thankful, and with the aid of which so much worry and heartache would have been saved. This book is not written with any intention whatsoever to propagate divorce; I want this clearly and conclusively understood, so that there can never be any misunderstanding. To me there are three things sacred above all others: the first is motherhood; the second marriage; the third is the home. He or she who promiscuously profanes these sacred things is unworthy of them and must pay the severest penalty. My book is meant to be an appeal for happiness and health; an appeal for peaceful homes, happy and contented husbands, happy wives and mothers of happy, healthy and well bred children. After all, unhappy and discontented human beings are unfit physically and morally to produce the best work and the finest healthiest children. The children are the forthcoming bearers of the world's burdens and responsibilities. To them belongs the future, and already too many social problems of the present age are due to the unhygienic and illogical mating of the human male and female. The divorce courts should only be appealed to as a last resort, to free some tortured soul from a life of misery, caused by humiliation, shame and hatred, the very essence of all evil. When the sacred state of matrimony becomes so profaned and degraded that it soils everything it comes in contact with; when even the minds of our children are poisoned and distorted by the atmosphere, and the last ray of hope has vanished, only then the hour has struck to ask the law for justice; to appeal to the judge for redemption for humanity's sake. Why have I written my book in parts, and why has each part its individual interest and charm? Because readers may choose any part or parts that especially interest them. If they are not interested in the book for the information it gives, they will always find the short stories and tales of Reno interesting and amusing. Part 1. Social and Industrial Life: Is written to acquaint the intended colonist or visitor with every phase of social and industrial life. This is very important to know for many reasons. First the law requires that one go to Reno for some other reason than divorce. So you may go there for instance to become a student; it is a healthful and therefore a fine place for study. The well equipped university gives ample opportunity; and if one is taking one's children, which often happens, it is well to know about the schools. It is well to have some other purpose in view when joining the Reno Divorce Colony, and to carry that purpose into effect. Also if one is not blessed with over much of the goods of this world, one can earn one's way while waiting. This part contains much information that is practical, useful, essential and interesting. The industries are very important. There are plenty of pleasant positions to be had; plenty of opportunity for business, as you will learn by reading this part; also many sorts of amusement, so that no one need be bored. It is best to keep busy; busy people seldom get lonely; lonely people often are too much in quest of companionship.... Moral, don't play with fire; and if you do get into trouble don't blame it on the "altitude." Reno's altitude has been somewhat abused by colonists in the past; loneliness is much more to blame for the unhappy state of mind so often experienced out there, and loneliness is mostly the result of idleness. Part 2. Reno Tragedies: Consists of a few short tales of people who have been members of the divorce colony. Whilst the comedy part describes characters who find life is all froth, who skim its surface, so to speak, those portrayed in this chapter are people who take existence seriously; who want to drain the cup of life to its last dregs! If one listens as one reads one can almost hear the steady heart throbs..... These are not exactly blue law stories, but as many great authors have taken the liberty of depicting things just as they found them in real life, my humble self has availed itself of the same prerogative. These tragic little tales of the divorce colony should be dear to you as they are to me; they are most appealing sketches in life..... Part 3. Reno Romance: Relates the story of a fair Virginian whose youthful mistake is righted through the Reno divorce courts. The fair heroine is reunited with her girlhood sweetheart, and they live happily ever after; a short story depicting another type of Reno divorce case. "Let us begin dear love where we left off, Tie up the broken threads of that old dream.".... Part 4. Reno Comedies: Has been written to give the reader, whether a would-be colonist or not, a glimpse of the humorous side of the occurrences in this much-talked-of little city. Happiness after all is not a question of the place, because "the city of happiness is in the state of mind." However, any person, place or thing that has not its funny side becomes rather dull, to say the least, and likewise the mind that cannot appreciate the humorous side. This part consists of a few plain tales from the humorous side of the lives of departed celebrities of the divorce colony, and should be amusing and entertaining to any reader. Naturally fictitious names have been used. Part 5. Reno and Its People: Is meant to give prospective residents or visitors an insight as to just what kind of place they may expect to find, and to dispel any fears that the accommodations would not be comfortable. It will acquaint newcomers with the kind of men and women one finds oneself associated with in daily life, which to strangers in a strange land, is most important, I think. Newly arrived colonists, perhaps lonely and heartsick, will not find it quite so hard to go to a strange country, if they know in advance that the people are generous, big hearted and sympathetic; progressive and interested in all things that stand for the betterment of humanity. Part 6. Nevada Divorce Laws: Gives the reader any and all information required to secure a divorce in Nevada; and besides it contains the opinion of many great thinkers on the question of divorce, coupled with a plea for universal divorce law. One should find this an interesting chapter, whether a prospective colonist or not; its contents, however, are absolutely indispensable for anyone anticipating divorce in Nevada, and consequently ought to be read most carefully; more especially so, as for the actual legal advice in this part, I am greatly indebted to one of Reno's ablest lawyers, Senator H. Walter Huskey. Part 7. Sons of the Sagebrush: A few short biographical sketches of men I met, read about and heard about during my stay in Reno. It is well to know the kind of men we may come in contact with, both in business and in a social way; most certainly it is well to know the type of men we may have to come in contact with in a business way. For that reason I have written a few little sketches of these men. Among them are lawyers, judges, mining men, hotel men, politicians and pioneers. Aside from giving some useful information this part is interesting for its character studies and its amusing little incidents. LILYAN STRATTON. November, 1921. [Illustration: WASHOE COUNTY COURT HOUSE. RENO NEVADA] PART 1 SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL LIFE Dull in Reno? Why no; how can one be bored in this delightful "big little city," when here you will find a concentration of all the most picturesque phases of life--a conglomeration of gaiety and tragedy, humor and drama, frivolity and learning! What a fertile field for the psychologist and sociologist. It is wonderfully interesting not always to turn to books only, with their rigid, lifeless rules and laws; books can only convey to us the things someone else has learned! Those who desire a real understanding of human nature's handiwork must work and play on human mountains, in human fields and human swamps. Being an ardent student of life and character, I have found Reno highly interesting and amusing, and dear reader, if you will do me the honor to accompany me through the following pages of this chapter, I am sure you too will be interested. First we will visit the restaurants, cafes and hotels which are teeming with the vigor of life, vibrant and pulsating; and if you know and understand human relationship, or wish to, then you may overflow with sympathy, laugh in conviviality, or perhaps weep in the privacy of your own room for what is and for what might have been.... The fashionable restaurant is not a large pretentious place, elaborately decorated, but there is something in the atmosphere which is not tangible but which we yet can sense. Who are all these people? and if each told his own story, how tremendously interesting it might be! Unconsciously, you know that the atmosphere is distinctive; that things are different; so many interesting personalities grouped into such a small place is something most unusual. Over in the corner is a New York banker; his strong, handsome face marked with character lines and crowned with white hair: the stamp of long years of struggle in the financial world. See, he is smiling across the table at his companion, and his face is almost boyish as he chats and laughs. Such a companion! I wonder what fate has sent her to cheer the desert city; a modern Cleopatra, even more beautiful than she of Egypt: a radiant beauty, this dark-eyed queen of the Orient; ruby lips and teeth of matched pearls; hair black as midnight, and fires smoldering in dreamy eyes as if in pools of mystery... Bored in Reno? How could one be? This is only a cafe such as you might visit in any other city. One might see the same banker and the same Oriental beauty in a New York cafe. But there they would not be nearly so interesting; for such people to be in Reno means either a domestic comedy, tragedy or romance. Each one is a puzzle, and one finds oneself intent upon divining the mystery embodied in these personalities, as they come and go like shadows on a screen. Now the waiter comes: there is something unusual about him also; one can't help noticing his big, powerful form as he bends over the table to take the order; he is a New York chauffeur working his way free from a nagging wife, so that he may marry a popular society belle. You can forgive her, can't you, for admiring his handsome physique; a Greek god he is in spite of his Irish brogue and bad ear for grammar.... But then she probably does not hear much of that, and won't if he is wise. That little woman over there with the carmine lips and black eyes, she is the wife of a Methodist minister and is here for the "cure" of course, like the rest. She is going to hitch her matrimonial wagon to a vaudeville "star" by way of a change! "The very day I get my decree," she told me. There comes an interesting couple. I think the woman is Moroccan. Doesn't she look a barbarous relic with those immense rings in her ears? You feel that there should be one strung through her nose, too. There is a story abroad that she is the consort of a well known millionaire of Chicago; after several unsuccessful attempts on her part at stabbing him, he is giving half his fortune in alimony to get rid of her. The other night at Ricks' she threw a plate at a man because for five minutes he paid more attention to her woman friend than to her.... A dangerous playmate, methinks! That charming little lady in a symphony of blue, surrounded by a company of admiring friends, is Mme. Alice, a Broadway opera star; her story is very interesting indeed. No, I dare not tell; it is sufficient that you should know that she is a gentle, sweet little mother, although she looks a mere girl herself. She has a voice of unusual quality and dramatic sweetness. I have had the pleasure of hearing her sing at several concerts which she gave for charity. She is extremely generous in that direction and always draws a packed house. She got her divorce while I was out there and passed on like the other shadows on the screen. The last I saw of her was when she was singing the "Battle Cry of Freedom" in the Hotel Golden lobby, as her decree had been granted. Her face was just radiantly happy as she repeated several times: "I am free, I am free.".... At a table, back in the shadows of the palms by the piano, sits another interesting little lady from gay New York. She is also a singer of note and the wife of a well known author. She has taken a mansion on the banks of the Truckee, and brought along her retinue of servants. Of course she is beautiful, the golden haired, blue eyed type, with a complexion like tinted rose leaves.... Who is that lone man at the table just opposite? Ah! that bearded gentleman with light hair, wearing a black tie; an artist-looking sort of chap? That is a world-famous portrait painter. I had the pleasure of meeting him and his beautiful bride at Cannes, Southern France, some years ago. Yes, he does look rather forlorn; there is a pathetic droop to his mouth. No, he is not here for a divorce; one of the exceptions. He arrived a few days ago from Tangiers; it was while there that he received by registered post his wife's summons in her divorce suit, and he took the first ship back to America to fight the suit and to try to win back his beautiful wife, who, by the way, is also a talented artist. But alas! Cupid is a stubborn little beggar; though blind as a bat and not very large, yet he has a will of his own, and won't be driven or led.... Though the man seated over there is apparently very interesting and is internationally known as a great artist and an exhibitor in the Royal Academy in London; though he must have loved his wife very much, to have traveled half way around the world from the northern coast of Africa to Reno, in order to try and bring about a reconciliation, still the beautiful wife has gone on with her divorce, which was finally granted, though bitterly contested! And so there he sits as though lingering over the grave of a great love. Bow down, ye Gods, and weep.... The hotels also are filled with interesting types; the pretty girl at the news-stand today suddenly disappeared! Yes, she got her divorce! In her place is the homeliest man you have even seen, and all the traveling men look disgusted and buy their papers from the newsboys in the street. The hotel stenographer has also taken her departure, and now we see a dainty blonde in place of the statuesque brunette. The brunette has gotten her divorce and has gone to San Francisco to marry a millionaire sportsman, so I hear. The beautiful lady with the sparkling black eyes, between that little boy and girl, is a violinist. They have the rooms over mine, and for several months I have heard the patter of tiny feet and childish free laughter; but I fear the mother does not laugh so much. I have been told that she lives in constant fear lest her husband come and take the children from her. In this case, I am told, there is a chance of reconciliation. I hope so with all my heart! The tall, handsome old gentleman speaking to her is a retired civil engineer; very wealthy I believe. He lived twenty-one years with his first wife who died; after some time he married again, but after one year of married life he is here for the "cure." He is an enthusiastic sportsman, a good horseman and very popular. The Court House is the next place of interest to study character, to find interesting personalities and new types. You may go over any day and watch some poor victim's case being tried. If one is doing time one self, it is a very good way to obtain inside information, though it is a bit like being at your own hanging..... not exactly, of course, but enough to make the anticipation peculiarly gruesome. Each searching question of the judge seems to draw the noose around the plaintiff's neck tighter and tighter; you will hold your breath: a word, and the six months' exile and more are all in vain..... Not until the final decision, "Judgment for the plaintiff," is pronounced do you heave a sigh of relief. [Illustration: ONE OF THE COURT ROOMS IN FAMOUS RENO COURT HOUSE] Each day the divorce mill grinds the steady grist, and it is there that one has a splendid opportunity of studying personality and character. The wife who is nagged and abused; the one who is obliged to support herself and her children; the one who has outgrown her charms; the luxurious beauty who has spent her husband's fortune and is preparing to spend another in the same way; the wife who has made a mistake and found the right man at the wrong time; the wife whose husband another woman has taken; the wife of a drunkard or a gambler. The husband who is nagged; the husband whose wife is a spendthrift; the husband whose wife wins prizes at bridge and neglects her home; the husband whose wife has deserted him when he needed her most.... Naturally the stories you hear from the "aspirants" are always plausible; and so they go by, the endless passing show. Next we will go to dinner; we will dine at the Hotel Golden tonight; they have just opened their new restaurant, and the food is excellent; so is the cabaret. There are two beautiful girls, new arrivals, who sing very well indeed; one is tall and fair and more than usually interesting. This beautiful girl sings with wonderful expression; a sweet tender passion, expressing at the same time a great love and a world of sympathy .... It is said that out of suffering comes sympathy, out of pain tenderness.... This girl might well burst into fame on the heart throbs of her songs; they are the voice of a soul which has suffered much, loved much and has become all tenderness and all sweetness. Another interesting type whose story will be told at the Court House in a few months. There is a violinist who is exceptional also; he draws the bow over his violin, and low, sweet strains of music come floating to our ears; then the music will suddenly change to the wild ecstasy of joy which will compel you to notice the player. When you look at him, you will know that his soul is not there; your heartstrings will quiver until the music stops; then you will suddenly find that you have forgotten to eat, and that the food is cold.... But you ponder on: you wonder who that artist-dreamer is; he must have been leading his love through poppy fields, kissing away from starving lips love's hunger, while he played.... Yes, he is here for the "cure." After dinner we will go to the theatre. There are several theatres, but the large productions usually go to the Majestic, which is modern in every respect and has seating capacity of more than one thousand. All the New York productions that make the Pacific Coast Tour play Reno. All the eminent musicians such as Kreisler, Misha Elman, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and others, stop here on their Western tour, and their concerts are always well attended and tremendously appreciated. Tonight we will hear the Boston Symphony.... You are surprised at the large ultra-fashionable audience; there are as many in evening dress as one would expect to see at a New York first night; here one can't tell the members of the Divorce Colony from the residents. They are an aggregation of well dressed, appreciative people, anxious to enjoy the evening's wonderful music. Dancing is the next in line of indoor amusements; most of the hotels and restaurants have splendid floors and excellent dance music. At Wilsonian Hall there is a beautiful ball room, and those who wish to learn the latest steps will find an expert teacher in Mrs. Wilson who takes special trips to New York every season in order to become acquainted with the very latest dances. Her classes and receptions are patronized by the best people, both of the Colony and City, and are very interesting and popular. Those who take their pleasure in life a little more seriously will find an excellently equipped public library, thanks to Mr. Carnegie. There is also a very fine collection of books at the University of Nevada, which is conveniently located in a very beautiful part of the city. I should like to pay a passing tribute to the University staff. They are as fine a set of professors as one could possibly desire to have. I had an opportunity of attending some of the lectures during the Summer Course and found them exceedingly interesting and well delivered. Of special interest to women would be the Century Club, a well organized body of the best women in the city. They are interested in home economics, child welfare and improvement of social conditions generally. They own their own spacious club house, which has a large assembly hall, lecture room, banquet hall, service kitchen and large grounds facing the river, with tennis courts and other conveniences for entertaining. There is also a Suffragette Club which is known as the Civic League, and is also instrumental in promoting public welfare. The Mothers' Clubs or Associations too, are better developed than those in many a large city; a fact which rather agreeably surprised me and proves how decidedly progressive are the women of the West. And now we will have a look round and visit the out-of-door attractions, which are many and varied. In summer, there is Belle Isle, a beautiful little amusement park on the banks of the Truckee, almost in the center of the city and the scene of many jolly carnivals. The city park is also a pretty little spot, and here are given many festivals and concerts for the Red Cross and other charitable organizations. It is a delightful place to spend a summer afternoon or evening. The gay music, flying colors and beautifully tinted light among the branches of the trees are all an inspiration to free happiness. There too it is delightful to sit when all is quiet, and watch the moonlight on the snow-capped mountains, while the warm summer breeze stirs the leaves above and the distant rushing waters of the Truckee float out to you like fairy laughter on the summer air. [Illustration: PALISADES CANYON SHOWING HUMBOLT RIVER] Nature has many delightful surprises in store for the new arrival in Reno; when you have strayed out to Moana Hot Springs and have taken a refreshing dip, you will agree with me. I thought the water was heated until a friend explained that it came gushing out of the ground almost boiling hot and had to be cooled off for the pools. There had been Jeffries' quarters during his training for the Jeffries-Johnson fight. From Moana one can see Steamboat Springs; these springs can be seen from a distance of several miles, owing to the fact that they send a steady stream of hot steam into the air, which spreads over an area of a mile or more; it is a strange sight to see this stream ascending into the clear atmosphere from the roaring regions below. The various hot springs to me are the most wonderful part of nature's loveliness. Here one may watch lonely colonists and native maidens dive and play in the water whilst listening to their laughter. An early morning dip in the pool and a swift canter back to town will start your blood tingling; clear the city-cramped lungs and fill them with Nevada's fresh invigorating air. It will make one feel like a two year old and add ten years to one's life..... Ricks, the famous road house, and training quarters of Jack Johnson, the black champion prize fighter, is within walking distance of Reno. Its chicken dinners have helped to make the place famous. There are private rooms for those who seek seclusion, a splendid dance floor, and I am told that here the mechanical pianos grind out waltzes, one steps and fox trots, whilst glasses clink far into the night and parties of colonists make merry. Farther on is Laughton Hot Springs, another popular bathing resort. This place is mostly patronized by motorists and equestrians and is more fortunate than the others in its location. The little rustic hotel is built in the cosiest nook, just at the bend of the river; the fine old trees bend their graceful branches over the rushing waters in which the majestic mountains reflect their wondrous beauty. Here one may obtain private dressing rooms and bathing pools, or a party of two or more may have a number of dressings rooms opening onto the same pool. The water in the pools changes every fifteen minutes. I am told there is a continuous inflow and overflow, which empties out into the river. What a wonderful spot to build a modern structure with beautiful steam rooms, modern dressing rooms and marble bathing pools, in place of the crude board sheds which rather spoil the natural beauty of this place of many charms, where one may bathe in the hot springs pool, fish in the river, wine, dine and dance! What more could the soul in exile wish for? If you wish for seclusion, seek a tranquil spot on the banks of the river; dream to your heart's content, watch the silvery moonbeams play among the branches and sparkle on the river, and listen to the sighing of the summer wind. I know of no place near New York endowed with so many of nature's charms. Fishing in the river is good, but fishing in the mountain brooks and streams is much better, and one can take a pack-horse, ride up over the mountains and discover places which look as though they dropped right out of a picture book. Rubicon Springs is such a place; a quaint old hunting and fishing camp, where a few nature lovers hide away from; the world every summer and really "rough it." I caught there some of the finest mountain trout I have even seen; I also saw a party of men bring in a very fine deer one afternoon, a feat which caused quite a little excitement among the guests. This isolated spot cannot be reached by automobile, it being about fifteen miles from the main road over a rugged mountain trail. There is certainly everything to be wished for in the way of out-of- door amusements in and near Reno. There besides motoring, riding, fishing, hunting, swimming and dancing are the tennis courts and the golf links. The Golf Club gives many interesting tournaments and is one of the social centers in summer for the elite, as is the race track where one may meet the world and its wife. The track is good and the horses as fine as one can see anywhere, all of which helps to render this sport most fascinating. [Illustration: LOVER'S LEAP BLUE CANYON] Talking of horses reminds me of one of my never-to-be-forgotten rides to Laughton Springs. Those who have never seen a Nevada sunset, while riding over the Sierras at the close of day, can have no conception of its wondrous beauty. I will try to tell you about it. We started one evening at a brisk canter over the swelling foot hills along the Truckee River, whence we could see Mt. Rose lift its stately head, clothed in royal robes of crimson and purple which half revealed and half concealed its snow-capped peaks and pine-clad grandeur. As we rode over the mountains which tower above the rivers and the greenest valleys, a storm came up; storm clouds dark and threatening, the most imposing I have ever seen. In a short while the storm passed over and the last rays of the setting sun shone on three mountain peaks across the river and valley. It is impossible to imagine a more exquisite display of colors. I think it must have been like the light that shines on a happy mother's face when she holds her love-child in her arms. And then a rainbow encircled the illuminated mountains, like a beautiful filmy halo about the head of the Madonna, while beneath lay the Truckee; its water like silvery veins and sparkling gems, glistening and trembling in the golden light. And stretching away to the north and east lay the sagebrush plains, wrapped in the silence of a dying day and illuminated with the sheen of God's promise of a to- morrow to come..... A wonderful picture: Nature's own masterpiece! The motor trips are the next in line of outdoor amusements and these trips will afford one the splendid opportunity of seeing, apart from the unexcelled scenery, the numerous places of interest. First, Carson City, the Capital; the State Penitentiary and the Government Indian School, also the Indian homes and reservations; you will find them all interesting. Carson City was founded in 1858 and was named after Kit Carson, the famous scout. The capital is thirty miles from Reno, fourteen miles from Lake Tahoe and twenty-two from Virginia City. [Illustration: TRUCKEE RIVER CANYON] The elevation of Virginia City is six thousand feet above sea level. There you may don skin garments and go down three thousand feet in a mine on the famous Comstock Lode. The heat in some of the mines is so intense it is impossible to stand it for more than a few minutes at a time. There is so much of interest in these famous old mining camps and in the strange freaks of nature. Here are the numerous hot springs and Pyramid Lake, an enormous body of water forty miles out in the desert, which possesses no apparent outlet although the Truckee flows into it. And apart from that, the development of agriculture and irrigation is interesting. I will try and describe some of my motor trips through Nevada and California. One fine Sunday we set out on an automobile trip to Virginia City over the great Gieger Grade, which has become so famous through the wonderful Comstock Lode from which over seven hundred millions in gold and silver have been extracted. The ride was most exciting, and the magnificent scenes unrolling themselves continuously upon each swerve round a sharp curve or a dangerous bend, just held us all enthralled. Often I was reminded of Switzerland, and then as I gazed, more and more enraptured by the delirious orgy of multi-colored hues, and looked at the precipitous ascent we had made; at the heights we had yet to climb, and at the undulating peaks that stood like an army of sentinels guarding us on every side, I forgot I was in the land of Nevada. I had drifted into an Arabian Night reverie, and not till the forty horse-power winged horse suddenly lost its equilibrium and gave a most ungainly lurch, not till then did I redescend to earth. While the incapacitated horse partook of first aid to the injured, I got out and gathered some of the prettiest little flowers I have ever seen; all the more marvelous because nature takes care of them in some mysterious way which we cannot understand, since rain is practically unknown in Nevada. There was the beautiful spotless desert lily; the delicate desert violet, the fascinating yellow blossom of the pungent native growth--the sagebrush--and many others. [Illustration: OFF TO DONNER LAKE picture shows a dogsled team] My next motor trip was from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara; there the scenery compares with that of Nevada as an exquisite water color compares to a grand old oil painting. We went spinning along over a perfect road from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, and I felt that America might well be proud of this wonderful state. Surely none other possesses such a variety of climate, or such a variety of beauty. Hardly do I dare attempt a description of all this magic scenery. It seemed a dream to me; just color everywhere. Green valleys and turquoise skies; snow-capped mountains and rosy sunsets. For many miles we wound round and round the mountain side, through orange groves, laden with golden fruit, tucked away in the emerald green foliage, and fruit orchards abounding with spring blossoms. And then we came to the Pacific Ocean which stretched far out into the infinite, reflecting the rose-colored sky just at sunset. The dream of it all is still with me. I could hardly realize that a week before I had been flying through the pure white sparkling snow in the same state; and yet, here I was only a few hours away.... One sojourning in Reno should not miss a trip through California while in the neighborhood of that glorious state. San Francisco is only a day's journey by rail, and the trip is truly worth while. Reno is not without its out-door winter sports; it has the advantage of being only thirty-six miles from Truckee, California. While flowers are blooming and birds singing their spring songs in Southern California, the Snow Queen reigns at Truckee in the mountains, six thousand feet above the sea. Here people from San Francisco and other large cities gather to indulge in winter sports, such as skiing, tobogganing and sleighing, and many professionals go there to display their art in skiing and skating; the Switzerland of the West, I would call it. It was all too fascinating and too beautiful: six feet of snow everywhere, and everything sparkling white in the sunshine. [Illustration: AMID THE SNOW AT TRUCKEE, CALIFORNIA illustration shows a dogsled team] Once I started out to see Donner Lake, which reposes between Summit, the highest point on this trip across the Great Divide, and Truckee. We were in a sleigh drawn by a team of huskies: real Alaskan dogs. I have ridden pretty much everything from a broomstick to a bronco, but this was my first experience with huskies. I thought it was going to be hard work for the dogs, but they frolicked about in the snow with their pink tongues out, showing all their teeth as though they were laughing in fiendish glee and enjoying every moment of it. Truckee is only about thirty-three miles from Reno by automobile, and the distance by train is thirty-six miles, so there should be no excuse for not visiting this American Switzerland. Another point of information which I discovered and think will interest you quite as much as it did me, was that most all the great moving picture companies go to Truckee to take their Alaskan scenes. And now whenever you see a beautiful arctic picture on the screen, you will realize that you are not looking at the frigid regions of Alaska, but at the glories of California. The Snow Queen knows, however, that when she tires of her realm of snow, a really, truly fairy land awaits her only a few hours distant, where she may play Fairy Queen and wander through fields of golden poppies, filling her arms with spring blooms, in beautiful Southern California. In Reno itself moonlight skating parties on the river and the University pond are popular also. Dull in Reno? Absurd! Nevada is necessarily a mining state. Apart from the $700,000,000 in gold and silver taken from the Comstock Lode, Nevada's mines have supplied the world with thousands of tons of other materials, such as lead, zinc, etc., and thus when one thinks of the industries in Nevada, it is quite natural to think of mining first. There it is in the air. Everywhere you are confronted with specimens of ore: in the offices of mining companies, in your lawyer's office, on the doctor's desk, on your friend's dressing table, next to the Bible in the minister's home. A chubby baby will gurgle and coo over a piece of this polished rock, and hold it in a little pink fist; old, white haired men will feebly finger a rough specimen streaked with green and amber. The spell of Nevada..... Walk out over the desert or ride over the hills, and as far as you can see, the sides of the mountains are perforated with holes made by prospectors; thousands and thousands of them, every one representing a hope. A promoter will take a piece of this beautifully colored rock and explain to you about the percentage of gold or copper it contains, the cost of extracting it and the enormous profits to be made; a friend will show you a marvelous specimen and explain that he or she owns a half interest in the claim which is sure to turn out at least half a million..... Then you will perhaps think of Robert Service's "Spell of the Yukon" and you will understand the enthusiasm and spirit of optimism. After all, why should they not be enthusiastic and optimistic? The whole state is piled high with mountains which look just like the ones in which so much gold and other valuable minerals have been discovered; if they are the same on top, why are they not the same below the surface? Tell us, you opal colored mountains of Nevada, what stores of precious treasures are you guarding from the greedy hand of man and how soon will you throw open another door of your treasure house? After having lived in the West and visited the mines and talked with the old-timers, I can easily understand the fascination of prospecting and mining, and why, in spite of all the hardships it entails, so many have become enslaved by the spell of it. The Crystal Saloon, at Virginia City, was built during the days of the first great boom, and on its register are many names of famous people. Under the year 1863, I saw written the following: "Clemens, Samuel L., Local Editor of Territorial Enterprise..." Mark Twain! The old-timers will tell you stories about Mark Twain's adventures in Nevada's mining camps almost as funny as those he himself wrote about in his book "Roughing It." In the register of the Washoe Club, organized in 1875, are the name of Thomas A. Edison, Fred. Grant (son of General Grant), and many other famous names. [Illustration: Donner Lake] I have been informed of a new discovery in connection with the native plant, the sage-brush. I am told there are splendid prospects for the development of potash and denatured alcohol from the huge sagebrush fields of the state. The principal business of Reno consists of banks, hotels, shops and restaurants. The shops do the city credit; they are up-to-date and well kept, and you will find almost every kind of shop. The electrical stores display every new electrical device on the market. The stationery shops are equally well equipped; the candy stores most tempting and excellent in every way, and the music store, hardware, drug, corsetiere, gents furnishing, shoe, fancy goods and department stores, the hair dressing parlors and florist shops are all up-to-date and as fine as you could find in any city twice Reno's size. The grocery stores and butcher shops and markets are of the finest. These places employ hundreds of people and the department stores send their buyers to New York and Paris. Reno has two daily papers, namely, the "Evening Gazette" and the "Nevada Journal." The "Nevada Journal" belongs to the Associated Press and has its private telegraph wires by which it receives the news direct. The hotels and apartment houses are always well filled. They are up- to-date, well kept and flourishing; the cafes are constantly being enlarged. The real estate business is also progressive; one may rent splendidly furnished houses, or modest cottages, or apartments at very fair prices. There I first saw the automatic elevator, the kind that you ring for and that runs down by itself and opens its own door; then you get in, press a button at the number you wish to get off at, and the elevator runs itself up to the floor indicated, stops and opens its door. The same apartments have beds that fold up automatically into the wall, leaving nothing in evidence except a beautifully paneled mirror. The Reno Commercial Club, which was founded in 1907, is made up of a body of the representative men of the state, who are organized to encourage educational and social intercourse, and to aid in social and material up-building of the city and state. Its executive board is as follows: Charles S. Knight, H. H. Kennedy, Tasker L. Oddie, B. Adams, Fred Stadtmuller, R. L. Kimmel, E. H. Walker. The Club's efforts are continually directed toward the encouragement of new enterprises, the securing of capital for new industries and investments; the dissemination of literature regarding the resources of Nevada; the building of good roads and cooperation with other states for a national highway; the immigration of settlers upon the agricultural lands of the state, more intensive farming, expansion of dairy interests, fruit growing and other agricultural industries. The Commercial Club is always obliging in extending the courtesy of its information bureaus in matters pertaining to the affairs of the city or state. Write to it! Nevada has made very broad strides in the direction of agriculture owing to its irrigation development. The Easterners somehow have an idea that Nevada has made very little progress since pre-historic days; that the West is still wild and wooly and consists of cow-boys, cattle ranches and rattle-snakes; but this impression is very erroneous. The picturesque cow-boy is practically a thing of the past, and so is the highwayman; the picturesque stage-coach with its four to six teams is almost forgotten; and I did not see one rattle-snake during all my exploits in the mountains and over the deserts. What has become of all those historic things which we so closely linked with the wild and woolly West of the past? They have retreated into oblivion before the great wheel of progress..... It is a mistaken idea to imagine that because Nevada is such a mountainous country it is unsuitable for agriculture. There are many broad green valleys, flourishing and producing splendid farm products. This of course is the astonishing result of artificial methods of irrigation. Alfalfa and potatoes are Nevada's greatest crop; wheat, rye, oats and other cereals are also grown. Some of the ranches have splendid orchards consisting of pears, apples, plums, cherries, etc., and the production will undoubtedly increase as greater irrigation developments are introduced. [Illustration: Trucker River Dam] What irrigation will do for the parched deserts of the West remains as yet to be seen, but when I stop to consider that all the famous spots of California owe their beauty almost entirely to irrigation, then I dare predict great things for the desert states. In a 1918 issue of the United States Geographical Survey Press Bulletin is an article which is particularly interesting for the possibilities it suggests at once to the reader for the utilization of waters. It reads as follows: "'Underground Water in Nevada Deserts.' "In Nevada the bedrock forms a corrugated surface consisting of more or less parallel mountain ranges and broad intervening troughs that are filled to great depths with rock waste washed from the mountains. These great deposits of rock waste were in large part laid down by torrential streams and are relatively coarse and porous. Because these deposits are porous the rain that falls upon them and the run-off that reaches them from the mountains sinks into them, and the valleys in which they lie are exceptionally arid. These deposits, however, form huge reservoirs in which the water is stored and in which, to the limit of the capacity of the reservoirs, it is protected from evaporation. So well is this water hidden that its existence was not suspected by many of the early travelers, and even today long desert roads on which there are no watering places, lead over areas where ground-water could easily be obtained. "In a desert valley, even where no wells have been sunk, it is generally possible to ascertain and outline the areas where ground water lies near the surface and to make an intelligent forecast of the depths to water in other parts of the valley. If a sufficient number of observations are made, it is also generally possible to form a rough estimate of the quantity of water that is annually available in such a valley and to predict to some extent the capacity of wells, the quality of the water, and the cost of recovery." To anyone familiar with Nevada, there are dozens of such desert reaches which must instantly suggest themselves to the mind, and it is interesting to speculate, not altogether idly, on how advantage might be taken of such conditions. The Bulletin particularly speaks of one of these areas: "In an investigation recently made by O. E. Meinzer, of the United States Geological Survey of the Department of the Interior, in Big Smokey Valley and adjacent area near Tonopah, Nev., the character of the vegetation and other surface criteria show that the ground-water stands within ten feet of the surface over an area of 130,000 acres. The measurements made indicate that tens of thousands of acre feet of water are annually contributed by mountain streams and by rainfall to the underground reservoir, and that about the same quantity of ground- water is annually discharged into the atmosphere through the soil and the plants in the shallow water areas. It was estimated that in an area of 240,000 acres the ground-water lies within 50 feet of the surface and that in an area of 335,000 acres it lies within 100 feet of the surface. Detailed maps were made showing the location and extent of these areas." Nevada, because of its peculiar geographical and climatological situation, will always need to irrigate its land to produce crops. Where irrigation waters are available, the soil has proved abundantly fertile, but Nevada has been handicapped by a lack of water for these very soils which would be capable of producing the best crops. If, perhaps, underlying those fertile though now arid areas there is such a reservoir of untapped waters as the Bulletin describes, there must instantly occur to the mind the question: "Cannot these waters be made available?" Elsewhere in Nevada great arid areas have been reclaimed by tapping such underground reservoirs and raising the waters to the surface for irrigation purposes with gasoline motors, where they have not flowed of their own accord, in artesian wells. Nevada has not ventured far into this field because it has not felt the necessity. But why wait on necessity? Why should not Nevada attempt to reach this water? It could easily do so and so add much valuable fertility to the state's already important resources. Of course, if these new irrigation resources of the state were to become sufficiently utilized, then there would seem no reason why Nevada should not be one of our best agricultural states. The Truckee River is a splendid asset to Reno. Fed by the eternal snows of the Sierra Nevadas, with a fall of 2,442 feet between Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake, it affords a water power equalled by few rivers in the U. S. A. Its power plants now supply light and power for all near-by mines; Mason Valley, Youngton, Virginia City and the Comstock Lode; yet these power stations do not generate one-tenth of the power that could be obtained. It is said that it would easily be possible to develop 40,000 horse-power within five miles of Reno. This means that Reno has great advantages as an industrial center, and as water power is known to be low in cost and as there is an immense quantity of iron ore in the state, it might eventually be considered a fine place to manufacture war supplies, especially for use on the Pacific Coast. The Southern Pacific Shops are at Sparkes near Reno and are of great advantage to Reno merchants. These shops do the general repair work of the Salt Lake Division of the Southern Pacific; they employ between five and six hundred men at an approximate payroll of $125,000 per month. The Verdi Lumber Company near Reno employs from 350 to 400 men in its mills, box factories and logging camps, at a monthly payroll of approximately $25,000. In addition to these industries there are the Reno and Riverside mills, and large stock yards and packing houses. Nevada is a noted stock growing state for great droves of sheep, hogs and cattle; Nevada's beef is famous throughout the United States. Reno, as well as all Nevada, is proud of the world-famous Wingfield racing stables, and not without reason. Mr. George Wingfield is a great connoisseur of horseflesh and has spared neither pains nor expense in order to add the best thoroughbreds to his stock. Even as I write, the news reaches me that an expert has left for England to purchase for Mr. Wingfield four mares and a stud, Atheling, a great English favorite. [Illustration: Honeywood of the Wingfield Stables] At present Mr. Wingfield has in his stables about 75 horses. I had the privilege of visiting them some time ago, and made the acquaintance of some of his prize yearlings. They were wonderful animals, just as fine as any I have ever seen, and I think I know and understand horses pretty well. There is one, Honeywood, a beautiful stallion, who was the winner of the Cambridgeshire stakes at Newmarket, England, in 1911. I don't think I have ever seen a more beautiful animal. The fact to be deplored is that the Federal and State Legislatures are not taking sufficient interest in the reforestation of Nevada; they should enforce the planting of two or three trees for every one that is felled. I believe some such law is now in force in the state of Washington and elsewhere. Near the big mining camps in Nevada around Reno, the mountains have been literally stripped of all their trees in the development of the mining industries. It has been a case of: "All Take and No Give." And now we come to "Divorce" which, if not actually an industry, can all the same easily pass for one, for there is no doubt but that the influx of prospective divorcees, of both sexes, contributes a goodly portion toward the financial welfare of Reno. Not only do hotels, restaurants, cafes and shops reap an abundant harvest from the luxury- loving wealthy colony, but even real estate prospers, as many "aspirants" rent cottages for the "season." Lawyers are kept busy all the time; the banks are opening new accounts for every patient who comes to town, and therefore on more mature consideration, why should we not call it the "Divorce Industry"? After all, what's in a name? [Illustration: Views of Reno's Public Play Grounds] RENO HAS ALL THE ADVANTAGES OF A BIG CITY WITH NONE OF ITS DISADVANTAGES The following is a reprint of a circular prepared by the Reno Chamber of Commerce: Location--Reno is situated in Western Nevada, twelve miles from the state line, and on the borderland of the lofty Sierras and Nevada plateau. The city lies in a fertile valley through which the beautiful Truckee flows, and is surrounded by high mountains. Area of Reno--Three square miles. Population--Power company, telephone company and school census show over 15,000; government census, 12,016. Elevation--4,500 feet. Climate--Winters short, moderately cold and open, with very little snow. Cool, dry, delightful summers, with cool nights, allowing refreshing sleep. No thunderstorms, hail, fogs or earthquakes. Average number of days without a cloud in the sky, 195; partly clouded, 105; and cloudy, 65. Doctors prescribe Reno's sunshine, dry atmosphere and altitude for health. Railroads and Rates--Three railroads enter Reno; the Southern Pacific, the Western Pacific and the Virginia and Truckee, affording the city transportation facilities enjoyed by few Western cities. At the present time Reno enjoys full terminal rates or better for goods shipped from Eastern points and the distribution rates to the Nevada and Eastern California territory are also very favorable. All three roads furnish ample freight handling and side track facilities. Highways--Reno is the center of the highway system of Nevada, and an important station on three transcontinental highways; the Lincoln Highway, the Overland Trail and the Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway. City Government--The government is a municipality with a mayor and six councilmen elected by popular vote. Appointive officers are city clerk, chief of police, chief of fire department, city engineer and city health officer. The city attorney is also elected. Industries--Reno is not an industrial city, but may be termed the office of the big industries of the state. Its biggest industries are a packing plant, machine shop and foundry, soap factory, planing mills, brick plant, flour mills and railroad yards. Financial Strength--The six banks in Reno have a total capitalization of $1,745,000 and total deposits of $14,782,751.92. Total resources amount to $18,363,651.94. The clearings average $4,500,000 monthly, indicating that Reno does a business of a city at least twice its size. Of the six banks, three are national. Tax Rate and Indebtedness--The tax rate of Reno, including state, county and city taxes, is $3.55 and the bonded indebtedness $433,000. Jobbing Center--Due to its central situation Reno is the jobbing center for the territory of Nevada and Eastern California. Reno has several warehouses and wholesale grocery, automobile supply, produce, tobacco, building materials, hardware, bakery and confectionery store. Cost of Living--The cost of living is about the same if not lower than in the Middle West and Western communities. The surrounding country supplies Reno with wholesome and cheap food and Reno's location on the main lines from the East and California enables the merchants to sell imported goods at a reasonable figure. One person can live well on $75 a month and the average family of five lives on $150 a month. Housing Conditions--Like most of the cities of the country there is a shortage but not an acute one of apartments and small homes in Reno. However, the amount of building done in Reno this year was almost three times that of any previous year, and the housing problem is expected to be solved by the summer of 1921. Health Conditions--The clear, dry air, altitude and sunshine of Reno's climate are especially beneficial to health, and persons with lung trouble find relief in Reno. There are no tenements or unsanitary conditions and the city health authorities enforce the laws strictly. Dairies, restaurants and bakeries are inspected regularly, and no refuse is allowed to accumulate in streets or yards. The water supply is pure. Labor Conditions--Labor conditions are good in Reno, which is the shipping point for the labor of the mines, lumber mills, ranches and construction camps of the Nevada and Eastern California territory. There is always work to be found in the trades and unskilled labor markets. The supply of office and store positions is about equal to the demand. There are no strikes or other quarrels between employer and employee in Reno. The trades are on a union basis. Schools--There are five grammar schools, a kindergarten, business college, high school and university in Reno. Plans are now being perfected for the establishment of a junior high school which will take care of the eighth grades and freshman high school classes. The scholarship standard is high and the best laboratory and playground facilities are offered. The teachers are paid salaries above the average, enabling the schools to maintain an efficient teaching force. Churches--There are twelve churches as follows: Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Christian Scientist, Lutheran, Methodist, Methodist Colored, Roman Catholic, Salvation Army, Seventh Day Adventist, Spiritual. [Illustration: University of Nevada] Hotels and Apartments--Reno has excellent hotel facilities with three large, first-class hotels and forty smaller hotels and apartment houses. Clubs and Civic Organizations--Headed by the Reno Chamber of Commerce there exists a live and aggressive group of civic and other organizations in Reno. Enumerated they are the Rotary Club, Lion's Club, Woman Citizen's Club, Italian Benevolent Society, G. A. R., Women's Relief Corps, Nevada Bankers' Society, Nevada Historical Society, Nevada Livestock Association, Nevada Mine Operators' Association, Reno Clearing House Association, Nevada Highway Association, Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Reno Grocers' Association, Reno Automotive Dealers' Association, Washoe County Medical Society, W. C. T. U., Spanish War Veterans, Washoe County Farm Bureau, Washoe County Tax Payers' Association, Truckee Meadows Water Users and Washoe County Bar Association, Twentieth Century Club, Reno Nurses' Association. Fraternal Organizations--Ancient Order Foresters, B. P. O. E., Fraternal Brotherhood, F. O. E., I. O. O. F., Daughters of Rebecca, Knights of Columbus, Knights of Pythias, Ladies of the Maccabees, Loyal Order of Moose, Masonic Orders, Modern Woodmen of America, Royal Neighbors, U. A. O. Druids, Woodmen of the World, Women of Woodcraft. There are four lodge buildings maintained by the Elks, Masons, Odd Fellows and Woodmen of the World. Public Buildings--Reno has many imposing public buildings, among them the county court house, city hall, public library, post office, Y. M. C. A., high school building, churches and university buildings. A new post office and Federal building is contemplated, and $100,000 a year is being spent on new buildings at the University. Theatres--Reno has four first-class theatres: The Rialto, Majestic, Grand and Wigwam. The first is a combination vaudeville and picture house and during the show season the best road shows are brought to Reno by the management and staged there. The other three are motion picture houses which secure the highest class films to be had. Their combined seating capacity is over 5,000. Publications--Two daily newspapers, five weekly journals, and three monthly journals are published in Reno. The Reno Evening Gazette and the Nevada State Journal give full Associated Press reports. Parks and Playgrounds--The city maintains two parks and one playground, and there is a playground at each of the public schools. Wingfield Park is a recent acquisition given the city by George Wingfield and consists of a beautiful island of over two acres, situated in the Truckee river within three blocks of the business district. The city is now improving this park and connecting it with the playground on the shore. The playground has three tennis courts, swings, and teeters and is used constantly during the year. In addition to the municipal parks the children of Reno have all outdoors to play in. [Illustration: Wingfield Home] [Illustration: General View of Reno, Looking N. W.] Hospitals--There are three hospitals in addition to the county hospital and the state hospital for mental diseases. The St. Mary's Hospital is also a training school for nurses. With a staff of thirty- three physicians, these hospitals are well able to take care of any emergency and the most expert treatment can be obtained in Reno. Libraries--Reno has a Carnegie Library, University Library, county law library and the high school library. The Elks Club, Y. M. C. A. and Chamber of Commerce maintain reading rooms. Telephone--The Bell Telephone Company of Nevada furnishes telephone service in Reno with 3,729 stations in the city. Of this number 1,725 are business phones and 2,004 residence phones. The rates are lower than most cities on the coast. The company plans to spend $300,000 in Reno the coming year in a new building to house its exchange. Long distance communication with most of the points in Nevada is also provided. City Water Supply--The city water supply is taken from the Truckee river by the Reno Power, Light & Water Company, twelve miles west of Reno, and is of the purest quality. It is snow water and is treated by a purification plant near the outskirts of Reno. Two large reservoirs store the water and give it ample pressure for distribution. A monthly rate of $2.75 for an unlimited supply of water is charged each residence. This allows for irrigation of small gardens and lawns. Gas and Electricity--Gas is manufactured by the Reno Power, Light & Water Company and distributed to nearly every home in the city through thirty-one miles of mains. The minimum rate is $1.10 a month and averages $2 per 1,000 cubic feet. Electricity is sold by the same company for light and power purposes from three hydro-electric plants on the Truckee river. For domestic uses the electricity is sold at seven to two cents a kilowatt hour, and for power at a minimum of five cents a kilowatt and as low as two cents for large users. Street Cars--The Reno Traction Company has five miles of track in the city and connecting with Sparks, three miles to the east. Cars are run on the half hour during the day and on the hour at night until 12:30 a.m. City Paving--Reno now has six miles of paved streets with five additional miles on the program for 1921. There are forty miles of sidewalks covering practically the entire city. Sewers--Rena has thirty miles of sewers emptying in the river at a point below the city. Shipping--The railroads entering Reno do a large business in the local yards, and Reno's importance as a distributing center is growing rapidly as shown by the following figures: Imports 1915, 155,000 tons of freight; imports 1920, 207,000 tons of freight. Exports, 1915, 45,000 tons; export 1920, 89,000. Several trucking lines also operate out of Reno to surrounding points and handle a large tonnage which it is impossible to estimate. Building Activity--The building permits issued for 1920 totalled in round numbers $300,000, which is twice the figure of last year. Contemplated Civic Improvements--The city council is working upon a comprehensive plan of civic improvements which includes paving work already mentioned, landscaping the river banks west of the Virginia street bridge, and improvement of Wingfield Park. A new bandstand costing $5,000 is being completed in the city park and close to $100,000 is being spent in purchasing an aviation field and building a hangar. A free tourist camp ground is to be modernly equipped. Building and Loan Associations--There are two Building and Loan Associations in Reno. The Union Building & Loan Association and the Security Savings & Loan Association. Both offer material assistance to the home builder on long payment plans. Fire Department--The equipment of the fire department is valued at over $75,000, and consists of the most modern fire-fighting apparatus. High speed motor trucks which can reach any point in the city within three minutes after the alarm is sounded, are used, and twenty-four men man the trucks on the platoon system. The department has a record of efficiency and the loss by fire is very low in Reno. Police Department--Reno also has a very efficient police force of fifteen men. An identification bureau and emergency hospital is maintained by the police department. Only sixteen burglaries occurred in Reno in 1920, and eight of the perpetrators were apprehended. Eleven robberies were reported and six apprehended. Reno Chamber of Commerce--The Reno Chamber of Commerce is an organization of 1,300 members employing a managing director, a secretary and a traffic manager on full time. These men maintain a credit bureau, mining information bureau and traffic bureau, and are carrying out a program of civic improvement and state development. The rooms occupy the fourth floor of the Reno National Bank Building in the heart of the city, and are used by some thirty organizations as a civic center. The business and community life of Reno revolves around the Chamber of Commerce. [Illustration with caption: THE TRUCKEE FROM RIVERSIDE DRIVE] [Illustration with caption: LOOKING NORTH OF VIRGINIA STREET] Aviation Field--The municipal aviation field consists of some sixty acres of land one mile south of the city, and is headquarters for the aerial mail service. The county is building a hangar costing $30,000 and the government stations over thirty men at the field. Two mail planes arrive each day and are repaired and overhauled at the field. In the event of the mail service being extended to Los Angeles and the Northwest, Reno will be the point at which the mail transfers are made for these points. University of Nevada--The University of Nevada is located in Reno, on a beautiful eminence overlooking the city. It is an accredited university offering for study all the regular courses for matriculation and bachelors degree in mining, agriculture, arts and sciences, civil engineering, electrical engineering and mining engineering. The teaching and scientific staff number 75 and the registration, 465 students. The state is expending $100,000 a year on new buildings at the University and it costs $170,205 a year to maintain from state and federal funds. Laboratory service is afforded the mining, agricultural and stock raising industries of the state and the University is looked upon with great pride by the citizens of Nevada. Fishing and Hunting--The country surrounding Reno abounds in game and fish and outdoor life is the fashion. The streams and lakes are all well stocked with game trout and a good basket of trout can be caught in the Truckee river within the city limits of Reno. Deer, grouse, sagehen, rabbits, coyotes and wildcats are plentiful on the ranges and can be reached within a few hours from Reno. Valley Farming--The valley in which Reno is located contains some 30,000 acres of fertile land, and is especially suited to the raising of garden truck, fruits, chickens and grains and grasses. There is a ready market for all the produce that is raised in the valley. A small farm of a few acres can be obtained within a mile of the city for a reasonable figure, and a good living earned in spare hours after work in the city. PART 2 RENO TRAGEDIES Mrs. Smith did her little six months in Reno and the world's sympathy was with her, and the recording angel, I dare say, winked solemnly to himself and said: "Another domestic tragedy!".... It is certainly a tragedy to be told outright by the husband one has borne children for and has been a good wife to, and has loved and cherished for the best part of one's life, to "cash in one's old face and make room in his heart and home for a younger and more fair." This was the case, apparently, with the Smiths. And yet during my short stay in Reno, I have heard of more tragic cases than that of Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith had been left her child and money. We can't buy happiness with money, it's true, but we can at least buy comfort, and that is something after all. I knew of a different case where there was no money to buy comfort: a mother, with a baby in her arms and the one desire in her heart, to make it legitimate before it should grow old enough to understand..... I met this heart broken mother in a hospital in Reno, six years after her arrival there. I had heard about her and went to see the child. "The divorce colony, all frivolity and gaiety," you say? Pardon me, I know better! This devoted mother had loved the father of her child. She had left an impossible husband and gone with a man who had shown her sympathy, kindness and love when her life was all unhappiness. She had fought bravely for her freedom, but for some reason had been unable to obtain it. The months had dragged into years, the woman toiling day by day in a shop to support herself and baby, until years of work and worry had claimed their prize at last, and she had fallen ill; and it was then I heard of her and went to see her. I could still see traces of beauty in the now hardened lines about her mouth and sunken eyes. It has been said that "absence makes the heart grow fonder," but alas! there are too many cases where "absence makes the heart grow... yonder." The man whose wife she had hoped to become forgot her in less than a year and passed out of her life.... I shall never forget the day I saw this fatherless child, with her little pale face, rose-bud mouth and big brown eyes, which when she lifted them to mine were filled with unshed tears. I knew that this little lonely child of fate understood.... even at the age of six. I just wanted to take her in my arms and cry.... One beautiful morning a mother arose and called at the door of her daughter's bedroom. What, no answer? She opened the door and looked in. Why, the bed had not been slept in! The mother knew that Marjory had been despondent of late, and she knew why. Can you imagine the icy hand that gripped that mother's heart when she looked upon the empty couch. An hour later Marjory's beautiful young body was found floating in the stream that runs through the University grounds among the green trees, with sunshine filtering through and the birds singing their glad notes of life among the leafy branches. As pure and sweet as a desert lily, and as dainty as an apple blossom was this daughter of Nevada. He who said "Truth is stranger than fiction" well nigh spoke truthfully indeed. Why wish to leave, Marjory, when you possessed youth, beauty and loving friends; when the month was June and all the world rejoiced? Indeed, why? If Marjory's stiffened lips could have answered, she would have said: "Yes, but my lover proved untrue: yesterday he was married to the Queen of the Divorce Colony; today they are on their honeymoon, and I am in the great unknown...." It is between the hours of twilight and night. The last fading light of the setting sun is reflected upon the waters of the Truckee River, in a silvery, rose-tinted hue, indescribable in its delicate beauty. There is a strange lady seated on the veranda of an imposing Colonial home overlooking the river. She is writing; sometimes she stops to gaze upon the glory of the sunset with great dreamy eyes, whose depths seem unfathomable. How the soft twilight glow enshrines her face! But now the sun has disappeared, yet the light seems still to cling about her beautiful form. In a brighter light you might see that her lips are crimson with the glow of youth, though her face is pale. Her hair, parted in the middle and dressed straight back, and her white gown give her the appearance of a Madonna. In her bodice, she wears a white rose which from time to time she caresses in a dreamy fashion..... Just here Eileen--her name is romantic isn't it?--is attracted by a young man who comes up the street whistling as he walks full of the joy of youth and life. He runs up the steps, two at a time. The lady on the porch lifts her eyes just one moment, but womanlike she sees much in a glance. She sees that his eyes are of a wonderful dark blue; that his hair is thick and wavy; and that he is tall, straight and strong. How lithe and supple he seems, too, as he runs up the steps and disappears into the house. Has he seen the lady Madonna? She does not know. There is indeed something strange about this dark haired man; something out of the ordinary and fascinating.... The Holbrooks had been immensely wealthy at one time but owing to gambling and unsuccessful mining deals their fortune had dwindled, and at the death of Mr. Holbrook his widow had found that her sole possessions consisted of a beautiful home and three lovely children. Eileen Reed had come to Mrs. Holbrook with a letter of introduction from a friend in the East, and had been taken into the home for the period of her exile. It was young Holbrook who had tripped up the steps and entered the house without apparently seeing her. Having a keen woman's understanding, I wondered if this apparent ignoring of the lady's presence was not what first caused her keen interest in the young man, for Eileen was not accustomed to being ignored. She bore her crown of beauty with added brilliance and grace because of the passing years, and was fully aware of her power to sway the will of those about her, and move the hearts of men with her irresistible charm and perfect splendor, alike persuasive, compelling and all-powerful. She had never really loved: a poor girl of a respectable family, she had taken up nursing; had married a wealthy doctor, and had been in the position of the penniless but beautiful wife of a rich husband. At dinner Eileen was presented to young Holbrook. I happened to be a guest at dinner on that particular evening, and noticed a slight effort on the part of the new arrival to interest the young man. However, young Holbrook was cordially polite only. After dinner they sauntered out on the piazza and chatted, for some time. During the conversation, Eileen got the impression that if he had expressed his opinion about divorces, it might not have been altogether complimentary. He had grown up in Reno and for more than fifteen years had seen the divorcees appear and vanish, and oh!--what a tale he could have told. However, he evidently thought this woman different or at least out of the ordinary, and he was right; she was a most unusual and unusually interesting woman. They drifted into a rather serious conversation; they spoke of the old-fashioned chivalry; the profound respect men had for women in the old-fashioned bygone days; he spoke of his father with so much reverence, dignity and pride, and this boy-man with all his premature experience, gave Eileen glimpses into a soul, into his soul, which was pure and clean and good. Eileen was rapidly becoming interested in this young head of the household; she found herself listening most attentively to every one of his words. After hearing nothing but silly wordly chatter for years, it seemed good to listen to this man who seemed to have absorbed all the romance and mystery of the land of his birth. At one time he would speak like a boy of twenty; the next moment like a man of forty; always there seemed to be present two personalities, one the care-free, happy boy, the other the all-wise, far-seeing man, with a keen intellectual understanding of every phase of life. So much were these two people interested in each other that neither noticed that it had grown quite late and a little chilly. Eileen shivered slightly and rather unconsciously; young Holbrook noticed it. "Why, you are cold, and it is late; I am sorry I did not realize it," he broke out in astonishment as he glanced at his watch; "really you must forgive me for keeping you up!" He extended his hand as he bade her good night. Eileen returned his good night in her most charming manner, though rather mechanically; something had come over her; she did not know it, but for the first time in her life she seemed to have fallen in love.... Much to my surprise and strangely enough after that evening these two people seldom met and were never alone together; it seemed to me as though young Holbrook avoided Eileen without seeming to do so. I could not understand his attitude unless he felt himself slipping and was trying to avoid temptation. I felt that his apparent indifference only served to fan the flames in Eileen's heart. She struggled with her wounded pride though there never was any outward sign of her feelings until she became ill. The first day's illness brought a gorgeous bouquet of red roses. "Oh, why did he do that, and why did he send red roses, the emblem of love and passion?" and why did Eileen clasp them madly to her heart and drink in their sensual sweetness? For three long weeks Eileen lay ill with burning fever, and always there were fresh red roses, but he himself did not come until Eileen began to convalesce. And one day he came and stood by her couch, and looked down, at her. He saw that she was paler, but the lips were still as scarlet as the petals of the American Beauties on the table by her side. The rose-colored light cast a glow over the prettiest breast and shoulders God had ever moulded! They said very little; it would be interesting to know what their thoughts were..... Shortly after Eileen came out of the hospital she sent a little token of appreciation to Mr. Holbrook, in recognition of his unfailing kindness during her illness. That same evening they met, by chance, and as he clasped her hand and thanked her for the little gift, the pressure of his hand sent a strange thrill to her heart; she stammered something in a tremulous voice and rushed away. Later in the evening they met, shall we say again "by chance", at dinner. They danced together, and the pressure of his strong arms nearly maddened Eileen.... Oh, why do we play with fire and why is forbidden fruit so sweet! A strange woman this, with her dual personality: a Madonna and a lover of all things good and beautiful, but a Cleopatra when the passionate fires of her soul were stirred; and this night, a passionate love that lacked all reason, dominated everything else in her being. When they had parted and she was alone in her room, sleep refused her offices: twelve: one: two.... and her eyes still were staring into the darkness.... Not a sound; all was quiet. She rose from her couch, her hair streaming, her body all aglow. She donned a flimsy, rose-colored dressing gown, opened her door, crept silently down the hall and went bodily into young Holbrook's room. In a dressing gown and slippers he sat, reading a magazine; he must have been restless, too. "Why Mrs. Reed--Eileen--what is the matter?" "The matter is, Boy, that I love you with all my heart and soul." And as he held her in his arms he whispered: "And I love you." For the first time since he had held her in his arms early that evening her reason asserted itself for a moment, and she pressed her hand over his lips to stifle the words. She had thought of poor little Marjory and her white face in the stream, and of a thousand other reasons why they should part. There were sacred promises on both sides to be kept. "But be mine," she pleaded, "just for tonight." He held her in his arms; she was his very own, and she counted his heart-throbs as they beat against her breast. He scented the perfume of her breath against his cheek, and drank deep of the wine of her red lips, as she whispered again her sweet confession through a mist of tears.... "The Woman Thou Gavest Me!" No one could better grace love's throne, nor rule more royally. Voice so low and tender and heart so warm, all herself she gave, and gladly, thoughtlessly, recklessly. Is it true that all humanity means to do right though often wrong: that the heart at times must obey the mandates of circumstances and environment: that even the purest and best succumb to temptation? Another day, and reason rules! He was engaged to a girl who had been his little sweetheart as far back as he could remember. He had carried her books and pulled her sled and fought her battles, and now he surely would never break her heart. There is duty; an invention of the Devil, but it must be met, though hearts break and burn; though we wander through a desert of hallowed love and damning desire. This dream was to end. For months those two beings faced their little world with only a nod as they passed by; not even as much as a hand-clasp. Who can tell what the man thought, or if he cared? But the woman wept out her sorrow in my arms. Confession is good for the soul, so it is said; there is joy in a heartache sometimes, and sweet content in tears. She told me how she lay awake and listened for his footsteps. If he came into the room her heart would almost cease beating. She almost fainted once when she met him coming in with his fiancee... but in silence she suffered; pride and duty ruled. "How exquisitely he tortures me," she said. "He uses roses as his weapons.... But what think you of this my friend? I shall bear his image into life! What matter laws and customs, and sins forbidden.... I shall be happy again when I hold my baby in my arms".... So terribly shocked was I that I could only gasp in amazement, but when I looked into the face of the woman, behold.... the Madonna! There seemed to be a spiritual light illuminating her face and she was far away in the land of dreams, looking into the face of her blue-eyed baby; born of a great, great Love, sacrificed to Duty. Life.... What a tragedy! Fate, did you say? Thank God for Time, the healer of all wounds. As someone has said: "Never a lip was curved in pain that could not be kissed into smiles again!" Just half an hour before she was leaving Reno, as we were dropping the last of the little silver toilet articles into her small traveling bag, and gathering up the odds and ends here and there, the telephone rang. At Eileen's request I answered. A manly voice said: "Mr. Holbrook speaking; I would like to come and pay my respects to Mrs. Reed if she has a few minutes to spare, and will permit me!" Of course she would, poor girl; she looked as though heaven had suddenly opened and beckoned her enter. I left them alone. Whatever was said must have taken the bitterness out of the parting, because it was a sweet-souled, courageous girl that joined me ten minutes later, to take her departure for life's everlasting battle fields; to begin anew. Perhaps she knew his love would crown the awaiting beyond with divine fulfillment...... When I saw her off on the Eastbound train, she answered my questioning look by taking a small photo from her bodice--"No, I have not forgotten," she said with a smile that was more tragic than all the tears the world has ever shed. "Here, next my heart, I shall carry my love always, but there is his duty and mine, and so much do I love him, that I want to bear all the pain myself...." Being a trained nurse, Eileen when she got her divorce went to France with several other Red Cross nurses, "where," she said, "I shall try to mend my broken heart while I help to patch up some of our mutilated soldier boys. My only hope is that I may be of some use, and I feel sure that my own miserable little wail of bereavement will get lost in the shuffle, when I am face to face with the tragedies of the battle fields..." Shall we forgive her? Yes, if we follow the teachings of the Nazarene..... I sometimes hear from Eileen; she is somewhere in France, and so is young Holbrook, I am told! I may yet continue their story some day. Methinks it is a promise; a whisper across the miles of unrest; a pledge of the fulfillment of a prayer; a surety for tomorrow's sunshine! Already I can see a smile in the East: may I hope, and hoping believe?.... "To Helen, my full blown rose, spirit of perfect womanhood, my inspiration and guide; to her whose love exceeds all others, to her memory I bow my head in everlasting devotion and admiration...." Thus spoke a man who had watched the train disappear eastward with the body of his sweetheart, four years prior to the writing of this book. When I think of all the tragic stories of the divorce colony, Helen's was perhaps the most pathetic. She was the daughter of a wealthy family in New York State. She ran away when only sixteen, and married a man whom she thought she loved, and for years she struggled to find happiness, ignored by her people because of her choice of a husband. She found herself poverty stricken and unloved, paying the price of her folly. What a pity that we must be young and know too little, and then grow old and sometimes know too much! Ideals are simply mental will-o'-the-wisps, of which we are always in pursuit, but which we see realized but seldom. For ten long years this woman faced neglect, humiliation and days and nights of anguish in her efforts to fulfill her duty, until she could stand it no longer, and crept back to her father's door to ask forgiveness. The millionaire father sent her to Reno, with ten dollars a week to live on, and a promise of forgiveness if in future she would promise to live according to his wishes. Poor little Helen! For years her heart had been starving for love, and now Reno meant to her the call of honor and duty, the sworn obligation of her family. But, alas, Helen was beautiful: a girl who had only just become a woman; whose sufferings had only served to develop a strong personality with an intangible charm; whose whole being suggested unnumbered possibilities of mind and character. Her face was like a lily, so fair, and almost classic, yet showing unmistakably the warm heart and emotional nature of the woman. A wealth of golden hair that crowned her regal grace, and eyes that had stolen the tenderest blue from a turquoise sky beneath the shade of modest lashes. Appealing lotus-like lips, rosy- ripe and moist with the dew of promised bliss; sensuous curves and graceful feminine lines..... such a woman was Helen. And he! Six feet of Western manhood; a graduate of Yale, and still an athlete at 35. A man with the highest ideals of fine, clean, strong manhood. He had gone West shortly after leaving college and had made his fortune, but he liked the West and its people, and there he made his home. The rough mining life he had led had worn off a little of the drawing room polish of his younger years, which made him even more fascinating, and something had turned his raven-black hair just a little bit gray at the temples. This man sat in a lawyer's office one afternoon, his wide brimmed Stetson pulled low over his eyes, and a cigar between his teeth, when a rather timid little blonde lady entered. He removed both cigar and hat and stood up. Jack Worthington was the man, and he was presented to Helen by his old friend, Dick Sheldon, who was also Helen's lawyer. Were you ever alone in a strange land, sitting between the four walls of a barren, stuffy room with the blue devils swarming thick around you? That had been the case with poor little Helen for two long weeks before her meeting with Jack Worthington. Two whole weeks!....it had seemed an eternity to this beautiful woman, with the wreckage of her youth staring her in the face: a youth which should have been all sunshine and flowers. She had risked all for the price of love and lost.... "Gee! Some woman!" said Worthington to Sheldon when the door closed upon Helen, after a private consultation with the lawyer. "What's the matter, old boy; captured at last, after all these years? Well, they say: 'the longer you wait, the harder the blow!' But I'll have to hand it to you, you're a good picker. That little woman is an angel if there ever was one in Reno, and you will be a lucky boy if you can win her!" Two days later there was a little dinner given at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon, and strange to say, Helen and Worthington were among those present. From that time on it was Jack who chased away the shadows and kept Helen amused. There was something wonderfully sweet and soothing about this strong, self-reliant man of the West. Life cannot exist without sunshine, and this man was slowly becoming the sunshine of Helen's life, with each walk in the moonlight along the banks of the Truckee, and with each ride through the wonderful, silent places, while they enjoyed Nevada's matchless sunsets, and glorious freedom of open country. [Illustration with caption: GLENBROOK] In spite of all Jack could do in the way of chasing away the shadows, Helen continued to grow more like the lily and less like the rose. It was terribly hot in Reno as the summer months came on, and there were reasons why Helen could not have all the comforts. Worthington, with his thousands, was hopeless. She should be up to the lake where the cool, fresh breezes could fan the roses back into her cheeks, but how could he manage it? "I know, I shall have the Sheldons go up to their camp at Glenbrook, and invite us up for the week.".... The very next morning a very sweet feminine voice called Helen over the 'phone. "Good morning, Helen dear, aren't you nearly cooked? Yes, I know it's a hundred and ten in the shade. I say, dear, Mr. Sheldon and I have a cozy nook up at Glenbrook, on Lake Tahoe. Won't you come up and spend the week with us there?.... Oh, yes, we will call for you at 8 A.M. tomorrow .... Oh, no, don't thank us, you will be so welcome.... All right, good-bye." When Helen tripped lightly down to the big touring car the next morning, she showed no surprise when Jack jumped from the back seat and assisted her to a place by his side. It was a gay party that landed at the camp a few hours later. Did these two people know that they had grown to love each other? There had been no word of love spoken between them but that night they went for a row on the lake of many colors, just as the sun dropped over the hills and the moon shone out in all its glory. Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon stood on the shore and watched them with a knowing smile. Jack was the salt of the earth, and he meant so well.... He did not mean to speak to Helen until she was free, but alas! for the infinite cry of infinite hearts that yearn. For weeks and weeks, when the days were the darkest, it had been Jack who happened along just at the right moment with a book or some flowers, accompanied by a funny story or a joke, some little kindness that would brighten the path a bit. What a mixture he was, of tenderness and brusqueness; of common sense and poetry; of fun and seriousness, this adopted son of the sagebrush. These were Helen's thoughts as she watched his strong body bend gracefully over the oars, which sent them flying through the sapphire water of Lake Tahoe. Already the color was beginning to appear in Helen's cheeks and she looked happier and more bewitching than ever before. "An angel pointing the way to Paradise," thought Jack. They discussed the moon- kissed glades and leafy woods of shadowland. Did they know that in each leafy bough Cupid awaited with love's weapon poised? Jack drew in the oars and allowed the little boat to drift; it is sometimes wonderfully sweet to drift; sometimes we drift into the harbor of happiness; sometimes we smash against the rocks, and are left shipwrecked. Little did Helen dream that soon this new found happiness was to vanish; that her lips burning for kisses yet unborn, might soon unbend and voice deepest anguish and piteous appeal; that those eyes which betokened unsolved depths of fondest affection, of laughter, love and life, might soon lose their lustre and dreamy languor, in an ocean of tears..... There two people drifted silently along, conscious only of the fact that they were supremely happy in each other's company .... But lo! out of the quiet a storm is born: why had they not noticed that the moon had hidden her silvery face behind a black cloud? The spray and rain beating upon their happy faces was the first incident which made them aware that a terrific storm was upon them, and that they were many miles from home. The wind was whipping the waves into a perfect fury, thus rendering unmanageable the little boat. The thunder rolled and roared, and finally the wind drove the frail craft against the stony wall of Cave Rock. Jack managed to grasp a part of the jagged surface and drag Helen with him; the boat hit against the rocks several times and finally broke up. [Illustration with caption: CAVE ROCK] All through the struggle Helen had sat motionless and fascinated at the strength and skill this man displayed in his efforts to pull for the shore, but when at last they were there, and she felt his strong arms about her, all her courage and strength failed her, and she fainted. He clasped her closer to his heart and looked into her colorless face. Her clothes were dripping, and her golden hair was streaming about her face. Jack stopped for a moment and pressed his burning lips to hers--they were icy. "My sweet burden of glorious womanhood," he whispered. "Thank God you are safe!" And he climbed up the rocky mountainside to the only available shelter.... Cave Rock. There he took his dripping burden and laid it on the damp, cold stones. There was no sign of life. He took off his coat, rang the water out as best he could, and spread it on the rocks and laid Helen upon it. He rubbed her hands and arms, and bathed her head, but she remained chilled. If he only had a dry match to start a fire with, or some brandy, but alas! they were storm-tossed souls, with no means of warmth, except that of the man's palpitating body..... He was aglow with warmth from the exertion of rowing and climbing up the mountainside. He would bring back life and pulsation to this woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul, by the warmth of his own glowing body. As he drew off his waistcoat and threw it aside, something fell to the ground. He felt about in the dark until he found the object; it was a tiny silver match case, some silly Christmas present which he never used and had forgotten all about, but it was surely a welcome friend at this particular moment. Were there any matches in it?.... He held his breath for a moment while he opened it .... His sigh of relief told the story. The rest now was only the work of a minute: some bits of driftwood and the remains of some previous camp fire quickly started a blaze. Carefully he laid Helen upon his coat near the fire, and continued to rub her body until her eyelids quivered and she opened her big blue eyes and looked about. She saw the camp fire, the strange looking cave and the big handsome figure bending over her.... First she looked startled, then when she slowly realized their predicament she became hysterical, threw herself into her rescuer's arms and wept. And each knew, as the one man and the one woman will always know by intuition, that fiction has no miracles such as are found in the book of life. Lips may dissemble, but there is no need of speech when heart meets its mate. Jack gathered her to his breast and soothed her as best he could. It was so good to look in her face and to hear her voice; her heart was so pure and her soul so lily white: her eyes like violets wet with the morning dew.... When she was quieter, Jack whispered in his fine manly voice quivering with earnestness: "Helen, my own, will you be my wife, my own sweet little wife until death do us part?" "Until death do us part, I will!" she whispered, and surely the angels must have recorded that sacred promise. Her voice was suffused with a world of tenderness as she breathed the words. From his coat pocket Jack produced a plain gold band. "My mother's wedding ring," he said, "it has never left me since I said good-bye to her and laid her to rest. I have been looking for a woman who would be as worthy of wearing it".... and he slipped it on her finger and kissed the hand it graced. And then and there they pledged their troth..... "I love you with all my heart and soul, my own sweet woman, and before God we can do no harm: with love such as ours there can be no such thing as sin. Society is a tissue of pretense: convention a fleeting fantom. My sweet bride of tonight." Splendidly conscious of her sweet sacrifice, she smiled at tomorrows.... "There is this hour and we live; if sin it is, it is yet divine; the happiest hour of my life, because I am loved and I love so much.".... Adieu to duty and creeds, love's altar has vestments of rosebud lips and starry eyes with whispered words of love divine: "Sin," it's said; but if with the one all holy love, what care we for the reckoning hour..... "Oh! Helen dear, you are missing the most gorgeous sunrise of creation!" [Illustration with caption: LAKE TAHOE] Why, it is Jack's voice.... Helen opens her eyes and looks around. "What did you say about the sunrise, Jack dear?" She looks out of the cave in the direction whence the voice came, and sees the silver dusk turning rose. "Oh! the sunrise! Yes, dear, I'll be there in just a minute." Helen quickly brought back her gaze from the rosy-tinted silver light to the cave and its surroundings. There was a camp fire lighted, and her clothing was stretched on a line near it, and she herself was wrapped warmly in a dry woollen cloak. In a very short time, she appeared at the opening of the cave, fully dressed, as fresh and sweet as a rose and radiantly happy. "Good morning, my wonderful bride, my own sweet woman," he whispered as he kissed her almost reverently. "Together we will enjoy this glorious sunrise!" "Isn't it wonderful?" she sighed, "not a sign of last night's terrible storm: just see how beautiful the lake is; all emerald, sapphire and gold! How the sun reflects its golden glory on the smooth water! How wonderful, Jack dear, to watch the birth of a new day, coming forth from the hands of its Maker. Oh, it is so good to be alive, my lover!" And Jack again held her in his arms, pressed her to his heart and almost smothered her with kisses. "And I want to say to you, dear, that no fame, no glory, no wealth, nothing on earth can bring the happiness, the real heart's content into one's life, that just one hour's true, unselfish love can give. I know this after ten long years of grief, suffering and despair, when all the time my heart cried out for its own, for what was its birthright and its heritage! I want to give you my whole heart, dear, a heart full of gladness and rejoicing." "My own sweet woman, it shall be my one and only thought to make your life one beautiful day of gladness and joy! And now, dear, I am afraid there is nothing to do but to walk back to the next camp which is about four miles distant, and then telephone the Sheldons to come for us. I am sure they must be worried; they are probably searching the lake for us. The road is good, that is one thing in our favor. Do you feel equal to the walk, or do you prefer to be left here while I go for help?" "Indeed I shall not be left here all alone. I could walk twice that distance!" They started off, hand in hand...... And for three wonderful months hand in hand they wandered. Only two people lived in this wonderful world for this man and this woman. All its wealth and beauty: its unutterable joys: its pleasures and stores of infinite happiness: all their very own! Together they wandered down life's leafy lanes, treading its quiet paths: together they drank deep of nature and enjoyed every moment without a thought of tomorrow. The flowers shed their sweetest perfumes, the birds sang their sweetest songs, and each leaf and bough nodded as though they knew. Of all men, he was the one God made, and she,--the woman.... Their souls responded to spiritual intuitions: their minds entwined as do the ivy and the oak... So beautiful was the love and devotion of this man and this woman, that every one who knew them was in sympathy with them; they were envied by those who had never known such blissful peace and delirious delight. These two people were planning a beautiful home on the banks of the Truckee. There had been a sweet confession from Helen: her case would soon be up for hearing and all would be well.... But alas! suddenly Helen was taken seriously ill. Three days later she died in the hospital. What was the matter? No one knows! With her last breath: "It has all been worth while, Jack dear," she whispered. And the man, heart-broken, bought a solid silver casket, with a glass inner casket, padded with delicate rose satin, and therein he laid the woman he had loved, honored and respected above all others. A friend who saw her said: "Never have I seen anyone look so beautiful, as she lay there in her soft chiffon gown, with a cluster of rosebuds in her hand; a full blown rose herself. Is it possible that a creation so fair and beautiful can, in a few short hours, return to dust again?" The next day Helen's body, in the silver casket, covered with flowers --the last tribute of a great love--was homeward bound. Is she to be envied, or pitied? I wonder.... The man who ever carried in his heart the greatest respect and reverence for this one woman, whispered gently as he placed a wreath of roses on her casket: "And I had hoped that you would be with me always! Oh, love of mine, what a wealth of beauty, charm and winning grace were yours in full flower".... I hope, if it be true, that there yet remains another life in some dim land of mystery; that they may again walk together, and sing, as in the long ago; hand in hand; for love such as theirs will live through eternity, and ever after.... PART 3 RENO ROMANCE Reno and Romance go hand in hand I should say. If you asked half a dozen of your friends what the word Romance means, I dare say each one would give a different answer. I think one of the most beautiful plays I have ever seen was a play called "Romance"; yet to me the play seemed rather a tragic story.... I have looked up the word in an English dictionary and it gives the definition, "An imaginative story, fiction." How prosaic! To me Romance has always been something poetical and very real indeed. At any rate, it is real in Reno; everywhere there is evidence of it; and it is easy to lay one's finger on the romantic cases. Just peep into the room of this new arrival; there is a bower of beautiful flowers, and there is a telegram on the dressing table. The lady's lawyer had been telegraphed to and has given instructions that a garden of flowers be arranged as a welcome to the fair exile; the telegram contains words of encouragement and consolation. I heard of many romances that were beautiful and interesting; that pictured to my mind youthful mistakes righted, dreams realized and ideal future homes, with love reigning supreme and peace and harmony keeping the charm ever radiant. I can't tell you about all of them, therefore I shall select the one I thought most beautiful. The heroine of my selected romance is Mrs. Beuland, of Virginia. Never have I found it so difficult to describe a woman as I find it to describe Mrs. Beuland; I wish I could picture to you this most unusual woman as I knew her in the southland, a mere girl of sixteen; as I think of her now she brings to my mind a poem of William Wordsworth: "I saw her upon nearer view, A spirit, yet a woman too: Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food-- For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles." Yes, she was like a poem, with much of the untamed grace of a panther, and the gentleness of a dove..... In Balzac's unique story, "A Passion in the Desert," a question is asked: "How did their friendship end?" The answer is, "Like all great passions--in a misunderstanding. One suspects the other. One is too proud to ask for an explanation and the other too stubborn to offer it." And so it was with Mrs. Beuland, else I should not be recording her romance here. I am glad the story of Balzac did not read: "Like all great loves," because I believe that a great love always brings with it harmony and understanding. The misunderstanding in this case was due to the fact, that the girl did not know that under this great passion lay slumbering a wonderful love of everlasting endurance. Surely the heroine of this romance was deserving of a great love. She was like a sunbeam when she entered a room, she always brought gladness; she radiated the joy of living. She rode like a princess, danced like a fairy, was a child of nature and at the same time a woman of the world. I have seen her romp in a daisy field and gather flowers with the children, as much a child as any of them, and a few hours later I have met her in a drawing room, an entirely different person, all dignity and self possession. Mrs. Beuland was a daughter of one of the first families of Virginia; tall and stately, with a splendid, graceful physique, blue eyes, black hair and olive skin. Her physical charm and mental attraction were always struggling for supremacy. She was a girl of many moods; sometimes the joy of living would just radiate from her and her care-free laughter and musical voice would be that of a happy child; another time her eyes would lose the sparkling, captivating expression and become dreamy and thoughtful, as though they were peering into the great beyond; her voice would tremble with earnestness as she would discuss some serious subject. And then again there would be a note of sadness, though never of bitterness. I knew Mrs. Beuland as Nell Wilbur in Virginia, before her marriage to Mr. Beuland. Her family were among the victims of the Civil War who were left paupers after the wreckage of the South. Nell Wilbur had always been proud, willful and highly strung. Her mother had died young. Her father after futile attempts to guide her steps in the right direction, finally concluded that it was better to let her have her head; she would run away with the bit anyway. She might break her neck, but she surely would have to learn life's lessons in her own way, and she did. Her family tried to make a match for her but she refused, saying, "I want to be the captain of my own soul; I will make my own mistakes": and she kept her word. Just seventeen, she went to visit an aunt in New York, glowing with youth and health, with a mind full of romance and ideals; an enthusiast, and a dreamer of dreams. She at once found herself surrounded by devoted admirers, all rivaling with each other in their efforts to please her. One young millionaire, finding that she was fond of equestrian sports, offered her the pick of his stables, whereupon the young Virginian lifted her eyes in surprise as she said: "But where would I ride? Your little old park isn't big enough to ride in, and the people all look as though they dropped out of a Fifth Avenue shop window. If you would come with me for a cross country gallop in Virginia, you would understand that I could not possibly be interested in doing living pictures in Central Park!" Among the hosts of Miss Wilbur's admirers there were two who interested the young lady; one a splendid young English lawyer, rich and handsome: the other, a young New York artist, poor but interesting, very sincere, very intellectual and with strong personality. Both men had many faults, though they had their full share of fine qualities as well. The faults that were most annoying to Miss Wilbur in the young lawyer (whose name by the way was Glen Royce) were his profound conceit and his sensual nature. There was some excuse for him because the Gods had endowed him with all their charms; he was an Adonis, Apollo and all the other Greek Gods in one. I don't think I have ever seen two people so near physical perfection as Nell Wilbur and Glen Royce. They seemed to be made for each other; every one had decided that they would surely be married. Young Royce was madly in love, and though Miss Wilbur lavished her smiles on the young artist, Will Beuland, no one thought that he had the slightest chance. Miss Wilbur's aunt invited a party of the young people to Atlantic City for the Easter holidays, and I was lucky enough to be asked, my principal pleasure being in watching the ideal young lovers. They were always perfectly groomed; always stunning; in morning dress, bathing suits and evening clothes, alike charming. The last evening before our return I was in the reception room when Nell appeared dressed for dinner. I watched young Royce when, with all the grace of a prince, he rose to receive her. She was in rose satin and chiffon, with a cluster of pink blossoms in her hand, like the herald of spring; so soft and delicately tinted were her beautifully moulded shoulders that one could scarcely perceive where the soft clinging chiffon left off. She was startlingly beautiful, and as I watched the man as he touched her hand, I could have sworn that all the blood in his veins had turned to liquid fire. I made some excuse and left them alone. The balcony was dark and deserted, and I betook myself to its seclusion. I think the lovers must have forgotten about the balcony; I am quite sure he had forgotten everything but the vision before him. He was living in the world that never was; the sound of flutes was wafted on the breeze from fairyland. Pulsing bosom and sheen of sun-kissed shoulders.... Ah! maddening modesty and virtue, how inconsistent are thy ways! No wonder so many forget about the cursed serpent.... Through the windows I saw the man lead the woman to a cluster of palms in a far corner of the big room, seat her on a divan in the shadow of the palms and drop on his knees before her. The next moment she was in his arms. He had meant to propose the same as we read in books, but his lips were too near the woman's delicately tinted breast... He kissed her lips, her eyes, her bosom and shoulders; he was like the rush of a bursting river whose waters cry out in ecstasy of liberation as they leap in the sunshine. That evening at dinner the engagement was informally announced. There was, however, something in Miss Wilbur's manner that I could not quite fathom; that something which completes the happiness of two people who love each other was lacking. It was not until ten years later when I met Mrs. Beuland in Reno, that I understood the shadow. I knew that the young lawyer had failed to induce Miss Wilbur to consent to an early wedding, and after much persuasion Mr. Royce returned to England alone. Later it was rumored that the engagement had been broken off; then we heard that Mr. Royce had committed suicide; again that he had married; another time that he was returning to America to press his suit. Miss Wilbur was very reticent about the subject and continued to receive the attentions of the young artist, Will Beuland, and some six months after Mr. Royce returned to England she was married to the New York artist. No one seemed surprised, though it caused much gossip. Fancy my astonishment when ten years later I met the stately Mrs. Beuland in the lobby of my hotel in Reno. I had not seen her since her marriage; the only difference the years had made, apparently, was that now she was a woman instead of a girl, and yes, there was just a wisp of snowy white hair among the black locks about her forehead, which made her look even more aristocratic, if that was possible. When one is lonely and alone in a strange place, it is most agreeable to find an unexpected friend; and when one has a heavy heart, it is good to confide in a sympathetic friend; so Mrs. Beuland and I became close companions. I was fortunately able to lend a helping hand and cheer the lonely way of this charming and much loved woman. One day as we were chatting on the banks of the Truckee, she said to me: "Do you know, it does seem such a pity that one of the most beautiful things on earth really causes the most trouble!" "What is that?" I replied. "Youthful ideals," she replied. "For a youthful ideal I have paid long years of misery, and have spent that time as an apprentice in the workshop of wisdom. Tardy wisdom, the mother of all real enduring happiness. Because of a youthful ideal I did not marry the man I really loved; instead I married the man I thought I loved. I wanted to be the companion and friend and ideal mate and intellectual partner through life to the man I married; those were my ideals. "The moment I promised myself to the man I loved I found myself clasped tightly in passion's mad embrace; a mad passion by youth's fierce fires fed; his kisses hotly pressed on my lips burned into my very soul and made my heart sick. Was that love? It was certainly not my ideal, to be the toy of mad passion! "Ah! where was wisdom's tardy voice that it did not whisper: 'God made men thus: there are no perfect men!'.... "How true it is that ideals are simply mental will-o'-the-wisps!.... "I married for ideals, not for love. I was in love with the ideal, and the man I married led me to believe he was that ideal; picture my heart-aching disappointment when I found that his art was his real bride, and that I was a sort of understudy; hardly that, after the first few months. I awoke to the fact that I had exchanged my youth and freedom for a domestic mill that sank all my ideals into commonplace. I said I would make my own mistakes and I did. Then came the long battle with my pride, and I suffered in silence. For seven long years I faced neglect and humiliation; and then one day after a visit to my old home, I returned to find my husband and one of his models occupying my very home.... my very bed. I turned and left the place without a word. "For the first time in my life I grew bitter; I wondered if it were true, that realization kills all the joys we anticipate; if all our rosy dreams turn gray in the face of cold reality. "I was sick at heart and alone, too proud to go to anyone with my troubles; it seemed to me that day by day the color was fading out of my life. I had for years given all my love gifts only to answer duty's call and one by one the leaves of my romance began to fall, until jealousy, like a cancer, had eaten into my aching heart, and left me stripped of everything, even hope.... "My thoughts were muddled; I could not think clearly: it was a day in early June: I did not know where to go, and I did not want to meet anyone I knew. I never knew quite how or why, but a few hours later I found myself in Atlantic City. I arrived there in the evening and after refreshing myself, I walked out on the board walk and almost to the end of it, until there was no one in sight: and then I went down on the sand and there I seated myself. I thought, with the big silver moon overhead and the waves breaking on the shore, I should be able to think out some plan for the future. I don't know how long I sat there, but I know the only thoughts that came to me were that in my case I was forever through with romance, sentiments and ideals. There was a storm raging in my soul, and bitter resentment in my heart; I had meant so well and it had all come to this. I looked at my watch: it was nearly eleven; I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to dine, that my head ached and that I was tired. I got up and started back to the hotel. Then a miracle happened; it sounds like fiction but I swear it is the truth..... "I heard my name called; it sounded as though it were an echo out of the past. I looked up.... a tall gentleman was standing by me looking down into my face; 'Good evening, Mrs. Beuland, this is indeed a pleasant surprise." Glen Royce....You know our story, and as I had not heard from him in years you can imagine my surprise. "Mr. Royce had been in America just one week; he had come over on business and just thought it would be interesting to run down and have a peep at the sea. I think both our thoughts traveled back over the years to the Easter time we spent together there.... "'How long are you remaining?' he asked after a little pause. 'About a week,' I replied. 'May I call tomorrow then?' 'Yes,' I said, 'but I have just arrived and am rather tired; if you will excuse me I will leave you now.' He saw me to my hotel and said good night. I never knew quite what was said or what really happened, however. I slept soundly from sheer exhaustion, and awakened the next morning refreshed, but unable to realize that everything was not a dream. "Then the 'phone rang. 'Good morning, Mrs. Beuland; this is Glen Royce speaking; hope I haven't called you too early? Will you come for a walk? It is a beautiful day.' I did and before the day was over, I had made a confidant of this old sweetheart of mine, and extracted a promise from him, a very foolish, silly promise. "'I want so much to be your friend,' he said, 'there must be something I can do to make your burden lighter.' I told him that I would accept his friendship under one condition, that he would promise not to make love to me, and so the courtship was started all over again on a friendship basis, though I did not realize it at the time. Later he made me tell him why I broke our engagement, and when I explained he understood, and blamed it on a misunderstanding. "I thought him a much finer man than he was ten years ago, but of course that is only the wisdom that comes with the years. It has been three years since I met him that evening, when I was blind with utter despair. That's the story so far! My case will be called tomorrow; if I am lucky I will be free, and then he is coming out and we will be married here and spend our honeymoon in California. I want you to be my only attendant. Things have turned out so that he is to remain in America; we have a beautiful little home near New York, down by the sea. When you go back East you must come and see us." And so the happy day arrived, just as the sun was sinking down behind Mount Rose; we stood in the silent church; I held the flowers, a huge bouquet of simple spring blossoms, while the groom slipped the little gold band on the bride's finger and the organ pealed out the benediction.... A few months later I arrived in New York and telephoned, "Hello, Nell, is that you? Here I am, may I come out, or are you two still honeymooning?" The answer came back: "We are still honeymooning, but you may come out; in fact, I am just crazy to see you. You will never find the way alone; meet Glen at his office and come out with him tonight!" And I did. The bride was at the station to meet us, radiantly happy. We motored over a beautiful bit of country and in about ten minutes came to a beautiful villa, with beautiful gardens and a glimpse of the sea in the distance; it did my soul good to watch this picture of domestic bliss. They were like a boy and girl again, up to their eyes in love and gloriously happy. "A love and happiness with wisdom as its basis and made up of understanding and friendship, with a dash of romance, and enough passion to lend warmth and charm, and a good portion of common sense that doesn't expect perfection": this is Nell's recipe for domestic happiness. Three years later. My husband and I have just returned from a week-end visit to Mr. and Mrs. Royce: the recipe seems to be working fine; I am trying it myself. We sat on the porch and watched them stroll out to the beach, in the fading light of the setting sun, and then the shadows of twilight hid them from sight. They disappeared, hand in hand; lovers, living in perfect companionship, planning and building as they go. May their matrimonial ship continue to sail on sunny seas, where soft winds blow, and rest in the harbor of happiness at last. Another triumph for Reno..... On the occasion of our visit she showed me a package of letters tied with white satin ribbon; "Glen's letters," she said; "he wrote me one every day I was in Reno and they are the most beautiful letters ever written." I read some of them and I agreed with her; I wish she would allow me to publish them: it would make a good world better for having read them. "Nor has earth, nor Heaven nor Hell any bars through which love cannot burst its way toward reunion and completeness".... And yet this queen of matrimonial bliss said to me, "I wish that all mothers would warn their girls against ideals which are not practical. I blame my ideals for years of utter misery; my ideal was a perfect man." "Someone has said: 'God does not make imperfect things,' and yet can anyone say that he has ever seen a perfect man or a woman? I held on to the shreds of my ideal until there was not a shred left to hang on to; until my heart lay bruised and bleeding on the altar of dead and gone ideals. And then wisdom came and whispered: 'You have been looking for perfection, but there is no such thing on this earth: we must be forbearing and forgiving: 'forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.' "With wisdom came new ideals that were practical and a new kind of love, indulgent and forgiving, yet self-respecting; a love as strong as the Rock of Ages. Love--a little thing--a sentiment perhaps--and yet without it what would be left of that which we call life.... "There are emotions which make for ambition, for right living, for honor and position, but how pitifully small and inconsequential besides the mighty tomes which, circling the globe, comprise the lexicon of love. Love--the symbol and sequel of birth, the solace of death--the essence of divinity! Frozen indeed is the heart which has never felt its glow; gross and sordid the soul which has never been illumined by its sunshine. "To live is to love, my friend, and to love is to suffer a little and to be happy much." PART 4 RENO COMEDIES According to some of the comic postcards which are sent out, Reno was known in the time of Adam and Eve. Someone sent me a card while there, which depicted Adam and Eve under the famous apple-tree. (Telephone: 281 Apple.) Eve was beautiful in flowing hair and fig leaf. Adam had one on too, a rather faded affair. Adam was plucking a nice, fat, green fig leaf out of his salad. Under the picture were written the words: "Eve, the next time you put my dress suit in the salad, Reno for me." One sees and hears funny things in Reno. For instance, no one will abide there long before being asked: "Are you here for the cure?" At first you may look astonished and say: "No, I am perfectly well, thank you," but the smile that lightens the questioner's face makes the meaning slowly dawn upon one. One can hear a porter say to a conductor of the train from the East: "Any victims today?"; and the hotels frequented by the divorcees are known as "hospitals for the first aid to the matrimonially injured." The reporter of the local paper will ask: "Any new headlines ready?" The Court House is known as "the divorce mill." Sometimes as "the separator"! Then Renoites are fond of nicknaming the members of the divorce colony, as well as the buildings. One fair divorcee was dubbed the "Weeping Beauty" by her lawyer, because she wept whenever she visited him. And she looked pretty too when she wept: "like a dew-kissed rose," he said. A gentleman of mature age was known as the "Silver King" because of his princely bearing, silvery white hair and Greek god figure. "The Venus of Reno" was another one, a statuesque brunette, because of her perfect figure and Grecian gowns. A very stout lady bore the graceful name of "Reno- ceros," whereas an old reprobate could do no better than "Renogade." However, "Reno-vated" they all got! An interesting fact is that your chambermaid, bellboy, hotel clerk, taxi driver, dressmaker, saleslady, cook and laundress, hairdresser, waiter and bootblack may all and each be a so-called divorcee. (For convenience sake, I speak of them all as "divorcees," although Webster defines a "divorcee" as a man or woman who has already obtained a divorce.) What is more, a great many of these people who are working are well fixed financially, and are just working to keep sane. I remember tipping my waitress one evening. The next day I received a bunch of American Beauties from that lady, which simply bowled me over at a glance. She got her divorce, and is now married to a wealthy New York real estate man. So you see it is difficult to discriminate. I received shock after shock until I felt like a shock absorber. I was dining with a friend one evening in a restaurant we often patronized. The gentleman with me desired a cigarette, and found his case was empty. A waitress, noticing his disappointment, extracted a silver cigarette case from her rather attractive bosom, opened it, and offered my friend one of her monogrammed cigarettes. Another victim! One evening after writing all day without any recreation, I went down to dinner, feeling a bit tired but rather satisfied with my day's work. I said to my waitress while looking over the bill of fare: "Tilly, I have worked hard today; I feel that I deserve a halo!" Tilly looked at me for a moment, and disappeared. She was a devoted soul and had always taken great pains to please me. In a few minutes she returned with a disappointed expression on her face, and said: "I am sorry, Mam, I can't get you the halo. Cook says it's something Mary wore around her head." Some of the witnesses in divorce cases are very humorous. I was present at a few hearings, when a tall and thin man stated in a rather shaky voice that his wife was a "beastly vampire," and that after living with him for two whole weeks she struck him over the head with a crutch and told him that she had a graveyard full of better men than he was. The present victim was the fourth husband of the defendant. "Judgment for the plaintiff".... Another pretty young lady said that one of her husband's favorite pastimes was spitting in her face, while yet another lady accused her actor husband of "too much artistic temperament, and whiskey temper." "Judgment for the plaintiff".... The funniest case I ever witnessed was that of an old washwoman. I don't know where she hailed from, but the judge said: "Why do you wish to get a divorce from your husband?" "Well, yer honor, he don't support me." "But," said the judge, "is that all the complaint you have? You must have more than that to get a divorce." "Well, yer honor, I don't love my husband any more." "That won't do either," said the judge impatiently. "Is that all?" "Well, to tell the truth, yer honor, I don't think he is the father of my last child." "Judgment for the defendant." .... What matter law and customs to even the most staid and stone-hearted Wall Street banker if he happens to be on top of the world with a woman who is a masterpiece of creation? There are many in Reno,-- masterpieces: not millionaire bankers--, and lonely too, sometimes! Anyway it came to pass not so very long ago, that a New York banker of great wealth and international reputation went out to Reno to secure a divorce. After two months' stay the gentleman lost his heart to a very attractive lady, who also was whiling away six months of her sweet young life in order to shake off the matrimonial shackles. The banker was about fifty, the lady twenty-seven and the wife of a well-known New York actor. So lavish were the banker's attentions to this charming lady that he gave a most extraordinary banquet in her honor at the Riverside Hotel to which were invited about one hundred guests. The dinner was under the management of one of the best of San Francisco's caterers, and all the table decorations were brought from San Francisco. The banquet, I am told, cost about $5,000--Hoover in those days was not popular as yet.... But alas! poor little Cupid was obliged to succumb to failure. Before the six months had passed, the banker's wife "got wise" to his whereabouts and his doings, and he disappeared from Reno very abruptly. About the same time the beautiful lady's actor husband learned of the affair, and sued the banker for fifty thousand dollars "heart balm" .... And so we find a fool face to face with his folly.... "Altitude," did you say? I don't know .... Funny how a few fleeting hours can change the face of the world! How the mind when free and refreshed can see and admit mistakes, and how our fairy castles and wondrous dreams vanish at the touch of reason and stern reality. It's wonderful to have known paradise: to have walked in its flower-strewn paths and to have tasted its delirious delights. But the awakening! "How could I?"--"How could She?"--"What was the end of it all?" "Who knows?" It is not well for man to be alone, nor woman either, otherwise why was Eve bestowed upon Adam? That is probably what a young man from one of the first families of Boston thought while exiled to the Reno Divorce Colony for the purpose of ridding himself of a wife: the result of one of youth's romantic mistakes. The affair of some years ago shocked his family and Eastern society generally. Was it a shop girl from Boston, or a chorus girl from New York? I have forgotten. Anyway, his companion in Reno was a fascinating little dancer of the Sagebrush Cafe. So infatuated was the young man with this little charmer that he spent his entire income entertaining her, and when the income had vanished he pawned his jewelry, including his watch. But then, boys will be boys, and after all, what could the poor youth do? All alone in a strange place! It is so uninteresting to sit and twirl one's thumbs: "Twiddle-dee Twiddle-dum.".... "That love laughs at locksmiths" and "All is fair in love and war" seems to be the moral of the following, if moral there be in it: Mrs. Jones, a very beautiful and statuesque blonde, went out to Reno for a divorce. On her arrival there she wrote her husband that she had repented: "I am sorry I ran away from you," she is said to have written, "and if you will come out here for me we will make up and live happily ever after." He came out and was arrested and thrown in jail, charged with extreme cruelty. The lady got her divorce within three weeks instead of six months, as she was able to serve the summons upon her husband in the State of Nevada. After that her sweetheart came out and they were married. I am told that some three years later the husband brought suit against them for collusion, but I never heard how it terminated. One of the noted cases of the Reno Divorce Colony is the divorce of a famous New York beauty and heiress. While she was riding in Central Park one afternoon her horse bolted and she was saved by a handsome policeman named Dow. When the young lady looked into the eyes of her rescuer, it was a case of "love at first sight." This god of the police force informed his wife of the affair: she immediately packed her box and started for Reno. A few days after her arrival, her husband was located in Carson City, by the merest accident of course, and as it was possible to serve the summons upon him in the State of Nevada, the case was put through in two weeks. As soon as it was ended, Mr. Dow presented his ex-wife with five one thousand dollar bills. When the cashier of the Reno National Bank handed her the envelope containing the bills, she extracted them and deposited them in her stocking. She was advised not to go about with so much money on her, whereupon she replied that the "First National was good enough for her." That same evening a champagne banquet was given by the ex-policeman at the Colony Restaurant at which most of the divorce colony were present, and among them, his ex- wife. Both of them were extremely demonstrative; in fact the entire party was decidedly affectionate, and the affair was the talk of the town for months afterwards. After Mr. Dow married the famous beauty, he found out it was riot all heaven to be the poor husband of a rich wife, and so he decided to return to the police force. Of course, that would never do at all, and therefore the fair lady promised to pay him ten thousand a year, in quarterly installments of $2,500, if he would consent to be her idle rich husband. This he did until Mrs. Dow II. found out that hubby was indulging in clandestine meetings with Mrs. Dow I., and presto, change! the allowance suddenly ceased. After a few months of separation from his bank roll, having become accustomed to an easily earned income, Mr. Dow sued his bank, Mrs. Dow II., for the blue envelope of two quarters of the allowance, and the New York newspapers just hummed with a fresh scandal. Finally Mrs. Dow II. tried to get a divorce on the plea that the Nevada divorce was illegal. Failing in this, there were ways and means found in the East, and at last they were divorced. It has been rumored that Mr. Dow thought the old love best after all, and that Mrs. Dow I. has been re- installed to the place of honor by his side. "True love never did run smoothly": not even in the police force.... A rather amusing story is told of Elinor Glyn's visit to Reno, not for a divorce, dear reader, but apparently for atmosphere, as she spent several months in the most rugged states in the West. One of the handsome sons of the sagebrush, known as the Beau Brummel of Reno, became very attentive to the distinguished lady visitor, and when she expressed a desire to see a real Western shooting scrap, the gentleman said: "All right; the lady must have anything her heart desires, doggonit!" and so he staged a regular shooting scrap. And they do say out there that it was so realistically done that Elinor fainted and was unconscious for an hour. The "fight" occurred on the train from Tonopah to Mina. Mr. Beau Brummel had been showing the lady Nevada's great mining camps: a couple of seats in front of Elinor Glyn and her escort two men began to quarrel, presumably over a game of cards. The fight grew until each pulled a six-shooter. There was a shot and a flash, and one man fell: dead, apparently, while the other stood over him, wild eyed, his smoking gun in his hand. I can truly believe this story as I saw the dead gentleman auction off four times the same basket of roses at a Red Cross benefit, and each time he got a hundred dollars for the basket... However dead he may have been, he certainly was not dead on the vine! Speaking of Beau Brummels, I never found out the name of the gentleman who came back from Lawton's one evening--or was it morning?--minus his silk shirt. A lady of the party had taken a fancy to it and suggested that they auction it off for the benefit of the Red Cross: at that time America had just declared war on Germany, and the interest in the Red Cross was at its height. The lady's suggestion was carried out with enthusiasm. The lucky lady was Mrs. Hall, called "the forty million dollar divorcee"; she bid seventy-five dollars for the shirt and wore it to a golf tournament the next day. Let us hope that the gentleman's linen was as attractive as his shirt, for the shirt was removed then and there and bestowed upon the fair purchaser. I met a very charming young couple in Reno whose story rather interested me. I was not shocked at this case, as I had been in Reno some time before I was introduced to them, and had heard about it. When I first met Mr. Lake he was with a very beautiful young lady to whom he seemed very attentive, and I thought surely they were sweethearts. We all went out motoring with Mr. Lake's lawyer, and in the course of conversation the lawyer informed me that Mr. Lake had received his decree about two weeks before, and as he had obtained a splendid position in Reno he had decided to remain there. His fiancee was expected next week from Alabama, and they were to be married at once upon her arrival. The lady with Mr. Lake at the time, the lawyer went on to say, was just eighteen years of age, and had received her decree about a week before. She had a fine little boy about two years old with her. One day the young lady called, and informed me that she had just been up to the future home of Mr. and Mrs. Lake unpacking his fiancee's trousseau which had been sent on ahead, with the request that it be unpacked and hung up in order that the wrinkles all be out by the time the bride arrived. "Look," continued the girl from South Carolina, and she held out her hand displaying a beautiful Roman gold ring of artistic design. "Isn't it beautiful?" Was I mistaken? did her voice choke at the next words? were there tears in her eyes? "This is her wedding ring, isn't it beautiful? I am wearing it until she arrives...." The naughty fiancee arrived two days before she was expected, and came near upsetting everything. Hubby-to-be saw her first, dodged, jumped into his car and raced up to the other girl's home to get the wedding ring and break the dinner engagement for that evening. Then he rushed downtown and greeted his bride-to-be in his lawyer's office. They are living in Reno, happily married. Mr. Lake received a telegram of congratulation from his first wife. Mrs. Lake II. is a charming woman. I think she has heard all about the episode, but she is a diplomat and probably thinks that one way to matrimonial bliss is skilled ignorance. Happiness and contentment and.... love.... or what we think it is! And yet, what would the world be without that inheritance. The Six Months' Residence Law of Nevada, was not made primarily to accommodate matrimonial misfits, but to secure settlers by offering them early citizenship and votes, the State being only sparingly populated. Prior to Reno, Sioux Falls, Dakota, used to be the haven for those seeking relief from the "tie that binds." When Dakota placed the ban on the divorce colony, someone discovered the Nevada divorce law, and those who found that Cupid was no longer at the helm of their matrimonial ship, turned Reno-ward. However, be it known that the citizens of Nevada knew all about this easy relief law from the undesirable bond way back in 1851, as the following quotation from a very amusing chapter of Nevada's history will illustrate. The book I speak of is called "Reminiscences of William M. Stewart" and was written by a Senator. Of course he was a Senator! Judges and Senators are as thick in Nevada as Colonels in Kentucky. Most every man worth while has been, is, or is going to be a Senator or a Judge. However, that book is a good one and I found the following most interesting and amusing. Says William M. Stewart: "If you want to preserve good health, keep your head cool and your feet warm!" "While working our claim I awoke one morning and saw a covered wagon with two oxen which had been unyoked and were grazing on the grass near a spring in a ravine below me. I soon discovered that a line had been drawn from the wagon to a clump of rocks, upon which were hung several articles of feminine apparel to dry. Women were so scarce in California at that time that this was sufficient to arouse the whole camp. The "Boys" as we were called, were scattered along the Coyote digging for a distance of about four miles, and when anything unusual happened the words, 'Oh, Joe!' would be passed along the whole line. "When I saw the feminine raiment, I raised the usual alarm, "Oh, Joe!" and this called the attention of the miners on Buckeye Hill, where I was, to the clothes-line which had attracted my notice. They gathered round on the hill, nearly surrounding the covered wagon and its contents. The rush of the boys in the immediate vicinity to see the wonderful sight attracted those farther away, and in less than ten minutes two or three thousand young men were watching the wagon, clothes-lines, and fascinating lingerie. In alarm the man that belonged to the woman inside stuck his head out of a small tent beside the wagon. I assured him that no harm was intended, but that we were very anxious to see the lady who was the owner of the clothes. This aroused her curiosity sufficiently to induce her to pull the curtain of the tent aside so that her face could be discovered but not fully seen. "I then proposed that we make a donation to the first lady that had honored our camp with a visit. I took from my camp a buckskin bag, used for the purpose of carrying gold, and invited the boys to contribute. They came forward with great eagerness and poured out of their sacks gold dust amounting to between two and three thousand dollars. I then proceeded to appoint a committee to wait on the lady and present it. The motion was unanimously carried and one of the gentlemen on the committee suggested myself as chairman. I took the sack of gold and went within about thirty feet of the tent and made as good a speech as I could to induce the lady to come out, assuring her that all the men about her were gentlemen, that they had seen no ladies for so many months and that the presence of one reminded them of their mothers and sweethearts at home. I told her that the bag of gold was hers on the condition that she come out to claim it. Her husband urged her to be brave, but when she finally ventured about half way the cheers were so vociferous that she got frightened and ran back. She repeated this performance several times and I kept moving slowly back far enough to get her away from the little tent so the boys could get a good view of her. I suppose half an hour was occupied with her running back and forth while the boys looked in admiration. When I finally gave her the bag with all the good wishes of the camp, she grabbed it and ran into the tent like a rabbit. "The next morning the wagon and the owner of the inspiring apparel were gone and we never heard of them in after life. It was no doubt well that they hastened their departure, for in those days it was a very usual occurrence for the young wife coming to that country to be persuaded to forsake her husband on their arrival in the new camp. The immigrants of 1850 included thousands of newly married young people whose wedding journey included all the hardships and privations of crossing the plains. Those hardships made the men look rather rough and scrubby, and they were all miserably poor. The women were young, and after they had an opportunity to wash their faces, looked more attractive: particularly to the miners who had been deprived of female society for several months and had accumulated some money and good will. The miner would propose marriage, and if a divorce could be obtained extreme cruelty was usually given as the reason for the divorce. The intended bridegroom was always a ready witness to swear to a case of extreme cruelty. "In the fall of 1851 I went to Nevada City to bring supplies for the men engaged in construction of the Grizzly Ditch. I bought several mule-loads and was having them packed very early one morning, but before I could get away I was summoned as a juror in Judge Barber's court. This was before I made myself exempt from jury duty by becoming a member of the bar. I saw the judge and tried very hard to beg off; but he told me there were ten divorce cases on hand and he wanted to dispose of them that day. (I think 1917 had nothing on 1851 when it comes to divorces in Nevada. Author.) "The judge continued: 'I cannot excuse you but I think you can get away in time to return to your camp tonight.' So I had to submit though I did not like it. I then prepared the jury room for use by conveying to it a demijohn of whiskey, a bucket of water and twelve tin dippers. As foreman of the jury I wrote the verdict as follows: 'We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of extreme cruelty.' We returned the verdict to the court, heard the next case, and continued until we had disposed of the ten cases. There were ten weddings that afternoon and evening. "I then thought and still think that we did the best thing that could have been done. These women had separated from their husbands, and if they had not been allowed to marry the men who had parted them, they perhaps would have done worse. Some of them made good citizens and raised families, and when they grew rich became very aristocratic." So much for the pioneer days, and they are really not so far away. Don't take an umbrella with you, you won't need it; it never rains; but I wish someone would write a poem to take the place of "Mispah." I received that poem from four different people on my departure from Reno, and I feel that it is overworked, though it is beautiful indeed, and I have quoted two verses of it below: MISPAH "Go thou thy way and I go mine Apart, yet not afar. Only a thin veil hangs between The pathways where we are; And God keep watch 'tween thee and me This is my prayer. He looketh thy way, he looketh mine, And keeps us near. I sigh ofttimes to see thy face, But since this may not be, I'll leave thee to the care of Him Who cares for thee and me." PART 5 RENO AND ITS PEOPLE Reno is named after General Reno, who died in the battle of South Mountain. It is about two thousand nine hundred miles from New York City; it takes nearly four days to reach it by train. From Reno to San Francisco is only about two hundred miles. The altitude is about 4,419 feet: the population twelve thousand. This "big little city" in the West is modern in every respect: it is the county seat of Washoe County and the largest city in the State of Nevada. Reno is located in the greenest of valleys and surrounded by the Sierra Nevadas, the most majestic mountain range in the United States. These mountains cover a length of six hundred miles from Mount Jacinto to Mount Shasta, and a breadth of from seventy-five to one hundred miles, with long and gradual slopes on the west, cut by deep canons. The climate of the Sierras is beyond an adequate description: the beautiful summer days are mild and rainless. The main peaks of the western range are: Mount King, Mount Gardner and Mount Brewer; those of the eastern range: Mount Kearsage, Mount Tyndall, Mount Williamson and Mount Whitney. Mount Whitney is the highest peak in the United States outside of Alaska, rising 14,898 feet above sea level. The other main peaks of the Sierra Nevadas exceed 13,000 feet in altitude. The peaks nearest Reno are: Mount Rose and Peavin Mountain, both of which can be seen from any part of the City of Reno. In this setting nestles our much-talked-of "Gem City of Nevada"--the city of heart-throbs and dreams! Its chief industries, I would say, are gold and love.... One less poetic might call these mining and divorce. Next to its dreamy, romantic side, Reno has a very practical side: its position as a business center. The railroads radiating north, east, south and west, give it an enormous tributary territory. There are modern business blocks, department stores, excellent hotels. The best hotels are: The Hotel Golden, the Riverside and the Overland. [Illustration: Lobby of the Golden Hotel] Reno is a city of beautiful residences, trees and shrubbery; asphalt and macadam streets. There are fine public buildings, libraries and theatres of the first magnitude. One of the most noteworthy features of Reno is its beautiful schools. There are six besides the High School and the University; Orvis Ring School, McKinley Park School, Southside School, Mt. Rose School, Mary S. Doten School and the Babcock Memorial Kindergarten. The architecture is the "old mission," and it is difficult to decide which one really excels in beauty. Apart from the beautiful architecture, these schools are all equipped with every modern device for the training of the younger generation, both physically and mentally. Never in any public school have I seen such a splendidly equipped Domestic Science room as the one in the McKinley Park School. Its beautiful open, airy Assembly Hall with its hardwood floors and stage for private theatricals and other social affairs is the acme of modern refinement. In this hall the "Mothers' Club" holds its meetings, and the children have their school dances. The University of Nevada has the best equipped school of Mining Engineering in the Western States; it also has a summer course on several interesting subjects, which often is taken advantage of by many who find time passing slowly, and wish to "brush up a bit." Among the imposing buildings downtown is the Y. M. C. A., an artistic and splendidly equipped edifice. It is located on the north bank of the Truckee, commanding a beautiful view of snow-capped Mount Rose and Slide Mountain in the distance, above the green of the trees. Part of this building is devoted to indoor sports and consists of a gymnasium, conducted by able instructors; a handball court, bowling alleys, pool and billiard tables and a spacious swimming pool with shower-baths; it furthermore has a library and a large number of private rooms for out- of-town guests. At the time of the writing of this book, 1917, the Y. M. C. A. donated the use of its Assembly Hall to the American Red Cross for making hospital supplies and for "First Aid" classes. Here, the residents of Reno work side by side with members of the "Divorce Colony," women in all walks of life, from all parts of the world; women famous and beautiful, all working for the great cause of Humanity without any social prejudices, personal feelings, or pettiness.... So much for the Y. M. C. A. [Illustration: Mt. Rose School] Among the prominent and beautiful buildings are: the Nixon Building and the Nixon Home on the banks of the Truckee, both of which are artistic and worthy of mention. Also the Elks' Home is very beautiful and picturesque: it is set in spacious grounds and has an imposing entrance crowned with an immense elk's head. Each of the antlers holds a beautifully colored light; the lights form the national colors. The home contains every comfort for the wandering Brother Elk, including a warm welcome. Broad verandas and balconies overlook the Truckee River, and when there is dancing its playful waters sing a rustling accompaniment to the music, which, when mixed with the moonlight on the river and the pretty girl by one's side, is calculated to make a romantic cocktail, sufficiently intoxicating to make any poor lonely Elk absolutely helpless. The social affairs of this organization take a very prominent part in the life of Reno. One sojourning in this city would be well advised to have a card to the Elks, should he or she have relatives or friends who are members. The Elks are a splendid organization: I have found them always ready with a helping hand extended. There are no less than ten churches in this charming little Reno town. The different denominations, their pastors and location are: 1. Baptist Church, Second corner Chestnut; Rev. Brewster Adams. 2. Catholic (St. Thomas), Second corner Chestnut; Rev. T. M. Tubman. 3. Congregational, Virginia corner 5th; Rev. W. D. Trout. 4. Episcopal, Second corner Sierra; Rev. Samuel Unsworth. 5. First Church of Christ, Scientist, Masonic Temple. [Illustration: Reno National Bank Building] 6. Lutheran (St. Luke's), Bell corner Second; Rev. F. E. Martens. 7. Methodist Episcopal, Sierra corner 1st; Rev. W. E. Lowther. 8. Presbyterian, Ridge corner Hill; Rev. W. E. Howe. 9. Salvation Army, Sierra Street; Capt. Boyd in charge. 10. Seventh Day Adventist, West 5th; Rev. W. S. Holbrook. The banks of Reno also do it credit; there are four in number: 1. The Farmers & Merchants Bank, Virginia corner Second Street. 2. The Reno National Bank, Virginia corner Second Street. 3. The Scheeline Banking and Trust Co., N. Virginia Street. 4. The Washoe County Bank, N. Virginia Street corner Second. In speaking of the banks, I want to comment especially upon the Reno National Bank. This bank a few years ago moved into its new building, a most beautiful and artistic structure, which in my opinion would do credit to Wall Street. Its lobby is artistically and beautifully equipped, as well as all parts of the bank. It is finished entirely in white marble, with blue velvet hangings, and no luxury or comfort known to a modern bank building has been forgotten in its construction. This bank was built in 1915 by Mr. George Wingfield at a cost of approximately $200,000. "From the North corner comes the light" .... can it be that sometimes its emerges from the West! Last but not least is the beautiful Court House. It was rebuilt in 1909 at an approximate cost of $150,000. It is located in a very prominent part of the city, and faces a beautiful little park; a very imposing building with its big golden dome, numerous marble pillars and broad steps. These steps might truly be called the "great divide," as many thousands have tripped up united and returned divided; which incidentally does not mean "united we stand, divided we fall." Perhaps much more so: "united we fall, divided we stand!" [Illustration: Interior of Reno National Bank] As one looks at this palace of Justice one cannot help conjuring up mental pictures of famous beauties and prominent men, whose stories have furnished headlines for the leading newspapers of our big cities in years gone by; they seem to pass in review; a continuous procession ascending the steps in search of freedom and new happiness.... Through this little city flows the Truckee River, which I think is one of its chief beauties. This river is one hundred miles long; flowing out of Lake Tahoe, it empties into Lake Pyramid, a desert lake with no apparent outlet. The waters of the Truckee are as clear as crystal, except when they reflect the rose color of the sunset, or the thousand hues from the mountain peaks when they turn green and gold, rose and purple: I have seen them look as though covered with heliotrope velvet, just at the hour between sunset and moonrise. One can follow the Truckee River from Reno to Lake Tahoe,--a motor run of about three hours, through scenery of indescribable beauty. The course of the river, tortuous and quickly changing from side to side, offers to the enchanted eye a kaleidoscopic review of towering rocks, foaming waterfalls, pine-clad mountains, snow-capped peaks, emerald lakes and moss-green valleys. I shall never forget my first trip from Reno to Lake Tahoe over what is known as the "Dog Valley Grade." We stopped at the summit, at the edge of the mountain. Down we peered into the misty shadows of the deep valleys, six hundred feet below. It was a strange sensation to be hanging thus between earth and sky: to feel that the only thing between life and death was about three feet of roadbed, and four "non- skid" tires. It was wonderful to drink in the beauty of it all. I felt like a disembodied spirit, traveling back:.... back over centuries into forgotten ages, trying to realize what this wonderful country must have been like when it was still hidden by the foaming waters of a great inland sea..... And then we reached beautiful Lake Tahoe, set in the midst of the Sierra Nevadas, surrounded by a dozen snow-capped peaks, the staunch, unflinching satellites of one of God's wondrous treasures. It reflects a picture to be surpassed nowhere else in the world. The great depth of the lake accounts for its glorious color of waters, which, turquoise blue in one place twenty feet away will change to emerald green; the colors do not fade into one another: they are distinctly separated. In some places the depth of the lake is even unknown. Lake Tahoe is twenty-three miles long: its maximum width thirteen. Its altitude is six thousand two hundred and twenty-five feet above sea level: the highest body of water in the United States. On one side its undulating waves kiss the shores of California: on the other those of Nevada, so that exiles of the "Divorce Colony" may take advantage of this delightful summer resort and still remain within the State to which one day they hope to owe their happiness..... The midsummer air is cool and invigorating; hunting and fishing excellent; motor rides perfect; boating and bathing the finest in the land. Hotel and camping accommodations are splendid; the landscape is picturesque and a never-ending delight to the eye. This is one of the great many splendid advantages of the beautiful city tucked away in the shadow of the Sierras; so cheer-up, you prospective exiles, the wilds have their untold fascinations. In writing of Reno one feels a compelling desire to describe the principal points of interest around and near the city, as in these days of motor cars and good roads it is a never-ending joy to spend a day among the famous gold mining districts, visit the Indian homes and reservations, and other beautiful and interesting places. I will endeavor to describe these further: Near Reno, on the Truckee, is the famous Carson Dam: the first reclamation project undertaken by the government under the National Reclamation Project Act. I went out to look it over and found it tremendously interesting. It was built in 1903 at a cost of $7,000,000. The dam is constructed of earth and concrete, eight hundred feet long, one hundred ten feet high, four hundred feet wide at the base and twenty feet wide at the top. The main unit of this project was completed in 1913. It was the means of reclaiming a total of 2,000,000 acres of what was once known as the "Forty Mile Desert." The dam produces many thousand hydroelectric horse-power, and it is wonderful to see this stretch of desert waste turned like magic into rich productive agricultural soil. Perhaps some day the entire desert will flourish likewise.... Who knows? Carson City, the capital of Nevada, is situated in the Eagle Valley and was originally laid out in 1858. The valley was first visited in 1833 by Kit Carson, the famous scout and frontiersman. The south end of Eagle Valley was settled by Mormons in 1849-1850. Carson City itself is 33 miles from Reno, 22 miles from Virginia City and 14 miles from Lake Tahoe. The principal points of interest in Carson are the Mint, the State Capitol, the Orphans' Home; the Federal Building and the Post Office; the Indian School; Shaw's Springs. And many other interesting things will well repay a visit. The Virginia and Truckee Railroad, over which the trip to Virginia City is made, is one of the grandest successes of railroading and engineering. It was constructed between Carson City and Virginia City in 1869, and from Carson City to Reno in 1872. The entire cost of the road was $5,200,000, or not less than $100,000 per mile. The enormous business transacted by the road may be surmised when it is stated that for a long time it paid the Central Pacific Railway $ 1,000 per day for freight on goods received there from, and collected for freight at the Virginia City office from $60,000 to $90,000 per month, and at Gold Hill but little less. East of Carson City on the road to Virginia City we pass the State Prison, known for its historic relics. Some years ago, during quarrying in the prison yard, immense footprints of pre-historic animals and birds were discovered at a depth of twenty feet below the surface of the ground. They cover an area of two acres, and were made by mastodons: they are over four inches deep. Many man-like tracks were found, 18 to 20 inches long and 8 inches wide, with a stride of 30 inches and a distance between right and left tracks of 19 inches. [Illustration: Elk's Home] A few miles east of Carson is the town of Empire, once an important trading post and distributing point for lumber, cordwood, etc. After leaving Empire the road enters the canons of the Carson River, passing in rapid succession the sites of numerous mills which were erected to. crush the rich ore of the world-famous Comstock Lode. Principal among these were the Morgan, Brunswick and Santiago mills which turned out hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of bullion. The grade of the road rises rapidly, the track leaves the canon and soon reaches the Mound House, the junction point with the Southern Pacific. Railroad trains leave Mound House for Dayton, Fort Churchill, Tonopah, Goldfield and all points south. Leaving Mound House the road soon traverses the famous mineral belt of the Comstock Lode. This belt is 7,000 feet wide and 6 miles long, and produced nearly a billion dollars. The first mine to be seen is the Haywood, lying to the west side of the road. This mine produced over $1,000,000 and is still active. To the east can be seen Silver City. The mines in this vicinity produced over $12,000,000. None of them has attained any great depth. The road next enters the Gold Hill district. The country in this vicinity is gashed and scarred by hundreds of cuts, shafts and tunnels dug by the early prospectors in their search for wealth. Every one of these marks represents a hope, and in many cases the hope was realized; the same spirit animates their successors and the search still goes on. The principal mines in Gold Hill are the Ophir, Caledonia, Overman, Seg, Belcher, Yellow Jacket, Kentuck, Crown Point, Imperial and Bullion. The Yellow Jacket was the first mine located, taking its name from the fact that its locators were warmly opposed by a swarm of yellow jackets. This was in 1859. The yield of the Gold Hill mines and the dividends paid were enormous. The Ophir Mining Co. in 1859 sent 45 tons of their croppings to San Francisco for reduction, the cost for transportation being 25 cents per pound, or $500 per ton. They paid $450 per ton for smelting, a total cost of $42,750, yet they made a profit of $128,250 on the transaction, the rock giving over $3,800 per ton. High above the town of Gold Hill and clinging to the side of the mountain can be seen the flumes of the Virginia & Gold Hill Water Co., which supplies the camps of Virginia City, Gold Hill and Silver with the finest water in the world. The water is conducted 3 I miles through pipes and flumes from springs and snow-fed streams in the Sierras 1,500 feet above the city. The capacity of the flumes is 10,800,000 gallons per day. From Gold Hill the road runs through tunnels, twists and turns along the side of Mt. Davidson until it reaches Virginia City, the end of the line. Virginia City was first settled in 1859. It obtained its name from an old prospector, James Finney, nicknamed "Old Virginny." Its elevation is 6,205 feet above sea level. In 1861 the population of Virginia City was 3,284, of Gold Hill 1,294 and of Silver City 1,022; in 1878 it was 40,000. The first international hotel was built in 1860. It was a single story building. The first day's receipts were $700. The present structure was built in 1877; it cost $210,000. The honor of discovering the "Comstock Lode" belongs to the two brothers, Allen and Hosea Grosch. The majority of the miners on the Comstock in the first days of its activity lived in tents and dug-outs called "holes in the wall." I never realized the vastness of our country, nor the wonderful opportunities which the West affords those in search of wealth, until I lived there six months. There are untold undeveloped resources, the like of which does not exist in the over-crowded East. May this little book, in a way, serve to introduce the West to the East. Reno and her people cannot be spoken of as typical of other Western towns and people, as the residents of this much-talked-of "big little city" are subject to conditions which do not exist in any other town in the country. They are democratic and whole-hearted Westerners, but find themselves confronted with social conditions which change their attitude toward things. However, I was very much impressed at the comparatively few divorces one finds among the older, permanent residents. I think this proves that it is the "unattainable that is most desired." [Illustration: Y.M.C.A.] The women of Nevada have enjoyed equal suffrage for some time; they are wide awake and interested in all public affairs. Besides being domesticated, they are intellectual and energetic. There are very few "prudes" among them, and a great many diplomats. Nowhere more than in Reno is developed among men and women a sense of being individual. I attended many of the Women's Clubs, and was always agreeably surprised to find them up-to-date in every respect: a company of women banded together to study and plan for the betterment of humanity, and social conditions in general. The Mothers' Club and the Century Club are doing splendid work in aiding the development of "Home Economics," "Better Babies," helping with all kinds of charities, civic improvements and much other commendable work. It was at these clubs that I met the real wife and mother, with real sweetness of soul: the woman who even under difficulties knew how to live a simple, pure and gentle life. Never have I come in contact with so much human feeling--even the ministers and their families are human, and full of understanding! The officials and people of prominence are all natural and unassuming. I attended a "Ladies' Aid" meeting at which there were about forty ladies present, and among other good traits of these fine, earnest women I noticed particularly the absence of gossip and prudishness. However, there is a spirit of contradiction prevailing in Reno which is very difficult to understand. All traces of the "wild and woolly" Western town have disappeared. The people of Reno are very docile indeed .... there are no cowboy yells nor Indian whoops, which some of our Eastern and Southern friends imagine still to exist. And the click of the roulette-wheel has passed with the years that have departed. Reno has developed into a cosmopolitan city with a cosmopolitan population. The cafes have cabarets with excellent talent, and there is dancing every evening in several of the hotels, where amid the bright lights, gay music, beautifully gowned women and well groomed men, one might easily imagine oneself in one of the swell cafes on Broadway: until one catches a glimpse of the moonlight on the Truckee, through an open window.... Here the people of Reno rub shoulders with those who constitute the "Divorce Colony," and to a new-comer, it is difficult to distinguish the one from the other. The people of Reno keep their city clean, and maintain a very high standard of law and order. A lady may walk out unescorted at any hour of the day or night, and will never be molested or insulted in any way. The absence of public drunkenness and profanity is very noticeable, and I was not surprised to read the following note clipped from one of the local newspapers on Sunday morning: "DEAD CALM IN POLICE COURTS ON SATURDAY" "Police court was absolutely deserted yesterday morning, not a single case appearing on the docket to mar the serenity of the day. Reno's night police found the citizens unusually well behaved all night long and were not required to make even one arrest during the twelve hours they were on duty." The fact that the people do not show much hospitality to undesirables, not even the hospitality of their jails, may explain why the little city is so calm and peaceful, and its police not overworked. The following clipping will indicate what happened to undesirables: "THREE MEN ARE TOLD TO GET OUT OF CITY" "Population of Reno Dwindles, Following Session of Judge Bryson's Court" "Charles C. Stewart, James Joyce and John Burke were picked up by the police on Commercial Row Wednesday for disorderly conduct. Judge Bryson's police court was still in session and the men were arraigned immediately. All three pleaded guilty to the charge and for the best interests of the community were given until 10 o'clock Thursday morning to get out of town." [Illustration: View of Nevada University Campus] I had the pleasure of being a guest at the "Military Ball" in the University of Nevada, at which the Governor, his staff and many state officials were present, and was very much impressed by the fact that Nevada's statesmen, like the State, are comparatively young. The Governor did not look a day over thirty. They were a fine looking lot of earnest, unassuming, democratic Westerners. I do not know when I have seen a prettier picture than the one I saw when I looked down from the balcony upon that splendid assembly of glittering uniforms, beautifully gowned women, and handsome young students, amid fluttering flags and gay music. As I looked on, I could not help thinking of the pioneer ancestors of some of these illustrious sons and daughters of Nevada, who had crossed the plains in the early days, and I wondered what they would have to say of this brilliant array, and of the magic, modern little city of Reno and its people, if they could peep from behind the curtains of yesterday! I am sure they would be more than proud of both! I fully expected to find living in Reno unusually expensive, but was agreeably surprised to find that one can live there even more reasonably than in the East. The prices are not extortionate at all, there being no specially made rates for "visitors," and the people are neither grasping nor selfish. I have found the people of Reno charming and interesting and it has been a pleasure indeed to get a peep behind the scenes of this romantic little city, and above all, I have found everyone fair and courteous in every way to those who are to become citizens of their town. PART 6 NEVADA DIVORCE LAWS "The History of Nevada," published in 1913, Sam P. Davis writes as follows: "The unenviable reputation, throughout the length and breadth of the land, in regard to the divorce law, has heaped ignominy on the State of Nevada. A few unscrupulous members of the legal fraternity, little better than outcasts at home, have come to Reno and besmirched the good name of a great State by their activity in converting into pernicious channels a law originally intended to give relief to mismated couples who could not travel the matrimonial highway in peace and harmony. "The divorce law of Nevada was enacted by the first territorial legislative assembly in 1861. The law was good enough for Nevada and gave general satisfaction until its exploitation for purely mercenary motives began. "Twenty-two States have practically the same divorce laws in force on their statute books, with the exception of the provision regarding residence. Until this year, Nevada required only six months' residence, but that had to be clearly established before action for dissolution of marriage could have any standing in the courts of the state. The residence had to be absolute, without the lapse of a single day except where good and sufficient reason could be shown, and to the entire satisfaction of the trial court. "Six months' residence was also necessary for citizenship in Nevada and enabled a man to exercise all the rights of a citizen. Therefore, it naturally follows, that he could prosecute a divorce, or any other kind of a suit, in the State of which he was a citizen. "In order that the reader may reach an intelligent understanding of this much mooted question, the statute on divorce is quoted in full: "Divorce from the bonds of matrimony may be obtained * * * for the following causes: "First--Impotency at the time of marriage, continuing to the time of divorce. "Second--Adultery, since marriage, remaining unforgiven. "Third--Wilful desertion at any time; of either party by the other, for a period of one year. "Fourth--Conviction of a felony or infamous crime. "Fifth--Habitual gross drunkenness since marriage, of either party, which shall incapacitate him from contributing his or her share to the support of the family. "Sixth--Extreme cruelty in either of the parties. "Seventh--Neglect of the husband for the period of one year, to provide the common necessaries of life, when such neglect is not the result of poverty on the part of the husband, which he could have avoided in ordinary industry." "As the law governing the term of residence, to acquire citizenship, which obtained in Nevada for half a century without causing even passing comment, has been taken advantage of for mere mercenary motives, the unanimous verdict of a righteously indignant people went forth that the law should be amended, in some way, to correct the evil. Thus at the last session of the Legislature the time required to obtain a residence before obtaining a divorce was changed from six months to one year. "If some sister States are stricken with remorse or find themselves in a sudden paroxysm of virtuous indignation, let them pass a law and enforce it, correcting the evils complained of at home, which will keep their divorces from coming to Reno-Nevada does not want them. If they persist in coming, let their home State enact a law which will make a divorce decree obtained in Nevada, void and of no effect whenever and wherever said divorcee sets foot within the borders of the home State. When other States enact and rigidly enforce some such drastic measure, the West will begin to have some regard for their particular brand of virtue. Until then, the West may be pardoned for believing that cant and hypocrisy often join hands with the lawless element and make a grandstand play for political effect. "Economic conditions in the West are vastly different from those in the East. Nevada is a sparsely populated country, and it is not considered to the interest of the State to hedge about too closely the road which leads to citizenship. Anything which may have a tendency to obstruct immigration or turn it in another direction, is conceded, in this neck of the woods, to be unwise statesmanship. The State has a vital interest in securing and holding as large a population as is consistent with her rapidly increasing resources; always keeping steadily in view the fact that none but desirable citizens are wanted. If, however, the other kind come, as they sometime do, Nevada is ready to cope with the situation, as many of that class can testify from personal experience. "Nevada is a veteran of the Civil War, having been organized as a territory in 1861, and admitted as a State of this glorious Union in 1864. No soldier on the field of battle ever made a more gallant defense of his country than did this "Battle Born" State during the trying times of the war. What she lacked in men was made up in money. Nevada was baptised in the blood of the nation and paid for her baptismal rite in a flood of gold and silver. With this flood of gold and silver, she saved the commercial honor of the country. This gold and silver paid the armies of the Civil War, averted national bankruptcy, and enabled the Government to resume specie payment in 1873. "Those were dark days in the financial and political history of the United States, and Nevada, maligned and despised as she is today in some quarters, was the savior of her country in that most critical period of her history. The State that furnished the sinews of war should have some standing in the hearts and minds of the American people, even if Republics are ungrateful. "From the best information at hand, it would appear that the mines of Nevada have yielded the enormous sum of two billion dollars during the past fifty years. Of this amount it is conceded that the Comstock alone produced fully one-half. The figures are given in round numbers, but are considered by mining men who are posted in such matters to be conservative. Thousands of discoveries, many of them marvelously rich, are still being made all over the state, in hitherto unknown and undeveloped territory. Besides gold, silver and copper, immense deposits of salt, borax, lime, platinum, sulphur, soda, potash-salts, cinnabar, arsenical ores, zinc, coal, antimony, cobalt, nickel, nitre, isinglass, manganese, alum, kaolin, iron, gypsum, mica and graphite exist in large quantities. "Proudly conscious of her strength and probity of character, great big-hearted Nevada looks down from her lofty pedestal and freely pardons all who may have misjudged her. This is Nevada's record. Match it, if you can. "The impulse which inspires a desire for a dissolution of an intolerable matrimonial alliance, is as fundamental to human nature as the one which inspires a desire for marriage, and is oft times far more moral. Therefore, to require the commission of immoral and degrading acts on the part of one of the parties to a marriage before a divorce can be granted, regardless of why it is desired, places an unwarranted premium upon immorality, and degrades society equally as much as it does the one committing the offense. Not only does this policy of the law foster immorality, but immorality increases in proportion as the law becomes more drastic. Surely, the Nevada law is more moral than that of New York, which permits divorce for adultery only. New York has the most drastic law of any of the States; as a consequence it has in proportion to the population, about seven times as many proven cases of adultery as any other State. There are nearly four times as many such cases there, as in the neighboring State of Pennsylvania. This is not because the good people of New York are so much worse than their neighbors, but because the law requires that residents of the former State, who desire divorce, commit adultery; unless they have the time, money and inclination to go to Reno. The effort to compel men and women to live together against their own free will, which is the purpose of stringent divorce laws, has caused even more immorality inside of marriage than it has outside. Immoral conditions are never so dangerous as when they exist in marriage. And besides, the fundamental policy of our laws which not only permits, but requires an investigation of divorce causes, is highly productive of evil. Many of the divorce cases in New York are simply food for a set of morbidly curious scandal-mongers. Even the Mohammedans consider our practice in this respect extremely vulgar: there is no more reason why a court should know why a husband and wife wish to separate than why they wish to marry. Nevada most certainly has the most sane and moral divorce laws of any of the States. More than half a century ago, in 1861, Nevada enacted its divorce laws in their present form. It then, as now, provided for only six months residence before filing suit. This was in line with its other liberal legislation and with legislation in other Western States. This divorce statute included, and still includes, seven causes of action: impotency, adultery, desertion for one year, conviction of a felony, gross drunkenness, cruelty and failure of the husband for a period of one year to provide the common necessities of life. In addition to this there is another splendid feature of the Nevada divorce law. It is not necessary to have witnesses, except to prove the fact that one is a resident in Nevada. The plaintiff's testimony is sufficient, unless the case is contested. This law eliminates the despicable bribing of witnesses which so often happens in other states. It also eliminates the obscene, immoral and vulgar courtroom discussions which are often the result of calling witnesses in divorce cases. The wisdom of this early legislation in Nevada is shown by the fact that more than fifty years afterwards the United States Commission of Uniform Legislation, in preparing a law on divorce to be offered for adoption by all states, has recommended Nevada's statute almost word for word. It should be remembered that this Commission is made up of the greatest thinkers of modern times: lawyers, jurists, professors, moralists and statesmen. No one criticises Nevada's causes for action. It is admitted that divorce, when it results from any one of these causes, is the only remedy for unfortunate relations, which, without such remedy, would injure society. A great majority of the leading thinkers and writers in our churches today admit that these causes of action are not too broad. I believe that Maryland has one of the most lenient divorce laws of any of the Southern States. A divorce is granted to residents after three years' separation. The decree is granted to the one deserted. Some of the Eastern and Southern States, in this respect, are still in the throes of the dark ages. The Western States, practically all of them west of the Mississippi River, have seen the perfidy and injustice resulting from such narrow exactions. These modern, progressive ideas have crystallized into the form of wise legislation, the statutes of many of the States being almost identical with that of the State of Nevada. In South Carolina no divorce is permitted on any ground. New York is but little better since the only cause recognized is adultery. New York's rigidity in this respect has annually led thousands of people to resort to revolting and immoral acts and join in collusion, in order to obtain relief from wretched and unbearable marriage bonds. Such laws are unjust. Such laws wreck valuable lives. With strong characters they lead only to unhappiness; with the weak, they result in immoral living. The question then: "Is divorce ever right?" must be answered in the affirmative. Why should two persons, who find after reasonable trial that they have made a mistake, and that they are wholly unsuited for each other, physically, morally and intellectually, be compelled to live together? What is at first mutual indifference, ripens gradually into loathing and hatred. Such conditions bring into the world innocent children, begotten not of love, as marriage presupposes, but of disgust, hatred, lust and incompatibility. Is it not a fact, established by the most reliable medical authorities and celebrated criminologists, that crime is fostered in the minds of children begotten of inharmonious relationship? We can never fathom the depth of untold sorrow brought about by unfortunate marriages, where there is no way to annul them. This burden upon mankind has resulted in countless desertions, felonies, drunkenness, murders and suicides. "In the daytime when she moved about me, In the night, when she was sleeping at my side,-- I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence. Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her-- Would God that she or I had died!" --Kipling. There is no stronger plea for divorce than hatred; all things mentally, morally and physically bad originate from hatred. I clipped the following from the Pall Mall Gazette of London, England, of May 2oth, 1920: EASY DIVORCE Opinions of the Typical Englishman To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, "Sir:-If it is not too late to answer some of the arguments brought to bear on 'Easy Divorce,' as Lady Beecham calls it, or, as I prefer to call it, the proposed equalisation of the Divorce Laws on which she wrote recently, I would like to know how far the sentiments of the 'Typical Englishman' mentioned in the article are known to Lady Beecham. "Among many great men she mentions Gladstone. Now, his opinion on the subject is surely well known, as in 1857 he supported an amendment moved by Mr. H. Drummond that infidelity alone on the part of a husband should entitle the wife to the dissolution of the marriage. Gladstone's speech was, I believe, an earnest attack upon the injustice of the Divorce Bill to women. "An able advocate, Sir Charles Russell, once described the action of a man whose wife was seeking a divorce from him in the following strong terms: 'This was not a case of mere vulgar acts of infidelity, but it was that of a man whose continued course of conduct, consistent only in its profligacy and heartlessness, had brought the wife into a condition by which the marriage tie had become a galling chain.' "If the conduct of the respondent did not amount to legal cruelty, the law was in an anomalous state, and did emphasize in a marked manner the inequality which existed in the laws relating to these matters between men and women. "George Eliot once wrote: 'These things are often unknown to the world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless, and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence." "Thackeray in 'The Newcomes' speaks of 'matrimonial crimes where the woman is not felled by the actual fist, though she staggers and sinks under the blows quite as cruel and effectual, where with old wounds still unhealed, she strives to hide under a smiling face to the world.' "How anyone can find it in their heart to state that incurable insanity should not be ground for divorce is inexplicable to me; but as it is well known that partial insanity even is not, and I know of an instance of a man who went twice into an asylum and came back twice to his wife, the poor woman bearing him on each occasion another child. Even this is not a ground for divorce. The Cruelty in refusing the injured person her freedom seems almost incredible." The first wrong step between young people is impossible to avoid, since during courtship both wear masks, each trying to impress the other that he or she is a paragon of all virtues. The net result is, that the truth often becomes a horrible revelation immediately after the wedding ceremony. Unhappy and mismated marriages, without means of rectification, are the curse of civilization, the living, gnawing cancer of society. In 1913, Nevada, under the lash of exaggerated newspaper notoriety, enacted a law changing the period of residence for the plaintiff in divorce actions from six months to one year. From Nevada's territorial existence down to that time it had been six months. It is a matter of history that Nevada extended to the world inducements to go to her sparsely settled lands, in the way of liberal legislation and short periods of residence to acquire rights of full citizenship-franchise included. A man becomes, under Nevada laws, a full fledged citizen and voter at the end of six months. To him is extended every privilege of government and from him is exacted every obligation of government, and the fact that at the end of six months he can bring an action for divorce is a consequence of these laws, and not--as is often thought--their purpose. Consequently, changing the law on the point of one of its principles instead of equally on all was irrational and illogical. Small wonder, therefore, that in 1915 the people, acting through their legislators and Governor, restored the period of residence in action for divorce to six months. It is now in strict conformity with their other laws, and with the same rights prescribed by them. Nevada's inhabitants have rescinded their act of 1914, by which they allowed immigrants and citizens to be robbed of a valuable right. The overwhelming vote of the legislature and approval of the bill by the Governor clearly shows the public opinion upon the subject. If it be right to commence action for divorce in one year, then it is right in six months. Length of period of residence is not a moral question. In this act the people of Nevada believe that they are morally and legally right, and that they are materially helping the progress of humanity. It is often supposed that one can secure a divorce in Reno without having to present grounds or causes for it. Let me hasten to disillusion such "idealists." As mentioned above, there are seven causes for divorce in this State, any one of which in the eyes of the liberal Nevada law, is sufficient justification for a dissolution of marriage. A fact which perhaps is not generally known is that one may leave the state temporarily any time after establishing a residence, provided, however, that the time during which one has been absent, is eventually "made up," that is; the actual presence in the state and county must amount to six months. In one divorce case at which I was present,--Mrs. Jones versus Mr. Jones--, the questions to a six months' resident were as follows: Q. Are you the plaintiff in this action? Q. What relation does Mr. Jones bear to you? Q. When were you married? Q. Where were you married? Q. Are there any children of this marriage? Q. It is stated in the complaint that since your marriage to Mr. Jones he has been guilty of habitual gross drunkenness, which he has contracted since the marriage. Will you please state to the court the circumstances in regard to his acts of habitual drunkenness? Q. Have his acts of habitual gross drunkenness incapacitated him from contributing his support to the family? Q. What effect have his habits of gross habitual drunkenness had upon his performing his part of the marital relations? Q. Please refer to page 5 paragraph--of your complaint and read it as to your reasons for coming to Reno, Nevada. Q. When did you come to the Count; of Washoe, State of Nevada? Q. Where have you been residing since you came to Reno, Nevada? Q. Have you been engaged in any occupation or profession during your residence in Reno, Nevada? Q. What is your intention in regard to your continuing your residence in the State of Nevada? Q. What was your former name? Q. Do you desire to be restored to your former name for business and property reasons? Q. It is stated in the complaint as a second cause of action that Mr. Jones for more than one year last past has failed, neglected and refused to provide you with the common necessities of life. Please state, if any, what provisions he has made for your support and how he has supported you, if at all. Q. It is stated in the complaint that he has been during all the said time and is now an able-bodied, talented man, and has been and is now in receipt of liberal salaries for his services. Please state to the court what the facts are in regard to this. Q. Has his failure to provide you with the common necessities of life been the result of poverty or sickness and could he have avoided such failure by ordinary industry? Q. Please state how you have supported yourself. Q. It is stated in the complaint as a third cause of action that Mr. Jones has been guilty of extreme cruelty to you in the State of Texas and in the State of New York. Please state to the court what his treatment has been to you in the way of using vulgar language to you and calling you vile names. Q. What occurred at New York City on or about May, 1919, in regard to the conduct of the defendant, in regard to his father and his coming to the hotel in a condition of intoxication. Q. It is stated that at Waco, Texas, the defendant would drink and keep you awake until a late hour in the morning. Please state to the court the circumstances of his conduct. Q. What occurred during the winter of 1919 at New York City in regard to Mr. Jones flourishing a loaded revolver and threatening to kill you? Q. What effect did his treatment of you have upon your being compelled to leave him? Q. What have you done in regard to endeavoring to persuade Mr. Jones to cease his excessive use of intoxicating liquors, his exhibition of ugly conduct, his vile language, to induce him to resume a normal condition of conduct and treat you with kindness? Q. What effect, if any, has his habitual gross drunkenness and extreme cruelty--to you had upon your happiness and health, and how has it affected you mentally and physically? Q. What effect has it had upon the intent and purposes of intermarriage and rendering your life with your husband unendurable, miserable and unbearable? In this case the charges were non-support and drunkenness and extreme cruelty. The plaintiff in a divorce case need not become seriously concerned because a defendant has refused to sign papers at the time he or she has been served. Personal service upon the defendant--the mere fact that the papers are handed to the defendant is sufficient, whether he has accepted them or not--or service by publication and mailing in Nevada will accomplish the same purpose; except that there will be a delay of forty days in the first case and eighty-two in the latter; however, if the defendant is not represented, or does not appear, there may arise the question as to the legality of the divorce in some States, especially in New York State. It will obviate considerable delay and inconvenience, if the defendant will sign and file his personal answer, admitting the plaintiff's allegations of residence, marriage, children, etc., but denying the cause of action. This answer should also contain an express waiver of notice of all proceedings. An answer cannot be signed, however, until the complaint is filed: the complaint cannot be--filed until six months have elapsed: therefore the divorce is not granted in six months, as is the impression which so many have, but the suit may be started at the termination of the six months' period. An expeditious and simple method of facilitating proceedings is to have the defendant appoint a lawyer in Nevada, granting him the power of attorney to accept service of the complaint. Since this can be provided for in advance the delay after the case has been filed can be reduced to a minimum. Below is the form of the Power of Attorney: "KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS, That I, John Jones, of the Town of Waco, County of....... State of Texas, hereby constitute and appoint........ of the city of Reno, County of Washoe, State of Nevada, as my true and lawful attorney, in fact and at law for me and in my name to act for me and appear for me as my attorney in any action that may or shall be instituted by Mary Jones, my wife, against me for the dissolution of the bonds of matrimony existing between us, in the second Judicial District Court of the State of Nevada, in and for the County of Washoe; and in any such action to accept service of summons thereon and to plead to or demur to, or to answer any verified complaint or other pleading that may or shall be filed by said Mary Jones in any action in said court; and to do and perform any other act or acts or to take any other proceeding or proceedings he shall deem proper in said action. "GIVING AND GRANTING unto my said attorney or his substitute full power and authority to do and perform all and every act and thing whatsoever requisite and necessary to be done in and out of said action, as fully and to all intents and purposes as I might or could do if personally present with full power of substitution, hereby ratifying and confirming all that my said attorney or his substitute may do or shall cause to be done by virtue of these presents. "IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and seal this...... day of July A. D., 1917. "STATE OF TEXAS, COUNTY OF....... ss.: "On this.... day of July, A. D., 1917, personally appeared before me, a Notary Public, in and for the County of......... State of Texas, John Jones, known to me to be the person described in and who executed the foregoing instrument and who acknowledged to me that he executed the same freely and voluntarily and for the uses and purposes therein mentioned. "IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my official seal the day and year in this certificate first above written. "Notary Public in and for the County of ......... State of Texas. Many people are under the impression that it is absolutely essential to engage a lawyer before reaching Reno, or immediately upon arrival. Both of these conceptions are erroneous. It is considerably wiser to make one's selection after taking up a residence, when one has had an opportunity to discuss the matter with the local people who "know the ropes," and who are thus in a position to advise one right. No legal action is necessary until some months have elapsed, unless of course the case be exceptional, as the one below for instance. The Nevada law provides that a suit for divorce may be immediately commenced in the county "where the defendant may be found." From this it will be seen that a plaintiff who has been a resident of Nevada for ten days or even one day, may sue at once if the defendant can be found in Nevada for service. That is, no six months period of residence is necessary at all, if the defendant happens to be there, or comes there for a reconciliation, to regain custody of children, to obtain a satisfactory property settlement, or for any other legitimate purpose, free from collusion. A celebrated case of this kind was tried at Minden, Nevada, in 1920. Below is a list of questions asked the plaintiff by the lawyer: Q. When did you first come here? A. The 15th day of February. Q. Have you any other residence? A. No, sir. Q. Is it your intention to make Nevada your residence? A. Yes, sir. Q. Did you by any means know of the coming of your husband into this state? A. No, sir. Q. Did you make any arrangements whereby he was to come into this state? A. No, sir. Q. When did you first learn that he was in this State? A. A friend told me he was coming to Nevada on business to look for a coal mine. Q. Did he mention any place your husband might be going to? A. Yes, he said something about Gold Hill. Question by the Judge: Answer by Plaintiff: Q. Do you know where there are coal mines in Gold Hills? You mean gold mines. A. Yes, gold mines. Questions by lawyer: Answers by Plaintiff: Q. What if anything did you do on hearing that he might come into this state? A. Why, I telephoned you and informed you. Q. Did you see your husband? A. No, sir. Questions by Judge: Answers by Plaintiff: Q. Did you have anything to do with the appearance of your husband in this vicinity? A. No, sir. Q. I want to have you very clear on this. No arrangements were made between yourself and your husband whereby he was to come into this state? A. No, sir. Q. When was it that you determined to stay in Nevada? A. When the doctor told me I needed a change. Q. And when was that? A. That was at Christmas, about two weeks after. Q. Have you ever, directly or indirectly, had any understanding with your husband that you should come into the State of Nevada and later-- being here--that he should come into this state, that you should institute divorce proceedings and have him served with papers? A. No, sir. Q. Is it your purpose and intention to [remainder of question and answer missing in original] Q. Did you have anything to do with the appearance of your husband in this vicinity? A. No, sir. Q. I want to have you very clear on this. No arrangements were made between yourself and your husband whereby he was to come into this state? A. No, sir. Q. When was it that you determined to stay in Nevada? A. When the doctor told me I needed a change. Q. And when was that? A. That was at Christmas, about two weeks after. Q. Have you ever, directly or indirectly, had any understanding with your husband that you should come into the State of Nevada and later-- being here--that he should come into this state, that you should institute divorce proceedings and have him served with papers? A. No, sir. Q. Is it your purpose and intention to remain in the State of Nevada as a resident and particularly in the County of Douglas? A. Yes, sir. Q. Is it your purpose to build here? A. Well, if I can find a place to suit me I will. Q. And have you given up Los Angeles as your residence, and your permanent residence is Genoa, Douglas County, Nevada? A. Until I regain my health, but this will be my home. Q. Do I understand that you have come into this state in good faith, seeking health and nothing else? A. Yes, sir. Q. That you have not come into the State of Nevada for the purpose of instituting divorce proceedings? A. No, sir. Q. That is absolutely so? A. Absolutely. By the Judge: "I think I have gone into this question pretty thoroughly. I feel that I should do so in all these matters in view of the fact that our statute requires a six months' residence. Therefore we should look into these matters thoroughly. That is all." Because of various newspaper items recently published the public has got the idea that the Reno divorce law has been changed. The following article, clipped from the Nevada State Journal of February 2nd, 1921, will explain the change in the laws as amended on that date: SCOTT DIVORCE BILL PASSES UNAN- IMOUSLY-SENATE BILL PROVIDES THAT PARTY MUST HAVE LIVED IN STATE SIX MONTHS. "Carson City, Feb. 1.--The Senate today passed the measure introduced by Senator Scott to amend the present divorce law. The bill as drawn re-enacts the law now in force, with the added provision, that at least one of the parties to an action for divorce must have resided in the State of Nevada not less than six months prior to commencement of the suit. "On recommendation of the judiciary committee, the bill was amended, to make the beginning of a suit possible in cases where "the cause of action shall have occurred within the county while plaintiff and defendant were actually 'domiciled' therein." In a talk urging passage of the bill as amended, Senator Scott declared that at least 90 per cent, of the odium attached to Nevada because of its divorce law was due to the fact that a few unscrupulous persons and attorneys-by means of collusion-so arrange matters as to take advantage of the "Where the defendant may be found" clause. He stated that he feared that unless some change as he proposed was made that people might soon go to that extreme and demand an enactment of legislation much more severe in its requirements. He presented the bill, "not as an attorney, but as a citizen of Nevada to cure what as a citizen he believed to be an evil." The amendments were adopted, and the bill passed, Senator Ducey answering "No," on roll call. "At the afternoon session of the Senate, Senator Ducey rose to ask a question of privilege, and proceeded to explain his vote by stating that he had failed to get the gist of the amendment. He thereupon requested that the Senate grant him the courtesy of a reconsideration of the vote taken at the morning session. Under the unanimous consent rule, a motion for reconsideration carried, after which the bill was passed with sixteen senators voting in its favor." [Illustration: Picture of Sir H. Walter Huskey] Following is a letter from H. Walter Huskey, one of Reno's prominent lawyers, in which at my request he answers some very important questions. Much of the information I have already given you in the foregoing pages, but I think it a good idea to give you the questions exactly as answered by him. This information really consists of most valuable legal advice to anyone anticipating a visit to Reno. Twenty-second October,1920. "Dear Mrs. Stratton: "I am very happy to have your letter of the 11th instant, and to note that you are making such splendid progress with your book. "My time and services are always at your command, even though you have asked me some questions that are not strictly in the horizon of a lawyer's work. "The advantages of Nevada's divorce laws are as follows: "The residence is only six months, but requires actual presence in the county where the action is to be filed. We have six causes of action for the husband, and--by adding neglect of the husband to provide the plaintiff with the common necessities of life--seven for the wife. "In most states corroborative evidence is required, that is, testimony of evidence tending to corroborate the allegation and testimony of the plaintiff. In Nevada no corroborative evidence is required in the absence of a contest, that is, testimony of the plaintiff alone in a non-contested case is sufficient. "In most or many of the states, the decree of divorce when granted is not final and absolute, that is, in some states it is interlocutory, requiring another appearance in court at the end of six months or a year. In other states, either one or both parties are forbidden the right to marry for six months or one year or longer, or the defendant is given six months in which to appeal, or one or both parties are placed under disabilities preventing immediate marriage. In Nevada the decree is absolute the moment granted and the minister, if desired, may be waiting at the court house door to perform the new marriage ceremony..... "With these few remarks I shall take up your questions by number: "1. Where to go upon arrival? "There are three good hotels in Reno; the Riverside Hotel, Hotel Golden and the Overland Hotel. Besides the hotels we have two or three good apartment houses. Many people go directly to the private boarding houses where room and board can be had at more reasonable figures. "2. What attitude to take up with the local people: what to do: what to avoid? "In the great West strangers are taken to be alright, until they prove themselves otherwise. It is unlike the East or South, where one must prove oneself as to character and standing, before one can hope to be admitted into the better circles of society. Fully ninety per cent, of the people who come to Nevada to become bona fide residents with the expectation of taking advantage of Nevada's lenient divorce laws, are people of high character and standing. It is naturally well to mix with Reno's people, to keep oneself as straight and restricted as one would do at home, and to avoid the tendency to throw off all restraint when one passes west of the Rocky Mountains. "3. Are there any crook lawyers? "There are crook lawyers, but not in Reno. There were one or two who have been indicted and disbarred. Sometimes it is possible-when the address can be found-to communicate with the defendant spouse and stir up trouble by offering to defend him or her free of charge, hoping by such action to be placed in position to squeeze a few hundred dollars out of the plaintiff. The best way to avoid this is to go to Reno and look over the field before selecting an attorney. "4. The possibility of blackmail? "The only possibility in the nature of blackmail comes from unprofessional practitioners like those mentioned in the preceding paragraph, who, in some way having the address of the defendant, communicate with him or her in the hope of stirring up trouble and representing the defendant in the contest. When relations are thus taken up with the proposed defendant, these lawyers usually notify the plaintiff that if the plaintiff will come to him or to a lawyer of his selection--someone closely associated with him--the matters can be adjusted and the divorce granted. The position taken by our County Clerk, under our law, in refusing absolutely to allow anyone, other than the parties and attorneys for the parties in a divorce suit, to have access to the papers greatly reduces the field of this blackmail and protects many innocent people. "5. How do you proceed with the case? "Upon arrival in Reno a new resident ought to find a reputable lawyer, consult him, retain him by paying him possibly one-third of the fee, and state to him the entire cause of action. The lawyer will take down the facts, given a receipt or contract showing the total fee to be paid; will make a record of the beginning of the residence period and will talk to the client generally about his or her cause of action, and the steps necessary to be taken toward establishing a bona fide residence that will hold water against all attack. Many persons have failed in contested cases, because of statements they have placed in letters to friends and relatives. These statements often show that the plaintiff is only serving time in Nevada, and, if brought to the attention of the court, will defeat one's allegation of residence upon which the jurisdiction of the court depends. Without jurisdiction no divorce can be granted. "6. What is the first step? "7. What if you cannot serve? "After the six months' residence period is completed, the first step is to prepare, verify and file the complaint. This complaint is a clear statement of the plaintiff's cause or causes of action. At the time of filing this complaint the summons is issued and handed to the attorney for the plaintiff. Where the defendant is not willing to file an answer or demurrer, and thus submit to the jurisdiction of the court, an "Affidavit for Publication" is sworn to by the plaintiff, and an "Order for Publication" is prepared for the signature of the judge, and being signed by him, is filed with the Clerk of the Court. After publication is ordered service may be made by publication once a week for six weeks in a Reno paper and by mailing a copy of the complaint attached to a copy of the summons to the defendant at his or her last known residence. "After publishing for six weeks, it is necessary to wait for a period of forty days during which time the defendant may answer. Service is complete only at the end of publication, and a defendant living outside of Nevada is entitled to the full period of forty days after service. "Below is a facsimile of different forms of 'Service by Publication': SUMMONS No. 16447 Dept. No. 2. IN THE SECOND JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT OF THE STATE OF NEVADA, IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF WASHOE. L.M.M., plaintiff vs. A.M.M., defendant. The state of Nevada sends greeting to said defendant: You are hereby summoned to appear within ten days after the service upon you of this summons if served in said county, or within twenty days if served out of said county but within said judicial district and in all other cases within forty days (exclusive of the day of service), and defend the above-entitled action. This action is brought to recover a judgment and decree of this court forever severing and dissolving the bonds of matrimony now and heretofore existing between the parties hereto upon the grounds of desertion, adultery and extreme cruelty as described in the complaint. Dated this 15th day of December, A. D., 1920 E.H.BEEMER, Clerk of the Second Judicial District Court of the State of Nevada, in and for the County of Washoe. By G. R. ELLITHORPE, Leroy F. Pike, Deputy. Attorney for Plaintiff. SUMMONS IN THE SECOND JUDICIAL DISTRICT OF THE STATE OF NEVADA, IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF WASHOE. I.M.G., plaintiff, vs. S.L.G., defendant. The State of Nevada sends greeting to said defendant: You are hereby summoned to appear within ten days after the service upon you of this summons if served in said county, or within twenty days if served out of said county but within said judicial district and in all other cases within forty days (exclusive of the day of service), and defend the above-entitled action. This action is brought to recover and decree dissolving the bonds of matrimony existing between you and said plaintiff, upon the ground that you wilfully failed, neglected and refused to provide for said plaintiff the common necessaries of life for a period of more than two years next preceding the commencement of this action, although having the ability so to do; awarding to said plaintiff the care, custody and control of the two minor children, the issue of the marriage between you and said plaintiff, to wit: G.L.G. and R.O.G.; and for general relief, as alleged and described in the complaint of said plaintiff now on file in said action in the office of the Clerk of the above named court, and to which said complaint reference is thereby made and said complaint made a part hereof. Dated this 8th day of January, A. D., 1921. E. H. BEEMER, Clerk of the Second Judicial District Court of the State of Nevada, in and for the County of Washoe. A. A. SMITH, Attorney for Plaintiff, 312 Clay Peters Bldg., Reno, Nevada. Jl5-22-29;F5-l2-l9-2e "8. What if you can serve? "Six weeks of time may be saved if the defendant can be served with complaint and summons. This personal service outside the state of Nevada is equivalent to completed service by publication, and the defendant has forty days in which to answer. "9. What if the defendant does not fight? "In cases where the defendant is willing that a decree should be granted, much time and some expense may be saved by defendant signing and filing a short formal answer, admitting plaintiff's allegations of residence, marriage, children, etc., but denying the causes of action. By filing this answer personally, or by retaining a Reno lawyer to accept services and file it for the defendant, the defendant need not visit Nevada at all. The case can then be closed up, and the decree granted within ten days after the expiration of the six months. By the filing of this short answer the defendant submits to the jurisdiction of the court, and any decree of divorce granted is valid and effective for plaintiff and defendant alike beyond any question, the world over. "10. What if the defendant fights? "If the defendant fights the case, evidence and testimony must be introduced and the case tried as other contested causes in other states. If the defendant be the wife, she can by filing affidavits showing her position financially compel the plaintiff husband, before proceeding with his case, to advance such sums of money as may be necessary to cover costs, attorney's fees, alimony pending the suit and traveling expenses to and from Reno. "11. What about the chances for losing? "In the absence of a contest, if a divorce case in Nevada be prepared by a lawyer who knows his business, there is no real reason for losing. If the cause be contested, then it all depends upon the allegations and proofs of the plaintiff as compared with the allegations and proofs of the defendant. Probably three cases out of four (contested cases) are won by the plaintiff. "12. How is the case called? "When the case has been filed and the time during which the defendant is permitted to answer has passed, a default is prepared by the attorney for the plaintiff, and signed and filed by the county clerk. In cases where the defendant has appeared personally or by counsel and an answer has been filed, they are ready for trial. On calendar day,-- which comes each Monday--either the default case or the case in which an answer has been filed is called to the attention of the court by the plaintiff's counsel and is set down for trial by the court-- usually some day that week. "13. Procedure of an actual case? Witnesses: Questions? "The trial of undefended divorce suits usually takes about fifteen or twenty minutes. The only witnesses necessary are those to Prove "residence in Reno" for the period of six months. Room rent receipts are not sufficient. Usually it is necessary to call the landlady of the rooming house, or the clerk of the hotel where the plaintiff has resided to show a continued residence in the County of Washoe. Where the plaintiff moves about frequently from one rooming house to another, it is more difficult to prove continuous residence. A residence in the county is all that is needed and all that has to be proved, however, and often plaintiffs in the summer time spend a month or two on that portion of Lake Tahoe which is in Washoe County. "14. Is this case treated publicly or privately? "All cases are tried in a court room which is open to the general public, unless the allegations are of such immorality in the complaint that the proof should not be heard by the general public. Divorce cases are so common in Reno, however, that the public rarely attend. "15 Does the decree allow you to take back your own name? "If the plaintiff be a woman and if there be no children the issue of the marriage, she will be allowed, if requested in the complaint, to take back her maiden name. The decree signed by the court simply orders that the plaintiff's maiden name be restored to her. If there be children the issue of the marriage, the maiden name of the mother will not be restored to her for the reason that it is thought that the mother should retain the name of her children. "16. What is the entire cost? "The entire cost of a non-contested case ranges from $22 to $30. If the case be contested there is no telling how high the cost may run. The cost of taking numerous depositions might amount to $50 or $100 or more. If the question is intended to cover the fees for lawyers' services, I would say that they run from nothing up to several thousand dollars. The usual fee for a person of ordinary means is about $250, which is probably the average fee in such cases in Reno, but persons of wealth often pay from $1,000 to $5,000. "17. In what sense are witnesses used, and how do they strengthen the case; is it the same as in the East? "In all non-contested cases, either where they go by default or where the defendant voluntarily files his answer after the residence for six months is proved, the plaintiff's testimony is sufficient to prove his or her cause of action, that is, no testimony beyond that of the plaintiff is needed where the case is not contested. In the event of a contest, the more witnesses and depositions one can procure the more likely they are to win. "18. Can the divorce be obtained at once if the defendant can be served in the state? "The statutes of Nevada expressly provide that, if the cause of action occurred in Nevada, that is, if the last acts of the defendant took place in Nevada, or if the plaintiff and defendant last cohabited in Nevada, or if the defendant without collusion can be served with papers in Nevada, the plaintiff need not reside there six months or for any other definite period. In line with this express provision of Nevada's laws, if a plaintiff comes to Nevada to begin a residence, and if the defendant comes here for any other purpose than to submit to service of the papers, which would be collusion, but bona-fide to secure the custody of children, to procure a settlement of property matters and alimony, to bring about a reconciliation, etc., service of the summons and complaint may forthwith be made upon him in Reno, and the case may proceed to trial at the end of ten days without the six months' residence period by either party. "19. How is the fee paid, and when? "As to fees for legal services, some attorneys require the entire fee in advance; some allow the fee to wait until some adjustment or settlement is made, or until the case is ready for trial, but the better method for both client and attorney is for the client to pay down one-third of the fee as a retainer, one-third at the time of filing the complaint, and the balance of one-third on the day set for the final trial of the case. "20. Please state the effect the Nevada divorce has in different states. For instance, I know a woman who got her divorce in Nevada and married again in New York; her first husband sued her for divorce in New York and accused her of adultery and got a divorce. Please state if the divorce is absolutely legal when the defendant is not represented, because I am very anxious that my book shall state only facts. I don't want to lead anyone astray on that subject. I am quite sure the divorce is not legal if it is simply obtained by advertising, as I myself was about to be handed back my divorce papers, and refused a marriage license in New York, when I explained that my husband had been personally represented. If that had not been the case I would not be the happy lady I am today. "Nevada divorces, exactly like the divorces granted in other states, are valid as follows: if the defendant be served in Nevada, in the event he appears in the cause either for contest or voluntarily, for the purpose of submitting to the jurisdiction of the court, the decree is absolute and valid the world over, freeing both parties from the moment it is granted. "If the defendant be served outside of the state of Nevada, either personally or by publication and mailing, and should not make an appearance in the case, the case goes by default and the decree, which is held valid in most cases as a matter of comity, is seriously questioned in the states of New York, Massachusetts and Illinois. Its validity is questioned, however, only in favor of a defendant who is a resident and citizen of the state where its validity is brought into court, that is, a resident of Illinois obtaining a divorce in Nevada by default against a defendant who resides in Illinois, will find that his decree of divorce is valid beyond a question in New York and Massachusetts and all other states except Illinois. Likewise, a resident of New York may depart from his home, take up his abode in Nevada, obtain a default decree against a spouse domiciled in New York and may marry again and live in any other state, except in the state of New York. It might be noted here, however, that many hundreds of plaintiffs have obtained default decrees under such circumstances and have married again, returned to New York state and have lived there without difficulty. Most foreign countries give validity to a Nevada decree. "Respectfully submitted, "H. WALTER HUSKEY." In considering a divorce in Nevada, the traveling expenses are quite an item; therefore I have written to the Traffic Department of the Pennsylvania Railroad System, and in a letter under date of February 6th, 1921, from the Traffic Manager of that company, I am indebted for the following information: "Regarding tickets, etc., to Reno, Nevada; round-trip tickets are not sold to Reno, but it is possible to purchase a round-trip ticket from New York to San Francisco or Los Angeles, and use it only as far as Reno. (I found that the greatest advantage of this ticket was that one could have a peep at San Francisco and Southern California without any extra cost, as one returns to the East.--Author). This ticket has no validation feature. "The round-trip ticket bears a limit of nine months and it costs $201.06, plus tax of $16.08, to either San Francisco or Los Angeles. The one-way fare from New York to Reno is $111.63, plus tax of $8.98." The roads used in the trip are The Pennsylvania Railroad, Chicago and Northwestern, Union Pacific and Southern Pacific. Below are suggestions for the best through trains quoted from 1921 time tables: Daily Service. Leave New York (Pennsylvania Station) 6:05 P. M., Saturday Arrive Chicago 3:00 P. M., Sunday Leave Chicago (Union Pacific) 7:10 P. M. Sunday, Overland Express. Arrive Omaha 9:00 A. M. Monday Arrive Ogden 1:00 P. M. Tuesday Leave Ogden (Southern Pacific) 12:30 P. M., Pacific time, Tuesday. Arrive Reno 3:25 A. M. Wednesday In conclusion I would desire to express the sincerest heart-felt hope that none of my readers be placed in a position where the only road to follow is: "the Great Divide." However, when there is no way out, no means of reconciliation, no tangible reason for submission to penal servitude for life, the only solution left is to face the truth; to turn one's back upon the past, and face the future! We revere our ancestors, but the inheritance handed down to us dissolves itself into obligations to the present: our principal obligation to the World today is our duty to the World tomorrow! To posterity: to those to whom "from failing hands we throw the torch...." As Virgil said: "Nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis:" our children's children and those who will be born from them. And in assuming our duty to the World tomorrow, we must start by doing our duty to the World today: ourselves; by righting what is wrong; by blasting the trail through life's mountainous obstacles; and purifying the atmosphere around us and leading the World on to the light that beacons us from beyond. [Illustration: Renoites as seen by a Reno Cartoonist] [ Reprint from Reno Freming Gazzette ] [ Aug. 7 1917 ] PART 7 SONS OF THE SAGEBRUSH To write of the "Sons of the Sagebrush" does not necessarily mean that they were born in the Sagebrush, or in the West. I was surprised to find that about seventy-five per cent, of the prominent citizens of Nevada had hailed from almost every State in the Union, from Carolina to California. The Good Book says that the wise men came from the East. From personal observation I should say that many of them settled in the West. I am told that there are numerous cases in which mothers worry for fear their sons may be led astray by some fascinating "divorcee"; that he may be caught in her "selfish snare" and left with a smashed heart and lost youthful ideals, while the fair lady laughs and leaves; but if you will pardon a bit of slang, I should say that the Western youth is a "pretty wise guy," and that mother need not worry because he can look out for himself! However, "mother's advice" may not always have held good after a mint julep, or a stroll in the moonlight..... Hence the experience. I do not mean that if a beautiful lady should whisper gently to one of the youthful sons of the Sagebrush: "I am afraid to go home in the dark," the gentleman would ring for a messenger boy as an escort, or call a taxi; and if she sighed for sympathy and a stroll by the Truckee, he would think that she needed a doctor, or a nerve specialist. .... The sons of the Sagebrush are not cold-hearted, nor are they lacking in courtesy of any sort, but to use a Western expression, they possess a large percentage of "horse sense!" Meaning, that they are not wearing their hearts on their sleeves these days.... One of the most interesting and unassuming gentlemen I met in the "big little city" was Mr. George Wingfield. I had made up my mind to that effect long before he was introduced to me because I had seen his beautiful home on the banks of the Truckee, and his beautiful bank building on the corner of Second and Virginia streets (the Reno National Bank, which I have described in Part 5), and had visited his ranch, and admired his string of thoroughbred horses and high-class stock. I had also been told how this gentleman had made his fortune almost over night, so to speak, during the big gold boom, and I liked him for staying right there and spending the gold in the State whence it came. He did not take his riches and go away, as so many of them have done, but he helped to build a beautiful city, and there it is that he made his home. I was rather surprised to find that Mr. Wingfield was not a native son, but hailed from Arkansas: also, I was disappointed in this gentleman's appearance, having been told that he was a resident of the West, when the West was really "wild and woolly," and full of gold and other things.... I expected him to be a much older man, and have not quite forgiven him for not being at least six feet six, with cold steel-blue piercing eyes, gray hair at the temples and a face furrowed with strong character lines. That was the sort of mental picture I had made of him when a friend told me of his experiences in the mining camp during a big strike of the miners. They were shooting up the town in real Western style, and many of them had been heard to swear that they would have Wingfield's life. He might well have taken his departure, but he did not: he was strong and relentless and knew no fear, though I am told he ate his meals in a restaurant where the walls were covered with mirrors, with his back to the wall, and a six-shooter on each side of his plate. Rather thrilling, to say the least. So far, Mr. Wingfield has not found it necessary to take advantage of the liberal divorce laws of the State: his beautiful home, charming and accomplished wife, and lovely children account for that. Somehow Mr. Wingfield's experience in Nevada and the gold mines brings to my mind a poem from Robert W. Service's "Spell of the Yukon," of which I am very fond: "This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain; Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane-- Strong for the red rage of battle; sane, for I harry them sore; Send me men grit for the combat; men who are grit to the core...." It would be difficult to name a citizen of Nevada more popular with his fellow-men or enjoying to a greater degree the confidence and trust of those with whom he is associated than H. J. Gosse, proprietor and manager of the Riverside Hotel of Reno. The colony has a real friend in H. J. Gosse, who is certainly an exponent of joy, giving optimism to the lonely wanderer who may find himself domiciled under the roof of the Riverside Hotel where the splendid personality of this old pioneer reigns supreme. Mr. Gosse's parents crossed the plains with an ox-team from New Orleans to California way back in '49. In 1862 the family moved to Silver City, then a lively mining town. [Illustration: Riverside Hotel, Nevada] The subject of this sketch went to school in Virginia City and later attended the Golden Gate Academy in Oakland, California. Like other young men, he followed various vocations and in 1896 he purchased the Riverside Hotel, which he has successfully conducted ever since. Under his management the hotel has continued to be the leading hotel in the city, and in 1901 the present large brick structure was erected. In 1888 Mr. Gosse was united in marriage with Miss Josephine M. Mudd, a native of California. In politics Mr. Gosse is a Republican. He is a member of the Improved Order of Red Men, and has filled all the chairs in the local Tribe and is Past Grand Sachem of the State of Nevada. He is also a Mason, being a member of the lodge chapter, commandery and the shrine. He is an active member of the B.P.O.E. No. 597, of Reno, and was instrumental in organizing the Lodge. In recognition of his services, he has been made an honorary life member and is a member of the Grand Lodge of the United States. Mr. Gosse's only son was among the first to answer his country's call when the United States entered into the World War in 1917; he died in his country's service a few months later.... No pictures of the picturesque West would be complete which did not depict in the foreground the fine, handsome figure of Nevada's erstwhile "Sentinel in Chief": former State Police Superintendent, Captain J. P. Donnelley. The Captain and his wife were among the very first friends I made when I arrived in Reno. Since then we have become more and more intimate, and my admiration and appreciation of them both grow keener, if such is possible, the longer I know them. Almost as interesting as the history of Nevada itself is the excited checkered career of this man, who at an early date left his native State of California where he had risen from the ranks of private to Adjutant of the 10th Battalion Infantry Guards and had sought in preference the dangers and hardships of rugged Nevada. Here he became deputy sheriff and chairman of the Republican Central Committee of Esmeralda County, to succeed Captain Cox as Superintendent of the State Police in 1911. In the same year there was a spurt of unusual liveliness from the Indian quarter. Several white men were killed, and it was Captain Donnelley who was selected to head one of the posses and risk the brunt of the battle. The Captain's scrapbook, which he was kind enough to let me look over, revealed many an interesting incident, and one would never think when talking to him that this genial, humorous, kind faced man was every inch a soldier and a hero. The combination strikes me as wonderfully illustrative of what real culture and civilization can do for a man. He fights, not for the love of fighting, from a savage hankering after blood, but because it is for the good of humanity in general that he should fight, and therefore that he does well. A large reward had been offered for the capture of those Indian desperadoes and of the several posses that had been sent out Captain Donnelley and his brave band were the only "lucky devils," and escaped with their scalps. In appreciation of his fine work the citizens passed a resolution to send the following letter to the Captain: "To the Nevada State Police and to Captain Donnelley, Privates Buck and Stone, and Sergeant Newgard: "Gentlemen:- "As a Committee of One I am directed by the citizens of Surprise Valley, this county, by a resolution passed by the citizens last week, to express to you gentlemen the thanks we so deeply owe you for your efficient and loyal services rendered in the interest of public justice in the running down of the Indian renegade murderers of our citizens in Nevada. "We cannot begin to express the same by words of tongue or pen and our feelings coming from the heart must be left to better speakers and writers than myself. "Be assured of our great thanks, and should occasion require we will endeavor to make good in payment. "Very sincerely yours, "(Signed) H. E. SMITH, Sheriff." [Illustration: Captain J. P. Donnelly Former State Police Superintendent] In 1912 there were some very serious disturbances in the copper mines in Ely. Martial law was declared; Captain Donnelley was delegated to go down to quell the disorder, and in a remarkably short time peace and order were restored. His success was due in a great measure to his magnetic personality, for the Captain is very popular and makes staunch friends wherever he goes. One of the greatest assets a man can have is the right sort of a wife. Mrs. Donnelley, once a divorcee, is both charming and interesting. She is a woman of culture, has traveled extensively and is interested in all the social problems of the day. When the Red Cross Chapter was organized in Reno she was asked to take charge of the workroom, which originally started with two and now boasts of a working force of between thirty to forty ladies. Without her efficient aid, little progress would have been made. Both the Captain and his wife are exceptionally fond of children and animals, and they tell the following amusing incident about one of the Captain's birthdays. One fine afternoon, out of a clear sky, seventeen youngsters of every conceivable size and shape, marched in upon Mrs. Donnelley, and announced the fact that they had come to celebrate Captain Donnelley's birthday. Thereupon they held aloft three monster cakes which they had brought along to demolish in case the Captain did not have birthday cakes any more. After the rather surprised lady of the house had ransacked the neighborhood for some fruit and ice cream to help the cake along and practically no vestige of the feast remained, the unsuspecting Captain came upon the scene. There was a rush and a scamper and a babel of voices shouted out, "Oh, Captain Donnelley, we're having such a good time at your birthday party!" Orpheus and his lute, David and his harp, Donnelley and his dog! These are inseparable associations, and so fine and historic an animal is "Brownie" that the newspapers devote write-ups to him just as if he were a regular celebrity or something like that. He is now guarding the chicks on a ranch and is making a dandy truant officer, so the Captain tells me. The Captain is a thinker, too. A short time ago he wrote a series of articles for the Reno Gazette, dealing with psychology. I was particularly impressed with a fact which he made to stand out clearly above all others and which would vitally affect society as a whole if it were to be universally carried out. It is the substitution of an indeterminate sentence for the definite one which now prevails. "No judge can determine in advance when a prisoner is fit to return to the community," he says; and in the same way we release the inmates of an insane hospital as soon as we think them sufficiently recovered, he believes we should release the criminal as soon as experts pronounce him fit to resume his relations with society. The following is a copy of the verses which the Captain thought would help his co-workers to do things right: "Did you tackle the trouble that came your way With a resolute heart and cheerful, Or hide your face from the light of day With a craven heart and fearful? Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it; And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only how did you take it. "You're beaten to earth; well, well, what's that? Come up with a smiling face, It's nothing against you to fall down flat, But to lie there-that's disgrace. The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce; Be proud of your blackened eye. It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts, It's how did you fight, and why. "And though you be done to death, what then? If you battled the best you could; If you've played your part in the world of men, Why, the critic will call it good. Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, And whether he's slow or spry, It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, But only, how did you die?" And now we come to a pure Sagebrush Son who first announced himself into the family midst only a few miles away from Virginia City, Judge Langdon. His father had been a true pioneer of the Comstock Lodge, and so Frank was born with a "golden" spoon in his mouth. However that may be, he went to school at Gold Hill, thence to St. Mary's College and finally passed the bar examination in 1886. Then he came back to Nevada, post haste, and established a law office in Virginia City and there he is to this day. Not for long, however, did he remain a private practitioner. He soon became a member of the Assembly, and District Attorney of his home County and subsequently was elected Judge of the County of Storey. And thereby hangs a "story." While the Judge was on the bench a felonious murder was committed. Preston and Smith were the criminals arraigned before the courts, and Frank P. Langdon their Judge. Originally the trial had come up in Hawthorne, Seat of Esmeralda County, and when in the midst of the case the County Seat was changed the case was naturally transferred. Feeling ran very high, for the prisoners had many friends, and several anonymous letters, bearing a fear-inspiring skull and cross-bones sketched in blood-red ink, did the young Judge handle: needless to say without any fear or trepidation! A son of the sagebrush knows no fear! At last the day for the final decision came. Some of those I have met who were present in the court room tell me that the atmosphere was highly charged and that many expected to see the Judge get a rough deal. But calmly, in clear ringing tones, he boldly stated his convictions, irrespective of the direst results that might follow; yet nothing happened. The men were condemned and the Judge is still residing in Virginia City, happy with his wife and six lively children. Not only through the popular ditty have the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia become famous: their own natural beauty is sufficient to render them beloved by all those who have had the opportunity to see them or live amongst them. But it is also under the blue shadows of those Virginia peaks that many a good man was born and it is therefore a great tribute to Nevada, I think, that Judge Sanders has permanently made his home under the purple and gray shadows of the Sagebrush slopes. He had been deputy clerk and librarian of the Supreme Court of Virginia, and during this time had taken advantage of the lore with which he came in contact to study the ways and byways of the law. Like unto hosts of others, for him too the Comstock Lode had proved a magnet, and in 1904 he hit the trail for Virginia City, Nevada. Then he trailed on, attracted by the Manhattan boom, and finally landed in Tonopah, the great silver camp. By this time he had begun to be known as a "big fighter" in the law world. His famous speech on the "Prospector" attracted considerable attention, and Nevada's sons soon found out that they had a real man in their midst. He was elected District Attorney of Nye County, and there never was a man more free from political prejudice or more ready to give every applicant to the Courts of Justice a fair and square deal. Cattle rustlers quaked and trembled at the name of Sanders as did I. W. W.'s; surrounding States never felt so very kindly disposed toward the Judge, as it was he who in a great measure was responsible for exterminating this disturbing element, or rather dumping it into other States, since it proved inexterminable. Judge Sanders is married to a Wisconsin girl and has his home at Carson City, Nevada. Dick Stoddard is a Reno boy through and through, and although his middle name is Cross, it certainly has nothing to do with his disposition, for he is most entertaining and genial. As a youth he attended the High School and the University, after a time taking the civil service. Then in the service of the railroad proper, he wandered around the coast for about four years. Not content with this mission in life, he entered the law offices of a prominent firm of attorneys where he imbibed all the legal wisdom he could, supplementing his practical experience by theoretical study. In 1903, behold our Judge, a full-fledged advocate; in 1905 he was elected City Attorney for Reno. It was during his term that Reno's streets were first paved, the new City Hall built and the Truckee's banks spanned by the Virginia Street bridge. A rather amusing story is told of how "they,"--his friends,--"put one over" on Dick, the "putting over," however, being to their mutual advantage. The Judge, or rather Attorney, as he was then, had one of those "off" spells that all of us have at times. He had sniffed his fill of musty legal parchment for the time, and he decided that he would prefer a sniff of the sea-weed and brine; that he needed a tonic arid that no better could be found than "Ozone." So he packed his grip, gave his friends the "slip," as one might say, and skipped off to a California resort. And while this revered City Attorney was vigorously breasting the Pacific billows, and enjoying cooling breezes that brought in their wake reminiscences of Honolulu, and other lands that enchant the senses, his friends at home saw to it that Dick Stoddard got the title of "General" hitched onto his title of Attorney. During his generalship there were several interesting "spats" between the Inter-state Commerce Commission and the railroads, but Attorney- General Stoddard was the right man at the right time, and I assure you that the State didn't have to suffer. Judge Moran is another original son of Erin who has adopted Nevada and has been adopted by her. One could hardly say that he was born with a golden spoon in his mouth, for "Barney" Moran had anything but the "life of Riley" in his early years. Up and up he has moved along the checker-board, however, until now he has become a "knight," a real knight, for many a human being would still be in sore distress were it not for the Judge's kind heart and sympathetic understanding in the divorce court. Some have dubbed him "Papa" Moran; he is so fatherly they say. And as of course it is no sin to kiss a father, it has happened that some of the highly strung victims have ventured to embrace Papa after he pronounced those all-meaning words, "judgment for the plaintiff." When he was only ten years of age, both his parents passed away and so about four years afterwards he crossed the "herring pond" in quest of a life of adventure. As far as variety is concerned, he had plenty of it, and some to spare, and it is all those hard knocks that have helped him to understand human nature as he does. Over in Cleveland he attended night school while working during the day as a machine-shop apprentice. Not finding this "job" quite to his liking, he tried tending the "traps" or doors underground in some of the coal mines. Soon his fancy changed again, and we find him engaged as a water boy on one of the railroads. "Tick, tick;-tick tick-tick," signaled the telegraph, and it was not long before young Moran became proficient enough to take a job as an operator. Now why the nickname "Barney," you will ask. Thereby hangs a tale! While working in the telegraph office, Tom Morau became infused with some of the electricity which charged the instruments, or so it seemed anyway. Now there were no less than four boys in that office who answered to the name of "Tom." So you may imagine, can't you, what, stampede there was every time the chief operator called "Tom." But don't imagine our Tom ever let anyone else get ahead of him. Although he was the youngest and probably the least in requisition, he was always "Johnny on the spot" before any of the Toms. To solve this dilemma which was first considered a joke but later developed into an unmitigated nuisance, the chief operator eventually said to Moran, "Say, Tom, in future you're Barney." Under the tutelage of Thomas L. Bellam, who took a great interest in him, he did three years of general study. This whetted his appetite for more, and he consequently landed in Chicago and took a course at the Chicago College of Law. But not till several years later did he take his final degree and start practicing. Now our wandering little Irish boy is District Judge of Washoe County. How seldom it is that we find anyone whose name is a real symbol of his temperament or profession. Often Mr. Stone will be a weak mollycoddle; Mr. Sharp, a phlegmatic butter-won't-melt-in-my-mouth sort of individual, or Mr. Strong, an "acute dyspeptic." Somehow, the gentleman in question, August Frohlich, seems to have been a little more fortunate in that respect, for Frohlich in German means "merry," and I have yet to find a man who is more devil-may-care or happy-go-lucky, in spite of all his family responsibilities, than Mr. August Frohlich. He was born in California, and at the age of seventeen found himself the sole supporter of himself and his mother. Since then he has held in turn almost every known variety of commercial position. Acting first as a fruit rancher, he then developed a passion for mining, at the same time pursuing a business course. When next we see him, he is exchanging smiles and general goods over the counter, his popularity winning for him afterwards the position of Postmaster and agent for Wells Fargo & Company at Crescent Mills. But he was young and restless, like so many of us have been, in one way or another, and two years are a long time. After running a stage line, doing a little bookkeeping and a few other odd jobs of the kind, he came to Reno and settled down for another two years to study at the University. And so on. The scene kept changing with kaleidoscopic rapidity until finally he found a congenial position in the Washoe County Bank, with the position of Receiving Teller. Political ambitions then began to take possession of this ever-progressive man, and he--was elected a Republican member of the 25th Legislature from Washoe County, receiving the highest vote of any of the twenty-seven candidates. In recognition of his ability, he was elected Speaker of the Assembly which was evenly divided, there being twenty-four Republicans and twenty-four Democrats, with one Independent. In his campaign for Speaker, the only promise he made was for a square deal. The proof that he had redeemed his promise was evidenced by his being re-elected Speaker of the Special Session which was held the following year. He was Director of the Reno Commercial Club, and surely the club spirit must be strong within him when you stop to think that he is a Mason, Elk, Moose, Druid, Woodman, and is active in the Y.M.C.A. At the present compilation, Mr. Frohlich is the owner of the Commercial Steel Company. I have recently been told by a lady who is prominent in social affairs that his great function when a benefit of any kind is given in town, is to try to drown the unmelodious clatter of the dishwashing with his fine vibrant tenor. Mr. Frohlich certainly enjoys popularity; his good humor and pleasing personality account for that, and thus Reno can surely be proud of such a bachelor, who all these years has defied lassoing. "Railroad Day," the big day when Reno was put on the map, was also Norcross Day, for the day when the first Pacific train passed through this town was the one when little Frank Norcross passed into our mundane existence to take his place--with the rest of us mortals: when so to say little Frank was "put on the map." His parents had come out to California as far back as 1850, Norcross' father being engaged in mining, lumbering and farming. Frank Norcross had his preliminary education at Huffakers, and had early evinced a literary turn of mind when as a comparative youth he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Twenty years later the University conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Law. He served a full term as County Surveyor of Washoe County and attended to Reno's old-fashioned lights, trimming them as he went along, no matter how severe the cold. One consolation he probably had was that unlike the other pedestrians he had an opportunity to warm those frozen finger tips. No mean advantage, I should judge, when the mercury sinks to zero and lower. He taught in a local school for a year or so, then did some newspaper work for the Journal and Gazette and finally ended by practicing law, having graduated from the University of Georgetown in 1894. After that, promotion came easily. When he had been in succession District Attorney of Washoe County and Supreme Judge, he served for two years as Chief Justice, and so great was his popularity that he was re- elected without any opposition. A very interesting fact about the Judge is that he won a thousand dollar cash prize offered by the "National Magazine" of Boston, for the best article in support of Colonel Roosevelt for a second elective term. But then, he was a great friend and admirer of the Colonel's and it evidently came to him easily. It was mainly through his efforts that the Reno Free Library was established, for he had always been interested in educational opportunities. Apparently he had some difficulty, too, in persuading Andrew Carnegie that Reno was actually an inhabited town, and habitable at that. "Andy," like so many other Easterners, was a little skeptical on that score, thinking probably that the divorcees would not want a free library, and surely according to fame or rather notoriety, there was nothing else of any note or significance in Reno but divorcees, with the exception perhaps of the lawyers, and they no doubt had all the law books they needed! Besides being a great lawyer, the Judge is also a good patriot, for he was a captain of the National Guard and took considerable interest in the State Militia affairs. Judge Norcross is a member of several brotherhoods and societies, among them the Nevada State Council of the National Civic Federation of which he is chairman, and the Committee of One Hundred of the New York University "Hall of Fame," the business of which it is to decide upon those who are to wake up over night and find themselves famous. Among the prominent Nevada citizens of the early mining days, are "Lucky Baldwin," C. C. Goodwin, James G. Fair, John W. Mackay, Marcus Daly and Mark Twain. Those who have not already done so would, I am sure, enjoy reading Mark Twain's "Roughing It." In this book he tells many interesting and amusing stories of his experiences in Nevada mining camps. I quote him as follows: "I went to Humboldt District when it was new; I became largely interested in the 'Alba Neuva' and other claims with gorgeous names, and was rich again in prospect. I owned vast mining property there. I would not have sold out for less than $400,000 at that time, but I will now. Finally I walked home--200 miles--partly for exercise, and partly because stage fare was expensive." Again he says: "Perhaps you remember that celebrated 'North Ophir.' I bought that mine. You could take it out in lumps as large as a filbert, but when it was discovered that those lumps were melted half dollars, and hardly melted at that, a painful case of 'salting' was apparent, and the undersigned journeyed to the poorhouse again." The following is one of the tragic incidents in the mining game. I think it must have been such an instance that caused the origin of the Western slang phrase-"Out of Luck." "I paid assessments on 'Hale and Norcross' until they sold me out, and I had to take in washing for a living, and the next month the infamous stock went up to $7- a foot. "I own millions and millions of feet of affluent leads in Nevada, in fact the entire under crust of that country nearly, and if Congress would move that State off my property so that I could get at it, I would be wealthy yet. But no, there she squats--and here am I. Failing health persuades me to sell. If you know of anyone desiring a permanent investment I can furnish one that will have the virtue of being eternal." I think "Roughing It" was written about 1851. If you knew Senator Huskey as I do, you would agree with me that the Senator is indeed Huskey by name and "husky" by nature. A more complete parcel of huskiness you never did see, nor a jollier, more cordial and better hearted could you ever wish to meet, for he has never allowed the musty parchment to dry up the finer faculties of his sentiments, and he can appreciate a beautiful sunset, a fine verse, and in fact all Nature's beauties, and yet be the big man and the great lawyer he is. Then too, the Senator is an enthusiastic sportsman and plays a splendid game of hand-ball. I have known him, for hours on end, to pound at the ball at the Y.M.C.A. as if his very life depended upon whether he had hit it a hundred or a thousand times in an afternoon; as if he would be shot at sunrise if he fell below the mark. But in college days, his strength ran to his feet. He was known as a powerful kicker, and woe betide the man who would try and act as a buffer between his feet and the ball. And now let me tell you about the Senator's early life. He started his career on the farm, for his father was a school teacher, and you will agree that--a family of fourteen is a rather expensive kind of brood to rear. And so, some of those fourteen chicks had to hustle and fence for themselves as soon as they could. Among the little Huskeys was Walter. It is thus he graphically describes some of his reminiscences: "I was a cracker jack at cutting corn. Father and brothers could beat me at husking, but somehow or other I was good at cutting. And some days I could cut as high as twenty-six shock in a half day. Finally I had accumulated a little fund and decided to brace myself for a talk with the college professor in charge. I was the greenest thing you ever saw, and they called me 'Lengthy,' for at that time I weighed only one hundred and thirty pounds." The title of "Senator" has since done its historical duty, for the once "bony laddie" now turns the scales at 250 pounds..... After that, the college professor paid young Huskey's parents a surprise visit, as a result of which we find the boy at work at a preparatory course in the Wesleyan University, Kansas. Within two years, through assiduous perseverance and keen enthusiasm for his work, he was able to teach in the country districts. For a decade he taught the younger generations how to shoot, and thus eked out a fairly moderate living, for the pay was not staggering by any means, nor was it like Huskey to forget the folks at home. In La Porte, Texas, whither by this time he had wandered, they offered him the principalship of the High School. "They gave me," I heard him say one day, "one hundred dollars a month, and I thought it was the biggest salary in the world." [Illustration: Senator H. Walter Huskey] Then he realized that it was almost impossible to convert a mint of knowledge into a mint of money, even as a principal, so he struck out vigorously for law, took a special course at Stanford University and received second highest honors. Shortly after he landed in the "big little city" of Reno and entered into partnership with Charles R. Lewers, who had strangely enough been His professor at Stanford University and who evidently held his erstwhile pupil in very high esteem, in thus throwing in his lot with him. In 1906 Huskey was elected by the Assembly of Nevada, and in 1914 by a very flattering majority was sent up as State Senator for Washoe County. As a law maker, he had proven his worth on more than one occasion, for not only is he a Senator with a brain, but also a man with a heart. The passing of the Employers' Liability Act was due directly to the Senator's spirited persistence. He lost the Southern Pacific contracts through it, but he did not care. One of the real romances of the divorce world is the Senator's second marriage, and the present Mrs. Huskey is exceedingly charming and interesting, and a splendid horse woman. An amusing incident is told of a little political difference of opinion between the Senator and the suffragettes about a remark which this worthy gentleman let forth in an unguarded moment. You should have seen the sparks fly and the fire flame up! In fact, it gave me considerable pleasure to be able to announce at the moment of writing that Senator Huskey's golden crop of curls was not singed beyond recognition and that his eyes were still steel blue and not black. This is how the conflagration started: At a conference in Carson City between the City Council and the Washoe delegation, the Senator, who put in a rather tardy appearance, is reported to have said to the other members: "All the ladies who came to Carson on The Cat Special' are waiting for you upstairs. I'm going to a show. Anything you do is all right for me." Miss Anne Martin, the president of the Women's League, did her best to put a favorable interpretation upon this very questionable term of endearment by saying that probably the Senator meant that they were as undrownable as cats, who are reputed to have nine lives, and that this persistence was getting what they wanted. That was all very well for the "mild" cats, but the spit-fiery ones were not so easily satisfied. One of them sent him a letter addressed, "Mr. H. W. Meow Huskey, Senate Chamber, Carson City." Others still more vindictive pasted a picture of a large tomcat, hunched of back and bristling of hair, right next to the Senator's campaign picture which already decorated the middle of the Truckee. Under it was written as large as life, "THE HUSKEY TOMCAT." Needless to say the whole town of Reno turned out the next day to enjoy the joke, and among them was the Senator, who enjoyed it as much as anyone. There is a strong rumor abroad that the Senator is to be a likely candidate for Governor: I certainly wish him every success. If a comprehensive knowledge of the law, a vigorous prosecution of the principles of Justice and a big heart are attributes that count, then the Senator stands the greatest chance to win the fight. Maurice Joseph Sullivan, Lieut.-Governor: No mining, no teaching, no law! This sketch is of a thoroughbred business man, who after graduating from the Polytechnic High School in San Francisco, joined a large wholesale hardware firm as a start in his career. Here he got some pretty "hard wear": those preliminary knocks that rub off all the rough edges and take with them some of the glamour of life..... However, Maurice Sullivan didn't have as many rough edges as most young fellows. He was good looking, popular and unspoilt--a phenomenon rarely come upon--and being ambitious it was not long before he had set up in Goldfield under the style of the Wood-Sullivan Hardware Co., selling hardware with lightning rapidity, just as if it were the easiest ware in the world to dispose of. Then one fine day Sullivan developed into a full-blown philanthropist. Each little baby visitor born into the camp of Goldfield was donated a big silver dollar, by way of encouragement to stay. And they surely did stay, those "Dollar Babies." In 1914 he was elected to the Lieutenant-Governorship, and an amusing anecdote is told of how he became "peeved" when he discovered that several of the house members were playing "hookey" in order to avoid voting on a bill, and sent the State police after them. How many of the culprits were collared and brought back I was not told, but I am inclined to think that it was the good round figure "nought," for the bill was scratched and the Lieut.-Governor fumed in vain. Mr. Sullivan was Lieut.-Governor during my stay in Nevada. Senator Morehouse.... One does not often in a lifetime meet a person born on April Fool's Day, and, usually when one happens to come across such a butt for mirth he will probably try to pass it off by telling you that the day of his birth is the last day of March, or something similar. I have known scores of people born on the 28th or even the 29th of February, but Senator Morehouse is the first one I have met who has the courage to face the world, and boldly announce the fact that he is an April Fool's child. But then, the joke is on the original April Fool, for the Senator has fooled him by being one of the brightest men of the State, and certainly its most gifted orator-- the Demosthenes of Nevada, in fact. Surely a true son of April Fool should stutter and stumble, and stammer and shy in the most pitiful manner. Well, anyway, the Senator can always have the consolation that he has "put one over" on Father April Fool. Way back, in the days of "Mobile Bay", young Harry Morehouse, then only a lad of seventeen, fought for his side until he could fight no more. Then the Sisters of Mercy had to mend the ravages of that unnatural fight, and for seven months Harry had a little holiday lying on his back. No sooner recovered, the rover spirit seized his feet and round he came to California, by way of the Isthmus, where he acted as "a sort of reporter," until he had eked out enough knowledge to teach in the grade school. Thence he started on the law path, from which he emerged most triumphantly, and after practicing in California struck out Renowards in 1913, where he was associated with the late Judge James G. Sweeney, who but recently passed away. By nature the Senator is mild and gentle, and always ready to lend a helping hand to a fellow traveller. I have had the pleasure of meeting him in private life, and have always felt impressed with those perfect manners, that pleasant voice and those kindly words. Although one of the newer Sons of the Sagebrush, he is surely one of the most acceptable. Governor Emmet D. Boyle has the distinction of being the youngest governor into whose hands Nevada ever thought it safe to entrust her well-being. He is none of your gray-beards, stolid of thought and sluggish of action, but a young politician (his real profession is mining engineering) with a wealth of experience, and plenty of good common "horse sense." His mother was a literary woman, and from her he learned to find a friend in books. As for his father, he was one of the most prominent mining men of the Comstock, and as a lad the governor-to-be had already acquired an extensive knowledge of mining, surveying, assaying and milling. At sixteen he joined the University and became a member of that most select of fraternities, with that weird-sounding name, Phi Kappa Kappa. He had specialized in mining at college, and upon graduation left the State, and engaged in several mining enterprises in British Columbia and Mexico. Then when his father passed away, he returned to Nevada and was offered a position as State Engineer. In 1915 he was made Nevada's Tax Commissioner and he traveled the State far and wide, gaining both fame and popularity. At college the Governor had distinguished himself considerably in the sporting arena, and he was known to be a particularly strong man when it came to kicking the ball. "Once a sport, always a sport!" If this spirit does not have the opportunity to show itself in active practice on the field of sport, it will nevertheless make itself felt in one's relations with men on the field of life, and so we have in Emmet D. Boyle a practical man with a vast knowledge about Nevada's foremost sources of success, with a true appreciation of the booklore of our ancestors, a keen eye and the love of fair play of the true sportsman. [Illustration: Governor Emmett D. Boyle Of Nevada] That he has a kind and humane heart can be judged from the fact that it was he who was responsible for the re-introducing of the six months residence law. Why should two people be forced to live together in distrust and misery any longer than was absolutely necessary? And so he worked as best he could to shorten that time, as much as the statute would permit. He succeeded, and thanks to him, several people have had their happiness given back to them..... I had the honor to meet the Governor on a number of occasions and always found him so simple and unassuming that I could hardly realize I was conversing with the man holding the highest position in the State, as if I had known him for years. The leading man of the State should have a charming wife! The Capitol would indeed be a desolate place without a hostess to entertain the Governor's colleagues, and apparently Governor Boyle has made a remarkably good choice in Miss Veda McClure, for she is extremely popular and takes a great interest in the Red Cross work, which is making such splendid strides all over the State. Let me here relate to you a most amusing incident which occurred to the Governor some little time ago. It was a State function and the dinner was scheduled for eight o'clock sharp; but it was not on time, and you shall hear why. At a quarter to eight, when his dress suit had not yet put in an appearance from the tailor's, the Governor sent a search party after it and waited, as patiently as circumstances would permit, for the delinquent "fine feathers" to blow in. By eight, he was a little more than uneasy, but it didn't help any. Suddenly, on the domestic horizon appeared a weird-looking creature! A human being, apparently in a state of frenzy over some terrible catastrophe. It was the tailor! "Here," he whispered, almost in tears, as he handed something to the outraged head of the State, "these ain't yours, but you'll have to wear 'em; yours someone else is wearing." [Illustration: Governor's at Carson City] And he wore them.... But, the tale runs, the Governor looked----He certainly did establish a precedent at that dinner. Mockers say that Judge Pat McCarran ran a close second, because his Excellency is lean and lank, while Judge McCarran would make two of him one way, and almost half of him the other, and because what happened to Governor Boyle had also happened to Judge McCarran that very night. Fred, de Longchamps... As a youngster, when playing amongst the rabbits and brush on the south side of the river Truckee, Fred, de Longchamps, like most youngsters, built many a castle in the air. Later, those castles descended literally from the air to the earth, for little Fred became a great architect, and now I am not surprised when I think how often I have admired those beautiful villas, which are strewn in such profusion all over Reno. When at Reno University, de Longchamps did the pen and ink work and other illustrating for the "Artemesai," the University publication. Mining, too, seemed to have a certain fascination for him, and in addition to his course in building, he gained considerable experience in mining operations. Then came the toss-up. Mining won, but wasn't strong enough to hold out, and thereupon, behold him returned to his old love. Do you see that fine modern looking structure over yonder? It is the Court House, without which Reno would not be Reno, and it was Mr. Fred, de Longchamps who conceived and built it. The Y. M. C. A. Building, The Nixon Bank Building, all these and more, are the splendid achievements of this brilliant young architect, who has helped in such a great measure to make the City of Reno as attractive as it is. It might also interest you to know that the Nevada Buildings at the San Francisco Exposition were erected "on the originality" of Fred, de Longchamps, and though their cost was comparatively small, they compared favorably with any State buildings on the grounds. Senator Nixon.... Although a native of Texas, Senator Nixon's life is essentially a Nevada Romance. He started on his career as a simple telegraph operator, and then migrated with all the Nevada immigrants in the boomy days of the goldfields. It wasn't exactly "open Sesame" and then a fortune. It was perseverance that "did the trick." But it made a mighty good job of it, for at the time of his decease in 1912, the Senator was worth several millions, and his beautiful residence situated at the top of a hill on the outskirts of Reno is said to have cost no less than $200,000. It does seem a pity, however, that as soon as a moderate sum of wealth is accumulated-with but few exceptions- there is a hankering to desert the State of Nevada in favor of some more populated, but surely not sunnier clime. And so young Nixon took his father's millions to the adjoining State of California, and Nevada knows not of them. Often I have felt that there was an analogy to the generous, self- sacrificing Mother Earth who gives all of her life and energy to nourish her sons, and who in reward receives little but slights and neglect. Frank Golden..... While writing of the Sons of the Sagebrush, we must not forget Frank Golden, Jr., who is a native son of Nevada, and one of the youngest hotel managers in the West, having become manager of the Golden Hotel at Reno when he was about nineteen. Mr. Golden's father built the Golden Hotel in 1901. He died in 1911, at which time the management was taken over by his son. The hotel was burned down in 1916 and reconstructed under the supervision of Frank, Jr., with the result that it is now perhaps the most beautifully equipped, best run and most modern European hotel in Reno, or in the State of Nevada, for that matter. Apart from being one of the youngest hotel managers in the West, he is also one of the most popular. Frank Golden was among the first to answer his country's call and served in France. [Illustration: Frank Golden, Jr.] 
35760	----	produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) Marriage and Divorce Laws of the World Edited by HYACINTHE RINGROSE, D. C. L. Author of "The Inns of Court" "Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities, and churches, and heaven itself."--Jeremy Taylor THE MUSSON-DRAPER COMPANY LONDON NEW YORK PARIS 1911 Copyright, 1911, by HYACINTHE RINGROSE All rights reserved PREFACE The purpose of this volume is to furnish to the lawyer, legislator, sociologist and student a working summary of the marriage and divorce laws of the principal countries of the world. There are no geographical boundaries to virtue, wisdom and justice, and no country has as yet monopolized all that is best in creation. The mightiest of the nations lacks something which is possessed by the weakest; and there is no branch of comparative jurisprudence of more general consequence than that treating of marriage, which is the keystone of civilization. By "civilization" we do not mean community life according to the standard of a single individual or nation, but in its broader and better sense, meaning the civil organization of any large group of human beings. This book is not a brief in favour of, or against, any particular social system or legal code, nor has it a mission to assist in the reformation of any country's marriage and divorce law. In the compilation which follows our endeavour is simply to set forth positive law as it exists to-day, leaving its correction or development to the proper authorities. The editor has lived among the books of the British Museum, the Bibliothèque Nationale and other great libraries for years, seeking in vain for just such a compilation as is here humbly presented. We hope, therefore, that whatever may be its imperfections the book is justified, and will be welcomed as the first of its kind. In its compilation we have been pleased to observe that the evident trend of modern legislation is toward uniformity among the nations of Christendom on the vital subjects of marriage and divorce. In fact, modernity brings uniformity in every department of public and private law--a consummation devoutly to be wished for by those who feel that, no matter how short may be the individual's life, he is nevertheless a kinsman to all of the race who have gone before or are yet to come. A study of the marriage laws of the world has also brought the happy conviction that the wholesome view of marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life, to the exclusion of all others, is the one triumphant fact of human history which can never lose its prestige. The surest sign of the general betterment of the world's law is that woman everywhere is more and more being allowed her natural place in the community as man's equal and associate. That nation is most enlightened which treats its womankind the best. All the legislation of the past century bearing on the subject of marriage has elevated men by giving more justice to women. When the next Matrimonial Causes Act predicated upon the labours of the present Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce is passed by the British Parliament, women will be given equal rights with men in our courts of law. The jurisprudence of England was not built for a day, and we are a people singularly bound by precedent, but when John Bull moves it is always in a straight line, and he never turns back. H. R. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION 7 II. ENGLAND 16 III. SCOTLAND 32 IV. IRELAND 36 V. THE FRENCH LAW 38 VI. THE LAW OF ITALY 46 VII. BELGIUM 53 VIII. SWITZERLAND 57 IX. GERMANY 60 X. AUSTRIA 67 XI. HUNGARY 72 XII. SWEDEN 76 XIII. DENMARK 81 XIV. NORWAY 85 XV. RUSSIAN EMPIRE 89 XVI. HOLLAND 100 XVII. THE JAPANESE LAW 104 XVIII. SPAIN 110 XIX. LAW OF PORTUGAL 117 XX. ROUMANIA 121 XXI. SERVIA 125 XXII. BULGARIA 129 XXIII. KINGDOM OF GREECE 132 XXIV. THE MOHAMMEDAN LAW 137 XXV. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 148 XXVI. DOMINION OF CANADA 199 XXVII. REPUBLIC OF MEXICO 209 XXVIII. ARGENTINE REPUBLIC 218 XXIX. UNITED STATES OF BRAZIL 223 XXX. REPUBLIC OF CUBA 227 XXXI. COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 238 XXXII. DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND 250 XXXIII. THE HINDU LAW 256 XXXIV. THE CHINESE EMPIRE 265 Marriage and Divorce Laws of the World CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Marriage is the oldest and most universal of all human institutions. According to the Chinese Annals in the beginning of society men differed in nothing from other animals in their way of life. They wandered up and down the forests and plains free from the restraint of community laws or morality, and holding their women in common. Children generally knew their mothers, but rarely their fathers. We are told that the Emperor Fou-hi changed all this by inventing marriage. The Egyptians credit Menes with the same invention, while the Greeks give the honour to Kekrops. In the Sanscrit literature we find no definite account of the institution of marriage, but the Indian poem, "Mahabharata," relates that until the Prince Swetapetu issued an edict requiring fidelity between husband and wife the Indian women roved about at their pleasure, and if in their youthful innocence they went astray from their husbands they were not considered as guilty of any wrong. The Bible story of the institution of marriage is contained in the Second Chapter of Genesis, 18th to the 25th verse. It is not within the purpose of this treatise to argue for or against the acceptance of the Bible narrative, so we call attention without comment to the extreme simplicity of the wedding ritual as stated in the 22d verse: "And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, _and he brought her unto the man_." Among primitive men marriage was concluded without civil or religious ceremony. Even in modern Japan a wedding ritual is considered all but superfluous. The principal marriage ceremonies have been derived from heathen customs; they were: the _arrhae_, or espousal gifts, an earnest or pledge that marriage would be concluded; and the ring betokening fidelity. Among the ancient Hebrews marriage was not a religious ordinance or contract, and neither in the Old Testament nor in the Talmud is it treated as such. As with the Mohammedans it was simply a civil contract. Under the old Roman law there were three modes of marriage: 1. _Confarreatio_, which consisted of a religious ceremony before ten witnesses, in which an ox was sacrificed and a wheaten cake was broken by a priest and divided between the parties. 2. _Coemptio in manum_, which was a conveyance or fictitious sale of the woman to the man. 3. _Usus_, the acquisition of a wife by prescription through her cohabitation with the husband for one year without being absent from his house three consecutive nights. But a true Roman marriage could be concluded simply by the interchange of consent. There was an easy morality of the olden times which according to present standards was akin to savagery. The Greeks even in the golden age of Pericles held the marriage relation in very little sanctity. It was reputable for men to loan their wives to their friends, and divorce was easy and frequent. Hellenic literature attempted to make poetry of vice and marital infidelity, and adultery was the chief pastime of the gods and goddesses. The Romans had more of the moral and religious in their character than the Greeks, but still we read of Cato the younger loaning his wife Marcia to Hortensius and taking her back after the orator's death. In the Second Chapter of the Gospel according to St. John we find that Jesus was a guest at a marriage in Cana of Galilee. His attendance at the wedding feast is not notable for His having on this occasion given the marriage contract the character of a sacrament, for nothing in the record even hints at this. The account is principally noteworthy as the history of His first miracle, that of turning water into wine. It was from the Fifth Chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians that the dogma that marriage is a sacrament was gradually evolved. In this chapter the Apostle points out the particular duties of the marriage status, and exhorts wives to obey their husbands, and husbands to love their wives. "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh." However, the early Christian Church did not treat marriage as a sacrament, although its celebration was usually the occasion of prayers and exhortations. It was not until the year 1563, by an edict of the Council of Trent, that the oldest branch of the Christian Church, namely, that governed by the See of Rome, required the celebration of marriage to be an essentially religious ceremony. The general marriage law of the European continent has been derived and developed from the edicts of the Roman emperors and the decrees of the Christian Church. This historical evolution is strikingly apparent when we read the definition of marriage as given in the Institutes of Justinian: _Nuptiae autem, sive matrimonium est veri et mulieris conjunctio, individuam vitae consuetudinem continens_. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman, including an inseparable association of their lives. There are as many definitions of marriage as there are views concerning it, but none of them improve very much upon that given in the Institutes. It is also worth noting that the impediments to lawful marriage were very nearly the same under the Roman Empire as they are to-day in most civilized countries. The 18th Chapter of the Book of Leviticus appears to have set the standard. There are three principal forms of marriage, namely, monogamy, polygamy and polyandry. Monogamy, or the condition of one man being married to but one woman at a time, appears to be not only the best but the most ancient and universal type. It was, according to the Bible, good enough for the first husband, Adam, for his only wife was Eve. The first polygamist on the same authority was Lamech, who was of the sixth generation after Adam, for he "took unto him two wives." Reading in the First Book of Kings, we are informed that King Solomon had "seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines." A round thousand. However, polygamy, or the marriage of a man to more than one wife at the same time, was not the rule even among the ancient Hebrews. Such a trial was left to kings and other luxurious persons. Polyandry is the condition of a woman having more than one husband at the same time. It evidently had its origin in infertile regions in the endeavour to limit the population to the resources of the district. It is almost a thing of the past, but it is still practised in Thibet, Ceylon and some parts of India. MORGANATIC MARRIAGE.--A morganatic marriage is a marriage between a member of a reigning or nominally reigning family and one who is not of either of such families. It is a term usually employed with reference to a matrimonial alliance between a man of royal blood (or in Germany of high nobility) and a woman of inferior rank. Such alliances are sometimes called "left-handed marriages," because in the wedding ceremony the left hand is given instead of the right. In Germany a woman of high rank may make a morganatic alliance with a man of inferior position. The children of a morganatic marriage are legitimate, but neither they nor the wife can inherit the rank or estate of the morganatic husband. By the Royal Marriage Act of England such an alliance has no matrimonial effect whatever. DIVORCE.--Divorce is almost as ancient as marriage, and just as fully sanctioned by history, necessity and authority. In the 24th Chapter of Deuteronomy we read: "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife." This rule was consistent with the patriarchal system of the Jewish commonwealth. The husband as the head of the family could divorce his wife at his pleasure. An illustration of such a divorce is furnished by Abraham's dismissal or divorcement of Hagar. This was surely a simple divorce law with a summary procedure, much cheaper, quicker and easier than is given by the statutes of several American States. No solicitor, barrister or court was required. The husband constituted himself president of the Court of Probate, Admiralty and Divorce for the special occasion and granted himself a favourable decree. The law of divorce as stated in Deuteronomy continued to be accepted by the Hebrews until the 11th century. It was in full force when Christ was on earth, for it is recorded in the 19th Chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew that He was questioned concerning it. Jesus had given to the Pharisees His views of marriage in answer to their question: "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for _every_ reason?" He then stated the proposition that because of marriage a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and added: "What, therefore, God bath joined together let not man put asunder." Then was put to Him the question concerning the existing law: "Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?" His answer was that "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so." Jesus although disapproving of the breadth of the Mosaic law did not declare against divorce; quite the contrary, for He said: "Whosoever shall put away his wife, _except it be for fornication_, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." Unless we assume that Jesus was concealing rather than expounding His views, the plain meaning is that He considered fornication to be the sufficient and only cause for an absolute divorce. Josephus interpreted the Jewish divorce law as follows: "He who wishes to be separated from his wife for any reason whatever--and many such are occurring among men--must affirm in writing his intention of no longer cohabiting with her." The ancient Jewish law made of woman a chattel and a marriage derelict at her husband's pleasure, but it gave the woman no right to divorce her husband for any cause. The poet, John Milton, in the least worthy of his writings, relied upon the Mosaic law in his specious argument in favour of unlimited divorce. St. Augustine contended that the question of divorce is not clearly determined by the words of Jesus, but there can be no mistake concerning the theological attitude of the Roman Catholic Church of to-day on this subject. It positively holds that no human power can dissolve a marriage when ratified and consummated between baptized persons. If one is prepared to concede the principal dogma of Roman Catholicism, namely, the infallibility of the Church, there is no lack of logic or authority in such an attitude, even though it differs or varies from the Mosaic law or the sayings of Jesus. We must remember, however, that modern divorce law is not founded on theological dogmas or theories, but upon practical social science and humanity. In most countries there is no distinction between the husband and the wife as to grounds of divorce. The Mohammedan law of Egypt and the statute laws of Belgium and England being conspicuous exceptions to the rule. Usually the domicile of the husband is the place where the action must be instituted, but in the United States of America a wife may acquire a separate domicile from that of her husband if he has given her cause for divorce. Divorces of domiciled foreigners are granted in several countries of Europe, provided the cause relied on is a cause for divorce in the native country of the parties, and in most continental countries divorces of natives are granted, whether domiciled in their native country or not, the foundation of jurisdiction being nationality, not domicile. Practically in all countries the exercise of jurisdiction for divorce is not affected by the fact that marriage was celebrated in or out of the country. The causes for divorce are varied in kind and in number. In some countries of Europe mutual consent is a sufficient cause under certain restrictions. The number of causes for divorce in Europe vary from one in England to twelve in Sweden. The dream of the academic lawyer is for an international law of marriage and divorce, but the differences between the existing judicial systems of the various great commonwealths of the world are much too great to make a universal law on the subject practicable. In one country only the civil marriage is legal and in another only the ecclesiastical alliance is valid; in one country divorce is allowed, and in another it is denied; in one, difference in religion between the parties is an impediment to marriage, and in another it is not; in one the canon law is controlling, and in another the civil law regulates all questions of matrimonial rights. Even in the matter of age and capacity the greatest variableness exists. As, for instance, the minimum age for marriage. In England it is fourteen for males and fifteen for females; in Germany, twenty-one for males and sixteen for females; In Austria, fourteen for both; in Russia, France, Holland, Switzerland and Hungary, eighteen for males and sixteen for females; in Spain and Greece, fourteen for males and fifteen for females; in Denmark and Norway, twenty for males and fourteen for females; in Sweden, twenty-one for males and seventeen for females; in Finland, twenty-one for males and fifteen for females; in Servia, seventeen for males and fifteen for females. It will be observed that the different laws as to the minimum age for marriage do not flow from circumstances of climate, religion or culture, but are mainly historical and arbitrary. CHAPTER II. ENGLAND. INTRODUCTION.--The law of England regards marriage as a contract, a status and an institution. As a contract it is in its essence an expressed consent on the part of a man and woman, competent to make the contract, to cohabit with each other as husband and wife, and with each other only. As Lord Robertson says: "It differs from other contracts in this, that the rights, obligations or duties arising from it are not left entirely to be regulated by the agreement of parties, but are to a certain extent matters of municipal regulation, over which the parties have no control by any declaration of their will." As a status created by contract, marriage confers on the parties certain privileges and exacts certain duties under legal protection and sanction. From the earliest period of the recorded history of England it has always been accepted doctrine that marriage as an institution is the keystone of the commonwealth and the highest expression of morality. The men of the law in England were anciently persons in holy orders, and the judges were originally bishops, abbots, deans, canons and archdeacons. As late as 1857 the clergy in their ecclesiastical courts had exclusive jurisdiction of matrimonial causes. They administered the Canon Law of the Western Church affecting marriage and ruled that in marriages lawfully made, and according to the ordinance of matrimony, the bond thereof can by no means be dissolved during the lives of the parties. By the passage of the Divorce Act of 1857 the jurisdiction in matrimonial causes was transferred to a new civil tribunal, and absolute divorce was sanctioned, with permission of remarriage on proof of adultery on the part of the wife, or adultery and cruelty on the part of the husband. It is seriously contended by some eminent churchmen that in spite of this legislation the Church of England still has as its definite existing law the old rule which obtained before the Reformation, namely, that marriage is indissoluble; that a limited divorce from bed and board may be permitted, but that an absolute divorce which leaves either party free to remarry during the lifetime of the other is forbidden. This supposed conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical laws of the realm furnishes an academic topic and engenders bad feeling, but it has no real existence. The Church of England exists by Act of Parliament and manifestly has no power to nullify statutes enacted by the legislature which established it as the official religious organization of the Kingdom. The civil courts of England have never considered marriage as a sacrament or religious ordinance, but have held that the dogmas and precepts of Christianity do not affect the civil status of marriage, but simply add to it a religious character. In this respect the law of England is in exact harmony with the attitude of the primitive Christian Church. Lord Stowell tells us that "in the Christian Church marriage was elevated in a later age to the dignity of a sacrament, in consequence of its divine institution, and of some expressions of high and mysterious import concerning it contained in sacred writings. The law of the Church, the canon law (a system which, in spite of its absurd pretensions to a higher origin, is in many of its provisions deeply enough founded in the wisdom of man), although in conformity to the prevailing theological opinion, it reverenced marriage as a sacrament, still so far respected its natural and civil origin as to consider that where the natural and civil contract was formed it had the full essence of matrimony without the intervention of the priest, it had even in that state the character of a sacrament; for it is a misapprehension to suppose that this intervention was required as a matter of necessity even for that purpose before the Council of Trent." The English courts only recognize as a true marriage one which, in addition to being valid in other respects, involves the essential requirement that it is a voluntary union of one man and one woman for life to the exclusion of all others, which is substantially the definition of marriage given by Lord Penzance in the leading case of Hyde v. Hyde. No marriage is recognized which is founded on principles which are in conflict with the general morality of Christendom. The term Christendom is used as a matter of convenience only. It includes all those nations generally recognized to be civilized, whatever may be their prevailing religion. LEX LOCI CONTRACTUS.--It is a well-established rule that the law of the place where the contract of marriage was concluded, that is, the _lex loci contractus_, or, as it is sometimes termed, the _lex loci celebrationis_ (law of the place of celebration), alone governs the court in ascertaining whether or not the marriage is regular. All the formal preliminaries, such as publication of banns, or license, and consent of the parties entitled to give or withhold consent according to the _lex loci contractus_, must be complied with. LEGAL AGE.--The legal age for marriage in England and Wales is fourteen for a male and twelve for a female. The consent of the father of each of the contracting parties is required of those under twenty-one. If the father is dead the consent of the mother is required unless there is a guardian appointed by the father. FORMAL REQUIREMENTS.--There are certain formal preliminaries to a valid marriage in England, such as the publication of banns, or the procurement of a common or special license which operates as a dispensation with the banns. BANNS.--The banns must be published on three Sundays in the parish in which the parties reside, and if they reside in different parishes the banns must be published in each parish. The marriage ceremony must be celebrated in one of the churches where the banns have been published. If they are published in two different parishes the clergyman of one parish must give a certificate of publication, which must be delivered to the clergyman who solemnizes the marriage. The parties must reside in the parish for fifteen days prior to the publication of the banns, and the marriage must take place within three months of the last publication. Where a man has procured the banns to be published in false names, or has concealed his true name, he will not be allowed to annul the marriage on that account only. A party cannot take advantage of his own fraud for the purpose of invalidating a marriage. LICENSE.--No publication of banns is necessary in the case of a marriage under a bishop's license. Licenses may be obtained at the offices of the bishop's registrars, and full information as to procuring a license may be obtained through the local clergy. A license granted by a bishop is only available in his diocese, and one of the parties must have resided for fifteen days immediately preceding the issue of the license in the parish in which the marriage is to take place. The cost varies in different dioceses, but it is usually between £2 and £3. The Archbishop of Canterbury has power to issue a special license enabling a marriage to be solemnized at any time or place. The cost of this is from £20 to £30, and it can be obtained at the Faculty Office, Doctors' Commons, London, E.C. CERTIFICATE OF REGISTRAR.--A marriage by the certificate of the registrar of marriages may take place at a Roman Catholic place of worship, a Nonconformist chapel, or at the office of the registrar of marriages. The parties must have resided in the district at least seven days preceding the date of the notice, which must be given to the superintendent registrar, or, if they live in different districts, then notice must be given to the superintendent registrar of each district, and it must be exhibited in his office for twenty-one days. If no valid objection to the marriage is made the superintendent registrar issues his certificate and the marriage may take place within three months. The cost, including certificate, is 9s. 7d. REGISTRAR'S LICENSE.--A marriage by registrar's license may take place either at his office or at a Roman Catholic or Nonconformist place of worship. Notice must be given by one of the parties to the superintendent registrar of the district in which he or she has resided for at least fifteen days, and he will then issue his license at the expiration of one day. The marriage can then immediately take place, or it may take place any time within three months. The cost is £2 14s. 6d. No marriage license will be issued to parties, either of whom is under twenty-one years of age, unless one of the parties makes oath that the consent of the proper persons has been obtained, or that there is no person alive whose consent would ordinarily be necessary. A marriage may be legally concluded without a marriage license if banns are duly published. HOURS FOR MARRIAGE.--Marriages can only be solemnized between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., except in the case of marriages by special license and Jewish marriages. FALSE NAMES.--Where both parties conspire to procure banns to be published in a false name or names or to practise a fraud with the object of obtaining a license the marriage may be annulled, but if the one party only is guilty the marriage will be valid. MARRIAGE BY REPUTATION.--In most cases it is necessary to produce clear evidence of a marriage ceremony, but in some exceptional instances a marriage may be proved by long reputation--_e.g._, if two persons have lived together as man and wife for many years, and if they have always been regarded as such by their friends and neighbours, the Court will presume a legal marriage unless evidence is produced to prove that the parties were not lawfully married. CERTIFICATES OF MARRIAGES--MARRIAGE LINES.--A marriage certificate (marriage lines) can be obtained at the time of the marriage for 2s. 7d. If applied for subsequently the cost will be 3s. 7d. A certificate can be obtained at the church, chapel, synagogue or meeting house where the ceremony was performed, or at the General Register Office, Somerset House, or at the office of the superintendent registrar of the district where the marriage took place. The entry in the register at either of these places may be inspected on payment of 1s. A certificate of a marriage entered into in England or Wales prior to July 1, 1837, should be obtainable either from the registrar general or from the church where it was solemnized. IMPEDIMENTS--PROHIBITED DEGREES. A man may not marry his: 1 Grandmother. 2 Grandfather's Wife. 3 Wife's Grandmother. 4-5 Father's Sister, Mother's Sister (_i.e._, aunt by blood). 6-7 Father's Brother's Wife, Mother's Brother's Wife (Uncle's Wife, _i.e._, aunt by affinity). 8-9 Wife's Father's Sister, Wife's Mother's Sister (Wife's Aunt). 10 Mother. 11 Stepmother. 12 Wife's Mother (Mother-in-law). 13 Daughter. 14 Wife's Daughter (Step-daughter). 15 Son's Wife (Daughter-in-law). 16 Sister. 17 Brother's Wife (Sister-in-law). 18-19 Son's Daughter, Daughter's Daughter, (Granddaughter). 20 Son's Son's Wife (Son's Daughter-in-law). 21 Daughter's Son's Wife (Daughter's Daughter-in-law). 22 Wife's Son's Daughter (Stepson's Daughter). 23 Wife's Daughter's Daughter (Stepdaughter's Daughter). 24-25 Brother's Daughter, Sister's Daughter (niece). 26-27 Brother's Son's Wife, Sister's Son's Wife (nephew's wife). 28-29 Wife's Brother's Daughter, Wife's Sister's Daughter (niece by affinity). A woman may not marry her: 1 Grandfather. 2 Grandmother's Husband. 3 Husband's Grandfather. 4-5 Father's Brother, Mother's Brother (uncle by blood). 6-7 Father's Sister's Husband, Mother's Sister's Husband, (Aunt's Husband, _i.e._, uncle by affinity). 8-9 Husband's Father's Brother, Husband's Mother's Brother (husband's uncle). 10 Father. 11 Stepfather. 12 Husband's Father (father-in-law). 13 Son. 14 Husband's Son (stepson). 15 Daughter's Husband (son-in-law). 16 Brother. 17-18 Husband's Brother, Sister's Husband (brother-in-law). 19-20 Son's Son, Daughter's Son (grandson). 21 Son's Daughter's Husband (son's son-in-law). 22 Daughter's Daughter's Husband (daughter's son-in-law). 23 Husband's Son's Son (stepson's son). 24 Husband's Daughter's Son (stepdaughter's son). 25-26 Brother's Son, Sister's Son (nephew). 27-28 Brother's Daughter's Husband, Sister's Daughter's Husband (niece's husband). 29-30 Husband's Brother's Son, Husband's Sister's Son (nephew by affinity). GROUNDS OR CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.--A husband is entitled to a divorce if his wife has committed adultery, but a wife is not so entitled unless her husband has committed incestuous adultery, bigamy, rape, sodomy, bestiality, adultery coupled with cruelty, or adultery coupled with desertion without reasonable excuse for two years or more. Incestuous adultery is adultery with a woman within the prohibited degrees. A wife will not be granted a decree of divorce on the ground of her husband's adultery coupled with cruelty unless the cruelty relied on consists of bodily hurt or injury to health, or a reasonable danger or apprehension of one or the other of them. There must be at least two acts of cruelty on the part of the husband. The communication of venereal disease when the husband knows of his condition is an act of cruelty. PROCEDURE.--The application for a divorce is made by a petition to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice. The party seeking relief is called the petitioner, and the party against whom the petition is brought is called the respondent. The party with whom a husband alleges his wife has committed adultery is called the co-respondent. The person with whom a wife alleges her husband has committed adultery is not a party to the suit. However, a woman implicated in a divorce suit may, upon proper application, secure an order permitting her to attend the proceedings as an intervener. Divorce proceedings in England are very expensive; the costs in an ordinary uncontested suit amount to from thirty to forty pounds sterling. A petitioner or respondent who is not worth twenty-five pounds after payment of his or her debts, exclusive of wearing apparel, may sue or defend in _forma pauperis_. A person whose income exceeds one pound a week cannot, except in special cases, sue or defend in _forma pauperis_. A party desiring to sue or defend in _forma pauperis_ must as a preliminary measure prepare a written statement of his or her case, setting forth the facts relied upon as a cause of action or defence, and obtain thereon an endorsed opinion of a barrister-at-law setting forth his professional opinion that the cause of action or defence as stated is good in law. The applicant must then make an affidavit, attaching the statement and the barrister's opinion. This affidavit is then filed in the Divorce Registry of Somerset House, where two days later, if a proper case is made out, an order is issued granting the applicant leave to sue or defend in _forma pauperis_. No fees are charged in respect to this application nor upon the subsequent proceedings in court. No solicitor or barrister is assigned to the party proceeding in this form. JURISDICTION.--The Court will only entertain jurisdiction when the husband is domiciled in England. If the husband is temporarily residing abroad an action by him or his wife for divorce must be instituted in England. The English Courts do not recognize a change of domicile which is obtained simply to enable the parties to obtain a divorce in another country, the laws of which offer greater facilities. If the domicile of the husband is in England, and either the husband or the wife obtains a decree of divorce in the United States of America or elsewhere, the English courts will treat such a divorce as a nullity. A person's domicile is his or her permanent home. An Englishman who lives in America for twenty-five years is not domiciled there unless by all the facts his conduct shows that he has abandoned his English domicile. CONDONATION.--A matrimonial offence which is a sufficient cause for divorce may be condoned or forgiven by the spouse aggrieved, and such condonation is a good defence to the action. But subsequent misconduct will revive the offence as if there had been no condonation. CONNIVANCE.--It is a sufficient defence to an action for divorce for the respondent to show that the adultery complained of was committed by the connivance or active consent of the petitioner. COLLUSION.--Collusion is the illegal agreement and co-operation between the petitioner and the respondent in a divorce action to obtain a judicial dissolution of the marriage. FORM OF DIVORCE DECREES.--An English decree of divorce is in the first instance _nisi_, or provisional. If after six months it is unaffected by any intervention by the King's Proctor, or any other person, it can be made absolute upon proper application. KING'S PROCTOR.--This is the proctor or solicitor representing the Crown in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice in matrimonial causes. In his official capacity he can only intervene in a divorce suit on the ground of collusion. Sir James Hannen, discussing the powers of this officer, said in a leading case: "If, then, the information given to the King's Proctor before the decree _nisi_ does not rise to a suspicion of collusion, but only brings to his knowledge matters material to the due decision of the case, he is not entitled to take any step, and the direction of the Attorney-General would probably be that he should watch the case to see if these material facts are brought to the notice of the court. If at the trial they should be, there will be no need for the King's Proctor to do anything more, for he would not be entitled to have the same charges tried over again unless material facts were not brought to the notice of the court. "If, however, those material facts are not so brought to the notice of the court by the parties, he will then be entitled as one of the public, but still acting under the direction of the Attorney-General, to show cause against the decree being made absolute." In special cases the court has power to make the decree absolute before the expiration of six months after the decree _nisi_. Until the decree is made absolute neither party can lawfully contract another marriage; and in the event of the suit being contested the parties must further wait until the time for an appeal has passed. ALIMONY, TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT.--During the pendency of the suit the husband is liable to provide his wife with alimony or maintenance. The amount granted is within the court's discretion, but generally it is about twenty-five per centum of the husband's income. Upon the granting of a decree in the wife's favour the court has power to grant the wife permanent alimony, the amount of which depends on all the facts, such as the husband's income, the wife's means and the social status of the parties. If a wife secures an order for alimony against her husband, he being a man of property, the court may require him to give security for its payment or direct him to make a transfer of money to a trustee or trustees for the convenient payment to the wife. Permanent alimony is usually smaller than temporary alimony, or alimony _pendente lite_, but no rule as to the amount can be safely stated, it resting in the discretion of the Court. If a husband has no considerable property he will be directed to pay the alimony awarded against him in monthly or weekly instalments. INSANITY.--Insanity is neither a cause nor a bar to divorce. If an insane wife commits adultery, or if an insane husband commits adultery coupled with the other offences which make out a cause of action against him, the innocent party is entitled to a decree of divorce. So an insane party may be a petitioner for divorce, but can only appear by his or her committee in lunacy. HUSBAND'S NAME.--A divorced wife is entitled to continue to use her former husband's surname. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--An action for the annulment of marriage has for its purpose the setting aside of the marriage contract on the theory that proper consent to the marriage has never been given by both the parties. The following are the causes or grounds for such annulment: 1. A prior and existing marriage of one of the parties; 2. Impotency, or such physical malformation of one of the parties which prevents him or her from consummating the marriage by sexual intercourse; 3. Relationship within the prohibited degrees; 4. Marriage procured by fraud, violence or mistake; 5. Insanity of one of the parties at the time of the marriage; 6. Marriage performed without legal license, or without the required publication of banns. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--By the Matrimonial Causes Act a decree of judicial separation, which is equivalent in effect to a divorce _a mensa et thoro_ under the old law, may be obtained either by the husband or wife on the ground of adultery, or cruelty, or desertion without legal cause for two years and upwards. The defences which may be set up by the respondent vary according to the cause relied upon by the petitioner, but there is one absolute bar in suits for judicial separations brought on any ground, and that is that the petitioner has committed adultery since the date of the marriage. SEPARATION ORDERS.--Besides the ordinary suit to obtain a judicial separation which must be prosecuted in the High Court a wife can obtain speedy and inexpensive relief by making an application to a police magistrate, or a board of magistrates, for a separation order. This remedy is limited to married women whose husbands are domiciled in England or Wales. Such separation orders are intended to furnish summary relief to the wives of workingmen, and the amount awarded for the wife's support to be paid by her husband cannot exceed two pounds a week, no matter what the husband's income may be. The following are the causes for which, upon application, a magistrate or board of magistrates is authorized to grant a separation order: 1. Habitual drunkenness of the husband, which renders him at times dangerous to himself or others, or incapable of managing himself or his affairs; 2. When the husband has been convicted of an aggravated assault upon his wife, or has been convicted by an Assize or Quarter Sessions Court of an assault and has been sentenced to a fine of more than five pounds or to imprisonment for more than two months; 3. Desertion by the husband of his wife; 4. Persistent cruelty of the husband toward his wife; 5. Neglect to provide reasonable maintenance for wife or infant children. By the Licensing Act of 1902 a husband is entitled to a separation order by a magistrate or board of magistrates if his wife is an habitual drunkard. RESTITUTION OF CONJUGAL RIGHTS.--Husbands and wives are entitled to each other's society, and if, without sufficient reason, either of them neglects to perform his or her obligations the injured party may institute what is known as a suit for restitution of conjugal rights, in which the court will grant a decree directing the offending party to render conjugal rights to the other party. If the decree is not complied with, such non-compliance is equivalent to desertion, and a suit for judicial separation may be instituted immediately. If the husband is the offending party, and if he has been guilty of adultery, a suit for divorce may at once be instituted; or if he commits adultery subsequently to the date of the decree for restitution, proceedings for divorce may be taken. Furthermore, if the suit for restitution is brought by the wife, the husband may be directed to make such periodical payments for her benefit as the court may think just. If the suit for restitution is brought by the husband, and if the wife is entitled to any property, the court may order a settlement for the whole or part of it for the benefit of the husband and children of the marriage, or either or any of them, or may order the wife to pay a portion of her earnings to the husband for his own benefit, or to some other person for the benefit of the children of the marriage. A husband cannot compel his wife to live with him by force, and if he seizes and retains possession of her, she or her relatives can obtain a _habeas corpus_ to compel him to release her, but persons who wrongfully induce a wife to leave her husband, or who detain her from his society by improper means, are liable to an action for damages by him. If a husband declines to live with his wife because he discovers that she has been unchaste before marriage she cannot obtain a decree for restitution of conjugal rights unless he knew of the fact before the marriage took place. If a husband has been guilty of cruelty he cannot obtain a decree for restitution. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--The Foreign Marriage Act of 1892 (55 and 56 Vict. c. 23) forms a complete code upon the subject of the marriage of British subjects abroad. Its chief requirement is that one at least of the parties to the marriage must be a British subject. Notice of the proposed marriage must be given fourteen days before the ceremony, and it must be performed before one of the following officials, who is termed in the Act a "marriage officer": the British ambassador, minister or chargé-d'affaires, accredited to the country where the marriage takes place; the British consul, governor, high commissioner, or official resident. The term consul in the Act includes a consul-general, a vice-consul, pro-consul, or consular agent. If the woman is a British subject, and the man is a subject or citizen of another country, the marriage officer must be satisfied that the intended marriage would be recognized by the laws of the country where the man to be married belongs. In 1896 there was passed the Marriage with Foreigners Act (6 Edw. 7, 3. 40), which is intended to protect British subjects who contract marriages with subjects or citizens of other countries, either at home or abroad, and to run the risk of having their marriages treated as invalid by the law of the country of the foreign contracting party. It provides for the granting of certificates by competent authority in the country to which the foreign party to the marriage owes allegiance, stating that there is no lawful impediment to the proposed marriage. CONFLICT OF LAWS.--English courts do not recognize a decree of divorce granted by the courts of a foreign country as having any effect outside of the country where granted, unless at the time of the beginning of the action which resulted in the decree both parties were domiciled within the jurisdiction of the court which granted it. This rule applies to divorce decrees obtained in Scotland because for all the purposes of private international law Scotland is a foreign country. The English courts will, however, recognize as possessing extra-territorial validity a decree of divorce which is recognized as valid by the courts of the country where the parties were actually domiciled at the time of its being granted. In the case of Gillig v. Gillig, decided in 1906, the English High Court recognized as valid in England a divorce granted in South Dakota, U. S. A., of parties domiciled in New York, because the decree in question was recognized as valid by the courts of the State of New York. It is the doctrine of English courts that an honest adherence to the principle that domicile alone gives jurisdiction in a divorce action will preclude the scandal which arises when a man and woman are held to be husband and wife in one country and strangers in another. CHAPTER III. SCOTLAND. The Act of Union between England and Scotland, A. D. 1707 (6 Anne, c. 2), which made one legislature, the present British Parliament, for the two countries, expressly provided that the existing law and judicial procedure of each kingdom should be continued, except so far as they might be repealed by the Act, or by subsequent legislation. The foundation of Scottish jurisprudence is the Roman law, and the canon law which is derived from it, consequently the law of marriage and divorce in Scotland differs from that of England. The status of marriage by Scottish law may be created in any one of three ways: First, by regular or public marriage celebrated in a church or private house by a minister of religion; second, by an irregular or clandestine marriage entered into without the assistance of a clergyman or any other third party, and, third, by declaration, or declarator, wherein the parties make a declaration confessing an irregular union, and are fined for the "offence," and obtain an extract of the "sentence" which answers to the purpose of a certificate of marriage. The Scottish definition of marriage is given by Lord Penzance as follows: "The voluntary union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others." IMPEDIMENTS.--Males under fourteen and females under twelve cannot marry, but if persons under age, called in the Scottish law "pupils," live together and continue to do so after both have passed their nonage they are considered married, on the ground that there is evidence of a contract after the impediment has ceased to exist. INSANITY.--An insane person cannot give a valid consent and therefore the insanity of either party is an impediment. INTOXICATION.--There can be no marriage if one of the parties at the time of the formal union was so intoxicated as to be bereft of reason, but a marriage voidable on the ground of either insanity or intoxication may be validated by the consent of both parties after a return to sanity or sobriety. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--As to the impediments which arise from blood and marriage, the 18th Chapter of the Book of Leviticus is practically the law of Scotland. Marriage is forbidden between ascendants and descendants _ad infinitum_, and in the collateral line between brothers and sisters, consanguinian or uterine, and between all collaterals, one of whom stands in _loco parentis_ to the other. It is still an academic question whether or not the marriage of a brother and sister both born illegitimate is prohibited. Of course, a previous marriage still subsisting is an impediment. GRETNA GREEN MARRIAGES.--In order to put a stop to the Gretna Green marriages which have furnished material for much romance in books and much sorrow in actual life, it was enacted by 19 and 20 Vict., c. 96, that "no irregular marriage contracted in Scotland by declaration, acknowledgment or ceremony (after 31 Dec., 1856) shall be valid unless one of the parties had at the date thereof his or her usual place of residence there, or had lived in Scotland for twenty-one days next preceding such marriage." It is manifest from all the decisions that in the absence of impediments, marriage in Scotland is constituted by interchange of consent. No formal expression of such consent is necessary. If the court is satisfied, from the whole circumstances and the conduct of the parties before and after, that they have given genuine consent to present marriage, it will be held that the marriage has been validly constituted. HUSBAND AND WIFE.--By the common law of Scotland the legal status of a married woman is so merged in that of her husband as to leave her incapable of independent legal action. Recent legislation has, however, modified this doctrine. DIVORCE.--The term divorce as used in this chapter means an absolute dissolution and setting aside of a legal marriage. The Scottish courts recognize two grounds for divorce, adultery and desertion. These grounds are open to either husband or wife. The action can only be maintained by the innocent party. ADULTERY.--The evidence must be such as would "lead the guarded discretion of a reasonable and just man to the conclusion that adultery has been committed." If the court has jurisdiction it does not matter that the offence was committed out of Scotland. DEFENCES.--Besides the denial of the allegation of adultery, the following are sufficient defences: 1, collusion; 2, condonation; 3, long delay in bringing the action; 4, connivance or lenocinium of the plaintiff, who is called a pursuer in Scottish procedure; 5, the honest belief that the intercourse alleged to be adultery was lawful, as when a wife enters into a second marriage in the reasonable belief that her first husband is dead. DESERTION.--Desertion or, as the Scottish lawyers put it, "non-adherence," for a period of four years, against the will of the party deserted, is the second ground for divorce. Mere separation, as, for example, the absence of the husband on necessary business or his imprisonment, is not such non-adherence as will entitle the pursuer to a decree. The desertion must be a deliberate and obstinate withdrawal from cohabitation and companionship. If a wife refused to accompany her husband abroad, and he went alone, her refusal, and not his going away, would constitute desertion. FOREIGN DIVORCE.--If a native of Scotland acquires a foreign domicile, and obtains a divorce while abroad, the divorce would be recognized in Scotland if granted for either of the two causes sufficient by Scottish law. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--The judgment of divorce completely sets aside the marriage, and both parties are free to marry again. On divorce the innocent party also comes into the immediate enjoyment of all the rights in the estate of the guilty spouse, or the funds settled by the marriage contract, as if the offending party had died at the date of the decree. Conversely, the guilty spouse loses all claim to such legal rights as he or she would have had on the death of the innocent party but for the divorce. CHAPTER IV. IRELAND. Ireland like Scotland has its separate judicial system, and many of its laws differ from those of all other parts of the British Empire. The Irish law relating to marriage and matrimonial controversies is administered under the Matrimonial Causes and Marriage Law (Ireland) Amendment Act of 1870. It is practically the same as the English law as it existed before 1857. The Irish Act of 1870 transferred the exercise by the Ecclesiastical Courts prior to the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland to a court for matrimonial causes and assigned the trial of such causes to the judge of the Court of Probate. Under the Irish Judicature Act of 1877 this jurisdiction is now vested in the Supreme Court of Judicature and is exercised by the probate and matrimonial judge. It is impossible to obtain a decree of divorce from the bonds of matrimony in the courts of Ireland. The only divorce decree granted is from bed and board, and amounts in effect to what is termed a judicial separation in England. The grounds for the limited form of divorce granted by the courts are adultery, cruelty or unnatural practices. In order to obtain a decree of complete divorce the petitioner must promote a bill in the House of Lords to dissolve the marriage and allow the petitioner to marry again, which bill must be founded upon and follow a divorce from bed and board obtained in the Irish courts. When a petition is presented to the House of Lords a wife must prove her husband's adultery coupled with cruelty and a husband must prove his wife's adultery and must, if possible, make his wife's paramour a party by instituting proceedings against him for criminal conversation in the Irish courts. NULLITY.--An action for nullity of marriage can be maintained on the following grounds: 1. Impuberty. 2. Relationship of the parties within the prohibited degrees. 3. An existing prior marriage of one of the parties. 4. Incapacity of the parties to conclude the marriage contract, as in the event of one being a lunatic. 5. Non-compliance with marriage laws. 6. Fraud in procuring the marriage. 7. Impotency. CHAPTER V. THE FRENCH LAW OF MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. MARRIAGE.--A man cannot contract a marriage before he has completed his eighteenth year and a woman until she has completed her fifteenth year. However, the President of the Republic may grant a dispensation as to age upon good cause appearing. A son who has not reached the age of twenty-five, or a daughter who has not reached the age of twenty-one, cannot marry without the consent of their parents; but if the parents disagree between themselves the consent of the father is sufficient. If both the father and the mother are dead or unable to give consent the grandparents take their place. Sons or daughters less than twenty-one years of age, who have no parents or grandparents, or only such as are in a condition which renders them incapable of giving consent, cannot marry without the consent of a family council. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriage is prohibited between all legitimate ascendants and descendants in the direct line and between persons who are connected by marriage and related in the same degree. Marriage is also prohibited between uncle and niece and aunt and nephew. The President of the Republic may, nevertheless, on good cause being shown, dispense with the prohibitions contained in the Civil Code forbidding the marriage of a brother-in-law with a sister-in-law, and the marriage between uncle and niece, and aunt and nephew. FORMALITIES.--A marriage must be celebrated publicly before the civil status officer of the civil domicile of one of the parties. The officer of the civil status before celebrating a marriage must publish the banns twice before the door of the Maison Commune, at an interval of eight days. The President of the Republic, and also the official whom he entrusts with this power, may dispense, for good cause, with the second publication of the banns. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--A marriage celebrated in a foreign country between French citizens or between a French citizen and a foreigner is valid if it is performed according to the forms customary in such country, provided always that the marriage has been preceded by the publications of the banns pursuant to the code. The record of a marriage contracted in a foreign country must be transcribed within three months of the return of the French citizen to the territory of the Republic in the public marriage registers of his civil domicile. VOIDABLE MARRIAGES.--The validity of a marriage which has been contracted without the free consent of both parties, or without the free consent of one of them, can only be impugned by the parties themselves or by the party whose consent was not freely given. When there has been an honest mistake as to the personality of one of the parties the validity of the marriage can only be impugned by the person who was misled. Such mistakes as to personality include mistakes as to quality as well as to identity. For example, the Court of Cassation held in 1861 that where a woman had been misled into marrying an ex-convict by ignorance of the fact, the marriage was annulable. An action for a declaration of nullity of marriage for any cause cannot be maintained by parties to the marriage, or by the relations whose consent was necessary, when such marriage has been ratified or confirmed knowingly by those whose consent was necessary, or after a year has passed since they acquired knowledge of the cause for an action without any application to the courts for relief. Every marriage which has not been contracted publicly, and has not been celebrated before a competent public official, can be impugned by the parties themselves, by their fathers and mothers, by the ascendants, and by all who have an existing vested interest, as well as by the Public Prosecutor. No one can legally claim the status of husband or wife, or the effects and privileges resulting by law from marriage, without the production of a certificate of the marriage celebration, except in the cases provided for by Article 46 of the code, namely, when no records have ever existed, or the same have been lost or destroyed. In such cases the marriage may be established by oral evidence. The fact that by common repute the parties are married does not dispense with the necessity of producing the record of the celebration. However, if there are children born of two persons who have lived openly as husband ind wife, and who are both dead, the legitimacy of their children cannot be assailed on the sole ground that a record of their parents' marriage is not produced. A marriage which has been declared a nullity has, if contracted in good faith, the civil effects of a marriage so far as the parties themselves and their children are concerned. If only one of the parties has acted in good faith the legal consequences of marriage only exist in favour of the innocent party and of the children of the marriage. The last two paragraphs, which are virtually a translation of Articles 201 and 202 of the Civil Code, are very important to foreigners who marry French citizens. Until a court has pronounced the marriage a nullity the marriage between a French citizen and a foreigner celebrated abroad is binding upon the parties, even though the exacting forms required by the French law have not been complied with. If an Englishwoman in good faith marries a Frenchman in London she is entitled by French law to the civil rights of a wife, and her children the issue of the marriage would be considered legitimate, although the marriage had not been celebrated after the publication of banns in the manner prescribed by the code; or the record of such celebration transcribed within three months of the return of the French husband to France. The foreign wife would have the same rights even if she married a Frenchman under twenty-five years of age without the previous consent of his parents. Of course, such a marriage could be declared null, leaving both parties free to marry again. It must be always carried in mind that to constitute a valid marriage under French law which cannot be impugned by anyone all the statutory conditions imposed by the Civil Code must be complied with. HUSBAND AND WIFE.--Married persons owe each other fidelity, support and assistance. A husband owes protection to his wife. A wife owes obedience to her husband. A wife is obliged to live with her husband and to follow him wherever he determines it proper to reside. A husband is obliged to receive his wife and to provide her with all that is necessary for the requirements of life, according to his means and condition. A wife cannot bring a civil action without the consent of her husband, even if she is a public trader and is not married under the system of a community of goods and has separate property. A wife cannot give away, convey, mortgage or acquire property, with or without a consideration, without her husband concurring in the document by which such transfer is made, or giving his written consent. A woman cannot become a public trader without her husband's consent. It is not necessary for a wife to have her husband's consent to make a will. MARRIAGE DUTIES.--The husband and wife are mutually bound to feed, support and educate their children. Children are bound to support their parents and other ascendants who are in want. DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage is dissolved: _a._ By the death of one of the parties; _b._ By a divorce pronounced according to law. SECOND MARRIAGES.--A woman cannot legally marry again until ten months have elapsed since the dissolution of her previous marriage. DIVORCE CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.-- 1. Either party to the marriage is entitled to a divorce on the ground of the adultery of the other. 2. Either party is entitled to a divorce because of the cruelty or serious insults of the one toward the other. This includes not only such violent cruelty as endangers life, but all sorts of less serious assaults. Any acts, words or writings by which one of the parties reflects on the honour and good name of the other furnish cause for a divorce. 3. The fact that one of the parties has been sentenced to death, imprisonment, penal servitude, transportation, banishment or loss of civil rights, and is branded with infamy, entitles the other party to a divorce. That article of the Civil Code which provided for divorce by mutual consent, owing to incompatibility of temper, has been repealed. DIVORCE PROCEDURE.--A party who wishes to institute a proceeding for divorce must present the petition personally to the President of the Court or to the judge who is acting in that capacity. If it appears that the petitioner is unable to attend in person the President of the Court or the judge acting as such is required to go, accompanied by his registrar, to the residence of the petitioner. The judge, upon seeing and hearing the petitioner and after having made such comment as he may deem proper, will affix his order to the end of the petition, directing the parties to appear before him on a day and at the hour then fixed, and will direct an officer to serve the citation upon the defendant. It is within the judge's discretion to grant leave in the same order to the petitioner to reside separate during the pendency of the action from the defendant. If the petitioner be a wife, the judge may fix the place of her temporary residence. The next step is that upon the day appointed in the citation the judge hears the parties in person. Upon such hearing it is the duty of the judge to do his best to conciliate the parties. In case the parties refuse to be conciliated, or the defendant defaults in appearance, the judge then grants an order certifying to the fact and giving the petitioner leave to issue a citation requiring the defendant to appear in court. The judge has authority under the code to make such a provisional order respecting the payment to a wife of alimony during the action or concerning the temporary custody of the children as may be necessary and proper. The case is prepared, investigated and judged in the ordinary form, the Ministère Public being heard. The Ministère Public is an official who performs similar duties to those of a King's Proctor in England. The petitioner can at any stage of the case change the petition for a divorce into a petition for a judicial separation. NEWSPAPER REPORTS.--The public press is forbidden under penalty of a fine of from 100 to 2,000 francs to publish the evidence in divorce trials. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--Parties who have been divorced cannot become husband and wife again if either of them, after the divorce, have contracted a new marriage since the divorce and been divorced a second time. If parties who have been divorced wish to become husband and wife again a new marriage is necessary. After such a remarriage no new petition for divorce can be entertained for any cause, except that one of the parties since the remarriage has been sentenced to a punishment which involves corporal detention and is branded with infamy. A divorced woman cannot remarry until ten months after the divorce has become absolute. Where the divorce has been granted on the ground of adultery the guilty party can never marry the person with whom he or she was found guilty of the offence. CUSTODY OF CHILDREN.--The custody of the children belongs to the party in whose favour the judgment of divorce has been pronounced, unless the court in the interests of the children, upon the application of the family or the Ministère Public, directs that they be entrusted to the other party or to a third person. Whoever may become entitled to the children's custody, the father and mother each retain their right to superintend the maintenance and education of their children and must contribute thereto in proportion to their means. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--The same causes which are sufficient to obtain a decree of divorce are sufficient to entitle the party to a separation from bed and board. When a judicial separation has lasted three years the judgment can be changed into a decree of divorce upon the application of either party. A judicial separation carries with it separation of property and restores to a woman her full civil rights, so that she may buy and sell and otherwise act as if she were a single woman. CHAPTER VI. ITALY. MARRIAGE.--Marriage in Italy is governed in practically all its aspects and connections by the regulations contained in the chapter on marriage in the Italian Civil Code (_Il Codice Civile del regno d'Italia_), which went into effect in 1866. These regulations are for the most part the same as those of the French Code, upon which the Italian Code was directly based, the modifications in the Italian Code being mainly in the direction of greater specificness and greater stringency. As in France, civil marriage is the only form of marriage recognized by the State. IMPEDIMENTS.--1. Age. A man may not contract marriage before completing his eighteenth year or a woman before completing her fifteenth. The King may, however, grant a dispensation permitting a man to marry after attaining the age of fourteen and a woman after attaining the age of twelve. 2. Existing previous marriage. As in France. 3. Period of delay. A woman cannot contract a new marriage until ten months after the dissolution or annulment of a former marriage, unless the marriage was annulled on the ground of impotence. But this prohibition ceases from the day the woman has given birth to a child. 4. Consanguinity and affinity. As in France. The King has a right of dispensation similar to that possessed by the President in France. 5. Relationship by adoption. As in France. 6. Mental incapacity. Marriage may not be contracted by one who has been legally adjudged of unsound mind. If an action on this ground is pending against either party to a contemplated marriage the marriage must be suspended until final judgment is given. 7. Homicide. A person who has been legally convicted as a principal or accomplice in a voluntary homicide committed or attempted upon any person may not be married to the latter's consort. As in the case of the preceding impediment, a contemplated marriage must be suspended if an action on this ground is pending against either party. 8. Consent of parents. The age under which the consent of parents or next of kin is required is 25 for males and 21 for females. An adopted child requires the consent of both its natural and adopted parents. If the consent is refused the Italian Code provides for an appeal to the court. Foreigners desiring to be married in Italy must present a certificate from the competent authority of their own country that they satisfy the requirements of the laws of that country. Foreigners ordinarily residing in Italy must also satisfy the requirements of the Italian law. PRELIMINARIES.--The preliminary formalities to marriage are essentially the same in both the French and the Italian Codes. LEGAL OPPOSITION.--Legal opposition to the marriage may be made by the parents or, in want of them, by the grandparents of either party, if they are cognizant of the existence of any legal impediment, even if the parties are of age. In default of ascendants, opposition can also be made by a brother, sister, uncle, aunt, or cousin german, as well as by the guardian or curator duly authorized by the family council, on the ground of lack of the required consent or the infirmity of mind of one of the parties to the marriage. Anyone may oppose the remarriage of his former consort. The public prosecutor is required to oppose the marriage officially when he is cognizant of any impediment, and to facilitate his accomplishment of this duty the registrar is bound to inform him of any impediment that appears to exist. The effect of a legal opposition is to suspend the celebration of the marriage until the case has been determined in court. If the opposition proves to be without legal ground the one filing it, unless one of the ascendants or the public prosecutor, may be held responsible for any damage occasioned by him. CELEBRATION.--Marriage must be celebrated publicly in the communal house and before the registrar of the commune where one of the parties has his or her domicile. Two witnesses are required. RECORD OF MARRIAGE.--The registrar must inscribe a record of the marriage in the civil register giving all the necessary details and must deliver an authenticated abstract of the record to the parties, who without this cannot legally claim to be married or to enjoy any of the legal consequences of marriage. ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN.--Such children are legitimatized by the subsequent marriage of their parents, although in order to acquire the legal rights of legitimate children they must be formally recognized by their parents. These legal rights are acquired at the time of marriage only if the illegitimate children are legally recognized by their parents in the marriage record or have been legally recognized at some time prior to the marriage; otherwise they date only from the day when such recognition is given subsequent to the marriage. Children of adulterous connections and of persons between whom exists the impediment of relationship by blood or marriage in the direct line, or of relationship by blood in the collateral line up to the second degree, cannot be legitimatized. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--In order that marriage may be valid in Italy an Italian citizen entering into a marriage in a foreign country must be free to marry under the Italian law and must make publication in the commune in Italy of which he is a resident, or if he is no longer a resident of Italy, in the one in which he last resided. The marriage is valid if celebrated according to the form prescribed by the laws of the country in which it takes place. Within three months after his return to Italy he must have the marriage recorded in the civil register of the commune where he permanently resides. ANNULMENT.--Marriage may be annulled if contracted in contravention of the impediments as to age, existing previous marriage, relationship or homicide. It may also be declared null if it was celebrated before an incompetent official or without the necessary witnesses; in the former case, however, the action cannot be instituted more than a year after the date of celebration. Actions on the foregoing grounds may be brought by the parties themselves, by the nearest ascendants, by the public prosecutor or by any one who has a legitimate or actual interest in the marriage. The validity of a marriage may also be attacked by the party whose consent thereto was not free or who was under error as to the person married; but actions on these grounds are no longer admissible when cohabitation has lasted for a month after the removal of the constraint or the discovery of the error. Impotence, when anterior to marriage, may be put forward as a ground for annulment by either party. Marriage performed without the required legal consent may be attacked by the person whose consent was necessary or by the party to whom it was necessary; but in the former case it cannot be attacked later than six months after marriage, and in the latter, six months after the party in question has attained his majority. Moreover, in cases where only one of the parties has attained the required age it cannot be attacked when the wife, although not yet of age, has become pregnant. The marriage of one who has been legally adjudged of unsound mind can be attacked either by the party himself, his guardian, the family council, or the public prosecutor, if the judgment had already been passed when the marriage was celebrated, or if the infirmity for which the judgment was pronounced was existent at the time of marriage. Marriage cannot, however, be attacked on this ground if cohabitation has endured for three months after the party has been legally adjudged to be once more of sound mind. The public prosecutor is obliged to intervene in all matrimonial causes, even if they were not instituted by him. SEPARATION.--There is no divorce in Italy, and marriage is only dissolved by the death of one of the parties. Personal separation is, however, permitted on the following grounds: 1. Adultery of the wife, or of the husband if he maintains a concubine in his house or openly in another place or when such circumstances concur that the act constitutes a grave indignity (_ingiuria grave_) to the wife. The latter provision is intended to apply particularly to cases where the wife has discovered the husband in _flagrante delicto_. 2. Voluntary abandonment. 3. Violence endangering the life or health, cruelty, threats, or grave mental indignities. 4. Sentence to punishment for crime, except when the conviction was prior to the marriage and the other party was cognizant of it. 5. The wife can ask for a separation when the husband, without any just reason, does not set up an abode, or, having the means, refuses to set one up in a manner suited to his condition. 6. Mutual agreement. Separation on this ground is not valid unless ratified by the court after an attempt at reconciliation has been made. LIMITATIONS TO RIGHT OF ACTION.--The right to obtain a separation is extinguished by condonation, express or tacit. PROCEDURE.--Actions for separations must be brought before the court under whose jurisdiction the defendant is resident or domiciled. Service is ordinarily personal, but if the residence of the defendant is unknown it may be made by a judicial edict giving notice of the action, of which one copy must be posted at the door of the building where the court holds its sessions, while a copy is published in the newspaper designated for the official notices of the court, and another copy is transmitted to the public prosecutor for the district in which the action is brought. Before the case is tried the parties are obliged to appear in person and without attorneys before the President of the Court which has jurisdiction over the case, who hears each party separately and makes such representations as he considers calculated to effect a reconciliation. If a reconciliation is accomplished the fact is noted on the court records and the case dismissed; otherwise the case is sent back to the court for trial. The trial is ordinarily in accordance with the rules of summary procedure. EFFECTS OF DECREE.--The party for whose fault the separation was pronounced incurs the loss of the marriage remainders; of all the uses which the other party had granted in the marriage contract, and also of the legal usufruct. The other party preserves the right to the remainders and to every other use dependent on the marriage contract, even if stipulated as reciprocal. In case both parties are equally at fault each incurs the losses above indicated, the right of support in case of necessity always being preserved. CUSTODY OF CHILDREN.--The tribunal which pronounces the separation also orders which of the parties shall retain the children. For grave reasons it may commit the children to an educational institution or to the charge of a third party. Whatever the disposition of the children, however, both parents retain the right of supervising their education. FOREIGN DIVORCES.--Decrees of divorce granted by foreign courts are not recognized in Italy so far as Italian subjects are concerned. CHAPTER VII. BELGIUM. REQUIREMENTS FOR MARRIAGE.--A man who has not completed his eighteenth year and a woman who has not completed her fifteenth year cannot contract marriage. Nevertheless, it is within the power of the sovereign to grant a dispensation setting aside this requirement for good and sufficient causes. There can be no marriage in Belgium without mutual consent. It is forbidden to contract a second marriage before the dissolution of the first. A son or a daughter who has not reached the age of twenty-one years cannot contract a marriage without the consent of his or her father and mother. In case of disagreement between the father and mother on this subject the consent of the father is sufficient. A disagreement between a father and a mother as to giving consent to the marriage of their child can be established by a notarial record, by a summons served by a process server, by minutes of a hearing held on the subject, or by a letter stating the mother's objection to the marriage written by her to a civil officer of the State. If the father or the mother is dead, if either of them is absent or incapable of expressing consent, the consent of the other parent is sufficient. The incapacity of a father or a mother to express consent may be proven by a declaration made by the future spouse whose ascendant is incapable and by four witnesses of full age, of either sex. If the father and the mother are dead, or both are incapable of manifesting their wishes, the grandfathers and the grandmothers take their places. PROHIBITIONS.--In direct line marriage is forbidden between all legitimate or illegitimate ascendants and descendants and their spouses. In the indirect or collateral line marriage is forbidden between brother and sister, legitimate or illegitimate, and their spouses of the same degree. Marriage is forbidden between uncle and niece and aunt and nephew. It is, however, possible for good reasons to obtain a dispensation from the sovereign permitting a marriage within these prohibited degrees. FORMALITIES.--Marriage must be celebrated publicly before a civil officer of the State of the commune and in the commune where one of the contracting parties has his, or her, residence. OBJECTIONS BY THIRD PERSONS.--Of course, a husband or wife of an existing marriage has the right to object formally to his or her spouse contracting another marriage. The father, and, in default of the father, the mother, and, in default of the mother, the grandparents have the right to oppose a marriage of a child or grandchild who has not reached the age of twenty-five years. ANNULMENT.--A marriage which has been contracted without the free consent of the parties, or one of them, may be annulled in the courts, but only on the application of either of the parties when neither of them have given free consent, or on the application of the party whose free consent was not obtained. When there has been an error concerning the identity of either of the parties to the contract the marriage can only be annulled at the instance of the party who has been misled or imposed upon. A marriage which has been contracted without the consent of the father or mother, the ascendants, or the family council, where such consent was a necessary condition precedent, can only be annulled on the application of the person or persons whose consent was wanting. A marriage which has been declared null continues in operation, nevertheless, all the civil effects both for the parents and the children, when the contract was concluded in good faith. OBLIGATIONS OF MARRIAGE.--The parties to a marriage are bound to mutual fidelity, protection and assistance. The husband owes protection to his wife and a wife obedience to her husband. A wife is obliged to live with her husband at whatever residence he may judge to be proper. The husband is obliged to receive his wife and to furnish her with the necessaries of life, according to his ability and social condition. A husband and wife contract together by the fact of marriage itself to nourish, educate and properly care for their children. A wife whose property is mixed with that of her husband, or who keeps her property separate, cannot give, sell, pledge, mortgage, or acquire title to property, with or without a valuable consideration, except on the written consent of her husband. DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage is dissolved: 1. By the death of one of the parties; 2. By legal divorce; 3. Abrogation by Article 13 of the Constitution. SECOND MARRIAGE.--A woman cannot conclude a new marriage until ten months after the dissolution of the one precedent. DIVORCE.--A husband is entitled to a divorce because of the adultery of his wife. A wife can only obtain a divorce because of her husband's adultery, when the husband has brought his paramour or concubine into the home he has established for himself and wife. Either party to a marriage is entitled to a divorce because of excessive ill-usage or grievous bodily injuries committed by one against the other. The conviction of one of the parties for an infamous offence entitles the other to institute an action for a divorce. MUTUAL CONSENT.--The mutual and persistent agreement of the parties to be divorced, expressed in the manner provided by law, and after certain formalities and proofs showing that a continuance of the marriage relation is unbearable, and that there exists by agreement of both parties peremptory reasons for a divorcement, is sufficient ground for a decree of divorce. At a meeting of the International Law Association, held at the Guildhall, London, on August 4th, 1910, Dr. Gaston de Leval, legal adviser to the British legation at Brussels, pleaded in favour of the Belgian system of divorce by mutual consent. Extremely few cases, he said, of such divorces took place, the proportion not being more than three per cent. on the average of Belgian divorces. He argued that such a divorce was at least as moral and difficult to obtain as any other kind of divorce, and in most of the cases the most difficult to obtain. CHAPTER VIII. SWITZERLAND. The marriage and divorce laws of the Swiss Republic are federal--that is, operating throughout all the cantons of the confederation. Prior to January 1, 1876, when the present federal law went into effect, the different cantons had individual laws regulating divorce. QUALIFICATIONS FOR MARRIAGE.--1. Age. A man must be at least eighteen years of age and a woman at least sixteen in order to contract a valid marriage. 2. Mental capacity. Lunatics and idiots are prohibited from marrying. 3. Free consent. No marriage is valid without the free consent of the parties. Duress, fraud or error in the person precludes the presumption of consent. 4. Consent of parents. Parental consent is required of all persons under twenty years of age. If the parents are dead or incapable of manifesting their will the consent of a guardian is necessary. If the guardian refuses consent the parties may appeal from his decision to the courts. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Marriage is prohibited between ascendants and descendants; between brothers and sisters of the whole or half blood; between uncles and nieces, or aunts and nephews, whether the relationship arises from legitimate or illegitimate birth, and between connections by marriage in the direct line. Marriage is also prohibited between adopting parents and adopted children. A widow, a divorced woman, or a woman whose marriage has been annulled cannot contract a new marriage within 300 days after the dissolution of the former marriage. When an absolute divorce has been decreed on the ground of adultery, attempt on life, cruelty, dishonourable treatment, sentence to an ignominious punishment, wilful desertion, or incurable mental disease, the guilty or losing party cannot enter into a new marriage until one year has elapsed from the date of the divorce. PRELIMINARY FORMALITIES.--Before the celebration, publication must be made in the district of birth and residence of both parties. Fourteen days after the formal publication of banns the registrar of the domicile of the intended husband delivers to the parties, provided no valid objection to the marriage has been served at the registrar's office, a certificate of publication, which permits the parties to be married in any place in Switzerland within six months from date of publication. CELEBRATION.--The marriage ceremony must be performed by a registrar. The civil ceremony must precede any religious celebration. The civil marriage before the registrar must be publicly performed in the presence of not less than two witnesses. ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN.--Illegitimate children are legitimatized by the subsequent marriage of their parents. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--A marriage contracted in a foreign country that is valid according to the laws of that country is valid in Switzerland. DIVORCE AND JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--Absolute divorce is granted for the following causes: 1. When both husband and wife consent to a divorcement and it appears to the court from facts presented that to keep the parties bound together by the marriage bond is incompatible with the true intention of marriage. 2. Adultery. However, six months must not have passed since the injured spouse obtained knowledge of the offence. 3. Attempt upon the life of either spouse. 4. Cruelty or dishonourable treatment. 5. Wilful desertion continued for two years, and the absentee has failed within six months to obey a judicial summons to return. 6. Incurable insanity or mental disease of three years' existence. 7. In the absence of the causes above set forth the courts have still power to grant either an absolute divorce or a judicial separation for not more than two years if it appears that the parties are grossly antagonistic to each other. If, upon petition, a judicial separation is granted and at its stated expiration no reconciliation has taken place, the court will entertain an application for an absolute divorce. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--The questions of property, alimony, custody of children and change of name are determined according to the laws of the individual cantons. Generally the guilty party must pay damages to the innocent spouse, either in one payment or by instalments, the amount depending upon the means of the parties and the nature and degree of the offence for which the divorce was granted. CHAPTER IX. GERMAN LAW. The German Empire consists of twenty-six political States. These include four kingdoms, six grandduchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free towns, and Alsace-Lorraine. With the exception of Alsace-Lorraine, whose affairs are administered by the central imperial government, all are sovereign States. This individual sovereignty of a German State is somewhat analogous to that of a State in the American Union. However, we must for the purposes of this chapter notice one important difference. The legislative power of the central authority of the German Empire is not only exclusive on certain imperial matters, but its acts take precedence in such domestic concerns as domicile, judicial procedure, marriage and divorce, and the general rights of a German subject. The Constitution of the Empire (April 16, 1871) enumerates in detail the powers, limitations and relations of the different organs of government. From the _Germania_ of Tacitus and other authorities we learn that among the early Germans marriage was largely a matter of bargain and sale. In the presence of certain relatives or friends the father or guardian of a female delivered her to the bridegroom on receipt of the purchase price. Marriage by abduction was also recognized, but the abducter was obliged to make compensation to the abducted female's father or guardian, which compensation amounted in effect to an agreed purchase price. Although the consent of the female was never asked or considered on the question of marriage, we are told by Tacitus that German wives were remarkable for their fidelity and affection and were treated as friends by their husbands, who had a high respect for their judgment in all concerns of life. From the mediæval times Christianity has exercised a strong and correcting influence on the relation of marriage in Germany. At first the Christian Church recognized the informally declared agreement to marry on the part of the man and woman, which is called nowadays a betrothal, as all that was necessary to make them husband and wife. If the agreement referred to some future time, however, they were not considered as actually married until cohabitation had taken place. By the decrees of the Council of Trent, ratified in 1564, the Roman Catholic Church made it a requirement for the first time that in order to constitute a valid marriage the declarations of the couple must be made before a priest and witnesses. It was not until the eighteenth century that the Protestant Church in Germany adopted the rule that a marriage is not concluded simply by betrothal or mutual agreement, but requires a formal religious celebration. The _Personenstandsgesetz_, which became law on January 1, 1876, provided for the first time governmental regulation of marriage on a non-sectarian basis for the German Empire. It was not, however, until the enactment of the Civil Code that a clear and methodical statement of the law of marriage and divorce was given to the German people. The German Civil Code (_Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch für das Deutsche Reich_), which became law on January 1, 1900, has been described by Professor Maitland as "the most carefully considered statement of a nation's law that the world has ever seen." It is in the Fourth Book of this scientific codification, under the general title of Family Law, that we find the German statutes of to-day on marriage and divorce. A summary of these statutes follows: MARRIAGE.--Religious definitions, dogmas and obligations respecting marriage are not affected or considered by the German Code. Marriage is treated as a civil contract to which the State is always an added party. A legitimate child requires, before the completion of his twenty-first year, the approval of his father for concluding a marriage; an illegitimate child requires, before reaching maturity, the approval of the mother. A male reaches his majority at twenty-one years of age and a female at the completion of her sixteenth year, for the purpose of marriage. IMPEDIMENTS TO MARRIAGE.--A marriage cannot be concluded between relatives by blood in the direct line nor between brothers and sisters of full blood or half blood, nor between persons one of whom has had sexual intercourse with the parents, grandparents or descendants of the other. Persons in the military service, aliens and officials who by the law require special permission to become married cannot conclude a marriage without permission. FORM OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage is concluded by the parties appearing together and declaring before a registrar, in the presence of two witnesses, their intention to become husband and wife. VOIDABLE MARRIAGES.--A marriage may be avoided by a spouse who has been induced to enter the marriage status by fraud concerning such facts as would have deterred him or her from concluding the marriage had he or she been acquainted with the actual state of affairs. A marriage cannot be avoided on the ground of fraud or misrepresentation as to the pecuniary means of either party. HUSBAND AND WIFE.--The parties are mutually bound to live in conjugal community. The right to decide in all matters affecting the common conjugal life belongs to the husband. However, if the decision of the husband on these matters is an abuse and not a reasonable exercise of his right the wife is not bound to accept his decision. PROPERTY.--A wife has absolute power to deal with her separate property as if she were a single woman. A wife's separate property includes also that which she has acquired by her industry or in the course of a separate business conducted by her. It is presumed in favour of the husband's creditors that all chattels which are in the possession of either husband or wife, or in their joint possession, belong to the husband. In regard to articles intended exclusively for the personal use of the wife, such as clothing, ornaments and working implements, it is presumed that as between the spouses and the creditors of either that the articles are the property of the wife. MATRIMONIAL CONTRACTS.--Both spouses may regulate their property relation by a contract made before or after the marriage. DIVORCE.--Grounds or Causes. Either spouse may petition for divorce on the following grounds: A. Adultery of the other spouse; B. An attempt by one spouse to kill the other; C. Wilful desertion continued for the period of one year; D. Offences specified in Sections 171 to 175 inclusive, of the Criminal Code, including bigamy, incest and certain detestable crimes; E. Such a grave breach of marital duty or such dishonest or immoral conduct which disturbs the conjugal relation to such an extent that the petitioner cannot reasonably be expected to continue the relation; F. Insanity of the respondent continued for three years and of such a character that the intellectual community between the parties has ceased and there is no reasonable hope of its renewal. Petitions for divorce must be filed within six months of the time when the petitioner acquires knowledge of the facts constituting a sufficient ground. The petition cannot be allowed in any case if ten years have elapsed since the happening of the cause for divorce. After divorcement both parties are free to remarry. If a marriage is dissolved for any cause the decree shall declare the respondent to be the exclusive guilty party. PUNISHMENT FOR THE GUILTY.--Adultery is punishable by imprisonment with labour for a term not exceeding six months in the case of the guilty married person and the partner in guilt if the marriage is dissolved on the ground of adultery. Prosecution only takes place, however, on proposal--that is, at the instance of the aggrieved spouse. CONDONATION.--The right to a divorce is lost by condonation of the offence relied upon as a cause. If a marriage is dissolved for any cause the decree shall declare the respondents to be the exclusive guilty party. EFFECTS OF THE DIVORCE.--A divorced wife retains the surname of her husband unless specifically prohibited until she remarries. If she is the innocent party she may, upon making a declaration before competent authority, resume her maiden name. If she is the guilty party, her husband, by making a declaration before competent authority, may prohibit her calling herself by his surname. After she has thus lost the surname of her husband she, by operation of law, resumes her maiden name. MAINTENANCE.--A husband declared by a decree of divorce or judicial separation to be the guilty party shall provide maintenance to his divorced wife suitable to her station in life, in so far as she is unable to obtain such maintenance out of her earnings and income. A wife declared by decree to be the guilty party shall provide maintenance to her divorced husband suitable to his station in life, in so far as he is not able to so maintain himself. The maintenance above referred to shall be provided by a money annuity payable quarterly and in advance. In some cases the person bound to provide such maintenance is required to furnish a bond or security for the performance of the duty. For sufficient reason the person entitled to the payment of such a money annuity may demand a complete settlement in a lump sum. The duty to provide maintenance is extinguished on the remarriage of the party entitled to it or on the death of the party bound to make such provision. If a marriage has been dissolved on account of the insanity of one of the parties the same spouse shall provide maintenance to the unfortunate respondent. If the husband is bound to provide maintenance to a child of the marriage the wife is also bound to reasonably contribute toward such maintenance out of her income or earnings. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--The same causes which are sufficient for a divorce will entitle the petitioner to a judicial separation if that form of relief is preferred. If such a judicial separation has been granted either spouse may apply for a divorce by virtue of the decree for separation, unless the conjugal community has been re-established after the issue of such decree. CHAPTER X. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. The Austria-Hungary Empire comprises five countries, each bearing the name of kingdom--viz., Hungary, Bohemia, Galicia, Illyria and Dalmatia; one archduchy, Austria; one principality, Transylvania; one duchy, Styria; one margraviate, Moravia, and one county, Tyrol. In this chapter we shall deal with the marriage and divorce laws of Austria, leaving those of Hungary and Transylvania for the following chapter. The regulations governing the marriage relation in Austria and the other parts of the Empire represented in the Austrian Reichsrath are in general contained in the Austrian Civil Code, which became law on June 1, 1811, supplemented by later statutes, court decrees and ministerial edicts. Perhaps the most curious feature of Austrian law is that an absolute divorce can, for certain causes, be granted when both the parties are non-Catholic, but for Roman Catholics the bond of marriage is dissoluble only by the death of one party. DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE.--The Austrian Code defines marriage as follows: "The foundation of family relations is the marriage contract. In the marriage contract two persons of different sex legally declare their intention to live in inseparable union to beget children and to rear them up and to render each other mutual assistance." MARRIAGE QUALIFICATIONS.--1. There must be mental capacity. Insane, demented, imbecile parties or persons deprived of the free use of their minds by intoxication or any other cause cannot contract a binding marriage. 2. Minors must have completed their fourteenth year of age. 3. Minors of legitimate birth under 24 years of age require the consent of their parents or proper guardians. Illegitimate minors under 24 years of age require the consent not only of their legal guardians but also that of the court. 4. There must be free consent of both parties. 5. Physical capacity. Permanent and incurable impotence is an impediment to marriage. 6. Moral impediments. No person who has taken holy orders which involve a solemn vow to celibacy can contract a valid marriage. Marriages between Christians and Jews are forbidden. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Marriage is forbidden between ascendants and descendants, between full or half brothers and sisters, between first cousins and between uncles and nieces or aunts and nephews. The relationship may arise from legitimate or illegitimate birth. For Jews, however, the impediment of consanguinity extends no further in the collateral line than to marriage between brother and sister or between a woman and her nephew or grandnephew. A Roman Catholic is expressly forbidden to marry a divorced party until after the death of the latter's former consort. PRELIMINARIES.--A valid marriage can take place only after formal publication of the banns and the solemn declaration of consent. Banns are published by announcing the coming marriage together with the full names of both parties, their birthplace, status and residence, on three consecutive Sundays or holidays. In the case of Jews the banns must be published on three consecutive Saturdays or feast days. CELEBRATION.--The solemn declaration of consent must generally be given before the spiritual pastor of one of the parties or before his representative. Two witnesses are necessary. A civil marriage in which the solemn declaration of consent is given before the chief administrative official of the district, in the presence of two witnesses and a sworn secretary, is obligatory if neither party belongs to a legally recognized religious sect. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--The marriage of an Austrian subject in a foreign country is treated as valid in Austria if the marriage was concluded according to the laws of such foreign country, and provided that such marriage was not in contravention of the Austrian law which accepts the Roman Catholic dogma of the indissolubility of marriage except by death of one of the parties. ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN.--Such children are fully legitimatized by the subsequent marriage of their parents. ROMAN CATHOLICS.--As we have noted before between Roman Catholics the bond of marriage cannot be dissolved by divorce. This rule applies even if one of the parties is converted after marriage to a non-Catholic sect. The Austrian law provides a way by which some Roman Catholic marriages may be provisionally dissolved after what is termed a "legal declaration of death." If eighty years have elapsed since the birth of an absent spouse, and his or her place of residence has been unknown for ten years; if an absent spouse has not been heard from in thirty years; or if a spouse has been missing for three years, and was last heard of under circumstances leaving little doubt as to his or her death, then an action can be instituted to have the absentee legally declared to be dead. Such a declaration of death will legally dissolve the marriage, leaving the spouse of the missing party free to marry again. However, should the absentee spouse ever reappear, the declaration of death and the new marriage lose all legal effect. DIVORCE.--Non-Catholic Christians may obtain absolute divorce for the following causes: 1. Conviction of adultery, or of a crime the penalty for which could be a prison sentence of five years. 2. Malicious abandonment. 3. Severe cruelty. 4. Conduct endangering the life or health. 5. Invincible aversion on account of which both parties desire a divorce. This need not be a mutual aversion, but it must be shown to be actual and lasting. For this cause an absolute divorce is granted only after a temporary separation from bed and board has been decreed, and the parties appear to be irreconciliable. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--The woman retains the name of her husband, and both parties may remarry, with the exception that a guilty party may not marry his or her accomplice. The guilty party loses all rights and privileges in the property of the innocent party. As to the custody of children the court has authority to make such order as the facts and justice may require. JEWISH DIVORCES.--Jews in Austria may obtain absolute divorce under special regulations adapted from the Mosaic law and rabbinical jurisprudence. Marriage may be absolutely dissolved by means of a bill of divorcement given by the man to the woman, with the mutual agreement of both parties. This cannot take effect at once, but there must be three attempts at reconciliation, either by the rabbi or by the court, or by both. The Austrian law also permits a divorce among Jews for the proven adultery of the wife, in which case he can give her a bill of divorcement without her consent. A Jewish woman cannot obtain a divorce because of the adultery of her husband. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--A judicial separation may be granted for the following causes: 1. By mutual consent. 2. Conviction of either spouse for adultery or a crime. 3. Malicious abandonment. 4. Conduct endangering the life or health of spouse seeking relief. 5. Incurable disease united with danger of contagion. 6. Cruel and abusive treatment. CHAPTER XI. HUNGARIAN MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE LAWS. In Hungary proper and Transylvania, together with Fiume and certain parts of the Military Boundary, the marriage law of 1894, supplemented by the Civil Registration Act of the same year, is in operation for all citizens, without regard to religious sect. In Croatia and Slavonia, which, although legally parts of the Kingdom of Hungary, are autonomous in domestic affairs; three separate systems of marriage regulation are in force governing, respectively, the Catholics, the Oriental Greeks, and the Protestants and Jews. HUNGARY PROPER AND TRANSYLVANIA.--Civil marriage is the only form recognized by law. MARRIAGE QUALIFICATIONS.--A man cannot marry before the conclusion of his eighteenth year; a woman, before the conclusion of her sixteenth year. A minor cannot conclude a marriage without the consent of his or her legal representative. IMPEDIMENTS.--1. Marriage is forbidden between ascendants and descendants. 2. Between brother and sister. 3. Between brother or sister and offspring of brother or sister. 4. Marriage between a person who has been previously married and a blood relative in direct line of that person's former consort is forbidden. 5. First cousins may not conclude marriage, except on dispensation from the Minister of Justice. 6. No person may conclude a marriage with any one who has been legally sentenced for a murder or a murderous assault committed on the former's consort, even if the sentence has not yet entered into effect. 7. No one may conclude a marriage without the consent of his ecclesiastical superiors if he has taken ecclesiastical orders or vows which, according to the law of the church to which he belongs, prevent his marrying. 8. So long as the guardianship continues, marriage is prohibited between a guardian or his offspring and the ward. PRELIMINARIES.--Before a marriage can be lawfully celebrated it must be preceded by the publication of banns. This publication must be made in the commune or communes where the parties ordinarily reside. Publication is made by posting an official notice for fourteen days in the office of the registrar and in a public place in the communal building. CELEBRATIONS.--Marriage is, as a rule, to be solemnized before the registrar of the district in which at least one of the parties has his or her residence or domicile. At the celebration of marriage the parties are obliged to appear together before the officiating magistrate, and in the presence of two competent witnesses declare that they conclude a marriage with each other. After such declaration the magistrate declares the couple to be legally married. The registrar is required by law to enter a record of the marriage on his official register and to give a formal marriage certificate to the parties. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--In general, for a marriage contracted by a Hungarian citizen in a foreign country to be recognized as valid in Hungary, the parties to the marriage must satisfy the requirements of their respective States as to age and legal capacity and must be free from all other impediments contained in the law of either State. The Hungarian citizen must comply with the regulations of the Hungarian law regarding publication. Besides this, the foreign marriage must be concluded in accordance with all the requirements of the country where it was celebrated. ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN.--If at the time such children were born the parents could legally have married each other then the subsequent marriage of the parents makes legitimate the children. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--Marriages may be annulled because of the violation of the various provisions of law regarding marriage impediments or the formalities necessary to conclude marriage. DIVORCE AND SEPARATION.--Marriage can be legally dissolved only by a judicial decree on certain grounds specified by law. These grounds are of two classes--absolute and relative. The following causes constitute absolute grounds for divorce: 1. Adultery. 2. Crime against nature. 3. Bigamy. 4. Wilful abandonment without just cause. 5. Attempt upon the life or wilful and serious maltreatment such as to endanger bodily safety or health. 6. Sentence to death or to at least five years in prison or the penitentiary. For all of the above causes the court must grant an absolute divorce if the allegations are proven. Divorce may also be granted on the following "relative grounds" if the court, after careful consideration of the individuality and characteristics of the parties, is satisfied that the facts warrant the desired relief: 1. Serious violation of marital duties. 2. Inducing, or attempting to induce, a child belonging to the family to commission of a criminal act or to an immoral manner of life. 3. Persistent immoral conduct. 4. Sentence to prison or the penitentiary for less than five years, or to jail for an offence involving dishonesty. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--An action for separation from bed and board can be maintained on any of the grounds enumerated for divorce. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE OR SEPARATION.--After a divorce the guilty party is required to restore to the innocent party all gifts made by the latter before or during the marriage. The man who is declared guilty is obliged to maintain the innocent woman in a position in keeping with his estate and social position, in so far as her income is insufficient. Alimony is payable as a rule in advance monthly instalments. The right to alimony continues after the man's death, but on the application of his heirs it may be reduced to the amount of the net income of the estate. The right to alimony ceases if the woman marries again. Up to their seventh year minor children are entrusted to the care of the mother; after that time, to the innocent party. If both parties are guilty the father receives the custody of the boys and the mother that of the girls. The effects of separation are the same as those of divorce in reference to property, alimony and custody of children. FOREIGN DECREES.--In matrimonial causes where one or both of the parties is a Hungarian citizen the courts of Hungary do not recognize any foreign judgment or judicial decree. CHAPTER XII. SWEDEN. MARRIAGE.--Swedish law recognizes marriages which are to take effect in the future (_sponsalia de futuro_), and the existence of a betrothal that has been entered into in the presence of four witnesses and the woman's marriage guardian carries with it the obligation of a final fulfilment of the marriage promise, which under certain conditions is subject to enforcement by law. Thus, on the refusal of one of the affianced parties to proceed to the promised marriage, they can be proclaimed man and wife by judgment of the court, and the complainant has then the rights of a legally wedded person. This method of procedure is resorted to particularly if cohabitation has taken place subsequent to the betrothal, but in the absence of such cohabitation various causes can render the promise of marriage invalid. Diseases of a contagious or of an incurable nature, whether contracted before or after the marriage promise was given, insanity, ungovernable temper, licentiousness or other vices, and serious defects are sufficient impediments to the compulsory marriage of betrothed persons. A person who, under false pretenses, entices another to promise marriage, cannot demand the fulfilment of the promise and is even liable to punishment. A betrothal entered into through force or fear, or during a state of intoxication or temporary insanity, is not valid. IMPEDIMENTS TO MARRIAGE.-- 1. Lack of free consent. 2. Epilepsy. Sufferers from epilepsy (_epilepsia idiopathica_) are barred from marrying. 3. A heathen or a person who does not belong to any recognized religious creed cannot contract a lawful marriage. 4. Non-age. Marriage can be lawfully entered into by males 21 years of age and over and by females 17 years of age and over. A male Laplander, however, may marry when 17 years of age and a female when 15 years of age. A dispensation may be granted from the impediment of non-age, but such dispensation is not granted a male unless his marriage is approved by his parents or guardians and unless he is a person of good reputation and able to support a wife. CONSENT OF PARENTS.--A male requires the consent of no third party. Any female under 21 years of age requires the consent of her marriage guardian. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Marriage is prohibited between relatives by blood in the direct line or between two relatives by blood in the collateral line, one or both of whom are descended in the first degree from the common ancestor. Marriage is also prohibited between relatives by affinity in the direct line. In all cases relationship by illegitimate as well as legitimate birth is included. A divorced person who has been adjudged guilty of adultery cannot contract a new marriage without the consent of the innocent party, provided the latter is still living and has not remarried. Under no conditions can the guilty party marry his or her accomplice. No man or woman who is bound by a betrothal or by an undissolved marriage can marry a third person. A widower must not contract a new marriage within six months after the death of his wife, nor a widow within one year after the death of her husband. PRELIMINARIES.--On three successive Sundays or holy days previous to a wedding banns must be published from the pulpit of the State church in the parish in which the prospective bride resides. CELEBRATION.--The usual form of marriage is the religious ceremony. This alone is valid in case the man and woman belong to the same religious sect. An adherent of the State church who has never been baptized or who has never been prepared for the rite of the Lord's Supper has recourse only to a civil marriage. This is also the case in a marriage between a Christian and a Jew and in a marriage between parties who belong to a Christian church the clergy of which have not been granted the right to perform marriages. DIVORCE AND JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--Grounds for Judicial Divorce. An absolute divorce can be granted by court on the following grounds: 1. Adultery. 2. Illicit intercourse with a third party after betrothal. 3. Malicious desertion for at least one year, provided the absentee has left the Kingdom. 4. Absence without news for six years. 5. An attack on the life. 6. Life imprisonment. 7. Insanity of at least three years' duration and pronounced incurable by physicians. ROYAL PREROGATIVE.--All the grounds for divorce by royal prerogative are not definitely determined. The following alone are specifically mentioned in the law: 1. Judicial condemnation to death or to civil death, even if a royal pardon is granted. 2. Judicial condemnation for a gross offence or an offence incurring temporary loss of civil rights. 3. Judicial condemnation to imprisonment for at least two years. 4. Proof of prodigality, inebriety or a violent disposition. 5. Opposition of feeling or thought between the husband and wife which passes over into aversion and hate, provided that a separation from bed and board has been granted on this ground and lasted for a year without a reconciliation taking place during the interval. LIMITATIONS TO RIGHT OF ACTION.--Collusion, connivance, condonation or recrimination extinguishes the right to a divorce. In a case of adultery divorce will be granted only if the innocent spouse has instituted proceedings within six months after obtaining knowledge of the offence, has not condoned it by cohabitation or otherwise and has not been guilty of a similar offence. If the insanity of the defendant in a divorce suit has been caused, or even accelerated by the cruel treatment of the complainant, divorce will be refused. PROCEDURE.--In a case of desertion, if the whereabouts of the guilty party is unknown, the court, by means of publication in all the pulpits of the district, orders him to return within a year and a day. If he does not present himself within the time mentioned the judge pronounces the divorce. Where the ground is insanity the judge must give a hearing to the nearest relatives of the afflicted party and investigate carefully the married life of the couple, in order to learn whether the insanity was caused or even accelerated by the plaintiff. The State's attorney is not authorized to interfere in a suit for divorce, nor are attempts at reconciliation required. The court can, however, advise a reconciliation, with or without the adjournment of the case. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--This is often only the preliminary to an absolute divorce. It can be granted when hate and violent anger arise between husband and wife and one of them reports the matter to the rector of the parish. It is the duty of the rector to admonish the couple. If they do not become reconciled they are to be further admonished by the consistory. If this admonition also proves fruitless the court grants a separation from bed and board for one year. The law provides also that this procedure may be followed in cases of malicious desertion, where the guilty party remains in the country or where one party drives the other from home. CHAPTER XIII. DENMARK. Justice is administered in Denmark in the first instance by the judges of the hundreds in the rural communities and by the city magistrates in the urban districts. Appeals from such courts lie to the superior courts of Copenhagen and Viborg, and in the last resort to the Supreme Court, which consists of a bench of twenty-four judges, at Copenhagen. Denmark was one of the first countries in Europe in which the government established any regulation or control over matrimonial affairs. The body of the law on marriage and divorce is found to-day in the Code of Christian the Fifth (1683), as modified and modernized, and such customs and precedents of the Danish people as the courts accept as binding. BETROTHAL.--A betrothal or engagement to marry carries with it no legal obligation. The courts of Denmark do not recognize the breach of a promise to marry as constituting a legal cause of action. If, however, a woman, on promise of marriage, permits sexual intercourse, she can sue to have the marriage specifically performed, provided the man is at least 25 years of age and the woman herself is of good reputation and neither a widow nor a domestic servant who has become pregnant by her employer or one of his relatives. In addition, the betrothal must either have been public or capable of easy proof. QUALIFICATIONS FOR MARRIAGE.--A male cannot legally conclude marriage before the completion of his twentieth year. A female must have completed her sixteenth year. The King may grant a dispensation permitting parties of less age to marry. Males and females are minors until the completion of their twenty-fifth year, and during minority cannot conclude marriage without the consent of their parents or guardians. If the necessary consent is withheld without just cause the authorities can furnish the desired permission. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriage is prohibited between relatives in the direct line, whether by blood or marriage, and between brothers and sisters of the whole or half blood. The royal dispensation is required for marriage between a man and his brother's widow, his aunt, great-aunt or any feminine relative nearer of kin to the common ancestor than the man himself. Persons convicted of having committed adultery with each other may not marry without having first obtained permission of the civil authorities. Persons divorced by extra-judicial decree are not allowed to contract a new marriage, without permission to this effect is given in the decree. The law prescribes a mourning period of one year for a widow and three months for a widower, during which time they are not allowed to contract a new marriage; but under special conditions the mourning period may be shortened. PRELIMINARY FORMALITIES.--If the marriage is solemnized before a clergyman banns must be published from the pulpit for three consecutive Sundays, and the marriage must follow within three months. In case of a civil marriage one publication must be made by the authorities at least three weeks and not more than three months before the celebration. CELEBRATION.--The national church of Denmark is the Lutheran, and in the case of Protestant Christians a religious marriage must be solemnized before a clergyman of the Lutheran Church. Civil marriages performed at the courthouse by a magistrate are permitted when the bride and groom are of different religious faith or when neither of them belong to any recognized religious sect. ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN.--Subsequent marriage of the parents legitimatizes a child born out of wedlock. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage may be annulled at the instance of one of the parties for the following causes: 1. Want of free consent by one or both parties. 2. If one of the parties at the time of the marriage was impotent and this fact was unknown to the other. This impotence must, however, be incurable and continue for three years. 3. If one of the parties was at the time of the marriage afflicted with leprosy, syphilis, epilepsy or a contagious and loathsome disease, and this fact was concealed and unknown to the other party. The disease must be incurable. DIVORCE.--An absolute divorce upon proper grounds may be obtained by means of a judicial decree, royal authorization given to the higher civil authorities, authorization from the Minister of Justice, or a special royal decree. The causes for an absolute divorce are: 1. The last two causes mentioned above as sufficient for an annulment. 2. Adultery. 3. Bigamy. 4. Wilful abandonment. 5. Absence for five years or more under circumstances leading a reasonable person to conclude that the absentee is dead. Exile or deportation from the country for at least seven years. 6. Imprisonment for life, if pardon or liberty is not given within seven years. EXTRA-JUDICIAL DIVORCE.--The Mayor of Copenhagen and the superior magistrate outside of Copenhagen--called the higher civil authorities--may give a royal authorization for a divorce in cases where the parties have lived apart for three years in consequence of a separation decree, and both parties ask for divorcement. The Minister of Justice has also authority in some instances to grant decrees of absolute divorce. The conditions under which a divorce can be granted by special royal decree are not specifically defined, but the decree is seldom granted except for substantial reasons and according to precedent. SEPARATION.--Decrees of separation from bed and board may be obtained upon mutual consent of the parties or if good reason exists upon the petition of one of the parties. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--Usually in the absence of an agreement between the parties each party receives one-half of the property which during the marriage relation was held in common. The duty of mutual support and assistance ends, but sometimes the man is directed to pay alimony to the woman. The innocent party is generally given custody and control of the children of the marriage, but the courts favour an agreement between the parties on this subject. Unless the decree of divorce has been brought about by her guilt a divorced wife is permitted to retain the name and rank of her divorced husband. CHAPTER XIV. THE NORWEGIAN LAW. In many respects the laws of marriage and divorce in Norway resemble those of Denmark. There are, of course, historical and political reasons for the resemblance. MARRIAGE.--The law of Norway fixes 20 years as the minimum marriageable age for a man and 16 years for a woman. These provisions are often interpreted, however, by the courts, as having reference to the age of puberty, and as this age varies with different persons the law is not always followed literally, particularly as regards the marriageable age of a woman. Neither male nor female under the age of 18 years is allowed to marry without the consent of parents or guardians. The validity of an objection to the marriage on the part of parents or guardians can be tested in court, and although causes for such objections are not specified or limited by statute they are kept within reasonable grounds through long-established precedent. IMPEDIMENTS TO MARRIAGE.--No man or woman may marry a relative by blood in the direct line. No man can many his full or half sister. Persons convicted of having committed adultery with each other may not marry without first obtaining permission of the civil authorities. A person bound by a marriage not dissolved through natural or legal causes is not allowed to enter into any other matrimonial alliance. After the death of her husband a widow must wait nine months before she can contract a new marriage, but this waiting period can be shortened by dispensation, especially if she proves that she is not pregnant. PRELIMINARIES.--In case of religious marriage one publication of banns is sufficient, and even this can be dispensed with in some instances. For a civil marriage no publication of banns is required. CELEBRATION.--Marriages must be solemnized before a minister of the Lutheran Church or by some person authorized by the State to officiate, and in the presence of two competent witnesses. The wedding celebration may take place either in church or in a private house. All notaries have legal authority to perform civil marriages, but only between persons at least one of whom does not belong to the State church. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--Nullity is of two kinds--absolute and relative. In the case of the latter the marriage is considered as valid until declared otherwise, generally on the application of one of the parties. A marriage is absolutely null if at its celebration there was no declaration of the clergyman or of the civil official that the couple were man and wife, or if proof exists of bigamy or of relationship within the prohibited degrees. DIVORCE AND SEPARATION.--An absolute divorce may be obtained for sufficient cause either by royal decree or by judicial determination. The most usual form is by royal decree, which is granted in the following cases: 1. When one at least of the causes prescribed by law is proven. 2. After a separation from bed and board has lasted three years. In such a case the royal decree is granted either on the petition of both parties, or, if circumstances justify, on the petition of one of the parties. 3. It may be granted by royal decree without any preceding separation. This form of divorce is granted either when legal cause for divorce exists or when the ground is otherwise considered sufficient. A judicial decree of absolute divorce is obtainable for the following causes: 1. Adultery. 2. Bigamy. 3. Wilful desertion for at least three years. 4. Assault and cruel treatment endangering the life of the complainant. 5. Absence for seven years, especially if no information has been received of the absentee during that period. If the facts as shown leave little or no doubt as to the death of the absent party, a divorce can be granted after three years' absence. 6. Imprisonment for life, after the innocent party has waited seven years. In addition to these grounds a divorce by royal decree can be obtained when one of the parties has become incurably insane or has been sentenced to prison for at least three years; or when the parties, by mutual agreement, have lived entirely apart for fully six years, and the facts show that domestic peace and the well-being of the parties are not promoted by their continuing as husband and wife. LIMITATIONS.--If the act complained of was committed by the consent or procurement of the complainant, or if the latter has voluntarily cohabited with the offender after discovery of his or her guilt, or if the complainant has been guilty of a similar offence, divorce will be refused. EFFECTS OF DIVORCEMENT.--Each of the parties receives one-half of the common property, but agreements are permitted by which the man retains all such property on condition of paying the woman an annual allowance. The duty of mutual assistance ceases, although if justice demands the man may be ordered to pay alimony to the woman. The Norwegian law contains no hard-and-fast rule as to the custody of the children of divorced parents. When no agreement exists between the parties the innocent party is generally given custody of all the children. A woman who obtains a decree of divorce against her husband is allowed to retain the name and rank of her ex-husband. SEPARATION.--A separation from bed and board may be granted either on the mutual consent of both parties, or by royal decree on the petition of one of the parties if reasonable grounds exist. CHAPTER XV. THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE. There have always been plenty of laws in Russia, the chief difficulty being not with the quantity but the quality. Another perplexing feature of Muscovite laws is the uncertainty of this patchwork of royal decrees, undefined traditions, changing customs and priestly superstitions. If Peter the Great had lived long enough he would probably have given Russia a regular code such as Napoleon bequeathed to France, but he was too busy during his career with wars, travels and social reforms. The Emperor Nicholas I. is entitled to the credit of being the first Russian sovereign to direct the compilation of anything approaching a classified legal code, and under his authority the jurist Speransky collected together some forty volumes. This code, as revised from time to time, is the best exposition obtainable of the law of the Empire. Its first article, however, qualifies the entire code by recognizing the Tsar's privilege of altering or setting aside any law of the realm at will. Until recently the first lesson for the Russian law student to learn was expressed in the doctrine: _Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem_. "The sovereign's pleasure has the force of law." Many reforms have of late years been worked in Russian law and judicial procedure, but in these matters Russia is still a long way off from justifying the belief expressed by Count Mouravieff, that this country has a civilizing mission such as no other nation of the world, not only in Asia, but also in Europe. Such benefits as can be derived from the law are still more for the privileged classes than for the great body of the people, and the point has not yet been reached of substituting judicial trials for ecclesiastical in matrimonial causes. The regulations concerning marriage and divorce fall within the province of the clergy and the ecclesiastical courts, except that the civil tribunals have jurisdiction over annulment and divorce for the _Raskolniken_, or "Old Believers," and for the Baptists and some other dissenters from the State Church of Russia. With the exceptions noted, the regulations of each form of religious belief, including Mohammedanism and other non-Christian beliefs, are endorsed by the State as the law for the adherents of that belief. The civil courts, however, have jurisdiction over the civil effects of marriage and divorce, and the State law contains certain provisions binding on the adherents of all religious confessions. The regulations governing the Roman Catholics are, in general, those of the canon law and those governing the German Lutherans are those of the old Protestant common law of Germany. We shall consider the special regulations affecting the Jews in a separate division of this chapter. MARRIAGE.--A man reaches marriageable age upon the completion of his eighteenth year and a woman upon the completion of her sixteenth year; natives of Transcaucasia, however, may marry at the completion of the fifteenth and thirteenth years, respectively. A marriage cannot take place without the free and mutual consent of the principals. The exercise of any kind of compulsion is forbidden to parents or guardians. Without regard to their age children require the consent of their parents. In most parts of Russia there is no appeal in case a parent withholds consent. Marriage without parental consent is not invalid, but the guilty person is liable to a penalty of from four to eight months' imprisonment, on petition of the parent, and to the loss of his right of inheritance in the property of the parent. Persons who are under guardianship or curatorship require the consent of their guardian or curator. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--The prohibited degrees of consanguinity are determined according to the principles of the religious body to which the parties belong. Marriage is, however, universally prohibited between persons who are related in the first or second degree. DIFFERENCE OF RELIGION.--Marriage between Christians and non-Christians is prohibited, except between Lutherans, adherents of the Reformed Church, and other Protestants on the one hand, and Jews and Mohammedans on the other. INSANITY.--Marriage is absolutely prohibited to insane persons. OFFICIAL PERMISSION.--Civil officials require the consent of their superiors in order to marry. HOLY ORDERS.--Marriage is prohibited to the clergy of the State Church, but if a secular priest is already married before ordination he may continue in that relation. The practice is for the majority of men who intend to enter the secular priesthood to marry before ordination. ADVANCED AGE.--Persons who have attained the age of eighty years may not marry. FOURTH MARRIAGE.--The contracting of a fourth marriage is unconditionally forbidden. PRELIMINARY FORMALITIES.--A male member of the Russian Church, or an "Old Believer," who intends marriage, must, from one to three weeks before the date of celebration, announce the fact to the clergyman in whose parish he resides, and bring to him the certificates of baptism of himself and his intended bride, certificates of their social status, proofs of identity and a certificate that both parties have been to confession and received holy communion. With these documents and proofs at hand the clergyman announces the names of the betrothed parties on three successive Sundays or feast days. The marriage cannot be concluded without a certificate showing that all the formalities have been complied with. CELEBRATION.--A marriage may be solemnized in accordance with the rules of the religious sect of the parties, before one of its clergymen, with the personal participation of the contracting parties and in the presence of competent witnesses. For members of the Russian Church the solemn betrothal, which formerly took place some time previous to the marriage, now introduces the wedding ceremony. The latter must follow the prescribed ritual exactly. The wedding must take place in church, during the daytime, before adult witnesses, and the contracting parties must be actually present. ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN.--The subsequent marriage of the parents does not in itself legitimatize such offspring. After their marriage the parents must petition the court for an order of legitimacy. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--Any marriage is null that was not solemnized by a clergyman of the religious sect of which one of the contracting parties is an adherent, except those solemnized before a priest of the Russian Church, because of the absence of a clergyman of the proper religious sect. A marriage is also null in case of bigamy, difference of religion and violation of the rules concerning consanguinity and affinity. DIVORCE.--It is impossible for an adherent of the Russian Church or for an "Old Believer" to obtain a decree of absolute divorce. The grounds for an absolute divorce for other persons except Jews are: 1. Adultery. 2. Bigamy. 3. Impotence existing at time of marriage. 4. Absence without news for five years. 5. Condemnation to the loss of all civil rights. 6. Banishment to Siberia with the loss of all special rights. Either party may petition for divorce on this ground. 7. Entrance of both spouses into a religious order, provided they have no children who need their support and care. 8. Conversion of a non-Christian to the Russian Church, provided he or his consort desires such divorcement. PROCEDURE.--In the case of a Christian who is not an "Old Believer" or a member of the Russian Church, the petition for divorce is filed in the ecclesiastical court. After this the bishop designates a clergyman, who is to make an attempt to reconcile the parties. Not until this attempt has failed is notice served on the defendant and the day set for a hearing of the cause. If the court decides in favour of a divorce, the decree must be submitted to the Synod for revision. In case of condemnation to the loss of civil rights, a divorce is granted immediately. If the ground relied on is the conversion of a non-Christian to the Russian Church, the divorce is granted merely on the formal declaration of one of the spouses that he or she does not wish to continue the marriage. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--The adjustment of the personal and property rights and the custody of the children are matters entirely for the discretion of the tribunal. LAW FOR LUTHERANS.--Members of the Lutheran Church outside of Finland are governed by special regulations concerning the grounds for divorce. These grounds are: 1. Adultery. 2. Unlawful relation with a third party before the marriage, though in the case of the husband only such relations subsequent to the betrothal are considered. 3. Wilful refusal of one party to live with the other. 4. Unjustified absence for two years without news. 5. Absence for five years. 6. Unjustified refusal to perform the marital duty for at least one year. 7. Wilful prevention of conception. 8. Impotence existing at time of marriage. 9. Incurable or loathsome disease existing at time of marriage and concealed from the other party. 10. Incurable insanity. 11. Vicious conduct. 12. Cruel and abusive treatment. 13. Design of one spouse to bring dishonour on the other. 14. Infamous crime. FINLAND.--In this country marriage between Christian and non-Christian, and the marriage of a Lutheran who has not yet been admitted to the rite of holy communion, are prohibited. In case of seduction marriage is prohibited unless the consent of the parents or of the court is obtained. Divorce is permitted in Finland for the following causes: 1. Adultery. 2. Illicit intercourse with a third party after betrothal. 3. Malicious desertion for one year. By petition to the Department of Justice of the Imperial Senate a Finn can obtain, for sufficient cause, a divorce on other grounds. RIGHTS OF MARRIED WOMEN.--When we come to consider the rights, or rather, the lack of rights, of married women in the Muscovite Empire we must remember that Russia is only geographically in Europe, and only nominally a Christian State. It is a country standing alone on the map of the world, five centuries behind in civilization what is really Europe. Although among the so-called higher classes woman is often treated socially--not legally--as the equal of her husband, among the great bulk of the population she has little more status than that of a domestic animal. There is no other country on earth pretending to be civilized where a woman, single or married, has so few rights recognized by the State or the national church. A married woman in Russia owns nothing. It is all her husband's. She is, however, allowed the privilege of saving up a little hoard of her own on the flax or wool out of which she makes the clothing for her husband and children. This little hoard is called her _korobka_, and upon her death it goes to her children. If she dies childless it goes to her mother, and if her mother is also dead it goes to her single sisters. Such a _korobka_, when accumulated by a single woman from her earnings, is considered as a dowry upon marriage, and it is generally applied by the bridegroom to pay the wedding expenses. Count Mouravieff could not have been thinking of woman's place in his native land when he said: "We Russians bear upon our shoulders the New Age; we come to relieve the tired men." It is our opinion that the nation which is most likely to bear upon the shoulders of its people the New Age is the country which treats its womankind the best. SPECIAL LAWS FOR JEWS.--The law of marriage and divorce which governs the Jews of Russia differs in many particulars from the rules applicable to adherents of other sects. This special set of regulations comes from the people of Israel themselves and is an outgrowth of the ancient Mosaic code of jurisprudence. In thus permitting the Jews to have a body of rules founded on the ancient precedents of their race and in agreement with their consciences we find at least one attitude of wise tolerance for which the Russian Empire is entitled to credit. BETROTHAL.--A Jewish betrothal must take place in the presence of two competent witnesses. The consent of the parents of either party is not required. Like marriage the betrothal can be dissolved only by death or by divorce. It obligates the parties to marry within thirty days from the date on which either demands marriage. A betrothal may be dissolved on the following grounds: A. Evil conduct. B. Change of religion. C. Insanity. D. Unchastity of either party or of one of his or her near relatives. E. By the man entering a dishonest occupation. IMPEDIMENTS.--Besides the impediments which prevent certain people of other sects from lawfully concluding marriage there are other impediments specially applicable to Jewish people. Briefly enumerated they are as follows: 1. A woman guilty of adultery, or even of secret association, with a man against her husband's will cannot marry her accomplice. 2. A marriage between a Jew and an idolator is forbidden. 3. If a woman's husband has died childless, and is survived by a brother, she can marry no one else than this brother until the latter has declined marriage with her in the prescribed form. 4. After the death of near relatives a marriage may not take place within thirty days. 5. A widow or divorced woman may not contract a new marriage within ninety days from the dissolution of her earlier marriage. 6. A pregnant woman may not marry before her delivery. 7. A widower may not marry before three feast days have passed since the death of his wife, but in case he is childless or his children require a mother's care he may marry after seven days. DIVORCE.--The Jewish law makes no distinction between divorce and annulment. The grounds for divorce are as follows: 1. Bigamy. 2. Difference of religion. 3. Relationship in the first degree in the direct line, by blood or marriage. No legal action is necessary for these three causes. 4. Adultery. 5. Leprosy of the husband. 6. Mutual consent of the parties. 7. Such conduct on the part of the wife as raises a reasonable suspicion of her adultery. 8. The cursing by the wife of her father-in-law in her husband's presence. 9. Wife's desertion of husband. 10. Wife's refusal for one year to perform marital duty. 11. Husband's cruelty to wife. 12. Husband's apostasy from the Jewish religion. 13. When the husband is a fugitive from justice. 14. Neglect of husband to support his wife. 15. Persistent vicious and disorderly manner of life on part of the husband. 16. Husband's admission that he is incurably impotent. 17. The contraction by the husband of a loathsome disease. 18. The adoption by the husband of a dishonest or disgusting occupation. 19. Such conduct on the part of the wife as causes her husband, without deliberation, to violate the ritualistic requirements of the Jewish religion. PROCEDURE.--The rabbi is the judge in the first instance of a divorce petition. Appeal from his decision lies to the civil authorities. In the ordinary divorce case the first action by the rabbi is an attempt to reconcile the parties. A confession of the guilty party is competent evidence. The divorce becomes effective by the man delivering to the wife, after the rabbinical decision, a bill of divorcement. This is done even if the wife is the successful suitor. The husband can be compelled to make such a delivery. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--The dowry (_Nedunya_), which was settled on the wife at the time of the marriage, must be returned to her if she is the innocent party. The woman retains the name of her divorced husband. Both parties are free to marry again. CHAPTER XVI. HOLLAND. MARRIAGE.--A male must be eighteen years or more and a female sixteen years or more in order to be lawfully married. Marriage is forbidden between all descendants and ascendants, legitimate or otherwise, and in the collateral line marriages are forbidden between brothers and sisters of the whole or half blood, legitimate or illegitimate. Marriage is also forbidden in Holland between brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, between uncle and niece, or granduncle and grandniece, and between aunt and nephew, grandaunt and grandnephew, legitimate or otherwise. The Queen has power under the law to grant a dispensation for good reasons relieving any couple from the effect of such prohibitions. She has also power, for sufficient cause, to permit persons under age to contract marriage. As a preliminary to marriage children must ask the consent thereto of their parents, but the consent of the father is sufficient. If the father is dead the consent of the mother suffices. If the mother and father are both dead the grandparents take their places. Marriage is treated in Holland as a civil contract. CELEBRATION.--The ceremony of marriage must take place publicly in the town hall before a registrar, but not until three days after the publication of banns. Four male witnesses of full age must be present. If one of the parties is unable to attend the town hall the marriage may be solemnized in a private house, but in such a case six male witnesses of full age are necessary. A religious celebration of the marriage cannot be performed until the officiating clergyman is shown proof that the civil marriage has already taken place. FOREIGN MARRIAGE.--A marriage concluded in a foreign country between two Hollanders, or between a Hollander and a foreigner, is recognized as valid in Holland if celebrated according to the requirements of the foreign country, and provided the banns were duly published, without opposition, in the place or places of residence in Holland of the contracting parties, and provided such marriage is not in contravention of the law of Holland. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage may be judiciously annulled on the following grounds: 1. Previous existing marriage of one of the parties. 2. Want of free consent on the part of one or both of the parties. 3. Mistake as to identity of person. 4. Insanity or deficient mentality of one or both parties. 5. Lack of marriageable age. 6. Relationship within prohibited degrees. 7. Marriage with an accomplice in adultery. 8. Absence of requisite number of witnesses. 9. Marriage in spite of an objection raised on publication of the banns, in case the objection proves to be well founded. 10. Marriage in violation of any other legal requirement. DIVORCE.--In Holland a marriage can be dissolved in one of four different ways: 1. By death of one of the parties. 2. By the absence of one of the spouses for the period of ten years or more, coupled with the remarriage of the other spouse. 3. By a divorce pronounced after a judicial separation has been obtained by one of the spouses. 4. By a divorce pronounced in the first instance for one of the causes hereinafter stated. The causes for an absolute divorce are: 1. Adultery. 2. Malicious abandonment continued for five years. 3. Judicial condemnation of one of the spouses to prison for an infamous offence. 4. Grave bodily harm inflicted by one spouse upon the other. PROCEDURE.--The action for divorce must be instituted before the judge of the district where the husband is domiciled, except when the cause alleged is malicious abandonment, in which case the suit must be brought before the judge of the district in which both parties had their last common domicile. Before filing the formal petition the complainant must personally attend before the district judge and state the facts, after which it is the duty of the judge to attempt a reconciliation of the parties. The complainant must appear without counsel or relatives. The judge next orders both parties to appear before him without counsel or relatives in the further endeavour to effect a reconciliation. If a reconciliation appears to be impossible the formal petition for divorce is then filed with the court. All suits for divorce are heard _in camera_, and the public prosecutor must attend. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--In so far as the innocent party is not able to support himself or herself out of his or her income the guilty party is bound, if able, to provide support. Except when it appears to the court that justice otherwise requires, the custody of the children is given to the successful suitor. The innocent party retains all gifts made to him or her by the other and the guilty party loses them all. Both parties are free to contract a new marriage. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--A separation from bed and board may be granted on the same grounds as entitle a party to an absolute divorce. Such a separation may also be judicially granted by consent of both spouses. After a judicial separation has existed for five years either of the parties may petition the court to enlarge the decree of separation into a decree of absolute divorce. CHAPTER XVII. THE JAPANESE CIVIL CODE. The East and the West, the Past and the Present, meet in the Japanese Civil Code, which became law in January, 1893. It is the first codification of private law that Japan ever had in her long history. Up to that time the basis of Japanese laws and institutions was Chinese moral philosophy, ancestor worship and the old feudal system. The Criminal Code of Japan (_Shin-ritsu-koryo_), enacted in 1870, was the last legal code founded on Chinese philosophy, customs and traditions, and the Revised Criminal Code (_Kaitei-Ritsurei_) is the first group of Japanese laws based upon European jurisprudence and civilization. Three periods may be marked in the history of Japan with regard to the legal aspect of the marriage relation. The first was the ancient Japanese period, the second the Chinese period, and the third, the present, that of modern Japan. The Chinese doctrine of the perpetual obedience of woman to man is expressed in the "Three Obediences": Obedience, while yet unmarried, to the father; obedience, when married, to the husband; obedience, when widowed, to the son. Buddhism regards woman as an unclean creature, a temptation, and an obstacle to peace and holiness. The great revolution in the legal position of woman in Japan which the new Civil Code has brought about is as impressive as all the other changes for the better which have of late years taken place in the land of the Cherry Blossoms. The Chinese and Buddhistic theories concerning womankind have but little influence on modern Japanese law. Under the Civil Code husband and wife are now on an equal footing, except when consideration for their common domestic life requires some modifications. Persons who are about to marry are permitted to make any contract with regard to their individual property, and a woman is capable of owning and controlling her separate property all during marriage. When Japanese law belonged to the Chinese system of jurisprudence there were seven causes for divorce, namely: 1. Sterility. 2. Lewdness. 3. Disobedience to father-in-law or mother-in-law. 4. Loquacity. 5. Larceny. 6. Jealousy. 7. Bad disease. As under the Mosaic law, these causes were invented only for the advantage of the husband. A wife had no right even to desire a divorce from her husband. An examination of the seven causes shows that a woman could be divorced practically at her husband's pleasure. The New Civil Code has changed all this. A wife has equal rights with her husband to the benefits of the divorce law. The New Civil Code of Japan is divided into five books, but it is only with Book IV., which deals with the "Family," that we are at present concerned. A summary of the present marriage and divorce law of Japan, as translated from Book IV., follows: REQUISITES OF MARRIAGE.--A man cannot marry before the completion of his seventeenth year or a woman before the completion of her fifteenth year. A person already married cannot contract another marriage. A woman cannot contract another marriage within six months from the dissolution or cancellation of her former marriage. If a woman is pregnant at the time of the dissolution or cancellation of her former marriage this provision does not apply after the day of her delivery. A person who is judicially divorced or punished because of adultery cannot contract a marriage with the other party to the adultery. Lineal relatives by blood or collateral relatives by blood up to the third degree cannot intermarry; but this does not apply as between an adopted child and his collateral relatives by adoption. Lineal relatives by affinity cannot intermarry. This applies even after the relationship by affinity has ceased because of marriage or divorce. An adopted child, his or her husband or wife, his descendants and the husband or wife of one of his descendants on the one hand, and the adopter and his ascendants on the other hand, cannot intermarry, even after the relationship has ceased. For contracting a marriage a child must have the consent of his parents, being in the same house. This, however, does not apply if the man has completed his thirtieth year or the woman her twenty-fifth year. If one of the parents is unknown, is dead, has quit the house, or is unable to express consent, the consent of the other parent is sufficient. If both parents are unknown, dead, have quit the house, or are unable to express consent, a minor must obtain the consent of his guardian and of the family council. This by way of parenthesis: The members of a house comprise such relatives of the head of the house as are in his house and the husbands and wives of such relatives. The head and the members of a house bear the name of the house. The head of the house is bound to support its members. A marriage takes effect upon its notification to the registrar. A wedding ceremony is not legally essential. The notification of marriage must be made by the parties concerned and at least two witnesses of full age, either orally or by a signed document. If a Japanese couple in a foreign country contract a marriage between themselves they may give the notification of their marriage to the Japanese minister or consul stationed in such country. EFFECT OF MARRIAGE.--By marriage the wife enters the house of the husband. A man who marries a woman who is head of a house, or a _mukoyoshi_, enters the house of his wife. A _mukoyoshi_ is a person who is adopted by another and at the same time marries the daughter of the house who would be the heir to the headship of the house. A wife is bound to live with her husband. A husband must permit his wife to live with him. A husband and wife are bound to support each other. When the wife is a minor the husband, if of full age, exercises the functions of a guardian. A contract made between husband and wife may be cancelled at any time during the marriage by either party, but without prejudice to the rights of third persons. DIVORCE BY MUTUAL CONSENT.--The husband and wife may effect a divorce by mutual consent. No court procedure is necessary. Just as in giving notice of marriage, the parties consenting to be divorced give notice of such agreement to the registrar, and they are _ipso facto_ divorced. A person who has not reached the age of twenty-five years, in order to effect a divorce by mutual consent, must obtain the consent of the person or persons whose consent was necessary for the marriage. If a husband and wife have effected a divorce by mutual consent without arranging as to whom the custody of the children shall belong, it belongs to the husband. JUDICIAL DIVORCE.--A husband or wife, as the case may be, can bring an action for divorce for the following causes: 1. If the other party contracts a second marriage. 2. If the wife commits adultery. 3. If the husband is sentenced to punishment for an offence specified in Article 348 _et seq._ of the Criminal Code; such offences involving criminal carnal sexuality. 4. If the other party is sentenced to punishment for an offence greater than misdemeanor, involving forgery, bribery, gross sexual immorality, theft, robbery, obtaining property by false pretences, embezzlement of goods deposited, receiving knowingly stolen goods, or any of the offences specified in Articles 175 and 260 of the Criminal Code, or is sentenced to a major imprisonment or more. 5. If one party is so ill-treated or grossly insulted by the other that it makes further living together of the spouses impracticable. 6. If one party is deserted by the other. 7. If one party is ill-treated or grossly insulted by an ascendant of the other party. 8. If an ascendant of one party is ill-treated or grossly insulted by the other party. 9. If it has been uncertain for three years or more whether or not the other party is alive or dead. 10. In the case of the adoption of a _mukoyoshi_, if the adoption is dissolved, or in the case of a marriage of an adopted son with a daughter of the house, if the adoption is dissolved or cancelled. CHAPTER XVIII. SPAIN. Spain is a constitutional and hereditary monarchy, the powers of which are defined by the fundamental law of June 30, 1876. The legislative authority is exercised by the sovereign in conjunction with a parliamentary body called the Cortes, which is composed of two houses, a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies. Spanish law is founded on the Roman law, the Gothic common law, the National Code of 1501, and the Civil Code of 1888, with its subsequent amendments and additions. Spanish law is binding in the Spanish Peninsula and adjacent islands, the Canary Islands and such African territory as is subject to Spain. MARRIAGE.--The law recognizes two forms of marriage: the canonical, which all who profess the Catholic religion should contract; and the civil, which must be celebrated in the manner hereinafter stated. Marriage is forbidden to: 1. Minors who have not obtained parental consent. 2. To a widow, during the three hundred and one days following the death of her husband or before childbirth, if she has been left pregnant. 3. To a guardian and his or her descendants, with respect to persons who are the wards of such guardian until the ending of the guardianship, and a proper accounting has been rendered by the guardian. An exception to this rule exists when the father of the ward has in his will or in a public instrument expressly authorized such a marriage. AGE.--A male cannot marry until he has completed his fourteenth year of age; a female until she has completed her twelfth year. Marriage contracted by persons under puberty shall, nevertheless, be _ipso facto_ made legal if a day after having arrived at the legal age of puberty, the parties continue to live together without bringing a suit to set aside the marriage, or if the female becomes pregnant before the legal age, or before the institution of a suit for annulment. Persons who are not in the full exercise of their reasoning faculties cannot contract marriage. The law forbids the marriage of all those who suffer from absolute or relative impotency. Priests and all other persons bound by a solemn pledge of celibacy in the approved canonical manner are forbidden to contract marriage, unless they have first received the necessary canonical dispensation. Persons already lawfully married cannot contract a new marriage. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--The following persons cannot contract marriage between themselves: 1. The ascendants and descendants by legitimate or illegitimate blood or affinity. 2. Collaterals by legitimate consanguinity up to and including the fourth degree. 3. Collaterals by legitimate affinity up to and including the fourth degree. 4. Collaterals by natural consanguinity or affinity up to and including the second degree. 5. The adopting father or mother and the adopted child; the latter and the surviving spouse of the adoptees, and the adopters and the surviving spouse of the adopted. 6. The legitimate descendants of the adopter with the adopted, while the relation of adoption continues. 7. Accomplices in adultery who have been judicially sentenced. Those who have been condemned as principals, or principal and accomplice, in the homicide of the spouse of any of the parties cannot conclude marriage between themselves. The government for sufficient cause will, on petition of a party, grant a dispensation permitting marriage between collaterals by legitimate consanguinity within the fourth degree. Other dispensations may also be granted on a proper petition. PARENTAL CONSENT.--The consent of the father is required for the marriage of a legitimate minor; in his default, or where he cannot consent, the power to grant it devolves, in this order: upon the mother, the paternal and maternal grandparents, and in default of all these, upon the family council. Recognized natural children or children legitimatized by royal concession must ask the consent of those who have recognized or legitimatized them or of their ascendants, or of the family council. Adopted children must ask the consent of the adopting father, and in his default, of the persons of the natural family upon whom it may devolve. Unrecognized illegitimate children must ask the consent of their mother, when she is known, and in her default consent must be asked of the maternal grandparents, and in their default, that of the family council. Children of age are obliged to ask the advice of the father, and in his default, of the mother before contracting marriage. In case the advice given is against the proposed alliance, the marriage cannot be celebrated until three months after the petition is made. Marriage in Spain is dissolved absolutely only by the death of one of the parties. CANONICAL MARRIAGE.--The requisites, form and solemnities for the celebration of canonical marriage is governed by the laws of the Catholic Church, and by the decrees of the Holy Council of Trent, which are accepted as part of the organic law of Spain. Canonical marriage produces all the civil effects in respect to persons and property of the spouses and their offspring. A magistrate is required to be present at the celebration of a canonical marriage simply for the purpose of making a verified record in the Civil Registry of the marriage. So that he may be present for the purpose above stated, the magistrate must be given notice in writing twenty-four hours at least before the intended celebration, telling him of the day, hour and place of the marriage. Persons who contract canonical marriage in _articulo mortis_ may give notice to the officials in charge of the Civil Registry, at any time whatever prior to its celebration, and prove in any manner whatever that such duty has been performed. CIVIL MARRIAGE.--A civil marriage must be preceded by a declaration to the Municipal Judge, stating the names, ages, professions and domiciles of the contracting parties; also the names, professions and domiciles of the parents; and proper certificates of the births and status of the contracting parties; certificates of consent or advice of parents, and dispensations when required. Marriages may be celebrated personally or by a substitute or proxy to whom a special authorization has been granted. Civil marriages must be solemnized by the contracting parties appearing before the Municipal Judge, or one of them, and the person whom the absent party may have appointed as proxy must appear before such magistrate, together with two competent witnesses. The Municipal Judge, after reading articles 56 and 57 of the Civil Code to the parties (which point out the rights and obligations of married life), must ask each party if they desire to be married to each other, and if both answer in the affirmative, the judge shall declare the parties to be husband and wife, and prepare a record of the marriage. Consuls and vice-consuls are empowered to exercise the function of municipal judges in marriages of Spaniards, celebrated in foreign countries. NULLITY OF MARRIAGE.--The following marriages are null and void: 1. Those concluded between persons related within the prohibited degrees. 2. Those concluded between persons under the age of puberty. 3. Marriages between persons, one or both of whom were of incurably unsound mind. 4. Incurably impotent persons. 5. Persons bound by canonical vows to chastity. The proceeding to have such marriages judicially declared as null may be instituted by either spouse, the Public Attorney, or by any interested person. The action lapses, and the marriage will be confirmed in cases based on abduction, error, force or fear, when the spouses have lived together six months after the error became known, or after the force or fear has ceased. DIVORCE.--A divorce in Spain only amounts to what in other countries is called a judicial separation. Accepting the decrees of the Council of Trent as law for Spain, marriage is treated as a sacramental contract which can only be dissolved by death. The Civil Code, Article 104, states the following causes for divorce: 1. Adultery on the wife's part. 2. Adultery on the part of the husband, when public scandal or disgrace of the wife is a result. 3. Violence exercised by the husband over the wife in order to force her to abandon her religious faith. 4. Cruelty actually inflicted, or grave acts of contumely. 5. The attempt or proposal of a husband to prostitute his wife. 6. The attempts of either husband or wife to corrupt the morals of the sons, or to prostitute the daughters. 7. Condemnation of either spouse to imprisonment for life. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE OR NULLIFICATION.--The civil effects of a divorce or annulment of marriage are as follows: 1. Separation of the parties. 2. To place the custody of the children with one or both of the parties, as justice may require. 3. To determine the responsibility for the support of the woman and children. 4. To place the woman under the special protection of the law. 5. To decree the necessary measures to prevent the husband, who may have given cause for divorce, or against whom the petition for nullity of the marriage has been instituted, from interfering with the wife in the administration of her separate property. HUSBAND AND WIFE.--The spouses are under mutual obligation to live together, to be faithful to, and help each other. The husband is bound to protect his wife and the wife to obey her husband. The wife is required to follow her husband wherever he may establish his residence. The courts, however, will in some cases release her from this requirement when the husband changes his residence to a foreign land. The husband is the manager of the property of the conjugal union, except when there is a mutual agreement to the contrary. The husband is the legal representative of the wife. She cannot, without his permission, appear in a suit by herself or through an attorney. However, she does not need such permission to defend herself in a criminal case or to bring a suit against her husband, or to defend herself in a suit brought by her husband against her. A wife cannot, without her husband's permission, acquire property in trade or by her labour. Neither can she, without such consent, alienate her property. The wife can, without her husband's permission, perform the following acts: 1. Execute a will. 2. Exercise the rights and perform the duties which pertain to her with regard to legitimate and recognized illegitimate children, the issue of herself and another not now her husband. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--The Spanish courts recognize as valid in Spain any marriage performed in a foreign country in accordance with the laws of such country, provided such marriage also meets with all the requirements of the Civil Code of Spain. CHAPTER XIX. CIVIL CODE OF PORTUGAL. On the third day of October, 1910, King Manuel II. of Portugal was dethroned and a Republic was proclaimed throughout the country. At the present time the affairs of the Republic are being administered by a provisional government. Until this temporary administration is followed by a permanent government, based on a national constitution, the Civil Code promulgated in 1867 will continue to be Portuguese law. MARRIAGE.--Marriage is defined in the Civil Code as a perpetual contract between two persons of different sex to live together and establish a legitimate family. Catholics must celebrate marriage according to the rules and form prescribed by their church. Those who are not Catholics are required to have their marriage celebrated before a civil officer of the State according to the rules and form prescribed by the civil law of the land. Marriage is forbidden: 1. Of minors under the age of 21 years, unless with parental consent. 2. Of persons of adult age who are incapable of properly governing themselves or their estates, without the authorization of their legal representatives. 3. Of an adulterous wife with her accomplice who has been condemned for the offence. 4. Of a wife who has been condemned as the principal or accomplice of the crime of homicide with a principal or accomplice in the same crime. 5. Of any person bound by solemn vows of religion to a life of chastity. The canon law of the Catholic Church defines the religious rules and spiritual effects of marriage, while the civil law defines the civil rules and temporal effects of the contract. A minister of the church who celebrates a marriage contrary to the requirements of Article 1058 of the Civil Code incurs criminal penalties. Marriage between Portuguese subjects who are non-Catholics is recognized as producing full civil effects. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--The following persons are forbidden to marry each other: 1. Ascendants and descendants. 2. Persons related collaterally in the second degree. 3. Males who have not completed their fourteenth year and females who have not completed their twelfth year of age. 4. Persons already bound by marriage. Any infraction of these prohibitions makes a marriage voidable. MARRIAGE PRELIMINARIES.--Whoever desires to contract marriage according to the manner provided by the civil law of the land must present to the civil officer of the State acting in the place of the applicant's domicile a declaration setting forth: 1. The full names, ages, occupations and domiciles of the contracting parties. 2. The full names, professions and domiciles of the parents. Upon receiving this declaration the civil officer publishes a notice of the intended marriage and informs all interested persons to file their objections, if any exist, within fifteen days. If at the end of this period no valid objection to the marriage has been formulated the civil officer proceeds to the celebration of the marriage. CELEBRATION.--For the civil celebration of marriage the contracting parties, or their duly empowered proxies, appear before the civil officer of the commune, attended by competent witnesses. If the marriage is celebrated in the official bureau of the commune two witnesses are sufficient; if outside of such bureau six witnesses are required. Any civil officer celebrating a marriage contrary to these provisions incurs penal punishment. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--A Catholic marriage--that is, one solemnized according to the canonical law--can only be annulled by an ecclesiastical tribunal and according to the laws of the Catholic Church enforceable in Portugal. A sentence of an ecclesiastical tribunal annulling a marriage is executed by the civil authority of the land. A marriage concluded before a civil officer in the form established by the civil law of the land can only be annulled by a civil court. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--A separation of the person and goods may be had for the following causes: 1. Adultery of the wife. 2. Adultery of the husband, if such adultery creates a public scandal or if the husband brings his concubine into the home he has established for his wife. 3. Sentence of one of the spouses to life imprisonment. 4. Cruel and abusive treatment. DIVORCE.--Under the law of Portugal as it existed down to the day when King Manuel II. was dethroned and a Republic declared there was no such thing as divorce recognized. Portugal has been for centuries a Catholic country, and the decrees of the Council of Trent, as well as all the other rules and regulations concerning marriage stated by the Catholic Church, have been accepted by Portugal as part of the law of the land. However, since December 1, 1910, when the present provisional government was constituted, certain new laws have been promulgated by government decree. One of these new laws relates to divorce and is most modern and radical in its scope. It permits the courts to grant absolute divorces for a number of reasons, including "mutual consent of the parties." Whether such laws, created by proclamation instead of legislation, will be incorporated into the inevitable new Civil Code of Portugal is a problem for the future. Our endeavour in this chapter has been to state the organic law of Portugal as it at present exists, untouched by legislation on the statute books of that ancient land. CHAPTER XX. ROUMANIA. Roumania is the name officially adopted by the united kingdom that comprises the former principalities of Walachia and Moldavia. In its native form it appears simply as "Roumania," representing the claim to Roman descent put forward by its inhabitants. The Roumanian Civil Code from which we summarize in this chapter the law of marriage and divorce of Roumania is practically a copy of the French Civil Code. MARRIAGE.--A man must be eighteen years of age and a woman fifteen in order to contract lawful marriage, except a dispensation is granted by the King. The free consent by both contracting parties is essential. Men under twenty-five years of age and women under twenty-one cannot marry without the parental consent. Men under the age of thirty and women under the age of twenty-five are obliged to ask the consent of their parents. A man or woman is allowed but one spouse at a time. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Marriage is forbidden between relatives, whether by blood or by marriage, in the direct line, and in the collateral line to the fourth degree, inclusive, by the Roman method of counting. The prohibition obtains whether the relationship arises from legitimate or illegitimate birth. A dispensation from such impediments may, in special cases, be granted, by the King. Marriage is forbidden between relatives by adoption and between godparents and their godchildren. Marriage is forbidden between guardians and wards, or between trustees and wards, and the father, son or brother of a guardian or trust cannot marry the ward until the accounts of the guardianship or trust have been properly audited and settled. Soldiers cannot marry without the consent of the military authorities. Marriage is expressly forbidden to priests, monks and nuns. Divorced persons are forbidden to remarry each other. A woman whose marriage has been dissolved by death or divorce may not marry again until the expiration of ten months after such dissolution. MARRIAGE PRELIMINARIES.--A marriage must be preceded by the publication of the names, occupations and residences of the parties themselves, and of their parents, on two Sundays before the celebration. Such publication of banns must be made before the door of the parish church and the door of the town hall of the commune where the marriage is to be concluded. The marriage cannot be solemnized until the fourth day after the second publication of banns. If a year passes after such publication without marriage a new publication is necessary. If, upon the publication of banns, the intended marriage is opposed, as it may be, by any person, the registrar of the commune must defer the celebration of marriage until the opposition has been withdrawn or overruled. CELEBRATION.--The marriage must be celebrated by the registrar in the town hall of the commune in which one of the parties had had continuous residence for at least six months. The registrar, in the presence of four witnesses, reads to the parties that chapter of the Civil Code of Roumania which defines the rights and duties of marriage. The parties must then declare to the registrar their intention to marry each other. After this the officiating registrar pronounces the parties to be husband and wife. If a religious celebration is desired it must in all cases be preceded by the civil ceremony. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage may be annulled on any of the following grounds: 1. That it was not regularly celebrated before a registrar. 2. That free consent of one or both parties did not exist. 3. Lack of proper age. 4. An existing marriage. 5. Relationship within prohibited degrees. 6. Lack of parental consent. 7. In the case of a soldier, lack of proper consent from the necessary military authorities. Where a marriage has been contracted in good faith the parties thereto and the issue of the marriage are entitled to all civil rights resulting therefrom; but if only one party was in good faith, only that party and the issue of the marriage are entitled to these rights. DIVORCE.--The great majority of the people of the kingdom belong to the Roumanian branch of the Orthodox Greek Church, which in practice does not hold to the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. The law of the land permits absolute divorce for the following causes: 1. By mutual consent of the parties. The parties on such an application appear before a judge with a written inventory of their goods, showing the division agreed upon, and with certificates of their birth and marriage, of the births and deaths of their children, and, when necessary, the consent of their parents. The judge then endeavours to reconcile the parties. If at the end of one year and fifteen days no reconciliation has been effected a divorce is granted. 2. Adultery of husband or wife. 3. Cruel and abusive treatment of one spouse toward the other. 4. A judicial condemnation of either party to a prison sentence for an infamous crime. 5. An attempt of one party on the life of the other. 6. Intentional omission of one spouse to warn the other of an attempt by a third person on the life of the other spouse. SEPARATION.--Judicial separations are not granted by the courts of Roumania. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--Divorced parties are forbidden to remarry each other. A divorced woman may not marry again within ten months after her divorcement, and the guilty party in a suit for divorce on the ground of adultery may not marry his or her accomplice in adultery. Otherwise divorced parties are free to marry again. A divorced woman may not retain her husband's surname. All property rights granted by the innocent party to the guilty party are extinguished by the decree of divorce. The guilty party may be ordered to contribute to the support of the innocent party. The custody of the children is usually given to the successful suitor. The court may, however, if circumstances require, entrust the children to the guilty party or to a third person. CHAPTER XXI. SERVIA. Servia is a kingdom in the northwestern part of the Balkan Peninsula. In 1882 it became a constitutional monarchy. The judiciary is vested in a High Court of Appeal, a Court of Cassation, a Commercial Court and twenty-three courts of the first instance. The Servian laws of marriage and divorce are substantially the same as those of the Orthodox Greek Church. All marital suits in which one or both parties belong to this church are governed by State law, although jurisdiction lies with the ecclesiastical courts. Matters pertaining to property settlement are, however, entirely within the jurisdiction of the civil courts, as are all marital suits in which neither party belongs to the Greek Church. When the parties to a marital suit are Roman Catholics decisions are rendered according to the canon law; and when both parties are Protestants, according to the principles of the sect to which the parties belong. In the case of a mixed marriage of others than adherents of the Greek Church the decision is rendered according to the principles of the church in which the marriage was celebrated. MARRIAGE QUALIFICATIONS.--A man cannot marry until he has completed his seventeenth year; a woman until she has completed her fifteenth year of age. By the dispensation of the church, granted by a bishop, a man of fifteen years or a woman of thirteen years may conclude marriage. The free consent of both parties is essential to a valid marriage. If both the contracting parties are over eighteen years of age parental consent to a marriage is not obligatory. Where both parties are under eighteen years, or the intended bride is under that age and the intended bridegroom is under twenty-one years, the consent of parents is necessary. All persons are forbidden to contract a new marriage until a previous existing marriage has been dissolved or judicially declared a nullity. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Marriage is prohibited between relatives by blood in the direct line and in the collateral line as far as the eighth degree, inclusive--that is to say, as far as the degree of relationship of third cousins. Relatives in the seventh or eighth degree may marry by episcopal dispensation. Marriage is prohibited between relatives by marriage as far as the fifth degree, inclusive. Marriage is prohibited between persons spiritually related, as between the godparent and the godchild or his descendants. IMPEDIMENTS.--Persons who have been judicially condemned for adultery are forbidden to contract marriage with their accomplices in the offence. The party declared guilty in a suit for divorce is prohibited from marrying again during the lifetime of the innocent party. A woman may not, as a rule, marry again until nine months after the dissolution by death or divorce of her previous marriage. Insane persons cannot contract a binding marriage. Incurable impotence of either party, which existed at the time the marriage was concluded, is cause for a decree of nullity. Marriage is expressly forbidden between Christians and Jews or between Christians and non-Christians of any sect whatever. Marriage is prohibited between two persons one of whom has attempted the life of the husband or wife of the other. A lawful marriage cannot be concluded with a woman who has been abducted and has not yet been restored to freedom. Marriage cannot be concluded by a person who is under sentence to imprisonment. PRELIMINARIES.--Before the marriage the parish priest must, on three successive holy days, publish banns in the church, and if any member of the parish knows of any impediment it is his or her duty to inform the priest. If a priest fails thus to publish banns, and impediments later appear, he is amenable to punishment. CELEBRATION.--The law of Servia does not recognize a civil marriage. If the parties, or one of them, belong to the Orthodox Greek Church they must be married according to the rites of that church. Christians of other sects must be married by their clergy and Jews by their authorized ministers. CHILDREN.--Marriage of the parents subsequent to their birth renders illegitimate children fully legitimate. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage may be declared null by a decree of a court of competent jurisdiction whenever it appears that some essential qualification to make the marriage valid was absent at the time it was concluded, or if it appears that the marriage was concluded in disregard of the impediments stated by law. ABSOLUTE DIVORCE.--A complete divorce from the marriage bond is allowed by the courts for the following causes: 1. Adultery of either party. 2. Attempt by either spouse to kill the other. 3. The concealment by one spouse of information concerning a plot to kill the other spouse. 4. Penal servitude incurred by either spouse, under a sentence of at least eight years. 5. Apostasy from the Christian religion. 6. Deliberate desertion persisted in for three years. 7. Flight from Servia followed by absence of at least four years. 8. Absence without news for six years. A decree of divorce or a decree annulling a marriage must always be submitted for the approval or disapproval of the ecclesiastical courts. EFFECTS OF DIVORCEMENT.--The innocent party to a divorce suit may contract a new marriage, but the guilty party is forbidden to remarry during the lifetime of the innocent party. Usually each party regains such goods and effects as he or she brought to the alliance. CUSTODY OF CHILDREN.--Boys under four years and girls under seven are given, as a rule, to the mother's custody. After that they are given to the custody of the father. The divorced woman must not continue to use the surname of her ex-husband. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--A separation from bed and board may be granted by the court whenever the facts show such a decree to best promote the interests and well-being of the spouses. CHAPTER XXII BULGARIA. The national religion of the Bulgarian people is that of the Orthodox Greek Church, and consequently the laws of that church on the subject of marriage and divorce is part of the organic law of Bulgaria. Upon the political independence of the country the Bulgarian Church, which had hitherto been under the Patriarchate of Constantinople through an exarch, declared its independence and established the Bulgarian Exarchate. The ecclesiastical courts of this Exarchate have general jurisdiction of matrimonial causes except as concern Mohammedans, Jews, and Christians who are not adherents of any of the Eastern Orthodox churches. Besides the laws of the Church, Bulgaria has a national law of marriage and divorce dating from 1897. The matrimonial concerns of Mohammedans are governed by the law of the religion of Mohammed. Christians who are dissenters from the Orthodox Church are permitted to marry according to the rules and regulations of their sect. REQUIREMENTS FOR MARRIAGE.--The marriageable age for men begins with twenty years, and for women with eighteen years. Parental consent is required, but if it is arbitrarily denied the authorities of the church may give their consent in its stead. A man or woman is permitted to have but one spouse at a time. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Marriage is forbidden between ascendants and descendants. In the collateral line marriage is forbidden between persons related within the seventh degree. Under this rule a person cannot lawfully marry the child of his or her second cousin. The ecclesiastical authorities may upon such grounds as to them may seem sufficient grant a dispensation permitting a marriage within the prohibited degrees. Marriage is also prohibited between godparents and godchildren, and between godchildren who have the same godparent. Here also the clergy may remove the impediment by dispensation. Persons suffering from idiocy, insanity, epilepsy or syphilis cannot contract lawful marriage. Marriage is forbidden when the parties are of different religious faiths. A person under obligation by religious vow to remain celibate or one who has been sentenced to a state of celibacy by an ecclesiastical court cannot conclude marriage. Accomplices in adultery may not marry each other. Persons in the military service must obtain the consent of their superiors to contract marriage. CELEBRATION.--The law of Bulgaria does not permit a civil marriage. If both or one of the contracting parties are baptized members of the Orthodox Greek Church, the marriage service must be in accordance with the rites of that church. Christians who belong to other churches are permitted to be married by the ministers of their faith. Three weeks at least must intervene between the betrothal and the wedding. All marriages must be preceded by the publication of banns. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--The law of Bulgaria does not recognize the foreign marriage of Bulgarian subjects unless the following elements are present: 1. The foreign marriage must comply with all the laws and rules of the foreign country where it is concluded. 2. If the parties are baptized members of the Orthodox Greek Church the marriage must be solemnized by a priest of that church. This rule applies even though in the country where the marriage was concluded a civil ceremony is sufficient. DIVORCE.--The Church and State both permit absolute divorces. The causes are: 1. Adultery of either spouse. 2. Drunkenness and disorderly conduct. 3. Cruel and abusive treatment. 4. Threat to kill. 5. Incurable impotence. 6. Absence of the husband for four years coupled with failure to support wife. 7. Sentence to prison for an infamous offense. 8. False accusation of adultery. 9. Wife's desertion of the husband continued for three years. DIVORCE PROCEDURE.--As before stated the suit for divorce must be brought before the ecclesiastical court. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--If the guilty party is the wife, her husband has the right to retain all her dowry which she brought to him, and to retake all gifts made to her either before or after marriage. If the guilty party is the husband, the wife has the right to recover her dowry, to keep any present she ever received from the husband, and to exact suitable maintenance from her divorced husband until such time as she remarries. The custody of the children is given to the winning suitor, except that children under five years remain in the care of their mother. CHAPTER XXIII. THE KINGDOM OF GREECE. Because of its matchless philosophy, literature and art, ancient Greece is still the marvel of the modern world, but little credit is given to old Hellas as one of the principal sources of the jurisprudence of to-day. For political reasons the Roman law was the overshadowing and dominating system of ancient law, but the fountain head of the laws of Rome, even of the Laws of the Twelve Tables, was the land of Demosthenes, Pericles, Solon and Lycurgus. The great jurisconsults of the Roman Empire were not Roman but Greek lawyers, not the least of whom was Gaius, the legal commentator who was the Blackstone of his period. The Roman Empire was the physical expression of Grecian intellect. Not only the first lawyers but the first popes of Rome were Greeks. The modern Kingdom of Greece has an excellent system of jurisprudence based on the old Roman law, with modifications drawn from the Bavarian and French. The commercial law has been adapted from the _Code Napoleon_, the penal laws are of Bavarian origin, and the laws of marriage and divorce are derived from the Roman law necessarily modified to harmonize with the dogmas of the Orthodox Greek Church, which is the national church of the kingdom. The Areopagus existed in Greece as a court of justice before the first Messenian war, 740 B. C. This court was situated on the Hill of Ares outside the city of Athens, the very "Hill of Mars" on which St. Paul preached in the year A. D. 52. We find historical mention of the Court of Areopagus as late as the year 880 of the Christian Era. It is unlikely that the Areopagus of to-day, which is the supreme court of appeal in modern Greece, has any other relationship than the same venerable name with the court of ancient times. Besides the Court of the Areopagus, there are four other inferior courts of appeal, one for each of the judicial districts of Greece. There are also four commercial tribunals, seventeen courts of first instance, and over two hundred justices of the peace. The standard of the Grecian judiciary is very high, for only men of unblemished reputation who have received the degree of doctor of law from a reputable European university are eligible to the bench. There is no _habeas corpus_ act in Greece, but no one can be arrested, no house can be entered, and no letter opened without a judicial warrant. The supreme power of the Church of Greece is vested in the Holy Hellenic Synod which consists of five members, who are appointed annually by the King, and the majority of whom must be prelates. The Metropolitan Archbishop of Athens is _ex-officio_ president; two royal commissioners attend without voting and the Synod's resolutions require to be confirmed by them in the King's name. In all purely spiritual matters the Synod has entire independence; but on questions having a civil side, such as marriage and divorce, it can only act in concert with the civil authorities. The Orthodox Greek Church as a matter of dogma treats marriage as a sacrament or divine ordinance, but unlike the Latin Church, it holds that for sufficient cause marriage may be legally dissolved, but not till a probationary period has elapsed during which a bishop or priest mediates with the purpose of reconciling the parties. MARRIAGE.--Both by the law of the land and the church law, marriage in Greece is treated as a social status which can only be concluded by a religious celebration. A civil ceremony has no validity. If both the parties or one of them are baptized members of the Orthodox Greek church, the marriage must be celebrated before a priest and in accordance with the laws and rites of that church. When both of the parties are Roman Catholics they must be married by a priest of their religion. If one of the parties is a Roman Catholic and the other a member of the Orthodox Greek Church, the marriage must be solemnized by a priest of the latter church. The rule is that mixed marriages must be solemnized by a priest of the Greek Church. Jews and Protestants may be married by the ministers of their respective denominations. AGE.--The marriageable age of males begins at the completion of their fourteenth year, and that of females at the completion of their twelfth year. CONSENTS.--The free consent of the contracting parties is essential. For a man under twenty-one years of age, or a woman under eighteen years of age, the parental consent is also necessary. MONOGAMY.--All persons are forbidden to contract a new marriage until a previous marriage has been dissolved by death or divorce. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Marriage is prohibited between persons of whom one is descended in a direct line from the other. Collateral kinsmen are forbidden to marry within the sixth degree. The degrees are counted according to the Roman law method of reckoning which counts the number of descents between the persons on both sides from the common ancestor. The authorities of the national church may upon such facts as to them seem proper grant a dispensation allowing a marriage within the forbidden degrees. SPIRITUAL RELATIONSHIP.--Marriage is expressly forbidden between godparents and their godchildren, and between godchildren who have the same godparent. A church dispensation is, however, easily obtained, relieving the parties from the last mentioned impediment. SPECIAL PROHIBITIONS.--Persons suffering from defective intellect, insanity, syphilis or epilepsy are forbidden to conclude marriage. Persons under religious vows to remain celibate cannot conclude marriage unless dispensed from such vows. Accomplices in adultery may not marry each other. Persons in the military service may not conclude marriage without the consent of the higher military authority. PRIESTS.--A priest of the Orthodox Greek Church is required to marry once, but he cannot contract a second marriage even after the death of his first wife. FOURTH MARRIAGE.--It is contrary to the law of the land as well as the law of the church for any person to contract a fourth marriage. BANNS.--All marriages must be preceded by the publication of banns. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--The Greek courts will not recognize the foreign marriage of Greek subjects who are baptized members of the Orthodox Greek Church unless the marriage was solemnized before a priest of that church. This is the rule, even though in the country where the marriage was concluded a civil ceremony is sufficient and obligatory. DIVORCE.--Absolute divorces are granted for the following causes: 1. Adultery of either husband or wife. 2. Cruel and inhuman treatment, endangering life or health. 3. An attempt by either spouse to kill the other. 4. Threat to kill. 5. The condemnation and imprisonment of either spouse for an infamous or degrading crime. 6. Confirmed habits of drunkenness. 7. Desertion. 8. Incurable impotence of either party. PROCEDURE.--All suits for divorce must be instituted in the ecclesiastical courts of the Orthodox Greek Church. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--Both parties are free to remarry, but the wife must wait until a full year has elapsed from the granting of a decree before contracting a new marriage. The wife must not use the surname of her divorced husband. If the wife is the successful suitor, she can recover from the defeated party the dowry she brought to him at marriage. She has a right also to retain any gifts she may have received from him either before or after marriage. In some instances the husband is obliged to pay alimony to his divorced wife during her lifetime, up to the time she contracts a new marriage. If the parties have children, such of them as are so young as to need a mother's care are temporarily awarded to the woman's custody even though she be the party declared to be guilty in the divorce suit. CHAPTER XXIV. THE MOHAMMEDAN LAW OF TURKEY, PERSIA, EGYPT, INDIA, MOROCCO AND ALGERIA. The laws of Mohammedanism which are founded on the Koran and the Traditions of Mohammed to-day constitute the civil and religious code of many millions of the world's inhabitants. A country that is subject to the government of Mohammedans is termed _Dar-ool-Islam_, or a country of safety and salvation, and a country which is not subject to such government is termed _Dar-ool-hurb_, or a country of enmity. Though Mohammedans are no longer under the sway of one prince, they are so bound together by the common tie of Islam that as between themselves there is no difference of country, and they may therefore be said to compose but one _dar_ or commonwealth. A Mohammedan is subject to the law of Islam absolutely, that is without distinction of place or otherwise. Every unbeliever in the Mohammedan religion is termed a _kafir_, or infidel, and infidels who are not in subjection to some Mohammedan state are generally treated by Islamic lawyers as _hurbees_, or enemies. The Mohammedans are taught to believe that their system of jurisprudence is of divine origin, is incapable of improvement, and can never be changed in any material particular. The fact is that with all its alleged source, perfection and immutability Mohammedan law has not been able to escape the inevitable rule of change which seems to affect everything and everybody in this world. There are certain countries where the entire legal and religious system is based on the laws of Mohammedanism; such countries are: Turkey, Persia and Morocco. There are other countries, such as Egypt, India and Algeria, where the law of Islam operates side by side with other legal systems. In India there are four distinct systems of jurisprudence, all in full operation and effect. These are: 1. English law created by the British Parliament. 2. Anglo-Indian law, which is created in India by the Legislative Councils of the British Government. 3. Hindu law, which applies to every one in British India who is a Hindu, and to no one else. 4. Mohammedan law, which applies to every one in British India who is a Mohammedan, and to no one else. If a Mohammedan in India abandons his religion he ceases to be governed by Mohammedan law. Since the promulgation of the Regulations of Warren Hastings in 1772, all suits in British India regarding inheritance, marriage, caste and other religious usages and institutions with respect to Mohammedans have been decided invariably according to Mohammedan law. EGYPT.--There are four kinds of legal tribunals in Egypt, namely: 1. The Native Courts, which have civil and criminal jurisdiction over natives. 2. The Consular Courts, which have jurisdiction over foreigners charged with crime. 3. The Mixed Tribunals, which have civil and criminal jurisdiction over persons of diverse citizenship. 4. The Mohammedan Courts, which deal with the questions of the personal rights of the Mohammedan inhabitants according to the laws of Islam. As over ninety _per centum_ of the people of Egypt are Mohammedans, the importance of the Mohammedan Courts is apparent. The Mohammedan law of marriage and divorce is also recognized as controlling and effective when the parties to a marriage are Mohammedans, in Russia, Roumania, Servia, Bulgaria and Greece. MARRIAGE.--Marriage is enjoined on every Mohammedan, and celibacy is frequently condemned by Mohammed. "When the servant of God marries, he perfects half of his religion," said the Prophet. Once Mohammed inquired of a man if he was married, and being answered in the negative, he asked, "Art thou sound and healthy?" When the man answered that he was the Prophet angrily said, "Then thou art one of the brothers of the devil." VALIDITY OF MARRIAGE.--Marriage, according to Mohammedan law, is simply a civil contract, and its validity does not depend upon any religious ceremony. Though the civil contract is not required to be reduced to writing, its validity depends upon the consent of the parties, which is called "_ijab_" and "_gabul_," meaning declaration and acceptance; the presence of two male witnesses (or one male and two female witnesses); and a dower of not less than ten _dirhams_ to be settled on the woman. The omission of the settlement does not, however, invalidate the contract, for under any circumstances, the woman becomes entitled to her dower of ten _dirhams_ or more. It is a recognized principle that the capacity of each of the parties to a marriage is to be judged of by their respective _lex domicilii_. The capacity of a Mussulman domiciled in England will be regulated by the English law, but the capacity of one who is domiciled in the _Belâd-ul-Islâm_, or Mohammedan country, by the provisions of Mohammedan law. We are told by the highest authorities on Islamic law that the three principal conditions which are requisite for a proper marriage are: understanding, puberty and freedom in the contracting parties. The Mohammedan law fixes no arbitrary age at which either male or female is competent to marry. Besides understanding, puberty and freedom, the capacity to marry requires that there should be no legal disability or bar to the union of the parties; that in fact they should not be within the prohibited degrees of relationship. LEGAL DISABILITIES.--There are nine prohibitions to marry, namely: 1. Consanguinity, which includes mother, grandmother, sister, niece and aunt. 2. Affinity, which includes mother-in-law, step-grandmother, daughter-in-law and step-granddaughter. 3. Fosterage. A man cannot marry his foster-mother, nor foster-sister, unless the foster-brother and sister were nursed by the same mother at intervals widely separated. But a man may marry the mother of his foster-sister, or the foster-mother of his sister. 4. Sister-in-law. A man may not marry his wife's sister during his wife's lifetime, unless she be divorced. 5. A man married to a free woman cannot marry a slave. 6. It is not lawful for a man to marry the wife or _mu'taddah_ of another, whether the _'iddah_ be on account of repudiation or death. That is, he cannot marry until the expiration of the woman's _'iddah_, or period of probation. 7. A Mohammedan cannot marry a Polytheist, but he may marry a Christian, Jewess, or a Sabean. 8. It is not lawful for a man to marry his own slave, or a woman her bondsman. 9. If a man pronounces three divorces upon a wife who is free, or two upon a slave, she is not lawful to him until she shall have been regularly espoused by another man, who having duly consummated the marriage, afterwards divorces her, or dies, and her _'iddah_ from him be accomplished. In the _Korân_ or _El-Kor'an_ we find in the chapter on women (Sura IV.) the law expressed as to certain prohibitions: "Forbidden to you are your mothers, and your daughters, and your sisters, and your aunts, both on the father's and mother's side, and your nieces on the brother's and sister's side, and your foster-mothers, and your foster-sisters, and the mothers of your wives, and your stepdaughters who are your wards, born of your wives to whom you have gone in: (but if ye have not gone in unto them, it shall be no sin in you to marry them) and the wives of your sons who proceed out of your loins; and ye may not have two sisters; except where it is already done. Verily, God is Indulgent, Merciful!" POLYGAMY.--According to Mohammedanism polygamy is a divine institution, and has the express sanction of the law. Mohammed restrained the practice of polygamy by limiting the maximum number of contemporaneous marriages, and by making absolute equity toward all obligatory on the man. A Mohammedan may marry four wives but no more. The law is thus stated: "You may marry two, three, or four wives, but not more." However, all true believers are enjoined that, "if you cannot deal equitably and justly with all you shall marry only one." In India more than ninety-five _per centum_ of the Mohammedans are at the present, either by conviction or necessity, monogamists. In Persia only two _per centum_ of the population enjoy the questionable luxury of plurality of wives. CELEBRATION OF MARRIAGE.--The _Nikah_, or celebration of the marriage contract, is preceded and followed by festive rejoicings, which have been variously described by Oriental travellers, but they are not parts of either the civil or religious ceremonies. The Mohammedan law appoints no specific religious ceremony, nor are any religious rites necessary for the contraction of a valid marriage. Legally, a marriage contracted between two persons possessing the capacity to enter into the contract is valid and binding, if entered into by mutual consent in the presence of witnesses. As a matter of practice a Mohammedan marriage is generally concluded by a formal ceremony which is ended by the _Qazi_ offering the following prayer: "O Great God! grant that mutual love may reign between this couple, as it existed between Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Joseph and Zalikha, Moses and Zipporah, his highness Mohammed and Ayishah, and his highness Ali al-Murtaza and Fatimatu'z-Zahra." HUSBAND AND WIFE.--A husband is not guardian over his wife any further than respects the rights of marriage, nor does the provision for her rest upon him any further than with respect to food, clothing and lodging. A husband must reside equally with each of his wives, unless one wife bestow her right upon another wife. A wife cannot give evidence in a court of law against her husband. If she becomes a widow she must observe mourning for the space of four months and ten days. In the event of her husband's death a wife is entitled to a portion of her husband's estate, in addition to her claim of dower, the claim of dower taking precedence of all other claims on the estate. "The women," says the Koran, "ought to behave toward their husbands in like manner as their husbands toward them, according to what is just." When the husband has left the place of conjugal domicile without making any arrangements for his wife's support, the judge is authorized by law to make an order that her maintenance shall be paid out of any fund or property which the husband may have left in deposit or in trust, or invested in any trade or business. When a woman abandons the conjugal domicile without any valid reason, she is not entitled to maintenance from her husband. The Mohammedan law lays down distinctly that a wife is bound to live with her husband, and to follow him wherever he wishes to go; and that on her refusing to do so without sufficient or valid reason, the courts of justice, on a suit for restitution of conjugal rights by the husband, would order her to live with her husband. The obligation of the wife, however, to live with her husband is not absolute. The law recognizes circumstances which justify her refusal to live with him. Although the condition of women under Mohammedan law is most unsatisfactory, it must be admitted that Mohammed effected a vast and marked improvement in the condition of the female population of Arabia. Amongst the Arabs who inhabited the peninsula of Arabia the condition of women was extremely degraded, for amongst the pagan Arabs a woman was a mere chattel. The Koran created a great reformation in the condition of women. For the first time in the history of Oriental legislation the principle of equality between the sexes was approached. DIVORCE.--The Mohammedan law of divorce is founded upon express injunctions contained in the Koran, as well as in the Traditions, and its rules occupy an important part of all Mohammedan works on jurisprudence. These rules may be summarized thus: The thing which is lawful but disliked by God is divorce. A husband may divorce his wife without any misbehaviour on her part, or without assigning any cause. There is an irregular form of divorce in which the husband repudiates his wife by three sentences, either express or metaphorical, as for example: "Thou art divorced! Thou art divorced! Thou art divorced!" The Mohammedan who thus divorces his wife is held in the _Hidayah_ to violate the law, but the divorce is legal. A sick man may divorce his wife, even though he be on his death-bed. An agent or agents may be appointed by a husband to divorce his wife. In addition to the will or caprice of the husband, there are also certain conditions which require a divorce. The following are causes for divorce, but generally require to be ratified by a decree from the _Qazi_ or judge: 1. _Jubb._ That is, when the husband has been by any cause deprived of his organ of generation. This condition is called _majbub_, and if it existed before the marriage the wife can obtain instant divorce. 2. _Unnah._ Impotence of either husband or wife. 3. Inequality of race or tribe. 4. Insufficient dower. (If the stipulated dowry is not given when demanded.) 5. Refusal of Islam. If one of the parties embrace Islam, the judge must offer it to the other three distinct times, and if he or she refuse to embrace the faith, divorce follows. 6. Unjust accusation of adultery by a husband against his wife. 7. If a wife becomes the proprietor of her husband or the husband becomes the proprietor of his slave wife divorce takes place. 8. An invalid marriage of any kind, arising from consanguinity or affinity of parties, or other causes. 9. The executed vow of a husband not to have sexual intercourse with his wife for as long as four months. 10. Difference of country. As, for example, if a husband flee from a non-Moslem country to a country of Islam and his wife refuses to accompany him. 11. Apostasy from Islam. The Greek Church holds that marriage is dissoluble in case of adultery, but not till a probationary period has elapsed during which a bishop or priest mediates with a view to reconciliation. A fourth marriage is unlawful. When a man or woman apostatizes from Islam, then an immediate dissolution of the marriage takes place, whether the apostasy be of the man or of the woman, without a judicial decree. If both husband and wife apostatize at the same time, their marriage bond remains; and if at any future time the parties again return to Islam, no remarriage is necessary to constitute them man and wife. There is a form of divorce known as _khula_ which is when a husband and wife disagreeing, or for any other cause, the wife on payment of a compensation or ransom to the husband, is permitted by law to obtain from him a release from the marriage tie. _Mubara'ah_ is a divorce which is effected by mutual release. A COMPARISON.--When compared with the Mosaic law it will be seen that by the latter, divorce was only sanctioned when there was "_some uncleanness_" in the wife, and whilst in Islam a husband can take back his divorced wife, in the law of Moses it was not permitted. See Deut. xxiv., 1-4. IDDAH OR IDDAT.--This is the term of probation incumbent upon a woman in consequence of a dissolution of marriage, either by divorce or the death of her husband. After a divorce the period is three months, and after the death of her husband four months and ten days, both periods being enjoined by the Koran. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE: 1. Sexual intercourse between the divorced persons becomes unlawful. 2. The wife is free to marry another husband after the completion of her _iddah_; or immediately if the marriage was never consummated. 3. The husband may complete his legal number of four wives without counting the divorced one, or may marry a woman who could not be lawfully joined with the divorced one, for example, her sister, after the completion of her _iddah_ but not before. 4. If the marriage has been consummated before the divorce, the whole of the unpaid dower becomes immediately payable by the husband to the wife, and is enforceable like any other debt if the marriage had not been consummated and the amount of dower was specified in the contract, he is liable for half that amount; if none was specified, he must give the divorced wife a present suitable to her rank, or their value. But the wife has no right to anything if the divorce took place by her wish, or in consequence of any disqualifications on her side, as for instance, her apostasy. 5. The wife is entitled to be maintained by her husband during the _iddah_ on the same scale as before the divorce, conditionally on submitting to her husband's control as regards her place of residence and general behaviour. But on completion of her _iddah_ she ceases to have any claim for maintenance. CHAPTER XXV. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. The United States as such, that is, in its Federal capacity, has no single system of marriage and divorce laws applicable to all the States and Territories. The purpose of the Constitution of the United States is to maintain by its federal structure a strong national government, while recognizing each of the States which make up the federation to be so far as is consistent with the motive of the Union, sovereign commonwealth. When one considers this wonderful federation of States and Territories, with nearly half a hundred separate governments each making and interpreting its domestic laws, and yet all parts of, and working in harmony with, the central or Federal Government, the justice of Gladstone's tribute to the American Constitution as "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man" is apparent. The laws of marriage and divorce in the various States and Territories cannot therefore be ascertained from a single legislative or judicial source. The law of the several jurisdictions consists not only of legislative enactments, but of judicial construction and interpretation of such legislation. Fortunately the tendency is toward uniformity of legislation among the States, especially on the important subject of marriage and divorce, and such differences as exist are pointed out substantially in this chapter when each State or Territory is considered separately. The Congress, or national legislature, has power to legislate only upon such subjects as the Federal Constitution marks out for it, and all powers not granted to the Federal government remain with the several States. The regulation of marriage and divorce is one of the most important domestic concerns which remains within the jurisdiction of a State. Article IV., Section 3, of the Constitution of the United States expressly grants to Congress exclusive power to prescribe laws for the Territories of the United States. Just as each State has a separate judicial system so the Federal Government has its separate courts, which have no power to interfere with the proceedings or judgments of the State courts unless some principle of the Federal Constitution or a national law is challenged. ESSENTIALS TO MARRIAGE.--There are three requisites to a lawful marriage in all of the States and Territories of the United States. These are: 1. First, that the marriage is _monogamous_. That is, the Federal courts and the courts of the several States only recognize as a true marriage one which in addition to being valid in other respects is a voluntary union of one man and one woman for life to the exclusion of all others. 2. The parties must be competent according to the _lex loci contractus_, or the law where the contract was concluded. 3. There must be free consent on the part of both of the contracting parties. INTERSTATE COMITY.--As Wharton points out in his "Conflict of Laws," marriage is not merely a contract but an international institution of Christendom. Often complications arise out of some difference between the law of marriage and divorce in the State where a marriage is concluded, or a divorce effected, and the law of the State where one or both of the parties may after the marriage or divorce acquire a domicile. The guiding rule in such cases is that if a marriage or divorce is valid in the State or Territory where it was concluded or effected, it is valid in all of the States and Territories of the United States. PROOF OF MARRIAGE.--There are various methods of proving the existence of a marriage. Where the parties live together ostensibly as husband and wife, demeaning themselves toward each other as such, and are received into society and treated by their friends and relations as having and being entitled to that status, the law will, in favour of morality and decency, presume that they have been legally married. This is the rule accepted with but slight qualifications in all of the States. The cohabitation of the parties coupled with the general reputation of being husband and wife is, however, at the best _prima facie_ evidence sufficient for the purposes of a civil suit. In criminal prosecutions for adultery or bigamy, marriage is a necessary ingredient of the offence, and must be directly established. PROOF OF MARRIAGES ABROAD.--In the absence of special statutes requiring a marriage abroad, or in another State to be proven in a particular manner, a foreign marriage can only be established by authenticated copies of the original records, or by proving as a matter of fact what the legal requirements for marriage are in the other country or State, together with proof that such requirements have been complied with. Of course, it is always necessary to identify the parties to any record. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--By an Act of Congress applicable to all the Territories marriage within and not including the fourth degree of consanguinity computed according to the civil law is forbidden. This is with but slight variation the rule adopted by each of the States. SOURCES OF LAW.--The laws of marriage in the several States and Territories originate from the law on that subject as it existed in England at the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, as subsequently modified by State legislation and local judicial interpretation. The law of divorce as it exists in the several States is entirely of local creation. In the remainder of this chapter each State and Territory of the United States and the District of Columbia is considered separately. ALABAMA. MARRIAGE.--The marriageable age for males begins at 17 years and for females at 14 years of age. Males under twenty-one years and females under eighteen years require the consent of their parents to lawfully conclude marriage. The essence of marriage which is considered as a civil contract is the free consent of both parties. IMPEDIMENTS.--The son must not marry his mother or stepmother, or the sister of his father or mother, or the widow of his uncle. The brother must not marry his sister or half-sister, or the daughter of his brother or half-brother, or of his sister or half-sister. The father must not marry his daughter or granddaughter, or the widow of his son. No man shall marry the daughter of his wife, or the daughter of the son or daughter of his wife; and all such marriages are declared incestuous. FORBIDDEN MARRIAGES.--Bigamous marriages; incestuous marriages; miscegenation--between blacks and whites; and marriage of a female compelled by menace, force or duress. Such marriages involve a criminal prosecution. CELEBRATION.--A marriage may be concluded before any regular minister of religion, any judge of a court of record, or a justice of the peace. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. Impotency. 2. Adultery. 3. Voluntary abandonment from bed and board for two years. 4. Imprisonment in the penitentiary for two years, the sentence being for seven years or longer. 5. The commission of the crime against nature. 6. Habitual drunkenness. 7. In favour of the husband, when the wife was pregnant at the time of marriage without his knowledge or agency. 8. In favour of the wife, when the husband has committed actual violence on her person attended with danger to life or health, or when from his conduct there is reasonable apprehension of such violence. LIMITED DIVORCES.--Decrees of separation from bed and board are granted to either spouse on the ground of cruelty. REMARRIAGE.--On February 13, 1903, an act was approved making it unlawful for either party to marry again after a decree of divorce has been granted, until after the expiration of the time allowed for taking an appeal (sixty days from the date of the decree), as well as during the pendency of an appeal, if one is taken. ALASKA. In the Territory of Alaska marriage is deemed a civil contract. Marriages may be solemnized before a qualified clergyman, judge or magistrate. Marriage is forbidden between persons who are related to each other within, but not including, the fourth degree of consanguinity. These degrees are computed according to the rules of the Roman Law. DIVORCE.--The following are legal causes for an absolute divorce: Impotency existing at the time of marriage and continuing to the commencement of the suit; adultery; conviction of felony; wilful desertion continued for the period of two years, or more; cruel and inhuman treatment calculated to impair health or endanger life; and gross and habitual drunkenness. ARIZONA. MARRIAGE.--In this newly admitted State marriage is treated as a purely civil contract. A male must be at least eighteen and a female at least fourteen years of age to lawfully contract marriage. The consent of the parents is required in the case of males under 21 and females under 18. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--All marriages between parents and children, including grandparents and grandchildren of every degree; between brothers and sisters of the half as well as the whole blood; between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews; and between first cousins are declared to be incestuous and void. The preceding paragraph extends to illegitimate as well as legitimate children and relations. NEGROES, MONGOLIANS AND INDIANS.--Marriage between whites and negroes, between whites and Mongolians, or between whites and Indians are absolutely void. PRELIMINARIES.--A marriage license is required. CELEBRATION.--Marriage may be concluded before any minister of the Gospel, judge of a court of record, or justice of the peace. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. When adultery has been committed by either husband or wife. 2. When one of the parties was physically incompetent at the time of marriage. 3. When the husband or wife is guilty of excesses, cruel treatment, or outrages toward the other. 4. In favour of the husband, when the wife shall have voluntarily left his bed or board for the space of six months with the intention of abandonment. 5. In favour of the wife, when the husband shall have left her for six months with the intention of abandonment. 6. For habitual intemperance. 7. Wilful neglect to provide for his wife the necessaries and comforts of life for six months. 8. When the husband shall have been taken in adultery with another woman. 9. In favour of either husband or wife, when the other shall have been convicted, after marriage, of a felony, and imprisonment in any prison. ARKANSAS. The minimum age for marriage is 17 for males; 14 for females. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years of age. The prohibited degrees are the same as in Alabama. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. Impotency. 2. Desertion for one year. 3. Previous existing marriage. 4. Conviction of felony or infamous crime. 5. Habitual drunkenness continued for one year. 6. Cruel and barbarous treatment endangering life. 7. Indignities which render condition and cohabitation intolerable. 8. Adultery. LIMITED DIVORCE.--Limited divorces are granted for the same causes. CALIFORNIA. MARRIAGE.--Marriage is defined as a personal relation arising out of a civil contract, to which the consent of parties capable of making it is necessary. Consent alone will not constitute marriage; it must be followed by a solemnization authorized by the code. A male must be at least eighteen and a female at least fifteen to conclude marriage. Parental consent is required if the male is under twenty-one years or the female under eighteen years. Such consent is not required if the minor has been previously lawfully married. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriages between parents and children, ancestors and descendants of every degree, and between brothers and sisters of the half as well as the whole blood, and between uncles and nieces or aunts and nephews are incestuous and void, whether the relationship is legitimate or illegitimate. Marriages between white persons and mulattoes or between white persons and Mongolians are prohibited. CELEBRATION.--Marriages may be celebrated before any justice of the supreme court, any judge of the superior court, any justice of the peace; or before a priest or minister of the Gospel of any sect. HUSBAND AND WIFE.--A married woman may acquire, hold and control property of every description the same as a single woman. DIVORCE.--The following are legal causes for an absolute divorce: Adultery; extreme cruelty; wilful desertion; wilful neglect; habitual intemperance; and conviction by either party of a felony. All decrees of divorce are first granted _nisi_, and an absolute or final decree cannot be secured until one year after the entry of the decree _nisi_. Marriages may be annulled on the following grounds: That the party petitioning for annulment was under age at the date of marriage; that the former husband or wife of either party was living and the former marriage undissolved at the time of the marriage in question; that one of the parties was of unsound mind when the marriage was concluded; that the marriage was procured by fraud; that the marriage was procured by coercion; that at the time of the marriage one of the parties was impotent, and such physical incapacity continues to the date of bringing the suit for annulment. COLORADO. MARRIAGE.--Marriage is a civil contract. The minimum marriageable age for males and for females has not been fixed by statute. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years or for females under 18 years. IMPEDIMENTS.--All marriages between parents and children, including grandparents and grandchildren, of every degree; between brothers and sisters of the half as well as of the whole blood; and between uncles and nieces and aunts and nephews are declared to be incestuous and void. This provision applies to illegitimate as well as to legitimate children. The statute contains a provision that persons living in that portion of the State acquired from Mexico are permitted to marry according to the custom of that country. No person can lawfully conclude marriage within one year after divorce. Marriages are also forbidden between whites and negroes or mulattoes. A marriage license is required. ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. Impotency. 2. A husband or wife living. 3. Adultery. 4. Desertion for one year. 5. Cruelty. 6. Failure to support for one year. 7. Habitual drunkenness for one year. 8. Conviction of felony. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. MARRIAGE.--A civil contract. The minimum age for males is 16 years, for females 14 years. The consent of the father or mother is necessary in marriages of males under the age of twenty-one years, and of females under the age of eighteen years, unless the party under age has been previously lawfully married. IMPEDIMENTS.--A man shall not marry his grandmother, grandfather's wife, wife's grandmother, father's sister, mother's sister, mother, stepmother, wife's mother, daughter, wife's daughter, son's wife, sister, son's daughter, daughter's daughter, son's son's wife, daughter's son's wife, wife's son's daughter, wife's daughter's daughter, brother's daughter, sister's daughter. A woman shall not marry her grandfather, grandmother's husband, husband's grandfather, father's brother, mother's brother, father, stepfather, husband's father, son, husband's son, daughter's husband, brother, son's son, daughter's son, son's daughter's husband, daughter's daughter's husband, husband's son's son, husband's daughter's son, brother's son, sister's son. CELEBRATION.--Marriage may be solemnized before a judge of any court of record, or any justice of the peace, or by any minister or ordained person who has furnished proof of his official capacity to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. Licenses to marry are issued by the clerk of the Supreme Court upon an affidavit showing that the contracting parties are competent and that all the requirements of law have been complied with. DIVORCE.--There is only one cause for a divorce, namely, adultery. A judicial separation or divorce from bed and board may be granted because of cruelty, unjustifiable desertion or drunkenness. Marriages procured by fraud or coercion, or between parties incapable by reason of insanity or non-age of concluding the contract, can be annulled. Petitioners in matrimonial causes must have been bona fide residents of the District of Columbia before instituting proceedings. CONNECTICUT. MARRIAGE.--No age is fixed by statute at which minors are capable of contracting marriage. The parents or guardians must give consent in writing to the registrar before a license is issued if either party is a minor. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--No man shall marry his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, aunt, niece, stepmother or stepdaughter; no woman shall marry her father, grandfather, son, grandson, brother, uncle, nephew, stepfather or stepson. All such marriages are declared to be incestuous. CELEBRATION.--Any ordained clergyman of any State, any judge or justice of the peace may solemnize marriage. No special form of celebration is required. ANNULMENT.--Whenever, from any cause, any marriage is void the superior court has jurisdiction, upon complaint, to pass a decree declaring it so. LEGITIMACY OF CHILDREN.--Children born before marriage whose parents afterwards intermarry are deemed legitimate and inherit equally with other children. DIVORCE.--The Superior Court has exclusive jurisdiction and may grant absolute divorce to any man or woman for the following offences committed by the other: Adultery, fraudulent contract, wilful desertion for three years with total neglect of duty, seven years' absence unheard from, habitual intemperance, intolerable cruelty, sentence to imprisonment for life, or any infamous crime involving a violation of conjugal duty and punishable by imprisonment in State prison. Parties divorced may marry again. There is no limited divorce recognized by the laws of Connecticut. DELAWARE. MARRIAGE.--While no age is fixed by statute as to when males or females may conclude marriage, in case of a marriage under the age of 18 years for males and 16 years for females a divorce can be obtained for fraud for want of age, in the absence of voluntary ratification after reaching that age. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. IMPEDIMENTS.--Degrees of consanguinity: A man may not marry his mother, father's sister, mother's sister, sister, daughter or the daughter of his son or daughter. A woman may not marry her father, father's brother, mother's brother, brother, son, or the son of her son or daughter. Degrees of affinity: A man may not marry his father's wife, son's wife, son's daughter, wife's daughter, or the daughter of his wife's son or daughter. A woman may not marry her mother's husband, daughter's husband, husband's son, or the son of her husband's son or daughter. Marriages between whites and negroes or mulattoes are prohibited. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.--They are adultery, bigamy, desertion for two years, habitual drunkenness for two years, extreme cruelty, or conviction after marriage of a crime, followed by continuous imprisonment for two years. The causes for divorce from bed and board are the same, with the addition of one other, namely, hopeless insanity of the husband. A marriage may be annulled for any of the following causes, existing at the time of the marriage: Incurable physical impotency; consanguinity; a former husband or wife living at the time of the marriage; fraud, force or coercion; insanity of either party; minority of either party, unless the marriage be confirmed after reaching proper age, to wit.: wife, 16 years; husband, 18 years. FLORIDA. MARRIAGE.--In order to be valid marriages must be celebrated before a qualified clergyman, judge, magistrate or notary public. Parties must be of sound mind, and the male at least seventeen years of age and the female at least fourteen years of age. DIVORCE.--Absolute divorce dissolving a marriage is granted by the courts for the following causes: 1. That the parties are within the degrees prohibited by law. 2. That the defendant is naturally impotent. 3. That the defendant has been guilty of adultery. 4. Extreme cruelty by defendant to complainant. 5. Habitual indulgence by defendant in violent and ungovernable temper. 6. Habitual intemperance of defendant. 7. Wilful, obstinate and continued desertion by defendant for one year. 8. That defendant has obtained a divorce in any other State or country. 9. That either party had a husband or wife living at the time of marriage. Judicial separations or divorces from bed and board are not granted in Florida. The petitioner called the complainant must have resided in the State two years, except where the defendant has been guilty of the act of adultery in the State, then any citizen of the State may obtain a divorce at any time, and the two years' residence shall not be required of complainant. A suit of divorce is commenced by a bill in chancery, and the general chancery practice of the State is followed throughout. A decree of divorce does not render illegitimate children born of the marriage, except in the case of a decree obtained on the ground that one of the parties had a previous spouse living at the time of the marriage. GEORGIA. MARRIAGE.--The marriageable age for males begins at 17 years and for females at 14 years. Females under 18 years of age require parental consent. To be able to contract marriage, a person must be of sound mind, of legal age of consent, and labouring under neither of the following disabilities: 1. Previous marriage undissolved. 2. Nearness of relationship by blood or marriage. 3. Impotency. To constitute an actual contract of marriage the parties must be consenting thereto voluntarily, and without any fraud practiced upon either. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriages between whites and persons of African descent are prohibited. A man shall not marry his stepmother, or mother-in-law, or daughter-in-law, or stepdaughter, or granddaughter of his wife. A woman shall not marry her corresponding relatives. Marriage is forbidden between ascendants and descendants. Any marriage within the Levitical degrees is a criminal offense. CELEBRATION.--Marriage is a civil contract and no form of solemnization is prescribed by statute. DIVORCE.--There are two forms of divorce in Georgia, a total divorce and a divorce from bed and board. The causes for total divorce are: 1. Intermarriage by persons within the prohibited degrees of relationship. 2. Mental incapacity at time of marriage. 3. Impotency at time of marriage. 4. Force, menaces, duress or fraud in obtaining marriage. 5. Pregnancy of wife at time of marriage, unknown to husband. 6. Adultery in either party after marriage. 7. Wilful and continued desertion for term of three years. 8. Conviction for an offense involving moral turpitude where penalty is two years or more in penitentiary. 9. In cases of cruel treatment, or habitual intoxication, jury may grant either total or partial divorce. IDAHO. MARRIAGE.--The marriageable age for males begins at 18 years and for females at the same age. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriage is prohibited between ascendants and descendants of every degree, and between brothers and sisters of the half as well as the whole blood, and between uncles and nieces, or aunts and nephews, whether the relationship is legitimate or illegitimate. Marriage of whites with negroes or mulattoes is also prohibited. A marriage license is required. CELEBRATION.--The law prescribes no particular form of solemnization, but the parties must declare in the presence of the celebrant that they take each other as husband and wife. Two witnesses must be present. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Extreme cruelty. 3. Wilful desertion for one year. 4. Wilful neglect for one year. 5. Habitual intemperance for one year. 6. Conviction of felony. 7. Permanent insanity. There is no limited form of divorce recognized. DEFENCES: 1. Collusion. 2. Condonation. 3. Recrimination. ILLINOIS. MARRIAGE.--To marry with parental consent, males must be at least 18 years and females 16 years of age; without such consent, males must be at least 21 years and females 18 years. Marriage is a civil contract and may be celebrated before a qualified clergyman or magistrate. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriages between parents and children, including grandparents and grandchildren of every degree, between brothers and sisters of the half as well as of the whole blood, between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, and between cousins of the first degree are declared to be incestuous and void. This includes illegitimate as well as legitimate children and relations. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. When either party at the time of marriage was and continues to be naturally impotent. 2. When he or she had a wife or husband living at the time of such marriage. 3. When either party has committed adultery subsequent to the marriage. 4. When either party has wilfully deserted or absented himself or herself from the wife or husband, without any reasonable cause, for the space of two years. 5. When either party has been guilty of habitual drunkenness for the space of two years. 6. When either party has attempted the life of the other by poison or other means showing malice. 7. When either party has been guilty of extreme and repeated cruelty. 8. When either party has been convicted of felony or other infamous crime. Limited divorces are not granted in this State. INDIAN TERRITORY. The laws of marriage and divorce in the Indian Territory are the same as those of Arkansas, except in the matter of marriage impediments, and in a few minor details. By an Act of Congress applicable to all Territories of the United States, marriages within and not including the four degrees of consanguinity, computed according to the civil law, are forbidden. INDIANA. MARRIAGE.--Males must be at least 18 years and females 16 years of age. Marriage is a civil contract which can be celebrated before any qualified clergyman, judge or magistrate. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriages between ascendants and descendants, or being persons of nearer kin than second cousin, are prohibited. A lawful marriage cannot be concluded between a white person and another person possessed of one-eighth or more of negro blood. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Impotency existing at the time of the marriage. 3. Abandonment for two years. 4. Cruel and inhuman treatment of either party by the other. 5. Habitual drunkenness of either party. 6. The failure of the husband to make reasonable provision for his family for a period of two years. 7. The conviction, subsequent to the marriage, in any country, of either party, of an infamous crime. Limited divorces are granted for husband's desertion, or failure to support his wife. IOWA. MARRIAGE.--A male must be at least 16 and a female 14 to conclude marriage. IMPEDIMENTS.--The prohibited degrees of consanguinity and affinity are the same as those of Illinois. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. Against the husband when he has committed adultery subsequent to the marriage. 2. When he wilfully deserts his wife and absents himself without a reasonable cause for the space of two years. 3. When he is convicted of a felony after the marriage. 4. When, after marriage, he becomes addicted to habitual drunkenness. 5. When he is guilty of such inhuman treatment as to endanger the life of his wife. 6. Against the wife for the causes above specified, and also when the wife at the time of the marriage was pregnant by another than her husband, unless such husband have an illegitimate child or children then living, which was unknown to the wife at the time of their marriage. There is no limited divorce allowed in this State. KANSAS. MARRIAGE.--No male under 17 years or female under 15 years of age may contract marriage without the consent of their parents and the probate judge of the district. IMPEDIMENTS.--The prohibited degrees are the same as those of Iowa. Marriage is a civil contract which may be celebrated before a clergyman or magistrate. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.--Abandonment for one year; adultery; impotency; extreme cruelty; fraudulent contract; habitual drunkenness; gross neglect of duty; the conviction of a felony and imprisonment in the penitentiary therefor subsequent to the marriage. KENTUCKY. MARRIAGE.--A male must be at least 14 years and a female 12 years. Marriages below these ages are prohibited and void, but the courts having general equity jurisdiction may declare void a marriage when the male was under 16, or the female under 14 years of age at the time of the marriage, and the marriage was without the consent of the father, mother, guardian, or other person having the proper charge of his or her person, and has not been ratified by cohabitation after that age. As a civil contract marriage may be celebrated either civilly or religiously. IMPEDIMENTS.--Same as in Kansas, with the addition that marriages between whites and negroes or mulattoes are prohibited. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Abandonment for one year. 2. Adulterous cohabitation. 3. Condemnation for felony. 4. Husband's confirmed drunkenness. 5. Wife's habitual drunkenness. 6. Wife's pregnancy by another man. 7. Adultery on part of wife. Plaintiff must have been a resident of the State at least one year. LOUISIANA. MARRIAGE.--A civil contract which may be celebrated by a minister, priest, judge or magistrate. No special form required. Males must be at least 14 years and females 12 years. Parental consent necessary unless minor is twenty-one years of age. The prohibited degrees of consanguinity and affinity are the same as those of all the Southern States. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Condemnation of either spouse for infamous offence. 3. Habitual intemperance. 4. Cruel treatment. 5. Abandonment. 6. Attempt to kill. 7. Public defamation. 8. Flight from justice. In case of divorce on ground of adultery, the guilty party cannot marry his or her accomplice. MAINE. MARRIAGE.--Minimum age not fixed by statute. Parental consent necessary for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. No special form of marriage ceremony required. IMPEDIMENTS.--Same as those of Massachusetts. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Impotency. 3. Extreme cruelty. 4. Three years' utter desertion. 5. Gross and confirmed habits of intoxication. 6. Cruel and abusive treatment. 7. When the husband being of sufficient ability, grossly, or wantonly and cruelly, refuses to provide suitable maintenance for his wife. The procedure and effects of divorce are almost identical with those of Massachusetts. MARYLAND. MARRIAGE.--The minimum age for marriage is not fixed by statute, but parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 16 years. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriage is prohibited between ascendants and descendants, and collaterally between all persons related by consanguinity and affinity as set forth in the list of impediments in the statement of the law of Massachusetts. Marriage is also forbidden between whites and negroes, or persons of negro descent. FORMALITIES.--Marriage licenses are required, and a ceremonial solemnization is essential. Marriage may be solemnized "by any minister of the Gospel, or other officer or person authorized by the laws of this State to solemnize marriage." CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. The impotence of either party at the time of the marriage. 2. Any cause which renders a marriage null _ab initio_. 3. Adultery. 4. Abandonment continued uninterruptedly for at least three years. 5. When the woman before marriage has been guilty of illicit carnal intercourse with another man, the same being unknown to her husband at the time of the marriage. Limited divorces granted for cruelty of treatment. All divorces are at first granted _nisi_--provisionally--to become absolute on application six months afterward. MASSACHUSETTS. MARRIAGE.--The minimum age for marriage is not fixed by law, but males under 21 years and females under 18 years must have parental consent. IMPEDIMENTS.--No man shall marry his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, stepmother, sister, grandfather's wife, son's wife, grandson's wife, wife's mother, wife's grandmother, wife's daughter, wife's granddaughter, brother's daughter, sister's daughter, father's sister or mother's sister. No woman shall marry her father, grandfather, son, grandson, stepfather, brother, grandmother's husband, daughter's husband, granddaughter's husband, husband's father, husband's grandfather, husband's son, husband's grandson, brother's son, sister's son, father's brother or mother's brother. In all cases in which the relationship is founded on marriage the prohibition continues, notwithstanding the dissolution by death or divorce of the marriage by which the affinity is created, unless the divorce is for a cause which shows such marriage to have been originally unlawful or void. FORMALITIES.--Marriage may be solemnized by a minister of the Gospel, a duly qualified rabbi, or a justice of the peace. No special form of ceremony is required. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Impotency. 3. Extreme cruelty. 4. Utter desertion continued for three consecutive years next prior to the filing of the libel. 5. Gross and confirmed habits of intoxication caused by the voluntary use of intoxicating liquor, opium or other drugs. 6. Cruel and abusive treatment. 7. On the libel of the wife, when the husband, being of sufficient ability, grossly, or wantonly and cruelly, refuses or neglects to provide suitable maintenance for her. 8. When either party has separated from the other without his or her consent, and has united with a religious sect that professes to believe the relation of husband and wife void or unlawful, and has continued united with such sect or society for three years, refusing during that term to cohabit with the other party. 9. When either party has been sentenced to confinement at hard labour for life or for five years or more in the State prison, or in jail, or house of correction. ALIMONY.--Temporary and permanent alimony may be granted to the wife. FORM OF DECREE.--Decrees of divorces are in the first instance _nisi_, and become absolute six months afterward upon application; unless the court for sufficient cause, on the petition of any interested party, shall otherwise order. MICHIGAN. MARRIAGE.--The minimum age for males is 18 years and for females 16 years. Parental consent is necessary for a female under 18 years. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Same as in Massachusetts, with the exception that marriages between first cousins are prohibited in Michigan. FORMALITIES.--License is required. No particular form of celebration prescribed. Marriage may be solemnized by any qualified clergyman, judge or justice of the peace. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Impotency at time of marriage. 3. Sentence of either party to prison for three years or more. 4. Desertion continued two years. 5. Habitual drunkenness. 6. In the court's discretion, a divorce may be granted to any resident whose husband or wife has obtained a divorce in another State. Limited or absolute divorces may also be granted for extreme cruelty; utter desertion for two years; and wanton failure of husband to support his wife. MINNESOTA. MARRIAGE.--The minimum age for males is 18 years, for females 15 years. Parental consent is required for marriage of male under 21 years or female under 18 years. The prohibited degrees of consanguinity and affinity are the same as in Michigan. No particular form of marriage ceremony is prescribed, but a license is necessary. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Impotency. 3. Cruel and inhuman treatment. 4. Sentence to State prison. 5. Wilful desertion continued for three years. 6. Habitual drunkenness. Limited divorces are granted to women only on the grounds of husband's cruelty, abandonment, or such conduct on husband's part as makes cohabitation unsafe. MISSISSIPPI. MARRIAGE.--The minimum age for marriage is not fixed by statute. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. The prohibited degrees of relationship are the same as in Massachusetts. Marriages of whites with negroes, mulattoes, or persons having more than one-eighth negro blood, and marriages between Mongolians, or persons having more than one-eighth Mongolian blood, are prohibited. Marriage cannot be concluded without a license duly issued. It may be solemnized by either clergyman or magistrate. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Relationship within prohibited degrees. 2. Impotency. 3. Adultery. 4. Sentence to penitentiary. 5. Wilful desertion continued two years. 6. Habitual drunkenness. 7. Pregnancy of the wife at marriage, by another man, unknown to husband. 8. Habitual cruelty. 9. If either party had another husband or wife at time of second marriage. 10. Insanity. 11. Habitual use of opium, morphine or other drug. Limited divorces are not granted. MISSOURI. MARRIAGE.--The minimum age at which marriage can be concluded is 15 years for males and 12 years for females. Parental consent is necessary for males under 21 years or females under 18 years. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Marriage is forbidden between ascendants and descendants, between brothers and sisters of the half as well as of the whole blood, and between uncles and nieces, and aunts and nephews. This applies to legitimate or illegitimate kindred. Marriage is also prohibited between whites and negroes. FORMALITIES.--No particular form of marriage is prescribed, but a license is necessary. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Impotency. 2. Adultery. 3. Absence without reasonable cause for one year. 4. Former marriage undissolved. 5. Conviction of felony or infamous crime. 6. Habitual drunkenness. 7. Cruel treatment. 8. Intolerable indignities. 9. Vagrancy of husband. 10. Conviction prior to marriage by either party of felony or infamous crime, unknown to the other spouse. 11. Pregnancy at time of marriage of wife by another man. Upon granting a divorce the court will make such direction concerning custody of children, and maintenance of wife, as justice may require. MONTANA. MARRIAGE.--Males cannot marry under 18 years and females under 16 years. If either party is a minor parental consent is required. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriages between ancestors and descendants of every degree, between brothers and sisters of whole or half blood, between uncles and nieces, or aunts and nephews, legitimate or illegitimate, are forbidden. FORMALITIES.--Outside of license, no particular formalities are prescribed. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Extreme cruelty. 3. Wilful desertion. 4. Wilful neglect. 5. Habitual intemperance. 6. Conviction of felony. NEBRASKA. MARRIAGE.--Males must be at least 18 and females 16 years of age to conclude marriage. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriages between ascendants and descendants, between brothers and sisters of whole or half blood, between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, and first cousins of the whole blood, are prohibited. CELEBRATION.--A marriage license is necessary, but no particular form of celebration is prescribed. GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Impotency at time of marriage. 3. Sentence to three years' imprisonment or more. 4. Abandonment for two years. 5. Habitual drunkenness. 6. Extreme cruelty. 7. Utter desertion. 8. When husband unreasonably and cruelly refuses to provide maintenance for wife. Limited divorce may be obtained on the three last grounds. NEVADA. MARRIAGE.--Males cannot marry under 18 years or females under 16 years. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Marriages between persons nearer of kin than second cousins of the whole blood or cousins of the half blood. FORMALITIES.--No particular form prescribed, but it is unlawful for clergyman or magistrate to solemnize marriage without having a license presented. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Impotency at time of marriage. 2. Adultery. 3. Wilful desertion for one year. 4. Conviction of felony or infamous crime. 5. Habitual drunkenness. 6. Extreme cruelty. 7. Neglect of husband to provide necessaries of life. Upon granting a decree of divorce the court shall make such other direction regarding disposition of property and custody of children as justice may demand. NEW HAMPSHIRE. MARRIAGE.--A male cannot marry under 14 years or a female under 13 years. There is no statutory requirement for parental consent. PROHIBITED DEGREE.--Same as in Massachusetts. Common law marriage is recognized. FORMALITIES.--License is necessary, but no particular form of ceremony is required. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Impotency. 2. Adultery. 3. Extreme cruelty. 4. Conviction of crime punishable in this State for more than one year. 5. Treatment detrimental to health. 6. Treatment to endanger reason. 7. Three years' absence. 8. Habitual drunkenness. 9. When either party joins a sect opposed to cohabitation between husband and wife. 10. Desertion for three years. Upon granting a decree of divorce the court will make such order as to maintenance of wife and custody of children as the facts shall call for. NEW JERSEY. MARRIAGE.--No minimum age is fixed for marriage. Males under 21 years and females under 18 years must have consent of parents. IMPEDIMENTS.--A man shall not marry any of his ancestors or descendants, or his sister, or the daughter of his brother or sister, or the sister of his father or mother, whether such collateral kindred be of the whole or half blood. A woman shall not marry any of her ancestors or descendants, or her brother, or the son of her brother or sister, or the brother of her father or mother, whether such collateral kindred be of the whole or half blood. FORMALITIES.--A marriage license is necessary only for non-residents of State. No special form of ceremony is prescribed, except that when solemnized by a religious society it must be according to the rules and usages of such society. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Wilful, continued and obstinate desertion for the term of two years. 3. When either party was, at the time of marriage, incapable of consenting thereto and the marriage has not been subsequently ratified. LIMITED DIVORCES. Granted for 1. Desertion. 2. Adultery. 3. Extreme cruelty. In every case, except for extreme cruelty, the party asking for a limited divorce must allege conscientious scruples against applying for an absolute divorce. JURISDICTION.--The Court of Chancery has exclusive jurisdiction in divorce matters. ANNULMENT.--A marriage may be annulled because: 1. One of the parties had another wife or husband living at the time of marriage. 2. When the parties are within the degrees prohibited by law. NEW MEXICO. MARRIAGE.--A male must be at least 18 years and a female 15 years to conclude marriage. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Marriage between ascendants and descendants, between brothers and sisters, of whole or half blood, between uncles and aunts, and nieces and nephews are void. FORMALITIES.--License is necessary. No special form of ceremony required. The marriage may be solemnized by an ordained clergyman, civil magistrate or religious society. GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Cruel and inhuman treatment. 3. Abandonment. 4. Habitual drunkenness. 5. Neglect of husband to support his wife. 6. Impotency. 7. Pregnancy by wife, at the time of marriage, by another than her husband, without husband's knowledge. 8. Conviction and imprisonment for a felony. NEW YORK. MARRIAGE.--Marriage is a civil contract, to which the consent of the parties capable in law of making the contract is essential. Minors become capable of contracting marriage upon completing their eighteenth year of age. A marriage is void from the time its nullity is declared by a court of competent jurisdiction if either party thereto was under the age of eighteen at the time it was concluded. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriage between an ancestor and a descendant, between a brother and sister, of either the whole or half blood, between an uncle and niece, or an aunt and nephew, whether the relatives are legitimate or illegitimate, is incestuous and void. The defeated party in an action of divorce against whom a decree has been granted on the grounds of adultery is prohibited from marrying again during the lifetime of the successful party. However, the court which granted the decree has power so to modify it as to permit such marriage after five years. COMMON LAW MARRIAGE.--By an act which became effective April 12, 1901, the law of New York has required a contract of marriage to be signed by the parties and witnesses acknowledged and recorded. Since that time a "common law" marriage, or one established simply by cohabitation and reputation, has not been recognized. MARRIAGE LICENSES.--The legislature of New York, at its session in 1907, passed an act providing for marriage licenses, which became effective January 1, 1908. Written consent of both parents or guardian must be given to the town or city clerk before he may issue license. If residents of the State, they must personally appear and execute the consent; if non-residents, it must be executed, acknowledged and certified. WHO MAY SOLEMNIZE MARRIAGE.--A clergyman or minister of any religion, or the leader, or the two assistant leaders, of the Society for Ethical Culture in New York City, justices and judges of courts of record, judges of the county courts, justices of the peace, mayors, recorders and aldermen of cities. MARRIAGE BY CONTRACT.--A lawful marriage may be concluded by a written contract of marriage signed by both parties, and at least two witnesses who shall subscribe the same, stating the place of residence of each of the parties and witnesses and the date and place of marriage, and acknowledged by the parties and witnesses in the manner required for the acknowledgment of a conveyance of real estate to entitle the same to be recorded. Such contract shall be filed, within six months after its execution, in the office of the clerk of the town or city in which the marriage was solemnized. JEWS AND QUAKERS.--Marriages among Quakers or Jews may be solemnized in the manner and according to the regulations of their respective societies. ENCOURAGEMENT OF MARRIAGE.--No marriage shall be deemed or adjudged invalid, nor shall the validity thereof be in any way affected on account of any want of authority in any person solemnizing the same, if consummated with a full belief on the part of the persons so married, or either of them, that they were lawfully joined in marriage. DIVORCE.--The only cause for absolute divorce is the adultery of either party. JURISDICTION.--The Supreme Court has exclusive original jurisdiction of actions for divorce. In an action for absolute divorce, both parties must have been residents of the State when the offense was committed; or must have been married within the State; or the plaintiff must have been a resident when the offense was committed, and also when the action was commenced; or when the offense was committed within the State, the plaintiff must have been a resident when the action was commenced. LIMITED DIVORCE.--A limited divorce, which is equivalent to a judicial separation in England, may be granted because of: 1. The cruel and inhuman treatment of the plaintiff by the defendant. 2. Such conduct, on the part of the defendant toward the plaintiff, as may render it unsafe and improper for the latter to cohabit with the former. 3. The abandonment of the plaintiff by the defendant. 4. When the wife is plaintiff, the neglect or refusal of the defendant to provide for her. In actions for limited divorce both parties must have been residents of the State when the action was commenced; or when the marriage took place within the State, the plaintiff must have been a resident thereof, when the action was commenced; or when the marriage took place out of the State, the parties must have become residents thereof, and have continued to be such at least one year, and the plaintiff must have been a resident when the action was commenced. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--An action to procure a decree declaring the marriage contract void and annulling the marriage may be maintained on any of the following grounds: 1. When either party was under the age of legal consent. 2. When either party was an idiot or lunatic. 3. When either party was physically incapable of entering into the marriage state, and such incapacity continues, and is incurable. 4. When the consent of either party was obtained by force, duress or fraud. 5. When either party had a former wife or husband living, the former marriage being in force. By a woman plaintiff on the following grounds: 1. Where the plaintiff had not attained the age of 16 years at the time of marriage. 2. When the marriage took place without the consent of the parent, guardian, or other person having legal charge of her. 3. Where it was not followed by consummation or cohabitation, and was not ratified after attaining the age of 16 years. DEFENCES IN DIVORCE ACTIONS.--Divorce will not be granted for the cause of adultery: 1. When the offense alleged has been condoned or forgiven by plaintiff. 2. When the adultery was committed by the procurement, connivance, privity or consent of plaintiff. 3. If five years have elapsed since the plaintiff discovered the defendant's guilt. 4. If there is existing any decree of any competent of any State or Territory of the United States granting an absolute divorce to the defendant and against the plaintiff. 5. If it appears that the plaintiff has also committed adultery. CUSTODY OF CHILDREN.--During the pendency of an action for divorce, or on final judgment, the court may give such directions as justice requires for the custody, care and education of any of the children of the marriage. ALIMONY.--The court has power during the pendency of an action for divorce to grant a woman plaintiff or defendant such allowance out of her husband's estate as may be necessary and just for her support, and also that she may be able to procure counsel to prosecute or defend the suit in her behalf. If the wife becomes successful in the action the court may in its discretion award her permanent alimony. The amount of alimony in all cases depends upon the wife's needs, her social status, and her husband's ability to make provision for her. FORM OF DIVORCE DECREE.--Decrees are first entered _nisi_, or provisionally, and cannot become absolute until the expiration of three months after the entry of the decree _nisi_. NORTH CAROLINA. MARRIAGE.--A male becomes capable of marrying at 16 years and a female at 14 years, but both if under 18 years require parental consent. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriage is prohibited between persons nearer of kin than first cousins of the whole or half blood. So is marriage between whites and negroes or Indians, or between whites and persons of negro or Indian descent to the third generation, inclusive. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Husband's fornication or adultery. 2. Wife's adultery. 3. If either party at time of marriage was and still is naturally impotent. 4. Wife's pregnancy at time of marriage by another man, without husband's knowledge. LIMITED DIVORCE.--A limited divorce may be obtained for the following causes: 1. If either party abandons his or her family. 2. If either party maliciously turns the other out of doors. 3. Cruel or barbarous treatment by one party endangering life of the other. NORTH DAKOTA. MARRIAGE.--No male can conclude marriage under 18 years of age or female under 15 years of age. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriage is prohibited between persons nearer of kin than second cousins of the whole blood. FORMALITIES.--License necessary. No particular form of ceremony is required, but the parties must express consent in presence of person solemnizing the marriage, and of at least one witness. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Extreme cruelty. 3. Wilful desertion for one year. 4. Wilful neglect for one year. 5. Habitual intemperance for one year. 6. Conviction of felony. Plaintiff must have been in good faith, a resident of the State for six months before filing petition, and either a citizen of the United States or a person who has declared his or her intention to become such. OHIO. MARRIAGE.--To marry, a male must be at least 18 years and a female 16 years of age. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriage between persons nearer of kin than second cousins is forbidden. FORMALITIES.--License is necessary unless banns be published in presence of congregation on two different days of public worship. No particular form of ceremony is required. The marriage may be solemnized by any ordained minister licensed by the State to perform marriages, or a justice of the peace in his county. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Upon proof that either party was already married at time of the marriage sought to be dissolved. 2. Wilful absence of one party from the other for three years. 3. Adultery. 4. Impotency. 5. Extreme cruelty. 6. Fraudulent contract. 7. Any gross neglect of duty. 8. Habitual drunkenness for three years. 9. Imprisonment in a penitentiary. 10. Procurement of a divorce without the State. ACTIONS FOR SEPARATE MAINTENANCE.--A wife may sue for separate maintenance because of: 1. Adultery. 2. Gross neglect of duty. 3. Abandonment without good cause. 4. Habitual drunkenness. 5. Sentence to imprisonment in a penitentiary. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--If the divorce is granted to the wife, because of the aggression of the husband, she shall be allowed such alimony out of her husband's property as the court deems reasonable. If the husband secures a divorce, on the aggression of the wife, he shall be allowed such alimony out of the wife's property as the court deems reasonable. The granting of a divorce does not affect the legitimacy of the children of the parties. Upon granting a divorce, the court shall make such order for the care and support of the children as is just and proper. OKLAHOMA. MARRIAGE.--The minimum age for marriage and the rule as to parental consent are the same as that stated for Nebraska. IMPEDIMENTS.--Same as in Nebraska. FORMALITIES.--Same as in Nebraska. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Former husband or wife living. 3. Abandonment for one year. 4. Impotency. 5. Pregnancy by wife at time of marriage by another man. 6. Extreme cruelty. 7. Fraudulent contract. 8. Habitual drunkenness. 9. Gross neglect of duty. 10. Conviction of felony. ACTION FOR SEPARATE MAINTENANCE.--This action may be maintained for any of the causes sufficient for divorce. OREGON. MARRIAGE.--A male is capable of marrying at 18 years, a female at 15 years. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. IMPEDIMENTS.--Marriages between first cousins of the whole or half blood or relatives nearer of kin are prohibited. Marriages between whites and negroes or Mongolians, or persons of one-fourth or more negro or Mongolian blood. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Impotency. 2. Adultery. 3. Conviction of felony. 4. Habitual drunkenness. 5. Wilful desertion for one year. 6. Cruel and inhuman treatment, or personal indignities rendering life burdensome. PENNSYLVANIA. MARRIAGE.--The minimum age for marriage is not fixed by statute. Both males and females require parental consent to marry under 21 years of age. IMPEDIMENTS.--A man may not marry his mother, father's sister, mother's sister, sister, daughter, granddaughter, father's wife, son's wife, son's daughter, wife's daughter, daughter of wife's son or daughter. A woman may not marry her father, father's brother, mother's brother, brother, son, grandson, mother's husband, daughter's husband, husband's son, son of her husband's son or daughter. By the act effective January 1, 1902, marriage is prohibited between persons who are of kin of the degree of first cousins. FORMALITIES.--License is necessary unless there is a publication of banns. The parties may solemnize their own marriage by obtaining from the clerk of the orphans' court a formal declaration of their right to do so instead of a license. Marriage may be solemnized by any minister of the Gospel, justice of the peace, or alderman, or by the parties themselves. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE: 1. Natural impotence or incapacity of procreation at time of marriage, and still continuing. 2. Former marriage still subsisting. 3. Adultery. 4. Wilful and malicious desertion for the space of two years. 5. Husband's cruel and barbarous treatment endangering wife's life. 6. Husband having offered such indignities to wife as to render her condition intolerable and life burdensome. 7. Relationship within prohibited degrees. 8. Marriage procured by fraud, force or coercion. 9. Wife's cruel and barbarous treatment of husband. 10. That either of the parties has been convicted as principal or accessory of the crime of arson, burglary, embezzlement, forgery, kidnapping, larceny, murder in first or second degree, voluntary manslaughter, perjury, rape, robbery, sodomy, buggery, treason, or misprison of treason, and has been sentenced to prison for more than two years. 11. That either husband or wife is a hopeless lunatic or _non compos mentis_. Confinement for ten years or more in an asylum for the insane is conclusive proof of hopeless insanity. LIMITED DIVORCE.--This may be granted for: 1. Husband turning wife out of doors. 2. Husband's cruel and barbarous treatment of wife. 3. Husband offering such indignities to his wife as to render her condition intolerable and force her to leave his house. Upon hearing any cause for divorce the court may decree either a divorce or a decree of nullity. RHODE ISLAND. MARRIAGE.--No age fixed for marriage. Parental consent required for all minors. IMPEDIMENTS.--Same as in Massachusetts. However, Jews are permitted to marry within degrees permitted by their religion. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. In case marriage was originally void or voidable by law. 2. When either party is for crime deemed civilly dead. 3. When party may be presumed dead. 4. Impotency. 5. Adultery. 6. Extreme cruelty. 7. Wilful desertion. 8. Continued drunkenness. 9. Neglect or refusal of husband, being able, to support wife. 10. Any other gross misbehaviour and wickedness in either of the parties repugnant to and in violation of the marriage covenant. SOUTH CAROLINA. MARRIAGE.--No age is fixed by law for marriage of minors, nor when parental consent is necessary. IMPEDIMENTS.--Same as to prohibited degrees of kinship as in Massachusetts. Marriages of whites with Indians, negroes, mulattoes, mestizos, or half-breeds, are forbidden. FORMALITIES.--No license is required, and no particular form of ceremony necessary. DIVORCE.--By a provision of the State constitution divorces from the bonds of matrimony are not allowed in South Carolina. Marriages may, however, be annulled for want of consent of either party, or for any other cause showing that at the time of the supposed marriage it was not a contract, provided such contract has not been consummated by cohabitation. SOUTH DAKOTA. MARRIAGE.--Minimum age at which males can marry is 18 years, females 15 years. Parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Same as in Massachusetts. Common law marriages are recognized. Marriage may be solemnized by minister, priest, judge of supreme court or probate court, justice of the peace, mayor, or by the parties themselves making a joint declaration. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery. 2. Extreme cruelty. 3. Wilful desertion for one year. 4. Wilful neglect for one year. 5. Habitual intemperance for one year. 6. Conviction of felony. Limited divorces are not granted. TENNESSEE. MARRIAGE.--The lowest age at which males can marry is 16 years, females 14 years. Parental consent is necessary for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--The prohibited degrees are the same as in Massachusetts. Marriages of whites with negroes, mulattoes or persons of mixed blood are forbidden. A person declared guilty of adultery is forbidden his or her accomplice during the lifetime of the former spouse. FORMALITIES.--License necessary. Marriage ceremony may be religious or civil in form. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Natural impotence and incapacity of procreation at time of marriage, and still existing. 2. A previous marriage still subsisting. 3. Adultery. 4. Desertion for two years. 5. Conviction of such crime as renders party infamous. 6. Conviction of felony. 7. Malicious attempt on life of other spouse. 8. Wife's refusal to move with husband into this State, and wilful absence from him for two years. 9. Wife's pregnancy at time of marriage by another person, without husband's knowledge. 10. Habitual drunkenness. LIMITED DIVORCES.--Such relief is granted to a wife only, for the following causes: 1. Cruel and inhuman treatment, rendering it unsafe and improper for continued cohabitation. 2. Such indignities offered to wife as render condition intolerable, and force her to leave husband. 3. Husband's abandonment of wife, or his turning her out of doors, refusing or neglecting to provide for her. TEXAS. MARRIAGE.--Earliest age for males to marry is 16 years; females 14 years. Parental consent required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. IMPEDIMENTS.--The prohibited degrees of kinship are the same as in New York. Marriage is forbidden between persons of European blood or their descendants and Africans or the descendants of Africans. FORMALITIES.--License required. Marriage may be solemnized by religious or civil ceremony. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.-- 1. Excesses; cruel treatment. 2. Wife taken in adultery. 3. Wife's abandonment of husband for three years. 4. Husband's desertion with intention of abandonment for three years. 5. When husband abandons wife and lives in adultery. 6. Conviction of felony and imprisonment therefor in State prison. There is no such thing as a limited divorce in this State. UTAH. MARRIAGE.--Males may marry at 14 years and females at 12 years, but if the former are under 21 years and the latter under 18 years parental consent is required. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Marriage between ascendants and descendants, between brothers and sisters of the whole or half blood, between uncles and nieces, or aunts and nephews, or between any persons related to each other within the fourth degree of consanguinity is prohibited. Marriage is also forbidden between a white person and a negro or Mongolian. FORMALITIES.--After a license has been procured the marriage may be solemnized by a minister or priest, judge of the Supreme or District Court, mayor of a city, or justice of the peace. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.-- 1. Impotency. 2. Adultery. 3. Wilful desertion for more than one year. 4. Wilful neglect of husband to provide for wife. 5. Habitual drunkenness. 6. Conviction for felony. 7. Cruel treatment. 8. Permanent insanity of defendant. To maintain an action for the last cause the plaintiff must prove that defendant has been adjudged insane at least five years before the beginning of action and that the insanity is incurable. VERMONT. MARRIAGE.--No minimum age is fixed by statute for marriage of minors, but males under 21 years and females under 18 years require consent of parents. IMPEDIMENTS.--The prohibited degrees of consanguinity and affinity are the same as in Massachusetts. FORMALITIES.--License, called in Vermont a "certificate," is necessary. No special form of marriage ceremony is prescribed, except that if solemnized by Quakers the ceremony must be in the form used in Quaker societies. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.-- 1. Adultery. 2. When either party is sentenced to confinement in the State prison for life, or for three years or more, and is actually confined at the time. 3. Intolerable severity of either party. 4. Wilful desertion for three consecutive years. 5. Absence of either party for seven years without being heard of during that time. 6. Husband's cruel refusal or neglect to provide suitable maintenance for wife. LIMITED DIVORCES.--A limited divorce, which leaves the marriage undissolved, may be granted for any of the causes for which an absolute divorce may be granted. VIRGINIA. MARRIAGE.--A male is deemed capable of marriage at 14 years and a female at 12 years, but for all minors under 21 years parental consent is required. PROHIBITIONS.--Marriage between ascendants and descendants, and between persons nearer of kin than the fourth degree of consanguinity, is prohibited. Marriage between white and colored persons is forbidden. FORMALITIES.--No marriage or attempted marriage, if it took place in this State, can be held valid here unless shown to have been under a license and solemnized according to statute. However, no particular marriage ceremony is prescribed, except that, if solemnized by a religious society, it must be in the manner practiced by such society. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.-- 1. Adultery. 2. Incurable impotency. 3. Sentence to penitentiary. 4. Conviction of one party (without the knowledge of the other) of an infamous offence before marriage. 5. Flight from justice. 6. Desertion continued for three years. 7. Wife's pregnancy at time of marriage by another man, unknown to husband. 8. Upon proof that prior to marriage wife had been, unknown to husband, a prostitute. LIMITED DIVORCE.--May be granted for: 1. Cruelty. 2. Reasonable apprehension of bodily hurt. 3. Abandonment. 4. Desertion. WASHINGTON. MARRIAGE.--Marriage is a civil contract which may be entered into by males of the age of 21 years and females of the age of 18 years who are otherwise capable. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Marriage is prohibited between persons nearer of kin than second cousins, whether of the whole or half blood, computing by the rules of the civil law. CELEBRATION.--No particular form of ceremony prescribed, but license is necessary. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.-- 1. Consent to marriage obtained by force and fraud and no subsequent voluntary cohabitation. 2. Adultery. 3. Impotency. 4. Abandonment for one year. 5. Cruel treatment. 6. Personal iniquities. 7. Habitual drunkenness. 8. Neglect to provide for wife or family. 9. Present imprisonment in penitentiary. 10. Any other cause in the court's discretion if it appears parties should not continue the marriage relation. 11. Incurable chronic mania or dementia existing for ten years or more. WEST VIRGINIA. MARRIAGE.--Males may marry at 18 years and females at 16 years, but parental consent is required for all persons under 21 years of age. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Same as in the State of Washington. FORMALITIES.--As to issuance of license and celebration, same as in Washington. If a man, having had a child by a woman, afterward intermarries with her, such child is deemed legitimate. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.-- 1. Adultery. 2. Incurable impotency. 3. Sentence to penitentiary. 4. Conviction before marriage of an infamous offence, unknown to other spouse. 5. Desertion for three years. 6. Pregnancy of wife at time of marriage by another man, unknown to husband. 7. Proof that wife, unknown to husband, had been before marriage a notorious prostitute. Proof that husband, unknown to wife, had been before marriage a licentious person. LIMITED DIVORCES.--Granted for: 1. Cruel treatment. 2. Reasonable apprehension of bodily hurt. 3. Abandonment. 4. Desertion. 5. Habitual drunkenness. WISCONSIN. MARRIAGE.--Males may marry at 18 years and females at 15 years, but parental consent is required for males under 21 years and females under 18 years. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Marriage is forbidden between persons nearer of kin than first cousins, of the whole or half blood, computing by the rules of the civil law. FORMALITIES.--Since April 29, 1899, a marriage license is required, but no particular form of celebration is necessary. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.-- 1. Adultery. 2. Impotency. 3. Sentence to imprisonment for three years or more. 4. Wilful desertion for one year. 5. Cruel and inhuman treatment. 6. Wife's intoxication. 7. Husband's habitual drunkenness for one year. 8. Voluntary separation of parties continued for five years. 9. Extreme cruelty. 10. Husband's refusal or wilful neglect to provide for wife. 11. Husband's conduct such as to render it unsafe and improper for wife to live with him. A limited divorce may be granted for all these causes except the first three. WYOMING. MARRIAGE.--A male may marry at 18 years and a female at 16 years. Parental consent is required if either party is a minor. PROHIBITED DEGREES.--Marriage between ascendants and descendants, between brothers and sisters of the whole or half blood, between uncle and niece, or aunt and nephew, and between first cousins, is forbidden. This applies to legitimate or illegitimate kindred, but only to persons related by blood. FORMALITIES.--A license issued by county clerk is necessary. Parties must solemnly declare in the presence of a minister or magistrate, and two witnesses, that they take each other as husband and wife. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE.-- 1. Adultery. 2. Physical incompetence at time of marriage continued to time of divorce. 3. Conviction and sentence for felony. 4. Wilful desertion for one year. 5. Habitual drunkenness. 6. Extreme cruelty. 7. Neglect of husband for one year to provide common necessaries of life. 8. Such indignities as render conditions intolerable. 9. Vagrancy of husband. 10. Conviction before marriage (unknown to other spouse) for felony or infamous crime. 11. Pregnancy of wife by another man at time of marriage, unknown to husband. Limited divorces are not granted in this State. CHAPTER XXVI. DOMINION OF CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND. The Dominion of Canada now consists of the Provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan, together with certain territories not as yet included in any Province. The Canadian Constitution, similar in principle to that of Great Britain, is embodied in the British North America Act of 1867 (30 Vict. c. 3). This act, which was passed by the Imperial Parliament, created the federation now styled the Dominion of Canada, and assigned to the Dominion Parliament power "to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Canada, in relation to all matters not coming within the classes of subjects by this act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces." One great distinction between the Canadian Constitution and the Constitution of the United States of America is that powers not specifically granted to the Provinces are reserved to the Dominion Government, whereas under the American Constitution powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government are reserved to the States, or to the people. Marriage and divorce are specifically set forth in the Canadian Constitution as a branch of legislation exclusively within the control of the Dominion Parliament, but although forty-three years have passed since the act became operative the Dominion Parliament has so far enacted only two statutes concerning the subject. The first act (May 17, 1882) legalized the marriage of a man with his deceased wife's sister, and the second (May 16, 1890) legalized the marriage of a man with his deceased wife's sister's daughter. The Dominion of Canada shares with Ireland the distinction of having no law permitting a judicial decree of divorce. However, by one clause of the British Act of North America there was preserved in full force the laws and judicial system of the several Provinces until the laws should be repealed or the courts abolished by competent authority. Consequently, four of the nine Provinces, namely, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, have their individual laws of divorce and divorce courts. Of the eight millions of people living in Canada six millions have no possibility of divorce except by a special act of the Dominion Parliament. The Dominion Parliament has power to grant an absolute divorce for any cause, but it never has done so except for adultery. Divorce petitions or bills are, as a matter of practice, introduced first in the Senate, where there is a standing committee to deal with them. For the Provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba, and the Northwest and other Territories, the Dominion Parliament is the only authority which can grant an absolute divorce. MARRIAGE.--Legislation concerning the formal requirements and solemnizations of marriage is still within the exclusive authority of the legislatures of the Provinces. As to the impediments which arise from blood and marriage, the law throughout the Dominion of Canada is in agreement with the law of England, which is based upon the 18th chapter of the Book of Leviticus. It is expressly provided by the act, 28 and 29 Vict. c. 64, that every law made or to be made by the legislature of any British possession, "for the purpose of establishing the validity of any marriage or marriages contracted in such possession, shall have and be deemed to have had from the date of the making of such law the same force and effect for the purpose aforesaid within all parts of Her Majesty's dominions as such law may have had or may hereafter have within the possession for which the same was made. Provided that nothing in this law contained shall give any effect or validity to any marriage unless at the time of such marriage both of the parties thereto were, according to the law of England, competent to contract the same." VALIDITY OF FOREIGN DIVORCES.--When the validity of a foreign divorce is considered by the Canadian courts the judges apply the strict rule of refusing to recognize a decree of divorce pronounced by a court within whose jurisdiction the parties had not a bona fide domicile. The courts also hold that a marriage celebrated in Canada between persons domiciled there is in its nature indissoluble except by death or by the act or decree of the Dominion Parliament, or a Canadian court of competent jurisdiction, and that no judgment of a foreign court dissolving such a marriage will be recognized in Canada. This rule invites, and has received, such severe criticism for its injustice that it cannot long be maintained by such tribunals of learning and integrity as the courts of Canada. Suppose a Canadian man and woman domiciled in Toronto should intermarry there, and afterwards acquire a joint domicile of twenty years' duration in New York City. If, after that period, the wife should obtain in the courts of the State of New York a divorce on the grounds of her husband's adultery, and should remarry another man, upon her return to Canada it would be manifestly unjust to treat the divorce and second marriage as null and void. Some of these days the Canadian courts will be called upon to consider the legal effect of a divorce obtained upon statutory grounds in England in a suit between two persons who were married in Canada and at the time of such marriage were domiciled in that country. Perhaps then the rule we have mentioned and criticised will be relaxed. The Island and Colony of Newfoundland, although a British colony in North America, is not yet incorporated as a part of the Dominion of Canada. It has its own governor, legislature and judicial system entirely separate from the Dominion and its own marriage and divorce law. The jurisdiction of Newfoundland extends not only over the island by that name, but also over the whole of the Atlantic coast of Labrador. AGE REQUIREMENTS.--The legal age for marriage in British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, the Northwest Territories and Newfoundland is fourteen for a male and twelve for a female. In Ontario both males and females must be at least fourteen years of age. PARENTAL CONSENT.--In British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, the Northwest Territories and Newfoundland parental consent is necessary for both males and females under twenty-one years of age. In New Brunswick and Ontario parental consent is required for males and females under eighteen years of age. In British Columbia an appeal may be taken to the courts if consent is refused by parent or guardian. CELEBRATION.--Marriages may be solemnized by duly qualified clergymen of every religious denomination, or by a judge, justice of the peace or other magistrate. Unless banns are published a license must be produced for each marriage, and can only be obtained from the proper local authority upon affidavit or declaration of one of the parties to the intended marriage, showing that no legal impediment exists and that the proper consents have been obtained. The competency of a Protestant minister to marry two Roman Catholics in the Province of Quebec was called in question by the leading case of Delphit v. Coté, reported in the Quebec Reports, 20 S. C. 338. The plaintiff, who had been baptized as a member of the Roman Catholic Church, was married to the defendant, who, at the time at least, professed the same belief, by a minister of a Protestant denomination, by virtue of a license issued in due form. Subsequently an ecclesiastical court of the Catholic Church declared the marriage null on the ground that two Roman Catholics could only be married by a Roman Catholic priest. Upon appealing to the civil court for an annulment of the marriage because of the ecclesiastical decree, it was held that the ecclesiastical court was entirely without jurisdiction and that the marriage was in all legal respects good and binding. MARRIAGES WITH INDIANS.--A Christian who marries an aboriginal native or Indian cannot exercise in Canada the right of divorce or repudiation of his wife at will, although following the usages of the tribe or "nation" to which his Indian wife belongs such divorces and repudiations are customary and regular. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--In any of the Provinces, or in Newfoundland, the courts may annul marriages on the ground of fraud, mistake, coercion, duress or lunacy. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--The courts of Canada and Newfoundland recognize a marriage concluded in a foreign country as valid if it was performed in accordance with the laws of the foreign country, if each person was competent to marry, according to the laws of the country of his and her citizenship, and if the marriage was not in violation of the general laws and usages of Christendom. ONTARIO.--The High Court of Justice in this Province has jurisdiction where a marriage correct in form is ascertained to be void _de jure_ by reason of the absence of some essential preliminary to declare the same null and void _ab initio_; but nothing short of the most clear and convincing testimony will justify the interposition of the court. As we have observed before, there is no divorce court in the Province. Every married woman is entitled to hold and alienate as her separate property all wages and profits acquired by her in any separate occupation which she may conduct on her separate account. QUEBEC.--This Province, which is composed largely of Roman Catholic inhabitants of French ancestry, treats marriage as a religious contract. The system of jurisprudence in Quebec is an admixture of the Code Napoleon, the _coutume de Paris_, and the common law of England. The provisions of the Civil Code and Code of Civil Procedure of the Province are largely of French origin. Marriage must be solemnized openly by a competent officer recognized by law and must be preceded by the publication of banns, unless a license is obtained. A license for a marriage by a Protestant clergyman must be issued from the office of the Provincial Secretary. A marriage contracted without the free consent of both parties, or of one of them, can only be attacked by such parties themselves or by the one whose consent was not free. A marriage contracted before the parties, or either of them, have attained the age required can no longer be contested if six months have elapsed since the party or parties have attained the proper age; or if the wife under that age has conceived before the termination of six months. The laws in this Province concerning the rights of married women to own property separate from their husbands are almost mediæval. A married woman cannot take judicial proceedings without being authorized so to do by her husband or the court. A husband and wife cannot contract with each other even with the assistance of a third person. They cannot even make donations to each other during the marriage. Husband and wife are not competent witnesses against each other in a court of law. Neither the courts nor the Provincial legislature grant divorces which dissolve the marriage bond. Applications for such relief must be addressed to the Dominion Parliament. A separation from bed and board is granted by the courts to either party to a marriage upon proof of adultery, cruelty, desertion or confirmed drunkenness; and to a wife for the failure of her husband to provide her proper support. Where a husband keeps a concubine in the same house with his wife the latter is justified in leaving him to live elsewhere, and in so doing the wife does not lose any of her marital rights. Quebec is the only Province in the Dominion of Canada where a child born out of wedlock is legitimatized by the subsequent marriage of the parents. BRITISH COLUMBIA.--The Divorce and Matrimonial Act of 1857, passed by the Imperial Parliament, is in full effect in this Province. The Supreme Court has jurisdiction to entertain a petition for divorce between persons domiciled in the Province and in respect of matrimonial offences alleged to have been committed therein. Absolute divorces are granted on the application of the husband on the ground of adultery; on the application of the wife on the ground of incestuous adultery, bigamy with adultery, rape, sodomy or bestiality, adultery coupled with such cruelty as without adultery would have entitled her to a judicial separation, or adultery coupled with desertion, without reasonable excuse, for two years or upwards. Alimony may be ordered to be paid to the wife, by the decree dissolving the marriage or granting a separation, or it may be sued for separately if the wife has either obtained or is entitled to such a decree. After absolute divorce either party may marry again. The procedure in divorce matters is almost identical with that of England. A judicial separation may be obtained by either spouse because of: 1. Adultery. 2. Cruelty. 3. Desertion without cause for two years or more. NEW BRUNSWICK.--It is interesting to note that in this Province a married woman may acquire, hold and dispose of, by will or otherwise (except that husband's curtsey will not therefore be affected), any real or personal property as her separate property, in the same manner as if she were a _femme sole_, without the intervention of any trustee, and may enter into and render herself liable in respect of and to the extent of her separate property on any contract, and of suing and being sued in all respects as if she were a _femme sole_. The grounds for absolute divorce are: 1. Impotency. 2. Adultery. 3. Consanguinity. NOVA SCOTIA.--This old Province, originally called Acadia, has a judiciary which consists of a chief justice, an equity judge and five puisne judges, a supreme court having law and equity jurisdiction throughout the Province, a vice-admiralty court and a court of marriage and divorce. The rules as to consanguinity and affinity, the causes for divorce and judicial separation and the civil effects of marriage and divorce are the same as in England. ALBERTA.--The Supreme Court Act (February 11, 1907) established the Supreme Court of the Province and provided that the court "shall have jurisdiction to grant alimony to any wife who would be entitled to alimony by the law of England, or to any wife who would be entitled by the law of England to a divorce and to alimony as incident thereto, or to any wife whose husband was separate from her without any sufficient cause and under circumstances which would entitle her by the laws of England to a decree for restitution of conjugal rights; and alimony, when granted, continue until further order of the court." NORTHWEST TERRITORIES.--The term "Northwest Territories" originally referred to the region over which the Northwest Company exercised authority, the territorial limits of which were not clearly defined. The term is now used to designate the Canadian territories and districts of Yukon, Keewatin, Mackenzie, Ungava and Franklin. As we have before observed, the law of marriage and divorce in the Northwest Territories is substantially the same as that of England. NEWFOUNDLAND.--This, the oldest British colony in North America, is the most modern in its law of domestic relations. Marriage is considered a civil contract, which may be solemnized before a qualified clergyman of any sect, or a judge, justice of the peace or other magistrate. A married woman has the same right of buying, selling, owning and controlling any kind of real or personal property as a single woman. She has also the fullest right to make any lawful contract without adding her husband as a party. She may sue and be sued as if she were a single woman or a man. There being no divorce courts, the Provincial legislature having no power to grant divorces, and the Colony of Newfoundland being outside of the jurisdiction of the Dominion Parliament of Canada, an absolute divorce cannot be obtained in the colony. CHAPTER XXVII. THE REPUBLIC OF MEXICO. Mexico is a federative Republic composed of twenty-seven States, three Territories and a Federal District. Under the present Constitution, which is dated February 5, 1857, each State has the power to control its own local domestic concerns and to have its own separate executive, legislature and judiciary. The Civil Code of the Federal District (_El Codigo Civil de Distrito Federal_) was enacted simply for the Federal District and the Territories of Lower California, Tepic and Quintana Roo, but each of the twenty-seven States have in their respective Civil Codes adopted the provisions of the Federal Civil Code, especially with reference to the law of marriage and divorce. Therefore, we find it unnecessary to deal with each State separately. MARRIAGE.--The courts of Mexico, following the Federal Code, define marriage as the lawful co-partnership of one man and one woman united for life in an indissoluble bond to perpetuate their species and to render each other mutual assistance, fidelity and sympathy in bearing together the burdens of life. The law does not recognize in any manner future espousals, nor any conditions contrary to the legitimate purposes of marriage. Marriage must be preceded by the statutory preliminaries and be celebrated before authorized officials with all such formalities as are by law required. A male must be at least 14 years of age and a female at least 12 years of age to contract marriage, unless a dispensation from the superior political authority is obtained permitting marriage at an earlier age. Such a dispensation can only be obtained in exceptional cases and for good cause. Parental consent is required for the marriage of both males and females under the age of 21 years. If the father is dead the consent of the mother is sufficient. If both the father and mother are dead then the consent of the paternal grandfather will suffice. If he is also dead the paternal grandmother must give consent. In the event of both paternal grandparents being dead the maternal grandparents take their place and exercise the _patria potestad_. IMPEDIMENTS.--The impediments to marriage are: 1. Incapacity of the parties, as when one or both are under age. 2. Absence of the consent of parents or of the person exercising the rights of a parent. 3. Mistake as to the identity of either party. 4. Relationship within the prohibited degrees. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Marriages are prohibited between ascendants and descendants; between brothers and sisters of the whole or half blood; between uncles and nieces; aunts and nephews, and all other persons related by blood or marriage within the third degree. The laws of Mexico recognize no relationship other than one by consanguinity and affinity. Each generation constitutes a degree, and the series of degrees constitute the line of relationship. OTHER PROHIBITIONS: A. A marriage is prohibited when either of the intending parties has a husband or wife still living. B. If one of the parties has made an attempt against the life of the husband or wife of the other with the intention of marrying the survivor. C. If one of the parties has obtained the apparent consent of the other by fear, coercion or duress. D. If either of the parties is permanently and incurably insane. FORMALITIES.--Parties intending to conclude marriage must personally appear before the judge of civil status of the domicile of either party, and state their intention. The judge will thereupon make an entry in a register kept for that purpose of the names, occupations and domiciles of both of the contracting parties, the names, occupations and domiciles of their parents, if the same be ascertainable, the names, occupations and domiciles of the witnesses whom the parties present to the judge as knowing the legal capacity of the parties, and proof of the consents of the parents, or of such persons as are lawfully exercising the rights of the parents. If either of the contracting parties has been previously married the judge must require proper evidence that the former consort is dead. If it appears that there exists any impediment to the intended marriage which could be removed by a dispensation from the superior political authority such dispensation must be exhibited. Upon the judge receiving the required proof that the parties may be legally married he will cause a copy of the record to be posted in a conspicuous place in his office for 15 days, and two similar copies must be posted in the usual public places. If, during the publication as aforesaid, and for three days thereafter, no valid opposition is made by any one to the marriage, it becomes the duty of the judge, upon request of the parties, to fix the place, day and hour for the celebration. A marriage must be celebrated in public at the place and time previously fixed by the judge. The parties must appear in person or by their specially appointed proxies, and be attended by at least three adult witnesses, who may be relatives. The parties, by themselves, or by their specially appointed proxies, must formally declare to the judge in the presence of the witnesses their intention to take each other as husband and wife, upon which declaration the judge shall pronounce them man and wife and make an official record of the marriage. RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS OF MARRIAGE.--Husband and wife are obliged to be faithful to each other, and each must contribute his or her part to the objects of the marriage. They are under mutual obligation to succor and protect one another and to render each to the other affection and sympathy. It is a wife's duty to live with her husband and to follow him wherever he may choose to go and accept his selection of a conjugal home. A husband is obligated to provide alimentation (_alimentos_) to his wife even though she may have brought no property into the marital community. By alimentation is meant not only necessary food, but raiment and things of personal necessity and comfort commensurate with the husband's ability to make such provision. The husband owes his wife the duty of protecting her person and reputation. The wife must obey her husband in domestic concerns, in the matter of training and educating the children of the marriage and in all affairs connected with the common property and the household. If the wife has property of her own she must furnish alimentation (food, clothing and lodging) to her husband when he is in want and cannot obtain it for himself. If a husband proposes to leave the Republic to live in a foreign land the wife may apply to the courts to be relieved from the usual duty of adopting her husband's residence. The husband is the legitimate representative and manager of all of the property of the marriage. He is ordinarily his wife's representative in legal proceedings. A wife generally cannot appear either personally or by attorney in a suit at law without her husband's authorization in writing. If she is of full age a wife does not require her husband's authorization in the following instances: A. To defend herself in a criminal action. B. To bring a suit against her husband. C. To devise or bequeath her own separate property by a will. D. When her husband is in what the Mexican lawyers call a state of interdiction, as, for example, when he is under guardianship or insane. E. When she is in business on her separate account and the suit or proceeding relates to such business. DIVORCE.--It is in the chapter of the Civil Code entitled "_Del divorcio_" that we find the statutory provisions concerning divorce. The chapter begins by stating positively that divorce (_divorcio_) does not dissolve the bonds of matrimony. We must remember that the Federal Code is founded upon the Spanish Code, and that both Mexico and Spain, being historically Roman Catholic countries, reflect the leading dogmas of the Catholic Church in their civil jurisprudence. What is called a divorce in Mexican law is at the most a separation from bed and board. It simply suspends certain of the civil obligations and effects of marriage. CAUSES FOR DIVORCE: 1. Adultery of the wife under any circumstances. 2. Adultery of the husband, if the adultery is committed in the conjugal home, or if the husband is living in concubinage, or if the husband's adultery causes a public scandal and attracts public contempt or insult to the wife, or if the wife has been ill used by word or deed by her husband's paramour or on account of her. 3. If the husband proposes or plans to prostitute his wife, or accepts from a third person any money, article or valuable consideration for the purpose of effecting such prostitution. 4. When either spouse instigates or encourages the other to commit a crime. 5. The attempt by positive acts by either husband or wife to corrupt their children or by deliberately permitting third persons to practice such corruption. 6. Abandonment without just and legal cause of the conjugal home (_casa comun_), or if there is just and legal cause for such abandonment, to remain away for one year or more without beginning a suit for divorce. 7. Cruelty, threats or injury of a serious nature by one spouse against the other. 8. False accusation of a grave nature made by either party against the other. 9. The refusal, or wilful neglect, of one spouse to furnish alimentation, or support, to the other, in accordance with law. 10. Incorrigible vices of gambling or drunkenness. 11. The existence of a chronic and incurable disease which is hereditary or contagious afflicting one of the spouses previous to the marriage, of which the other spouse had no knowledge when the marriage was concluded. 12. If the wife gives birth to a child conceived before marriage, which child has been judicially declared illegitimate. 13. An infringement or violation of the marriage settlements (_capitulaciones matrimoniales_). 14. Mutual consent of the parties. PROCEEDINGS FOR DIVORCE.--Even if the spouses consent to a divorce there must be a formal legal proceeding. In such a case the suit is begun by a petition to the judge setting forth clearly the consent to divorce and the agreement of the parties as to the maintenance of the wife, the custody of the children and the disposition or division of the property held in common. When such a petition is filed it becomes the duty of the judge to summon the parties before him and to endeavour to effect a reconciliation. In a suit where the spouses do not mutually consent to a divorce, it is still the legal duty of the judge to attempt a reconciliation of the parties. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--While the Mexican law does not recognize absolute divorce it does provide for the annulment or setting aside absolutely of certain marriages. Marriages are voidable and may be annulled in the courts on the following grounds: A. If the parties are related within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity and affinity. B. If the parties, or either of them, were incapable by reason of non-age or otherwise of legally concluding marriage. C. If the necessary parental consent, or consent of the person exercising the _patria potestad_, was not had. D. If the marriage was irregular or contrary to law, as, for example, if the proper publication was omitted, or no witnesses attended the celebration. E. If there exists in either party, and existed before the marriage, an incurable impotency for copulation. Want of legal age of either party is not a ground for annulment if a child is born, the issue of the union. And if either party, or both, were under the legal age at the time of marriage, a decree of annulment will not be granted if, upon becoming twenty-one years of age, the spouses continue to cohabit together. Such marriages as we have pointed out above are not void, but voidable, and any of the grounds sufficient for annulment may be waived by the aggrieved spouse. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE.--Divorce can only be granted to the innocent party, and suit therefor must be brought within one year after the petitioner discovers the facts which constitute a legal cause for a decree. The innocent party, pending the action, or even after the final decree, may require the other party to resume the marriage relationship. The most usual effect of a divorce is a physical separation of the spouses. If the wife is the guilty party she may, on her husband's suggestion, be directed by the judge to live in a certain house, for the protection of the good name of the husband. Upon the finding of a decree of divorce, if the parties have not reached an appropriate agreement, the judge will make such directions as to the maintenance of the wife, custody of children and division of common property as justice may require. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--Marriages concluded between foreigners in a foreign country, which are valid in that country, will be recognized as valid for all civil effects in Mexico. A marriage between a Mexican citizen and a foreigner, or between two Mexican citizens, and concluded in a foreign country, will be valid for all civil effects in Mexico, provided such marriage was concluded according to the law of the foreign country and is not in violation of the Mexican laws as to the prohibited degrees of relationship, capacity to contract and consent of persons in _loco parentis_. Foreign laws (_leyes extranjeras_) must be established as matters of fact by the persons relying upon their existence, and their application to questions at issue must also be shown. Within three months after a Mexican citizen who has concluded marriage in a foreign country returns to the Republic, he or she must cause the inscription of the celebration to be entered in the Civil Register of his or her domicile. CHAPTER XXVIII. ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. The Civil Code of the Argentine Republic shows strong evidences of the Spanish origin of its precepts. As in the old motherland marriage is considered as indissoluble except by the death of one of the contracting parties. However, the Republic does not accept the decrees of the Council of Trent or the canonical law of the Catholic Church on the subject of marriage as parts of the law of the land. As a matter of religion the people of Argentina may consider marriage as a sacrament or divine ordinance, or not, as it pleases their consciences, but as a matter of law marriage in the Argentine Republic is simply a civil contract. ESSENTIALS OF MARRIAGE.--For the validity of marriage there must be the consent of two contracting parties declared before the public official in charge of the civil register. The contract can be declared by proxy, but only with a special authorization from the principal, in which the person with whom the proxy has to conclude the marriage is clearly described. IMPEDIMENTS.--The existence of any of the following conditions make a marriage unlawful: 1. Consanguinity between ascendants and descendants without limitation, whether legitimate or illegitimate. 2. Consanguinity between brothers and sisters and half brothers and sisters, legitimate or illegitimate. 3. Affinity in the direct line in all degrees. 4. The woman not being twelve and the man fourteen years of age. 5. The existence of a previous marriage. 6. Where one of the parties has been voluntarily the author of, or the accomplice in the death of, the former husband or wife of the other. 7. Insanity. 8. A woman over twelve years of age and a man over fourteen, but minors, and the deaf and dumb who cannot write cannot bind themselves in marriage without the consent of their legitimate father, or, failing him, without their mother's consent, or that of their guardian, or of the judicial consent or permission, in the absence of the above. The civil judge will decide in cases of disagreement. 9. A guardian, or his descendants under his power, cannot marry minors under his guardianship so long as the latter lasts. PRELIMINARIES.--Those who desire to marry must present themselves before the public official in charge of the civil register, at the domicile of one of the parties, and verbally declare their intention to marry. Two witnesses are required who, from their knowledge of the contracting parties, can declare as to their identity and that they consider them capable of being married. CELEBRATION.--The marriage must be celebrated before the official charged with the civil registry in his office, publicly, the bride and bridegroom, or their proxies, appearing in person, in the presence of two witnesses and with the formalities prescribed by law. If either of the contracting parties are unable to appear at the registry office the marriage may be celebrated at his (or her) residence. If the marriage be celebrated in the registry office two witnesses must be present, and four witnesses if it is celebrated at the domicile of either of the contracting parties. In celebrating the marriage the Public Registrar must read to the contracting parties those portions of the law which define the rights and obligations of married couples. He must also receive from each the declaration that they respectively desire to take each other as husband and wife. He must also formally declare the couple to be man and wife. There is no legal objection to a religious celebration of marriage following the civil ceremony, which alone is treated as legally effective. HUSBAND AND WIFE.--The contracting parties are bound to be mutually faithful, but the infidelity of the one does not excuse the infidelity of the other. The one who breaks this obligation can be proceeded against by the other in the divorce courts without prejudice to what is laid down on the subject by the Penal Code. The husband is bound to live in the same house as his wife and to give her all necessary assistance, protection and support. If there be no marriage contract to the contrary, the husband is the legal administrator of all the property belonging to the married couple, including that of the wife, as well as that which they possessed at marriage as of that subsequently acquired by them in their own right. The wife is bound to live with the husband wherever he may fix his residence. A wife cannot, without her husband's permission, go to law, make any contract, or acquire goods, nor alienate or pledge goods without such permission. The wife may, of course, in certain cases, such as divorce, acquire judicial authorization for prosecuting or defending a suit in the courts. DIVORCE.--The courts of the Argentine Republic grant divorces, but in effect they only amount to a personal separation of the parties to a marriage, without the dissolution of the bonds of matrimony. These so-called divorces are granted for the following causes: 1. Adultery of the husband or wife. 2. Attempt by one of the parties on the life of the other, either personally or as an accomplice. 3. The instigation of one of the parties by the other to commit adultery or other crimes. 4. Cruelty. 5. Serious injuries. In estimating the gravity of the injury the judge will take into consideration the education and social position of the parties. 6. Such ill-treatment, even if not serious, as renders married life unsupportable. 7. Wilful and malicious desertion. EFFECTS OF THE DIVORCE.--If the wife be of age she can exercise all the usual acts of civil life. Each of the parties can fix his or her domicile or residence where he or she thinks fit, even if it be abroad. However, if the party have children under his or her care, they cannot be taken abroad without the permission of the court of their domicile. The innocent party can revoke the donations or advantages which he or she may have made or promised to the other by the marriage contract, whether they were to have come into effect during the life of the party or after his or her death. Children less than five years old remain in the mother's custody. Those over that age shall be handed over to the party who, in the opinion of the judge, is most fitted to educate and care for them. The husband who may have given cause for divorce must continue to support the wife if she have not sufficient means of her own. The judge shall decide the amount and manner in which this shall be done, with due regard to the circumstances of both parties. Whichever of the parties may have given cause for divorce will have the right to require the other, if he or she be able to do so, to provide him or her with subsistence, if such be absolutely necessary. DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE.--A legal marriage can only be dissolved by the death of one of the contracting parties. A marriage which can be dissolved in accordance with the laws of the country in which it was celebrated cannot be dissolved in the Argentine Republic except by the death of one of the parties. The supposed decease of one of the contracting parties, either through absence or disappearance, will not enable the other to marry again. So long as the decease of one of the contracting parties, either through absence or disappearance, has not been absolutely proved, the marriage is not considered as dissolved. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage may be annulled when it was contracted in violation of some legal impediment, or for want of proper consent. SECOND OR FURTHER MARRIAGES.--A woman cannot marry again for ten months after a dissolved or annulled marriage, unless she was left pregnant, in which case she may marry after having given birth to the child. PROOF OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage must be proved by certificate, or copy thereof, of such marriage. If it is impossible to produce the certificate, or its copy, all other means of proof will be allowed, but these other proofs will not be admitted unless it is previously established that such certificate or copy cannot be produced. CHAPTER XXIX. THE UNITED STATES OF BRAZIL. The United States of Brazil (_Estados Unidos do Brazil_), the largest country in South America and one of the most extensive political subdivisions of the world, is a Republic comprising twenty States and a Federal District. Its present constitution was adopted February 24, 1891, and is in many respects similar to that of the United States of America. The legislative power is vested in the President of the Republic and a National Congress, consisting of a Senate and Chamber of Deputies. The individual States are governed by their governors and legislatures, and possess their own judicial systems. The main body of the civil law has its origin in the Portuguese Code and in the judicial precedents of Portugal. There is a Supreme Federal Court of Justice, which sits at the capital, Rio de Janeiro, and Federal Courts in each of the twenty States. Ninety-nine per centum of the people of Brazil are Roman Catholics and consider marriage as a religious sacrament, but the law of the land considers it simply as a civil contract. MARRIAGE.--The Civil Code defines marriage as a perpetual contract between two persons of different sex to live together and establish a legitimate family. A civil or legal celebration of marriage is compulsory for all persons, irrespective of race or creed. If after the civil marriage the parties may desire to satisfy their consciences and the mandates of their church or sect by having the marriage solemnized in a religious form, there is no legal objection thereto. Marriage is forbidden: 1. Of minors under the age of 21 years, unless with parental consent. 2. Of persons of adult age who are incapable of properly governing themselves or their estates, without the authorization of their legal representatives. 3. Of an adulterous wife with her accomplice who has been condemned for the offence. 4. Of a wife or widow who has been condemned as the principal or accomplice of the crime of homicide with a principal or accomplice in the same crime. 5. Of a person bound by solemn vows of religion to a life of chastity. The canon law of the Roman Catholic Church is accepted as defining the religious rules and spiritual effects of marriage, but the civil law defines the status and temporal effects of the marriage contract. PROHIBITED MARRIAGES.--The following persons are forbidden to marry each other: 1. Ascendants and descendants. 2. Persons related collaterally in the second degree. 3. Males who have not completed their fourteenth year and females who have not completed their twelfth year of age. 4. Persons already bound by marriage. PRELIMINARIES.--The intending parties must present themselves in person before the registrar and produce certificates showing: A. Full names, ages, occupations and domiciles of the contracting parties. B. The full names, ages, occupations and domiciles of their parents, or, if they are dead, the same particulars of those who replace them _in loco parentis_. C. Proof of the consents of such persons who in law are entitled to give or withhold consent to the proposed marriage. D. A declaration in writing by two respectable witnesses of full age, certifying acquaintance with the contracting parties, and knowledge that they are not related within the prohibited degrees of kinship. If either of the contracting parties has been previously married, proof of the death of the former spouse must be given to the registrar. Upon receiving satisfactory proof as stated above, the registrar must post a notice of the proposed marriage in a conspicuous place in his office, which notice informs all interested persons to file their objections, if any they have, in the registry within fifteen days. If at the end of this period no valid objection to the marriage has been formulated the civil officer proceeds to the celebration of the marriage. A marriage concluded before a civil officer in the form established by the civil law of Brazil can only be annulled by a civil court. DIVORCE.--The law of the Republic does not permit of an absolute divorce for any cause whatsoever. A true marriage can only be dissolved by the death of one of the parties. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--A separation of the person and goods may be had for the following causes: 1. Adultery of the wife. 2. Adultery of the husband, if such adultery creates a public scandal, or if the husband brings his concubine into the home he has established for his wife. 3. Sentence of one of the spouses to life imprisonment. 4. Cruel and ill-human treatment. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--The courts of Brazil recognize as valid a marriage between two foreigners concluded in a foreign land, provided that such marriage is monogamous, is not between ascendants or descendants, or between persons related collaterally in the second degree, and if such marriage was regularly concluded according to the law of the country of its celebration. A marriage abroad of a citizen of the Republic of Brazil must conform not only to the law of the place of its celebration, but must also be in strict accordance with the law of Brazil. CHAPTER XXX. THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA. A nation may in a day overthrow a dynasty which has ruled for centuries, it may in a few years completely revolutionize its system of government and methods of trading, but its ancient code of marriage will live on unchanged for ages. It is a noteworthy fact that the law of Rome concerning marriage survived the Roman Empire by a thousand years, and even to-day it is the foundation of the law on that subject in all of the Continental countries of Europe and of the entire Western Hemisphere, with the exception of the United States of America and Canada. In the Civil Code of Cuba we can see not only its recent origin from the Spanish Code, but traces of the Law of the Twelve Tables and the Institutes of Justinian. Cuba is to-day a Republic composed of six Provinces. The seat of government is located at Havana, where sit the Senate and House of Representatives, which constitute the national legislature. The Civil Code is the _Codigo Civil_ of Spain, with such changes and modifications as have become effective since Spain lost its sovereignty over Cuba. The statement of Cuban law which follows is, therefore, predicated upon the _Codigo Civil_, which by royal decree of May 11, 1888, was extended to the islands of Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines, upon proclamations and orders issued during the recent American military occupation and on the interpretation and construction of the positive law by Cuban courts and jurists. MARRIAGE.--The law considers marriage as a civil contract, which may be concluded by either a civil (_matrimonio civil_) or a religious (_matrimonio religioso_) celebration. A male cannot marry until he has completed his fourteenth year of age; a female until she has completed her twelfth year. Marriages contracted by minors under the legal age become, however, _ipso facto_ legal if a day after having arrived at the legal age the parties continue to live together without bringing suit to annul the marriage, or if the female becomes pregnant before the legal age or before the institution of a suit for annulment. Only such persons as are in the full enjoyment of their reason can contract marriage. Marriage is forbidden to all persons who suffer from absolute or relative physical impotency for the purposes of procreation. Persons ordained _in sacris_ and those professed in an approved canonical order, who are bound by a solemn pledge of chastity, cannot lawfully conclude marriage until they have obtained the proper canonical dispensation. Those who are already bound in marriage cannot contract a new marriage. Persons who are twenty-three years of age or upwards may conclude marriage, if otherwise of legal capacity, without parental consent or advice. Persons under twenty years of age require the consent of their parents, or of such persons whose right it is to give or withhold such consent. Persons who are more than twenty years of age, but under twenty-three, are under the obligation of asking the advice or counsel of their parents or of such persons standing in the parental relation before contracting marriage, and if the advice is refused, or it should be unfavourable, the marriage cannot take place until three months after the petition was made. The consent and the favourable advice for the celebration of a marriage must be proven, if requested, by means of an instrument authenticated by a civil or ecclesiastical notary or by the municipal judge of the domicile of the petitioner. When the advice has been proven the lapse of time shall be proven in the same manner. If a marriage is concluded by persons more than twenty years of age, and under twenty-three years of age, without compliance with the rules just stated, the marriage will be recognized as valid, but the offender is subject to certain disabilities and penalties. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--The following persons are prohibited from contracting marriage with each other: 1. The ascendants and descendants by legitimate or natural consanguinity or affinity. 2. Collaterals by legitimate consanguinity up to the fourth degree. 3. Collaterals by legitimate affinity up to the fourth degree. 4. Collaterals by natural consanguinity or affinity up to the second degree. The government, for sufficient cause, may on the petition of a party grant a dispensation permitting a marriage of minors who have not obtained the proper permission or advice of the persons whose legal right it is to authorize one or the other. For grave reasons the government may also grant a dispensation relieving a party from the prohibition of marrying within the third and fourth degrees of collaterals by legitimate consanguinity; the impediments arising from legitimate or natural affinity between collaterals and those relating to the descendants of the adopter. SPECIAL PROHIBITIONS.--The following persons cannot contract marriage with each other: 1. The adopting father or mother and the adopted; the latter and the surviving spouse of the former, and the former and the surviving spouse of the latter. 2. The legitimate descendants of the adopter with the adopted, while the adoption lasts. 3. Adulterers who have been condemned by a final judgment. 4. Those who have been condemned as authors, or as the author and accomplice, of the death of the spouse of either of them. CELEBRATION OF MARRIAGE.--A civil marriage must be celebrated according to the requirements of the code, as changed or modified by subsequent orders, decrees and legislation. Any clergyman, priest or minister, irrespective of faith or sect, who belongs to a religious denomination actually established in the Republic of Cuba, and who has been duly authorized, may solemnize marriage. A register is kept in the office of the Secretary of Justice containing the names and addresses of all clergymen, priests and ministers who are qualified to solemnize marriage in the Republic. Persons who desire to contract a religious marriage must present to the clergyman, priest or minister who is qualified to perform the ceremony a declaration signed by both of the contracting parties, stating: 1. The names, surnames, profession, domicile or residence of the contracting parties. 2. The names, surnames, profession, domicile or residence of the parents. 3. Certificates of birth and of the status of the contracting parties, the consent or advice, if proper, and the dispensation, when it is necessary. Upon the presentation of such a declaration the clergyman, priest or minister shall announce the future celebration of marriage between the parties according to the form or method prescribed by the rites and regulations of his religious denomination. If the religions denomination of such clergyman, priest or minister has no established form for such announcement, then a publication must be made in the form established by the Civil Code. The method required by the Civil Code for proclaiming an intended marriage is set forth in Article 89, which directs a publication by posting the written declaration of the parties for fifteen days and calling upon those who have information of any obstacle to oppose the marriage. A civil marriage can only be solemnized by a municipal judge (_Juez Municipal_), to whom must be presented as an indispensable preliminary such a signed declaration of the parties as is necessary in the case where the parties desire a religious ceremony. A municipal judge chosen to celebrate a civil marriage will also direct as a preliminary to marriage such a proclamation as is required by Article 89 aforesaid. A priest, minister or clergyman duly authorized to perform marriages may, for sufficient cause, dispense with the publication as before set forth; but in every case where a publication is made the marriage cannot be concluded after fifteen days after the first day of such publication. No priest, clergyman or minister is now authorized to grant a dispensation permitting a marriage for any reason forbidden by the laws of the Republic. An opposition to a marriage made by an interested person must be heard and determined by the municipal judge of the district before any person whatsoever is authorized to solemnize the nuptials. The celebration itself must be witnessed by two adults, who may be relatives of the parties. Article 87 of the code, permitting one or both of the parties to a marriage to appear at the celebration, either personally or by proxies to whom a special power is given, is still in effect. The municipal judge, priest, minister or clergyman who solemnizes a marriage must immediately furnish to the parties a certificate of marriage and cause a full and particular record of said marriage to be filed in the Civil Registry of the District (_Registro Civil del Distrito_), in default of which such judge, priest, minister or clergyman will be subject to a fine of one hundred _pesos_, or imprisoned for not less than 30 days, or not more than 90 days, by the Correctional Judge (_Juez Correccional_) of his domicile. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGES.--The civil courts have exclusive jurisdiction to decree an annulment of marriage. The following marriages are void: 1. Those celebrated between persons related within the prohibited degrees, except in cases of dispensation. 2. Those contracted by error as to the person or by compulsion or intimidation. 3. Those contracted by the abductor with the abducted while she is in his power. 4. Those which are not solemnized by an authorized official. A marriage contracted in good faith produces civil effects, although it may be declared void. If good faith existed on the part of only one of the spouses it shall produce civil effects only with regard to said spouse and to the children. Good faith is presumed if the contrary does not appear. When bad faith existed on the part of both spouses the marriage shall only produce civil effects with relation to the children. After the annulment of a marriage the sons over three years of age shall remain in the care of the father and the daughters in the care of the mother, provided there was good faith on the part of both spouses. If either or both were guilty of bad faith the tribunal has power to make such disposition of the children as justice may require. RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS.--The spouses are obliged to live together, to be faithful to, and mutually assist, each other. The husband must protect his wife, and the latter must obey her husband. The wife is obliged to follow her husband wherever he may establish his residence. The tribunals may, for just cause, exempt her from this obligation when the husband removes his residence beyond the seas or to a foreign country. The husband is the administrator of the property of the conjugal partnership, except when the contrary is stipulated. The wife, however, retains ownership of the paraphernal property, which consists of such property as the wife brings to the marriage, not included in the dowry. The husband is the representative of his wife. The latter cannot, without his permission, appear in a suit in person nor through an attorney. Nevertheless, she does not require such permission to defend herself in a criminal suit or to proceed against or to defend herself in suits with her husband. Neither may the wife, without the permission of her husband, acquire property for a good or valuable consideration, alienate her property, or bind herself, except in certain exceptional cases, and within the limitations established by law. A wife may without her husband's permission: 1. Execute a will. 2. Exercise the rights and perform the duties which appertain to her with regard to the legitimate and acknowledged natural children she may have had by another, and with relation to the property of the same. Only the husband and his heirs can enforce the nullity of the acts executed by his wife without proper authorization. DIVORCE.--Divorce only produces the suspension of the life in common of the spouses; it does not dissolve the marriage. The legal causes for divorce are: 1. Adultery on the part of the wife in every case, and on the part of the husband when public scandal or disgrace of the wife results therefrom. 2. Personal violence actually inflicted or grave insults. 3. Violence exercised by the husband toward the wife in order to force her to change her religion. 4. The proposal of the husband to prostitute his wife. 5. The attempts of the husband or wife to corrupt their sons, or to prostitute their daughters, and connivance in their corruption or prostitution. 6. The condemnation of a spouse to penal servitude. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE: 1. The separation of the spouses in every case. 2. The protection of the wife. 3. The placing of the children under the care of one or both of the spouses, as may be proper. 4. The provision for the support of the wife and of the children who do not remain under the authority of the father. 5. The adoption of the necessary measures to prevent the husband, who may have given cause for the divorce, from injuring the wife in the administration of her property. FOREIGN MARRIAGES.--A marriage contracted in a foreign country, according to the laws of such country, is generally treated as valid in Cuba. Such a marriage, however, must be monogamous and otherwise in conformity with the general laws and usages of Christendom. If the parties are Cubans, and are married abroad while retaining their domiciles in Cuba, the foreign marriage must also conform to the requirements of Cuban law with regards to the capacity of the parties and the necessary parental consent or advice. PROOF OF MARRIAGE.--The ordinary manner to prove a marriage concluded in Cuba is to produce a certificate of the record of the civil registry, and this is the proof required unless the books of the civil registry never existed, or have disappeared, or a question is pending before the tribunals, in which case all kinds of direct evidence are admissible. The uninterrupted status of the parents, together with the certificates of the birth of their children as legitimate, is one competent method of proving the marriage of said parents, unless it is shown that one of the two was bound by a prior marriage. A marriage contracted in a foreign country may be established by showing an authenticated copy of its registration. If such foreign country does not require a regular or authenticated registration the marriage must be proved by competent evidence of the regulations of marriage in the foreign country in question, together with proof that all such regulations were complied with. Should a marriage be contracted in a foreign country between a Cuban and a foreign woman, or between a foreigner and a Cuban woman, and the contracting parties do not make special stipulations with regard to their property, it is understood, when the husband is a Cuban, that he marries under the system of the legal conjugal partnership; and when the wife is a Cuban that she marries under the system of laws in force in the husband's country. ENGAGEMENTS TO MARRY.--Future espousals do not give rise to an obligation to contract marriage. No court will admit a complaint in which their performance is demanded. However, if the promise has been made in a public or private instrument by a person of age, or by a minor in the presence of the person whose consent is necessary for the celebration of the marriage, or when banns have been published, the person who refuses to marry, without just cause, can be obliged to indemnify the other party for the expenses which he or she may have incurred by reason of the promised marriage. An action to recover indemnity for such expenses must be instituted within a year, counted from the day of the refusal to celebrate the marriage. SPANISH PRECEDENTS.--It should be remembered that in throwing off the yoke of Spanish rule the people of Cuba did not change their blood, language or traditions. Just as the law of the United States of America is founded upon the law of England as it existed at the time of the adoption of the American Constitution, so the jurisprudence of the Republic of Cuba has as its foundation the law of Spain as it existed at the time the Republic was established. In both instances there have been changes and modifications by legislative acts and judicial interpretations, but a Spanish judicial decision has even more weight in a Cuban tribunal than an English decision has in an American court because Cuba, being a younger Republic than the United States, is much nearer to its motherland in point of time, besides its closer resemblance in race, religion and customs. CHAPTER XXXI. COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA. The Commonwealth of Australia, created by an act of the Imperial Parliament in 1900 (63 and 64 Vic. cap. 12), is a federal State under the supreme authority of the Crown of Great Britain. This act of Parliament not only created a federal Commonwealth out of the colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, West Australia and Tasmania, but it also granted to the new Commonwealth a written constitution which is obviously modeled upon that of the United States of America. The constitution provides that "every law in force in a colony which has become or becomes a State shall, unless it is by this constitution exclusively vested in the Parliament of the Commonwealth or withdrawn from the Parliament of the State, continue as at the establishment of the Commonwealth or as at the admission or establishment of the State, as the case may be." It is also provided that "when a law of a State is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth the latter shall prevail and the former shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be invalid." All powers not delegated to the central or federal government are reserved to the States. However, in spite of its resemblance to other federal systems, the principle of the responsibility of ministers to Parliament proclaims its English parentage. The judicial power is exercised under the constitution by a federal supreme court, called the High Court of Justice, and other courts of federal jurisdiction. It is expressly provided in the Australian constitution that the Parliament of the Commonwealth shall, subject to the constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to "divorce and matrimonial causes, and in relation thereto, parental rights, and the custody and guardianship of infants." It will be observed that Parliament is given no power under the constitution to make laws prescribing the qualifications for marriage, the impediments thereto, and regulations concerning the celebration. All such power is reserved by the respective States. Moreover, the grant of power to Parliament to make laws with regard to "divorce and matrimonial causes" is not a power "by this constitution exclusively vested in the Parliament of the Commonwealth or withdrawn from the Parliament of the State." Until the Parliament of the Commonwealth shall legislate on the subject, by passing enactments concerning divorce and matrimonial causes superseding the existing statutes of the several States, the laws of each State will continue in operation. In this chapter we shall consider, first, such laws and regulations concerning marriage and divorce as are in effect throughout the entire Commonwealth, and then, under separate headings, discuss the laws and regulations of each State. MARRIAGE.--The courts of Australia, following the English courts, only recognize as a true marriage one which, in addition to being valid in other respects, involves the essential requirement that it is a voluntary union of one man and one woman for life to the exclusion of all others. The law of the place where marriage is celebrated--that is, the _lex loci celebrationis_--alone guides the court in ascertaining whether or not a marriage is regular. All the formal preliminaries, such as the publication of banns, or license, the consent of the parties entitled to give or withhold consent and the solemn declaration of the contracting parties before competent authority, according to the law of the place of celebration, must be complied with. LEGAL AGE.--The legal age for marriage throughout the Commonwealth of Australia begins with fourteen years for a male and twelve years for a female. PARENTAL CONSENT.--In all of the States parental consent is required for the marriage of males and females under twenty-one years of age. BANNS OR LICENSE.--Unless a marriage license is procured banns must be published in the parish in which the parties reside, and if they live in different parishes the banns must be published in each parish. Where a man has caused the banns to be published or has procured a license under a false name or names, or has been married under a false name or names, he will not be allowed to annul the marriage on that account. A party cannot take advantage of his own fraud for the purpose of invalidating a marriage. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--The law considers it against public policy and morality, and contrary to the well-being of the parties, that persons closely related by blood or marriage should intermarry. Marriages are therefore prohibited between all ascendants and descendants, legitimate or illegitimate. A man is also prohibited from marrying his stepmother, wife's mother, stepdaughter, daughter-in-law, son's daughter-in-law, daughter's daughter-in-law, stepson's daughter, stepdaughter's daughter, niece by blood, niece by affinity, or nephew's wife. A woman is prohibited from marrying her uncle by blood or affinity, husband's uncle, father-in-law, stepson, son-in-law, son's son-in-law, daughter's son-in-law, stepson's son, stepdaughter's son, nephew by blood or affinity, or niece's husband. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage may be annulled in any of the States of the Commonwealth upon competent proof showing: 1. A prior and existing marriage of one of the parties. 2. Impotency or such physical malformation of one of the parties which prevents him or her from consummating the marriage by sexual intercourse. 3. Relationship within the prohibited degrees. 4. That the marriage was procured by fraud, violence or mistake as to identity. 5. That one of the parties was insane at the time the marriage was concluded. 6. That the marriage was celebrated without the consent of the persons by law entitled to give or withhold consent. 7. That the marriage was performed without legal license, or the publication of banns, or solemnized before a person not having authority to officiate. A marriage will not be annulled on the last ground stated if it appears that one of the parties acted in good faith and honestly believed that the person who solemnized the marriage had the required authority. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--A decree of judicial separation, which is equivalent to the old form of limited divorce (_a mensa et thoro_) may be obtained in any of the States for the following causes: 1. Adultery of either husband or wife. 2. Desertion without legal cause for two years or more. 3. Cruelty or abusive treatment of one spouse by the other. It is an absolute bar to a suit for judicial separation that the petitioner has committed adultery since the marriage. DIVORCE.--Absolute divorces completely dissolving the marriage bond are granted by the courts of every State in Australia. As every State has its separate statutes on the subject, which set forth the legal causes for divorce, we shall consider such causes in our discussion of each State separately. DEFENCES.--In all the States condonation of a matrimonial offence, which is a legal cause for divorce, is a good defence to the petition. It is also a sufficient defence for the respondent to show that the offence complained of was committed by the connivance or active consent of the petitioner. Connivance in adultery as a bar to divorce is founded on the doctrine _volenti non fit injuria_, the consent consisting in acquiescence, active or passive, in the adulterous intercourse. Passive acquiescence is a sufficient bar, provided it was carried out with the intention that the husband or wife would be guilty; but it must be something more than mere inattention, indifference or dulness of apprehension. The presumption, where the facts are equivocal, is in favour of absence of intention. One spouse must not invite the other to commit adultery; but he or she may permit the licentiousness of the other spouse to have its full scope without being guilty of connivance. It is not connivance to watch for the purpose of discovering a suspected fact so as to make conviction certain. COLLUSION.--An illegal agreement and co-operation between a petitioner and a respondent in a divorce action to enable the petitioner to obtain a judicial dissolution is a fraud upon the court. Upon such collusion appearing the court, at its own instance, will dismiss the petition. DESERTION.--The High Court of Justice of the Commonwealth has defined desertion, which in several of the States is a legal cause for absolute divorce, as follows: "Desertion involves an actual and wilful bringing to an end of an existing state of cohabitation by one party without the consent of the other. Such 'consent' must be shown by something more than a mere mute acquiescence in an existing state of separation or non-resistance to abandonment. What is necessary is some communication of the intended acquiescence or non-resistance to the other by express words or by conduct." FORM OF DIVORCE DECREE.--A decree of divorce in any of the States is granted _nisi_, or provisionally, and cannot be made absolute until three months have elapsed after the decree _nisi_ is entered. A judicial separation may be granted, even if the suit is for an absolute divorce, if the court deems such a decree better meets the law and facts of the case. VICTORIA.--The Marriage Act of 1890 (54 Victoria, No. 1166), entitled "An act to consolidate the laws relating to marriage and to the custody of children and to deserted wives and children and to divorce and matrimonial causes," is practically a short code on the subject of marriage and divorce. CELEBRATION OF MARRIAGE.--The following persons, and none other, may celebrate marriages: 1. A minister of religion ordinarily officiating as such, whose name, designation and usual place of residence, together with the church, chapel or other place of worship in which he officiates, is at the time of the celebration of the marriage duly registered according to law in the office of the Registrar-General. 2. A minister of religion being the recognized head of a religious denomination. 3. A minister of religion holding a registered certificate that he is a duly authorized minister, priest or deacon from the head of the religious denomination to which he belongs, or, if there be no such religious head, from two or more officiating ministers of places of worship duly registered according to law. 4. The Registrar-General or other officer appointed for that purpose. JEWS AND QUAKERS.--The law permits Jews and Quakers to be married by such persons and in such manner as is considered regular and lawful according to their respective beliefs and usages. FORMALITIES.--A marriage must be preceded by a license or the publication of banns. A marriage celebration requires the attendance of two witnesses of full age. DIVORCE.--A domicile of two years or more is a condition precedent to bringing a suit for divorce. The following are legal grounds for a divorce or dissolution of the marriage bond: 1. Adultery on part of the wife. 2. Adultery on part of the husband if committed in the conjugal residence or if it is coupled with circumstances or conduct of aggravation or of a repeated act of adultery. 3. Desertion without just cause continued for three years or more. 4. The habitual drunkenness of a husband for three years, if the husband has habitually left his wife without support, or has habitually been guilty of cruelty to her. 5. Habitual drunkenness of a wife for three years, if the wife has habitually neglected her domestic duties, or rendered herself unfit to discharge them. 6. Imprisonment of either spouse for not less than three years, and being still in prison under a commuted sentence for a capital crime, or under sentence to penal servitude for seven years or more. 7. If the husband has within five years undergone frequent convictions for crime and has been sentenced in the aggregate to imprisonment for three years or more, leaving his wife habitually without means of support. 8. That within a year previously the respondent has been convicted of having attempted to murder the petitioner, or of having assaulted him or her with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm, or that repeatedly during that period the respondent has assaulted and cruelly beaten the petitioner. FORM OF DECREE.--Divorce decrees are entered, in the first instance, _nisi_, or provisionally, and cannot be made absolute until after the expiration of three months following the decree _nisi_. IN FORMA PAUPERIS.--Special provision is made enabling poor persons to prosecute suits for divorce by an interlocutory order in _forma pauperis_, which relieves the person in whose favour it is granted from certain charges and expenses, but does not furnish him or her with the free services of a solicitor or barrister. RECENT DECISIONS.--An important divorce decision holds that visits to brothels by a petitioner who seeks a divorce on the ground of his wife's adultery constitute misconduct conducing to the adultery of the wife and bars the petitioner from a decree, without entering into the question of whether or not adultery was committed by the petitioner in the course of such visits. However, the fact that a husband has conduced to an act of adultery by his wife is not a bar to him obtaining a divorce based on subsequent acts of adultery. NEW SOUTH WALES.--The requirements as to age, consent of parents, or of persons standing in _loco parentis_ are the same in this State as throughout the rest of the Commonwealth and have been set forth in the first part of this chapter. No marriage can be celebrated except by a minister of religion ordinarily officiating as such, whose name, designation and usual residence have been and continue registered in the office of the Registrar-General for Marriages in Sydney or by a district registrar. Parental consent is not required of persons who have previously been lawfully married and whose former marriage has been dissolved by death or divorce. A marriage must be attended by two adult witnesses. By the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1899 jurisdiction in respect of divorces _a mensa et thoro_ (judicial separations), suits for nullity of marriage, suits for dissolution of marriage (absolute divorce), suits for restitution of conjugal rights, suits for jactitation of marriage, and all causes, suits and matters matrimonial are vested in the Supreme Court of the State. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE.--A husband who has been domiciled for three years or more in the State may petition for a dissolution of the marriage on the following grounds: A. That the wife has committed adultery. B. That the wife has, without just cause or excuse, wilfully deserted the petitioner and without any such cause or excuse left him so deserted for three years or more. C. That the wife has, during three years and upwards, been an habitual drunkard and habitually neglected her domestic duties or rendered herself unfit to discharge them. D. That within one year the wife has been imprisoned for a period of not less than three years and is still in prison under a commuted sentence for a capital crime, or under sentence to penal servitude for seven years or more. E. That within one year the wife has been convicted of having attempted to murder her husband, or having assaulted him with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. F. That during one year previously the wife has assaulted and cruelly beaten her husband. A wife may obtain an absolute divorce from her husband by proving: A. That her husband has committed incestuous adultery. B. That the husband has committed bigamy with adultery. C. That the husband has committed rape, sodomy or bestiality. D. That the husband has committed adultery coupled with such cruelty as without adultery would have entitled the wife to a divorce _a mensa et thoro_ (divorce from bed and board) under the laws of England as existing before the enactment of the Imperial Act 20 and 21, Vict. c. 85. E. Adultery of the husband coupled with desertion without reasonable excuse for two years or upwards. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--A judicial separation may be granted on the ground of adultery, cruelty or desertion without legal cause or excuse continued for two years and upwards. QUEENSLAND.--In this State marriage may be celebrated by any regular officiating minister of religion, or by any district registrar, or by specially authorized justices of the peace. CAUSES FOR ABSOLUTE DIVORCE.--A husband is entitled to an absolute divorce if his wife has committed adultery, but a wife is not so entitled unless her husband has committed incestuous adultery, bigamy, rape, sodomy, bestiality, adultery coupled with cruelty, or adultery coupled with desertion without reasonable excuse for two years or more. Incestuous adultery is adultery with a woman within the prohibited degrees. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--A limited divorce or judicial separation can be obtained by either spouse on the following grounds: 1. Adultery. 2. Cruelty. 3. Desertion without legal cause for two years. LEGITIMACY.--Illegitimate children are legitimatized by the subsequent marriage of their parents. WEST AUSTRALIA.--The Marriage Act of 1894 is virtually an acceptance by this State, so far as practicable, of the English Divorce Act of 1857. The causes for absolute divorce or for a judicial separation are the same as those given above for the State of Queensland. SOUTH AUSTRALIA AND TASMANIA.--In these two States, by legislative enactments, the causes for absolute divorce and judicial separation are the same as those given on opposite page for Queensland, West Australia and South Australia. The exercise of appellate jurisdiction by the High Court of Justice of the Commonwealth in matrimonial causes has the beneficial effect of making the several States more and more uniform in their local legislation and judicial interpretation. The federal Parliament has express authority under the constitution to enact a federal code of marriage and divorce which will operate throughout the entire Commonwealth, and such a code in one form or another is inevitable. The Commonwealth of Australia is not yet a dozen years old, but the need of superseding six separate systems of law respecting marriage and divorce by a national law on the subject is already apparent and under constructive discussion. Of all the federative dependencies of the British Crown Australia is perhaps the most homogenous in race, religion and traditions, and it will probably be the first to adopt a federal law of marriage and divorce. CHAPTER XXXII. DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND. The Dominion of New Zealand is a colony of Great Britain consisting of North, South and Stewart Islands, or New Zealand proper, and certain outlying islands, including Cook Island, in the Pacific Ocean. Its present form of government was established by an act of the Imperial Parliament (15 and 16 Vict., cap. 27) passed in 1852. The legislative power is vested in the governor and a bicamera General Assembly or Parliament, consisting of a Legislative Council and a House of Representatives. The constitution provides that the General Assembly or Parliament may make laws "not repugnant to the laws of England." The General Assembly, by an act passed in 1858, declared that: "Whereas, the laws of England, as existing on the fourteenth day of June, 1840, have been applied in New Zealand as far as applicable to the circumstances; but, Whereas, doubt has arisen in respect to such application--Be it declared and enacted, that the laws of England, as existing June 14, 1840, be deemed and taken to have been in force on and after that day and shall hereafter continue in force." Hence it is apparent that the body of the law of New Zealand is founded upon the jurisprudence of England. The judicial system includes a Supreme Court of the Dominion, District Courts and courts presided over by stipendiary magistrates. MARRIAGE.--Males under fourteen years of age and females under twelve years cannot contract a lawful marriage. All persons, male or female, under twenty-one years of age, who have not previously contracted a lawful marriage, require the consent of their parents or guardians in order to marry. However, the marriage of males fourteen years of age or more, or of females twelve years of age or more, without the consent of parents or guardians, does not make such marriage _ipso facto_ void. Parental consent to a marriage of a minor must be given by the father, if living and competent to act; if not, then by the following persons in the order stated: (a) the duly appointed guardian; (b) the mother if she has not married again; (c) or a guardian specially appointed by a court exercising chancery powers. No person can contract a new marriage who has a spouse by an existing marriage still living. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Marriage is forbidden between all ascendants and descendants _ad infinitum_ and between persons related to each other by blood or marriage within the third degree, according to the method of computation of the civil law. According to this reckoning a person cannot marry a relative nearer than his or her own first cousin. PRELIMINARIES.--Notice of a proposed marriage must be given to the registrar of the district in which one of the parties has resided for three days at least. If the contracting parties live in different districts notice must be given to the registrars of both districts. Such notice must set forth the names, ages, status and occupations of each party, together with their addresses, a statement of the period each party has lived in the district, and the name and place of the church, chapel or other building selected by the parties for the solemnization of the marriage. The parties must also make solemn declaration to the registrar or registrars to the truth of all statements of fact in said notice and show that there is no legal impediment to the proposed marriage. Upon receiving the notice in due form the registrar will issue a certificate at once addressed to any officiating minister, or to himself, authorizing the solemnization of the marriage. All marriages must be registered, and the officiating minister or officer who fails to have the record made is subject to punishment. Ordinarily, the best proof of a marriage is to produce the marriage certificate, together with proof identifying the parties, but if the record is lost, destroyed or never existed proof of the marriage may be given by direct oral evidence. In most instances it is necessary to produce clear evidence of a marriage ceremony, but in some exceptional cases a marriage may be proved by long reputation. That is, if two persons live together as husband and wife for many years, and if they have always been regarded as such by their friends and neighbours, the courts will presume a legal marriage unless evidence is produced to prove that the parties were not lawfully married. DIVORCE.--An absolute divorce may be obtained according to the provisions of the Divorce and Matrimonial Compilation Act of 1904 by a husband or wife who has been domiciled in the Dominion of New Zealand for two years or upwards on the following grounds: 1. Adultery of either spouse. 2. Wilful and continuous desertion without just cause for five years and upwards. 3. Habitual drunkenness for four years with habitual cruelty or desertion on the part of the husband. 4. Habitual drunkenness for four years with habitual neglect of her household duties on the part of the wife. 5. Conviction and sentence to imprisonment or to penal servitude for seven years or upward for attempting to take the life of the petitioner. ANNULMENT OF MARRIAGE.--A marriage is annulled on the theory that true and proper consent to the marriage contract has never been given by the parties. The causes or grounds for such annulment are: 1. A prior and existing marriage of one of the parties. 2. Impotency or such physical malformation of one of the parties which prevents him or her from consummating the marriage by sexual intercourse. 3. Relationship of the parties within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity or affinity. 4. That the marriage was procured by fraud or violence of one of the parties. 5. Mistake as to identity. 6. That the marriage was performed without the required legal preliminaries. 7. Insanity of one of the parties at the time the marriage was solemnized. Concerning the sixth cause the tendency of judicial interpretation and construction is to treat the legal requirements concerning formalities to be merely directory and to consider the marriage itself, if at least one of the parties acted in good faith, to be valid. The courts of New Zealand view many of the statutory requirements concerning marriage to be necessary and proper regulations, and which, if disregarded, subject certain persons to fixed penalties, but are not necessarily essential to the marriage contract. EFFECTS OF DIVORCE AND ANNULMENT.--The parties may remarry. During the pendency of the suit for divorce the husband is liable to provide his wife with maintenance or alimony. The amount granted is within the court's discretion, but generally it is about twenty-five per centum of the husband's income. Upon the granting of a divorce decree in the wife's favour the court has power to grant the wife permanent alimony, the amount of which depends on all such facts as the husband's fortune and income, the wife's income and needs and the social status of the parties. If there are children under full age, the issue of the marriage, the court will in the exercise of its discretion make such order concerning their custody, support and education as the ends of justice may require. JUDICIAL SEPARATION.--Under the Divorce and Matrimonial Compilation Act a decree of judicial separation, which is the same in effect as a divorce from bed and board under the old law, may be obtained by either spouse upon the following grounds: 1. Adultery. 2. Cruelty. 3. Desertion without just cause continued for two years. SUMMARY JURISDICTION ACT.--Besides the ordinary suit for a judicial separation a wife may obtain speedy and inexpensive relief by making an application to a stipendiary magistrate for an order of separation and maintenance. The causes sufficient for the granting of such relief are: A. Habitual drunkenness of the husband, coupled with habitual cruelty to, or neglect of, the wife and family. B. Desertion by the husband of his wife. C. Habitual cruelty of the husband toward his wife. D. Neglect of the husband to provide reasonable maintenance for his wife and minor children. A husband is entitled to summary relief permitting him a separation order upon proof that his wife is an habitual drunkard who habitually neglects her household duties. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE HINDU LAW. For every person in the world whose rule of civil conduct is based upon the English system of jurisprudence there are two others to whom Hindu law is both binding by political authority and the rule of conscience. The student of law and world politics will note with interest two impressive facts concerning Hindu jurisprudence in India. The first is that until the accession of British rule in that country the Hindu law was not law in the sense in which the term is understood by lawyers. The second fact is that the acknowledged jurisconsults and commentators upon the Hindu law of to-day are not Hindus, but British and Anglo-Indian jurists. Prof. Golapchandra Sarkar, in his admirable treatise, says: "The administration of the Hindu law by the English judges shows forth in clear light the administrative capacity, the indomitable energy, the scrupulous care and the strong common sense of the English nation." In treating of the marriage and divorce laws of over two hundred and twenty-five millions of human beings who are Hindus by race and religion, the first question to be answered is: What is Hindu law? Hindu law is the whole body of rules regulating the life of a Hindu in relation to his civil conduct and the performance of his religious duties grouped together under the general name of _Dharma Sastra_, or religious ordinances. The ultimate source of this wonderful system is the Veda, but the Hindu also accepts an immemorial custom as transcendant law, contending that such acceptance is approved in the sacred scripture and in the codes of divine legislators. In the Mahabharat we read: "Reasoning is not reliable; the Vedas differ from one another; and there is no sage whose doctrine can be safely accepted; the true rule of law is not easy to be known; the ways of venerable persons are, therefore, the best to follow." The Hindus have for centuries been governed by their own laws, which they regard not as the edicts of a political sovereign, nor as the enactments of a human legislature, but as the immutable commands of the Supreme Being of the universe. With such reverence have these laws been regarded that no Hindu king of whom we have any historical record ever dared to repeal, alter or modify one of them. For the past century such progress as Hindu law has made is due entirely to the action of the British courts in India. As we called attention to in the chapter on Mohammedan law, there are four distinct systems of jurisprudence in India, all in full operation and effect. Two of these systems, the English law created by the British Parliament and Anglo-Indian law created by the legislative councils, are territorial in jurisdiction, while the others, namely, the Hindu law and the Mohammedan law, are purely personal. That is to say, the Hindu and Mohammedan systems of law apply respectively to Hindus and Mohammedans, and to no one else. At the beginning of British rule in India the government of the East India Company gave the native inhabitants of the country the privilege of being governed by their own laws in matters relating to marriage, inheritance and religious usages. In the regulations promulgated by Warren Hastings in 1772, and since in the various civil acts and charters establishing the law courts, the rule is expressed that in cases relating to marriage, inheritance, succession and religious usages the Hindu law shall apply to the Hindus. The Privy Council decided in the leading case of Abraham v. Abraham that under the regulations and acts a Hindu is a man by both birth and religion a Hindu. In the case of Raj Bahadur v. Bishen Dayal, Mr. Justice Straight said: "If we are correct in our view that the status of a Hindu or Mohammedan under the first paragraph of Section 24, Act VI., of 1871, to have the Hindu law made the 'rule of decision,' depends upon his being an orthodox believer in the Hindu or Mohammedan religion, the mere circumstance that he may call himself or be termed by others a Hindu or Mohammedan, as the case may be, is not enough." CASTE.--The idea of caste or class distinction so completely permeates every religious and secular institution of India that one cannot understand Hindu law without having in mind the principal features of this social system. The Vedas, upon which the whole structure of Hindu religion and ethics professes to be based, give no countenance to the present regulations of caste. The Sanscrit word for caste is _verna_, meaning colour, and this leads us to the true origin of caste distinctions. The _verna_, or colour, of the light-complexioned Aryan invaders who entered India from the Northwest and the _verna_ of the dark-skinned aborigines whom they subjugated established the first distinctions of caste. There are four principal castes to-day among the Hindus, namely: 1. _Brahmin_, or priest caste. 2. _Kshatriya_, or warrior caste. 3. _Vaisya_, or merchant caste. 4. _Sudra_, or servant caste. A fifth class, called _Pariahs_, are of no caste, and are practically outside the law. The first three upper classes or castes are also called "twice-born" men, because they are supposed to be regenerated or "born in the Veda." So, generally, are the distinctions of caste recognized that Pope Gregory XV. found it advisable to publish a bull sanctioning caste regulations in the Christian churches of India. The Hindus attach great importance to the marriage. It is regarded by them as one of the ten _sankars_, or sacraments, necessary for the regeneration of men of the twice-born classes, and the only sacrament for women and _Sudras_. The Veda says: "A Brahmin immediately upon being born is produced a debtor in three obligations: to the holy saints for the practice of religious duties; to the gods for the performance of sacrifice; to his forefathers for offspring." Manu ordains that "after a man has read the Vedas in the form prescribed by law, has legally begotten a son and has performed sacrifices to the best of his power, he has paid his three debts and may then apply his heart to eternal bliss." The Hindus hold the marriage relation in such respect that the question of the validity of a marriage is rarely submitted to the courts for judicial determination. The law of the Catholic Church treats marriage as a sacramental contract dissoluble only by death, but the Hindu law goes further by declaring against the remarriage of widows. This rule of Hindu has been legislated upon by Act XV. of 1856, which makes a Hindu widow eligible for a new marriage, but the marriage of a widow has never been the practice among Hindus. Mann says: "A widow who from a wish to bear children slights her deceased husband by marrying again brings a disgrace on herself here below and shall be excluded from the seat of her lord." Polygamy, or plurality of wives, is permitted by the Hindu law, but is rarely practiced. Polyandry, or plurality of husbands, is contrary both to the Hindu law and the provisions of the Indian Penal Code. The three higher castes are permitted to intermarry with the caste next below their own, the issue taking the lower caste or sometimes forming a new caste. In many ways the theoretical inferiority of the _Sudra_ absolves him from the restraints which the letter of the law lays on the three higher castes. AGE FOR MARRIAGE.--In the Hindu law want of age, though a disqualification for other purposes, does not render a person incompetent to marry. Ordinarily the lowest age is eight years for females, but a girl may be married before that age if a suitable husband is procured for her. If none of the persons who ought to give a girl in marriage do so before she completes her eleventh year she may choose a husband for herself. A girl must be given in marriage before she attains puberty. The reason for marrying off a girl before she reaches the age of puberty is that the marriage should be free from sexual desire. PARENTAL CONSENT.--The Hindu law vests the girl absolutely in her parents and guardians, by whom the contract of her marriage is made, and her consent or absence of consent is not material. The consent of the parents is required for the marriage of minors--that is, persons under fifteen years of age. The parties authorized to give or withhold such consent are the father, the paternal grandfather, the brother, a _sakulya_ or kinsman in succession. The want of parental consent, or the consent of the person standing in _loco parentis_, does not invalidate a marriage otherwise legally contracted. IMPEDIMENTS.--Disqualifications or impediments are absolute or relative. A disqualification which renders a party incompetent to marry any person is absolute, while one which simply renders a party incompetent to a particular person is termed relative. A woman with a husband living is absolutely disqualified from contracting a new marriage. Idiots and lunatics are disqualified for civil purposes only, although the Hindu law permits a wife to desert or disobey an insane husband. Deaf and dumb persons, or those afflicted with incurable or loathsome diseases, are competent to marry, but cannot insist upon conjugal rights. Among the three highest castes (the twice-born) impotency is not an impediment to marriage, but for those of the lowest caste (_Sudras_) it is a disqualification. A twice-born husband who was impotent was for centuries permitted to appoint a kinsman to beget issue by his wife, but this is now forbidden. The female must be younger than her husband and of the same caste. A girl whose elder sister is unmarried, or a man whose elder brother is unmarried, is not eligible for marriage. MARRIAGE CEREMONIES.--Ceremonies of some sort, religious or secular, are requisite to the concluding of a valid marriage. The ceremony may be that of "walking seven steps" or merely the exchange of a garland of flowers. The question as to whether or not a marriage is ceremonially complete depends largely upon what ceremonies are customary among the parties concerned. Consummation is not necessary to complete a marriage. In thousands of cases girls under ten years of age have been married to males older than themselves who have died before their wives were old enough for the consummation of marriage. Such a situation has brought about the sad plight of the tens of thousands of child widows in India. If a girl of eight years of age is ceremoniously married to a man and immediately thereafter returns to her father's home to await the time when she shall be old enough to assume conjugal duties, she is from the moment the ceremony of marriage is completed a married woman, and if her husband dies the next day she is an eight-year-old widow whom no orthodox Hindu will marry. When the British first came to India it was a general practice for widows to voluntarily submit to be burned alive with the corpses of their deceased husbands. This savage practice was called a _suttee_, and by it millions of child and adult widows were burned to death. By a provision of the Indian Penal Code such a death is treated as a suicide, and all who participate in the offence are holden for homicide. We are glad to record that the British Government has so thoroughly enforced the law in this respect that _suttees_ have been entirely abandoned by the Hindus. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Baudhayana says: "He who inadvertently marries a girl sprung from the same original stock with himself must support her as a mother." Marriage between ascendants and descendants is unlawful. Marriage is also prohibited between a twice-born man and a woman who is of the same _gotra_, or primitive stock. The woman must not be the daughter of one who is of the same _gotra_ with the bridegroom's father or maternal grandfather. Neither must she be a _sapinda_ of the bridegroom's father or maternal grandfather. _Sapinda_ in the Hindu law means descended from ancestors within the sixth degree. That is, from persons in the ascending line within the seventh degree from the intending husband. The _sapinda_ relationship ceases after the fifth and seventh degrees from the father and mother respectively. A _Sudra_ has no _gotra_ of his own. DIVORCE.--Divorce in the ordinary sense is unknown to the Hindu law. The Hindus contend that even death does not dissolve the bond of marriage. The single case in which a dissolution of a Hindu marriage can be granted by a court of law is under Act XXI. of 1860, which was enacted to meet the complications which arise when one of the spouses becomes a Christian. If the convert, after deliberation for a prescribed time, refuses to cohabit further with the other spouse, the court may upon petition declare the marriage to be dissolved, and either party is free to marry again. There are some low castes in the Bombay Presidency, in Assam and elsewhere, among whom the practice of irregular divorce and remarriage of the parties prevails. The causes for divorce are mutual consent of the parties and ill-treatment. These divorces, although permitted by custom, are not recognized by the courts. RESTITUTION OF CONJUGAL RIGHTS.--A Hindu husband or wife can maintain a lawsuit to obtain a judicial separation against a deserting spouse for restitution of conjugal rights, but a Hindu convert to Christianity cannot obtain such a decree if his wife remains a Hindu. CHAPTER XXXIV THE CHINESE EMPIRE. A treatise on the marriage and divorce laws of the world would be incomplete without a chapter dealing with the law of the most compact nationality in history. Chinese law is the growth of many centuries and is based on immemorial custom, but with all its antiquity and wealth of precedent, it has not yet passed the system of exacting testimony from witnesses by physical torture. The first evidence of civil law to be found in Chinese history or tradition is the recognition and regulation of the status of marriage. Its fundamental principle is parental authority. Though in a sense systematic, the laws of China are not as yet in a concentrated or scientific form. Under the present dynasty the collection of laws which is applied by the courts is called _Ta Ch'ing Lii Li_. Two things are to be said in favour of the laws of China--the first being that every Chinese is within the law, and that the person is considered of more importance than property. MARRIAGE.--A Chinese is not permitted to have more than one wife. He may, however, in addition, keep concubines, or "secondary wives." Both wives and concubines have a legal status. The wife is considered to be a relative of all her husband's family, but a concubine is not so considered. It is an offence for a man to degrade his wife to the level of a concubine, or to elevate a concubine to the level of his wife. The consent of the parties, which is the first requisite of a valid marriage in Christendom, is legally of no consequence in China. It is the consent of the parents of the respective parties which is material and necessary. The consent of the father of the woman is sufficient, and if he is dead then the mother may give the necessary consent. The preliminary stages of a Chinese marriage are elaborately formal. It is the duty of the families of the intended bride and bridegroom to ascertain whether or not the parties have the capacity to conclude marriage. Certain introductions and exchange of social courtesies follow. If everything appears satisfactory the parties acting on behalf of the intended bride send a note of "eight characters" to the parties acting in behalf of the prospective bridegroom, which note is practically a proposal of marriage. If the terms of the proposed marriage are agreed upon the next thing is for the representatives of the parties to draft and execute the articles of marriage. The courts will hold it to be a marriage if the betrothal is regular, even if there is no consummation. It is essential to a legal marriage that the written consent of the woman be obtained; it is not sufficient that the woman herself gives free consent. Fraud makes the marriage a nullity. In his book, "Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal Law," Mr. Ernest Alabaster tells of the case of "Mrs. Wang." It appears that an old reprobate, knowing that the girl's parents would refuse him because of his ugliness of face and character, sent a handsome young nephew to represent him in the marriage negotiations. The impersonation brought about the signing of the contract, and the old man secured possession of the bride. Soon after the wedding he ill-treated his young wife and one night she strangled him. The court decided that the woman had committed an unjustifiable homicide and that the victim was not her husband. IMPEDIMENTS.--Intermarriage is forbidden between ascendants and descendants and between kinsmen by consanguinity or affinity up to the fourth degree. Marriage is also forbidden between persons having the same _Hsing_, or surname. A free person cannot contract a valid marriage with a slave. A mother and daughter must not marry father and son. Marriage is absolutely forbidden to a Buddhist or Taoist priest. An official must not marry a wife or buy a concubine within his jurisdiction. It is unlawful for a person of official rank to take as his secondary wife or concubine an actress, singing woman or a prostitute. No one must marry a female fugitive from justice. Marriage of a deceased brother's widow is against the law. It should be remembered that it is a criminal offence to contract an invalid marriage. For example, not very long ago a prince of the Imperial family purchased a singing girl as his secondary wife or concubine. The marriage was declared null and he was sentenced to receive sixty blows for attempting to contract an illegal secondary marriage. WIDOWS.--A widow or divorced woman can contract a new marriage, but she must first obtain consent of her parents and wait until the customary period of mourning is completed. DIVORCE.--As an institution divorce is almost as ancient in China as marriage. Marriage is not considered as in any respect a religious contract, but as a status created principally for the comfort of man and the continuance of the race. As woman is considered an inferior creature to man she has not the same rights in or out of a court of law. However, she can obtain, against her husband's will, an absolute divorce on the following grounds: 1. Impotency. If her husband is unable to perform the sexual act a wife can compel him to grant her a deed of divorcement. 2. If a man sells his wife to another the woman is _ipso facto_ divorced from both men. 3. If a man induces his wife to become a prostitute, or accepts her earnings as such, the wife is entitled to a decree of absolute divorce. We can find no other causes which entitle a woman to a divorce from her husband. His adultery, cruelty, abandonment, neglect or drunkenness furnishes no ground for a dissolution of the marriage. For a husband divorce is very easy. The so-called "seven valid reasons" enable any man so inclined to practically discard his wife when it pleases him. The seven "reasons" or causes are: 1. Talkativeness. 2. Wantonness. 3. Theft. 4. Barrenness. 5. Disobedience to parents of husband. 6. Jealousy. 7. Inveterate infirmity. The last of the seven reasons permits a man to get rid of a wife who is incurably ill or infirm. MUTUAL CONSENT.--If husband and wife mutually agree upon divorce the courts, by ancient custom, will ratify their agreement. Although the Chinese law does not consider the consent or non-consent of the parties as of any consequence in creating the status of marriage, it, by a peculiar process of logic, permits them to end the relationship whenever they mutually please so to do. Perhaps one can easier understand the marriage and divorce laws of the Chinese Empire by remembering that all Chinese laws are supposed to follow the instincts of the people (_Shun po hsing chi ching_). GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.--The present laws and customs of China are but little changed from the time of the Tang Dynasty, which reigned nearly thirteen hundred years ago. Then, as now, a poor man who finds himself unable to support his wife, may, if she has no parents to take her back, sell her to his richer neighbour. The judicial machinery of the Chinese Empire is the elaboration of centuries of customs and precedents. In the first instance parties seeking legal redress apply by complaint to the lowest court having jurisdiction within the district of their domicile. If dissatisfied with the decision an appeal can be made first to the District Magistracy, then to the Prefecture, and after that to the Supreme Provincial Court. If the questions involved are sufficiently important a further appeal may be prosecuted before the Judiciary Board, which sits in Peking and is the highest judicial court in the Empire. In theory a defeated suitor can appeal from the Judiciary Board to the fountain of law and justice, His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of China, but there are few cases, according to the record, which have gone so far. We are of the opinion that Chinese law will never approach a scientific system until China recognizes the necessity and value of having professional advocates and jurists to point out the way to better things. INDEX A Alabama, 151 Alaska, 152 Alberta, 207 Algeria, 137 Argentina, 218 Arizona, 153 Arkansas, 154 Australia, 238 Austria, 67 B Belgium, 53 Brazil, 223 British Columbia, 206 Bulgaria, 129 C California, 155 Canada, 199 China, 265 Colorado, 156 Connecticut, 158 Cuba, 227 D Delaware, 159 Denmark, 81 District of Columbia, 157 E Egypt, 137 England, 16 F Finland, 94 Florida, 161 France, 38 G Georgia, 162 Germany, 60 Greece, 132 H Hindu Law, 256 Holland, 100 Hungary, 72 I Idaho, 163 Illinois, 164 India, 137 Indiana, 165 Indian Territory, 165 Iowa, 166 Ireland, 36 Italy, 46 J Japan, 104 Jews, Laws for, 96 K Kansas, 167 Kentucky, 167 L Louisiana, 168 M Maine, 169 Manitoba, 199 Maryland, 169 Massachusetts, 170 Mexico, 209 Michigan, 172 Minnesota, 172 Mississippi, 173 Missouri, 174 Mohammedan Law, 137 Montana, 175 Morocco, 137 N Nebraska, 175 Nevada, 176 New Brunswick, 206 Newfoundland, 208 New Hampshire, 177 New Jersey, 177 New Mexico, 179 New South Wales, 246 New York, 179 New Zealand, 250 North Carolina, 184 North Dakota, 184 Northwest Territories, 207 Norway, 85 Nova Scotia, 207 O Ohio, 185 Oklahoma, 186 Ontario, 204 Oregon, 187 P Pennsylvania, 187 Persia, 137 Portugal, 117 Prince Edward Island, 199 Q Quebec, 204 Queensland, 248 R Rhode Island, 189 Roumania, 121 Russia, 89 S Saskatchewan, 199 Scotland, 32 Servia, 125 South Australia, 248 South Carolina, 190 South Dakota, 190 Spain, 110 Sweden, 76 Switzerland, 57 T Tasmania, 248 Tennessee, 191 Texas, 192 Transylvania, 72 Turkey, 137 U United States of America, 148 Utah, 193 V Vermont, 193 Victoria, 243 Virginia, 194 W Washington, 195 West Australia, 248 West Virginia, 196 Wisconsin, 197 Wyoming, 198 
39834	----	Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. AFTER THE DIVORCE _A ROMANCE_ BY GRAZIA DELEDDA _Translated from the Italian_ BY MARIA HORNOR LANSDALE And they shall scourge him, and put him to death; ... And they understood none of these things:.... --St. Luke xviii. 33, 34 [Illustration] NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1905 COPYRIGHT, 1905 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY _Published March, 1905_ THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS RAHWAY, N. J. PART I AFTER THE DIVORCE CHAPTER I Nineteen Hundred and Seven. In the "strangers' room" of the Porru house a woman sat crying. Crouched on the floor near the bed, her knees drawn up, her arms resting on her knees, and her forehead on her arms, she wept and sobbed continuously, shaking her head from time to time as though to indicate that there was no more hope, absolutely none at all; while her plump shoulders and straight young back rose and fell in the tightly fitting yellow bodice, like a wave of the sea. The room was nearly in darkness; there were no windows, but through the open door which gave upon a bricked gallery, a stretch of dull grey sky could be seen, growing momentarily darker; and far, far away, against this dusky background, gleamed the yellow ray of a little, solitary star. From the courtyard below came the shrill chirping of a cricket, and the occasional stamp of horses' hoofs on the stone pavement. A short, heavy woman, clad in the Nuorese dress, with a large, fat, old-woman face, appeared in the doorway; she carried a four-branched iron candlestick, in one socket of which burned a wick soaked in oil. "Giovanna Era," said she in a gruff voice, "what are you about all in the dark? Are you there? What are you doing? I believe you are crying! You must be crazy! Upon my word, that's just what you are--crazy!" The young woman began to sob convulsively. "Oh, oh, oh!" said the other, drawing near, and in the tone of one who is deeply shocked and amazed. "I said you were crying. What are you crying for? There's your mother waiting for you downstairs, and you up here, crying like a crazy creature!" The young woman wept more violently than ever, whereupon the other hung the candlestick on a large nail, gazed vaguely about her, and then began hovering over her disconsolate guest, searching for words wherewith to comfort her; she could only repeat, however: "But, Giovanna, you are crazy, just crazy!" The "strangers' room"--the name given to that apartment which every Nuorese family, according to immemorial custom, reserves for the use of friends from the country--was large, white, and bare; it had a great wooden bedstead, a table covered with a cotton cloth and adorned with little glass cups and saucers, and a quantity of small pictures hung close to the unpainted wooden ceiling. Bunches of dried grapes and yellow pears hung from the rafters, filling the room with a faint fragrance; and sacks of wool stood about on the floor. The stout woman, who was the mistress of the house, laid hold of one of these sacks, dragged it to another part of the room, and then back again to where she had found it. "Now then," said she, panting from her exertion, "do stop. What good does it do? And why should you give up, anyhow? What the devil, my dearie! Suppose the public prosecutor _has_ asked for the galleys, that doesn't mean that the jury are all mad dogs like himself!" But the other only kept on crying and shaking her head, moaning: "No, no, no!" between her sobs. "Yes, yes, I tell you," urged the woman. "Get up now, and come to your mother," and, taking hold of her, she forced back her head. The action revealed a charming countenance; rosy, framed in a thick mass of tumbled black hair; the big dark eyes swollen and glistening with tears, and surmounted by heavy black eyebrows that met in the middle. "No, no," wailed Giovanna, shaking herself free. "Let me cry over my fate, Aunt Porredda."[1] "Fate or no fate, you just get up!" "No, I won't get up! I won't get up! They'll sentence him to thirty years at the very least! Do you hear me? Thirty years! That's what they'll give him!" "That remains to be seen. And after all, what is thirty years? Why, you carry on like a wildcat!" The other gave a shrill cry, and tore her hair in an access of wild despair. "Thirty years! What is thirty years!" she shrieked. "A man's whole lifetime, Aunt Porredda! You don't know what you are talking about, Aunt Porredda! Go away, go away and leave me alone! for the love of Christ, oh, leave me to myself!" "I'm not going away," said Aunt Porredda. "The idea! In my own house! Get up, you child of the devil! Stop this before you make yourself ill. To-morrow will be time enough to pull your hair out by the roots; your husband isn't in the galleys yet!" Giovanna dropped her head, and began to cry again in a subdued, hopeless way, heartbreaking to listen to. "Costantino, Costantino," she moaned in the tone of one bewailing the dead, "I shall never see you again, never again! Those mad dogs have seized you and bound you fast, and they will never let you go; and our house will be empty, and the bed cold, and the family scattered. Oh, my beloved! my lamb! you are dead for this world. May those who have done it die the same death!" Aunt Porredda, distracted by Giovanna's grief, and unable to think of anything more to say, went out on the gallery, and began calling: "Bachissia Era! come up here; your daughter is losing her mind!" A step was heard on the outer stair. Aunt Porredda turned back into the room, and behind her appeared a tall, tragic-looking figure all in black. The gaunt, yellow face, shaped like that of some bird of prey, was framed in the folds of a black handkerchief; two brilliant green spots indicated the eyes, deep set, overhung by fierce, heavy brows, and surrounded by livid circles. Her mere presence seemed to exercise a subduing effect upon the daughter. "Get up!" she said in a harsh voice. Giovanna arose. She was tall and lithe, though cast in a heavy mould and having enormous hips. Beneath the short, circular petticoat, adorned below the waist with a band of purple, and with a broad, green hem, appeared two little feet shod in elastic gaiters, and the suggestion of a pair of shapely legs. "What are you worrying these good people for?" demanded the mother. "Have done now; come down to supper, and don't frighten the children, or throw a wet blanket over the happiness of these good people." The "happiness of these good people" was in allusion to the arrival of the son of the house, a law student, home for the holidays. Giovanna, recognising that her mother meant to be obeyed, quieted down without more ado. Pulling the woollen kerchief from her head, and thereby disclosing a cap of antique brocade, from whence escaped waves of coal-black hair, she turned towards a basin of water standing on a chair, and began to bathe her face. The two women looked at one another, and Aunt Porredda, taking her lips between her right thumb and forefinger in sign of silence, noiselessly left the room. The other, accepting this hint, said nothing more, and when Giovanna had finished bathing, and had set her hair in order, silently led the way down the outer stair. Night had fallen; warm, still, profound. The solitary yellow star had been followed by a multitude of glittering asterisks, and the Milky Way lay like a scarf of gauze embroidered with silver spangles. The air was heavy with the penetrating odour of new-mown hay. In the courtyard, the crickets, hidden away in the trelliswork, kept up their shrill chirping; the ruminative horse still stamped with his iron-shod hoofs upon the stones, and from afar floated the melancholy note of a song. The kitchen opened on the courtyard, as did a ground-floor bedroom sometimes used as a dining-room. Both doors were standing open. In the kitchen, beside the lighted stove, stood Aunt Porredda engaged in preparing the macaroni for supper. A child, clad in a loose black frock, fair, untidy, and barefooted, was quarrelling with a stout little urchin, fat and florid like his grandmother. The girl was swearing roundly, naming every devil in turn; while the boy tried to pinch her bare legs. "Stop it," said Aunt Porredda. "There now, will you leave off, you naughty children?" "Mamma Porru, she's cursing me; she said: 'Go to the devil who gave you birth.'" "Minnia! what a way to talk!" "Well, he stole my purse, the one with the picture of the Pope, that Uncle Paolo brought me----" "It's not so, I didn't!" shouted the boy. "You'd better not be talking about stealing, Minnia," he added with a meaning look. The girl became suddenly quiet, as though a spell had been cast over her, but presently her tormentor, seizing a long stick, tried to hook the curved handle around her legs. Minnia began to cry, and the grandmother faced about, ladle in hand. "I declare, I'll beat you with this ladle, you wretched children! Just you wait a moment!" she cried, running at them. The children made a dash for the courtyard, and collided violently with Giovanna and her mother. "What's all this? What's all this?" "Oh, those children, they'll drive me wild! I believe the devil is in them," said Aunt Porredda from the doorway. At this moment a slim little figure in black emerged from the main gateway leading into the street, calling excitedly: "They are coming, Grandmother; here they are now!" "Well, let them come; you would do better, Grazia, to pay some attention to your brother and sister; they have been fighting like two cocks." Grazia made no reply, but taking the iron candlestick from Aunt Bachissia she blew out the light, and hid it behind a bench in the kitchen, saying in a low voice: "You ought to be ashamed, Grandmother, to have such a looking candlestick, now that Uncle Paolo is here." "Uncle Paolo! Well, I declare! Do you suppose he was brought up on gold?" "He has been to Rome." "To Rome! The idea! They only don't have lights like that there, because they have to buy their oil by the pennyworth. Here, we can use as much oil as we want." "You must be green if you believe that!" said the girl; then, suddenly catching the sound of her grandfather's and uncle's voices, she flew to meet them, trembling with excitement. "Good-evening, Giovanna; Aunt Bachissia, how goes it with you?" said the hearty voice of the student. "I? Very well, the Lord be praised! I was sorry to hear of your misfortune. Never mind, courage! Who knows? The sentence is to-morrow, is it not?" He led the way into the room where the supper-table was laid, followed by the two women and the children, whom their uncle's presence filled with mixed terror and delight. He was short and limped slightly, one foot being smaller than the other, and the leg somewhat shorter; this circumstance had earned him the nickname of Dr. Pededdu,[2] a jest which he took in very good part, declaring that it was far better to have one foot smaller than the other, rather than a head smaller than those of other people. His fresh, round, smiling face, with its little blond moustache, was surmounted by a big, tattered black hat. He proclaimed himself a Socialist. Sitting down on the side of the bed, with both legs swinging, he threw an arm around each staring, open-mouthed child, and drew it to him, giving his attention meanwhile to Aunt Bachissia's recital of their misfortunes. From time to time, however, his gaze wandered to Grazia, the angles of whose girlish, undeveloped figure were accentuated by an ill-fitting black frock much too small for her. Her own hard, light-coloured orbs never left her uncle's face. "Listen," said Aunt Bachissia, in her harsh voice, "I will tell you the whole story. Costantino Ledda had an uncle by blood, his own father's brother. His name was Basile Ledda, but they called him 'the Vulture'--may God preserve him in glory if he's not fast in the devil's clutches already--because he was so grasping. "He was a wretch, a regular yellow vulture. God may have forgiven him, but there, they say he starved his wife to death! He was Costantino's guardian; the boy had some money of his own, his uncle spent it all, and then began to ill-use him. He beat him, and sometimes he would tie him down between two stones in the open field, so that the bees would come and sting him on the eyes. Well, one day Costantino ran away; he was sixteen years old. For three years nothing was heard of him; he says he was working in the mines; I don't know, but anyhow, that's what he says." "Yes, yes, he was working in the mines," interrupted Giovanna. "I don't know," said the mother, pursing up her lips with an air of doubt, "well, anyway, the fact remains that one day, during the time that he was off, some one fired at Basile the Vulture out in the field. It is true he did have enemies. When Costantino came back he admitted that he had run away for fear he might be tempted to kill his uncle, he hated him so. "Afterwards, though, he tried to make his peace with him, and succeeded too. But now listen to this, Paolo Porru----" "Dr. Porru! Dr. Porreddu!" shouted the small nephew, correcting the guest. The latter, turning on the boy angrily, started to box his ears, whereupon Giovanna laughed. On beholding their heartbroken guest--she who up to that moment had been surrounded by a halo of romance and tragedy--actually laughing, the pale, lank Grazia broke into a nervous laugh as well, and then Minnia laughed, and then the boy, and then the student. Aunt Bachissia glared about her, and, lifting one lean, yellow hand, was about to bring it down on some one--she had not quite decided whether her daughter or the boy--when Aunt Porredda appeared in the doorway, bearing a steaming dish of macaroni. She was followed by Uncle Efes Maria Porru, a big, imposing-looking man, whose broad chest was uncomfortably contracted in a narrow blue velvet jacket. He was a peasant, but affected a literary turn; his large, colourless face resembled a mask of ancient marble; he wore a short, curling beard, and had thick lips always parted, and big, clear eyes. "Come, sit down at once," said Aunt Porredda, planting the dish in the centre of the table. "What! laughing, are you? The little doctor is making you all laugh?" "I was just about to give your grandson a box on the ear," said Aunt Bachissia. "And why were you going to do that, my soul? Come now, sit down, all of you; Giovanna, here; Dr. Porreddu, over there." The student threw himself back full-length on the bed, stretched out his arms, lifted his legs high in air, dropped them again, sat up, and jumped to his feet with a yawn. The children and Giovanna began to laugh again. "A little gymnastic exercise does one good. Great Lord! how I shall sleep to-night! My bones feel as though they had lost all their joints. How tall you have grown, Grazia; you look like a bean-pole." The girl reddened and dropped her eyes; while Aunt Bachissia thrust out her lips, annoyed at the student's lack of interest, as well as at the general indifference to Costantino's fate. To be sure, Giovanna herself had apparently forgotten, and it was only when Aunt Porredda placed before her a bountiful helping of macaroni covered with fragrant red gravy, that she suddenly recollected herself; her face clouded over, and she refused to eat. "There now! what did I tell you?" cried Aunt Porredda. "She is crazy, absolutely crazy! Why can't you eat? What has eating your supper to-night to do with the sentence to-morrow?" "Come, come," said Aunt Bachissia crossly. "Don't be foolish, don't go to work and spoil these good people's pleasure." "A brave heart," said Uncle Efes Maria pompously--fastening his napkin under his chin and seeing an opportunity for a learned observation--"a brave heart defies fate, as Dante Alighieri says. Come now, Giovanna, prove yourself a true flower of the mountains; more enduring than the rocks themselves. Time softens all things." Giovanna began to eat, but with a lump in her throat that made swallowing a difficult matter. Paolo, meanwhile, had not spoken a word, but sat bowed over his plate, which, by the time Giovanna had managed to get down her first mouthful, was entirely clean. "Why, you are a perfect hurricane, my son!" said Aunt Porredda. "What a ravenous appetite you have, to be sure! Do you want some more--yes?--and more still--yes----?" "Well done!" cried Uncle Efes Maria. "It looks as though you had found very little to eat in the Eternal City!" "Eh, that is precisely what I was saying just now," said Aunt Porredda. "Beautiful streets, if you will; but--when it comes to buying anything--the pennies have to be counted down! I've been told all about it! On my word, they say that there are no provisions stored in the houses as there are here, and you all know for yourselves that with no provisions in the house it is not easy to satisfy one's appetite!" Aunt Bachissia nodded affirmatively; she knew only too well what happens when there is nothing in a house to eat. "Is that true or not, Dr. Porreddu?" "True, perfectly true," said he, laughing, and eating, and waving his large, white hands with their long nails, in the air. "It is that that makes him such a leech, a regular vampire," said Uncle Efes Maria, turning to his guests. "I'll not have a drop of blood left in my veins. Body of the devil! how the money must go in Rome!" "Ah, if you only knew!" sighed Paolo. "Everything, every single thing is so frightfully dear. Twenty centimes for a single peach! There, I feel better now." "Twenty centimes!" exclaimed all the company in chorus. "Well, Aunt Bachissia, and then? After Costantino came back?" asked Paolo. "Well, Paolo Porru--you see I go on addressing you familiarly, even though you will be a doctor soon; when you were a little chap I used to go so far as to give you a cuff now and then----" "I have no recollection of it, but go on with your story," said the young man, while Grazia's nostrils fairly dilated with anger. "Well, as I said, Costantino disappeared for three years, and----" "He was working in the mines, all right; then he came back and was reconciled to his uncle. What then?" "He met my Giovanna here, and they fell in love with each other; but the uncle made objections because my girl was poor. Then they began to hate one another worse than ever. Costantino was working for the Vulture, and he would never let him have a centime. So, then, one day Costantino came to me and said: 'I'm a poor man; I haven't got any money to buy trinkets for the bride, or to provide a feast and all the rest for a Christian wedding; and you are poor, too. Now then, suppose we do this way: we will have the civil ceremony, and all live and work together; then, when we have saved enough, we will be married by God. A great many do it that way, why shouldn't we?' So we did; we had the civil ceremony very quietly, and afterwards we all lived together and were happy enough. But the Vulture was furious; he used to come and yell things at us even in our own street, and he tried to interfere with Costantino in every way he could. But we just kept on working. So at last, when the vintage was over last autumn, we began preparing the sweets and things for the wedding, and then Basile Ledda was found dead one day, murdered in his own house! The evening before, Costantino had been seen going in there; what he went for was to tell his uncle about the wedding, and to try to make his peace with him. Ah, poor boy! he would not run off and hide somewhere as I begged and implored him to do, so of course they arrested him." "He would not go because he was innocent, mamma, my----" "There you go, you simpleton, beginning to cry again! If you don't stop, I'll not say another word, so there! Well, then, Costantino was arrested, and now the trial is just over, and the public prosecutor has asked to have him sent to the galleys; but he's a dog, that public prosecutor! They have evidence, to be sure; Costantino was seen on the night of the murder entering his uncle's house, where he lived all by himself, like the wild beast that he was; and then their relations in the past--all true enough, but there are no proofs. Costantino was very contradictory, and full of remorse about something; he kept repeating: 'It is the mortal sin'; for you must know that he is a good Christian, and he thinks that this misfortune has been sent as a punishment because he and Giovanna lived together before they were married by religious ceremony." "But tell me one thing----" "Just wait a moment. I should add that now they _have_ been married by religious ceremony--in prison! Yes, my dear, in prison; fancy what a horrid thing that was! Now don't begin crying again, Giovanna; if you do, I'll throw this salt-cellar at your head. There she is, the goose! Every one told her not to do it. 'Don't be married now,' they said. 'If he's found guilty and sentenced, you can marry some one else!'" "How contemptible!" began the young woman, with flashing eyes, but the mother merely turned a cold, penetrating look upon her, and she broke off at once. "Did _I_ say so?" demanded the other. "No, it was other people, and they said it for your own good." "For my good, for my good," moaned Giovanna, burying her face in her hands; "there is no more good for me, ever again, ever again!" "Have you children?" asked Paolo. "Yes, one, a boy. If it were not for him--alas, alas! if Costantino is sentenced, and there were no child--then, oh, misery, misery----!" And she seized her hair by the roots, and began to drag her head violently from side to side, like an insane person. "You mean that you would kill yourself, my beloved?" asked Aunt Bachissia ironically. To the student there was something artificial in the action; it reminded him of a famous actress whom he had once seen in a French comedy, and this open display of grief only aroused his cynicism. "After all," said he, "the new divorce law has been approved, and any woman whose husband is serving a sentence can regain her freedom." Giovanna did not appear so much as to take in what he said, and continued to rock her head from side to side. Aunt Porredda, however, spoke up in a decided tone: "What an idea! as though any one but God could undo a marriage!" "Yes, I read about that in the papers," said Uncle Efes Maria jocularly. "Those are the divorces they get on the Continent, where men and women marry over and over again without troubling themselves about priests, or magistrates either, for that matter, but here!--shame!" "No, Daddy Porru, that's not on the Continent, it's in Turkey," said Grazia. "Here too, here too," said Aunt Bachissia, who had eagerly followed every word. As soon as supper was over the two Eras went off to see their lawyer. "What room have you given them?" asked Paolo. "The 'strangers' room'?" "Why, of course; why?" "Because I really thought I should like to sleep there myself; it is suffocating down here. What better 'stranger' could there be than I?" "Be patient just till to-morrow, my boy. Remember these are poor guests." "O Lord! what barbarous customs! Will there ever be an end to them?" he exclaimed impatiently. "That's just what I should like to know," said Uncle Efes Maria. "These women are draining my pockets. Well, what do you think of the new Ministry?" "I don't think anything of it at all!" laughed the student, recalling a character in the _Dame chez Maxim_, a favourite play at the Manzoni Theatre, which he frequented. Then he sauntered off to look at some books he had left on a shelf at the other end of the room. Minnia and the boy had run out into the courtyard; Grazia, seated at the table, with both cheeks resting on her closed fists, was still gazing at her uncle. He turned towards her: "You read novels, don't you?" "I? No," she answered, turning red. "Well, I only wanted to say that if I ever catch you reading certain books--I'll rap you over the head with them." Her under-lip began to tremble, and, not to let him see her cry, she jumped up and ran out. In the courtyard she found the two children still quarrelling over the purse with the picture of the Pope. "As for stealing," the boy was saying, "you had better keep quiet about that; you, and she there--the bean-pole--you two sold some wine to-day, and kept the money!" "Oh, what a lie!" cried Grazia, falling upon him and dealing him a blow, but crying herself bitterly all the while. The courtyard was filled with the chirping of the crickets and the noise of the horses' hoofs; and the warm, starlit air was heavy with the scent of the hay. "You must not be hard on her, she is a poor orphan," said Aunt Porredda, speaking in Grazia's behalf (they were the three children of an older son of the Porrus', a well-to-do shepherd whose wife had died the year before). "And why not let her read if she wants to?" "Yes, yes, let her read by all means," said Uncle Efes Maria pompously. "Ah! if they had only allowed _me_ to read when I was young--I would have been an astronomer, as learned as a priest!" To Uncle Efes Maria an astronomer represented the height of learning and cultivation--a philosopher, as it were. "Have you seen the Pope, my son?" asked Aunt Porredda, from an association of ideas. "No." "What! You have never seen the Pope?" "Oh! what do you expect? The Pope is kept shut up in a box; if you want to see him, you've got to pay well for it." "Oh, go along!" said she. "You are an infidel," and, going out to where the children were still fighting, she made a rapid descent upon them, separated the belligerents, and sent each flying in a different direction. "On my word!" she cried, "you are just like so many cocks. The Lord have mercy on me! Here they are, the chicken-cocks! Bad children, every one of you, bad, bad children!" And the lamentations of the youngsters arose and mingled with the noises of the summer evening. FOOTNOTES: [1] Porredda, female diminutive for Porru. [2] Piedino,--little foot. CHAPTER II The next morning Giovanna was the first to awaken. Through a pane of glass set in the door came a faint, roseate, sunrise glow; and the early morning silence was broken only by the chattering of the swallows. Not yet fully aroused, her first sensations were agreeable; then, all at once it was as though a terrific clap of thunder had sounded in her ear. She remembered! This was the day that was to decide her husband's fate. She knew for a certainty that he would be condemned, and yet she persisted in hoping still. It mattered very little to her whether or no he were guilty; probably she had not at any time troubled herself much with that aspect of the case, and what wholly concerned her now were the consequences. The thought of being parted, perhaps forever, from this man, young, strong, and active as a greyhound, with his caressing hands and ardent lips, was agony; and as the full consciousness of her misery came over her, she jumped out of bed, and began drawing on her clothes, saying breathlessly: "It is late, late, late." Aunt Bachissia opened her little firefly eyes, and then she also got up; but she realised too clearly what that day, and the next, and the year following, and the next two, and five, and ten years would probably be like, to be in any haste to begin them. She dressed deliberately, plunged her hands into water, passed them across her face, and dried it, then carefully arranged the folds of her scarf about her head. "It is late," repeated Giovanna. "Dear Lord, how late it is!" But her mother's calm demeanour presently quieted her. Aunt Bachissia went down to the kitchen and Giovanna followed. Aunt Bachissia prepared the _café-au-lait_ and bread for Costantino (the two women were allowed to take food to the prisoner), placed them in a basket, and started for the jail, Giovanna still following. The streets were deserted; the sun, just appearing above the granite peaks of Orthobene, filled the atmosphere with fine, rose-gold dust. The sky was so blue, the little birds so gay, and the air so still and fragrant, that it was like the early morning of some festal day, before the human bustle and the ringing of the church bells have disturbed the stillness and charm. Giovanna, crossing the street that leads from the station--near which the Porrus lived--to the prison, gazed upon her own violet-coloured mountains in the distance, hemming in the wild valleys below like a setting of amethysts; she inhaled the delicious air filled with the perfume of growing things; she thought of her little slate-rock house, of her child, of her lost happiness, and it seemed as though her heart would burst. The mother walked briskly on in front, poising the basket on her head. Presently they reached the great, round, white, desolate pile in which are the prisons. A sentry stood, mute and immovable, looking in the morning light like a statue carved out of stone. A single green shrub growing against the blank expanse of wall seemed the rather to accentuate the dreariness of the spot. A huge, green door, which from time to time opened and shut like the mouth of a dragon, now opened and swallowed up the two women. Every one in that dismal abode had come to know them; from the florid, important-looking head-keeper, who might have been a general at the very least, down to the junior custodian, with his pale face, his straight blond moustache, and his pretensions to elegance. The visitors were not allowed to penetrate beyond the gloomy passageway, whose fetid atmosphere, however, gave some idea of the horrors that lay beyond. The pale and elegant guard, coming forward, took their basket, and Giovanna asked in a low voice if Costantino had slept. Yes, he had slept, but he kept dreaming all the time. He did nothing but repeat over and over again the words--"_The mortal sin!_" "Ah! may he go to the devil with his mortal sin!" exclaimed Aunt Bachissia angrily; "he ought to stop it!" "Mamma, dear, why need you swear at him? Has not fate cursed him enough as it is?" murmured Giovanna. The women now left the building and stood outside, waiting for the prisoner to be brought forth. When Giovanna's eyes fell upon the group of carbineers who were to escort him to court, she fell to trembling violently, although on all the preceding days she had seen precisely the same thing; and her big, black eyes, stretched to their widest extent, fastened upon the great doorway with the unseeing stare of a crazy woman. Slowly the minutes lagged by, then the dragon mouth opened, and once more, surrounded by stony-faced guards with fierce black moustaches, the figure of Costantino appeared. He was tall and as lithe as a young poplar tree; a long lock of lustrous black hair hung down on either side of a face, beardless, pallid from prison confinement, and almost feminine in its beauty. The eyes were large, and chestnut-brown in colour; the mouth small, and as innocent as a child's, and there was a little cleft in the middle of the chin. He looked like a young Apollo. The moment his eyes fell upon Giovanna, although he too had been waiting for that moment, he grew whiter than ever, and stopped short, resisting the guards. Giovanna rushed forward, sobbing, and seized hold of his manacled hands. "Forward!" said one of the carbineers; then, gently, to her: "You know, my girl, it is not allowed." Aunt Bachissia now stepped forward as well, darting rapid glances out of her little green eyes. The escort halted for an instant, and Costantino, smiling bravely, said in a voice that was almost cheerful: "Courage! Courage!" "The lawyer is waiting for you," said Aunt Bachissia, and then the guards pushed the women gently aside. "Stand back, good people! Out of the way!" said one, and they led the prisoner off, still smiling back at Giovanna, his gleaming white teeth showing between lips that were still round and full, albeit colourless. Thus he disappeared from view between his stony-faced conductors. Aunt Bachissia now, in her turn, dragged off Giovanna, who wanted to follow her husband, and insisted that she should return first to the Porrus' for breakfast. They found the courtyard bathed in sunlight. It played upon the shining leaves of the grape-vines, from which hung bunches of unripe grapes like pale-green marble; the swallows disporting in it were moved to pour forth floods of song; and it tricked out Uncle Efes Maria, preparing to set out for the country on his chestnut horse. How full of light and cheerfulness seemed that little, enclosed spot, with its low stone-wall, beyond which could be seen a broad expanse of open country, stretching away to the distant horizon! The children sat on the threshold of the kitchen door, devouring their breakfast of bread soaked in _café-au-lait_; Grazia had taken hers to a retired corner, possibly in order not to be seen engaged upon anything so prosaic by the student-uncle. He, meanwhile, stood in his shirt-sleeves in the middle of the enclosure, gulping down the contents of a great bowl. "How large is St. Peter's?" asked Aunt Porredda, who was polishing the doctor's shoes, and marvelling the while to hear of the wonderful things he had seen. "How large? Why, as large as a _tanca_.[3] You can't even pray there; no one could say his prayers in a _tanca_. The angels are as large as that gateway--the littlest ones--those that hold the holy-water basins." "Ah! then you have to go upstairs to reach the water?" "No; they are on their knees, I think. Give me a little more _café-au-lait_, mamma; is there any?" "Of course there is. It seems to me you have come back very hungry, my little Paolo; you're a regular shark!" "Do you know how much this breakfast would cost in Rome? One franc! not a centime less; and then the milk is all water!" "The Lord preserve us! Why, that is frightful!" "What do you think? I saw some dolphins at sea; the strangest-looking creatures----Oh! here are our guests; good-morning; what have you been about?" Giovanna described the meeting with her husband, and was beginning to cry again, when Aunt Porredda took her by the hand and led her into the kitchen. "You have need of all your strength to-day, my soul," said she, setting before her a large cup of _café-au-lait_. A little later the two women started out again for the Court of Assize; Paolo promising to join them there. "Courage!" said Aunt Porredda, as she took leave of Giovanna, and the latter heard her husband's sentence in the kind hostess's tone, and went off with the look of a whipped dog. Paolo followed her with his eyes; then, limping across the courtyard to his mother, he said a singular thing: "Listen to me, mamma; before two years have gone by that young woman will be married to some one else!" "What do you mean by saying such a thing, Dr. Pededdu!" cried the mother, who always addressed her son by his nickname when she was angry with him. "Upon my word, you must be crazy!" "Oh! mamma, I have crossed the sea," he replied. "Let us hope, at all events, that she will engage me as her lawyer." "That young man devours his food like a dog," said Giovanna to her mother, as they descended the steep little street. "May the Lord have mercy on him!" Aunt Bachissia, walking along plunged in thought, answered through her clenched teeth, "He will make a good lawyer; he will gnaw his clients to the bone and then swallow them whole!" Then the two walked on in silence, but a moment later Aunt Bachissia stumbled, and as she did so, for some reason that she could not fathom, it flashed into her mind that, should it ever so fall out that Giovanna were to apply for a divorce, she would ask Paolo to be their lawyer. It was eight o'clock when they reached the Cathedral Square, and the small windows of the Court House close by were sending back dazzling reflections of the early morning sun. The little granite-paved square was already crowded with country friends and neighbours, witnesses in the trial. Some of these immediately approached the two women, and greeted them with the inevitable commonplace: "Courage! Courage!" "Oh! courage; yes, we have plenty of it, thank you," said Aunt Bachissia. "Now leave us in peace." And she continued on her way, as proud and erect as a race-horse. The road was only too familiar already, and she followed it straight to the fateful hall. Behind her came Giovanna, and behind her, the others: heavily bearded, roughly clad men; a handful of idlers; last of all, a near-sighted old woman with no teeth. The jury, most of them old and fat, were already in their places. One of them had an enormous hooked nose; two others, fierce-eyed, thickly bearded men, looked like bandits; three sat in a little group with their heads close together, laughing over something in a newspaper. In a few moments the judge appeared, his rosy face surrounded by a straggling white beard. Then came the public prosecutor, a young man with a fair, drooping moustache, flushed and tyrannical-looking. Then the registrar, the ushers--all of these functionaries looking to Giovanna, in their black robes, like so many evil genii come to weave their fatal spells about poor Costantino. And there he was himself! Erect in the cage, like some frightened animal held in leash by the two stony-faced carbineers. His gaze was fastened upon Giovanna, but now there was no smile; he seemed overpowered by the weight of his misery; and, as his glance fell upon those men, the arbiters of his fate, his clear, childlike eyes contracted and grew dark with terror. Giovanna, too, seemed to feel the grip of an iron hand on her heart, and at times the sensation was so acute as to give her actual physical pain. The lawyer for the defence, a little pink-and-yellow man, with a high-pitched, querulous voice, began his speech. His defence had been sufficiently unfortunate from the first; now he merely repeated what had already been said; and his words seemed to fall into space like drops of water dripping into a great empty vessel. The public prosecutor, with his drooping moustaches, maintained an air of insolent indifference. A few of the jury appeared to take credit to themselves for sitting through it with patience; while the others, so far as could be observed, did not so much as pretend to listen. The only persons present, in fact, who really took any interest in the summing up of the defence were Aunt Bachissia, Giovanna, and the prisoner; and the longer their advocate talked, the more did these feel that their case was hopelessly lost. From time to time some new arrival would take one of the seats behind Giovanna, and whenever this happened, she would turn quickly to see if it were Paolo. For some reason she found herself ardently wishing for him; she felt as though his mere presence in the courtroom might help them in some way. At last the lawyer ceased. Instantly, Costantino arose, and, growing very red in the face, asked if he might speak. "The--the"--said he, pointing in the direction of the advocate--"the gentleman-lawyer has spoken--he has defended me--and I thank him kindly; but he has not spoken the way I could have wished; he did not say--well, he did not say----" He stopped, breathing hard. "Add anything to your defence that occurs to you," said the judge. The prisoner stood for a moment with his eyes cast down, in an attitude of deep thought. The flush died out of his face, leaving it whiter than before; presently he passed his hand across his forehead with a convulsive movement, and raised his head. "This is it," he began in a low tone. "I--I----" but again his voice failed; then, suddenly clenching his fists, he turned towards the lawyer, and burst out in a voice of thunder: "But I am innocent! I tell you I am innocent!" The lawyer hastily motioned with his hand to quiet him; the judge raised his eyebrows, as though to say: "And suppose he had said so a hundred times, is it our fault that we are not convinced?" And a woman's sob was heard through the courtroom. Giovanna had broken down, and Aunt Bachissia at once dragged her towards the door, reluctant and tearful. Every one but the public prosecutor watched the struggle between the two women. A little later the court withdrew to deliberate. Aunt Bachissia, followed by two of the neighbours, hauled Giovanna into the square, where, instead of trying to comfort her, she fell to scolding her roundly. Was she quite mad? Did she want to be removed by force? "If you don't behave yourself," she concluded, "I declare I'll give you a good beating!" "Mamma, oh! mamma," sobbed the other. "They are going to condemn him! They are going to take him from me, and I can do nothing, I can do nothing----!" "What do you expect to do?" asked one of the neighbours. "As sure as I am alive there is nothing for you to do. Be patient, though, and wait a little longer----" At this moment three figures in black appeared, one of them laughing and limping. They were Paolo Porru and two young priests, friends of his. "There she is now," said the student. "It looks as though he had been sentenced already!" "Upon my word," remarked one of the priests, "she is indeed a young colt! One that knows how to kick, too! She looks----" The other one, meanwhile, was staring curiously at Giovanna, and as they all three approached the Eras, Paolo asked if the argument had closed. "It's the man who murdered his uncle, isn't it?" enquired one of the priests. The other continued to stare at Giovanna, who had begun to regain her self-control. "He has murdered no one at all," said Aunt Bachissia haughtily. "Murderer yourself, black crows that you are!" "Crows, are we? Well, you are a witch!" retorted the priest. Upon which the bystanders began to laugh. Giovanna, meanwhile, at the solicitation of Paolo, had become quite calm, and she now promised not to make a scene if they would let her return to the courtroom. They all, accordingly, went in together, and found that the jury, after a brief deliberation, were already taking their seats. A profound silence fell upon the dim, hot room. Giovanna heard an insect humming and buzzing against one of the windows; her limbs grew heavy; she felt as though her body, her arms, her legs, were strung on rods of ice-cold iron. Then the judge pronounced the sentence in a low, careless voice, while the prisoner looked at him fixedly and held his breath. Giovanna kept hearing the buzzing of the fly, and was conscious of a feeling of intense dislike for that rosy, white-bearded man, not so much on account of what he was saying, but because he said it with such an air of indifference. And this was what it was: A sentence of twenty-seven years' imprisonment "for the homicide who, after long premeditation, had at last committed the crime upon the person of his guardian and own uncle by blood!" Giovanna had so entirely prepared her mind to expect thirty years, that for the first moment twenty-seven seemed a respite, but it was only for a moment; then, swiftly realising that in thirty years three count for nothing, she had to bite her lips violently to keep back the shriek that rose to them. Everything grew dim before her; by a desperate effort of the will she forced herself to look at Costantino, and saw, or thought she saw, his face old and grey, his eyes, dim and vacant, wandering aimlessly about him. Ah! he was not looking at her, he was not even looking at her any more! Already he was parted from her forever. He was dead, though still among the living; they had killed him! Those fat, self-satisfied men, who sat there in perfect indifference, awaiting their next victim. She felt her reason forsaking her, and suddenly a succession of piercing shrieks rent the air; some one seized her, and she was dragged out again into the sunlit square. "Daughter! daughter! Do you know what you are doing? You must be mad! You are howling like a wild beast!" cried Aunt Bachissia, grasping her by the arm. "And what good will it do? There is the appeal still,--the Court of Cassation,--do be quiet, my soul!" All this had happened in a few moments. The witnesses, the lawyer, Paolo Porru, and the others now came crowding around the women, trying to think of something to say to comfort them. Giovanna, dry-eyed and staring, was sobbing in a heartbroken way, disjointed sentences falling from her lips, expressions of passionate tenderness for Costantino, and wild threats and imprecations addressed to the jury. She begged so hard to be allowed to remain until the condemned man should be brought out, that they agreed. At last he appeared; bent, livid, sunken-eyed; grown prematurely old. Giovanna rushed forward, and, as the carbineers made no motion to stop, she went ahead of them, walking backwards, smiling into her husband's face, telling him that it would all be set right in the Court of Cassation, and that she would sell everything, to the very clothes on her back, in order to save him. But he only stared back at her, wide-eyed, unseeing; and when the carbineers pushed her gently aside, one of them saying: "Go away, my good woman, go off now, and try to be patient," he too said: "Yes, go away, Giovanna, try to get permission to see me before I am taken away, and--bring the child, and take courage." So Giovanna and her mother went back to the house, where Aunt Porredda embraced and wept over them; then, however, appearing to repent of such weakness, she set about to remedy it. "Well," said she. "Twenty-seven years, what is that after all? Suppose he had been sentenced to thirty, would not that have been worse? What! You are going away? In this heat! Why, you must be crazy, both of you; upon my word, I shan't let you go." "Yes," said Aunt Bachissia; "we must get off; the others are all going back now, and will be company for us. But if it won't be putting you out too much, Giovanna will return in a few days and bring the boy." "Why, bless you! is not this house the same as your own?" They sat down to dinner, but Giovanna, though now perfectly calm, would touch nothing. Two or three times Aunt Porredda attempted to talk on indifferent subjects: she asked if the boy had cut his first teeth; remarked that travelling in such heat might make them ill; and enquired about the barley-crop in their neighbourhood. Profound peace brooded over the courtyard. The sun poured down on the grape-vines overhead, and traced delicate lacework patterns on the paving where it filtered through the leaves. The swallows flew hither and thither, singing joyously. Paolo sat reading the newspaper as he ate his dinner. Grazia and Minnia,--the boy had gone off with his grandfather,--in their sparse, tumbled little black dresses, kept falling asleep over theirs, overpowered by the noontide somnolence. Aunt Porredda's words floated dreamily out into all this sunlight and peace, into which Aunt Bachissia's tragic mien, and Giovanna's mute air of woe, seemed to strike a note of discord. The moment the meal was ended, the visitors packed their wallet, saddled their horse, and said farewell. Paolo promised to see their lawyer about the appeal to the Court of Cassation, and as soon as they were well out of sight, began to play with Minnia, forcing her to shake off her drowsiness, and pretending that he was crazy. He would first laugh uproariously, shaking in every limb; then, suddenly become perfectly silent, staring ahead of him with wild fixed gaze; then break forth once more into peals of laughter. The girls were highly diverted; they too fell to laughing immoderately; and the sun-bathed courtyard and tranquil house, freed at last from the gloomy presence of the guests, was filled with sunshine, and merriment, and peace. FOOTNOTE: [3] An enclosed pasture, but of vast extent. CHAPTER III Meanwhile, the Eras pursued their journey under the burning July sun. The road at first led downwards to the bottom of the valley; then crossed it and ascended the violet-coloured mountains that, shutting in the horizon beyond, lost themselves in the haze that rose from the heated earth. It was a melancholy progress. The two women rode one horse, a dejected-looking beast, tractable and mild. Their travelling companions had gradually drifted away; some riding on ahead; others falling behind, but all alike were silent and depressed, overpowered by the suffocating heat, the stillness, and the sad outcome of their journey. They felt Costantino's misfortune almost as keenly as the women themselves, and out of respect for Giovanna's dumb agony, either remained silent, or, if they spoke, did so in undertones that awoke no echoes, and failed even to break the intense silence. Thus they travelled on, and on; descending steadily towards the bed of a torrent, whose course ran through the bottom of the valley. The path, though not very steep, was rugged and at times difficult to follow as it wound its way between rocks, stretches of barren, dusty ground, and yellow stubble. At long intervals a scraggy tree would raise its solitary head; lifeless, immovable in the breathless atmosphere, like some lonely hermit of the wilderness; its shadow falling athwart the sun-baked earth, like that of a little wandering cloud, lost and frightened in the great expanse of light its presence alone seems to mar. Occasionally the shrill note of a wild bird would issue from one of these oases of shade, only to die away instantly, choked and overpowered by the weight of the all-embracing silence. Big purple thistles, pink-belled convolvuluses, and lilac mallows, rearing themselves here and there in defiance of the sun, seemed only to enhance the general air of desolation; while below and above stretched endless lines of ancient grey stone-walls, covered with dry yellow moss. Fields of uncut grain, with spears like yellow pine-cones, closed in the distance. On, and on, they went. Giovanna's head was burning beneath her woollen kerchief upon which the sun's rays beat mercilessly; and big tears coursed silently down her cheeks. She tried to hide them from her mother, who was riding on the saddle, while she was seated on the crupper, but Aunt Bachissia heard, Aunt Bachissia saw, even out of the back of her head; and presently she could contain herself no longer. "Look here, my soul," said she suddenly, as they traversed the bottom of the valley, between great thickets of flowering oleanders; "will you have the goodness to stop? What are you crying for, anyhow? Haven't you known it for months and months?" Instead of stopping, however, Giovanna only burst forth into loud sobs. Aunt Bachissia glanced around; the others had all gone on ahead, and they were quite alone. "Haven't you known all along how it would be?" she repeated, in low, even tones that seemed to Giovanna to come from an immeasurable distance and, sweeping by them, to be swallowed up in the surrounding void. "Are you such a fool, my soul, as not to have known it from the first? Did he or did he not kill that infamous Vulture? If he killed him----" "But he never said he had done it!" interrupted Giovanna. "Well! that was all that was needed, for him to be crazy enough to say so. My soul! just think for a moment, nothing more was wanting! For my own part, I always expected that some time or other he would crush that Vulture as one crushes a wasp that has stung him. You say Costantino is a good Christian! My soul! one would have thought that by this time you would begin to have some idea of what it means to hate! Would you, yes or no, if you had the chance, murder those men back there who condemned him? Very well, then. He murdered the Vulture, and to a certain extent I sympathise with him, because I know the human heart. But I have not forgiven him, and I never will forgive him, for taking the risks he did. No, that I will not, not for the love of God! He had a wife and a child, and if he were going to do it he should have gone about it more carefully. And now, that's enough of it. Let the whole matter drop. You are still young, Giovanna; you must think of him as of one who is dead." "But he is not dead!" wailed Giovanna desperately. "Very well, then," said Aunt Bachissia angrily. "Go and hang yourself. There, do you see that tree over yonder? Well, go and hang yourself from it; but don't torment me any more. You have always been a torment. If you had married Brontu Dejas everything would have been right; but no, you must have that beggar; very well, the best thing for you to do now is to hang yourself!" Giovanna made no reply. In the bottom of her heart she too believed Costantino to be guilty, but she had long ceased to care. In her present misery all she took note of was the central fact of his condemnation, and she could not understand why ordinary mortals should have the power so to dispose of a fellow-creature. Ah, how she hated that mysterious, invincible power! She felt towards it as she did towards those horrible spirits, unseen, but _felt_, which fly abroad on stormy nights! On, and on, they went. Now they had crossed the valley and were slowly ascending the mountain on its further side. The sun began to sink towards the west, the horizon to open; the sky grew soft, and the landscape lost its look of utter desolation. The shadows of the mountain-peaks stretched down now, clear into the dim depths of the valley, where a few late dog roses still bloomed; a little breeze sprang up and filled the air with the odour of wild growing things. Insensibly every one's spirits revived under the influence of this unlooked-for shade and coolness. One of their companions, joining the two women, began to recount an adventure a friend of his had had close to that very spot; at one point the story became so entertaining that even Giovanna smiled faintly. On, and on. Now the sun was setting, and from the height they had attained they could make out the sea, a bluish circle, bounded by the horizon. Finally, beyond a thick-growing mass of trees and bushes so sturdy as to withstand alike the wild winter blasts and the scorching heats of summer, lying in the midst of the melancholy uplands like an island in a sea of light and solitude, they descried their own village, the eyrie of a strong, handsome, and primitive people; shepherds for the most part, or peasants occupied in raising grain and honey. Green, rocky pastures, gay in the springtime with daffodils, and fragrant with mint and thyme, and fields of grain, hemmed in the little group of slate-stone cottages that gleamed in the sun like burnished silver. Here and there a good-sized tree cast its shadow athwart this quail's nest, hidden away, as it were, amid the billows of ripening grain. Lines of green tamarisks, and a wilderness of thyme and arbute, lay beyond. Further still were the limitless stretches of the uplands, and above all spread a sky of indescribable softness and beauty. On the right, against this sky, the lonely mountain-peaks reared themselves like a company of sphinxes, blue in the morning, lilac at noonday, and purple or bronze-coloured at evening; their rugged sides covered with forests, the home of eagles and vultures. It was nearly dark when the Eras at last reached the village. Mount Bellu, the colossus of that company of sphinxes, had enveloped itself in a cloak of purple mist, and stood out against the pale, grey sky. The street was already silent and deserted, and the clatter of the horse's hoofs on the rough stone paving resounded like the blows of a hammer. One after another their companions turned off, so that when they reached their own home, the two women were quite alone. The Era cottage stood on a little flat clearing, above the level of the street. Higher up on the hillside, overlooking it, was another house, a white one. A large almond-tree, growing beside a piece of crumbling wall that extended from one corner of the cottage, overhung the street, which, beyond this point, merged into the open country. Scattered about on the level stretch of ground between the two houses,--the grey cottage of the Eras and the white dwelling of the Dejases,--beneath the shadow of the almond-tree, lay a quantity of great boulders, convenient and comfortable resting-places; hence the spot had come to be used by the villagers as a sort of common or place of public resort. Hardly had the horse stopped before the cottage, when Giovanna slid down and, with lagging steps and hanging head, advanced towards a woman,--a relative left in charge during their absence,--who came forward to meet them with the baby in her arms. Taking the child from her, Giovanna clasped it closely to her breast, and began to weep, burying her head on the chubby little shoulder. Her tears were now flowing quietly enough, a feeling of numbness and of utter despair crept over her, and the unhappiness of the preceding months seemed as nothing in comparison with the misery and desolation of the present moment. The baby, hardly yet five months old, had clear, violet eyes, and little, unformed features set in a stiff, red cap with fringe hanging down over the forehead. He recognised his mother, and began pulling with all his strength on the end of her kerchief, kicking both little feet, and crying: "Ah--ah--aah----" "Malthinu, my little Malthineddu, my sole comfort in all the earth; your daddy is dead," sobbed Giovanna. The woman, understanding that Costantino had been found guilty, began to cry as well. Suddenly Aunt Bachissia descended swiftly upon them. Pushing Giovanna into the cottage, she asked the woman to help her unload the horse. "Are you stark mad, both of you?" she demanded in a low voice. "What need is there to carry on like that, right out here in sight of the white house? I can see the beak of that old Godmother Malthina now. Ah! she will be delighted when she hears of our bad luck." "No," said the woman, "she has come several times to ask for news of Costantino, and she always seemed to feel very sorry. She told me she had dreamed that he was condemned to penal servitude." "Oh, yes! that is the kind of sorrow that an ill-tempered cur feels! I know her! She's a venomous snake, and she can't forgive us. After all," she added a few minutes later, walking towards the cottage with the wallet on her back, "she's right; we can't forgive ourselves." Aunt Martina Dejas was the owner of the white house on the hill, and the mother of that Brontu Dejas whom Giovanna had refused to marry. She was very well off, but a miser, and Aunt Bachissia was quite mistaken in supposing that she hated them. As a fact, the refusal had affected her very little, either one way or the other. "See here," said Aunt Bachissia, when they had finished unloading the horse. "Will you do me one favour more, Maria Chicca? Will you take back the horse and tell her that Costantino is to get twenty-seven years in prison? Then watch her face." The woman took hold of the bridle, the animal having been hired from the Dejases, and led it towards the white house. This house, formerly the property of a merchant who had failed, had been bought at public sale a few years before. It was large and commodious, with a portico in front that gave it an almost seignorial air, but which was used as a promenade by Aunt Martina's chickens and pigs. It was an inappropriate dwelling for rough shepherds like the Dejases, as was shown by its rude furnishings, composed mainly of high clumsy wooden bedsteads, roughly fashioned chests, and heavy chairs and stools. Aunt Martina was seated on the portico, spinning--she could spin even in the dark--when Maria Chicca approached, leading the horse. The house was entirely unlighted, Brontu and the men being off at the sheepfolds, while Aunt Martina never kept a servant. She had other sons and daughters, all married, with whom she lived in a constant state of warfare on account of her miserly habits. Whenever there was any especial stress of work, she got in some of the neighbours to help. Often Giovanna and her mother were hired in this way, being paid in stale or injured farm produce. The Eras, however, were too poor to refuse anything they could get. "Well, what was the result?" asked the old woman, laying the spindle and a little ball of flax on the bench beside her. She had a thin, nasal voice; round, light eyes, placed close together; a delicate, aquiline nose, and lips that were still full and red. "You are crying, Maria Chicca. I saw those two poor women arrive, but I was afraid to go and ask, because I dreamed last night that he had been sentenced to penal servitude." "Ah, no! they have given him twenty-seven years' imprisonment." Aunt Martina appeared to be disappointed; not, indeed, that she bore Costantino any ill-will, but because she had a firm belief in the infallibility of her dreams. She took the horse by the bridle, saying: "I will go to the Eras' this evening, if I possibly can, but I'm not sure. There's a man coming, he who worked for Basile Ledda; he is going to hire out to us. He was one of the witnesses; but I believe he's back, isn't he?" "Yes, I think he is," said the other. And, returning to the cottage, she began at once to relate how Aunt Martina felt very sorry; and how she had dreamed that Costantino had got penal servitude; and that Giacobbe Dejas--he was a poor relation of the other Dejases--was going to work for them. Giovanna, who was nursing the child, and gazing down at it sorrowfully, did not so much as raise her eyes. Aunt Bachissia, on the contrary, asked innumerable questions: Had she found the old Dejas alone? Was she spinning,--spinning there in the dark?--etc., etc. "Listen," she said to Giovanna. "She may be here this evening." Giovanna neither moved nor looked up. "My soul! do you hear me?" cried the mother angrily. "She may come down this evening." "Who?" asked Giovanna, in the tone of a person just awake. "Malthina Dejas!" "Well, let her go to the devil!" "Who is to go to the devil?" asked a sonorous voice from the doorway. It was Isidoro Pane, an old leech-fisher related to the Eras. He had come on a visit of condolence. Tall, with blue eyes and a yellow beard, a bone rosary about his waist, and clasping a long staff with a bundle fastened to the top, Uncle Isidoro looked like a pilgrim. He was the poorest and the gentlest and the most peaceable inhabitant of Orlei. When he wanted to swear, all he said was: "May you become a leech-fisher!" He and Costantino were great friends. Often and often had the two sung the holy lauds in church together, and the Eras had named him as a witness for the defence, because no one could testify better than he to the blameless character of the accused man. His name had, however, been rejected. What, indeed, would the testimony of a poor leech-fisher amount to when confronted with the majesty of the law! The moment she saw him, Giovanna gave way and began to sob. "The will of God be done!" said Isidoro, leaning his staff against the wall. "Be patient, Giovanna Era, you must not lose your trust in God." "You know?" asked Giovanna. "Yes, I have heard. Well, he is innocent. And I tell you that even though he has been condemned to-day, to-morrow his innocence may be proved." "Ah! Uncle Isidoro," said Giovanna, shaking her head. "Your confidence doesn't impress me any longer. Up to yesterday I believed in you, but now I have lost faith." "You are not a good Christian; this is Bachissia Era's doing." Aunt Bachissia, who regarded the fisherman with scant favour, and was always afraid of his bringing vermin into the house, turned on him angrily, and was about to launch forth into abuse, when another visitor arrived. He was presently followed by others, and still others, until at last the little cottage was filled with condoling neighbours; while Giovanna, who was really tired by this time even of weeping, felt it incumbent upon her to continue to sob and lament desperately. All the time, Aunt Bachissia kept watching for the rich neighbour, but she did not appear. Instead, there came Giacobbe Dejas, the man who was about to enter her service. He was a cheerful soul, about fifty years old; ordinary-looking, short, thin, smooth-shaven, and bald; with no eyebrows, and a decided squint; the eyes, small and cunning, were of a nondescript colour, something between yellow and green. He had worked for Basile Ledda for twenty years, and had been called as a witness for the defence. In his testimony he had alluded to the ill-treatment Costantino had received from his uncle, but told also how the old miser had maltreated every one, his women and servants as well. Why, the very day before his death he had struck and kicked him--Giacobbe Dejas! "Malthina Dejas is expecting you," said Aunt Bachissia. "You had better go on up there." "The devil cut off her nose!" replied Giacobbe. "I'll go presently. What I'm afraid of is of falling out of the frying-pan into the fire! She's a worse miser than even _he_ was." "If she pays you what you earn, you've no right to judge her," said the ringing voice of Uncle Isidoro. "Ah! you are there, are you?" said Giacobbe mockingly. "How are the legs? Pretty well punctured?" Isidoro regarded his legs, which were wrapped about with bits of rag. It was his habit to stand in stagnant water until the leeches attached themselves to him. "That need not concern you," he answered quietly. "But it is not well to curse the woman whose bread you are going to eat." "I shall eat my own bread, not hers, and that is our affair. Come now, Giovanna, take heart! What the devil! Do you remember that story I was telling you on the road from Nuoro? Be sensible now, for this little chap's sake. Costantino is not going to die in prison, I can tell you that myself. Give me the baby," he added, stooping down to take it, but finding the little fellow asleep, he straightened himself, and, placing a finger on his lips, "Aunt Bachissia," he said (he always used the "Aunt" and "Uncle" even with people younger than himself), "do me a favour; send your daughter to bed; she has come to the end of her forces. And you, good people," he continued, turning to the company, "let us do something as well, let us take ourselves off." One by one, accordingly, they all departed. Aunt Bachissia, seizing the stool upon which Isidoro Pane had been seated, took it outside and wiped it vigorously. When she came in she found Giovanna fallen into a sort of a doze, and had to shake her in order to arouse her. The young woman opened her eyes, which were red and glassy; then she got up with the child in her arms. "Go to bed," commanded the mother. She looked at the door, murmuring: "Never again! He will never, never come back again! For a moment I thought I was waiting for him." "Go to bed, go to bed," said the mother, her voice harsher than ever. She gave Giovanna a push, and then, taking up the old brass candlestick, opened the door. The cottage consisted of a kitchen, with the usual stone fireplace in the centre and the oven in one corner, and two bedrooms, furnished in the most meagre way. Giovanna's bedstead was of wood, very high, and provided with an extremely hard mattress and a red cotton counterpane. Aunt Bachissia took the little Martino, who was whimpering in his sleep, and laid him down, cradling him between her two hands, while Giovanna got ready for bed. When she was undressed and her head bare, the beautiful hair wound around it somewhat in the fashion of the ancient Romans, the mother covered her carefully and went out. No sooner was she left to herself, however, than she threw off the covers and began to moan and lament. She was completely worn out with sorrow and fatigue, and her eyes were heavy with sleep, yet she could not rest. Confused pictures kept crowding through her brain, and, as though her mental anguish were not already suffering enough, sharp pains shot through her teeth and temples. Every time she had one of these twinges it was as though some one had poured a jug of boiling water down her spine, and she shook with nervous terror. Altogether, the night was one long horror. From the adjoining room, the door of which stood open, Aunt Bachissia could hear Giovanna muttering and raving; now addressing Costantino in terms of extravagant endearment; then the jury with threats and imprecations. She herself, meanwhile, lay wide awake, her brain clear and active, going over every detail of what had taken place, and laying plans for the future. The sound of Giovanna's grief only aroused a dumb sense of resentment in her breast, and yet, after a while, she too found herself weeping. CHAPTER IV On the evening of the following day, a Saturday, Brontu Dejas, returning from the sheepfolds, was hardly off his horse before he began to grumble. Among themselves, the Dejases were notorious grumblers, though with outsiders they were always extremely suave. Apart from this trait he was a good-natured devil; young and handsome, very dark and thin, of medium height, with a short curling red beard. He had beautiful teeth, and, when talking to women, smiled continually in order to show them. Coming home on this particular evening, he began to grumble because he found neither light nor supper awaiting him. It must be admitted that there was some justification; for, after all, he was a working-man, and week after week he would return from six days of toil to find a house as dark and squalid as a beggar's hovel. "Eh! eh!" he said, as he began to unharness his horse. "This might as well be Isidoro Pane's shanty! Let us have some light, at any rate, so we can see to swear. What is there for supper?" "Bacon and eggs; there now, be patient," said Aunt Martina. "Did you know that Costantino Ledda had been sentenced to thirty years?" "Twenty-seven. Well, are those the eggs? My dear mamma, that bacon is rancid. Why don't you give it to the chickens? the chickens, do you hear?" and he snapped his handsome teeth angrily. "They won't eat it," answered Aunt Martina tranquilly. "Yes, twenty-seven. Ah! twenty-seven years, that is a long time. I dreamed he had got penal servitude." "Have you been to see the women yet? How pleased they must be now with their fine marriage! Miserable beggars!" He had asked the question with evident curiosity, yet the moment his mother told him that she had been, and that Giovanna was tearing her hair and quite beside herself, while it was plain to see that Aunt Bachissia wished now that she had strangled her daughter before allowing her to make such a match, he turned on her furiously. "What business had you to go near the den of those wretched beggars?" "Ah! my son. Christian charity! You don't seem to have any idea of what that is!" Aunt Martina liked, indeed, to pretend that she was a charitable person. "Priest Elias was there too this morning; yes, he went to comfort them. Giovanna wants to take the baby to Nuoro for Costantino to see before they carry him off. I told her she was crazy to think of such a thing in this heat; but Priest Elias told her to go, and he nearly cried!" "What does he know about children! He is barren, like all the rest of them," snarled Brontu, who hated the priests because his uncle, who had been rector in the village before Priest Elias Portolu came from Nuoro, had left all his property to a hospital. Aunt Martina had not forgiven this outrage either, but the old she-wolf knew how to disguise her feelings, and when Brontu railed against the priests she always made the sign of the cross. "What makes you talk that way, you fool?" said she, hastily crossing herself. "You don't know where your feet may carry you! Priest Elias is a saint. If he were to hear such evil talk as that--beware! He has the Holy Books, and if he chooses to, he can curse our fields, and bring the locusts, and make the bees die!" "A fine saint!" exclaimed Brontu. Then he insisted upon hearing all the particulars about the Eras,--how Giovanna had cried out, what that old kite, Aunt Bachissia, had said---- "Well, Giovanna's sobs were enough to melt the very stones; and Aunt Bachissia was in despair because now, in addition to all the rest, the lawyer's fees and other expenses of the trial have stripped them of everything they possessed, even to the house." The young man listened intently, his face beaming with satisfaction, and his white teeth gleaming. In his undisguised pleasure he was simply and purely savage. "Listen," said Aunt Martina, when she had finished. "Giacobbe Dejas will be here presently to see you too. He wanted to begin his term of service to-morrow, but I told him to wait till Monday. To-morrow is a holiday, and there is no sense in our having him eat at our expense." "Beautiful St. Costantino! You _are_ close, mamma." "Oh, you; you are just like a child! What use is there in wasting things? Life is long and it takes a great deal to live." "And how are those two women going to live?" asked Brontu after a short silence, seating himself before the eggs and bread. "They will catch snails, I suppose," said Aunt Martina scornfully. She had taken up her spindle again, and was spinning close to the open door. "You take a great interest in them, Brontu Dejas." Silence. Within the room the only sounds were the rattle of the spindle and the noise of Brontu's strong teeth, as he munched the hunks of hard bread; outside, though, beyond the portico, the crickets were chirping incessantly; and from the far-away, deserted woods, through the warm, dim atmosphere of the falling night, came the melancholy cry of an owl. Brontu poured out some wine, raised the glass, and opened his mouth, but not to drink. There was something he wanted to say to his mother, but the words would not come. He drank the wine, brushed some drops off his beard with the back of his hand, and again opened his mouth, but still the words died away. A sound of heavy boots was heard, tramping across the open space before the house. Aunt Martina, still spinning, arose, told her son that Giacobbe Dejas was coming, and, taking the food and wine, put them away in the cupboard. Giacobbe saw the action as he entered, and at once understood that she was hiding something in order not to have to offer it to him; but, as he himself would have put it, he was too much a "man of the world" to allow any expression of resentment to escape him. He advanced, therefore, smiling and cheerful. "I will wager," said he, laying one finger on his nose, "that you were talking about me." "No, we were speaking of poor Costantino Ledda." "Ah, yes, poor fellow!" returned Giacobbe, becoming serious at once. "And when you think that he is innocent! As innocent as the sun! No one can be more sure of it than I." Brontu threw himself back in an easy attitude, crossed his legs, and, turning slightly around, showed his teeth as he did when talking to women. "As to that, opinions may differ," he said sharply. "There, for instance, is my mother; she dreamed that he had got the death sentence." "Oh, no, Brontu! What are you talking about? Penal servitude!" "Well, it amounts to the same thing. Now, we will talk business." "Very well, let us talk business, by all means," assented Giacobbe, crossing his legs as well. A little later the two men, having settled the matter in hand, went off together, Brontu leading the way to the tavern. He himself was not in the least close, and if he never offered a visitor a glass in his own house, it was only not to irritate Aunt Martina. At the tavern, though, he was superb, and on this particular evening he made Giacobbe drink so much, and drank so much himself, that they both became tipsy. Coming out at last into the silent, deserted street, filled with the odour of the dry fields, they began talking again of Costantino, and Brontu said, with brutal frankness, that he was glad of the sentence. "Go to the devil!" shouted Giacobbe. "You have no heart!" "All right, that's it; I have no heart." "Just because Giovanna wouldn't have you, you are glad to hear of the death, or worse than death, of a brother." "He's not dead, and he's not a brother; and it was I who would not have Giovanna Era. If I had wanted her to, she would have licked the soles of my shoes." "Bum--bum--look out, or you'll have a tumble, my little spring bird. You lie like a servant-maid." "I--I--am--not--a--a--servant-maid," stammered Brontu, furious. "If you say anything like that again, I'll take you by the crown of your head and choke you." "Bum--I tell you, you'll fall down, little spring bird," repeated Giacobbe at the top of his lungs. Their voices rang out through the quiet street; then they suddenly ceased talking, and stillness reigned once more. In the distance, under the light of the stars which overhung the mountain crests like garlands of golden flowers, the owl still sounded his melancholy note. All at once Brontu began to cry in a strange, drunken fashion, with neither sobs nor tears. "Well, what is the matter now?" demanded Giacobbe in a low tone. "Are you drunk?" "Yes, I am. Drunk with poison, you galley refuse. I only hope you will be strangled yet!" At this the other felt very indignant. Not only had he never been to prison, but he had never so much as been accused of any offence against the law. Yet, mingled with his resentment, there was a vague feeling of terror. "You are going crazy!" said he in a still lower tone. "What's the matter with you? Why should you talk to me like that? Have I ever done anything to you?" Whereupon the other became confidential, and, groaning as though he were in physical pain, he declared that he was, in truth, madly in love with Giovanna, and that he had hoped, and prayed the devil, from the beginning, that Costantino would be found guilty. "Even if the devil were to get my soul it wouldn't matter, because, you see, I don't believe in him!" said he, breaking into a foolish, cackling laugh, more disagreeable to listen to even than his previous maudlin distress. "I intend to marry Giovanna," he presently added. Giacobbe was greatly astonished at this, but he pretended to be still more so. "What!" said he. "You take my breath away! How--why--what on earth do you mean? How can you marry her?" "She will get a divorce, that's all. Well, what of that? There's a law that gives a woman the right to marry again if her husband has been sent to prison for a long sentence." Giacobbe had heard some talk of this, but no case of legal divorce, still less of remarriage, had as yet been heard of in Orlei. Nevertheless, not to appear ignorant, he said: "Oh, yes, I know; but it is a mortal sin. Giovanna Era will never do it!" "That's just what I am worrying about, Giacobbe Dejas. Will you talk to her on the subject to-morrow?" "Oh, yes, of course! To-morrow! You're an ass, Brontu Dejas! You may be rich, but you are as stupid as a lizard, stupider than one! Here, when you might marry a maid,--some rich young girl, as fresh as a rose with the dew still on it,--you want instead to have that woman! Upon my word, it will give me something to laugh at for the next seven months!" "All right, you can laugh till you split in two, like a ripe pomegranate! But I'm going to marry her!" said Brontu angrily. "There's no other woman like her, and I shall marry her; you will see!" "Well, do marry her, my little spring bird!" cried the other, bursting into a loud laugh. Brontu joined in, and they continued on their way uproariously till they saw a tall figure with a staff silently approaching them. "Uncle Isidoro Pane, did you have good sport?" shouted Giacobbe. "And your legs, have they plenty of punctures?" "You had better turn leech-fisher yourself," said the other, coming up to them. "Whew! what a smell of brandy! Some one must have broken a cask near here!" "Do you mean that you think we are drunk?" demanded Brontu in a bullying tone. "The only reason you don't get drunk yourself is because you haven't anything to do it with! Get away! get away, I tell you, or I'll crush you like a frog!" The old man laughed softly, and walked on. "Idiot!" said Giacobbe in an undertone. "Don't you know that he could have helped you with Giovanna? He's a friend of hers." "Here! here!" shouted Brontu, turning around, and gesticulating with both arms. "Come back! come back, I tell you! 'Sidore Pane, _che ti morsichi il cane_!"[4] he laughed, delighted with his rhyme. But Isidoro did not stop. "Do you hear me?" yelled the tipsy Brontu, stammering somewhat. "I tell you to come here! Ah! you won't do it, you little toad? I tell--you----" But Isidoro silently pursued his way. "Don't talk to him like that; what sort of way is this to carry on?" remonstrated Giacobbe. Brontu thereupon adopted a new method. "Little flower, come here, come here! Come listen to what I have to say. You may tell _her_--that friend of yours--well, yes, Giovanna, that is who I mean. You may tell her that if she gets a divorce I'll marry her!" This had the desired effect. The old man stopped short, and turning around, called in a distinct voice: "Giacobbe Dejas!" "What is it, my dear?" answered the herdsman mockingly. "Make--him--keep--quiet!" returned Isidoro in the tone of a person who means to be obeyed. For some unexplained reason, Giacobbe felt a sudden sense of chill as he heard the tone and those four emphatic words. Taking his new master by the arm he drew him quickly away, murmuring: "You are a dunce! You behave as though you had no sense at all! What a way to talk!" "Didn't you tell me to yourself?" "I? You are dreaming! Am I crazy?" They continued on their way, staggering along together, arm in arm. On the portico they found Aunt Martina, still spinning. She saw at once that her son was tipsy, but said nothing, knowing by experience that to irritate him when he was in that condition was only to arouse him to a state of fury. When he asked for wine, though, she said there was none. "Ah! there is none? No wine in the Dejas' house! The richest people in the neighbourhood! What a miserly mother you are." Then he began to bluster: "I'm not going to make a scandal, but I can tell you I am going to marry Giovanna Era!" "Yes, yes, you are going to marry her," said Aunt Martina to quiet him. "But in the meantime, go to bed, and don't make such a noise; if she hears you, she won't have you." He quieted down, but made Giacobbe unroll a couple of rush mats and spread them on the floor; then, throwing himself down, nothing would do but the herdsman must lie down as well, and sleep beside him; and rather than have any trouble, Aunt Martina was obliged to agree. Thus it fell out that instead of beginning his term of service on the Monday, Giacobbe entered his new place on Saturday evening. FOOTNOTE: [4] _Che ti morsichi il cane_,--"May the dog bite you." CHAPTER V Sunday morning, a fortnight later, found all the personages of our story assembled at Mass, with Priest Elias officiating. The country people said that when he celebrated he seemed to have wings. Giovanna alone was absent; and this for two reasons. First, her late misfortune required the observance of a sort of mourning; she was expected not to show herself outside the house except when her work made it necessary. Apart from this, however, she had fallen into a state of lethargy, and appeared to be quite unable to move about, to go anywhere, to work, or even to pray. She had, indeed, never been much of a Christian at any time, though before the trial she had made a vow to walk barefoot to a certain church in the mountains, and, if Costantino were acquitted, to drag herself on her hands and knees from the point where the church first came into view to its doors; that is, a distance of about two kilometres. Now, she had ceased praying, or talking, or eating, and even seemed to have lost all interest in her child. Aunt Bachissia had to feed him with bread crumbled up in milk in order to keep the poor little fellow alive. Some of the neighbours said that Giovanna was losing her mind; and indeed it did look so. She would remain for hours at a time in a sort of stupor, crouched in a corner with her glassy eyes fixed on vacancy, and when she aroused it was only to fly into violent paroxysms, tearing her hair, and crying out wildly. After the final interview with Costantino, when she had had the child with her, she could think of nothing else, and described the scene in the prison over and over again, with the monotonous insistence of a monomaniac: "He was there, and he was laughing. He was livid, and yet he laughed, standing there behind the bars. Malthineddu seized hold of the bars, and he touched his little hands and then he laughed! My heart! my heart! don't laugh like that; it hurts me, because I know that that is how dead people laugh! And the guards, standing there like harpies! At first they were good to us, those guards who watch over human flesh; but afterwards, when Costantino had been condemned, they were cruel, as cruel as dogs! Malthinu was frightened when he saw them, and cried; and his father laughed! Do you understand? The baby, the little, innocent thing, cried; he understood that his father had been condemned, and he cried! Oh, my heart! my heart!" Then Aunt Bachissia, beside herself with impatience, and unable to hold in any longer, would exclaim: "Honestly, Giovanna, any one would take you to be two years old! That child there has more sense than you. Simpleton!" And sometimes she would threaten to beat her; but prayers, sympathy, and threats were equally unavailing. Meanwhile, word came from Nuoro that, while waiting to hear from the appeal, Costantino had been removed to the jurisdiction of Cagliari. Then came a short, sad, little letter from the prisoner himself. The journey had gone well, but there, at Cagliari, the heat was suffocating, and certain red insects, and others of different colours, tormented him night and day. He sent a kiss to the child, and urged Giovanna to bring him up in the fear of God. He also asked to be remembered to his friend Isidoro. On this Sunday, therefore, at the close of the Mass, Aunt Bachissia waited till the fisherman should have finished singing the sacred lauds in his ringing voice, in order to deliver Costantino's message. Priest Elias remained kneeling on the steps of the high altar, with white ecstatic face, and Isidoro still sang on, but the people began to leave, filing past Aunt Bachissia, as she stood waiting. Aunt Martina passed, with the fiery bearing of a blooded steed, old but indomitable still; Brontu passed, dressed in a new suit of clothes, his hair shining with oil; he railed at the priests, but on Sunday he went to Mass; and Giacobbe passed, in a pair of new linen trousers, smelling strong of the shop. Still Isidoro sang on. The church, at last, became almost empty; the fisherman's sonorous voice resounded among the dusty, white rafters; the boards and beams of the roof; the side altars, covered with coarse cloths, adorned with paper flowers, and presided over by melancholy saints of painted wood. When Uncle Isidoro stopped at length, there were only the priest, a boy who was extinguishing the candles, Aunt Bachissia, and an old blind man left. Isidoro had to repeat the final response to the lauds himself; then he got up, put away the little bell used to mark the Stations of the Rosary, and moved towards Aunt Bachissia, who stood waiting for him near the door. They went out together, and she gave him Costantino's message; then she begged him to do her a favour; it was to ask Priest Elias to go to see Giovanna and try to reason her out of the condition she had allowed herself to fall into. He promised to do so, and they separated. On the way home Aunt Bachissia was joined by Giacobbe Dejas, who had been standing on the open square before the church, looking down at the village and the yellow fields, all bathed in sunlight. "How are you?" asked the herdsman. "Ah, good Lord! bad enough, without being actually ill. And you, how do you like your new place?" "Oh! I told you how it would be. I'm out of the frying-pan into the fire! The old woman is as close as the devil; she expects me to work till I fall to pieces, and will hardly let me come in to Mass once a fortnight." "And the master?" "Oh! the master? Well, he's just a little beast, that's all." "What do you mean by saying such a thing as that, Giacobbe?" "Well, it's the simple truth, little spring bird. He growls and snarls over every trifle, and gets drunk, and lies like time. I suppose Isidoro Pane told you----" He paused, and Aunt Bachissia, fixing her small green eyes upon him, reflected that, if he talked like that about his master, he must have some object. "Well," he resumed, "Isidoro Pane must have told you--of course he told you, about Brontu being drunk that evening; it was just here, where we are now, Brontu yelled out: 'Tell Giovanna Era that if she gets a divorce I'll marry her!' The beast, that's just what he is, a beast! He drinks brandy by the cask." Of the last clause of this speech, however, Aunt Bachissia took in not one word. The fact that Brontu had said he would marry Giovanna if she got a divorce was all she comprehended. Her green eyes flashed as she asked haughtily: "And you wish him not to, Giacobbe?" "I? What difference would it make to me, little spring bird? But you ought to be ashamed of yourself to think of such a thing, Aunt Kite, hardly two weeks after----" "I'm not a kite," snapped the old woman angrily; and though the other laughed, she could see that he too was furious. "You might, at least, wait to hear from the appeal," said he. "And then you can devour Costantino as you would a lamb without spot. Yes, devour him if you want to, but I can tell you that Giovanna will get a brandy-bottle for a husband, and just as long as Martina Dejas is alive you will starve worse than ever." "Ah! you bald-pate----" began Aunt Bachissia. But Giacobbe walked rapidly away, and she had only the satisfaction of hurling abuse at his retreating back. Not that she proposed to have Giovanna apply for a divorce. Heaven forbid! With poor Costantino still under appeal, and waiting there in that fiery furnace, devoured by horrible insects! No, indeed, but,--what right had that vile servant to talk of his master so? What business was it of his to meddle in his master's concerns? And Aunt Bachissia decided then and there that that "bald raven" had himself taken a fancy to Giovanna; and, filled with this new idea, she reached the cottage. Her immediate thought was to repeat the whole story to Giovanna, but finding her, for the first time in two weeks, bathed, and tranquilly engaged in combing out her long hair, which fell down in heavy, tumbled masses, she was afraid to say a word. CHAPTER VI Time passed by; the autumn came, and then the winter. Costantino's appeal had, of course, been rejected, as appeals always are. One night he was fastened by a chain to another convict, whom he had never seen, and the two took their places in a long file of others, all dressed in linen, all silent; like a drove of wild beasts controlled by some invisible power. They were going--where? They did not know. They were silent--why? They could not say. Presently they were all marched down to the water's edge, put on board a long, black steamer, and shut into a cage--still like wild beasts. All about them lay the crystal sea, across whose dark, green waters the ruby and emerald reflections from the ship's lights danced and sparkled like strings of glittering jewels; while above, engirdling the great ring of water, hung the deep blue sky, like an immense, silent vale dotted over with yellow, starry flowers. At first Costantino's sensations were not altogether unhappy. True, he was going into the unknown to fulfil a cruel destiny, but down in the bottom of his heart he firmly believed that before very long he would be liberated, and he never lost hope. The bustle on deck, the rattle of the chains, and the first motion of the ship as it got under way, filled him with childish curiosity. He had never been to sea, but, as a boy, he had often stood scanning the horizon, and gazing at the grey stretch of the Mediterranean, sometimes dotted over with the white wings of sailing vessels. At such times, as he stood among the wild shrubs and undergrowth of his native mountains, he would dream of some day crossing that far-away sea to distant, unknown lands, and to the golden cities of the Continent. He could read and write, and had a book in which St. Peter's at Rome was depicted; and in the chapter on sacred history there was an engraving of ancient Jerusalem. Ah! Jerusalem. According to his ideas, Jerusalem must be the finest and largest city in the world; and, as he stood there dreaming among the bushes on Mount Bellu, and gazing off at the grey Mediterranean, it was to Jerusalem that he longed to go. And now, here he was crossing the sea; but how different from his dreams! Yet, so splendid was his conception of Jerusalem that if it had been thither that he was bound, even a chained and condemned prisoner on his way to expiate a crime, he would, nevertheless, have been content to go. The pitching and rolling of the ship was accompanied by the ceaseless rush of the water from the bows. Some of the convicts chattered among themselves, laughing and cracking jokes. Costantino fell asleep and dreamed, as he always did, that he was at home again. He had been set free almost immediately,--he dreamed,--and had gone home without letting Giovanna know a word about it so as to give her the unutterable joy of the surprise. She kept saying: "But this is a dream, this is a dream----" The expenses of the trial had stripped the little house bare of everything, even the bed was gone; but nothing made any difference. All the riches in the world could not compare with the bliss of being free and of living with Giovanna and Malthineddu. But he was terribly tired, so he curled himself up in the baby's cradle; the cradle rocked, harder and harder all the time. Giovanna laughed and called out: "Be careful not to fall out, Costantino, my dear, my lamb!" And the cradle rocked more than ever. At first he laughed as well, but all at once he found he was suffering, then he fell head foremost on the ground, and woke up. There was a heavy sea on, and Costantino was sick. The ship struggled up to mountain-heights and then plunged swiftly into bottomless gulfs of water, the waves breaking even over the third deck. All the convicts were ill; some still attempted to joke, while others swore, and one, with a yellow, cunning face,--he was Costantino's companion--moaned and lamented like a child. "Oh!" he groaned, cowering down, gasping and frightened. "I was dreaming that I was at home, and now--now--oh! dear St. Francis, have pity on me!" Notwithstanding his own misery, both physical and mental, Costantino felt sorry for him. "Patience, my brother, I was dreaming too about being at home." "I feel," cried another, "as though my soul were melting away. What the devil is the matter with this ship! It seems to be trying to dance the Sardian dance!" Whereat some of the others still had sufficient spirit left to laugh. The storm was increasing. At times Costantino thought he was dying, and was frightened; yet, on the other hand, he felt an unutterable weariness of life. His soul seemed to be steeped in the same bitter fluid that his stomach was casting up. Never, not even at the moment when the sentence of condemnation had been passed upon him, had he experienced anything like his present condition of hopeless misery. He too began to swear and groan, doubling his fists, and twisting his chilled toes. "May you die just as I am dying now, you murderous dogs, who brought all this on me!" he muttered, while tears as bitter as gall welled up into his eyes. Towards dawn the wind subsided, but even when the sickness had passed, Costantino found no relief; he felt as though he had been beaten to the point of death, and he was shaking with cold, and exhaustion, and dread. The steamer relentlessly pursued its way. Oh, if it would only stop for just one moment! A single moment of quiet, it seemed to Costantino, would suffice to restore his strength; but this continuous forging ahead, the constant rolling, the never-ceasing roar of the waves as they lashed the sides of the vessel, kept him in a state of nervous tremor. On, and on, and on; the long hours of agony dragged slowly by; night came again; and all the time his subtle-faced, yellow-visaged companion hardly ceased to sigh and lament, driving Costantino into a perfect frenzy of irritation. Sleep came at length, and then, strange to relate, he had the same dream as on the previous night, only this time it was Giovanna who was in the cradle, and the cradle was rocking quite gently. When Costantino awoke, the boat seemed hardly to move; in the silence that precedes the dawn, he heard a voice say: "That is Procida." He was shaking with cold, and wondered if they were to land there, where, he thought he remembered to have heard, the galleys were. Presently his companion awoke, shivering and yawning prodigiously. "Are we there?" asked Costantino. "How do you feel?" "Pretty well. Are we there?" "I don't know; we are near Procida; is that where the galleys are?" "No; they're at Nisida," said the other. "But we are not galley-birds!" he added, with a touch of pride, and then fell to yawning again. "Oh, how I was dreaming!" he said, and then stopped, overcome by the memory of his dream. The prisoners were landed at Naples and immediately placed in a black-and-yellow van, something like a movable sepulchre. Costantino caught a brief glimpse of a wide expanse of smooth green water, a quantity of huge steamers, and innumerable small craft filled with gaily dressed men who shouted out all manner of incomprehensible things. All around the boats, on the surface of the green water, floated weeds, scraps of paper, refuse of all kinds. Enormous buildings were outlined against a sky of deepest blue. At Naples, the convicts were separated; Costantino was taken off to the prison at X---- and saw his yellow-visaged companion no more. On reaching his destination, Costantino was at once consigned to a cell where he was to pass the first six months of his term in solitary confinement. This cell measured hardly two metres in length by six palms in breadth: it was furnished with a rude folding bed, which, during the day, was closed and fastened against the wall. From the tiny window nothing could be seen but a strip of sky. Of the entire term of his imprisonment this was the dreariest period. He would sit immovable for hours with his legs crossed and his hands clasped about his knee--thinking; but strangely enough he never either lost hope or rebelled against his fate. He was persuaded that what he was enduring was in expiation of that mortal sin, as he regarded it, of having lived with a woman to whom he had not been married by religious ceremony, and he felt an absolute certainty that, this sin atoned for, his innocence would some day be established and he would be set free. At the same time, although he did not despair, he suffered acutely, and passed the days, hours, minutes in a state of nervous expectation of some change that never came, and a prey to a devouring homesickness. Thus day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, he lived in his thoughts close to Giovanna and the child, recalling with minute precision every little unimportant detail of the cottage life, his past existence, and the happiness that had once been his. In addition, moreover, to his own misery, he suffered at the thought of what Giovanna was enduring: now and again an access of passionate tenderness, having her far more than the child for its object, would seize him and arouse him from his usual state of pensive melancholy; then, leaping to his feet, he would stride back and forth,--two, or at most three, steps bringing him to the opposite wall, where he would presently stop, and, throwing himself against it, would beat his head as though trying to dash out his brains. These were his moments of utmost desperation. Hope always returned, however, and then he would begin to weave fantastic dreams of an immediate and romantic restoration to freedom, and the guard never entered his cell that his heart did not begin to beat violently, fancying that he was the bearer of some joyful tidings. Sometimes he played _morra_ with himself, and he cared so much whether he lost or won that he would laugh aloud like a child. At other times he would sit for hours looking at his outstretched palm, imagining that it was a plain divided into _tancas_, with walls, rivers, trees, herds of cattle, and shepherds; and weaving stories about them all, full of exciting adventures. And sometimes he prayed, counting on his fingers, and repeating the lauds aloud, trying even to improvise new verses. In this way it came about that he actually did compose a laud of four strophes, dedicated to St. Costantino, in which the saint's aid was particularly invoked in behalf of all prisoners wrongfully condemned. The refrain ran: "Saint Costantino, we implore thee For thy condemned innocent!" The composing of this laud completely occupied him for many days, and made him, for the time being, almost happy. When it was finished he was wild with joy, but instantly an overpowering desire to tell some one about it seized him; whom was there, though, to tell? The guard was a little Neapolitan; bald, clean-shaven, with a flat, snub nose like that of a skeleton; he talked to him sometimes, but he was not sufficiently intelligent to understand the laud; then there were the other prisoners whom he saw during the exercise hour, but to them he was not allowed to speak; finally he bethought him of the chaplain, and asked to confess in order that he might have the opportunity to repeat the laud to him. The chaplain was a Northerner, a young man, tall and lean, with quick, nervous movements, and great flashing black eyes filled with intelligence. He listened patiently while Costantino repeated his laud, and then enquired if he did not think that, in asking to confess for the purpose of reciting it, he had been guilty of the sin of vanity. Costantino reddened and said "No," whereupon the confessor smiled indulgently, reassured him, praised his verses, and sent him off in a state of beatification. A few days later the prisoner again asked to confess. "Well, have you written another laud?" asked the chaplain. "No," said the other, looking down, "but I want to ask a favour." "What is it? Let us hear." Costantino held his breath a moment, frightened at his own temerity; then he said quickly: "Well, this is it: I want to send the laud home!" "Ah!" said the chaplain, "I can't do that; how could you write it, anyhow?" "Oh, I know how to write!" exclaimed the prisoner, raising his clear eyes to the other's face. "Yes; but the trouble is, my brother, that you are not allowed to write." "Oh, I can manage that!" "Well, well, but I can't; I can't do it." Costantino looked extremely dejected and all but wept; then he confessed; asked whether it might not be better to dedicate the laud to SS. Peter and Paul, since they too had been in prison, and begged to be forgiven if he had presumed too much in making such a request. The young chaplain gave the absolution and prayed for some moments aloud, the prisoner, meanwhile, praying to himself; then, laying one hand on the other's head, the priest said in a low voice: "Listen; write out your laud if you can manage it, and--keep a brave heart." A wave of joy swept over Costantino, and from that moment he had no other thought than of how he might contrive to transcribe his verses. "I have been a student," he said one day to the guard. "But I know how to make shoes as well. Would you like to have me make you a pair? Oh, I can fit you!" "You want something," said the man in Neapolitan. "But it's no use, I will do nothing." "Now, Uncle Serafino, be kind! Remember your immortal soul!" "I remember my immortal soul well enough, and I've told you before that I'm not your uncle; you killed your uncle." "All right; it does not signify; only in our part of the country we always call all the important people 'uncle.'" Don Serafino, however, wanted his own title, which Costantino, for his part, could not bring himself to employ, since in Sardinia it is used only in addressing people of noble birth; so for that day nothing was accomplished. On the following morning the prisoner returned to the charge: he recounted how he was of good family, had received an education, and fallen heir to a fortune; this, his uncle, he whom he had been accused of murdering, had spent, and had then shut him up in a dark little room, and forced him to make shoes; and once he had torn almost the entire skin off one of his feet. He even offered to show the foot, but Don Serafino declined with an expression of horror, and cursed the dead man's cruelty under his breath. The result was that Costantino presently found himself in possession of a sheet of paper, and by means of blood and a small stick, he succeeded in writing out the laud for condemned prisoners. Thus the winter wore away. One March day a visit of inspection was made to Costantino's cell; it was under the direction of a big man, with two round, staring, pale-blue eyes, and so little chin that what he had was completely hidden by a heavy light moustache. "Hello! you there," he cried to the prisoner. "What can you do?" Don Serafino was with the party, and as his eye fell upon him, Costantino suddenly recalled the fancy sketch he had once given him. "I can make shoes," he replied. "Hello!" said the big man with the staring blue eyes. "You can? Well, you murdered your uncle." As the remark seemed to call for no reply, Costantino merely moved his lips, as though to say: "Certainly, I murdered my uncle; may it please your mightiness!" The party moved on, but before long Don Serafino returned and informed the prisoner that his term of solitary confinement had been shortened by more than a third, and that he would soon be released from his cell. Costantino supposed that he owed this favour to his good behaviour, but Don Serafino explained that it was because he had interceded for him with the authorities, telling them that the prisoner was of good family, that one of his feet had been flayed, and that he could make shoes. A few days after this Costantino was taken from the cell and set to work, in company with a number of others, at making shoes; he had, moreover, the privilege of writing once every three months to Giovanna. All of these concessions made him quite happy. Then the spring came, and the convicts, who had suffered intensely from cold, became gay and cheerful, keeping up a continual flow of chaff during working hours. Two brothers from the Abruzzi, however, who had asked as a special favour to be allowed to work together, quarrelled so incessantly over the division of a piece of property that was to be settled on their release--that is to say, in ten years' time--that, after falling upon one another one day, they had to be separated and confined for two weeks in cells. Even then, the very first time they encountered each other during the exercise hour, they began fighting again. It was during this hour of comparative freedom, when the prisoners took their exercise in the courtyard, that Costantino made the acquaintance of a compatriot, another Sardinian. This man, who had received the nickname of the _King of Spades_, on account of his triangular-shaped face, his big body, and spindle legs, was white and puffy, and so closely shaven as to look quite bald; he was an ex-marshal of carbineers, convicted of peculation, and, according to his own account, was related to a Cardinal who was secretly in friendly relations with the King and Queen. This personage, he declared, might shortly be expected to procure his pardon, and not alone his but that of any among his friends whom he should recommend; those, for instance, who supplied him with cigars, money, or stamps. He had been assigned for duty in the clerk's office, and thus had many opportunities to communicate with persons outside, to arrange clandestine correspondences between the prisoners and their families, and to smuggle in money, tobacco, stamps, and liquor; all greatly to his own profit and advantage. It was not long before he asked Costantino if he did not wish to send a letter home. "Yes," replied the young man, "but I am poor; I have nothing to give you." "Never mind," said the other generously; "that makes no difference, we are compatriots!" and forthwith he launched into an account of his exploits as a marshal. He had, it appeared, killed ten or more bandits in the course of his career, and had received ten medals; once when he happened to be in Rome the King had invited him to his box at the theatre! He was, in short, a hero; but of his crowning exploit he never spoke, merely observing that he had been sent to prison through the machinations of powerful enemies. At first, in spite of his equivocal appearance, Costantino believed it all, and felt deeply sympathetic; but gradually, as day by day the accounts of the marshal's adventures grew more varied and marvellous, he became sceptical, and ended by placing as little faith in what he said as did the others, though they all pretended to be greatly impressed in order to obtain favours. Every member, indeed, of the little community, not excepting the guards, was both a liar and a hypocrite. The prisoners all tried to make out that they were something quite different from what they appeared to be, and each one had some remarkable explanation of how he happened to be there; while the very fact of their being compelled, quite against their will, to associate closely and intimately together, destroyed every spark of mutual regard that might, under different circumstances, have sprung up among them. Costantino noted with surprise that those who were held for the more serious charges, while they were the greatest braggarts and boasters, seemed in other respects to be better than the rest. The minor delinquents were, almost without exception, cowardly, surly, and treacherous; fawning upon any one who could do them a service, and betraying their friends without hesitation, when the occasion arose. "There is hardly a man in this place," remarked the _King of Spades_ one day to Costantino, "but what is utterly corrupt; most of them are hardened criminals, versed in every form of vice. Why, the very air we breathe is contaminated, and a man, suddenly deprived of his liberty and cut off from society, quickly goes to decay in such a place; he loses all moral sense, becomes deceitful, cowardly, and violent, and soon grows so depraved that he cannot even realise his own depravity." And he gave some startling instances in illustration of his point. "It is my belief," he continued, "that among all who are here now, we two, the _Duck-neck_ and the _Delegate_, are the only honest ones; all the others are criminals. Be very wary with them, Costantino, my dear fellow-countryman; this place is nothing but a den of bandits, of a worse class even than those whom I put an end to!" Sometimes Costantino felt quite depressed, reflecting that if his own honesty made no better impression than that of the _King of Spades_ there was little to be proud of. The _Duck-neck_ was a Sicilian student, a consumptive with white hair, a long neck, and the body of a child. Though he spent most of his time reading, was timid and shrinking, and rarely spoke, he would occasionally fly into such violent rages that he was obliged to submit to the embraces of _Ermelinda_, as the prisoners called the strait-jacket. In one such paroxysm he had once killed a professor. The _Delegate_, who looked like a gentleman, was likewise a Southerner; he, it appeared, had been sent to prison out of pure envy! He had a swelling chest and a noble head; his nose was large and Grecian, and there was a cleft in the middle of his lower lip; his expression was haughty and repellent, but as soon as he was approached he became extremely affable, even servile. Notwithstanding the "powerful influence" that was being exerted in his favour, certain lofty personages, a minister in particular, were persecuting him unrelentingly. The student had lent him some scientific books, and he was now bent upon writing a great scientific work himself. Being also assigned to the clerk's office, he was able secretly to devote a good deal of time to this splendid undertaking, of which the _King of Spades_ gave glowing accounts. "See here," said he one day to Costantino; "that man will make all our fortunes. We work every day on the book and have a set of phrases of our own, referring to it; but the utmost caution is necessary, otherwise--beware!--everything may be ruined, and it is a real scientific discovery. I will run over the main heads for you. How the atmosphere was formed--that is, the air. How the ocean was formed--that is, all bodies of water. Origin of the organic world. A rational demonstration of the existence of a primordial continent in the central tract of the Pacific Ocean. Upon this continent human life first made its appearance, passing the period of infancy in those tropical regions. Immigration into Africa and Asia. The continent disappears by reason of a great cataclysm. Identification of this cataclysm with the flood of the Bible. The other continents emerge. Then--End of atmosphere--End of oceans--End of the heavenly bodies--End of the earth!" "And end of imprisonment?" enquired Costantino with a smile. He had understood very little of the other's discourse, only taking it for granted that, as usual, he was relating fiction. The _King of Spades_ had to have a listener, however, so he continued tranquilly: "Just wait a moment, the other chapters are: Amplification of the accepted doctrine of evolution. Evolution of our species from the anthropomorphic apes. Causes of the inclination of the axis of the planets,--but not Saturn. Reasons for this anomaly. Sun spots, etc.----" "Oh, go to the devil!" said Costantino to himself, yawning prodigiously. He was staring across the bare courtyard, with its fountain playing in the middle. "And how about the magpie?" he presently asked, pointing to one that had domesticated itself in the establishment. The convicts gorged him with food, and he had become fat and somnolent. If by any chance he felt hungry, he called certain of them by name in a queer, shrill voice. "Oh, let him burst!" said the _King of Spades_ fretfully. "You are nothing but a child, Costantino; more interested in that silly bird than in a scientific work of the very first importance. Indirectly I can lay claim to the _magnum_ part of the discovery, as it was I who brought the _Delegate_ and the _Duck-neck_ together. We have already succeeded in despatching an abstract of the work, together with a letter addressed to the King, to the Prime Minister. But remember--not a word of this to any one! One eminent scientist, on reading the abstract, exclaimed: 'This is the loftiest manifestation we have yet had of Italian genius!' Take my word for it, Costantino, my dear compatriot, the _Delegate_ has reached a dizzy height. He has some powerful friends who are now in Rome for the express purpose of working for his pardon; but then, he has powerful enemies as well! However, he will be liberated before long on account of this book." Costantino found all this extremely tiresome, but he pretended to listen as he was hoping soon to get an answer to his letter to Giovanna, and wanted to keep in the other's good graces. The answer did arrive, sure enough, in May, and gave him the most intense happiness. Giovanna wrote that the boy had been unwell, possibly because the anguish she had endured had affected her milk; now, however, he was entirely well again. Isidoro Pane had received the lauds to San Costantino written in blood, and had wept when he read them, and now he sang them in church, the whole congregation accompanying him. No one knew who had written the verses, but Isidoro said an old man with a long, snowy beard, all dressed in white, had appeared one day on the river-bank, and had handed them to him. People said it was San Costantino, or perhaps Jesus Christ himself! And Giacobbe Dejas had hired himself out to his rich relatives. And the Nuoro lawyer had taken possession of the title to their house, allowing the two women to live there for a small rent. The rich Dejases often had work for Aunt Bachissia, and for her, Giovanna, as well; so they managed to get along. Pietro Punia had been ill with carbuncles, and had died. Annicca "with the silver shoulders" was married. An old shepherd had been arrested for stealing beehives. Thus the letter went on, entirely filled with such simple chronicles, which, to Costantino, however, were fraught with the most intense interest. As he read he seemed to breathe again his native air; each item set before him a picture of the rocks and bushes, the people and objects, to which he was bound by the closest ties of habit and affection. Only, it disturbed him a little to learn that Giovanna sometimes worked at the Dejases'. He knew of Brontu's passion for her, and that she had refused him, and as he read this part of the letter he experienced a first, vague sensation of alarm. Three francs were enclosed, and when he reflected that this money might probably have come from the Dejases, he hated to touch it. Two francs he offered to the _King of Spades_, rather expecting that his dear compatriot would refuse to take them. His dear compatriot, on the contrary, accepted them with alacrity, remarking that they would serve as part payment for the person who conducted the clandestine correspondence. Under other circumstances this would have angered Costantino, but just then he was so anxious to write again to Giovanna, to maintain some sort of intercourse with his little, far-off world, that he would have sacrificed the half of his life to secure the good offices of the _King of Spades_. He read and re-read his letter till he knew every word by heart. During the day he hid it in the sole of his shoe, ripping this open again each night. And always, as he sat silently bending over his work, his mind dwelt continuously on the people and events in that little, distant village, and he identified himself so completely at times with the subjects of his thoughts that he lost sight of his real surroundings. He saw the old shepherd steal cautiously up to the hives, his face and hands wrapped in cloths. The spot is sunny, deserted; all about lie green fields dotted over with flowers, dog-roses, honeysuckle, sweet-peas, undulating lines of colour stretching away in all directions as far as the eye can reach. The warm air is heavy with the odour of pennyroyal and other aromatic herbs, and the brooding silence is broken only by the low hum of the bees. Anxiously Costantino follows every movement of the old thief as he first detaches the little cork hives from the flat stones on which they stand; then, tying them all together with a stout cord, places them in a bag, and makes off. Just at this point Costantino could not quite make up his mind as to the next act in the drama, and as he was considering, a shrill voice broke in on his reflections: "Cos-tan-ti! Cos-tan-ti!" and arousing himself with an effort he saw the magpie, fat and sleek, hopping lazily about in the courtyard, and stretching its blue wings in the sun. At night, with the precious letter safely deposited beneath his pillow, he would resume the thread of his thoughts. Now it was the sonorous voice of his friend the fisherman that he would hear, singing the lauds, and sometimes he almost wondered if Isidoro had not in truth seen--on the river-bank, among the oleander bushes bending over with their weight of fragrant pink blossoms--the figure of an old man dressed in white, with a long beard as snowy as the wool of a little newborn lamb! Ah, surely it was the Saint himself, good San Costantino, come to tell Isidoro that he had not forgotten the prisoners unjustly condemned! Costantino readily accepted this picture of the Saint, although the statue of him in the village church represented a robust and swarthy warrior. "Good old Saint! Good San Costantino! Soon, soon thou wilt free us all, blessed forever be thy name!" Then the scene changes. Now it is the portico of the rich Dejas's house; every one is busy with the spun wool, dividing it into long skeins preparatory to weaving it. Giovanna comes and goes, carrying huge bunches in her hands. Brontu is there too, seated on the threshold of the kitchen door, with his legs well apart, and between them, laughing and unsteady, stands the little Malthineddu. Ah, intolerable thought! Presently, however, remembering that Brontu is never at home except on holidays, he is somewhat comforted, and then he falls asleep, his heart steeped in a mingled sensation of joy and pain. CHAPTER VII Summer had come again. "How quickly the time passes," said Aunt Martina, as she sat spinning on the portico. "It seems only yesterday, Giacobbe, that you took service with us, and yet, here you are back again to renew the contract! Ah, the time does indeed pass quickly for us poor employers! You have saved thirty silver scudi at the very least, and have begun to build a house of your own, but what have we to show for it?" "That's all very well, but how about the sweat of my brow, little spring bird? The sweat of my brow, doesn't that count for anything?" replied the herdsman, who was busily greasing a leather cord with tallow. "But there's your keep," rejoined the old woman. "Ah, you have forgotten to allow for that!" May the crows pick your bones! thought Giacobbe, who would have liked to say it aloud, but was afraid to. He thoroughly detested both his employers, the miserly old woman and the weak, hot-headed son, who tormented him continually with his project of marrying Giovanna if she would get a divorce. It was important, though, for him to renew the contract, so he held his tongue. He greased the thong thoroughly, rolled it up, and took it into the house; then he asked permission to go off to attend to a piece of business of his own, and having received a grudging assent, departed. Walking in the direction of the Era cottage, the herdsman presently descried little Malthineddu bestriding, with very unsteady seat, a spirited stick horse, the sun gilding his dirty little white frock, his stout legs and bare arms. Stooping down with outstretched arms, Giacobbe barred the way. "Where are we off to?" he asked caressingly. "There's the sun, don't you see it? Ahi! ahi! Maria Pettina[5] will come with her fire-comb and snatch you up, and carry you off to the hobgoblins! Run back quickly to the house." "No-o-o, no-o-o-o," shouted the child, jumping up and down on his steed. "Well, then," said Giacobbe, lowering his voice and closing one eye as he pointed to the white house, "Aunt Martina is up there, and to save bread she eats little children; don't you see her?" The boy seemed to be impressed, and allowed himself to be led back to the cottage, still insisting, however, upon riding his stick. Giovanna was sewing at the door, as round and fresh and rosy as though no misfortune had ever befallen her. Above her pretty face the mass of wavy hair lay in thick, glossy coils. Seeing Giacobbe approach with the child, she raised her head and smiled. "Here he is," said the herdsman. "I am bringing him safely back to you; but I found him playing in the sun, and travelling straight towards Aunt Martina, who eats children so as to save bread." "Oh, go away!" said Giovanna. "You ought not to tell children such things!" "I tell them to grown people as well, for Aunt Martina eats them too. Look out, Giovanna Era, the first thing you know she will eat you, and all the more because you are like a ripe quince--no, not that either, quinces are yellow, aren't they? You are more like a--a----" "An Indian fig!" she suggested, laughing. "And how is Aunt Bachissia? Is it long since you heard from Costantino?" At this Giovanna became suddenly grave, replying with an air of mystery that they had had news of the prisoner only a short time before. "Ah!" said the man, without pressing the matter further. "Can you tell me if Isidoro Pane is anywhere about? I want to see him." "Yes," she replied sadly, taking up her work again. "He is at home." Giacobbe said good-bye, and walked thoughtfully away in the direction of Isidoro's house,--if house it could be called,--which stood at the other end of the village. The fisherman, in justice to whom it should be said that he fished for trout and eels as well as leeches whenever he had the opportunity, was seated in the shadow of his hut, mending a net. This hut, which stood in the fields, a little apart from the rest of the village, was a prehistoric structure composed of rough pieces of slate dating possibly from the time when men, not yet having mastered the art of cutting stones for themselves, used such pieces as had already been detached by nature. It was roofed over with sticks and bits of tile, above which flourished a vigorous growth of vegetation. The sun was sinking after a day of intense heat. Not a leaf stirred in the row of dusty trees along the scorched, deserted village street. Far off, the yellow uplands, furrowed by long, slanting shadows, were immersed in floods of crimson light; and beyond them rose the rugged line of purplish mountains--a row of huge red sphinxes covered with a veil of violet gauze. The all-pervading stillness was pierced by the distant note of a blackbird. Wild figs with coarse, dark foliage, and a hedge of wild robinia, among whose branches hairy nettles and the whitish-leaved henbane had wound and interlaced themselves, surrounded the hut; and from the doorway could be seen a wide expanse of country, lonely and vapourous as the sea. The atmosphere was filled with the acrid odour of stubble and dried asphodel, and the ground was so thickly covered with dead leaves, and twigs, and bits of straw that Giacobbe had got quite close to the old fisherman before the latter perceived him. "What are we about now?" cried the herdsman gaily. The other raised his eyes without lifting his head, and, regarding his visitor curiously for a moment, made no reply. Dropping cross-legged on the ground, Giacobbe watched him as he mended the net with waxed twine threaded in a huge, rusty needle. "Well, really!" said the herdsman presently, with a laugh. "I should think the little fishes would find no difficulty in coming and going at their pleasure!" "Then let them come and go at their pleasure, little spring bird," said the fisherman, mimicking Giacobbe's favourite mode of address. "What are you doing here? Have you left your place?" "No; on the contrary, I have just made a new contract with those black-beetles of rich relations. But I want to speak to you about something serious, Uncle 'Sidore. First, though, tell me how your legs are? And is it long since you last saw San Costantino on the river-bank?" The old man frowned; he disliked to hear sacred things alluded to with irreverence. "If that is what you came for," said he, "you can take yourself off at once." "Oh, well, there is no need to get angry! Here, I'll tell you what I came for; it really is important. But, as for irreverence--if you find me turning into a heathen you must blame the little master, he is always pitching into the saints. He gets terribly frightened, though, whenever he thinks he is going to die. Just listen to this: the other night we saw a shooting star; it fell plumb down from the sky, like a streak of melted gold, and looked as though it had struck the earth. Brontu threw himself down full-length on the ground, yelling: 'If this is the last day, have mercy on us, good Lord!' And there he stayed until, I swear, I wanted to kick him!" "And you were not frightened?" "I? No, indeed, little spring bird; I saw the star disappear right away." "But the very first moment that you saw it, tell the truth now, you were scared then, weren't you?" "Oh, well, go to the devil! Perhaps I was. But see here, what I came for was to talk to you about him--the master. If he is not crazy, then no one is in the whole world. He wants you to go to Giovanna Era and to suggest to her to get a divorce and marry him!" Isidoro dropped his work, a mist rose before his calm, honest eyes: he clasped his hands, resting his chin on them, and began shaking his head. "And how about you?" he asked in a stern voice. "Are you not just as crazy to dare to come to me with such a proposition? Oh, yes! I understand, you are afraid of losing your place! What a poor creature you are!" "Ho, ho!" cried the other banteringly. "So that's your idea, is it? You and your leeches!" "Oh! you mean to be funny, do you? Well, it is time this was put a stop to! Tell your master that he has got to bring this business to an end. The whole neighbourhood has heard about it, and people are talking." "My dear friend, we have only just begun! And here are you talking of ending it! I have had enough of it, I assure you, for morn, noon, and night, that brandy-bottle does nothing but talk to me about it! I had to promise him at last that I would see you, so here I am! But I can tell you not to talk on his side! There is only one person, Uncle Isidoro, who can really put a stop to this scandalous business, and that is Giovanna herself. You must go to her, and tell her to make that beast shut up. I can do nothing more." Isidoro gazed at him with wide, unseeing eyes; he appeared not to be listening. Presently he resumed his work, murmuring: "Poor Costantino! poor lamb! What have they done to you?" "Yes, indeed, he is innocent," said Giacobbe. "And any day at all he may come back! This craze of Brontu's has got to be stopped. Then there is Aunt Bachissia as well, hovering over her like a vulture over its prey!" "Poor Costantino! poor lamb! What have they done to you?" repeated Isidoro, paying not the smallest heed to anything that Giacobbe said. The latter became annoyed. Raising his voice until it echoed through the surrounding silence and solitude, he shouted: "What _have_ they done to him? What are they _going_ to do to him? Why don't you listen to what I am telling you, you old rag-heap? You must go and talk to her, right away! There she is, cheerful and rosy, and ready to fall at the first touch, like a ripe apple! At heart, though, she is not bad, and if you will predispose her against it--make her see what she ought to do--the whole thing may be prevented. Get up! get along! move! do something! Here is your chance to perform miracles, if you really are a saint, as the sinners seem to think!" "Ah! ah! ah!" sighed the old man, rising to his feet. His tall figure, majestic even in its rags, stood out in the crimson light, against the background of dark hedge and distant, misty horizon, like that of some venerable hermit. "I will go," he said, sighing heavily. And at the words Giacobbe felt as though a great weight had been rolled from his breast. From then on, the two men worked, steadily together in the interest of the far-away prisoner, finding themselves opposed, however, by three active and united forces, as well as by the passive resistance of Giovanna. The three forces against which they had to contend were: the brute passion of Brontu, the grasping greed of Aunt Bachissia, and Aunt Martina's self-interest, she being now wholly in favour of Brontu's scheme. Giovanna, she argued, was, though poor, both healthy and frugal, and she knew how to work like a beast of burden. A woman in good standing coming into the house as a bride, might entail all manner of extravagance and outlay, and the wedding alone would be sure to mean a heavy expense. Whereas, in the case of Giovanna, the marriage would be conducted almost in secret, and she would steal into the house like a slave! Shrewd Aunt Martina! Thus the months rolled over the little slate-stone village, the desolate mountains, the yellow stretch of uplands. Autumn came--soft, melancholy days, when the sea lay beneath a veil of mist on the horizon, and dark clouds, like huge crabs, travelled slowly across the pale sky, trailing long lines of vapour behind them. Sometimes, though, it would turn cold, and the atmosphere would be like a spring of limpid water, fresh, clear, and sparkling. On such an evening as this, when a long, violet-coloured cloud hung in the eastern heavens like an island in a crystal sea, and the scent of burning thyme came from the fields which the peasants were making ready for sowing, Brontu would swallow great gulps of brandy to take off the evening chill, and then, throwing himself down in the back of the hut, would lie dreaming, as warm and happy as a cat, his eyes fixed on the violet-coloured cloud on the distant horizon. All about the cabin, in every direction, as far as the eye could reach, stretched the broad _tancas_ of the Dejases, billowy undulations, losing themselves in the fading daylight. Here and there amid the golden-brown stubble were dark squares of newly-turned earth, swollen by the rain, and patches of fresh grass and purple, autumnal flowers sending out a damp perfume. Clouds of wild birds, and large crows as black and shining as polished metal, poured out of the clumps of _assenzio_, which, half-hidden among the wild roses and the clustering arbute with its shining leaves and yellow berries, looked like _tumuli_ of ashes. In one of the _tancas_ two peasants, farm hands of the Dejases, were burning brush preparatory to ploughing for the wheat and barley crops. The flames crackled as the wind blew them hither and thither, pale yet, in the evening light, and transparent as yellow glass, the smoke hanging over them in low, light clouds, like fragrant incense, then melting away. Along the tops of the hedges enclosing the sheepfolds, each bare, thorny twig seemed to stand out separately in the crystal atmosphere, like a tracery of amethyst-coloured lace. The animals had all been herded for the night, except a few horses which could be seen here and there, with noses to the ground, cropping the short grass. From without the hut came the sound of Giacobbe's voice, then the faint tinkle of a cowbell; the prolonged, far-away howl of a dog; the harsh screaming of a crow. Within, extended like a Bedouin on a pile of skins and warm coverings, Brontu dreamed his one, unvarying dream, while the fiery liquor, coursing through his veins, filled him with a delicious sense of warmth and comfort. Ah, how the young proprietor did love brandy! Not so much for its penetrating odour and sharp, biting taste, as for that glowing sensation of happiness that stole over his heart after drinking it. But woe betide any one who meddled with him at such times! Instantly his mood would change, and the sweetness turn to gall. It seemed to him that dogs must feel just as he did then, when some one tramples on their tails as they lie asleep. He would arouse in a state of fury, and lose the thread of his dream. Yes, he loved brandy; wine was good too, but not so good as brandy. His father before him had liked ardent spirits; so much so, in fact, that one day, after drinking heavily, he fell into the fire and was so badly burned that--Heaven preserve us!--he died of the effects! But there! enough of such melancholy thoughts! Nowadays people are more careful, they don't allow themselves to tumble into the fire! Moreover, to balance the passion for brandy, Brontu had his other passion, for Giovanna. Ah, brandy and Giovanna! The two most beautiful, ardent, intoxicating things in the whole world! But where Giovanna was concerned Brontu was as timid and fearful as he was reckless in the matter of brandy. He trembled merely at the thought of approaching her--of speaking to her. On those days when he knew that she was working for his mother he fairly yearned to go home, to gaze at her, to see her working there in his own house, and yet he dared not stir from the _tanca_! Now, though, as time went on, he was growing weary of waiting; a devouring anxiety, moreover, had seized upon him. What if, by hesitating so long, he were to meet with another refusal! Tormented by this thought, he longed to tell her of his solicitude for her; how, in order to console her for all that had occurred, he would gladly have married her at once, immediately after Costantino's sentence! His ideas differed from those of most people, but he was made that way and could not change. At bottom, like most drunkards, he had not a bad heart, nor was he immoral: his one passion, apart from drink, had always been for Giovanna, ever since when, as a boy, he had come with his family to live in the house on the hill. She was only fifteen then, and very fresh and beautiful. Every time he looked at her, even in those days, he had flushed even to his hands, and though she had noticed it, she had not seemed to mind. He never said anything, though, and so at last, when one day he screwed up his courage to the point of persuading his mother to go to Aunt Bachissia with an offer of marriage, it was too late, the position had been filled! Giovanna, at that time, had been as spirited and passionate as a young colt, and as utterly indifferent to worldly considerations. She might have married Brontu Dejas at first for his beautiful teeth, but having once fallen in love with Costantino, she would not have thrown him over for the Viceroy himself, had Sardinia still possessed one. The twilight deepened; the sky grew more and more crystalline, like a vast mirror; the little, violet cloud grew leaden and opaque, then long and scaly, like some monster fish; the sounds from without, rising clearer than ever in the intense stillness of the hour and place, it seemed to Brontu that he must be dreaming when the voice of Aunt Bachissia suddenly broke in upon his revery. "_Santu Juanne Battista meu!_" exclaimed the harsh, melancholy voice. "If I am not mistaken, that is Giacobbe Dejas?" "At your service," replied the herdsman, in a tone of amazement. "But what wind blows you to these parts, little spring bird?" "Ah, I am here at last! Where is Brontu Dejas?" Brontu rushed out of the hut, his knees shaking and his brain in such a whirl that he could hardly discern Aunt Bachissia's black-robed figure as she stood holding her shoes in one hand, and balancing a bundle on her head. "Aunt Bachissia!" he cried, in great agitation. "Here I am! Good-evening! Come here, come right in here!" The woman flew towards him, closely followed by the herdsman. "Ah, Brontu, my dear boy! If I am not dead to-night, it must mean that I never shall be! Three hours I have been walking! I lost my way. I must see you about something, but be patient for a moment." Patient! With his whole being in such a state of turmoil that he could hardly keep back the tears! Taking her by the hand he led her inside the hut, while Giacobbe, seeing that he was to have no part in the interview, went around to the back and listened with all his ears, raging meanwhile, inwardly, like a wild bull. Not a word, however, reached him. The conference was extremely short, Aunt Bachissia refusing even to sit down. She said that she had lost her way looking for Brontu's sheepfolds, and that Giovanna would be getting very anxious, as she thought she had merely gone into the fields to look for greens. Yes, it was quite true, they had to depend largely upon greens for their food, so bitter was their poverty: and what had brought her now was nothing less than to ask Brontu for some money. Oh, a loan! yes, thank Heaven, only a loan! If they should not be able to repay it, then she and Giovanna would work it off. For months they had not paid any rent--rent--! for their own house--! Now, the lawyer was threatening to evict them. "And where would we go, Brontu Dejas?" concluded Aunt Bachissia, clasping her gnarled and yellow hands. "Tell me where we would go, Brontu, my soul!" His breast heaved; he wanted to seize the old woman in his arms, and shout: "Why, to my house; that is where you would go!" But he did not dare. As there was no money at the hut Brontu decided to go home for it at once; he wished, anyhow, to return with Aunt Bachissia. Going outside, he called to Giacobbe to saddle the horse immediately. "What has happened?" asked the man. "Is your mother dead? God rest her soul!" "No," replied Brontu cheerfully. "Nothing has happened that in any way concerns you." Giacobbe began saddling the horse, but he was consumed with curiosity to know why Aunt Bachissia had come, and why Brontu was going back with her. She has come to borrow some money, he reflected, and he has none; he is going home to get it for her. "Listen, Brontu!" he called, and when the other had come quite close, he said: "If she wants money, and you haven't got any here, I can let you have some." "Yes, she does; she wants to borrow some money," said Brontu in a low tone, quivering with delight and excitement. "But I am going back with her to get it, whether you have it here or not; that makes no difference; I am going to see Giovanna this very evening, at her own house; I am going to talk to her and do for myself what not one of all you donkeys has had sense enough to do for me!" "Man!" cried Giacobbe angrily, "you must be going mad!" "All right; let me go mad. See here, draw the girth tighter. Ah! swelling out your sides, are you?" he added, addressing the horse. "You don't fancy night excursions? What will you say when the old woman is mounted on the crupper?" "She too?" exclaimed Giacobbe. "She too, yes; what business is it of yours? Isn't she my mother-in-law?" "You go too fast, upon my word! Look out, or you will have a fall and break your neck, little spring bird. Ah! you are really in earnest? You really mean to marry that beggar, that married woman, when you might have a flower for your wife? Well, I can tell you one thing, Costantino Ledda is innocent; some day he will come back, remember that; some day he will come back!" "Let me alone, Giacobbe Dejas, and attend to your own affairs. There, put a bag on the crupper. Aunt Bachissia!" he called to the old woman. Giacobbe ran quickly into the hut, and fell over Aunt Bachissia, who was just coming out. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," he said, trembling. "You are worse than any beggar! Oh, I'm going to talk to Giovanna! I am going to talk to her myself!" "You are a fool," said the woman; then, lowering her voice, she called him by an outrageous name, and passed out. A few moments later the two set forth. Giacobbe watched them as they slowly moved away in the fading light, across the solitary _tanca_: further and further, along the winding path, beyond the thickets, beyond the clumps of bushes, beyond the smoke of the brushwood fires; until, at last, they were lost to sight. Then an access of blind fury seized him; clutching the cap from his head, he flung it from him as far as he could; then picked it up again, and fell to beating the dog. The poor beast set up a prolonged howl that filled the silent waste, and was echoed back again with a sound like the despairing cry of some wandering phantom. Night fell. Giacobbe, throwing himself down on the paillasse which Brontu had quitted shortly before, smelled an odour of brandy; he got up, found his master's flask, and drank. Then he lay down again, and presently he too felt something bubble up in his breast, bathe his heart, scorch his eyelids, mount gurgling to his brain. His anger melted suddenly away and was replaced by a feeling of melancholy. Through the open door he could see the bright red glow of the brush fires gradually overpowering the fading twilight; as the two merged they formed a single hue of violet, indescribably melancholy in tone. Now and again the dog gave another long howl. Oh! what misery, what misery! Why had he, Giacobbe, beaten that poor dog? What had it done to him? Nothing. He was filled with remorse, the foolish, emotional remorse of the drunkard; yet, so irritating were the sounds that he had a strong impulse to rush out and beat the unfortunate beast again. All at once his mind recurred to Brontu and Aunt Bachissia, whom he had forgotten for the moment, and he began to tremble violently. What had happened? Had Giovanna given in? Ah! what made that dog bark like that? It was like the shriek of a dead person,--the voice of Basile Ledda, who was murdered! "Pooh, pooh, the dead cannot cry out. That is nothing but the howling of a dog." He laughed softly, drowsily, to himself; his heavy eyelids closed, shutting out the opaque, violet-coloured mist that hung like a curtain before the open door; he felt as though a sack filled with some soft but heavy substance were pressing down upon him, so that he could not move; yet the sensation was agreeable. A thousand confused images chased one another through his brain. Among other things he dreamed that he was dead, and that his soul had entered into the body of a dog, a gaunt, little yellow cur, who was running around and around Aunt Bachissia's kitchen searching for bones. Costantino was sitting by the fire; he was dressed in red, and there was a great chain lying at his feet; all at once he saw the dog, and flung the chain at it. The creature's head was caught fast, encircled in one of the iron rings, and Giacobbe, stricken with terror, forced himself to cry out, in order to make them understand it was he. He awoke, perspiring and shouting: "Little spring bird!" Night had fallen; the deserted _tanca_, stretching away beneath a clear sky sparkling with big, yellow stars, glowed with the red light of the brush fires. Giacobbe could not get to sleep again; he turned and twisted from one side to the other, but the intoxicating effects of the brandy had passed, leaving his mouth dry and feverish. He got up and drank; then he remembered that he had taken nothing to eat that evening. For a long time he stood leaning against the door of the hut, his face lighted up by the glow of the fires. "Shall I get something to eat or not?" he asked himself, hardly conscious that he did so. Then he looked up at the stars. Almost midnight. What had that little beast--his master--accomplished? he wondered, and his anger rose again, but chiefly against Aunt Bachissia. What impudence to come all the way to this distant spot just to further the little proprietor's outrageous plans! For he knew perfectly well that the loan was merely an excuse of that old harpy to draw Brontu on, to bring him to a decision, to make him commit himself. Ah, what a low creature that woman was! Had she no conscience at all? Did she not believe in God? At this point Giacobbe grew thoughtful, and presently he threw himself down again, still debating whether or no he were hungry, and whether it were worth while to get something to eat. No, he decided; he was not hungry, nor thirsty, nor sleepy; nor could he rest; lying down, or sitting up, or standing. He yawned noisily and began talking aloud, mumbling foolish, disconnected things, in a vain effort to distract his thoughts, which, however, continued to dwell persistently upon _that thing_. It was horrible, horrible! Marry a woman who had another husband already! And suppose Costantino should come back? Who knows? Everything is possible in this world. And even if he were never to return, there was the boy, how about him? What would he think when he grew up and found that his mother had two husbands? What a law that was! "Ha! the men who make the laws are pretty queer!" And Giacobbe laughed mirthlessly, for, down in the bottom of his heart, his inclination was to do anything else but laugh. Getting up, he seized the brandy-flask, saying to himself that if Brontu should display any curiosity as to who had drunk his brandy, why so much the worse for him. "I'll tell him it was the spirits! Ha, ha!" He laughed again, took a deep draught, and, throwing himself down, quickly fell into a heavy sleep, and dreamed that he was telling a sister of his all about his other dream of Costantino, and the yellow dog, and the chain. When he awoke the sun was already above the horizon, pushing through a bank of bluish cloud. The morning was cold, with light, drifting clouds, and the thickets, bushes, stubble, every spear of grass, sparkled with dew in the slanting rays of the sun. Once more the birds bustled in and out among the bushes, burst into song, rushed together in little groups, or poised gracefully in the misty air. Now and then the chorus of chirps and twitters would swell into something so acute and piercing that it was almost like the patter of metal raindrops: sometimes a shrill whistle, or the strident note of a crow, would break into this silvery harmony; then all would die away, swallowed up in the vast silence of the uplands. Giacobbe came out of the hut yawning and stretching. He yawned so violently that his jaws cracked, and his smooth-shaven face folded into innumerable tiny wrinkles about the round, open mouth; and his little, oblique eyes, yellow in the sunlight, watered like those of a dog. "Well," he thought, pressing both hands to his stomach, "I have cramps here. What did I do last evening?" He threw open the folds; a ram with curved horns came out, snuffing the ground, closely followed by a yellowish bunch of sheep, all trying to tread in his tracks, and all likewise snuffing the ground; others came, and still others; the folds were empty; still Giacobbe stood close to the enclosure--motionless--buried in thought. "Yes, last evening I had nothing to eat. I drank the little master's brandy, and then I had dreams. Yes, yes, that was it--Costantino--and the dog--and my sister Anna-Rosa. Well, damn him! Why didn't he come back, the little toad? I got drunk, just like a beast. Yes,"--he moralised, walking towards the hut,--"a drunken man is like a beast; he does not know what he is doing, and brays out everything in his mind. A dangerous thing that, Giacobbe Dejas, you bald-pate! Get that well into your head; it's dangerous. No, no, I'll never get drunk again; may the Lord punish me if I do." A little later the young master returned. Giacobbe, intent and smiling, watched him closely. "Ah!" said he, stepping forward solicitously, "you look like a man who has had a whipping; what has happened?" "Nothing. Get away." But nothing was further from the other's intention. He began to circle around his master, fawning upon him and making little bounds towards him like a dog, teasing persistently to be told what had occurred. At last Brontu, who really longed to unburden himself, yielded. Well then, yes; Giovanna had, in fact, driven him away like an importunate beggar. She had asked him if he had forgotten that she had a son who would one day spit at her, and demand to know how it was that she had two husbands. "My soul, I knew it!" cried Giacobbe, leaping in the air for joy. "What did you know?" "Why, that she had a son." "Well, I knew that myself. She chased me out of the house; that's the whole of it. I could hear the two--the mother and daughter--from the road, quarrelling furiously together." And then Brontu went to look for his brandy-flask. Giacobbe was so overjoyed that he could have laughed aloud for glee. "Look here!" he called. "The spirits came last night and drank your brandy. Ha! ha! ha! but there must be some left; I am sure there is still some left." Brontu drank eagerly without making any reply. Then he flung the flask angrily at the herdsman, who caught it in the air; and Brontu, having drunk for sorrow, Giacobbe proceeded to drink for joy. FOOTNOTE: [5] A summer goblin, invoked in Sardinia to frighten children out of the sun. CHAPTER VIII One morning, about three years after his conviction, Costantino awoke in a bad humour. The heat was oppressive, and the air of the cell was heavy and sickening. One of the prisoners was snoring and puffing like a kettle letting off steam. Costantino had slept with Giovanna's last letter beneath his head, and a sad little letter it was; short, and depressing in the extreme. She told of her and her mother's dire poverty, and of the boy's serious illness. It never occurred to Costantino to reflect how cruel it was to write to him in this strain; he wanted to know the truth about them, however bad it might be, and he felt that to share all Giovanna's sorrows and to agonise over his inability to help her was a part of his duty. A barren duty,--alas!--merely an increase of his misery. He had become quite deft at his trade of shoemaking, and worked rapidly, but he could make very little money; all that was left, however, after the _King of Spades_ had been paid for his supposed good offices he sent to Giovanna. "Upon my word," said the ex-marshal, "you are a goose. Spend it on yourself. They ought to be sending you money." "But they are so poor." "Poor! Not they; haven't they got the sun? What more do they want?" said the other. "If you would only eat and drink more it would be a real charity. You are nothing but a stick, my dear fellow. Look at me! I'm getting fat. My bacon may be all rind, but, all the same, I'm getting fat." He was, in fact, as round as a ball, but his flesh hung down in yellow, flabby rolls. Costantino, on the other hand, had fallen away, his eyes were big and cavernous, and his hands transparent. The sun! he thought to himself bitterly. Yes, they have indeed got that; but what good is the sun even, when one has nothing to eat, and is suffering every kind of privation? He was, no doubt, a great simpleton, but as he thought of these things, he sometimes cried like a child. Yet all the time he never gave up hope. The years passed by; day followed day slowly, regularly, uneventfully, like drops of water in a grotto, dripping from stone to stone. Almost every convict in the prison, especially those whose terms were not very long, hoped for a remission, and kept close count of the days already elapsed and of those yet to come. Their accuracy was amazing; they never made a mistake of so much as a single day. Some even carried their calculations so far as to count the hours. Costantino thought it all very foolish; one might die in the mean time, or regain his liberty! It was all in the hands of God. Yet, all the same, he too counted on being freed before the appointed hour; only in his case the appointed hour was so desperately, so hopelessly far away! This realisation was heavy upon him on that morning when he awoke and fingered the warm paper of Giovanna's last letter. Getting up, he sighed heavily, and began to dress himself. The man on his right stopped snoring, opened one sleepy eye, regarded Costantino dully, then closed it again. "Feeling badly?" he asked, as Costantino sighed again. "Oh, yes! Your child is ill. Why don't you tell the Director?" "Why should I tell the Director? He would clap me into a cell for receiving the letter, and that would be the whole of it." "Except _pane e pollastra_" (bread and water), said an ironical voice. There was a general laugh, and Costantino, realising bitterly the utter indifference of all those men among whom he was destined to pass his days, felt as though he were wandering alone in a burning desert, gasping for air and water. He went to his work longing impatiently for the exercise hour, when he would be able to talk over his troubles with the _King of Spades_. The great, fat, yellow man whom he despised so in his heart, was, nevertheless, indispensable to him; his sole comfort, in fact. He alone in that place understood him, was sorry for him, and listened to him. He was paid for it all, to be sure, but what did that signify? He was necessary in the same way to a great many of the convicts, but to none, probably, as much as to Costantino, who already, with a somewhat selfish regret, was dreading the time when, his term expired, the _King of Spades_ would finally depart. On this particular day a new inmate made his appearance in the workroom. He was a Northerner; long and sinuous, with a grey, wrinkled face, and small, pale eyes. It was not easy to tell his age, but the men laughed when he announced himself as twenty-two. He began at once to complain of the heat and of the sickening smell of fish that filled the room. Ah, he was no cobbler; no, indeed! He was the only son of a wealthy wholesale shoe-dealer,--a gentleman, in fact. And thereupon he recounted his unfortunate history. He had, it appeared, been so unlucky as to kill a rival in love; there had been provocation and he had ripped him open in the back,--simply that! The woman who was the real cause of the crime had consumption, and now she was dying from grief,--dying, simply that! Moreover, there was a child in the question, a son of the prisoner's by the sick woman. If she died, the boy would be left orphaned and abandoned. Costantino trembled at this; not, indeed, that the man's story affected him particularly, but because the picture of the woman and the child reminded him of Giovanna and the sick Malthineddu. The newcomer, who was cutting a pair of soles with considerable skill, now became silent, and bent over, intent upon his work, his under lip trembling like that of a child about to cry. Costantino, watching him, reflected that though he knew that this man must be suffering intensely he felt as indifferent as did any of the others: he too, then, had lost the power of sympathising with the sorrows of others! The thought filled him with dismay and made him more insanely anxious to get out than ever. That day, as soon as he saw the _King of Spades_, he drew him over to a corner where the sun-baked wall cast a little spot of shade; but when he had got him there he could not bring himself to begin on his own troubles. Instead he repeated the story told by the new arrival. The other shrugged his shoulders and spat against the wall. "If he wants to, even he can write," he said. "But I should advise prudence, some one is nosing about." "How are we ever going to manage after you have gone?" said Costantino thoughtfully. "You would like to keep me here forever, you rascal?" demanded the other in a rallying tone. "Heaven forbid! No, indeed; I only wish you might get out to-morrow!" The _King of Spades_ sighed. His enemies, he declared, were forever devising new and diabolical schemes for keeping him out of the way; he had abandoned all hope now of a pardon. In any case, however, his term would expire before long; then he would go at once to the King, and lay a plain statement of the facts before him. The King would order an instant reversal of the verdict, and he himself, his innocence finally established, would be restored to his post. Who could tell, there might even be another medal conferred, to keep the rest company! But his first care would be to obtain pardons for all his friends, especially for Costantino. "That would be a noble work," he observed, self-approvingly. Indeed, by virtue of making such assurances frequently, he had come actually to believe in them himself. "To-morrow? Yes, indeed; a pardon might very possibly come to-morrow, and a good thing that would be for every one." "Good, or bad," said Costantino despondently. "After all," continued the other, "when I am gone it may be that you will no longer have any use for my services." The moment the words were out of his mouth he regretted having spoken, but seeing that Costantino merely shook his head, evidently supposing that he alluded to a possible pardon, he regarded him compassionately. "Are you really and truly innocent?" he asked. "By this time I should think you would be willing to talk to me quite openly. Do you remember that first time when I asked you? You said: 'May I never see my child again, if I am guilty.'" "Yes, so I did; and now, you mean to say, I am perhaps not going to see him again? Well, God's will be done; but I am innocent, all the same." The _King of Spades_ turned, and again spat upon the wall. "Patience, old fellow, patience, patience," he said; and there was a note of real warmth and feeling in his tone. He felt, in fact, quite proud of himself for recognising and esteeming honesty when he saw it in others, and it was this taste that drew him to Costantino. He saw with wonder that his fellow-countryman was so good, that his soul was so pure, and his whole nature formed of so fine a material, that even the boundless corruption of prison life could not sully him. Now it happened that the ex-marshal allowed himself--as one of the privileges of his position of go-between--to read the letters that passed through his hands. Not long before, an anonymous letter had come for Costantino, written in a villainous hand, with great sprawling characters that looked like insects crawling over the page. Venomous creatures they proved, indeed, to be, and capable of inflicting wounds as deadly as those of any living reptile. In short, the letter announced that Giovanna, wife of the prisoner, was permitting Brontu Dejas to pay court to her, and that Aunt Bachissia was about to go to Nuoro to consult a lawyer about applying for a divorce for her daughter. On reading this precious communication the ex-marshal became furious; his friend, the _Delegate_, immersed as he was in his great scientific researches, heard him snorting, and puffing out his fat, yellow cheeks. "Idiots! Fools! Sardinian asses!" he sputtered. "Why on earth tell him about it at all! What can he do, except batter out his brains against the wall?" He did not deliver the letter, and every time he saw his friend he regarded him compassionately, feeling at the same time pleased at his own goodness of heart for caring so much. Three days later the boy died. Costantino was notified immediately of the event. He wept silently and by stealth, trying hard to bear up with fortitude before his companions. When Arnolfo Bellini, the man whose mistress was dying, heard of the Sardinian's misfortune, he fell into a fit of nervous weeping, emitting curious noises like an angry hen, his grey, old-young face doubling up in such grotesque contortions that one of the quarrelsome brothers from the Abruzzi burst out laughing; one of the others leaned across and punched him in the leg with an awl, whereupon the Abruzzese started, ceased laughing, and continued his work without protest. Costantino, after staring a moment at Bellini in amazement, shook his head and turned to his bench. Silence reigned, and presently the man calmed down. The low room was filled with the hot, reflected glare from the courtyard, and the overpowering heat drew a sickening odour from the leather and the perspiring hands and feet of the convicts. There were thirteen of them under the surveillance of a tall, red-moustached guard, who never opened his lips. The uniformity of dress, the close-cropped heads and shaven faces, and the general vacuity of expression lent them all a certain mutual resemblance; they might have been brothers, or at least nearly related to one another, and yet, never more than on that particular day, had Costantino felt himself so utterly apart, so wholly out of sympathy with his companions in misery. He stitched and stitched, bending over the shoe, which rested between his knees in the hollow of his leather apron. From time to time he would pause, examine his work attentively, then go on again drawing the thread through with both hands with a jerk that seemed almost angry. Yes, one must work, now that the boy was dead. Had he loved him very dearly? Well, he could hardly say; perhaps not so very much. He had only seen him once during that time at Nuoro, through the iron grating of the reception-room, held fast in the arms of his weeping mother. The baby, he remembered, had a little pink face, somewhat rough and scarred, like certain kinds of apricots when they are ripe. His round, violet-coloured eyes shone like a pair of grape seeds from beneath their long fringe of lashes. He had cried the whole time, terrified at the sight of the stern-faced, rigid guards; and grasping the iron bars convulsively with his little red hands. This was the only memory Costantino had preserved of his son. Years had gone by since then; yet he always imagined him flushed, tearful, with little violet eyes shining out from beneath the dark lashes. But he often pictured the future, when Malthineddu, grown to be big and strong, would drive the wagon, and ride the horse, and sow, and reap, and be the comfort and support of his mother. The prisoner constantly hoped that some day or other he would be cleared, and able to return to his home, but when at times this hope seemed to be more than usually vain, then his thoughts would instantly revert to the boy, and how he would be able to take his place in a way; thus his feeling for him was more a part of his love for Giovanna than that more selfish affection which is the result, often, of habit and propinquity. Now the boy was dead, and the dream shattered; the will of God be done. And Costantino, dwelling upon Giovanna's grief, suffered himself, acutely. When the _King of Spades_, accordingly, met his friend that day in the shadow of the sun-baked wall, he at once perceived that the other's grief was far more for his wife than for the loss of the child; nevertheless, his method of imparting comfort was to say banteringly: "Why, my dear fellow, if, as you say, the Lord has taken the innocent little soul back to himself, why do you take it so much to heart? It must be for his own good!" "Why must it?" said Costantino, his head drooping, and both arms hanging down with limp, open palms. "Why must he be better off? Simply because he was poor!" The _King of Spades_ happened to be in a philosophising mood. He explained, therefore, that poverty was not always a misfortune; nothing of the sort; it might at times be looked upon as a blessing, even an unqualified one! "There are many worse things than poverty," said he. "Reflect for a moment; your wife will become reconciled." "Oh! of course; she has the sun," said Costantino, clenching his hands. "This burning sun, and just how is it going to help her?" "Pff! pff! pff!" puffed the other, inflating his big, yellow cheeks. Then he grew thoughtful, and fell to examining the little finger of his right hand with minute attention. "Suppose," he said suddenly, "your wife were to marry again?" Costantino did not quite take in what he meant, but his arms stiffened instinctively. "I hardly should have thought," said he in a hurt tone, "that you would say such a thing as that." "Pff! pff! pff!" The ex-marshal swelled and puffed meditatively. Then, after a short pause, he began again: "But listen, my dear fellow, you don't understand. I don't for a moment mean to say that your wife is not a perfectly honest woman; what I do mean is--suppose she were actually to marry some one else? And still you don't understand? Upon my word, this Christian is extraordinarily slow at taking an idea! One would suppose you were free, you are so innocent. Perhaps, though," he added, "you don't know that people can get divorces nowadays. Any woman whose husband has been sentenced for more than ten years, can be divorced and marry some one else." Costantino threw his head up for a moment, and his sunken eyes opened round and wide; then the lids dropped again. "Giovanna would never do it," he said simply. There was another brief interval of silence. "Giovanna would not do it," he repeated; yet, even as he pronounced the words, he had a strange sensation, as though a frozen steel were slashing his heart in twain; one part was convulsed with agony, while the other shrieked again and again: "She would never do it! she would never do it!" And neither part gave a single thought to the little, dead child. "She would not do it, she would not do it," reiterated one half of his heart with loud insistence, until, at last, the other was convinced, and they came together again, but only to find that both were now devoured by that torturing pain. "See here," said the _King of Spades_, "I don't believe she would either. But tell me one thing; now that the child is dead, and now that the mother has nothing more to hope for, from either him or you, would it not, after all, be the very best thing she could do, supposing she had the opportunity? For my own part, I think that if a chance came along for her to marry again, she would be very foolish not to take it." "Brontu Dejas!" said Costantino to himself. But he only repeated: "No, she would not do it." "But you are a Christian, my friend; if she were to do it, would she not be in the right?" "But I am going back some day." "How is she to know that?" "Why, I have told her so all along, and I shall never cease telling her so." The _King of Spades_ had a strong inclination to laugh, but he restrained himself, feeling quite ashamed of the impulse. Presently he murmured, as though in answer to some inward question: "It is all utter foolishness." "Yes, of course," said Costantino. But all the time, he was thinking of Brontu Dejas, of his house with the portico, of his _tancas_ and his flocks; and then of Giovanna's poverty. Alas! the knife was cutting deep into his heart now. That very night he wrote a long letter to Giovanna, comforting her, and assuring her of his unshaken faith in the divine mercy. "It may be," he wrote, in the simple goodness of his heart, "that God wishes to prove us still further, and so has taken from us the offspring that we conceived in sin; may his will be done! But now, a presentiment tells me that the hour of my restoration to liberty is at hand." He considered long whether or no to tell her of the _dreadful thing_ hinted at by the ex-marshal, and thought himself quite shrewd and cunning when he decided it would be better to let her think that he did not so much as know of the existence of that infernal law. His letter despatched, he felt more tranquil. But a little worm had begun to gnaw and gnaw in his brain. The ex-marshal, moreover, from that day on, with a pity that was heartless in its operations, never ceased to instil the subtle poison into his veins. He must become accustomed to the idea, thought this diplomatist to himself, else the poor, simple soul will die of heartbreak. There were times, however, when he thought that it might be better, after all, to let him die, and have done with it. Then, remembering all his promises about obtaining a pardon, he would pretend to himself that he was really going to do this, and continue the torture so that his victim might survive the shock when news of the divorce actually came. He had no doubt that his friend's wife was seriously contemplating the step, and it made him angry to hear Costantino speak affectionately of her. "My dear fellow," said he one October day, puffing as usual, "you don't know women. Empty jugs, that's what they are; nothing but empty jugs! I was once engaged to be married myself. You can hardly believe it? Well, I can hardly believe it either. What then? Nothing, except that she betrayed me before I had even married her, and--that you irritate me beyond measure. Here is your wife in an altogether different situation; she is young and poor, and has blood in her veins--she has blood in her veins, I suppose, hasn't she? Well, if this Dejas fellow wants her to marry him, I say she would be a great goose not to do it." "Dejas! Why--what--who told you?" stammered Costantino in amazement. "Oh! didn't you tell me yourself?" Costantino thought he most certainly had not, but then his mind had been in such a confused state for some time back--but merciful God! Dear San Costantino! How had he ever come to do such a thing? What had made him utter that man's name? "Well, then," he burst out; "yes, I am afraid of him! He courted her before we were married; he wanted her himself. Ugh! he's a drunkard, and as weak as mud. No, no; she could never do anything so horrible! For pity's sake, let's talk of something else." So they did talk of something else, still in the Sardinian dialect, so as not to be understood by the other prisoners. They talked of the consumptive student, who was drawing visibly nearer to the door of the other world; of Arnolfo Bellini, who began to sob whenever his eye fell on the dying man; of the _Delegate_, whom they could see pacing back and forth by the fountain; of the magpie, who was growing feeble, and losing all his feathers, from old age. Gossip, envy, hatred, identical interests, cowardice, raillery, fear--such were the bonds which united or kept apart the different members of the little community--prisoners, guards, and officials alike. To Costantino they were all equally objects of indifference; he, the _Delegate_, and the student seeming to live apart in a little world of their own, with the ex-marshal--the pivot about which every detail in the prisoners' lives seemed to revolve; he, meanwhile, appearing to be as superior as he was necessary to them all. Many envied the friendly intercourse existing between Costantino and him, and frequently the former would be implored to use his influence with the _King of Spades_ to procure some favour. He merely shrugged his shoulders on such occasions, though, when they offered him money, as sometimes happened, he was sorely tempted to take it, so intense was his longing to be able to support Giovanna; he had no other idea. The _King of Spades_, with his eternal insinuations that cut like knives, was becoming more and more hateful to him. One day they actually quarrelled, and for some time did not speak to one another. But Costantino could not stand it; he felt as though he should suffocate, as though he had been shut up in a cell, and cut off from all communication with the outer world. He soon apologised and begged for a reconciliation. The autumn drew on; the air grew cool, and the sky became a delicate, velvety blue, distant, unreal, dreamlike. Sometimes the breeze would waft a perfume of ripening fruit into the prison enclosure. Costantino was less acutely miserable, but he had sunk into a state of settled melancholy; he grew thinner and thinner, and deprived himself continually of things which he stood in need of in order to have more money to send to Giovanna. The other prisoners all received presents of some sort from their friends and relatives; he alone denied himself even the little pittance he was able to earn. "I don't understand it," said the ex-marshal to him one day. "Your complexion is pink and you look younger than you did when you came, and yet you are almost transparent." Sometimes Costantino would flush violently, and the blood would rush to his head; then he would be utterly prostrated, and in his weakness he would suffer more from homesickness than he had done even in the first year of his imprisonment. He would see before him the boundless sweep of the uplands, sleeping in the autumnal haze, glowing and yellow beneath the crystal sky; he would get the breath of the vineyards, the scent of such late-maturing fruits as flourish in that land of flocks and beehives; images would rise before him of the foxes and hares, the wild birds and cattle, the hedges thick with blackberries, all the hundred and one natural objects which had constituted the sole element of enjoyment in his otherwise miserable and barren childhood. Then his thoughts would turn to his uncle, the cruel old Vulture who, having tormented him in his lifetime, seemed able to torment him still. An impulse of bitter hatred would rise up in his heart, only to be repressed, on remembering that he was dead, and succeeded by a prayer for the murdered man's soul. There was no one else whom he was even tempted to hate, no one at all; not even the real murderer, or Brontu Dejas--who, in fact, had as yet given him no cause for complaint--or the _King of Spades_, though he subjected him to this continual martyrdom. Indeed, it hardly seemed as though he had sufficient strength effectually to hate any one. A feeling of gentle melancholy pervaded him, a sort of numbness like that of a person about to fall asleep; his only sensation was one of tender, pitiful, passionless love; as tranquil, as mild and all-embracing as an autumnal sky, and having for its one object--Giovanna. She was a part of the love itself, and waking or sleeping, he thought only of her, only of her, only of her. As time went on this love became more and more engrossing; she came to represent the far-off home, family, liberty--life itself. All, all, was comprehended in her: hope, faith, endurance, peace, the very love of life! She became his soul. When the inexorable _King of Spades_ threatened him with _that horrible thing_, he did not know it, but it was the death of his soul that he was holding over him. For the certainty of not losing Giovanna, Costantino would gladly have agreed to pass forty years in prison; and, at the same time, he panted for his freedom precisely in order that he might not lose her. During the winter that followed, he suffered intensely from cold; his face and nails were livid, and during the exercise hour, even when he stood in the sun, his teeth chattered like those of an old man. He asked often to confess, and confided all his troubles to the young chaplain. "Who puts such ideas as these into your head, my son?" asked the confessor, his dark eyes flashing. "A fellow-countryman of mine, the ex-marshal--Burrai. The _King of Spades_ they call him." "May God bless and protect you!" said the other, becoming thoughtful; he knew the _King of Spades_ well. Then he administered what comfort he could, and asked what Giovanna had written herself, and when. Alas! she wrote but seldom now and never more than a few lines at a time. It seemed almost as if, after the child's death, she had nothing to write about. In her last letter she had told him that the weather was bitterly cold; there had been two snow-storms, in one of which a man, while attempting to cross the mountains, had been frozen to death. And then she had added that they were having a famine. These accounts, of course, preyed upon Costantino's mind. He would dream constantly that he had been taken to Nuoro and given his liberty; from thence he would set forth on foot for home; it was cold, bitterly cold; he could go no further--he was dying, dying--then he would wake up shivering, and with a heavy weight on his heart. "You are so weak, my brother," said the confessor. "It is bodily weakness that makes you imagine all these things. Your wife is a good Christian; she would never wrong you in the world. Come, put all such ideas out of your head. You should try to get back your strength; you must eat more, and drink something now and then. Are you earning anything?" "A little; but I send it all to my wife, she is so terribly poor. Oh! I eat plenty, and I don't like to take anything to drink; it gives me nausea." "Well, take heart. I will talk to Burrai; he shall not bother you any more." He did, in fact, have an interview with the _King of Spades_, and took him severely to task for putting such wicked ideas into Ledda's head. "The poor fellow is far from strong as it is," said he. "If you don't let him alone, he will be ill." Burrai regarded the priest calmly out of his shrewd little pig-eyes, then he gave a puff and shook his head. "I only do it for his own good," he said confidently. "But what good, what possible good? You----" "I tell you, my dear fellow--I beg your pardon--but here it is, for the present--as long as the cold weather lasts--there is very little to be feared, so far as the young woman is concerned; that is, I fancy that now it is only the old one, Costantino's mother-in-law, who is at work, advising and tormenting her daughter not to let her chance slip by. But when the spring comes--then you'll see; that's all." The chaplain's face fell; he was disturbed and puzzled. The other, watching him out of his sharp, little eyes, concluded that the present would be a good time to explain himself more fully, and accordingly began to enlarge upon the mother-in-law's grasping disposition, the youth of her daughter, the dangers of the spring season, and so forth. The chaplain now became really angry. "This is too much!" he exclaimed, as he strode up and down, striking the palms of his hands together, and his eyes flashing. "How dare you imagine all this string of things that may possibly happen, and then repeat them to that poor creature as though they were actual occurrences? Because the young woman once had another suitor, you mean to say----" "My dear friend, there is no need to get so angry," said the other. "Here, look at this," and he showed him the anonymous letter. The chaplain saw at once that the matter was more serious than he had supposed; he read the letter, and then asked if Ledda paid him money. "Of course, a trifle now and then. Perhaps you think it wrong? Well, don't I take the risk of being put in a cell in order to serve him?" "And you consider that you are doing right when you act in this manner?" "What is doing right? If it is helping your neighbour, then I most certainly think that I am." The chaplain re-read the letter attentively. "Yes," pursued the other. "I certainly am. And what is more, if, when I get out of here, they don't reinstate me in my position, I intend to arrange a system of correspondence for all the prisons in Italy. It will be a sort of agency----" "I see, my friend, that it will not be long before we have you back again." "Eh! eh! I shall know how to manage the thing; a secret agency, and----" "Pardons too!" said the priest, folding the letter and returning it. "How can you have the heart to fool those poor creatures so?" "Yes, pardons too," replied Burrai calmly. "Well, and suppose they are fooled; if it gives them any comfort to hope, is not that an act of kindness in itself? What is there for any of us, but hope?" "Well," said the other more mildly, "at least do me the favour to leave that poor fellow alone. Allow _him_ to enjoy the pleasures of hope, otherwise he will certainly fall ill." The ex-marshal promised, though with bad grace. It seemed to him a poor method. "He will die of heartstroke, I verily believe," he said to himself. "Wait till the spring; then we will see whether a man of the world knows what he is about or no." And he laid one hand on his breast. When they next met, Costantino asked with a smile if he had seen _Su Preideru_, as they called the chaplain between themselves, and what he had said to him. The ex-marshal was leaning against the damp and dingy wall, softly cursing some individual unknown, in the Sardinian dialect. "_Balla chi trapasset sa busacca, brasciai!_" (I wish a ball would hit him in the pouch, the he-wolf!) he murmured, as Costantino approached. "What is it? Who?" "Oh! nothing." "You want to know if I have seen the priest? Yes, and he scolded me like a child. What a child it is! A little pig, really and truly, a little pig! But the lard is yellow and rancid. Do you know, I read somewhere that in Russia they think very highly of rancid lard?" "But tell me what he said." "What he said? Let me see, what did he say? I don't remember; oh! yes, he told me that I had imagined all that--what we have been talking about. Yes, that was it, my dear fellow; I have, it seems, a vivid imagination, and your wife will never wrong you in the world! Never, as surely as we are standing here!" Costantino looked at him eagerly. No, the man was not chaffing; he was perfectly serious, and evidently meant what he said. "Ah, ha! he scolded you, did he? Good enough!" he cried. "This wall," said the _King of Spades_, straightening himself, and regarding his hands, which were red and scarred from contact with the rough stones, "this wall looks as though it were made of chocolate; it is warm and damp. Ah! if it only were, there would be two advantages: we could eat it, and then escape! Have you ever eaten any chocolate?" "Why, of course, and Giovanna too; she is very fond of it, but it is fearfully dear. Well, and what then?" "What then?" exclaimed the other impatiently. "My dear fellow, you drive me crazy. Oh! she will wait for you twenty-three years--never fear!" "No, not that long; I shall be out of here long before that," replied Costantino confidently. "Then too," he added with a gleam of humour, "there is the pardon; you were to see the King, you know, about a pardon for me." "Precisely," said the other. "I was to see the King. You don't believe me? I shall, however, go to him at once; he receives every official, and what am I if not an official? He is fond of the army; he is young; I hear he is getting fat. Ah! not as fat as I, though"--and he laughed. From then on, whenever Costantino tried to bring the conversation around to the old subject, the other contrived to head him off; but at all events he was no longer tormented. One day about this time, Costantino was informed that five francs had been paid in to his account. "He did it!" he exclaimed. "I am sure it was the priest. What a kind man he is! But I don't need it; no, indeed, I don't need the money at all." "You stupid," said the _King of Spades_. "Take it; if you don't he will be offended. 'I don't want it!' A pretty way that to acknowledge a present!" "But I should be ashamed to take it. And what could I do with it, anyhow?" "Why, eat, drink--you have need to, I can assure you. You would like to send it home, I suppose? The devil take you! If you do such an idiotic thing as that I will spit in your face! Why, see here, she doesn't even write to you any more; she----" "What is there for her to write about?" said Costantino, trying vainly to think of some excuse. "Besides," he added, "she will be working now, the winter is nearly over." "Yes, it is nearly over, and then the spring will come," said the other in a tone that had almost a menace in it. "It will come." "Why, of course, it will come!" "When does the warm weather begin with you? We have it in March." "Oh, with us, not till June. But then it is so beautiful. The grass grows--oh! as tall as that, and they clip the sheep, and the bees are making honey!" "An idyl, truly! You don't know what an idyl is? Well, I'll tell you. It is--sometimes it is--infidelity. Wait till June. How long is it since you've been to confession?" "Oh, I've not been for a fortnight." "A long time, I declare! What a good Christian you are, my friend. For my own part, I've never been at all. My conscience is as clear and unsullied as a mirror. Now there," said he, pointing to the pasty-faced student, whose hair was so white that it looked as though it had been powdered, "there is one who had better confess without delay; he is knocking now at the door of eternity." Sure enough, only a few days later the student was removed to the infirmary, and at the end of March he died. Bellini, the man whose mistress was dying of the same disease, asked after him anxiously every day, and when he died cried for hours in a weak, childish fashion. It was not from any grief he felt at parting from the sick man, but at the thought of what might happen to his mistress. His grief subsided at length, and then, as he no longer had the reminder of the student before his eyes, he gradually came to think less and less about his own sorrow. The death of the student had a totally different effect upon the _King of Spades_; he became quite melancholy, took to philosophising about life and death, and would engage in lengthy discussions with the _Delegate_, who rolled his eyes about and expounded his views in a deep bass voice. When talking with Costantino, the ex-marshal was apt to drop into rather homesick reminiscences about the distant land of their birth. "Yes," said he one day, "I was once quite close to your home, or its neighbourhood. I can't tell you precisely, but I know there was a wood, all arbute, and cork-trees, and rock-roses; it looked as though there had been a rain of blood all over them. And there was a smell--oh! the queerest kind of smell, it was something like tobacco. Then there was a cross on a stone, and you could see the water far away in the distance." "Why, of course!" cried Costantino. "That was the forest of _Cherbomine_ (Stagman). I should say I did know it. Once a hunter saw a stag there with golden horns. He fired, and shot it dead, but as the stag fell it gave a cry like a human being, and said: 'The penance is completed!' They say it was some human soul that had been forced to expiate a terrible sin of some sort. The cross was erected afterwards." "And how about the horns?" "They say that as the hunter drew near the horns turned black." "Pff! pff! how superstitious you all are, you peasants! Ah! here is the spring coming at last," he continued, staring up at the sky. "For my own part, the spring gets on my nerves. If I could but go hunting once. There was one time when I was hunting in the marshes near Cagliari: ah! those marshes, they look just like ever so many pieces of looking-glass thrown down from somewhere above; and all around there were quantities of purple lilies. A long line of flamingoes were flying in single file; they stood out against the sky which was so bright you could hardly raise your eyes to it. Pum! pum! one of the flamingoes fell, the others flew on without making a sound. I rushed right into the middle of the marsh to get the one I had shot. I was as quick and agile as a fish in those days; I was only eighteen years old." "What are flamingoes good for?" "Nothing; they stuff them; they have great, long legs like velvet. Have you ever been in that part of the country? Oh! yes, I remember, when you worked in the mines, you passed through Cagliari. I shall go back there some day, to die in blessed peace!" "You are melancholy nowadays." "What would you have, my friend? It is the spring; it is so depressing to have to pass Easter in prison. I shall take the Easter Instruction this year." "I have taken it already." "Ah! you have taken it already?" And the two prisoners fell into a thoughtful silence. Thus April passed by, and May, and June. The dreary prison walls turned into ovens; unpleasant insects came to life, and once more preyed upon the unfortunate inmates; again the air was filled with sickening odours, and in the workroom, presided over by the same red-faced, taciturn guard, perspiration, fish, and leather fought for pre-eminence in the fetid atmosphere. Costantino, weaker than ever, suffered tortures from the insects. In former years he had slept so profoundly that nothing could disturb him, but now it was different, and a sudden sting would arouse him with a bound, and leave him trembling all over. Then insomnia set in, and periods of semi-consciousness that were worse than actual sleeplessness, haunted, as they sometimes were, with nightmare. Sharp twinges, not always from insects, shot through his entire body, and he would toss from side to side, gasping and sighing. Sometimes the torture became almost unendurable, and often the orange glow of sunrise would shine through the window before he had been able to close an eye; then, overpowered by exhaustion, he would fall into a heavy slumber just as it was time to get up! Giovanna had now entirely ceased writing. Once only, towards the end of May, a letter had come, begging him not to send her any more money, as she now earned enough to live on, with care. After that there was nothing more. And yet he maintained his tranquil faith in her loyalty. Even this last letter he took as a fresh proof of her affection for him. Every day the _King of Spades_, waiting for his friend in the exercise hour, would betray a certain anxiety. "Well," he would say uneasily, his sharp little demon-eyes snapping from out of the big, clean-shaven, yellow face. "Well, what news?" And when Costantino would seem to be surprised at the question, he too would look surprised, though he never would say at what. "It is warm weather," he would observe. "Yes, very warm." "The spring is over." "I should say that it was!" "Have they finished harvesting where you come from?" "Of course they have. My wife says there is no need to send her anything more now." "Ah! I knew that already, my dear fellow." The ex-marshal hardly knew what to think; he was almost annoyed to find that his forebodings were not being verified. One day, however, Costantino failed to put in an appearance at the "exercise," and when the ex-marshal was told that his friend had been taken to the infirmary, he felt a strange tightening at the heart. Presently the old magpie came fluttering about, and, settling down with a shake of its half-bald, rumpled head, croaked out dismally: "Cos-tan-ti, Cos-tan-ti." "'Costanti' has had a stroke, my friend," said the _King of Spades_. The other convicts began to crowd around him curiously. But he waved them all off. "I know nothing about it," he said. "Let me alone." Up to nine o'clock, Bellini told them, Costantino had been at work with the rest as usual. Then a guard had said that he was wanted, no one knew what for; he had gotten quickly up, and gone off with him, as white as a sheet, and his eyes starting out of their sockets; he had not returned. To the last day of his life Costantino never forgot that morning. It was hot and overcast; the shadows of the clouds seemed to hang over the workroom, throwing half of it into deep gloom. The convicts all looked livid by this light, the leather aprons exhaled a strong and very disagreeable odour, and every one was out of humour. A man who was afraid of ghosts had been telling how in his part of the country, long, white, flowing forms could be seen on dark nights, floating on the surface of the river; he asked Bellini if he had ever seen them. "I? No; I don't believe in such foolishness." "Ah! you think it's foolishness, do you?" said the other in a dull, monotonous tone, and staring into the shoe he was at work on. "Calf!" murmured another, without looking up from his work. The believer in ghosts thereupon raised his head with an angry movement, and was about to reply in kind, when the first broke in, protestingly: "Oh, really," said he, "can't I talk to myself? If I choose to say--calf,--or ram,--or sheep,--or dog,--what business is it of yours? Can't I say things to my shoe, I'd like to know?" It was at this point that the guard had come, and called Costantino away, and the latter, who had passed a sleepless night, had opened his drowsy eyes, turned pale, and leaped to his feet. "Who wants me?" he had asked, and then he had followed the guard. He was taken to a dingy room, filled with shelves of dusty papers. The dirty windows were closed; beyond them, through a red grating, could be seen the sky--dull and grey, as though it too were dirty. A man was seated writing, at a tall, dusty desk, piled so high with papers that between the papers and the dust the man himself could hardly be seen. As the prisoner entered he raised a flushed face, the small chin completely hidden by a heavy, blond moustache. He fixed a pair of big, round, dull-blue eyes upon Costantino, but apparently without seeing him, for he dropped them again immediately, and went on writing. Costantino, who had seen this man before, stood waiting, his heart thumping in his breast. Mechanically his thoughts dwelt upon the description of the water-phantoms he had just been listening to, and the voice saying: "calf"; he wondered vaguely if one would be justified in feeling angry at that. Not a sound broke the stillness of the room, except the scratch, scratch, of the pen, as it travelled over the coarse paper. Again the pale blue eyes were fixed upon the prisoner, and again lowered to the sheet. Costantino, trembling and unnerved, gazed desperately around the room. Still the man wrote on. The prisoner could feel his heart beating furiously; a thousand dark fancies, hideous, terrifying, rushed through his brain, like clouds driven before an angry tempest. And still the man wrote on, and on. Suddenly, without warning, all the dark fancies vanished,--dispersed and swallowed up, as it were, in a single glorious flood of light. A thought, so dazzling and beautiful as almost to be painful, shot into his mind. "They have discovered that I am innocent!" The idea did not remain for long, but it left behind it a vague, tremulous light. The man was still writing, and did not stop as he presently said in a loud, hard voice: "You are named----?" "Costantino Ledda." "Where from?" "Orlei, in Sardinia, Province of Sassari." "Very good." Silence. The man wrote a little while longer; then suddenly he dug his pen into the paper, raised his red face, and fastened his round, expressionless eyes upon the man standing before him. Costantino's own eyes dropped. "Very good. Have you a wife?" "Yes." "Any children?" "We had one, but he died." "Are you fond of your wife?" "Yes," replied Costantino, and raised his terrified eyes as far as the fat, red hand resting on the desk, with a ring on one finger having a purple stone; and between the thumb and forefinger, the stiff, black point of the pen. Not knowing where to fix his perplexed gaze, Costantino followed the movements of this pen, conscious all the while only of a feeling of supreme agony, as when one dreams that he is about to be swallowed up in a cataclysm. The hard voice was speaking again, in a low, measured tone. "You know, of course, that your wife's whole life has been ruined by your fault. Young, handsome, and blameless, the rest of her days must be spent in struggle and privation. The world holds out no promise of happiness for her, and yet she has never done any harm at all. As long as your child lived she endured her lot patiently, her hopes were fixed upon him. But now that he is dead what has she left? When you return to her,--if, indeed, God should be so merciful as to allow you to do so,--you will be old, broken-down, useless, and she will be the same. She sees stretching before her a terrible future--nothing but sorrow, shame, poverty, and a miserable old age. No resource but to beg; thus her life is a worse punishment even than yours----" Costantino, as white as death, panting, agonising, tried to protest, to say that he would surely be liberated before long, but the words died away on his lips; the other, meanwhile, gave him no chance, but pursued his theme in smooth, even tones, his dull eyes never leaving the prisoner's face. "Her life is thus a worse punishment even than yours. You should think of these things, and, abandoning all hope, repent doubly of your crime." He cleared his throat, and then continued in a different tone: "Now, however, the law has provided a means by which this great injustice can be rectified. You of course know very well that an act of divorce has gone into effect which enables a woman whose husband is guilty of a certain class of crime, to marry again. Should your wife--sit down, keep quiet--should your wife apply for such a divorce, it would be your duty to grant it at once. I know that you are, or pretend to be, after all, a good Christian----" Costantino, who was leaning on the table, shaking in every limb, but making a heroic effort to control himself, now broke in. "Has she applied for it?" he demanded. "Sit down, sit down there," said the other, motioning with his pen; he wanted to continue his harangue, but Costantino again spoke, in a clear, firm voice that contrasted strangely with the trembling of his limbs. "I know my duty perfectly," he said, "and I shall never give my consent. I shall undoubtedly be freed before very long, and then my wife would bitterly repent of her mistake." Two deep wrinkles furrowed the red cheeks of the lecturer, and an ugly smile shone from his dull eyes. "Indeed!" he said. "Well, the consent of the prisoner is asked merely as a formality. It is, of course, his duty to give it, and his good-will counts for something in his favour. But it all comes to the same thing, whether he gives it or no--Eh, there! what--why--what is the matter?" For Costantino had given a sudden lurch, and collapsed on the floor like a bundle of limp rags. PART II CHAPTER IX Nineteen Hundred and Ten. In the "strangers' room" of the Porru house, Giovanna was looking over some purchases made that day in Nuoro. She was stouter than ever, and had lost something of her girlish look, but, nevertheless, she was both fresh and handsome still. She examined the pieces of linen and woollen stuff attentively, turning them over and over and feeling them with a preoccupied air, as though not altogether satisfied with the selection; then, folding them carefully, she wrapped them in newspaper and laid them away in her bag. These things were the materials for her wedding outfit, for, having at last obtained her divorce, she was shortly to marry Dejas. She and her mother had come to Nuoro for the express purpose of making the purchases. The money had been borrowed with the utmost secrecy from Aunt Anna-Rosa Dejas, Giacobbe's sister, who had always taken a particular interest in Giovanna because of having been for a short time her foster-mother. It was the dead of winter, but the two women had courageously defied the fatigues and discomforts of the journey in order to lay in a supply of linen, cotton, kerchiefs, and woollen stuffs. The ceremony, a purely civil one, was to be conducted in the strictest privacy, more so, even, than on the occasion of a widow's marriage. But this made no difference to Aunt Bachissia, who was determined that her daughter should enter her new home fitted out in every respect like a youthful bride of good family. The country-side was still wondering and gossipping over the scandalous affair, and it was rumoured that another couple contemplated applying for a divorce--by mutual consent. A great many people already looked askance at the Eras, and some said that Brontu had evil designs upon Giovanna. Giacobbe Dejas, Isidoro Pane, and a number of other friends had stopped going to the house after making final scenes that were almost violent. Giacobbe had snarled like a dog, and had used prayers and even threats in a last, vain effort to dissuade Giovanna from the step, until Aunt Bachissia had, at length, driven him out. Even Aunt Porredda at Nuoro, although it was her son who had obtained the divorce for Giovanna, had received her friends with marked coolness. The "Doctor," as she called her son, was, on the contrary, most cordial and attentive in his manner towards their guests. So Giovanna was folding up her possessions in a thoughtful mood, her preoccupation having, however, to do solely with those bits of stuff. The linen, it appeared, was somewhat tumbled; the fringe of the black Thibet kerchief, with its big crimson roses, was too short; one piece of ribbon had a spot on it,--worrying matters, all of them. Night was falling--like that _other time_--but the surroundings, and the weather, and--her heart, were all, quite, quite different. The "strangers' room" now had a fine window, through whose panes shone the clear, cold light of a winter evening. The furniture, all entirely new, exhaled a powerful smell of varnished wood, while its surface glistened like hoarfrost. The door opened on the same covered gallery, but new granite steps now led down to the courtyard. The "Doctor's" practice was growing, and the entire house had been done over. He now had an office in the busiest part of the town, and was much in demand both for civil and penal processes. The most desperate cases, the worst offenders, all that class of clients who have the least to hope from the law, entrusted their affairs to him. Giovanna folded, wrapped, and packed her possessions, and then, the bag being somewhat over-full, she shook it vigorously to make the contents settle down; this accomplished, she turned with knitted brows, and slowly descended the outer stair, both hands thrust deep in the pockets always to be found just below the waist in the skirt of a Sardinian costume. It was an evening in January, clear but extremely cold. Some silver stars, set in the cloudless blue of the sky, seemed to tremble in the frosty atmosphere. Crossing the courtyard Giovanna could see, through the window of the lighted dining-room, Grazia's pale face and great, eager eyes as she sat turning over the leaves of a fashion paper. The child had developed into a tall and pretty girl; she was dressed in the latest fashion, with great lace wings extending from the shoulders behind the arms; they obliged their wearers to walk sideways through any narrow aperture, but made them look, by way of compensation, like so many angels before the fall. Grazia, seeing the guest, smiled at her without getting up, and the latter entered the kitchen. Here, too, everything was new; the white walls, the stove of glistening bricks, the petroleum lamp hanging from the ceiling. It was all so gorgeous that Aunt Bachissia could not refrain from gazing about her the whole time, her shining, little, green beads of eyes, snapping and sparkling in the sallow, hawklike face, set in the folds of a black scarf. She at least, was unchanged--the old witch! She was seated beside the servant-maid, a dirty, dishevelled young person, whose loud and frequent laugh displayed a set of protruding teeth. Aunt Porredda was cooking, and scolding the maid for this annoying habit of hers. Only fancy! Here was the mistress doing the cooking, while the servant sat by the stove and--laughed! What kind of way to do was that? And, moreover, the good woman could never have one single moment's peace, and she the mother of a famous lawyer! Giovanna seated herself at some little distance from the stove, stooping over with her hands still buried in the pockets of her skirt. "Just look!" exclaimed Aunt Bachissia in a tone of envy. "This kitchen might be a parlour! You must do _your_ kitchen up like this, Giovanna." "Yes," said the young woman absent-mindedly. "Yes? Well, upon my soul, I should say so! Godmother Malthina is close, but you have got to make her understand that money is meant to spend. A kitchen like this--why, it is heaven--upon my soul! This is living." "What do you always say 'upon my soul' for?" asked the giggling servant-maid. "If she doesn't choose to spend her money, how am I to make her?" said Giovanna with a sigh. The servant was still laughing, but Aunt Porredda, who wanted to keep out of her guests' conversation, turned on her, and sharply ordered her to grate some cheese for the macaroni. The girl obeyed. "What is the matter with you?" asked Aunt Bachissia as Giovanna sighed again. "She remembers!" said Aunt Porredda to herself. "After all, she is a Christian, not an animal, and she can't help herself!" But Giovanna spoke up crossly: "Well, it's just this; they've cheated us. That is not good linen, and the ribbon is spotted. Oh! it is too much." "Upon my soul!" said the maid, mimicking Aunt Bachissia's voice and accent, and grating away vigorously on the cheese. Aunt Porredda thereupon let out upon her all the vials of wrath she would fain have emptied upon her guests, calling her by all the names which, in her secret heart, she was applying to Giovanna--"shameless," "vile," "ungrateful," "despicable," and so on, and threatening to strike her over the head with the ladle. In her terror, the girl grated the skin off one finger, and she was in the act of displaying it with the blood streaming down when the lawyer-son limped briskly into the room. He was enveloped in a long, black overcoat, so full that it looked like a cloak with sleeves. His smooth, fresh-coloured little face beamed with the self-satisfied expression of a nursing child. Asking immediately what there was to eat, he dropped into a seat beside Aunt Bachissia, and sat there chatting until supper was ready. After him the little Minnia came running in, rosy, breathless, and dishevelled, and threw herself down by the servant-maid. The boy had died three years earlier. The little girl's dress, of black and red flannel, was pretty enough, but her shoes were torn and her hands dirty. She had spent the entire day tearing around in a neighbouring truck-garden, and began to pour out confidences to the servant in an eager undertone. "Upon my soul!" repeated the servant, in the same tone as before. Next Uncle Efes Maria's big face, with its thick, wide-open lips, appeared in the door, wanting to know why they could not have supper right away. The dining-room was now furnished with two tall, shining cupboards of varnished wood, and the whole apartment had quite an air of elegance--strips of carpet on the stone floor, a stove, and so on. Poor Aunt Porredda, with her big feet and hobnailed shoes, never felt really at home there; while Uncle Efes Maria had not yet cured himself of the habit of staring proudly around him. Grazia, tall and elegant, always withdrew into herself when her relations came into this room, where she passed most of her time eagerly devouring the _Unique Mode_, the _Petite Parisienne_, and the fashion articles of a family journal,--sufficiently immoral in its tone, since it fomented such unhealthy dreams in her foolish head. Ah, those low-cut gowns, covered with embroidery; those scarfs worked in gold; those bodices with their great wings of silver lace, the rainbow hues, the spangles glittering like frost! Ah, those hats covered with artificial fruits, and the long flower boas, and petticoats trimmed with lace at thirty lire a yard, and the painted gloves, and fans made of human skin! How beautiful it all was,--horribly, terrifyingly beautiful! Merely to read about these things gave her a sort of spasm, they were so beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful. And afterwards, how ugly and common and flat everything seemed,--the simple old grandmother, with her fat, wrinkled face; and the dull grandfather, gazing about him with such ignorant satisfaction and pride! It was all simply stultifying. Just as on that other, far-away evening, Aunt Porredda came in, bearing triumphantly the steaming dish of macaroni, and all the members of the party seated themselves around the table. Aunt Bachissia, finding herself in the shadow, so to speak, of Grazia's wings, forthwith broke anew into loud exclamations of wonder and admiration, this time _à propos_ of those glorious objects: "No, we have never seen anything like that in our neighbourhood, but then, we have no ladies there. Here they all look like angels, the ladies." "Or bats," said Uncle Efes Maria. "Eh, it's the fashion, my dears. Why, I remember when I was a child the ladies were all big and round; they looked like cupolas. There hardly were any ladies in those days,--the Superintendent's wife, the family----" "And then that thing behind," interrupted Aunt Porredda. "Oh! I remember that, it looked like a saddle. Well, if you'll believe me, upon my word and honour, I remember one time some one sat down on one of them." "The last time we were here," said Aunt Bachissia, "those wings were little things; now they are growing, growing." Grazia sat eating her supper as though she did not hear a word of what the others were saying. The "Doctor" eat his too--like a gristmill--staring at his niece all the while with the look of a pleased child. "Growing, growing," said he. "The next thing we know they'll all take flight." Grazia shrugged her shoulders, or rather her wings, and neither spoke nor looked up. She frequently found her uncle,--that hero of her first, young dream,--very trying, and worse than trying--foolish! It was the common talk of the town that the uncle and niece were going to marry, and he, when interrogated on the subject, would answer neither yes nor no. The conversation continued for some time on impersonal topics. Every now and then Aunt Porredda would get up and pass in and out of the room, and occasionally the talk would die away, and long pauses ensue that were almost embarrassing. Like that _other time_ every one instinctively avoided the subject uppermost in the minds of the guests; who, on the whole, were just as well pleased to have it so. But, just as before, it was Aunt Bachissia, this time without intending to, who introduced the unwelcome topic. She asked if the report that the "Doctor" was to marry his niece were true or no. The Porrus looked at one another, and Grazia, bending her head still lower over her plate, laughed softly to herself. Paolo glanced at the girl, and, with an irony that seemed a little forced, replied: "Eh, no! She is going to marry the Very Right Honourable Sub-Prefect!" Grazia raised her head with a sudden movement and opened her lips, then as quickly lowered it, the blood meanwhile rushing up to her forehead. "Oh! he's old," said Minnia. "I know him; he's always walking about the station. Ugh! he has a long, red beard, and a high hat." "A high hat too?" "Yes, a high hat--a widower." "The high hat is a widower?" "You shut up!" said the child sharply, turning on her sister. "No, I'm not going to shut up. He's a Freemason; he won't have his children baptised, or be married in church. That's the way of it; he'll not marry in church." "The young lady is well informed," said Uncle Efes Maria, polished as usual. Thereupon Aunt Porredda, who had almost shrieked aloud at the word "Freemason," waved both arms in the air, and burst out: "Yes, a Freemason! One of those people who pray to the devil. Upon my word, I believe my granddaughter there would just as leave have him! We are all on the road to perdition here, and why not? There's Grazia, forever reading bad books, and those infernal papers, till now she doesn't want to go to confession any more! Ah, those prohibited books! I lie awake all night thinking of them. But now, this is what I want to say: Grazia reads bad books; Paolo,--you see him, that one over there, Doctor Pededdu,--well, he studied on the Continent where they don't believe in God any more; now that's all right, at least, it isn't, it's all wrong, but you can understand a little why those two poor creatures have stopped believing in God. But the rest of us, who don't know anything about books and who have never in our lives ridden on a rail-road,--that devil's horse,--why should _we_ cease to believe in God, in our kind Saviour, who died for us on the cross? Why? why? tell me why. You there, Giovanna Era, tell me why you should be willing to marry a man by civil ceremony when you already have a husband living?" The final clause of Aunt Porredda's oration fell with startling effect upon her audience. Grazia, who, with a smile upon her lips, had been busily engaged in rolling pieces of bread into little pellets, raised her head quickly, and the smile died away; Paolo, who, likewise smiling, had been fitting the blade of a knife in and out of the prongs of his fork, straightened himself with a brusque movement; and Uncle Efes Maria turned his dull, round face towards Giovanna, and fixed her with an impassive stare. Giovanna herself, the object of this wholly unlooked-for attack, though she flushed crimson, replied with cynical indifference: "I haven't any husband, my dear Aunt Porredda. Ask your son over there." "My son!" exclaimed the other angrily. "I have no son. He's a child of the devil!" It almost seemed as though Giovanna had succeeded in throwing the responsibility of her act upon Paolo, because he had won her case for her! Every one laughed at Aunt Porredda's outbreak, even Minnia, and the servant who entered the room at that moment, carrying the cheese. Notwithstanding her wrath, Aunt Porredda took the dish and handed it politely to her guests. "Upon my soul," said Aunt Bachissia, carefully cutting herself a slice, and speaking in a tone of gentle melancholy, "you are as good as gold, there is no doubt about that, but--you live at your ease, you have a house like a church, and a husband like a strong tower [Uncle Efes Maria coughed], and you have a circle of stars about you--motioning towards them--so it is easy enough to talk like that. Ah! if you knew once what it meant to be in want, and to look forward to having to beg your bread in your old age! Do you understand? In your old age!" "Bravo!" cried Paolo. "But I would like to have a clean knife." "What difference does that make, Bachissia Era?" answered Aunt Porredda. "You are afraid to trust in Divine Providence, and that means that you have lost your faith in God! How do you know whether you will be poor or rich when you are old? Is not Costantino Ledda coming back some day?" "Yes, to be a beggar too," said Aunt Bachissia coldly. "And God alone knows whether he ever will come back," observed the young lawyer brutally, taking the knife which the servant held out to him, blade foremost. They had all heard that Costantino was ill, and there was a report that his lungs were affected. In order to appear agitated,--and possibly she really was so to some extent,--Giovanna now hid her face in her hands and said brokenly: "Besides--if it is only to be a civil ceremony--it is--it is because----" Then she stopped. "Well, why don't you go on?" cried Paolo. "You are to be married by civil ceremony because the priests won't give you any other! They don't understand, and they never will understand; just as you will never understand, Mamma Porredda. What is marriage, after all? It is a contract made between men, and binding only in the sight of men. The religious ceremony really means nothing at all----" "It is a sacrament!" cried Aunt Porredda, beside herself. "Means nothing at all," continued Paolo. "Just as some day the civil ceremony will mean nothing at all. Men and women should be at liberty to enter spontaneously into unions with one another and to dissolve them when they cease to be in harmony. The man----" "Ah, you are no better than a beast!" exclaimed Aunt Porredda, though it was, in fact, not the first time that she had heard her son express these views. "It is the end of the world. God has grown weary; and who can wonder? He is punishing us; this is the deluge. I have heard that there have been terrible earthquakes already!" "There have always been earthquakes," observed Uncle Efes Maria, who did not know whether to side with his wife or his son. Probably, in the bottom of his heart his sympathies were with the former, but he did not want to say so openly for fear of being looked down upon by the gifted Paolo. The latter made no reply. Already he regretted having said so much, being too truly attached to his mother to wish to give her needless pain. Giovanna now took her hands from her face, and spoke in a tone of gentle humility: "Listen," said she. "When I was married before--_to that unfortunate_--I had only the civil ceremony, and if he had not been arrested, who knows when we ever would have had the religious marriage! And yet, were we not just as much man and wife? No one ever said a word, and God, who knows all, was not offended----" "But he punished you," said Aunt Porredda quickly. "That remains to be seen!" shouted Aunt Bachissia, whose bile was beginning to rise. "Was the punishment for that, or for Basile Ledda's murder?" "If it had been for the murder, only Costantino would have been punished." "Well," said the old witch, her green eyes glittering with triumph, "is not that just what I am saying? My Giovanna here is not to be punished any longer for his fault, since God has given her the opportunity to marry a young man who is fond of her, and who will make her forget all her sufferings!" "And who is also rich," remarked Uncle Efes Maria, and no one could tell whether he spoke ingenuously or no. Giovanna, who had quite lost the thread of her discourse, was, nevertheless, determined to continue her rôle of patient martyr. "Ah, my dear Aunt Porredda," said she, "you don't know all, but God, who alone can see into our hearts, he will forgive me even if I live in mortal sin, because he will know that the fault is not with me. I would gladly have the religious ceremony, but it cannot be." "Yes, because you are married already to some one else, you child of the devil!" "But that other one is as good as dead! Just tell me now, can he help me to earn a living? And if the lawyers, who are educated and learned, and who know what life really is, can dissolve civil marriages, why can't the priests dissolve religious ones? Perhaps they don't understand about it. There is that priest whom we have--Elias Portolu--the one who is so good, you know him? he talks like a saint, and never gets angry with any one. Well, even he can't say anything but 'No, no, no; marriage can only be dissolved by death--and go and be blessed, if you don't know what is right!' Does a body have to live? Yes, or no? And when you can't live, when you are as poor as Job, and can't get work, and have nothing, nothing, nothing! And just tell me, you, Aunt Porredda, suppose I had been some other woman, and suppose there had been no divorce, what would have happened? Why, mortal sin, that is what would have happened, mortal sin!" "And in your old age--want," said Aunt Bachissia. The servant brought in the fruit: bunches of black, shining, dried grapes, and wrinkled pears, as yellow as autumn leaves. The old hostess handed the dish to her old guest, with an indescribable look of compassion. Her anger, and disdain, and indignation had suddenly melted away as she realised the sordid natures of the mother and daughter. "Good San Francisco, forgive them," she prayed inwardly. "Because they are so ignorant, and blind, and hard!" Then she said mildly: "You and I, Bachissia Era, are old women, and you, Giovanna, will be old some day. Now tell me one thing: what is it that comes after old age?" "Why, death." "Death; yes, death comes after. And after death what is there?" "Eternity?" said Paolo, laughing softly to himself as he devoured his grapes like a greedy child, holding the bunch close to his mouth, and detaching the seeds with his sharp little teeth. "Eternity, precisely; eternity comes after--where are you going, Minnia? Stay where you are." But the child, tired of the conversation, slipped out of the room. "What do _you_ say, Giovanna Era, does eternity follow? yes, or no? Bachissia Era--yes, or no?" "Yes," said the guests. "Yes? and yet you never think of it?" "Oh! what is the use of thinking of it?" said Paolo, getting up, and wiping his mouth with his napkin; he felt that it was high time for him to be off; he had already wasted too much time on these women, who, after all, were interesting solely from the fact that they had not yet paid him. "There are some people waiting to see me at the office--several people, in fact," he said. "I will see you again; you are not leaving yet awhile?" "To-morrow morning at daybreak." "Not really? Oh! you had better stay longer," he said indifferently, as he struggled into his huge overcoat. When it was on, Aunt Bachissia--watching him out of her sharp green eyes--thought that the little Doctor looked like a _magia_, that is, one of those grotesque and frightening figures whom wizards evoke by their arts. He departed, and immediately afterwards Miss Grazia, who had hardly spoken throughout the entire meal, arose and left the room as well. Uncle Efes Maria settled himself back in his chair, and began to read the _New Sardinia_. Bursts of laughter came from the two girls in the kitchen, and the women sat, each eating a pear, in perfect silence. A weight hung over them; upon Aunt Porredda as well as upon the others, for she was realising in her simple untutored mind that the disease that had attacked the souls of her ignorant guests was one and the same as that from which her sophisticated son and granddaughter were suffering. CHAPTER X The next morning, just as on that day so long before, Giovanna was the first to stir, while Aunt Bachissia, who like most elderly people usually lay awake until late into the night, still slept, though lightly and with laboured breath. The light of the early winter morning, cold but clear, shone through the curtained window-panes. Giovanna had fallen asleep the night before feeling sad,--though Aunt Porredda's outbreak had annoyed rather than distressed her,--but now, as she looked out and saw the promise of a bright day for the journey, she felt a sensation of joyous anticipation. Yes, she had felt quite melancholy on the previous evening before falling asleep, thinking of Costantino, and eternity, and her dead child, and all sorts of depressing things. "I have not a bad heart," she had reflected. "And God looks into our hearts and judges more by our intentions than by our actions. I have considered everything, everything. I was very fond of Costantino, and I cried just as long as I had any tears to shed. Now I have no more; I don't believe he will ever come back, and if he does it will not be until we are both old; I can't go on crying forever. Why should it be my fault if I can't cry now when I think of him? And then, after all, I am just a creature of flesh and blood, like every one else; I am poor and exposed to sin and temptation, and in order to save myself from these I am taking the position which God has provided for me. Yes, my dear Aunt Porredda, I do remember eternity, and it is to save my soul that I am doing what I am doing--no, I am not bad; I have not a bad heart." And so she very nearly persuaded herself that her heart not only was not bad, but that it was quite good and noble; at least, if this was not the conviction of that innermost depth of conscience, that depth which refused to lie, and from whence had issued the disturbing veil of sadness that hung over her, it was of her outer and more practical mind, and at last, quite comforted, she fell asleep. And now the frosty daybreak was striking with its diaphanous wings--cold and pure as hoarfrost--against the window-panes of the "strangers' room," and Giovanna thought of the sun and her spirits rose. The older woman presently awoke as well, and she too turned at once to the window. "Ah!" she exclaimed in a tone of satisfaction. "It is going to be fine." They dressed and went down. Aunt Porredda, polite and attentive as usual, was already in the kitchen. She served her guests with coffee, and helped them to saddle the horse. To all appearances she had quite forgotten the discussion of the previous evening, but no sooner had the two women passed out the door than she made the sign of the cross, as though to exorcise the mortal sin as well. "Very good," she said to herself, closing the door after them. "A pleasant journey to you, and may the Lord have mercy on your souls!" Through the crystalline stillness of the morning came the sound of shrill cock-crowing--close at hand, further away, and further still; but the little town still slept beneath its canopy of china-blue. This time the Eras were to make the journey alone. They had to descend into the valley, cross it, and then climb the mountain-range which they could see beyond, showing grey in the early light, its snowcapped peaks standing out boldly against the horizon. It was very cold; there was no wind, but the air cut keenly. As they descended into the wild valley the intense stillness seemed only to be intensified by the monotonous murmur of a mountain stream. The short winter grass, bright green in colour, and shining with hoarfrost, showed here and there in vivid patches along the edges of the winding path. From the rocks came a smell of damp moss, and the green copses sparkled with a glittering layer of frost. The whole valley was radiantly fresh and sweet and wild, but here and there gnarled outlines of solitary trees stood out like hermits penitentially exposing their bent and naked forms to the cold brilliance of the winter's morning. In the fields the earth showed black and damp; and long lines of dilapidated wall, climbing the hillsides and descending into the hollows, looked, with their coating of green moss, like huge green worms. On, and on, and on, journeyed the two women, their hands and feet and faces numb and stiff with cold. They crossed the stream at a ford where the water ran broad and shallow and quiet, then they reascended the valley and began to climb the mountain at its further end. The sun, now well above the horizon, was shining with a cold, clear radiance, and the mountains of the distant coast-range showed blue against the gold of the sky. The wind had risen as well, and, laden with the odour of damp rocks and earth, was stirring among the shrubs and bushes. The two women proceeded silently on their way, each buried in her own thoughts. In the middle of a small defile, overhung by rocks, and shadowed by the lofty snowcapped summits of the mountains, they met a man of Bitti journeying on foot: the travellers exchanged greetings, although unknown to one another, and passed on their respective ways. As the women mounted higher and higher, the sun enveloped and warmed them more and more; and they thought of the half of the journey already accomplished, of the purchases they were carrying back in the wallet, of what they would do when they got home; and Aunt Bachissia thought of Aunt Martina's amazement when she should see Giovanna's outfit, while Giovanna thought of Brontu and of the queer things he would sometimes say when he was drunk. Preoccupied as they were, however, when they caught sight of the white walls of the church of San Francisco glistening among the green bushes half-way up the mountain side, each thought of Costantino, and said an Ave Maria for him. Shortly after midday they reached home. Orlei, set in its circle of damp fields, and blown upon by the frozen breath of the mighty sphinxes whose heads were now wreathed in bands of snow, was far colder than Nuoro, and the sun could barely warm life into the scanty herbage in its narrow, melancholy streets. The roofs were covered with rust and mildew, some of them overgrown with dog-grass; the walls were black with damp; the trees, nude and brown. Here and there a thin line of smoke could be seen curling upwards into the limitless space above; but, as usual, the village appeared to be utterly silent and deserted. In the crevices of the walls the little purple and green cups of the Venus's looking-glass bloomed chillily; speckled lizards crawled into the sun, and snails and shining beetles mounted patiently from stone to stone. Aunt Martina, seated on her portico, spinning in the sun, saw the arrival of the travellers, and was instantly devoured by curiosity to know what they had in their wallet; she controlled herself, however, and returned their greeting with courteous composure. Towards evening Brontu arrived; he visited his betrothed every three days, and this evening his mother decided to accompany him, in order to see the purchases made by her neighbours in Nuoro. A sparse little fire of juniper-wood was burning on Aunt Bachissia's hearth, throwing out fitful gleams of light across the paved flooring, and lighting up the earthen walls of the kitchen with a faint, rosy glow. Giovanna wanted to bring a candle, but the visitors prevented her, Aunt Martina from an instinct of economy, and Brontu because in the dim firelight he felt freer to gaze at his betrothed. The attitude of the latter towards her future mother-in-law and towards Brontu himself was quite perfect. She had a gentle, subdued manner, and spoke in childlike tones, albeit expressing sentiments of profound wisdom. She gave shy glances from beneath her long, thick lashes, and might have been a girl of fifteen so guileless and innocent was her bearing. She was not, in truth, consciously acting a part; what she did was purely instinctive. Brontu was madly in love with her, and now, when he had been drinking, he would run to her, and, throwing himself on his knees, repeat certain puerile prayers learned in infancy. Then he would begin to cry because he realised that he was tipsy, and would swear that never, never again would he touch a drop. This evening, however, he was entirely himself, and sat talking quietly, enfolding Giovanna all the while in a passionate gaze, and smiling and displaying his teeth, which gleamed in the firelight. Aunt Bachissia began to tell about their trip; she spoke of the greatcoat worn by the young lawyer, and of the "wings" in fashion among the Nuorese ladies; then she described the Porrus' kitchen, and told of their meeting a man on the road; but of the discussion started by Aunt Porredda at the supper-table, and of the purchases she and Giovanna had made, she said never a word. She knew, however, very well that Aunt Martina could hardly wait to see the new possessions, and was herself no less anxious to display them. "And what have you to say about it all, Giovanna?" said Brontu, stirring the fire with the end of his stick. "You are very quiet to-night. What is the matter?" "I am tired," she replied, and then suddenly asked about Giacobbe Dejas. "That crazy man? He torments the life out of me; I shall end some day by kicking him out. He does not need to work now for a living, anyhow." "I don't know how it is," said Aunt Bachissia. "He used to be such a cheerful soul, and now, when he has a house and cattle, and they even say he is going to be married, his temper is something----! You knew, didn't you, that he threatened to beat us?" "Did he ever come back?" "No; never since that time." "Nor Isidoro Pane either," said Giovanna in a dull voice. "I thought I saw him go by here yesterday evening," said Aunt Martina. Giovanna raised her head quickly, but she did not speak, and Brontu laughingly remarked that he supposed she did not stand in any particular need of leeches just at present. "Well," said Aunt Martina at length, "didn't you bring me anything from Nuoro? You keep one a long time in suspense!" They had, in fact, brought her an apron, but Aunt Bachissia feigned surprise and mortification. "Of course," said she, "we had forgotten for the moment----" And she gave a shrill laugh, but sobered down instantly on observing that Giovanna took no part in these pleasantries, and seemed unable to shake off her melancholy. "No, no; we never thought about it, but Giovanna will show you a few trifles that we bought----" Giovanna got up, lighted a candle, and went into the adjoining room, Brontu's ardent gaze following her. Aunt Martina sat waiting for her present. Several moments passed and Giovanna did not return. "What is she doing in there?" asked Brontu. "Who knows?" Another minute elapsed. "I am going to see," he said, jumping up and walking towards the door. "No, no; what are you thinking of?" said Aunt Bachissia, but so faint-heartedly that Aunt Martina--scandalised--called to her son to come back with energetic: "Zss--zss----" Brontu, however, paying no attention, tiptoed to the door. Giovanna was standing before an open drawer, re-reading a letter which she had found slipped underneath the door when they got home that day. It was a heartbroken appeal from Costantino. In his round, unformed characters he implored her for the last time not to do this thing that she was about to do. He reminded her of the far-away time of their early love; he promised to come back; he assured her solemnly of his innocence. "If you have no pity for me," the letter concluded, "at least have some for yourself, for your own soul. Remember the mortal sin: remember eternity!" Ah, the same words that Aunt Porredda had used; the very same, the very same! Uncle Isidoro must have slipped the letter in while they were away. How long it had been since they had had any direct news of the prisoner! The tears rushed to her eyes, but what moved her were probably more the memories of the past than any thoughts of that eternal future. Suddenly she heard the door being pushed softly open, and some one stealing in behind her. Leaning quickly over, she began to rummage in the drawer, with trembling hands and misty eyes. Brontu stood directly behind her with outstretched arms, he clasped her around the shoulders, and she, pretending to be frightened, began to tremble. "What is it? What are you doing?" he asked in a low, broken voice. "Oh! I am looking--looking--the apron we got for your mother--I don't know what I have done with it. Let me go, let me go," she said, trying to free herself from his embrace. Close to her face she saw his white teeth gleaming between the full, smiling lips, as red and lustrous as two ripe cherries; then, suddenly, she felt his hand behind her head, and those two burning lips were pressed close to her own in a kiss that was like the blast from a fiery furnace. "Ah!" she panted. "We have forgotten eternity!" A little later she was seated once more in her place by the fire, laughing with all the abandonment of a happy child; while Brontu regarded her with the same look in his eyes that he had when he had been drinking. The winter passed by. Costantino's friends never abandoned their efforts to break off the accursed match, but in vain. The Dejases and Eras were like people bewitched, and remained deaf alike to prayers, threats, and innuendoes. The syndic, even the syndic, a pale and haughty personage who resembled Napoleon I., was against this "devil's marriage," and when Brontu and Giovanna came to him in great secrecy to have it published, he treated them with the utmost contempt, spitting on the ground all the time they were there. When the question of the divorce had first been mooted, people talked and wondered, but nothing more; then, when it was said that Brontu and Giovanna were in love with each other, there was general disapproval, yet at bottom the community was not ill-pleased to have such a fruitful theme to gossip about; but when there was talk of a marriage!--then every one said it was simply and purely an impossibility. The neighbours laughed, and rather hoped that Brontu was amusing himself at the expense of the Eras. After that, had the young people merely lived together in "mortal sin" probably nothing more would have been said, and people would have ceased to laugh and thought no more about it. It would not have been the first time that such a thing had occurred, nor was it likely to be the last; and Giovanna could cite her youth and poverty by way of excuse. But--_marry_ a woman who already had a husband! _marry_ her! That was a thing not to be stood! What would you have? People are made that way. And then the disgrace and scandal of it! Why, it was a sin, a horrible sin, and it was feared that God might punish the entire community for the fault of these two. There were even threats of making a demonstration on the marriage day--whistling, stone-throwing, and beating the bride and bridegroom. When rumours of these things reached their ears Brontu became very angry. Aunt Bachissia said: "Leave them to me!" and Aunt Martina threw up her head with the movement of a war-horse when it scents the smell of the first volley. Ah! she would rather like to fight and--win. She was beginning to feel old, she was tired of work, and well pleased at the prospect of having a strong servant in the house without wages. Moreover, she liked Giovanna, and Brontu wanted her, and so people might burst with envy if they chose. On the evening of the day when the marriage was published, Uncle Isidoro Pane was working hard in his miserable hut by the brilliant, ruddy light of a large fire. This was the one luxury which Uncle Isidoro was able to allow himself--a good fire--since he collected his wood from the fields, the river-banks, and the forests. During the winter his chief occupation was weaving cord out of horsehair; he knew, in fact, how to do a little of almost everything,--spin, sew, cook (when there was anything to cook), patch shoes,--and yet he had never been able to escape from dire poverty. Suddenly the door was thrown open; there was a momentary glimpse of the March sky--not stormy, but overcast--and Giacobbe Dejas silently seated himself beside the fire. The fisherman's kitchen looked like one of those pictures of Flemish interiors, where the figures are thrown out in a ruddy glow against a dark background. By the uncertain light, a grey spider-web could be dimly discerned, with the spider in the middle; in the corner near the hearth, a glass jug filled to the brim with water in which black leeches swam about; a yellow basket against the wall; and finally the figures of the two men and the black hair cord, its loose ends held between the bony, red fingers of the old fisherman. "And how goes it now?" asked Giacobbe. "How goes it now? How does it go now?" repeated the old man. "I don't know." "Well, it's been published," said Giacobbe more as though he were talking to himself. "The thing is actually done! The drunkard never even came near the pastures to-day, so I just took myself off as well. They may steal his sheep if they want to; I don't care; here I am, and something has got to be done, Isidoro Pane! Hi! Isidoro Pane! leave that cord alone and listen to me. Some--thing--has--got--to--be--done----Do you hear me?" "Yes, I hear you; but what is there to do? We have done all we can--implored, expostulated, threatened----The syndic has interfered, the clerk. Priest Elias----" "Oh, Priest Elias! What did he do? Talked to them with sugar in his mouth! He should have threatened them; he should have said: 'I'll take the Holy Books and I'll curse you! I'll excommunicate you; you shall never be able to satisfy your hunger, nor to quench your thirst, nor to have any peace; you shall live in a hell upon earth!' Ah, then you would have seen some result! But no, he is a dunce--a warm-milk priest; and he has not done his duty. Don't speak of him to me, it makes me angry." Isidoro laid down the cord: "It's of no use to get angry," said he. "Priest Elias has no business with threats, and he has not used them; but never fear, excommunication will fall on that house all the same!" "Well, I am going to leave them; yes, I am going away. I'll eat no more of their accursed bread!" said Giacobbe with a look expressive of his loathing and disgust. "But before going, I should like to have the pleasure of administering a sound thrashing to those favourites of the devil." "You are crazy, little spring bird," said Isidoro with a melancholy smile, imitating Giacobbe. "Yes, I am, I'm crazy; but even so, what do you care? You haven't done anything either to stop this sacrilege. Oh, it's disgraceful! I've lost all my good spirits----" "It has made me ten years older." "All my good spirits, and I keep thinking all the time of what Costantino will say to us for not being able to put a stop to it. Is it true that he is ill?" "Not now; he was ill, but now he is only desperate," said Uncle Isidoro, shaking his head. Then he picked up the cord and began plaiting it again, murmuring below his breath: "Excommunicate--excommunicate----" "I get so furious that I foam at the mouth--the way a dog does," said Giacobbe, raising his voice. "Just exactly like a dog. No, after all, I don't think I'll quit that house; I'll stay there if I burst, and see them when the blast of excommunication strikes them. Yes, if there is one thing that is sure, it is that God punishes both in this life and the other too, and I want to be on hand when it comes. What is that that you are making, Uncle 'Sidoro?" "A horsehair cord." There was a short silence; Giacobbe sat staring at the cord, his eyes dim with grief and anger. "What are you going to do with it when it is done?" "Sell it, over in Nuoro; I sell them here too sometimes; the peasants use them to tie their cows. What makes you look at it like that? You are not thinking of hanging yourself, are you?" "No, little spring bird, you can do that for yourself, if it is God's will. Yes," he continued, again raising his voice. "They have actually published the notice." Another silence; then Isidoro said: "Who knows? I can't help hoping yet that that marriage may never come off. I have faith in God, and I believe that San Costantino may still perform some miracle to stop it." "Why, certainly; why not? A miracle by all means!" said Giacobbe scornfully. "Yes; why not?" replied Isidoro calmly. "The real murderer of Basilio Ledda might die now, for instance, and confess. In that case the divorce could not hold good." "Of course, die just at this precise time!" said the other in the same tone as before. "You are as innocent as a three-year-old child, Isidoro, with your Christian faith!" "Well, who knows? Or he might be found out." "Why, to be sure, he might be found out! Just in the nick of time! Only what has any one ever known about it? And who is to find him out?" "Who? Why, you--I--any one." "There you go again! Just like a three-year-old child! Or, rather, a snail before it's out of the shell. And how, pray, are we to find him out? Are we even certain that Costantino did not do it himself?" "Yes, we are certain, entirely so," said Isidoro. "It might have been any one of us, but never him. I might have done it, or you----" Giacobbe got up. "Well, what can you suggest to do? If there is anything to be done, tell me." "Any one but him," repeated Uncle Isidoro, without raising his head. "Yes, there is one thing to do,--commit ourselves into the hands of God." "Oh, you make me so angry!" cried the other, stamping about the forlorn little room like an imprisoned bull. "I ask if there are any steps to be taken, and you answer like a fool. I'll go and choke Bachissia Era; that will really be something to do!" And he marched off as he had come, without greeting or salutation of any kind, angry this time in earnest. Uncle Isidoro, likewise, did not so much as raise his head, but, noticing presently that his visitor had left the door open, he got up to close it, and stood for some moments looking out. It was a mild March night, moonlit but overcast. Already one got faint, damp whiffs, suggestive of the first stirrings of vegetation. All about the old man's hovel the hedges and wild shrubs seemed to lie sleeping in the faint, mysterious light of the veiled moon. Far away, just above the horizon, a streak of clear sky wound and zigzagged its way among the vapourous clouds like a deep blue river, on whose banks a fire burned. Isidoro shut the door, and with a heavy sigh resumed his work. CHAPTER XI It was the vigil of the Assumption, a hot, cloudy Wednesday. Aunt Martina sat on the portico spinning, while Giovanna, who was pregnant, sifted grain near by. Usually two women perform this task, but Giovanna was doing it alone. First she stirred the grain around in the sieve and extracted all bits of stone, then she sifted it carefully into a piece of cloth placed in a large basket that stood before her. She was seated on the ground, and beside her was another basket heaped with grain that looked as though it were piled with gold dust. Instead of growing fat the "wife with two husbands," as she was called in the neighbourhood, had become much thinner; her nose was red and somewhat puffed; there were dark circles around her eyes, and her lower lip was drawn down with an expression of discontent. Some dishevelled-looking roosters, which now and again fell to fighting and strewed the floor with feathers, were laying siege to the basket; from time to time one of them would succeed in thrusting his bill inside; then Giovanna, with loud cries and threats, would drive him off, but only to stand watchful and alert, ready to return to the charge the moment her attention wandered. Her attention wandered frequently. Her expression was sad, or rather, indifferent--that of a self-centred person dwelling continually on her individual woes. The skies might fall, but she would consider only how the event might be expected to affect her personally. She was barefoot and quite dirty, as Aunt Martina hated to have her soap used. The two women worked on in silence, but the older one watched her companion out of the corner of her eye, and whenever she was slack about driving off the chickens, she screamed at them herself. At length one, bolder than the rest, jumped on the edge of the basket and began greedily pecking within. "Ah--h--ah, a--a--ah!" shrieked Aunt Martina. Giovanna turned with a sudden movement, and the rooster, spreading its wings, flew off, leaving a trail of yellow grains behind it, which, in dread lest her mother-in-law should scold her (she was always in dread of that), she hastily began to gather up. "What a nuisance they are!" she exclaimed peevishly. "Ah, I should say they were, a downright nuisance," said the other mildly. "No, don't lean over like that, my daughter, you'll hurt yourself; let me do it," and leaving her spindle she stooped down and began to pick up the grains one at a time, while a hen seized the opportunity to pull at the bunch of flax on her distaff. "Ah! ah, you! I'll wring your neck for you!" shrieked Aunt Martina, suddenly turning and espying it, and as she drove it off, the others all instantly fell to gobbling up the grain. The younger woman went on with her task, bending over the sieve, silent and abstracted. From the portico could be seen the deserted common, Aunt Bachissia's bare little cottage in the sultry noontide glare, a burning stretch of road, yellow, deserted fields, and a horizon like metal. The clouds, banked high one upon another, seemed to rain heat, and the stillness was almost oppressive. A tall, barefooted boy passed by, leading a couple of small black cows; then came a young woman, likewise barefoot, who stared at Giovanna with two round eyes, then a fat white dog with its nose to the ground; but that was all; no other incident broke the monotony of the sultry noontide. Giovanna sifted and stirred ever more and more languidly. She was weary; she was hungry, but not for food; she was thirsty, but not for drink; through her whole physical nature she was conscious of a need of something hopelessly lost. Her task finished, she leaned over and began pouring the grain back from one basket to another. "Let it be, let it be," said Aunt Martina solicitously. "You will do yourself some harm." Giovanna, starting presently to carry the grain to the "mill" (a grind-stone turned by a small donkey, which grinds a hundred litres of grain in four days), her mother-in-law prevented her and took it herself. Left alone, Giovanna went into the kitchen, looked cautiously around, and then began to search through the cupboards. Nothing anywhere; not a piece of fruit, no wine, not so much as a drop of liquor wherewith to quench the intolerable thirst that tormented her. She did, at last, find a little coffee, which she heated, and sweetened with a bit of sugar from her pocket, carefully re-covering the fire when she had done. The mouthful of warm liquid seemed, however, the rather to augment her thirst. Giovanna felt that what she wanted was some soft, delicious drink, something that she had never tasted in all her life and--never would. A dull anger took possession of her, and her eyes grew bitter. Walking over to the door of the storeroom, she shook it, although knowing perfectly well that it was locked; her lips grew white, and she murmured a curse below her breath. Then, barefoot as she was, she went out, noiselessly crossed the common, and called her mother. "Come in," answered the latter from the kitchen. "I can't; there's no one in the house." Aunt Bachissia came and stood in the doorway; glancing up at the sky, she remarked that it looked threatening, and that there would probably be a storm that night. "Well, I don't care," said Giovanna sullenly. "It may rain every bolt out of heaven!" Then she added more gently: "But may that which I bear be saved from harm." "Upon my soul, you are in a bad humour. What has become of the old witch? I saw you sifting grain." "She has taken it to the 'mill.' She was afraid to let me go for fear I might steal some." "Patience, my daughter; it will not always be like this." "But it is like this, and like this, and I can't stand it any longer. What sort of a life is it? She has honey on her lips and a goad in her hand. 'Work, work, work.' She drives me like a beast of burden, and gives me barley-bread, and water, and no light at night, and bare feet. Oh, as much of all that as ever I want!" Aunt Bachissia listened, unable to offer any consolation. She was, indeed, accustomed to hear these plaints poured into her ears daily. Oh, Aunt Bachissia had been fooled as well! and had to work harder than ever before, though for that she cared little; it was Giovanna's really wretched condition that gave her the most concern. "Patience, patience; better times are coming; no one can rob you of the future." "Bah, what does that amount to? I shall be an old woman by that time,--if I haven't died already of rage! What good will it do to be well off when you're old? You can't enjoy anything then." "Eh! yes, you can, upon my soul," said the other, her green eyes gleaming like a couple of fireflies. "I could enjoy a great many things well enough! Eh, eh! To have nothing to do all day long, and roast meat to eat, and soft bread, and trout, and eels, and to drink white wine, and rosolis, and chocolate----" "Stop!" cried Giovanna, with a groan; and she told how she had been unable to find anything wherewith to quench her burning thirst. "You must have patience," repeated the mother. "That comes from your condition. If you had the most delicious things in the world to choose from--liquors from the King's own table--you would still be thirsty." Giovanna kept gazing up at the house with the portico, her eyes weary and hopeless, and her mouth drawn down sullenly. "Yes, we will have rain to-night," said the other again. "It can rain as much as it wants to." "Is Brontu coming home?" "Yes, he is, and I am going to tell him about everything to-night; yes, I shall speak to him about it this very night." "My soul, you are? And what is it that you are going to speak to him about?" "Why, I am going to tell him that I can't stand it any longer, and if he only wanted me so as to have a servant and nothing else, he will find that he has made a mistake, and--and----" "You will tell him nothing of the sort!" said the old woman energetically. "Let him alone; doesn't he have to work and live like a servant himself? What is the use of bothering him? He might send you packing, and marry some one else--in church." Giovanna began to tremble violently, her expression softened, and her eyes filled. "He's not bad," she said. "But he gets tipsy all the time, and smells as strong of brandy as a still; it makes me sick sometimes. Then he gets so angry about nothing at all. Ugh, he's unbearable! It was better--it was far, far better----" "Well," demanded Aunt Bachissia coldly, "what was better?" "Nothing." This was the kind of thing that went on all the time. Giovanna did nothing but brood over memories of Costantino; how good he had been, how handsome, and clean, and gentle. A deep melancholy possessed her, far more bitter than any sorrow one feels for the dead; while her approaching maternity, instead of bringing consolation, the rather increased her despair. The afternoon wore on, grey and leaden; not a breath of air relieved the suffocating stillness. Giovanna established herself on the tumble-down wall, beneath the almond-tree, and her mother came and sat beside her. For a while neither of them spoke; then Giovanna said, as though continuing a conversation that had been interrupted: "Yes, it is just the way it used to be at first, after the sentence; I dream every night that he has come back, and it is curious, but do you know, I am never frightened,--though Giacobbe Dejas declares that if Costantino ever did come back he would kill me. I don't know, but I somehow feel in my heart that he is coming back; I never used to think so, but I do now. Oh! there is no use in looking at me like that. Am I reproaching you for anything? I should say not. You would have a better right to reproach me. What good has it all done you? None at all; you can't even come to see me any more--up there----" She thrust out her lip in the direction of the white house. "My mother-in-law is afraid you might carry some dust off on your feet! And I can't give you anything, not a thing; do you understand? Not even my work. Everything is kept locked up, and I am treated exactly like a servant." "But I don't want anything, my heart. Don't make yourself miserable over such trifles. I am not in need of anything," said Aunt Bachissia very gently. "You must not worry about me; all I care about is that money I borrowed from Anna Dejas. I don't see how I am ever to pay her, but she will wait." Giovanna reddened angrily, and wrung her hands, exclaiming in a high-pitched voice: "Well, anyhow, I shall certainly speak to him about that to-night, the nasty beast; I am going to tell him that at least he might pay for the rags I have on my back. Pay for them! Pay for them! May you be shot!" "Don't speak so loud; don't get so excited, my soul. There is no use, I tell you, in losing your temper. What good will getting angry do you? Suppose he were to turn you out." "Well, he may if he wants to; it would be better if he did. At least, I could work for myself then, instead of slaving for those accursed people. Ah, there she is, coming back," she added in a lower tone as the black-robed figure of Aunt Martina appeared in the open glare of the common. "Now, I'll get a scolding for leaving the house empty; she's afraid some one will steal her money. She has heaps of it, and she doesn't even know about it; she can't tell one note from another, nor the coins either. She has ten thousand lire,--yes, a thousand scudi----" "No, my soul, two thousand." "Well, two thousand, hidden away. And I am not allowed a drop of anything to refresh me, or to slake this burning thirst inside me!" "It will all be yours," said Aunt Bachissia, "if you will only be patient and bide your time. When the angels come some day and carry her off to Paradise, it will all belong to you." Giovanna cleared her throat, and rubbed it with one hand; then she resumed hotly: "They may drive me out if they want to, it makes no difference to me. Listen: the communal clerk says I am Brontu's wife, but it seems to me as though I were just living with him in mortal sin. Do you remember what sort of a marriage it was? Done secretly, in the dark almost; without as much as a dog present; no confections--nothing. And then Giacobbe Dejas--choke him!--laughing and yelling out: 'Here he comes, the beauty!' and then the 'beauty' came." "Now you listen to me," said Aunt Bachissia in a low penetrating voice. "You are simply a fool. Upon my word, you always were, and you always will be. Why do you give up so? and for such trifles too? I tell you every poor daughter-in-law has got to live just as you are living. Your harvest-time will come; only be patient and obedient, and you will see it will all come out right. Moreover, just as soon as the baby is born I believe you will find that things are very different." "No, nothing will be different. And then--if there were no children--they will only chain me faster to that stone that is dragging me down and trampling on me. Would you like to know something? Well, my real husband is Costantino Ledda, and----" "And I'll stop your mouth! You are beside yourself, my soul; be quiet!" "--and if he comes back," Giovanna went on, "I'll not be able to return to him on account of having children." "I will stop your mouth," repeated Aunt Bachissia, trembling and rising to her feet with a movement as though she were about to put her threat into execution. There was no need, however, for Giovanna saw her mother-in-law coming across the common and broke off. Aunt Martina, spinning as she walked, slowly approached the two women. "Taking the air?" she enquired, without raising her eyes from the whirling spindle. "Fine air! The heat is suffocating. Ah, to-night we may get some rain," replied Aunt Bachissia. "It undoubtedly is going to rain; let us hope there will be no thunder, I am so afraid of thunder. The devil empties out his bag of nuts then. I hope and trust Brontu will be in before evening. What shall we have for supper, Giovanna?" "Whatever you like." "Are you going to stay out here? Don't run any risks; it might be bad for you." "What will be bad for me?" "Why, the evening air; it is always a little damp. It is safer to stay inside; and you might be getting supper ready. There are some eggs, my daughter; eggs and tomatoes; prepare them for yourself and your husband; I am not hungry. Really, do you know," she continued, turning to Aunt Bachissia: "I have no appetite at all these days. Perhaps it is the weather." "Perhaps it is the devil perched on your croup, and your own stinginess!" thought the other. Giovanna neither spoke nor moved; she seemed completely immersed in her own dismal thoughts. "The 'panegyric' is to be at eleven to-morrow, such an inconvenient hour! Shall you go, Giovanna? It has always been at ten o'clock in other years." "No; I shall not go," replied Giovanna in a dull tone. She was ashamed now to be seen in church. "Yes, at that time it is apt to be warm; it is just as well that you should not go. But it seems to be raining," she added, holding out her hand. A big drop fell and spread among the hairs on its back. Tic, tic, tic,--other great drops came splashing down, on the motionless almond-tree, and on the ground, boring little holes in the sand of the common. At the same time the sky appeared to be lightening; there was a vivid gleam, and a great, yellow cloud, with markings of a darker shade, sailed slowly across the bronze background of the sky. The women took refuge in their houses, and immediately afterwards the rain began to fall in earnest; a heavy, steady downpour, with neither wind nor thunder, but almost frightening in its violence. In ten minutes it was all over, but enough had fallen to soak the ground. "God! Oh, God! Oh, San Costantino! Oh, Holy Assumption!" moaned Aunt Martina. "If Brontu is out in this he'll be like a drowned chicken," and she studied the heavens anxiously, though never for a moment ceasing to spin, while Giovanna began to prepare the supper. Listening to the clatter of the rain, she, too, felt a vague uneasiness; not, indeed, on her husband's account, but in dread of some unknown, indefinable evil. All at once the yellow light that had accompanied the downpour melted in the west into a clear, pale blue sky; the rain stopped suddenly, the clouds opened and parted, skurrying off,--under one another, on top of one another--like a great crowd of people dispersing after a reunion. The light was sea-green; the air was fresh and reviving, filled with the odour of damp earth and of dried grass that has had a thorough soaking, and with the sound of shrill, foolish crowings of roosters mistaking this pale, clear twilight for the dawn. Then,--silence. Aunt Martina's black figure, eternally spinning on the portico, made a dark splotch against the green sky. Giovanna was lighting the fire, bending over the hearth, when a long, tremulous neigh broke on her ears; the tremor in the sound seemed to communicate itself to her, and she straightened herself up, trembling as well, and looked out. Brontu was arriving, and she was frightened--what about----? About everything and nothing at all. A tiny gleam flashed out from Aunt Bachissia's cottage; by its light the old woman was endeavouring, with the aid of a rough broom, to sweep out the water that had poured over her threshold. The sky, beyond the yellow fields, looked like a stretch of still, green water; and in the foreground the almond-tree, glossy and dripping, dominated everything around it. Beneath the almond-tree, in the last gleam of daylight, Brontu appeared on horse-back; horse and rider alike black and steaming, and lagging along as though sodden and weighted by the deluge that had poured over them. The two women came running out to meet him, uttering many expressions of horror, possibly a trifle exaggerated in tone, but he paid no attention to them. "The devil! the devil! the devil!" he muttered, drawing his feet heavily out of the stirrups, and lifting first one and then the other. "Go to the devil who sent you!--My shoes are water-logged! Why don't you get to work?" he added crossly, marching off to the kitchen. The two women began at once to unload the horse, and when Giovanna followed him a little later, he at once demanded something to drink, "to dry him." "Change your clothes," she told him. But no, he did not want to change his clothes; he only wanted something to drink,--"to dry him"--he repeated, and grew angry when Giovanna would not get it for him. He ended, however, by doing precisely as she said,--changed his clothes, took nothing to drink, and, while waiting for supper, sat carefully rubbing his wet hair on a towel, and combing it out. "What a deluge! what a deluge!" he said. "A regular sea pouring straight out of heaven. Ah, I got my crust well softened this time!" He gave a little laugh. "How are you, Giovanna? All right, eh? Giacobbe Dejas sent all kinds of messages. You act like smoke in his eyes." "You ought to stop his tongue," said Aunt Martina. "He's only a dirty serving-man; if you didn't let him take such liberties he would respect you more." "I stopped more than his tongue; he wanted me to let him come in to-night. 'No,' I said; 'you'll stay where you are, and split.' He's coming in to-morrow, though." "To-morrow? and why to-morrow? Ah, my son, you let yourself be robbed quite openly; you don't amount to anything!" "Well, after all, to-morrow is the Assumption," said he, raising his voice, and putting the finishing touches to his hairdressing. "And Giacobbe is a relation, so let it rest. There, Giovanna, see how handsome I am!" He smiled at her, showing his splendid teeth. He did, in truth, look so handsome, and clean, and radiant, with his shining locks and fresh colour, that Giovanna felt a momentary softening. Presently he began to hum a foolish little song that children sing when it rains: "'Rain! rain! rain Ripe grapes, and figs----'" And so, they all sat down to the evening meal in high good humour and contentment. Aunt Martina, excusing herself on the plea of having no appetite, ate nothing but bread, onions, and cheese; articles of diet, however, of which she happened to be particularly fond,--but this in no wise interfered with the general harmony of the supper. After they had finished Brontu asked Giovanna to go out with him for a little walk; just to ramble about with no particular object, among the paths and deserted lanes of the village. The sky had completely cleared, a few flickering stars glimmered faintly from out its pellucid depths; and the air was full of the odour of dead grass and wet stones. Quantities of sand and mud had been washed over the paths, but Giovanna wore her skirts very short, and such heavily nailed shoes that they struck against the stones with a sound like metal. Brontu took hold of her arm and began to invent wonderful pieces of news, as his custom was when he wanted to interest her. "Zanchine," said he, naming one of the men, "has found something. What do you suppose it is? A baby." "When?" "Why, to-day, I think. Zanchine was digging up a lentisk when he heard a 'wow, wow'; he looked, and there was a baby, only a few days old. Well, that wasn't so wonderful; but now comes the queer part. A little cloud suddenly came flying through the air, and swooped down on Zanchine and seized the baby. It was an eagle who had evidently stolen the baby somewhere and hidden it among the bushes, and when he saw Zanchine looking at it, he shot down and----" "Get out!" said Giovanna. "I don't believe a single word you say." "Make me rich, if it's not true." "Get out, get out!" said Giovanna again impatiently, and Brontu, seeing that instead of being amused, she was out of humour, asked her if she had had a bad dream. She remembered the one she had told her mother of, and made no reply. In this way they came to the other side of the village; that is, to the part where Isidoro Pane lived. A spectacle of indescribable loveliness lay spread before them. The moon, like a great golden face, gazed down from the silver-blue west; and the black earth, the wet trees, the slate-stone houses, the clumps of bushes, and the wild stretch of upland--everything, as far as the eye could reach, to the very utmost confines of the horizon, seemed bathed in a tender, half-tearful smile. The two young people passed close by the fisherman's hut; they could hear him singing. Brontu stopped. "Come on," said Giovanna, dragging him by the arm. "Wait a moment; I want to knock on the thing he calls his door." "No," she said, trembling. "Come away, come on, I tell you; if you don't come, I'll leave you by yourself." "Oh! yes, that's true; you and he have had a quarrel; I haven't, though; I'm going to knock on his door." "I'm going on, then." "He was singing the lauds of San Costantino," said Brontu, as he rejoined her a few moments later. "The one the saint gave him on the river-bank that time. That old man is stark mad." CHAPTER XII On the following morning at about eleven o'clock, the religious services began in the church. They were set for this late hour so as to allow for the arrival of a young priest from Nuoro, a friend of Priest Elias's, who was to give a "panegyric" gratis to the people of Orlei. This panegyric was a great event, and in consequence, by ten o'clock the church overflowed with a gaily dressed throng of persons. The building itself was painted in the most vivid colours--pink walls relieved by stripes of bright blue; a yellow wooden pulpit; and rows of lusty saints with red cheeks and blond hair, simpering from their pink niches like so many Teutonic worthies. San Costantino, however, the Patron Saint, was clad in armour, and his face looked dark and stern. This ancient statue was believed to perform miracles, and, according to local tradition, had been carved by San Nicodemus himself. Through the wide-open door came a flood of sunshine, which, pouring over the congregation, enveloped them in a cloud of golden dust. At the other end of the church, where the altar stood, it seemed quite dark, notwithstanding the large M of lighted tapers, looking, with their motionless flames, like so many arrowheads stuck on shafts of white wood. Priest Elias was celebrating Mass; and close by stood his friend, wearing a lace alb, and with a small, dark face like that of a shrewd child; he was singing away at the top of his voice, and all wondered to hear the little priest sing so loud, knowing that he was to preach as well. Most of the people had, indeed, come expressly to hear this sermon, and were paying scant attention to the Mass, being taken up with whispering and staring about them. True, the heat was suffocating, and clouds of insects made devotion difficult, even for the most pious. At last Priest Elias, having finished chanting the gospel, turned his pale, ascetic face towards the people, and his lips were seen to move. Just then the figure of Giacobbe Dejas appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the vivid, blue background of the sky. His usual mocking expression was changed to one of self-satisfaction. Aware that the priest was speaking, he paused on the threshold to listen, holding his long black cap in his hand; then, finding that he could distinguish nothing, he stepped inside and whispered to an old man with a long yellow beard, who stood near the door, to know what had been said. "I don't know; I couldn't hear him; they make as much racket as if they were out in the square," said the old man querulously. A tall, fresh-complexioned youth, with black hair and an aquiline nose, turned and stared at Giacobbe. Noting his unusual cleanliness, his new clothes, and general air of complacency, he grinned ill-naturedly. "I think," said he, "that Priest Elias said the other priest was going to begin the panegyric now." "Did you hear him say it?" asked the old man crossly. "I didn't hear him say anything at all," replied the youth. Giacobbe worked his way towards the front of the church, pushing in and out among the men, who turned to look at him as he pressed against them. Suddenly a silence fell on the crowd. The men all drew back against the walls, and the women sat down on the floor. In the centre of the church, where a stream of sunshine fell, was a sort of wooden bedstead, painted blue, and watched over by four little pink-cheeked cherubs, whose green, outstretched wings gave them the appearance of four emerald butterflies. On the bed, reposing with closed eyes upon brocade cushions, was a tiny Madonna. She was dressed entirely in white, with rings, necklaces, and earrings of gold--it was the Assumption. The dark, shrewd face of the little priest now appeared above the edge of the pulpit. Giacobbe regarded him fixedly for a moment, and then turned his right ear towards him so as to hear better. "People of Orlei, brothers, sisters----" said the priest in a clear, childish treble--"asked to preach you a little sermon on this solemn day----" Giacobbe liked the opening, but finding that he could hear very well without paying strict attention, he turned and began to observe the people, talking all the while to himself, though without losing any of the discourse. "There's Isidoro Pane, the devil take him! if he hasn't got on new clothes too; I wonder if he is also thinking of getting married. Eh, eh! That fresh-looking fellow down there by the door was laughing at me; he saw how happy and prosperous I looked, and thought of course that I must be going to get married. Well, and what if I am? Is it any business of yours, you puppy? Can't I get married if I want to? I have a house of my own, and cattle too.[6] "Eh, eh! my sister will die without heirs--God bless her!--there she is, looking like a pink, shiny, little wax doll. Who would ever suppose that she is older than I? She wants me to get a wife. Well, I am perfectly willing, but whom shall I get? I am not so easy to please, and then I'm afraid--I'm afraid--I'm afraid. With this new law--the devil roast all the lawyers--who in the world is one ever to trust? There's that precious young master of mine; there he is at this very minute, with the stamp of mortal sin on him. What is he doing here? Why don't they horsewhip him? Why don't they drive him out like a dog? And his old bird-of-prey mother too? The old jade, there she is! Why don't they drive both of them out?" "Ah," he thought presently, "that is true, though; if they turned every one out who did wrong, the church would soon be empty. But those two people, I hate them; I'd like to flog them till the blood came. I'm not bad, though; didn't I stay up at the folds only to-day, working to repair the damage made by yesterday's storm? Then, when I came down, there was Giovanna getting dinner all by herself. She was dirty, and ill, and unhappy. No holiday for her! The mother and son go off together, and she, the maid-servant, stays at home and does the work. Well, it serves her right--a bad woman! And yet, I do feel sorry for her sometimes. There, God help me, I do feel sorry for her. When I said something ugly to her just now, she never answered a word. After all, when you come to think of it, she's the mistress, and I'm the servant. But is it my fault if I can't help pitching into you sometimes, little spring bird? I can't bear the sight of you, and all the same I'm sorry for you, and that's the way it is. Now, we must listen to what the priest has to tell us. He's just like a sparrow; that's it, a sparrow singing in its nest." "Brothers, sisters, beloved----" cried the little preacher in the soft Loguedorese dialect, which sounds almost like Spanish, and waving his small white hands in the air--"the faith of Our Lady is the most ideal, the most sublime of all faiths. She, the gentle woman, daughter, wife, and Mother of Our Lord, mounted to heaven all radiant and fragrant as a chaplet of roses, and took her seat in glory amongst the angels and seraphim----" "There's Priest Elias," thought Giacobbe, turning his little squint-eyes, which shone like metal in the bright light, towards the altar. "Yes, with his hands folded together, a boiled-milk priest, who can't preach anything except goodness and forgiveness, and all the time he has the Holy Books, and could strike right and left among the people if he chose to. Ah, if he had only threatened Giovanna Era----! He always looks as if he were in a dream, anyhow." "No one," continued the little preacher, standing erect in the yellow pulpit, "no one has ever been able to say that he failed to get anything he asked in true faith from Our Most Holy Lady. She, the Lily of the Valley, the Mystical Rose of Jericho----" But the audience was growing weary. The women, seated on the floor like beds of ranunculuses and poppies, were beginning to stir uneasily, and had ceased to listen. The young priest understood, and brought his discourse to a close, with a general benediction, which included the entire gathering of persons who, while ostensibly listening to the word of God, were, for the most part, wholly taken up with their own and their neighbours' affairs. Priest Elias, arousing from his dream, resumed the celebration of the Mass. He alone, with possibly Isidoro Pane, had listened to the sermon, and the latter, so soon as the Mass was concluded, began to sing the lauds, his clear, sweet voice flowing out like a stream of limpid water rippling among rocks and flowering moss. The young stranger listened with ecstasy to those liquid tones; the old fisherman's venerable figure, his long, flowing beard, and gentle eyes, and the bone rosary clasped between his knotted fingers, recalling certain pilgrims he had seen in Rome. He wanted to meet the old man, and Priest Elias, accordingly, stopped him at the church door. Giacobbe, who was watching, was almost consumed with envy at the sight of the fisherman standing in friendly conversation with the two priests. "What the thunder were they saying to you?" he demanded as the other came up. "They wanted me to dine with them," said Isidoro, with some show of importance. "Oh! they wanted you to dine with them, did they? So, my little spring bird, you are getting to be somebody, it seems. Well, you come along with me." "To the Dejases'? Not I!" exclaimed Isidoro in a tone of horror. "No, no; I'm not going to eat with those children of the devil to-day. I'm going home, so come along." It was past midday as the two men set off for Aunt Anna-Rosa's house. The sun, pouring down on the narrow streets, had dried the mud, and the moisture on the trees. In all directions people could be seen dispersing to their homes, and the heavy tread of the shepherds resounded on the stone pavements. Children, dressed in their Sunday-best, peeped from over tumble-down walls, and through open doors glimpses could be caught of dark interiors, with here and there a copper saucepan shining from a wall like some huge medal suspended there. Thin curls of smoke floated up through the clear atmosphere, and the music of a mouth-organ, issuing from a usually deserted courtyard, sounded as though it were coming from the bowels of the earth, where some melancholy old Fate was solacing herself. The entire village wore an unaccustomed air of gaiety, and yet this very festal look, the wide-open doors, the wreaths of smoke, the children, so ill at ease at their holiday attire, the sound of the mouth-organ, the bare, unshaded houses exposed to the full glare of the noontide sun--all combined to produce an effect of profound melancholy. Giacobbe led the way to his sister's house, and they all three dined together. The little woman, herself widowed and childless, adored her brother, and still referred to him as "my little brother." But then she loved all her kind, without distinction, and her eyes, slightly crossed, of no colour in particular, and as pure and liquid as two tiny lakes illuminated by the moon, were as innocent as the eyes of a nursing child. She knew that evil existed, but was frightened merely at the thought of men committing sin. One of the great sorrows of her life had been Giovanna's divorce and re-marriage--her own foster-child, as it were! And to think that she had actually lent them the money for the wedding outfit----! Giacobbe dearly loved to tease her. "Here's our friend Isidoro," he cried, as the party seated themselves at table. "He is thinking of getting married, and has come to consult you." "Bless me, Isidoro Pane, and are you really going to be married?" "Oh! go along, go along," said the fisherman good-humouredly. "So you don't care about marrying?" cried Giacobbe, holding a piece of roast meat in both hands, and tearing it apart with teeth that were still sound and strong. "Well, you are a dirty beast. Do you know, sister, he has lovers, all the same." "I don't believe that." "It's true, though; take me to heaven if it's not. Yes, he has lovers who suck his blood." The others laughed like two children at this humourous allusion to Isidoro's leeches. Giacobbe began to cut his meat with a sharp knife, holding it between his teeth and left hand, and muttering that it was as tough as the devil's ear, while his sister and the guest, having once begun, were ready to laugh at everything. Giacobbe's mood, however, suddenly changed, and for some reason which he himself was at a loss to explain, his good spirits of a few hours before deserted him. "When we have finished, I'll take you to see my 'palace,'" he said. "It will be done in a few days now, and if I wanted to I could rent it right away, but I don't want to; I intend to live in it myself." "Then you are not going to hire out any more?" "No, not after a little while; I have worked enough. I have been working for forty years; do you take that in? Yes, it's forty years. No one can say I stole the money I have laid away for my old age." "And you are going to marry?" "Poh! Who is there to marry me? I should despise any young woman who was willing to, and I won't have an old one, not I. Take something more to drink, Isidoro Pane." "You must want to make me tipsy!--well, as it's a holiday--here's to the bride and groom!" "What bride and groom?" "Giacobbe Dejas and Bachissia Era!" said the fisherman, who was waxing merry. Giacobbe made a quick movement as though to throw himself upon him. "I'll knock out your brains!" he cried, his eyes flashing with anger. "Ah, you murderer!" laughed the other. "Hush, hush! One should not say such things," said Aunt Anna-Rosa. Giacobbe drank off a couple of glasses of wine, and then laughed in rather a forced way, looking sideways at his sister and the fisherman. "See here," he said suddenly; "why don't you two get married? Isidoro Pane, my sister is rich, and you see how fresh she is, just like the hip of a wild rose. You'd think she had found some magic herb and made an ointment to preserve her skin." "God bless you! How queer you are sometimes!" exclaimed the little woman. "Yes; you two had better marry; I wish it. My sister is rich; all my property will go to her, because I am going to die first. Somehow, I don't quite know why, but I feel as though I were going to die soon; I feel as though I were going to be killed----" "Oh, nonsense! If it happens to-day, it will come from drinking too much." "Dear little brother, what on earth are you talking about? In the name of the wretched souls in purgatory, don't say such things," said his sister, greatly distressed. "You have no enemies," said Isidoro. "And besides, only those perish by the sword who have used the sword." "Well, I have slaughtered many and many an innocent, unoffending fellow-creature," replied Giacobbe seriously, burying his mouth in a slice of watermelon. "You don't believe me? Sheep and lambs without number!" and he lifted his face, streaming with the pink juice, and laughed. Dinner over, the two men went off to look at the new house. Its two stories--the ground-floor and one above it--were divided into four large bedrooms, a kitchen, and a stable; these accommodations being deemed sufficient to earn for it the title of "palace," not alone from Giacobbe, but from the entire neighbourhood as well. "Do you see this? Have you noticed that?" Giacobbe kept calling out, drawing attention to every detail and corner of his property; his clean-shaven face, devoid even of eyebrows, growing, meanwhile, almost youthful in its enthusiasm. "You had better marry my sister," he said presently. "This house will be hers some day." "You are making fun of me," replied the other. "Because I am poor, you think you can laugh at me as much as you like." The wooden floors filled the simple soul with awe, and he hardly dared to walk on them. Giacobbe, on the contrary, seemed to enjoy stamping about in his great hobnailed boots, and making as much noise as he could in the big, empty rooms, all redolent of fresh plaster. The two men paused for a moment at an open window, whose stone sill, baked by the sun, felt hot to the touch. The house stood high, and below them, in black shadow, lay the village, looking like a heap of charcoal beneath the green veil of trees. All about stretched the yellow plain, and, beyond, the great violet-grey sphinxes reared themselves against a cloudless sky. The bell of the little church, clamouring insistently, broke in on the noontide heat and stillness, and the sound was like metal striking against stone, as though far off, in the rocky heart of those huge sphinxes, a drowsy giant were wielding his pick. "Why don't you want to marry my sister?" said Giacobbe again. "This house will belong to her, and this will be her bedroom; here at this very window you could smoke your pipe----" "I never smoke; do let me be," said the fisherman impatiently. The other's talk began to annoy him. "I'm not joking, you old lizard," retorted Giacobbe. "Only you are such a dull beggar that you can't even tell that I'm not." "Listen," said Isidoro. "You have given me my dinner to-day, and so you think you have a right to make game of me. Now, I tell you this, if you want me to be grateful for it, you had better leave me alone." Giacobbe stared at him for a moment; then he burst into a loud laugh. "Come on," he cried; "let's have something to drink." They went out, and Giacobbe led the way to the tavern, but the other refused to enter, saying that it was time for him to be getting back to the church. In the tavern Giacobbe found Brontu and a number of others playing _morra_, their arms flung out in tense attitudes, and all shouting the numbers at the tops of their lungs. Before five o'clock, the hour set for the procession, they were all quite tipsy, Giacobbe more so than any one: notwithstanding which fact he insisted upon grasping his master by the arm, being firmly under the impression that without his aid, the other would not be able to walk. He then invited the whole company to adjourn to his "palace" to view the procession. A little later, accordingly, the big, empty rooms echoed to the sound of hoarse voices, bursts of aimless laughter, and uncertain footsteps. The windows were all thrown wide open, and quickly filled with wild, bearded faces. Giacobbe and Brontu were standing at the same window where the old fisherman had been shortly before. By this time the sun had left it, but the sill was still warm, while below them and beyond, the village, and the plain, and the mountains were striped with long bars of ever lengthening shadows. "Cu, cu!" shouted Brontu, staring out with round eyes. This was so intensely humourous that the others all began imitating him, each one making as much noise as possible. The house resounded with the uproar; a crowd gathered in the street below, and presently the drunkards within and those without began to exchange abusive epithets, followed by spitting and stone-throwing. On a sudden, however, complete silence fell; a sound of low, mournful chanting was heard approaching, and immediately after a double line of white, phantom-like figures appeared at the end of the street, preceded by a silver cross held aloft against the blue background of the sky. The men in the street fell back against the walls, the heads at the windows were lowered, and every one uncovered. One of the white-robed brotherhood, boys for the most part who, when the ceremonies were over, would receive three soldi each and a slice of watermelon, knocked at the door of the new house as he passed, and the others followed his example. "Curse you!" yelled Giacobbe furiously, leaning far out of the window. "Boors! walking in the procession, are you?" and he was about to spit on them, but Brontu prevented him, telling him it would not do. Now came the green brocade standard, with its hundred variegated ribbons and gilded staff; and next the Madonna of the Assumption, extended with closed eyes on her portable couch, covered with necklaces and rings that looked like relics of the bronze age, and watched over by the four green cherubs. On each of the four sides, walking beside the bearers, was a man wearing a white tunic and carrying in his arms a child dressed as an angel. They were charming little creatures, two blond and two brunette, and they chattered gaily with one another, shouting to make themselves heard. One of them, tickled under the knee by the man who carried him, squirmed and wriggled, one wing hanging limply down. The sight of these children touched some finer emotion in Brontu, Giacobbe, and the others, and bending their knees, they crossed themselves devoutly. The children, for their part, gazed up at the windows, and one of them, recognising an uncle in the group, flung a red confetto at him, which, missing fire, fell back into the road. Priest Elias and the little stranger from Nuoro came next, wearing brocade and lace robes, pale and handsome in their bravery. They walked with clasped hands and rapt faces, chanting in Latin. "The devil!" exclaimed Giacobbe suddenly. "If there isn't that dirty old Isidoro Pane! You'd suppose he was running the whole procession; I'm going to spit on him." "No, you're not," commanded Brontu. Giacobbe coughed to attract the fisherman's attention, but the other did not so much as raise his eyes, continuing to intone the prayers to which the people responded as with a single voice. The surging, vari-coloured crowd had flowed together behind the procession, and above the sea of heads could still be seen the swaying silver cross. The men had all uncovered,--bald heads, shining with perspiration, mops of thick black hair, rough, curly pates,--and then the gay head-kerchiefs of the women, some with black grounds and yellow squares, others striped with red, or covered with green spots,--all surmounting flushed faces, flashing eyes, white bodices crossed on the breast, red, gesticulating hands. Gradually the crowd thinned; an old cripple came limping along, then a woman with two children hanging to her skirts, then three old women--a child with a yellow flower in its mouth--the street grew empty and silent; the noise, and movement, and colour receding in waves, and growing ever fainter as the low, melancholy cadence of the chanted invocations died away in the distance. As the last sounds ceased, two cat's paws appeared on the wall opposite Giacobbe's house, followed by a little, white face, with wide startled eyes, then the animal leaped on the wall, and sat staring intently down into the street. "Too late!" cried Brontu, waving a salute. The others shouted with laughter, and when Giacobbe presently told them it was time to be off, they refused to go. The host, thereupon, seizing a lath covered with plaster, tried to drive them out, and the entire troop of rough, bearded men began to run from room to room, pushing one another by the shoulders, yelling, tumbling over each other, and shrieking with laughter like so many schoolboys. Driven forth at length, they continued their horseplay in the street, until Giacobbe, having locked the door and put the key in his pocket, led the way back to the tavern. At dusk Brontu and the herdsman, supporting one another, appeared at the white house. Aunt Martina was sitting on the portico with her hands beneath her apron, reciting the rosary. When her eyes fell on the two men she remained perfectly still and silent, but her lips tightened, and she shook her head ever so slightly, as though to say: "Truly, a fine sight!" "Where is Giovanna?" demanded Brontu. "She went to her mother's." "Oh! she went to her mother's, the old harpy's? Well, she's always going there, curse her." "Don't shout so, my son." "I will; I'll shout as much as I like; I'm in my own house," and turning towards the common, he began to call at the top of his voice: "Giovanna! Giovanna!" Giovanna appeared at the door of the cottage, and started to cross the common hastily with an alarmed air; as she drew near, however, her expression changed to one of annoyance and disgust. Pausing in front of the two men, she regarded them with a look of undisguised scorn. Giacobbe laughed, but Brontu reddened to the tips of his ears with anger. "Well," she demanded; "what is the matter? Have you got the colic?" "He would have got it pretty soon if you hadn't come," said Giacobbe. Brontu opened his mouth and his lips moved, but no sounds came forth, and his anger presently died away as senselessly as it had come. "Well----" he stammered. "I wanted you. We have hardly seen each other all day. What were you doing at your mother's? Who was there?" "Who was there?" she repeated, in a tone of intense bitterness. "Why, no one. Who would you expect to find at our house?" "Why, San Costantino might come--t--o--o--gi--i--i--ve you--u a po--em----" sang Giacobbe thickly. "Have you ever seen San Costantino? Well, there's Isidoro Pane--he's perfectly crazy--he doesn't like you; no, indeed, he doesn't, and--and----" "Shut up; hold your tongue!" said Aunt Martina. "And the sheepfolds left all this time to take care of themselves! That's the way you attend to your master's business! You're all alike, accursed thieves!" Giacobbe sprang forward, erect and livid; and Giovanna, fearing that he was really going to strike the old woman, stepped quickly between them. He turned, however, without saying a word, and sat down, but with so lowering an expression that Giovanna remained near her mother-in-law in an attitude of protection. Brontu, on the contrary, was struck with the idea that his mother deserved a rebuke. "What sort of manners are these?" he demanded in a tone that was intended to be severe. "Why, you treat people as though--as though--as though they were beasts--everybody! To-day--to-day--no, yesterday was a holiday. If he chose to get drunk, what business was that of yours?" "I got drunk on poison," remarked Giacobbe. "Yes, poison," agreed Brontu. "And I did too. And there's another thing. I'm tired of all this, mother and wife--and the whole business. So there! I'm going away. I'm going to spend the night with him in his palace. After all, we are relations, and--and----" "Say it right out!" shouted Giacobbe. "You may be my heir; that's what you mean! Ha, ha, ha!" He laughed boisterously, emitting sounds that were more like the howls of a wild beast than human laughter. Brontu, trying to imitate him, only succeeded in producing a noise like the cry of some happy animal in the springtime. Giovanna felt herself grow sick with dread; she was afraid of the rapidly approaching darkness, of the solitude that enwrapped the common, of the presence of these two men whom wine had turned into quarrelsome beasts. "The excommunication," she thought, "has fallen on us all: on this servant, who dares to defy his master; on the son, who upbraids his mother; on me, Giovanna, who loathe and despise them one and all!" Aunt Martina arose, went into the kitchen, and lit the candle. Giovanna followed her and set about preparing the supper. When it was ready they all sat down together, and for a little while everything went well. Presently Brontu began to tell of how they had watched the procession from the windows of Giacobbe's "palace," his account of their foolish doings bringing a smile to his mother's lips. Then he tried to put his arm around his wife, but Giovanna's heart was full of gall. For her the holiday had been, if anything, sadder than an ordinary day; she had worked hard, she had not been to church, she had not so much as changed her dress; and yet, the moment she had allowed herself to go for a little recreation to the cottage,--the scene alike of her greatest misery and of her most intense happiness,--she had been ordered back as peremptorily as a dog is told to return to its kennel. Consequently, she was in no mood for endearments, and repulsed Brontu's proffered caress, telling him he was drunk. Giacobbe, thereupon, laughed delightedly, which irritated Giovanna as much as it angered Brontu. "What are you laughing at, you mangy cur?" demanded the latter. "I might say I am not as mangy as you are yourself. But then, I--I want to say that--that--well, I'm laughing because I choose to." "Eh! I can laugh too." "Fools!" said Giovanna scornfully. "You make me sick, both of you." At this Brontu, quite beside himself, suddenly turned on her: "What is the matter with you, anyhow?" he demanded in a hard voice. "One would really like to know. Here you are, living on me, and when I offer to kiss you you fly out at me. You ought to be thankful to kiss the very ground under my feet; do you hear me?" Giovanna grew livid. "What!" she hissed. "Am I treated any better than a servant in this house?" "Well, a servant; all right, you can just stay one. What else should you be, woman?" Giacobbe's squint-eyes sparkled at this, but Giovanna, rising to her feet, proceeded to pour out all the concentrated bitterness of the past months. Addressing her husband and mother-in-law, she called them slave-drivers and tyrants; threatened to go away, to kill herself; cursed the hour she had entered that house, and, in the transport of her rage, even revealed the debt to Giacobbe's sister. At this, the herdsman fell to laughing softly to himself, murmuring words of half-mocking reproach addressed to Aunt Anna-Rosa. On a sudden, however, his face grew black; the sombre figure of Aunt Bachissia appeared in the doorway; she had heard her daughter's angry voice resounding through the stillness of the evening, and had come at once. "Here," said Aunt Martina, perfectly unmoved, "is your daughter, gone mad to all appearances." Brontu, completely sobered, was signing urgently to his mother-in-law to come forward and try to calm the furious woman, and Aunt Bachissia was about to do so when Giacobbe suddenly leaped to his feet and threw himself in front of her with an ugly scowl. "Get out of here!" he ordered, pointing to the door. "And are you the master?" asked Aunt Bachissia ironically. "Get out, I tell you," he repeated, and, as she continued to advance, he laid hold of her. She shook him off, and he went out himself instead, and, sitting down on the portico, tried to laugh; but, odd to relate, instead of laughter, he presently found himself shaking all over with dry, convulsive sobs. FOOTNOTE: [6] In Sardinia, farm labourers often own cattle which are either turned out with their master's herds (whose partners they thus, in a manner, become), or are confided to some other shepherd, who receives half the profits in return for looking after them. CHAPTER XIII Time passed on. The sky and weather changed with the changing seasons, but among the inhabitants of the little village all remained much as usual. In the course of the winter Giovanna gave birth to a weak, puling girl-baby, which did nothing but cry. Doctor Porra, or Pededda, as he still continued to be called, came all the way from Nuoro expressly to stand for the poor little creature. He arrived in a carriage, bundled up like a bale of clothing, his rosy face beaming as usual. Quite a number of persons had assembled to see him, and he distributed smiles and greetings indiscriminately to all who would have them, assuring a group of Brontu's friends who had gone to meet him, that he remembered perfectly seeing all of them at Nuoro. This gratified them immensely, all but one, that is, who said he had never been to Nuoro. "It is of no consequence," said the lawyer cheerfully, "I am sure to see you there some day." This was a somewhat equivocal assurance, as it seldom happened that any of them went to Nuoro except on law business; however, the man was highly pleased. Aunt Bachissia, watching the new arrival divest himself of his greatcoat, shawl, and various other wraps, thought that he looked more than ever like a _magia_. "You seem to have grown stouter," she said, looking at the layers of clothing. "Oh! this is a mere nothing," he replied. At which they all laughed delightedly. The baptism was to be conducted with great pomp, and Aunt Martina, probably for the first time in her life, slackened the strings of her purse, and sent to Nuoro for wines and sweets of the best quality. She could not sleep the night before, however, and passed a wretched day, tormented by the fear that some of the delicacies might be spirited away. On the morning of the ceremony Giovanna got up early and helped her mother-in-law to prepare the macaroni for dinner; then she went back to bed, where she remained in a sitting posture, propped up by pillows, and with the bedclothes drawn up about her waist. Above that she wore her blouse and bodice, and she had on her wedding coif and bridal kerchief. She looked somewhat pale, but very handsome, her great eyes seeming larger even than usual. The table was set in the bedchamber, and covered with a linen cloth, which Aunt Martina now took out from her chest for the first time since it had been bought. The ceremony was to take place at about eleven o'clock of a very cold morning. From the pale sky a thick, white vapour fell, enveloping the village and all the surrounding country in a misty veil. The narrow streets were deserted, and here and there frozen puddles lay like pieces of broken, dirty glass. An absolute silence reigned in the open space before the Dejases' house, opposite which the almond tree stretched its bare, black limbs against the misty background. All at once the common was invaded by a troop of urchins, bundled up in ragged garments and odds and ends of fur; with fringed, red caps on their heads, and wearing old boots, some of them almost as large as the little persons who wore them. Groups of people stood about, principally shivering women, coughing and sneezing and smelling of soot and smoke. Then the baptismal procession appeared. First came two children looking solemn and important, and carrying candles from which red ribbons fluttered; these were followed by the woman with the infant wrapped in shawls, and covered with a piece of greenish brocade, like the standard of San Costantino. Then the godfather appeared, his round little face rosy and smiling as ever, emerging from the folds of his big coat and black-and-white shawl. With him walked the godmother, one of Aunt Martina's daughters, a lank young woman with a long, narrow face, who reminded one of a shadow seen at sunset. She had to lean down in order to reach her companion's ear. With the godparents came Brontu, freshly shaven and gay, and behind them followed a group of friends and relatives, marching along in step, with a noise like the tramp of horses' hoofs. Last of all came the godmother's servant-maid, a shivering creature blue with cold; she carried a small basin under one arm, and kept both hands buried in the pockets of her gown. From time to time she thrust out her tongue to catch the drops that kept running down from her nose. The boys trotted alongside, forming two wings to the procession, their eyes eagerly fixed upon the godfather, who returned their gaze with an amused stare and hailed them jocosely: "Why, hello! you here? What are you looking for, little hedgehogs?" "He's lame," said one. "Hush, keep quiet, or he won't give us anything!" The procession passed on; the faces of the urchins fell; some of them were angry, and others seemed on the verge of tears. "Crippl----" one began to call, but stopped suddenly. The godfather had pitched a handful of copper coins into the air, and the whole troop flung themselves after them, yelling, tumbling over one another, pushing, fighting, struggling, rolling over and over, almost upsetting the maid-servant, who instantly began to deal out blows and curses in greater proportion even than the coins themselves. Fresh handfuls of money and renewed scuffling by an ever-increasing crowd of ragamuffins continued to the very doors of the church, where Priest Elias stood awaiting the party and listening to something the red-robed sacristan was urging upon him. The sacristan was, in fact, afraid that Priest Elias, with his usual kindly indulgence, might be persuaded to return to the house with the baptismal party, whereas it was the custom of the neighbourhood for the priest to do that only in cases where the parents had been united by religious ceremony: he was, therefore, exhorting the other to practise severity with Brontu, with the godparents, with the whole company in fact. "Your Honour," said he, "will surely not return to the house with this infant? Why, it is almost illegitimate! On no account should such respect be paid to it." "Go and see if they are coming," said the priest. "They are not in sight yet. No, your Honour will not go." "And how about you? Shall you not go?" enquired the priest with a slight smile. "Oh! with me it is an altogether different matter; I go on account of the sweetmeats, not to do honour to that rabble." At this moment the company came in sight, and the ceremony presently began. No sooner had the baby's bald little red head been uncovered than it began to emit sounds like the bleating of a hoarse kid. The godfather stood by smiling, with a lighted taper in his hand, doing his best to remember the creed, Giovanna having implored him to recite it conscientiously, so that the baptism might be valid. Almost the entire crowd of urchins had followed the party inside the church, and there was a pattering like rats running about, as the sacristan would chase them all out, only presently to come stealing back. The woman who had carried the baby, and the maid-servant with the basin, seated themselves on the steps of a side altar, where they anxiously awaited the godfather's present. At last the service was over, the tips had been given, the baby wrapped up again, and Brontu and his friends stood waiting awkwardly for the priest, who had gone into the sacristy to remove his robes. Would he come back or not? Was he going to the house with the newly baptised infant or no? There was an uncomfortable pause, and then, as he did not appear, the procession set out somewhat mournfully on the return journey, followed by the triumphant sacristan, to whom Brontu would dearly have liked to administer blows in place of the expected sweets. All along the route the people came out to see them go by, and many faces, especially those of the women, lighted up with ill-natured smiles as they perceived that the priest was not there. Poh! It was like the baptism of a bastard! Giovanna, albeit not really expecting the priest, grew a shade paler when the company invaded her chamber without him. She kissed the little purple creature sadly, feeling as though the outlook for the poor child was very dark indeed. "I remembered every word of the creed from beginning to end," announced the godfather. "Happy mother, your child will be a wonder, as tall as its godmother and as gay as its godfather!" "If only it may be as prosperous as its godfather," murmured Giovanna. "And now," cried the young man, joyously clapping his hands, "come to dinner. What a pleasant custom it is! Upon my honour, it is a charming custom!" And he clapped his hands again, as though calling a crowd of children. They all took their places at table, where the macaroni, which had already been served, was to be followed by a beautiful roast pig exhaling an odour of rosemary. * * * * * It was only a few days after the baptism that a strange though not unprecedented event occurred in Orlei. Near Isidoro Pane's hut was an ancient dungheap, abandoned for so long that it had become almost petrified. It was covered with a growth of sickly-looking vegetation, and emitted no odour, looking like some sort of artificial mound. One evening at about dusk, while the fisherman was preparing his supper, he heard sounds in the direction of this mound, and went to the door to see what they were. The weather was cold, and in the clear, greenish twilight he saw a group of black figures, chiefly women, advancing, singing to the accompaniment of some instrument. Isidoro understood what it was and went to meet them. The women, about twenty in all, old and young, were chanting in a melancholy monotone, with sudden breaks and changes, a weird song or exorcism against the bite of a tarantula; while a blind beggar, a pallid young man, miserably clad in soiled and ragged woman's clothing, accompanied them on a primitive instrument called a _serraia_--a sort of cithern, made out of a dried sow's bladder. There were only three other men in the party, and in one of these, with a flushed, feverish face, and one hand bound up, the fisherman recognised Giacobbe Dejas. Isidoro advanced, and joining the party laid one finger on the bandaged hand, Giacobbe, meanwhile, gazing at him wildly, his eyes transfixed with terror. "Are you afraid you are going to die from a tarantula bite? No, no," said Isidoro, smiling. The women continued their chant. There were seven widows, seven wives, and seven maids. One of the widows was Giacobbe's sister. She walked at his side, fresh and pink as ever, notwithstanding her wild state of alarm and anxiety; and her shrill little voice, like the note of a lively cricket, trilled and trembled high above all the others. "He is suffering," said one of the men to Isidoro in a low tone. "Ah?" said the fisherman gravely. The words chanted by the women ran as follows: "Saint Peter he walked down to the sea And into the water his keys dropped he. Then the Lord unto him did say: 'My Peter, what is it ails thee to-day?' 'Of deadly bites I bear the smart In my two feet, and my back, and my heart.' 'Peter, take of the sad thorn-tree[7] Pounded as fine as fine may be; Take it three days for thy wound. So shall Peter be made sound.' Tarantula, with the painted belly, You have a daughter straitly born, Straitly is your daughter born. One for the mountain I leave forlorn; One for the mountain, and one for the valley. You have killed me, and I will kill you." Meanwhile the group had stopped in front of the mound. The two men, who were provided with spades, began to dig, and Isidoro stood waiting with Giacobbe, the chanting women, and the blind man still playing on his strange instrument. Giacobbe silently watched the operations of his two friends, and Isidoro watched him, puzzled by the transformation he had undergone; he seemed, indeed, like an altogether different person; his face was inflamed, and drawn with fright, and the little eyes, which usually twinkled so shrewdly from beneath their bald brows, were dim with a childish terror of death. When they had come to the end of the chant, the women began again at the first line, the instrument continuing the accompaniment on the same monotonous key as before. It sounded like the humming of a swarm of bees in flight. Puffs of icy wind blew from the west, cutting the faces of the group gathered about the mound, like knives. The purple-blue of the sky was fading into a greenish tint, like the face of a lake when the sun has left it; and over the entire scene there hung a pall of indescribable melancholy--the dull, cold twilight, the darkening uplands, the black village, the shadowy group of people, performing a superstitious rite with all the faith of heathen idolaters.[8] The two men dug with friendly zeal, throwing up spadefuls of black earth mixed with rags, egg-shells, and refuse of all kinds. As it covered their feet and legs, they would mount higher, bending to their task, panting and sweating, while the women continued their chant, and the blind man his monotonous accompaniment. A hole of sufficient depth having at last been dug, Aunt Anna-Rosa, never ceasing for an instant to emit the same shrill, mournful sounds, helped Giacobbe to remove his coat, and then, taking him by the hand, they led him to the edge of the excavation. He jumped in at a bound, and the two men, pushing him down with their hands, hastily piled on the earth, until he was buried up to the neck. The performance that then took place was even more extraordinary. The head, looking as though it had been severed from the body and stuck in the centre of this heap of refuse, was surrounded by sparse vegetation, which trembled in the breeze as though affrighted; while overhead hung the melancholy sky. Hardly had the two men completed their task, and stood,--the one wiping the perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve, and the other knocking off the dirt that was sticking to his hands,--when the women closed in a circle around the head, and began to dance to the sound of their own chanting voices and the instrument still played by the blind man, who stood with his sightless balls and pale, impassive face turned towards the distant horizon. This continued for some time; then the dancing ceased, the circle broke, but the chanting still went on. Isidoro and the other men threw themselves on the mound, and with spades and hands, had soon disinterred Giacobbe. He was perspiring profusely when he emerged, covered with dirt, and his face and neck were purple. He said he had felt as though he would suffocate; then he shook himself and thrust first one arm and then the other into the sleeves of the coat which his sister held ready. "Well, so you are not going to die after all, little spring bird?" said Isidoro jokingly. The other, however, made no reply; the cold wind struck his perspiring body with an icy chill, his face grew pallid, and his teeth chattered. They walked off in the direction of Aunt Anna-Rosa's house, Isidoro, who by this time had lost all interest in his supper, accompanying them. "Did you kill it?" he enquired of the sick man, remembering to have heard that if one kills a tarantula with his ring finger he acquires the power to cure the bite with a simple touch of the same finger. "No," said Giacobbe; and then, while the weird chanting still continued, he gave an account of his misfortune. "I was asleep; suddenly I felt something like the sting of a wasp. I woke up all in a perspiration. Ah, it had stung me! It had stung me! The horrible tarantula! I saw it as plain as I see you, but it was some distance off, on the wall. Ah, the devil take you, accursed creature! So I came right home. Do you know, I am afraid to die; I've been afraid for ever so long." "But we all have to die some time, whenever the hour comes," said Isidoro seriously. "Yes, that is true; we all have to some time," agreed one of the men; "but that is poor consolation for Giacobbe Dejas." "My legs feel as though they had been broken," he groaned. "And oh, my spine! it is just as though some one had struck it with an axe! I am going to die; I know I am going to die----" As they passed along, the people came out of their houses to watch them go by, but it was like a funeral procession; no one spoke, nor did any one follow them. Giacobbe's eyes grew dim, and presently he stumbled and clutched hold of Isidoro for support. The women were moving along on a trot, like a herd of colts; their voices rose, fell, rose again, and seemed to die away into the chill night air, overpowered at last by the even, strident notes of the cithern, like the gasps of some wounded animal left to die alone in the forest. At last they reached the little widow's house. A fire was burning in the slate-stone fireplace in the centre of the kitchen, laid on a little heap of live coals which had just been taken out of the oven. This last, a huge, round affair having a hole in the top to allow the smoke to escape, occupied one corner, its square door being quite large enough to allow of the passage of a man's body. Into its still hot interior Giacobbe accordingly now crept, the soles of his heavy shoes appearing in the opening, their worn nails shining in the firelight. Placing themselves around the oven and the fireplace, the women continued their exorcism with renewed vigour, the red and purple lights from the fire falling upon their white blouses and yellow bodices. Aunt Anna-Rosa's round, open mouth looked like a black hole in the middle of her pink, shining face. The blind man, conscious of the fire, felt his way towards it little by little, though without ceasing to play. Reaching the edge of the fireplace, he put one of his bare feet upon the hot stone. "Zs-s----" whispered Uncle Isidoro warningly. "Look out, boy, or you'll have a surprise." The words were not out of his mouth when the youth gave a sudden bound backwards, shaking his burned foot in the air. For a moment he stopped playing, but the women never faltered. Standing there, erect and immovable around the huge oven, they might have been intoning a funeral dirge over some prehistoric sepulchre. "He is coming out!" cried Aunt Anna-Rosa suddenly, and Giacobbe's great feet could be seen issuing from the oven. At the same instant the house-door was thrown violently open, and the black-robed figure of Priest Elias appeared. On hearing what had occurred he had at once hastened to the house, hoping to arrive in time at least to prevent the ordeal of the oven. He was flushed and breathless, and his eyes flashed. On catching sight of him one of the women gave a scream and others stopped chanting, while the rest motioned to them to continue. Giacobbe, meanwhile, had got out of the oven. "Be quiet!" commanded the priest, panting. "Aren't you ashamed of yourselves? No?" They all became silent. "Go," he said, opening the door and holding it with one hand, while with the other he almost pushed the women out. When the last had gone he became aware for the first time of the presence of Isidoro, and his face fell. "You too?" he said reproachfully. "Extraordinary, most extraordinary! Don't you see what you have done among you to that poor man?" Then changing his tone, "Quick," he said, "go at once for the doctor as fast as you can. And as for you," turning to Giacobbe, "get to bed at once." The sick man asked for nothing better; he was burning with fever, his head was shaking, and he could hardly see. Isidoro went off in search of the doctor, somewhat mortified and yet, in spite of his usually hard common sense, his intelligence, and his deeply religious nature, quite unable to see what harm there could be in trying to cure a tarantula sting with the rites, chants, and incantations employed by one's forebears from the days when giants inhabited the _Nuraghes_. The women had scattered into groups along the street and were discussing the occurrence, some of them a little ashamed, while others were inclined to blame the priest. One irrepressible young girl was beating her hands in time and singing the lament which should have been chanted in chorus around Giacobbe's bed had not the priest's arrival prevented: "'Oh, mother of the spider! A stroke has fallen on me.'" Some of the women would have stopped Isidoro, but he strode quickly on, buried in thought. At last they all dispersed, and the cold, still evening settled down on the little widow's house, while overhead the stars looked like golden eyes veiled in tears. FOOTNOTES: [7] _Ispana trista_ or _santa_, from which, according to tradition, the crown of thorns was made. The people use the leaves of this tree for medicinal purposes. [8] The custom of burying a person bitten by a tarantula in a dunghill, and putting him in an oven, is not so unreasonable as it at first appears, the effect of the poison being neutralised if the sufferer can be made to perspire freely; while the sickening odours of the dunghill induce nausea, also supposed to be very beneficial. Now, however, the people completely ignoring these practical results, the ceremony has come to be an act of pure superstition. The account given above describes such scenes as they have actually been known to occur. CHAPTER XIV The room where Giacobbe lay was extremely lofty, and so large that the oil light did not penetrate the corners. The furniture appeared to have been built expressly with a view to its ample proportions; a huge, red, wooden wardrobe which stood against the end wall, reaching clear to the ceiling. The bed, the lower part of which was draped with yellow curtains, was as high and massive as a mountain. Seen thus, in the dim, flickering light, with its black corners and great lofty white ceiling like a cloudy sky, the room had a mysterious, uncanny look. Little Aunt Anna-Rosa seemed almost in danger of losing her way as she moved about among the bulky furniture, and her shoulders hardly reached above the counterpane when she came and stood beside the bed where her brother lay in the uneasy grip of the fever. He seemed to himself still to be in the mound, only the two friends who had interred him, kept on piling the earth higher and higher about his head. He was suffocating, the torture was almost unendurable, and yet he dared not stop them, fearing the cure might not be efficacious unless his head were buried as well; and his head seemed to be Priest Elias, on whose breast the tail of a tarantula could be seen wriggling about. In his dream Giacobbe was conscious of an almost insane fear of death. It had occurred to him when he was in the oven that hell, perhaps, was a huge heated oven where the damned would sprawl throughout eternity. Now, in his dream, precisely the same feeling was reproduced. He was in the mound, the earth reached higher and higher about him; he shut his mouth tight to keep from swallowing it, and there, opposite him, he suddenly saw a lighted furnace. It was the infernal regions. Such a feeling of terror seized upon him that even in his dream, in his feverish semi-consciousness, he was aware of an overmastering desire to prove to himself that this horror was an illusion of the senses. In the effort he awoke, but even awake he had something of the same sensation that stones, were they endowed with feeling, would have in a burning building, growing all the while hotter and hotter, and yet unable to stir an inch. Giacobbe felt like a burning brick himself, or a piece of live coal, a part of the infernal fires; and waking, his terror was even more acute than in his dream. He emitted a groan and the noise gave him comfort; it had an earthly, human sound, breaking in on all those diabolical sensations. Isidoro, who had stayed in case the little widow might have need of him, heard the groan from where he sat dozing in the adjoining kitchen, and bounded to his feet in terror; he thought that Giacobbe had died. Approaching the bed, he found the sick man lying flat on his back, his face drawn, his eyes, which looked almost black, wet with tears. "Are you awake?" asked the fisherman in a low voice. "Do you want anything?" He felt his pulse, and even laid his ear against it as though trying to hear the throbs. At the same instant Giacobbe observed the round little visage of his sister appear above the other edge of the bed, enveloped in the folds of a large white kerchief. Then a curious thing happened: the face of the sick man contracted, his mouth opened, his eyes closed, and a deep sob broke the stillness of the room. Instantly memory carried the woman back to a far-distant day when her brother, a tiny lad, had sat weeping on this very bed; and opening her arms just as she had done then, she took him to her kind bosom, murmuring words of loving remonstrance. "In the name of the holy souls in purgatory! What is it? What is the matter, little brother?" Isidoro, quite at a loss, continued to feel his friend's pulse, trying now one vein, and now another, and muttering to himself: "How strange, how very strange!" "Well, what is it? Won't you tell me what it is? You, Isidoro Pane, what happened?" "Why, nothing happened. He called out, and that was all. May be he had a bad dream. We'll give him a drink of water. There now, here's a little fresh water. That's it, he wants it--see how he is drinking! You were thirsty, weren't you? It's the fever, you see; that's what ails him!" Giacobbe sat up in bed, and after drinking the water calmed down. He had on an old white knitted cotton shirt, through which could be seen the outline of his small wiry body, the thick growth of black hair on his chest contrasting oddly with the perfectly smooth face and bald head above it. He remained in a sitting posture, leaning forward, and thoughtfully passing his well hand up and down the injured arm. "Yes," he remarked suddenly in the panting, querulous tone of a person with fever. "Yes; I had a bad dream. Whew! but it was hot! Holy San Costantino, how hot it was! I was dreaming of hell." "Dear me, dear me, what an idea!" said his sister reprovingly; and Uncle Isidoro said playfully: "And so it was hot, little spring bird?" The sick man seemed to be annoyed. "Don't joke, and don't say 'little spring bird.' I don't like it; I shall never say it again, and I shall never laugh at any one again. "Listen to me," he said, bending forward and continuing to rub his arm. "Hell is a dreadful place. I've got to die, and I've got to tell you something first. Now listen, but don't get frightened, Anna-Rosa, because I am certainly going to die; and Uncle Isidoro, you know it already, so I can tell you. Well, this is it. It was I who killed Basile Ledda." Aunt Anna-Rosa's eyes and mouth flew wide open; she leaned against the side of the bed, and began to shake convulsively. "_I_ knew it already?" exclaimed Isidoro. "Why, I knew nothing at all!" Giacobbe raised a terrified face, and began to tremble as well. "Don't have me arrested," he implored. "I'm going to die, anyhow; you can tell them then. I thought you knew. What is the matter, Anna-Ro? Don't be frightened; don't have me arrested." "It's not that," she said, raising herself. Her first sensation of having received a blow on the head was passing away, but now, in its place, there came a singular feeling of some change that was taking place within her; her own spirit seemed to have fled in dismay, and in its place had come something that regarded the world, life, heaven, earth--God himself--from a totally different standpoint; and everything viewed in the light of this new spirit was full of horror, misery, chaos. "I will not tell any one. No, no! But how could you ever suppose that I knew about it?" protested Isidoro. He felt no especial horror of Giacobbe, only profound pity; but at the same time he thought it would be better, now, for him to die. Then, simultaneously, their thoughts all flew to Costantino, and hardly left him again. "Lie down," said Isidoro, smoothing out the pillow. But the other only shook his head and began to talk again in the same querulous, laboured voice, now beseeching, now almost angry: "I thought you must know about it; and so, you never did, after all? Well, that's so; how could you? But I was afraid of you all the same. I had an idea that I could read it in your eyes. Do you remember that night at your house, when you said: 'It might be you who killed him'? I was frightened that night. Then, there was that other time--Assumption Day--here in this very house, you called me 'murderer.' I knew it was a joke, but it frightened me because I was afraid of you, anyhow. So then, when I said that about you and my sister getting married, I meant it. I thought it might give me a sort of hold on you." "Oh, Christ! Oh, holy little Jesus!" sobbed the widow. Giacobbe looked at her for a moment. "You are scared, eh? You wonder what made me do it? Well, I'll tell you. I hated that man; he had flogged me, and he owed me money. But I thought it would kill me when they condemned Costantino Ledda. Why didn't I confess then? Is that what you want to say? Ah, it sounds all very easy now, but you can't do it. Costantino is a strong young man, I thought to myself; I shall die long before he does, and then I'll confess the whole thing. And I can tell you that that thing that Giovanna Era did made me a hundred years older. What is Costantino going to say when he comes back? What is he going to say?" he repeated softly to himself. "What ought we to do?" said Aunt Anna-Rosa, burying her face in the bedclothes and groaning. She felt as though it must all be some frightful dream; yet, not for a single instant did she contemplate concealing her brother's crime. And afterwards?--One of two equally horrible things must happen. Either Giacobbe would die, or he would be sent to prison. She could not tell which of the two she dreaded most. "Now we must lie down and rest; to-morrow will be time enough to talk of what is the best thing to do," said Isidoro, again smoothing out the pillow. Giacobbe turned over and laid himself down; then, raising his left hand, he began to count off on his fingers: "Priest Elias, one; the magistrate, two; then--what's his name?--Brontu Dejas; yes, I want him particularly. They must all come here, and I will make a confession." "Brontu Dejas!" repeated Isidoro with stupefaction. "Yes; they will take his word sooner than any one's. But first, you've all got to swear on the crucifix that you'll let me die in peace. I'm frightened. You'll let me die in peace, won't you?" "Why, of course; don't worry now. And you, little godmother, go back to bed; get as much rest and sleep as you can," said the fisherman, quietly drawing the clothes up about Giacobbe, who kept throwing them off, turning restlessly, and shaking his head. "I'm hot," said he. "I tell you I'm hot. Let me alone. Why aren't you more surprised. Uncle 'Sidoro? I went on hiring out to keep people from suspecting anything; but you knew all along; oh, yes! you knew well enough!" "I tell you I knew nothing at all, child of grace." "Then why aren't you surprised?" "Because," replied the old man in a grave voice, "such strange things are always happening; it is the way of the world. Now keep the covers over you, and try to go to sleep." The widow, who appeared not to have been listening to what the two men were saying, now raised her face. Poor, little, fresh face! It had suddenly grown yellow and wrinkled; all the years that had passed over it without being able to leave any trace, had, in the last five minutes, taken their revenge! "Giacobbe," said the little woman, "what need is there of calling in witnesses? Why should we have any one else? Won't _I_ do?" She straightened herself and looked at Isidoro, who, in turn, looked at the sick man. "Why, that's true!" they exclaimed together. A sudden atmosphere of relief fell on the dimly lighted room. The patient, with a sigh, stretched himself quietly out, remained still for a few moments, and finally fell asleep. The little widow, likewise following Isidoro's advice, went back to bed. The ponderous front of the great red wardrobe seemed to be brooding over the scene; and the shadowy ceiling to overhang it like the sky above a deserted hamlet. All those inanimate objects seemed to repeat gravely to one another the old fisherman's words: "It is the way of the world!" * * * * * The Orlei physician, Dr. Puddu, was a coarse, fat beast of a man. Once upon a time he, too, had had his high ideals; but Fate having cast him into this out-of-the-way corner of the world where the people were rarely, if ever, ill, he had taken to drink; at first, because, being from the South, he felt the cold; and afterwards because he found that wine and liquor were very much to his taste. In these days, in addition to his intemperate habits, he had become a Free Thinker, so that even the villagers had lost all respect for him. Giacobbe had complained of a pain in his side, and Doctor Puddu, after cauterising the tarantula bite, had said roughly: "You fool, people don't die of these things. If you do die, it will only be because you are an ass." And Aunt Anna-Rosa had looked at him angrily, and muttered something under her breath. Poor little Aunt Anna-Rosa! It did not take much to anger her in these days; she quarrelled, indeed, with every one except the patient. And how old she looked! After that night her face had remained yellow and drawn; she looked like a different person, and her brother's revelation had worked a singular change in her both physically and morally. She was constantly tormented by the question as to how Giacobbe ever could have brought himself to kill any one. He, who was always as merry and gentle as a lamb! How in the name of the holy souls in purgatory had he ever done it? And our father, he was no thief, not he! He was a God-fearing man, and always so kind and gay that when any of the neighbours were in trouble they invariably came to him to be cheered up. The little woman's heart swelled as she thought of her old father long since dead, but suddenly a mist seemed to rise in her brain, and her face contracted with the horror of a terrible thought. "Perhaps he, too, the kindly, good old man had committed some crime! Why not? No one could be trusted any more, living or dead, old or young." And then she fell to crying, beating her breast with her tiny fists, and bitterly repenting of her wicked doubts. When, approaching the bedside, she would find the patient's face drawn with suffering, his wide, terror-stricken eyes, meanwhile, seeming to implore death to spare him, an infinite tide of pity would well up within her, a rush of maternal tenderness, a sorrow beyond words. More than ever was he her little brother, her boy, curled up on the great bed; so frightened, so shrunken with suffering! And while everything else, every one else, even the sacred dead, even innocent children, aroused hateful suspicions, he alone, he of them all, called for pity, tenderness, a passionate and consuming love, that was like melting wax within her. Yet she must see him, and she was seeing him,--die. More than that, she must wish for his death. All the while that she was nursing him with tenderest care, she must hope that her watchfulness, the medicines, everything, would fail. Moreover, death, that awful thing which she must ardently desire for the "little brother" whom she loved, when it came would bring, not only the deep, natural sorrow of her loss, but that other horror, the announcement of his guilt. Of all the burdens that pressed upon her, however, the hardest to bear was the fact that the sick man was perfectly conscious of her attitude towards him. On the third day of his illness, Isidoro had brought, with great secrecy and mystery, a medicine obtained from the sacristan. It was a concoction made of olive-oil, into which had been plunged three scorpions, a centipede, a tarantula, a spider, and a poisonous fungus; it was considered a cure for any kind of sting. Aunt Anna-Rosa applied it at once to the patient's puffed and swollen hand, he allowing her to do it, and watching the operation intently. Then he said: "Why do you take all this trouble for me, Anna-Ro? Don't you want me to die?" Her heart sank, while he continued quietly, addressing Isidoro: "And you? You brought me this, but just suppose it were to cure me, what would you do then?" "God will look after that; leave it to him," said the fisherman. Giacobbe lay quiet for a few moments; then he said: "Shall you two go together to the magistrate's?" "Where?" "To the magistrate's; it's cold, though, now, and it's a long way to go; you must not go on horse-back, Anna-Rosa, do you hear? You will have to have a carriage to drive to Nuoro." "What for?" she faltered distressedly, pretending not to understand. "Why, to see the magistrate, of course." She scolded him, and then went into the kitchen and wept bitterly. "Here is your oil," she said presently, as Isidoro came out and prepared to leave. "You could not do anything but bring it, of course. When is Priest Elias coming?" "This evening." "Yes, he ought to; Giacobbe must confess. Time is flying, and he is very ill; last night he didn't close an eye. Ah!" she added suddenly, "he seems to me just like some wounded bird." "Have the Dejases been here?" "Oh, yes! They've been here, both of them, mother and son. Brontu has been here twice. Oh, they all come!" she said desperately, "but what good does it do? They can't cure him; they can't give him either life or death." "Either one would be equally a blessing or a curse to him," said Isidoro, carefully wrapping his red handkerchief around the vial of oil. "As they are for most of us!" said the woman. Soon after, the doctor arrived in a shrunken overcoat, with the collar turned up. He had been drinking already, and smelled strong of spirits; his lips were white, and he puffed, and spat about, sometimes over himself. He seemed somewhat startled, however, when he saw his patient's condition. "What the devil's the matter with you?" he demanded roughly. "Your side? your side? You've got the devil in your side. Let's have a look." He threw back the covers, exposing Giacobbe's hairy chest; passing his hand up and down his side, he listened with his ear close to the patient's back. "It's all nonsense," he said. "You've worked yourself up like some old woman." Then he replaced the covers carelessly, and went out. At the door, however, he turned and fixed Aunt Anna-Rosa with his eye. "Woman," he said, "let him see the priest at once; he has pneumonia." At dusk Giacobbe confessed; then he called his sister. "Anna-Ro," he said, "Priest Elias is going to Nuoro with you too. You must be sure to have a carriage on account of the cold." It was, in fact, snowing then, and the big room was filled with the white reflected light. Priest Elias looked attentively at Aunt Anna-Rosa, for whom he had an especially tender feeling on account of a fancied resemblance to his mother. The poor little black-robed figure seemed to him to have shrunken in the past few days, and now she was hanging her head in a pitiful, shamefaced way; bowed with mortification at her "little brother's" disgrace. Instinctively the priest understood the heroic part that quivering soul had been called upon to play in this tragedy, and he breathed an inward benediction upon her. CHAPTER XV It was the month of May, and the wild valley of the Isalle, usually so forbidding and rugged, lay smiling in the sun, adorned with tall grass and clumps of flowering shrubs and fields of barley, which rippled in the breeze like cloths of greenish gold. It was as though some old pagan, drunk with sunlight and sweet scents, had decked himself out in branches and garlands. The clear, liquid note of a wild bird would occasionally pierce the silence of the valley, then die away, drowned in the fragrance of the narcissuses and flowering broom, which gleamed like nuggets of molten gold on the very edges of the loftiest cliffs, as though peeping over to see what lay in the ravine below. A spendthrift fay had passed along, scattering flowers, colours, scents, with a reckless hand. Some meadows in the distance, pranked with ranunculuses, looked like stretches of green water reflecting a starry sky. Here and there a group of trees nodded and whispered together in the breeze. The sun had but just sunk and the west was still glowing like the cheek of a ripe peach; while in the east the mountains lay like a huge parure of precious stones set in a case of lilac satin. Costantino Ledda, liberated only a few hours before at Nuoro, was returning to his native village on foot, descending leisurely into the valley, his small canvas pack slung on his back. Now and then he would stop and look around him curiously. "Ha! the valley seems smaller, perhaps because I have seen the sea," he murmured. He looked older; his face was clean-shaven and intensely white; but otherwise he had none of the tragic air which would have been appropriate under the circumstances. He was coming back in this manner,--alone and on foot,--because he had not been able to say precisely what day he would be freed; otherwise some one, relative or friend, would certainly have gone to meet him. Besides, his impatience to reach home would brook no delay. Down and down the mountain-side he went; he was almost gay, possibly because of some wine he had drunk at Nuoro, where he had also provided himself with more for the journey. As he continued to descend his legs would occasionally double up under him, but he cared little for so trifling an inconvenience as that. "Why," he said to himself, "when I am tired I have only to lie down and go to sleep. I have plenty of bread and wine in my bag; what more could any one want? I'm as free as the birds of the air. Yes, that's true; I am free; I'm a bachelor now; that's a funny thing; once I was a married man with a wife, and now I'm a bachelor." He thought that he found this idea amusing. Down and down, now watching the sandy path, winding between high grass on either side, now gazing at the birds to whom he had compared himself, as they flew hither and thither, at times almost skimming the ground, then darting into the bushes where they would find a roosting-place for the night. He thought of the prison magpie, and felt a sudden tightening at his heart. Yes; it was true he had been sorry, when the time came to leave that place of torment--the companions whom he disliked so heartily, the horrible, enclosing walls, the strip of sky that for all those years had seemed to overhang the prison courtyard like a metal lid. After the death of the real culprit days and months had elapsed before Justice had completed its leisurely formalities and the innocent man could be liberated. During these months Costantino, informed of the event, had been wild with impatience, and the days had seemed like years; yet, when the moment of departure actually came, he nearly wept. This emotion, however, which was apparently the outcome of pity and sympathy for the beings whom he was leaving behind, was, in reality, for the things he was leaving behind; for all those inanimate objects that had engulfed and swallowed up his life--both his past and his future. Now this sorrow was done with, everything was done with; even that horrible torture that followed Giovanna's act was all so much a thing of the past that he really fancied that he could laugh at it. Down, and down; he reached the bottom of the valley and began to skirt the edge of the Isalle. The sunset sky was still bright, and here and there the water shone between the oleanders and rushes, or reflected the rose and yellow lights in the sky. The delicate lace umbrellas of the elder-flower, and the brilliant coral blossoms of the oleanders stood out in the clear atmosphere as though from a setting of silver. Costantino, by this time very tired, began to think that perhaps the valley was not, after all, so small as it had seemed at first. "I can sleep out of doors perfectly well," he thought, "but it would have been so amusing to walk up to Isidoro's door--Bang, bang--'Who's there?' 'I'--'Who's I?' 'Why, Costantino Ledda!' How astonished old Isidoro would look! Perhaps he would be singing the lauds; may be _those_ lauds, who knows? Why, let's see! _I_ wrote a set of lauds once! How extraordinary that seems!" He wondered over many incidents of the past as a boy will sometimes be astonished to think of things he did as a child. But the present held many surprises as well. The glory of the springtide amazed him, as did the length of time it took to cross a valley that appeared to be so small. But most of all he wondered to think that he was crossing it on his way back to his own village. He was walking now between two fields of grain above which the slanting light threw a veil of golden haze, and its surface, rippled by the breeze, seemed stroked by an invisible hand. He went on picturing his arrival, Isidoro having written to ask him to come straight to his house: "'Come in,' he will say, and then, 'Giacobbe Dejas is dead; it was he who did it!'--'I know that already. The devil! Is that all you have to tell me?' 'Well, then, your wife has married some one else.' 'I know that too.' 'Then why don't you cry?' 'Why on earth should I? I have cried enough; I don't want to any more now. I've crossed the sea; I've seen the world. I'm not a boy any longer; nothing makes much difference to me any more.'" But at the very moment when he was boasting to himself of his indifference and worldly cynicism, an icy grip closed about his heart. Oh! to be going back to find the little house, Giovanna, his child, his past! "There is nothing left," he said aloud. "The storm has swept over it and carried everything away, everything, everything----" He threw himself down on the edge of the field of grain in an agony of grief. It was often this way; the great tempest of sorrow had broken over him long before and seemingly passed on; but instead of that it had only hidden itself for a time; it was there now, stealing along, keeping pace with him; for long distances he would not see its evil shape; then suddenly it would leap forth, bursting through the ground at his very feet and whirling around its victim, clutch him by the throat, beat him to the ground, suffocate him--then leave him spent, exhausted. After a while Costantino sat up, unfastened his wallet, and drew out a dried gourd filled with wine, throwing his head back, he took a deep draught; then he put it away, and sat looking around him at the sea of grain on whose golden-green surface floated splotches of crimson poppies. Somewhat revived he presently resumed his journey, but all the eagerness and spring with which he had set out had died away. What did it matter whether he got home this day or the next, since there was no one to expect him? And so he plodded on till the first shadows of approaching night overtook him just as he reached the end of the valley. The crickets had turned out like a tribe of mowers with their tiny silver sickles, the scent of the shrubs and flowers hung heavy in the warm air; the breeze had died away, and the birds were silent; but the black triangles of the bats circled swiftly in the luminous grey dusk. Oh, that divine melancholy of a spring evening! Felt even by happy souls, may it not be an inherited homesickness, transmitted through all the ages? A longing for the flowers, and perfumes, and joys of that eternal, albeit earthly, paradise which our first parents lost for us forever. Costantino tramped on and on: he had passed long years under a brutal oppression, between infected walls, amid corrupt companions in an environment whose very air was confined, and now--he was walking in the open, treading grass and stones under foot! As he ascended the mountain from the valley below, every step brought more of the horizon into view and a wider expanse of soft, overhanging sky as boundless as liberty itself. And yet,--and yet,--never in all those years of imprisonment had he experienced a sense of such utter hopelessness as that with which he now saw the shadows fall from those free skies. He was pressing on, but whither? and why? He had set forth eager, elated, as one hastening to a place where pleasant things await him. Now he wondered at himself. In the uncertain twilight he seemed to have lost his way; his journey had turned out to be vain, abortive. He was trudging on aimlessly; he had no country, nor home, nor family; he would never reach any destination; he had gone astray, and was wandering about in a boundless, desert tract, as grey and cheerless as the sky above him, where the stars were like camp-fires lighted by solitary travellers who, unknown to one another, wandered, lost like himself, in the unwished-for and oppressive liberty of the trackless wilderness. And yet it was not the actual thought of Giovanna herself that weighed him down, nor yet his lost happiness, nor the misery that a wholly undeserved fate had forced upon him; all these things had long ago so eaten into his soul that they had come to form a part of his very nature, and he had grown almost to forget them, as one forgets the shirt he has on his back. Now his grief fastened upon memories of certain specific objects which had passed out of the setting of his life, and which he could never recover. His mind dwelt, for instance, persistently on the little common in front of Giovanna's cottage, the stones in the old wall where they used to sit together on summer evenings, and above all on the great, wide bed, where he would lay himself down beside her after the hard day's work was over. He felt now as though he might be going home at the close of one of those long, toilsome days. But now--now--where was he to turn for rest and ease? Thus, up through the load of unhappiness that bore him down, all-pervading and indefinable as the fragrance of the wild growth about him, a sense of physical discomfort forced itself; he was conscious of hunger and weariness. Reaching the top of a knoll, he sat down and opened his wallet. Night had fallen, but the atmosphere was clear and bright; the mountains which hid the sea on the east were bathed in moonlight, and the Milky Way spanned the heavens like a white, deserted causeway; in the west a pale, uncertain reflection hung over the distant sea; a magical aurora encircled the mountains. The path stood out distinctly, and the round, compact clumps of bushes might have been a scattered flock of black sheep. No sound broke the stillness but the mournful hoot of an owl. Costantino ate and drank; then, stretching himself out on the ground, he allowed his gaze to wander for a moment along that vast white roadway that traversed the heavens; then he shut his eyes, and the sense of bodily comfort, the repose for his tired limbs, and the effect of the food and drink were such that he became almost cheerful again. Hardly, however, had his lids closed, when all his prison companions began to troop before his vision, and he seemed to be seated at work at his shoemaker's bench. The thought of all the wonderful things he would have to tell his friends at Orlei then came into his mind, and filled him with such childish pride that he had an impulse to get up at once and push on so as to get there without delay. "Yes, I must get up and go on," he said, and then, "No, I won't; I shall stay here and go to sleep; I am very sleepy; no, I must get on,"--the words came confusedly this time. "Isidoro Pane expects me. I shall say, 'What a lot of people I have met! I have seen the sea; I know a man who is a marshal, Burrai is his name; he's going to get me a position of shoemaker in the king's household.' Now I am going to get up and start--start--star----" But he did not. Confused visions flitted across his brain. The _King of Spades_, astride of a donkey, came riding down that great white road that stretched across the sky; all at once he heard him cry out,--once,--twice,--three times. He was calling Costantino, who, opening his sleepy eyes, shut them again, and then opened them wide: "Idiot," he muttered; "it's the owl; yes, I'm going directly; I'm going----" And he fell fast asleep. When he awoke, the great, shining face of the moon was still high in the heavens; with its flood of steely light there came a fall of dew. Enormous shadows, like vast black veils, hung over certain parts of the mountains, but every crag, every thicket and flower even, stood clearly out wherever the moonlight fell. The owl still gave his penetrating cry, sharp and metallic, cutting through the silence like a blade of steel. Costantino shivered; he was wet with dew, and getting up, he yawned loudly; the prolonged "Ah--ah-h-h" fairly resounded in the intense stillness. He scrutinised the heavens to find out the hour. The _Star_, that is to say, Diana, had not yet lifted her emerald-gold face above the sea; dawn therefore was still a long way off, and Costantino resumed his journey, hoping to reach the village before the people should be about. He did not want to meet the gaze of the curious, and above all else he dreaded being seen by Giovanna or her mother. He had made up his mind to avoid them, if possible not even to see them or pass by their cottage; what good would it do? Everything was over between them. So he trudged on, and on; now up, now down; along the moonlit mountain-side. The heaps of slate-stone, the asphodels heavy with dew, the very rocks themselves, gave out a damp, penetrating odour, and here and there a rill of water stole in and out between fragrant beds of pennyroyal. As far away as the eye could reach, blue, vapoury skies overhung blue, misty mountains, until, in the extreme distance, they met and melted into one shimmering sea of silver. The man walked on, and on; his brain yet only half awake, but his body refreshed and active. Now and then he would take a short-cut, leaping from rock to rock, then pausing breathless, with straining heart and pulses. In the moon's rays his limpid eyes showed flecks of silver light. The further he went the more familiar the way became; now he was inhaling the wild fragrance of his native soil; he recognised the melancholy _salti_ sown with barley, the grain not yet turned; the beds of lentisks, the sparse trees whispering in some passing breath of wind, like old people murmuring in their sleep; and there, far off, the range of mighty sphinxes blue in the moonlight; and further still, the flash of the sea, that sea that he was so proud to have crossed in no matter what fashion. On reaching the little church of San Francisco he paused, and, cap in hand, said a prayer, a perfectly honest and sincere one, for at that moment his freedom gave him a sense of happiness such as he had not as yet experienced at any time since leaving the prison. * * * * * Day had hardly begun to break when Isidoro heard a tapping at his door. For fifteen--twenty days, for four months, in fact, he had been waiting for that sound, and he was on his feet before his old heart had started its mad beating against his breast. He opened the door; in the dim light he saw, or half saw, a tall figure not dressed in the costume of the country, but wearing a fustian coat as hard and stiff as leather, out of which emerged a long, pallid face. He did not know who it was. Costantino burst into a harsh laugh, and the fisherman, with a pang, recognised his friend. Yes, at last; it was Costantino come back, but in that very first moment he knew it was not the Costantino of other days. He threw his arms around him, but without kissing him, and his heart melted into tears. "Well, you didn't know me, after all," said Costantino, unstrapping his wallet. "I knew you wouldn't." Even his voice and accent were strange; and now, after his first sensations, first of chill and then of pity, Isidoro felt a sort of diffidence. "What are you dressed that way for?" he asked. "If you had let me know I would have brought you your clothes to Nuoro, and a horse too. Did you come all the way on foot?" "No; San Francisco lent me a horse. What are you about, Uncle Isidoro? I don't want any coffee. Have you got any brandy?" The fisherman, who had begun to uncover the fire, got up from his knees, embarrassed and mortified at having nothing better to offer his guest than a little coffee. "I didn't know," he stammered, spreading out his hands, "but just wait a moment, I'll go right off--you see I expected you, and I didn't expect you----" And he started for the door. "Stop; where are you going?" cried the other, seizing hold of him. "I don't want anything at all. I only said it for a joke. Sit down here." Isidoro seated himself, and began to look furtively at Costantino; little by little he grew more at ease with him, and presently passing his hand over his trousers he asked if he intended to go on dressing that way. In the early morning light streaming through the open door, Costantino's face looked worn and grey. "Yes," he said, with another of those disagreeable laughs, "I am going on dressing this way. I am going away soon." "Going away soon! Where to?" "Oh! I have met so many people," began Costantino, in the tone of one reciting a lesson. "And I have friends who will help me. What is there for me to do here, anyhow?" "Why, shoemaking! Didn't you write to me that that was what you wanted to do?" "I know a marshal named Burrai," continued Costantino, who always thought of the _King of Spades_ as still holding office. "He lives in Rome now, and he's written me a letter; he's going to get me a position in the King's household to be shoemaker." Isidoro looked at him pitifully. "Ah, the poor fellow, he was altogether different. What made him talk like that, and tell all those foolish little things when there were such heartrending topics to discuss." Thus Uncle Isidoro to his own heart. Pretty soon, however, he began to suspect that Costantino was putting all this on, and that his apparent indifference was assumed. But why? If he could not be open and natural with him, with whom could he be? "Come," said he, "let us talk of other things now; we can discuss all that later. Really, though, won't you have a little coffee? It would do you good." "What do you want to talk about?" asked Costantino drearily. "I knew you would think it strange that I don't cry, but I've cried until I haven't the wish to any more. And I am going away; one can't stay in this place after having crossed the sea--who is that going by?" he asked suddenly, as the sound of footsteps was heard outside. "I don't want any one to see me," and he jumped up and shut the door. When he turned, his whole expression had changed and his features were working. "I walked by _there_," he said, his voice sinking lower and lower, "on my way here. I didn't want to, but somehow I found myself there before I knew it. How can I--how can I stay here? Tell me--you----" He clasped both hands to his forehead and shook his head violently; then, throwing himself at full length on the ground, he writhed and twisted in an agony of sobs, his whole body shaking with the vehemence of his grief. He was like a young bull caught and held fast in the leash, and made to submit to the red-hot iron. The old fisherman turned deathly white, but made no attempt whatever to calm him. At last, at last, he recognised his friend. CHAPTER XVI No sooner had news of Costantino's return got abroad than visitors began to stream to Isidoro's hut. Throughout the entire day there was an incessant coming and going of friends and relatives, and even of persons who had never in their lives so much as interchanged a word with the late prisoner, but who now hastened with open arms to invite him to make his home with them. The women wept over him, called him "my son," and gazed at him compassionately; one neighbour sent him a present of bread and sausages. All these kindly demonstrations seemed, however, only to annoy their object. "Why on earth should they be sorry for me?" he said to Isidoro. "For Heaven's sake, send them about their business, and let's get away into the country." "Yes, yes, we will go, all in good time, child of the Lord, only have a little patience," said the other, bending over the fireplace, where he was cooking the sausage. "How naughty you are, I declare!" Since witnessing that paroxysm of grief in the morning, Uncle Isidoro had felt much more at ease with his guest, and even took little liberties with him, scolding him as though he had been a child. During the short intervals when they found themselves alone, he told him the _facts_. Costantino listened eagerly, and was annoyed when the arrival of fresh visitors interrupted the narrative. Among these visitors came the syndic, he who was a herdsman, and looked like Napoleon I. His call was especially trying. "We will give you sheep and cows," he began, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "Yes, every herdsman will give you a _pecus_,[9] and if there is anything you need, just say so; are we not all brothers and sisters in this world, and especially in a small community like this?" Costantino, thinking of the treatment he had received at the hands of his "brothers and sisters" of this particular small community, shook his head. "Yes," he said; "my brothers have treated me as Cain treated Abel; it would take a good deal more than sheep and cows to make it up to me." "Oh, well! that has nothing to do with it," replied the syndic, absorbed in his idea. "You have travelled; tell me now, have you never stood on the top of some high mountain, and looked down on the villages scattered about in the plain below? Well, didn't they seem to you like so many houses, each with its little family living inside?" Costantino, who was tired of the conversation, merely replied that all he wanted was to leave this village and never come back to it again. "Oh, no! You mustn't do that!" urged the other. "Where would you go? No, no; you must stay here, where we are all brothers." The next to arrive was Doctor Puddu, carrying a large, dirty, grey umbrella. He at once peered into the earthenware saucepan to see what was cooking. "You are all degenerates, every one of you," he announced in his harsh voice, rapping the saucepan with his umbrella. "And I'll tell you the reason: it's because you will eat pork." "Don't break the saucepan, please," said Uncle Isidoro. "And I beg your pardon, but that is not pork; it's beans, and bacon, and sausage." "Well, isn't bacon pork? You're all pigs. Well----," turning to Costantino. "And so, good sheep, you've come back? I saw him die--what's his name?--Giacobbe Dejas. He died a miserable death, as he deserved to. You had better take a purgative to-morrow; it's absolutely necessary after a sea voyage." Costantino looked at him without speaking. "You think I'm crazy?" shouted the doctor, going close to him, and shaking his umbrella. "A purgative! do you understand? A purgative!" "I heard you," said Costantino. "Oh, so much the better! Well, I've heard that _you_ say you want to go away. Go-o-o----! Go, by all means. Go to the devil. But first of all, go to the cemetery, go to that dunghill you call a cem-e-te-ry; and dig and scratch like a dog, and tear up Giacobbe Dejas's bones, and gnaw them." He ground his teeth as though he were crunching bones; it was both grotesque and horrible, and Costantino could do nothing but stare at him in utter amazement. "What are you looking at me like that for? You've always been a fool, my dear fellow--my dear donkey! Just look at you now! calm and amiable as a pope! They've robbed you of everything you possessed, betrayed you, murdered you, knocked you about among them as though you had been a dried skeleton, and there you sit, bland and stupid as ever! Why don't you do something? Why don't you go to that vile woman, and take her, and her mother, and her mother-in-law by the hair of their heads, and tie them to the tails of the cows they offer to give you as a charity, and set fire to their petticoats, and turn them loose in the fields so that they may spread destruction in every direction? Do you understand? I say, do you understand, idiot?" He flung the words in the other's face, his breath heavy with absinthe, his eyes bloodshot. Costantino recoiled, trembling, but the doctor turned to go. On the threshold he paused again and shook his umbrella. "You make me long to break your neck!" he cried. "Men such as you deserve precisely the treatment they get! Well, take a purgative, anyhow, stupid." "Yes, I'll do that," said Costantino, with a laugh, but at the same time the doctor's words made a deep impression on him. There were times, indeed, when he felt utterly desperate. He said over and over again that he meant to go away, but, as a fact, he did not know where to go. Nor, on the other hand, could he see what was to become of him should he decide to remain on in the village. He said to himself: "I have no home, and there is no one belonging to me; for this one day every one rushes to see me out of curiosity, but by to-morrow they will all have forgotten my very existence. I am like a bird that has lost its nest. What is there for me to do?" All the time, though, those words of the doctor's kept ringing in his head. Yes, truly, that would be something for him to do. Go there, fall suddenly upon them like a bolt out of heaven, and utterly destroy all those people who had destroyed his life! "No, Costantino," resumed Uncle Isidoro, as they sat at table, eating the neighbour's white bread and sausage. "No; she is not happy. I have never looked her full in the face _since_, and it gives me a queer feeling to meet her, as though I were meeting the devil! And yet, do you know, I can't help feeling sorry for her. She has a little girl that they tell me is like a young bean, it is so thin and puny. How could a child born in mortal sin be pretty? It was baptised just like a bastard, the priest wouldn't go back to the house, and the people were sneering all along the street." "Ah, do you remember my child?" asked Costantino, cutting off a slice of fat, yellow bacon. "_He_ was not like a bean, not he! Ah, if he had only lived!" "It may be better so," said the fisherman, beginning to moralise. "Life is full of suffering; better to die innocent, to go--to fly--up there, above the blue sky, to the paradise that lies beyond the clouds, beyond the storms, beyond all the miseries of human life. Drink something, Costantino; this wine is not very good, but there is still some left.--Well, I remember last year on Assumption Day, Giacobbe Dejas asked me to take dinner with him. He was afraid of me; he thought I knew, and he wanted his sister and me to get married. Oh! if you could just see that little woman you wouldn't laugh. She went with the priest and me to Nuoro. May the Lord desert me in the hour of death, if ever I saw a more courageous woman in all my life! She hardly seemed to touch the ground! Well, she's gone all shrunken and shrivelled now, don't you know--like a piece of fruit that dries up on the tree before it is ripe. I go all the time to see her, and just to amuse her I say: 'Well, little barley-grain! Shall we two get married? She smiles and I smile, but we feel more like crying! Who could ever have imagined such a thing?--I mean, here was Giacobbe Dejas, seemingly happy and contented; he was getting rich, and he talked of being married. And then--all of a sudden--pum!--down he comes, like a rotten pear! Such is life! Bachissia Era sold her daughter, thinking to improve her condition, and now she is hungrier than ever. Giovanna Era did what she did, imagining that she was going to have a heaven upon earth, and instead of that, she's like a frog with a stick run through it!" "But does he _beat_ her?" asked Costantino heavily. "No, he doesn't do that; but there are worse things than beating. She's treated just like a servant, or, rather, like a slave. You know how they used to treat their slaves in the old times? Well, that's the way she's treated in that house." "Well, let her burst! Here's to her damnation!" cried Costantino, raising his glass to his lips. It gave him a cruel pleasure to hear of Giovanna's misery, such pleasure as a child will sometimes feel at seeing an unpopular playmate receive a whipping. Dinner over the two men went out and stretched themselves at full length beneath the wild fig-tree. It was a hot, breathless noontide; the air, smelling of poppies and filled with grey haze, was like that of a summer midday, and there were bees flying about, sounding their little trombones. Costantino, completely worn out by this time, fell asleep almost immediately. The fisherman, on the contrary, could not close an eye. A green grasshopper was skipping about among the blades of grass, giving its sharp "tic, tic." Isidoro, stretching out one hand, tried to catch it, his thoughts dwelling all the while on Costantino. "I know why he wants to go away," he ruminated. "He still cares for her, poor boy; and if he stays here he will just suffer the way San Lorenzo did on his gridiron. There he lies, poor fellow, like a sick child! Ah, what have they done to him? Torn him to pieces--Ah-ha! I have you now!" but just as he was about to pull the grasshopper apart, it occurred to him that possibly it too, like Costantino, had had its trials, and he let it go. A shadow fell across the foot of the path; Uncle Isidoro, recognising Priest Elias, sprang to his feet, went to meet him, and drew him into the hut, so as not to awaken Costantino. The latter, however, was a light sleeper, and, aroused presently by the sound of their voices, he too got up. As he approached the hut he realised that he was being talked about. "It is far better that he should go," the priest was saying in a serious tone. "Far, far better." Costantino could not tell why, but at the sound of these words his heart sank within him like lead. However, he did not go. The days followed one another and people soon ceased to trouble the returned exile; before long he was able to go about the village as much as he chose without being stared at, even by the gossips and ragamuffins. With the savings laid up in prison he purchased a stock of leather, soles, and thread, but he never began to work. Every day he bought a supply of meat and fruit and wine, eating and drinking freely himself, and urging Isidoro to do the same. He was in great dread lest the villagers might think that he was living on the old man's charity, and wanted to let them see that he had money and was openhanded, not only with him, but with every one else; so he would conduct parties of his acquaintances to the tavern where he would make them all tipsy and get so himself at times, and then the tales he would relate of his prison experiences were marvellous indeed to hear. In this way his little store of money melted rapidly away, and when Isidoro scolded him, all he would say was: "Well, I have no children nor any one else to consider, so let me alone." He was counting, moreover, on the inheritance left by his murdered uncle, which the other heirs had agreed to resign without forcing him to have recourse to the law. "Then," said he, "I shall take myself off. I am going to give you a hundred scudi. Uncle Isidoro." But poor old Isidoro did not want his scudi nor anything else except to see him restored to the Costantino of other days--good, industrious, and frank. Frank he certainly was not at present, and when, occasionally, the fisherman surprised him with tears in his eyes, his sore, old heart leaped for joy. "What is it, child of grace?" he would ask. But Costantino would merely laugh, even when the tears were actually running down his cheeks. It was heartrending. Sometimes the two would go off together to fish for leeches; that is, Isidoro would stand patiently knee-deep in the yellow, stagnant water, while Costantino, stretched on his back among the rushes, would spin yarns about his former fellow-prisoners, gazing off, meanwhile, towards the horizon with an unaccountable feeling of homesickness. Go away? go away? Did he not long to go away? Did he not, up there, beneath that fateful sky, in the deathly solitude of the uplands, under the eternal surveillance of those colossal sphinxes, feel as though an iron circle were pressing upon him? Every object, from the blades of grass along the roadside to the very mountain-peaks, reminded him of the past. Each night he prowled around Giovanna's house like some stealthy animal, and one evening he saw her tall figure issue forth, and move down in the direction of _their_ cottage. This was the first time that he had seen her, and he recognised her instantly, notwithstanding that it was by the fading light of a damp, overcast evening. His heart beat violently, and each throb gave him an added pang, a fresh memory, a new impulse of despair. His instinct was to throw himself upon her then and there, clasp her in a close embrace,--kill her. Before long, however, he was no longer satisfied to catch only furtive glances, secretly and in the dark; he became possessed with the desire to see her and to be seen of her in broad daylight; but she never left the house, and he dared not go by there in the daytime. On another evening, a Saturday, he heard Brontu's laugh ring out from the portico, and he fancied that _hers_ mingled with it. His eyes filled, and he had much the same sensation of nausea as on that first morning of the sea voyage when he woke up ill. All this time he continued to feign the utmost indifference, without quite knowing why he did so. The Orlei people had, however, become almost hateful to him, even Uncle Isidoro. Sometimes he asked himself in wonder why he had ever come back. "I am going away," he said one day to the fisherman, gazing across the interminable stretch of uplands to the blue and crimson sky beyond, against which the thickets of arbute seemed to float like green clouds. "I have written to a friend of mine--Burrai--he can do anything, you know; he could have gotten me a pardon, even if I had really been guilty." "You have told me all that before; I am tired of hearing it," said Isidoro. "All the same, I notice that he has never even answered your letter." "He is going to get me a position; yes, I really mean to go. But tell me why is it that the priest is so anxious for it? Is he afraid that I will kill Brontu Dejas?" "Yes, he is. He's afraid of just that." "No, he's not; that's not it. I said to him: 'Priest Elias, you must know perfectly well that if I had wanted to kill any one, I would have done it right off.' And all he said was: 'Go away, go away! It would be far better.' What do you think about it, Uncle Fisherman; shall I go or not?" "I don't think anything about it," answered the other in a tone of strong disapproval. "What I do think is that you are an idle dog. Why aren't you at work, tell me that? It's because you do nothing but think all the time of your good-for-nothing Burrai, who, however, never gives you a thought." "Oh! he doesn't give me a thought?" said Costantino, piqued. "Well, I'll just let you see whether he does or not. Look here!" He drew a letter from the inside pocket of his coat, and proceeded to read it aloud. It was from Burrai, written at Rome, where the ex-marshal had opened a little shop for the sale of Sardinian wines. Naturally, being himself, he had improved upon the facts, and announced that he was the proprietor of a large and flourishing establishment; he invited Costantino to pay him a visit, and reproached him for not having come at once to Rome, where, he said, he could find him a position without difficulty. The fisherman's blue eyes grew round with innocent wonder. "To think, only to think!" he exclaimed. "And you never told me a word about it! What made you hide the letter? How much does it cost to go to Rome?" "Oh! only about fifty lire." "And have you got that much?" "Why, of course I have!" "Then go, go by all means!" exclaimed the old man, stretching his arms out towards the horizon. They were both silent for a moment. The fisherman, bending his head, gazed at the pebbles lying at his feet, while Costantino stared absently ahead of him. Beyond the brook, the tall, yellow, meadow-grass was bowing in the wind, and the long stems of the golden oats rippled against the blue background of the sky. Uncle Isidoro made up his mind that the moment had come to tell Costantino plainly why all his friends wanted him to leave the village. "Giovanna," he began quietly, "does not love her husband; you and she might meet----" "She and I might meet? Well, and if we did, what then?" "Nothing; you might, that's all." "Oh, nothing!" cried Costantino, and his voice rang out scornfully in the profound stillness; "nothing! I tell you that I despise that low woman. I don't want her." "You don't want her, and yet you hang about her house all the time, like a fly about the honey-pot." "Ah, you know about that?" said Costantino, somewhat crestfallen. "It's not true, though,--well--yes; perhaps it is. But suppose I do hang about her house, what business is it of yours?" "Oh! none at all, but--you had better go away." "I am going. I suppose the truth is you are getting tired of having me on your hands!" "Costantino, Costantino!" exclaimed the old man in a hurt voice. Costantino pulled up a tuft of rushes, threw it from him, and gazed again into the distance. His face was working as it had done on the morning of his return, after he had closed the door of Isidoro's hut; his brain swam, once or twice he gulped down the bitter saliva that rose in his throat; then he spoke: "Well, after all, why does the priest insist so on my going? Am I not actually her husband? Suppose even that she were to come back to me? Wouldn't it be coming back to her own husband?" "If she were to come back to you, my dear fellow, it would be Brontu Dejas either killing you or having you arrested." "Well, you needn't be afraid; I don't want her. She's a fallen woman, as far as I am concerned. I shall go off somewhere, to a distance, and marry some one else." "Oh, no! You would never do that," murmured Isidoro appealingly. "You are too good a Christian." "No; I would never do that," repeated Costantino mechanically. "Never in the world; you are far too good a Christian." The old man said it again, but without conviction. The experience of a long life was battling with the tenets of his simple faith. "If he does not do it," he sighed to himself, "it will not be merely because he is a good Christian." FOOTNOTE: [9] Head of cattle. CHAPTER XVII The July evening fell softly, tranquilly, like a bluish veil. Costantino, seated on the stone bench outside the fisherman's hut, was thoughtfully counting on his fingers. Yes; it had been sixty-four days since his return. Six-ty-four days! It seemed like yesterday, and--it seemed like a century! The exile's fustian coat had grown worn and shabby; his face, dark and gloomy; and his heart--yes, his heart as well, had worn away from day to day, from hour to hour. Eaten into by misery, by rage and passion, it, too, had turned black, like a thing on the verge of decay. A habit of dissembling, a result of prison life, had clung to him; so that now he found it impossible to be really open with any one, much as he sometimes longed to unburden his heart; while the constant effort to conceal his feelings harassed him and added to his general misery. A frozen void seemed to surround him, like a great sea, calm, but boundless, stretching away in all directions from a shipwrecked mariner. For two months now he had been swimming in this sea, and he was wearied out; his forces were spent. Scan the horizon as he would, his soul could espy no friendly shore across that bleak and desolate expanse; no prospect of an end to the unequal struggle; the icy water and the measureless void were slowly swallowing him up. Every day he would talk of going away, but nothing more. It was a pretence, like all else that he did; in his heart he knew perfectly well that now he would never go. Why should he? On this side of the water, or on that, life would always be the same. He cared for no one; he hated no one, and he felt that he had become as base and self-centred as his late comrades in prison. Even Uncle Isidoro, who had meant so much to him at a distance, now, in the close companionship of daily intercourse, had become an object of indifference, at times almost of dislike. When the old man went off on his fishing expeditions, or on the circuits which he made from time to time through the country to dispose of his wares, Costantino felt as though a weight had been lifted from him; the semi-paternal oversight which the other exercised over him having, in fact, come to both frighten and irritate him. On this particular evening the fisherman was away, and Costantino was sensible of this feeling of freedom from an irksome restraint. Now he could do whatever came into his head, without any one to preach, or that disagreeable sensation of being watched, which, possibly as a result of the long years spent in prison, the mere presence of the old man was sufficient to excite. Moreover, he was expecting a visitor. Although he professed, now, to despise all women, and did, in fact, usually avoid them as much as possible, he had allowed himself to be drawn into relations with a strange creature--a half-witted girl--who lived near Giovanna. She had surprised him one night prowling about the Dejas house and had persuaded him to go home with her. From this individual he got all the gossip of the white house, and he took refuge with her whenever he thought he had been seen crossing the common. He was waiting for her now at Isidoro's hut, in the owner's absence, but he looked down on her, and her foolish talk jarred on him. Presently she arrived, and Costantino told her to sit down out there on the stone bench beside him. "It's hot inside, and there are fleas, and spiders, and--devils. Stay here in the fresh air," he said, without looking at her. "But we'll be seen," she objected, in a deep, rough voice. "All right; suppose we are! It makes no difference to me, why should it to you?" "But, as it happens, it does make a difference to me." "Why?" he said, raising his voice. "Men cannot matter, since they are all sinners as well; and as for God, he can see us just as well inside as out." "Oh, go away!" she said, but without any show of anger. "You've been drinking." Then she turned away and went into the hut. Striking a light, she looked into the cupboard where the food was usually kept, and, as Costantino still did not come, she returned to the door and called to him: "If you don't come at once I shall go away; but you had better be careful; I have something to tell you." He jumped up, and, going inside, took her in his arms. The girl broke into a wild laugh. "Ah-ha! you come quick enough now. That brought my little shorn lamb, eh?" She was tall and stout, with a small head and a dark, diminutive face, red lips, and greenish eyes--not ugly, exactly--but rather repellent. Though she never drank anything herself, she gave an impression of being always a little tipsy, and was very prone to think that other people were so, in fact. Still laughing, she went again to the cupboard. "It's empty," she said. "Nothing there at all; and, do you know, I am hungry!" "If you'll wait a moment I'll go and buy something; but first, you must tell me--" She turned abruptly, laid one hand on his breast, and with the other began to rain blows that were anything but playful. "Ah, you want to know--crocodile. You want to know, do you? That's what brought you in, is it? Go back--enjoy the air, poor, dear little lamb! You want me to tell you? You think it is something about Giovanna Era, eh? And you came in for that, and not to see me?" "Let go," he said, seizing her hands. "You hit hard; the devil take you! Yes, that's what I came in for--well?" "I shan't tell you a word, so there!" "Now, Mattea," he said gently, "don't make me angry; you are not ill-natured. See now, I am going off to buy you whatever you want. What shall it be? What would you like to have?" He was like a child promising to be good if only it can have what it wants. And, in fact, at that moment he did want something; he wanted it badly, and not a nice thing, either. What he wanted was to be told that Brontu had beaten his wife, or that she had met with an accident, or that overwhelming disaster of one sort or another had engulfed the house of Dejas, root and branch. It was, therefore, somewhat disappointing when Mattea, closing one eye, announced that some cattle had been stolen, and that Aunt Martina, on hearing the news, had rushed off like a crazy thing to ascertain the exact extent of the loss. "She will be up at the folds all night, and your wife is all alone--do you understand--alone?" "Well, what difference does that make to me?" "Stupid! You can go to see her.--You won't go? Why, that's what I came expressly to tell you! Of course you'll go; I want you to. I'm sorry for you. After all, you are her husband." "I'm not. I'm not any one's husband," he said, with a shrug. "I thought you would have something very different to tell me. Now--what shall I get you? Beans--milk--bacon--cheese?" "If you're not any one's husband, then marry me," she said, in a low, unsteady voice, like a person who has been drinking. Costantino coughed, and spat on the ground. Instantly a gleam of intelligence shot into her usually dull, expressionless eyes. "Why do you do that?" she asked sharply. "You think, perhaps, that she is better than I?" He flushed, and then a heartsick feeling came over him. "Yes," he said; "you are worse, or--better than she." "What do you say?" "If you are not lying at this moment, and didn't come here to lay a trap for me, with this story of her being alone--well, then you are better than she." "Why should I lay a trap for you? I'm sorry for you, that's all. I swear by the memory of my dead, that if you go there this evening you'll run no risk whatever." "Who can believe you, woman, when you don't respect even the dead?" Mattea, angry and offended, started to leave the hut; but he held her back. "A low dog," she said scornfully. "I take pity on you, and you speak to me like that! What have you to reproach me with? What, I say?" She threw her head back with a certain pride, knitting her brows, and turning upon Costantino a look that was altogether new. He stared back at her for a moment, amazed that a woman of her class should speak in that tone, should hold up her head, and dare to look at him with such an expression. Then he began to laugh. "I'm off now," he said, "but I'll be back in a moment. I'll get some wine too, even though you don't drink it. Wait for me here--wait, I say," he repeated roughly, as she followed him to the door. "Don't bother me." She stood still, and he went out, but before he had gone a dozen steps he heard her deep voice calling him back. Returning, he saw the tip of her nose through the crack of the door, and one eye, regarding him with its habitual look of dull stolidity. "What do you want, squint-eyed goat?" "If you are going to her, there is no use in making me wait here." "Go to the devil whom you came from!" exclaimed Costantino. "I would as soon think of going to her house as you would of going to church. I say you are to wait!" and he made as if to tweak her nose, but she quickly drew back and shut the door. Ten minutes later Costantino returned, but his strange guest had disappeared. Thinking that she might be hiding somewhere outside, he looked for her, calling in a low voice and telling her that he had bread and meat and fruit, but in vain; she had taken herself off. An intense stillness reigned all about the hut. Through the night, now completely fallen, came only the sound of the fig-leaves rustling mysteriously, as though an invisible hand were shaking a piece of stiff silk. Nothing else could be heard, and nothing could be seen, except the stars shining brilliantly in the warm sky. Costantino felt much aggrieved by Mattea's defection. As lonely as an outcast dog, what on earth was there for him to do throughout that interminable evening? He was not sleepy, having, in fact, taken a long nap in the afternoon, and he had nowhere to go. He began to eat and drink, talking aloud from time to time in a querulous voice. "If she imagines that I am coming to see her, she's green,"--silence--"as green as a rose in springtime. She's crazy." Another silence. Then--"Coming to see her! Not I; neither her nor the other one. Mattea is sickening; she seems to be a sort of animal, and that's all there is about it." He swore, and then gave a light, purposeless laugh, such as people give when they are alone. All the while he kept swallowing great gulps of wine, and each time that he emptied his glass he would thrust out his lips and exclaim: "Ah--ah--ah!" rubbing his chest up and down to express the delicious sensation caused by the wine as it flowed down his throat. Soon he began to feel more cheerful. "She may go to the devil--or to hell, if she wants to!" he exclaimed, thinking of Mattea and her sudden disappearance. But all the while he knew perfectly well that he was forcing himself to dwell despitefully upon her, in order to keep from thinking of the other. At last he went out, and, stretching himself upon the stone bench, allowed his thoughts to take their own course. "She is alone," he reflected. "Well, what do I care? I loathe her and I wouldn't go there, not if she were to give me a chest full of gold! What should I do with gold, anyway?" He put the question to himself in profound dejection, but immediately began to hum a gay little song, having got into a way of trying to fool himself as well as other people: "'Little heart, dear heart, I await thee day by day, But, when thou seest me, Hovereth near the bird of prey.'" For a time the sound of his own voice--low, monotonous,--arrested his attention; then his thoughts once more asserted themselves. "If I were to go there--well, what would happen? Sin, perhaps. But am I not her husband? I have not the remotest idea of going there, though; I should think not! Uncle Isidoro makes me laugh--old idiot! 'Go away, go away,' [imitating Uncle Isidoro's voice], 'if you don't go away, something dreadful is sure to happen! Brontu Dejas will kill you, or have you arrested!' Well, if he does, what then?" He began to sing again, the sharp rustle of the fig-leaves, almost like the clash of metal blades, accompanying the subdued murmur of his voice: "'When you see life Bloom in January, When you see a swineherd Making cheese of pork----'" He shifted his position and his heavy eyelids closed, his head, supported on one hand, rolling from side to side. "Well, what then?" he repeated, then opened his eyes, as though startled by the sound of his own voice. They closed again presently, and he went on talking to himself: "No; I would never have her again for my wife. For me she is just an abandoned woman. She has been living with another man, and, as long as she has gone to live with him, she might come back and live with me, and then go and live with some one else! She's no better than Mattea, and I spit upon them both!" He opened his eyes and spat on the ground. At the moment he had a genuine scorn of Giovanna, and yet, at the very same time, tender, distant memories surged up in his breast. He remembered a kiss he had once given her as she lay asleep, and how she had opened her eyes with a startled look, exclaiming: "Oh, I thought it was some one else!" Well, what manner of foolishness was this for him to be thinking of now? He was a simpleton, neither more nor less than a simpleton! Moreover, how could he know, supposing for a moment that he were to go, whether Giovanna would receive him or drive him away? The man's mind was neither trained nor developed, yet, at that moment, he was reasoning as a much more complex nature might have done. He hoped that she would not receive him; he knew that for himself there was nothing for it but to go on living and suffering; yet he felt that, should he go to her and be repulsed, at least a ray of light would penetrate the cold, dreary void that encircled him. But he wanted her, he longed for her still. From the day he had lost her his whole being had suffered like a crushed and twisted limb that still goes on living. Yet, mingled with this sense of longing there was a spiritual breath as well, the instinct of the immortal soul which never wholly dies out, even in the most degraded. He dreamed of Giovanna an honest woman, lost forever in this world, but restored to him in eternity. Now, if she were to betray her second husband, even for the sake of her first, she would not--could not--be an honest woman! So thought Costantino, and yet---- It was, perhaps, ten o'clock, and he had been lying for half an hour or more on the stone bench, when a mournful strain broke in upon the stillness. It was the blind man, singing and accompanying himself upon his rude instrument. His voice, clear enough, but sad and monotonous, vibrated through the night air with a sobbing suggestion of homesickness that was hardly human, as though it were the wail of a lost soul, recalling the few hours of happiness spent upon earth. The music seemed to be a cry for light, happiness, the joy of living, all those things whose existence the blind youth half understood, but could never hope to realise--which the dead have lost, and can never hope to repossess. Costantino shivered and got up; the voice and the accompaniment began to die away, growing gradually fainter and fainter, and ceasing at last altogether. He felt a great wave of agony and tenderness surge up in his breast. In the darkness, the silence, the unutterable loneliness that surrounded him, he, too, felt an overmastering longing, like the blind man's, for light; an agonising homesickness, like the dead recalling their brief experience of life. He turned and began to walk in the direction of the village. At first he seemed to be in a dream, although he heard beneath his feet the rustle of the dead leaves and stubble blown by the wind about Isidoro's hut. He rubbed his eyelids and little violet-coloured electric circles seemed to flash and swim in the air. Soon though, his eyes becoming used to the darkness, he discerned clearly the light line of the road, the black cottages, the great, empty void above, where the stars hung like drops of gold, ready to fall. He walked steadily on, knowing perfectly whither he was bound, and never wavering for a single instant. Here and there, on the thresholds of cottages whose owners were too poor to indulge in the luxury of a light, little groups of people sat, enjoying the freshness of the night air. Occasionally the high-pitched voice of a woman would float across the road, recounting some piece of gossip, or trifling incident of domestic life. In a lonely angle Costantino espied a pair of lovers; the man, hearing his footsteps approach, tried to hide his companion, who quickly turned her face to the wall. Costantino walked on, but presently he stopped and half turned, thinking he would give the two young people a fright by calling out: "I am going to tell your father right away!" But the fear of attracting attention, and being himself discovered, deterred him, and he went on. When he discerned the black mass of the almond-tree, rearing itself from beside the path beyond Aunt Bachissia's cottage, his heart gave a sudden bound, and then stood still; it was so like a great head with rough, shaggy locks, thrusting itself out, intently watching for him to appear. He had fully determined to pass the tree, cross the common, enter the Dejas house, and speak to Giovanna; it all seemed perfectly simple and plain, and he was prepared to do it; yet he was frightened, more than frightened--terrified. A flexible, girlish voice floated out into the night: "No matter how often you may say it, it's not true!" He looked all about him; no one was to be seen, and he went on, his nervousness increasing with every step. Crossing the common, he examined Aunt Bachissia's cottage; then the white house; then Mattea's hovel; from the last a faint light shone; the two others were in total darkness. Again the idea crossed his mind that Mattea might be playing him a trick; or, perhaps, Aunt Bachissia was with Giovanna, or the latter might already have gone to bed, and would decline to open the door! Nevertheless, he walked steadily on, and up on the portico. Instantly the figure of Giovanna became apparent, seated on the doorstep. At the same moment she recognised him and leaped to her feet, rigid with terror. His voice, low, agitated, at once reassured her. "Don't be frightened. Are you alone?" "Yes." A second later they were in each other's arms. EPILOGUE A year elapsed. One night, when Brontu was away from home, Aunt Martina heard, or thought she heard, a low murmur of voices in Giovanna's room. Had Brontu come back? the old woman wondered, and if so, why? Could anything have happened at the sheepfolds? Tormented by the thought, she finally got up. The door was open, and she listened a moment. Yes, undoubtedly some one was talking in Giovanna's room. Not wishing to strike a light, she attempted to cross the room that separated her own chamber from Giovanna's, in the dark. She made a misstep, however, and, trying to recover herself, overthrew a chair. "Holy Mary!" she muttered, setting it right again. Then she groped her way to the door, felt for the handle, and tried to open it. It was locked. "What do you want?" demanded Giovanna's voice instantly. "Has Brontu got back?" "No; why?" "I thought I heard some one talking. Why have you got the door locked?" "Is it locked? I must have done it without thinking," said Giovanna innocently. "I'll open it right away; just wait a moment. I was talking to the baby; she wouldn't go to sleep." "Mariedda!" called the grandmother. But there was no response. "Is she asleep now?" "She is just falling asleep." In the pause that ensued a painful drama was enacted in the breasts of the two women. "I will get up now and open the door," said Giovanna presently in a strained voice. But the old woman made no reply. Motionless, a cold chill creeping through her, she _felt_ the horrible truth flash into her mind like a sudden glare of blinding light. Giovanna must have a lover, and that lover could be none other than Costantino Ledda. In that moment of searching illumination a thousand little incidents to which she had paid no heed at the time, a thousand little unconsidered trifles, rose up to confront her, and she trembled from head to foot, in a paroxysm of grief and rage. Yet, when Giovanna repeated: "I will open the door right away," she was able to control herself, and answer quietly: "It's not worth while; stay where you are." Then she turned, and, crossing the room again in the dark, said to herself with a sort of calm fury: "Now is the time to show them that old Martina is no fool!" Her first impulse was to hurry downstairs and look out to see if any one had climbed from Giovanna's window to the roof below, which, in turn, gave on another and still lower roof. But she restrained herself, reflecting very sensibly that if Giovanna saw that she was suspected she would instantly be on her guard. "No, no; this is a time to dissemble, old Martina; to pretend, spy, listen, watch--and then?" What was to happen afterwards? The _afterwards_ suggested such a multitude of wretched possibilities that the old woman threw herself on her bed in a torment of agonised conjecture. What would Brontu do if he knew? Poor Brontu! With all his violent temper he was such a good fellow at bottom, and so tremendously in love with Giovanna! But there it was; he was so much in love with Giovanna that he would be perfectly capable of committing some crime should he suspect her constancy. Then, what would become of him? thought Aunt Martina. "Ah, it will be far better for him to know nothing of all this trouble. I will implore Giovanna to be loyal, and not to betray her poor husband. And then--suppose, after all, I should be mistaken! Suppose she really was talking to the baby! Eh, no, no! Some one else was there, and it could have been no one but Costantino. Oh, wretched creature! accursed beggar! Is this your gratitude towards those who have fed and clothed and nourished you? But never mind, we will pay you back! We will drive you out of this house with a whip, naked as when you came into it!" And thus, torn by successive impulses of hatred, pity, fury, and despair. Aunt Martina dragged through the weary night. One significant circumstance she did recall--that Costantino was said to be on good terms with Aunt Bachissia, Giovanna's mother. Some time previously he had set to work in earnest; had rented a little shop, and was making a good deal of money by his trade of shoemaking. A repulsive thought came into the old woman's head. What if Aunt Bachissia knew and encouraged her daughter's intimacy with her first husband! "The old harpy detests us," said Brontu's mother to herself. "Perhaps Costantino makes her presents!" Daybreak found her still wide-eyed and sleepless. Getting up, she went out to examine the wall above which rose the roofs leading to Giovanna's window. Not a trace was to be found of any one having been on it. The dawn was exquisitely tranquil and beautiful; the village was still asleep, and the fields lay bathed in soft grey haze beneath a silver sky. Aunt Martina drew a deep breath; she felt as though she had awakened from a horrible dream; the utter peace and serenity of the early morning seemed to communicate itself to her distracted spirit. Then, on a sudden, happening to raise her eyes to Giovanna's window, she saw the young woman watching her. Instantly the conviction flashed across her that she too had lain awake the entire night; that she too was looking now to see if any tell-tale traces remained to betray the fact that she had had a visitor, and more than that, that she now was fully aware of Aunt Martina's suspicions. Across the space that divided them, the two women exchanged a look of mutual fear and hatred. War was declared! * * * * * The battle opened in ominous calm, each side marshalling its forces in silence and secrecy. Aunt Martina's efforts were directed to allaying Giovanna's suspicions in the hope that she might some day surprise her and her lover together. Giovanna, perfectly awake to her mother-in-law's tactics, pretended not to notice anything, but at the same time proceeded with great caution in her relations with Costantino. He had entirely altered his mode of life; he now worked regularly, and was doing very well; but underneath everything was a sense of unutterable melancholy, which he was never able wholly to throw off. "I am doing everything I can to provoke Brontu to break with me," said Giovanna one day. "I want him to apply for a divorce, so as to be rid of me; then I will go back to you, beloved, and nothing shall ever part us again. I will be your servant, your slave--and make you forget all your past sorrows." But Costantino only smiled wearily. It was true that he still loved Giovanna, but it was a very different kind of love from that which she had formerly inspired in him. Now, there was more of passion, perhaps, but it did not go so deep, and he knew, though he could not tell her so, that even were she free to return to him as his wife, he could never be happy again as in the old days. She was not the woman to whom he had given his heart, but another and a very different person. One who, having been false to both husbands in succession, was now, perhaps, deceiving them simultaneously. Often Costantino was seized with an access of rage against the entire human race, Giovanna included. He would have liked to murder some one--Brontu, or Aunt Bachissia, or even Giovanna, in order to avenge himself for what he had been made to suffer. And yet, all the time, he knew himself to be quite incapable of doing anything brutal or violent, and raged and fumed the more at his own weakness. His heart seemed to have sunk into a state of torpor, and to have lost the power to enjoy acutely. Uncle Isidoro was now constantly urging him to marry again, much as such an act would be contrary to his own principles. "I have one wife already," Costantino would reply. "What could I do with another? Have her betray me too? All women are exactly alike." Then Uncle Isidoro would sigh, and remain silent. He was in constant dread lest some new tragedy should befall. He was aware, partly from intuition and partly because Costantino himself allowed him to have an inkling of the truth, that the young man was holding secret intercourse with his former wife, and his daily fear was of some explosion. Thus, he argued to himself that if Costantino could only be induced to marry some gentle, affectionate young woman, who would bear him children, he would come in time to forget the other one, and find rest and peace. To these suggestions, however, Costantino only gave the same weary smile that had now become habitual. "Are you afraid that I will murder some one?" he asked, divining the old man's nervous terrors. "No, no; there is no need to feel alarmed now; matters are going too much to my taste just at present for me to do anything to disturb the current." The current was, however, in a fair way to be disturbed after that night on which Aunt Martina made her discovery. On the following day Costantino went, as his frequent custom now was, to Aunt Bachissia's cottage. He had no liking for the old woman who had been chiefly instrumental in bringing about Giovanna's divorce; there were even moments when the thought of strangling his ex-mother-in-law got into his blood, filling his veins with a sensation of almost voluptuous joy. But he went there, nevertheless, mainly because he took a dreary pleasure in living over the past in that little cottage where he had once been so happy. Moreover, he enjoyed listening to Aunt Bachissia's never-ending abuse of everything connected with the house of Dejas. Did the old woman know of her daughter's renewed relations with Costantino? Neither of them had said a word to her on the subject; yet, like Isidoro, she suspected how matters stood, though, unlike him, she made no effort to interfere. Costantino had made her a present of a pair of shoes, and from time to time he performed other little services for her. Had he asked her to allow him to meet Giovanna in her house, it is quite possible that she would have offered no objection; but up to the present time he had neither told nor asked her anything. On this day, however, he arrived visibly anxious and perturbed, and Aunt Bachissia, who was sitting by the door spinning, laid down her spindle and gave him a steady look out of her sharp little eyes. Night was falling, and Costantino, who had worked hard all day, was tired, sad, unhappy. The soft brilliance of the summer night, the silence of the little house, the peaceful solitude of the common, the warm, sweet breath of the evening, all combined to create a flood of homesickness for the past, and an acute sense of present misery that was well-nigh unbearable. He threw himself down on a stool and rested his elbows on his knees and his forehead on his interlocked hands. For a few moments neither of them spoke; the man was thinking of Malthineddu, of his little dead child; he seemed to see him then, playing before the door, and hot tears trembled in his eyes. "Do you know," said Aunt Bachissia suddenly, "the old colt is going crazy?" "Who?" asked Costantino. "Who? Why, the old miser, Martina Dejas. She got up out of her bed last night, and went and banged on my Giovanna's door. She said she heard some one talking to her. Upon my soul, fancy such a thing! She has gone entirely mad; she always was half so." "Ah!" was all that Costantino said. "Listen, my soul," said Aunt Bachissia, lowering her voice. "Giovanna tells me that the old colt suspects----" "What?" asked Costantino, raising his head quickly. "Suspects that you and Giovanna--you understand? She has not said a word, the old maniac, but Giovanna has guessed that she has some idea in her head, and on that account----" "I understand," said Costantino. He did understand. Evidently Giovanna had taken this method of warning him that they would have to be prudent. "And so, my soul," Aunt Bachissia went on, "for the present it will be as well for you to stop coming here--just so as not to arouse suspicions. I will go every once in a while to see you--for a chat, you know. Ah!" she gave a weary sigh, "you--yes, you are a man! Look at you, standing there now, as tall and handsome as a banner! When I think of that little freak of nature--Brontu Dejas--I declare, I wonder what on earth Giovanna could have been thinking of to--forget you. Ah, if she had only listened to me!" Costantino, who had risen and was standing in the doorway, crimsoned with anger when he heard these outrageous lies being calmly offered for his acceptance. "Hold your tongue," he began in a hoarse voice. But Aunt Bachissia was not listening; she was looking intently up at the white house; presently she whispered: "Look, my soul, we are being watched now. Giovanna is right. Do you see the old harpy peering at us? Oh! I could tear out her eyes!" Sure enough the figure of Aunt Martina could be seen lurking in the shadow of the portico. For the moment Costantino, who had never really borne any especial ill-will towards Brontu's mother, felt all the anger, and sorrow, and rebelliousness in his nature concentrate into one bitter longing to do the old woman some bodily harm. He would dearly have liked to make a wild dash across the common, fall upon her without warning, and tear her eyes out, as Aunt Bachissia had said. "Never mind, let her alone," said the latter. "Giovanna has told me that she is doing everything she can to make them ill-use her and drive her out of the house. Then we will apply for another divorce--you, my soul, all you have to do is to be careful and--wait." "What have I to wait for?" he asked roughly. "Nothing can happen now that _I_ want." She said something more, but he was not listening. Standing erect and motionless on the threshold of the door that had once been _his_ door, he stared across at the portico of the Dejas house, feeling even more desolate and forlorn than usual. So, then, his one remaining consolation, that of holding intercourse with Giovanna, was about to be torn from him, and by the same people who had stolen from him everything else that made life pleasant; moreover they might deprive him even of life itself should he continue his relations with her who really was his own wife! Ah, Dejas! accursed race! Yes, now the old mother as well was included in his hatred of that house, and the longing to cross the common, fling himself on the portico, and make the still summer evening resound with her shrill screams of agony, at last overmastered him. With a sudden movement, right in the middle of one of Aunt Bachissia's sentences, he stepped out into the twilight, and with rapid strides began to cross the common. When he had gone about half-way, he stopped, stood motionless for a moment, and then, altering his direction, walked away. Aunt Bachissia watched his figure as it was slowly swallowed up by the shadows; and the silence and languor of the dusk deepened into night. After that evening Costantino visited her cottage no more. * * * * * One day, towards the end of October, Uncle Isidoro Pane had an unexpected visitor. The old fisherman, seated before his fireplace, was getting supper ready for himself and Costantino, who still made his home with him. Outside, the air felt almost cold, the wind was rising, and long, violet-coloured clouds were flying across the clear, greenish, western sky. Uncle Isidoro was thinking sadly of that evening when, amid the chanting of the women, they had interred Giacobbe Dejas in the dungheap. The earthen pot bubbled on the fire, and from without came the melancholy rustling of the fig-tree and the bushes, shaken by the wind. All at once a low knock came on the door. "Who is there?" asked Uncle Isidoro. "_Ave Maria!_" The salutation came from Aunt Martina Dejas, who now, after satisfying herself that the old man was entirely alone, entered and cautiously closed the door behind her. "Oh, Martina! _Grazia plena!_" responded the fisherman, astonished to see who his visitor was. Her head and shoulders were completely enveloped in a petticoat worn in lieu of a shawl; her features were paler and more gaunt even than ordinary, and to Isidoro she seemed to have aged greatly. "Sit down, Martina Dejas," said he politely, offering her a stool. "What good wind blows you here?" "It's an ill wind," she replied. Then, looking all around her, she said: "I want to talk to you privately; can any one hear us? Where is _he_?" "Still at the shop; he does not get back till later." "Listen," said the old woman, seating herself; "you can probably guess what it is that brings me here?" "No, I cannot guess, Martina Dejas," declared the other, though all the time he knew very well. "But why didn't you send for me? I would have gone to your house." "At my house there is some one who has the ears of a hare; she can hear through a stone wall. Now, listen--I don't suppose I have to make you promise not to tell any one? You wouldn't betray my confidence, would you?" "I will not betray you." "You are a man of the Lord, Isidoro Pane; a very dreadful thing has happened; will you help me to set it right?" "If I can," he said, spreading out his arms and hands. "Tell me about it!" The old woman sighed. "Tell you about it! Yes," she said, "that is what I am going to do, Isidoro; but what I have to say burns my lips, and you are the only human being I would breathe it to. A terrible misfortune has overtaken my house. Do you see how old I have grown? For months I have not been able to close my eyes. Giovanna, my daughter-in-law, has a lover--Costantino Ledda. You don't seem surprised!" she added quickly, seeing that the other remained unmoved. "You knew it already! Some one has known about it! Perhaps there are others too--perhaps every one knows the disgrace of my house!" "Easy, easy; don't be frightened. I did not know it, and I don't think any one else does. It may not be true, either, but if it were, and people knew about it--no one would be surprised." "No one would be surprised!" "Certainly not, Martina Dejas; no one at all. Every one knows perfectly well--pardon me if I speak frankly--that Giovanna married your son entirely from motives of self-interest. Now Costantino has come back; _they_ were in love with one another _before_, and now they are in love with one another _after_; it is perfectly natural." "It is perfectly natural! How can you say such things, Isidoro Pane? Is it perfectly natural for a woman to be unfaithful? For a beggar taken in out of the streets to betray her benefactors? Is it perfectly natural that my son, Brontu Dejas, who had the courage to do what not another soul would have dreamed of doing--is it natural that he should be deceived?" "Yes, it is all natural." "Ah," exclaimed Aunt Martina, getting up, her eyes flashing with anger, "then it was quite useless for me to come here!" "Easy, easy!" said the old man again. "Just sit down, Martina, and tell me quietly what brought you. Let us put all these questions aside--they are of no use now, anyhow--and discuss the situation as it is. I think I can guess what it is you want me to do; you want me to use my influence with Costantino to get him to leave your family in peace----?" The old woman sat down again, and opened her heart. Yes, that was what she wanted, that Isidoro should do all he could to induce Costantino to give Giovanna up. "This misery will kill me," she said in conclusion, her voice trembling; "but at least my Brontu will have been spared. Ah, if he should ever find out about it, he is lost! He is sure to kill some one, either Giovanna or Costantino. I am continually haunted by the most horrible presentiments; I keep seeing a smear of blood before my eyes. You will see, Isidoro; you will see! If we don't find some way to stop this shameful thing, some horrible tragedy will occur----!" As she talked, Aunt Martina had been growing steadily paler, until she was now quite livid; her lips trembled, and her eyes gleamed partly with anger, partly with unshed tears. "You alarm me, and you make me feel very sorry for you as well," said Uncle Isidoro gravely. "But see here, whose fault is it all? I remember--this visit of yours brings it all back to me--another visit I once had; it was from Giacobbe Dejas, poor soul. Well, he sat there, just where you are sitting now, and he said almost the same words: 'We must find some way to stop this thing; if we don't, some terrible misfortune will surely happen!' And so we did; we tried our best to stop that shameful thing, but without avail. You and your son, and all the rest of you, were determined to bring about your own ruin. You fell into mortal sin; you broke the laws of God, and now your punishment has come!" "We! only we!" exclaimed the old woman haughtily. "No; the fault belongs to them as well. To Bachissia Era, for her avarice and wickedness in throwing her daughter at Brontu; and to Giovanna, for abandoning her first husband when she loved him, and marrying another out of self-interest! The blame belongs equally to all, or, rather, it does not; it is _theirs_ alone, for we did nothing but what was good. It is theirs, theirs, and I hate every one of them--vile, low-born beggars--traitors. And I can tell you, if Costantino does not give this thing up, he'll bitterly regret it. Beg, implore, adjure him! Tell him not to bring ruin on a respectable house, and then,--if he will not listen----" "Hush, Martina," begged the fisherman, seeing that she was working herself into a fury. "Don't talk foolishness. But tell me, are you really certain that Giovanna and Costantino are meeting each other?" "Absolutely certain. For three months now, as I told you, I have hardly closed my eyes. One night I heard some one talking to Giovanna. She saw right away that I had noticed something, and for a while she was on her guard. But now--now she has thrown aside all prudence. The other day they met at Bachissia Era's cottage; I saw them plainly; and not only that, I heard them; I listened at the door. Then, last night he was with her again; do you understand? actually in my house, beneath my roof! And I--I was trembling so with rage I hardly knew what I was about; but I waited for him below; I was going to speak to him, and then I was going to stab him--kill him, if I could--I had a knife ready in my hand. But do you know, I could not stir a limb! I could not even open my lips when he crept down as stealthily as a thief, first on to the roof, and then the ground, and away! Ah, I am nothing but a poor old woman; I can't do a thing. I was just frightened, and I hid. Giovanna knows that I care more for Brontu than for anything else in the world, and that I would sacrifice everything to spare him, even the honour of our name. And so the ungrateful creature is taking advantage of the tenderest feeling that I have. She is counting on my being afraid to tell him for fear that he will commit murder, and so be ruined forever, and that is why she dares to carry it on. But I--I--Isidoro, I will be capable of doing almost anything if Costantino does not break this off. Tell him so." "But why don't you speak to Giovanna?" asked the fisherman. "Because--well, I'm afraid of her. She follows me about and watches me all the time like a tigress ready to spring. She hates me, just as I hate her at times; and at the very first word she would fly at me and choke me to death. I don't dare to open my mouth. Oh, it is all so horrible! You don't know what days I pass! Death would be far less bitter than the life I am leading." As she spoke these words, Aunt Martina buried her face in her hands and began to sob. A feeling of intense pity rose in the old fisherman's heart. In the days of his most grinding poverty he had never been reduced to tears, and to think of the rich, proud Martina Dejas being actually more wretched than an old pauper like himself! "I will do my very best," he said. "Now go, and try not to worry. You had better get off at once, though; it is time for _him_ to be coming back." She got up, wrapped the petticoat carefully around her head and shoulders, and when Isidoro had looked out to make sure that no one was about who might recognise her, walked slowly away. The air was sharp; the wind was blowing in gusts, tearing the first dead leaves from the trees. Aunt Martina, struggling against it, felt more anxious and depressed even than when she came. It seemed as though that chill, autumn wind that shook and lashed and tore her, were tearing and lashing her spirit as well. The presentiments of evil that she had spoken of as haunting her, were stronger than ever. Passing a certain wretched little hovel, more forlorn and poverty-stricken than any of the others, she shot a keen glance at it, and then quickly lowered her eyes, as though in dread lest some invisible being should read the dark thought of her soul. The owner of this hovel, a poor peasant, had come to her some time before, and had asked her to lend him some money. "Lend it to you!" she had exclaimed derisively. "And how do you propose to repay it?" "If I can't pay you back in money," the man had replied, "there may be some other way of showing my gratitude. You could require any service at all of me." She understood what he meant. He was ready to undertake anything, even the commission of a crime, in order to get the money he needed. But she had not wanted anything, and so had sent him off. Now, passing the forlorn little house, rapidly falling into ruins, through the darkness and wind, and melancholy of the night, she saw again before her the gaunt, resolute figure of this man; his hollow, sunken eyes; his lips, white from hunger; his dark, bony hands, ready for any act by which he might hope to snatch a little ease and comfort out of life; and the horrible schemes of vengeance that were tearing at her selfish old heart began to take a fearful and well-defined shape. Thus she passed on. A dark, forbidding form, enveloped in her black _tunic_, swept by the wind past that wretched hovel like a shadowy portent of evil. * * * * * That same evening Uncle Isidoro reasoned with Costantino at length, urging him by every argument at his command to avert what otherwise must inevitably result in a catastrophe for himself, for Giovanna, and for every one concerned. Costantino regarded the old man steadily with his usual melancholy smile. "What," he demanded, "could happen? You admit yourself that the old harpy will never talk to her son. And--isn't she my wife, Giovanna? Haven't I a perfect right to be with her whenever I choose?" "Ah, child of the Lord," sighed Uncle Isidoro, clasping his hands and shaking his head, "you will be made to suffer for it in some way; you had better look out: Martina Dejas is capable of anything where her son is concerned." A look of hatred came into Costantino's eyes. "Listen," he said; "my heart is like a vessel full of deadly poison; a single drop more and it will overflow. Let them look out who have brought all this on themselves." Then he got up and went out into the night. For hours he wandered aimlessly about, like one who had lost his way, in the wind-swept solitude. Then, about midnight, he found himself, almost without knowing how he got there, as on that first evening, beneath Giovanna's window. He climbed on the shed and tapped. Aunt Martina, lying wakeful and alert, heard everything; heard Costantino approach, heard his knock, heard Giovanna open to him; and then she knew it was hopeless. Without doubt Isidoro had faithfully reported his conversation with her, and this was Costantino's reply: he had come directly and defiantly to Giovanna. "No doubt," thought the old woman bitterly, "he argues that since old Martina lacks the courage to make her son unhappy by telling him the truth, he may as well profit by her weakness. Yes; no doubt that is what he thinks. But, he has forgotten to take account of what the poor old mother may be stirred up to do in order to protect her boy! Now, Costantino Ledda, it is between us two!" One night as Costantino slid down from the shed beneath Giovanna's window, he felt something cold and sharp enter his side; in the darkness he made out the figure of a man, his face covered with a black cloth. He threw himself upon him, and after a brief struggle, breathless, silent, determined, he succeeded in throwing him down and disarming him. Then he let him go without so much as attempting to identify him. What did it signify who the assassin was? Behind that black mask he knew only too well that Aunt Martina's gaunt features looked out, and that it was her hand that had directed the murderous stroke. He made his way back to Isidoro's hut, and, the fisherman being absent on one of his journeys, dressed the wound himself, hiding away like a stricken animal, and concealing what had happened from every one. He did not even undress, but for three days and nights lay stretched on his pallet, a prey to the bitterest reflections. The weather had become cold; outside, the wind whistled among the dry hedges, and, forcing its way into the hut, made the long threads of cobweb swing back and forth, and brought down clouds of dust from the roof. Through the window Costantino could see processions of pale blue clouds scudding across the cold, bright background of the sky; and he said to himself that he wanted to die. Death, death, what else remained for him? The world--his world--was now only a cold and empty void. His feeling for Giovanna could never be what it once had been; he had, indeed, resumed his relations with her, but she could never mean the same thing to him again after having deserted him in his hour of need. The very pleasure which he felt in their clandestine intercourse was due in part to his hatred of the Dejases. The Dejases! The mere thought of the joy which his death would afford them, even now, aroused him and put new life into his veins! "They have stolen everything else of mine," he thought, "and now they want to take my life as well. But they shan't have it; I will kill one of them first." He recalled a trial at which he had once been present, where the accused had proved that he had been attacked, and had struck back in order to defend himself; the jury had acquitted him. "Well, they will acquit me; I shall be striking in self-defence. And if they don't acquit me----!" There arose before him the faces of his fellow-convicts. The _King of Spades_ smiled at him lugubriously, and behind him he could see the gloomy walls of the prison courtyard. At least, though, _they_ had been friendly; they might have been murderers, but they had never tried to assassinate him. On the third day of his seclusion in Uncle Isidore's hut a storm came up. Nothing could exceed the comfortless desolation of the poor little abode. The black clouds travelling overhead seemed to break directly against the small, bare window; presently some big drops fell from the roof; one leak in especial, directly over the black, cold fireplace was so persistent that at last, seeing that the water was forming into a thin stream, the young man reached out and shoved Uncle Isidoro's earthenware saucepan beneath it. Drip, drip, drip, the sound was like the monotonous and melancholy ticking of a clock. Night descended, if anything colder and more dreary than before; the rain came down steadily, and the drops fell into the saucepan with the regularity of a machine. Costantino did not move; he had neither wood wherewith to build a fire, nor any more food, and it did not occur to him to get up, to bestir himself, to go out, to live. Perhaps Uncle Isidoro was stalled in some neighbouring village by the storm, and would not get back. During the night fever set in, and Costantino was racked by hideous dreams, painful memories of the past, tempests of anger, mingled with physical suffering. How long he lay in this condition he could never remember, only he recollected hearing the steady drip, drip of the water as it fell into the saucepan, the beating of the rain on the roof, and the long sob of the wind as it swept about the deserted house. In the intervals of the fever, when he would arouse from the lethargy that weighed him down, he was conscious of sharp, shooting pains through all his limbs, similar to those he had felt in prison on awaking after a feverish night; and also of a savage, animal desire to do some harm, to fling himself on some one or some thing, and bite, and tear, and destroy. Another day and night went by. The rain was falling more heavily than ever, and that steady, inexorable drip, drip had at last filled and overflowed the saucepan. Between cold and starvation Costantino had almost come to the end of his forces. Once he was visited by a horrid illusion. He thought that a mad dog had thrown him down and bitten him in the stomach. He awoke shaking, and could not throw the idea off; perhaps he had been bitten by a mad dog, and this was hydrophobia! Towards evening the storm died down, though the rain did not cease entirely. Then, suddenly, he felt that he was dying; he had no sense of rebellion now; all that was over; he seemed to have lost even the power to care. To die, to die--Why should he want to go on living? Everything both within him and about him was black and void. Through all his fever-ridden dreams one idea had remained persistently by him--that he was about to commit a crime. Now it was Aunt Martina whom he was on the point of stabbing; then some one else; but in the intervals of consciousness he realised that should he live, should he once more find himself burdened with the dolorous gift of existence, while he would not even attempt to resist the secret force that was urging him on, it would matter little against whom his fury expended itself; it might be Aunt Martina, or Brontu, or some one else. But then--then--deep down in his soul he could never rid himself of a sense of terror of _what would happen afterwards_. Yes; he wanted to die, so as to suffer no more and to be saved from becoming a murderer. At last the rain was ceasing; it still fell steadily, but more, now, like a gentle shower, while the wind had died down completely. It was cold, though, and the damp, chill atmosphere hung over the cabin like a heavy wet cloth. So unutterably dreary were the weather and the surroundings that Costantino, recalling the periods of his most acute misery, could never remember being so utterly and hopelessly wretched as now. Not even on the day of the sentence, not even on the day when they had told him of the divorce, nor on that other day of his return: for on every one of those occasions, desperate as the outlook had been, there always remained the hope of better things in the life to come. Then his conscience had been pure; but now, should he go on living, he believed that he would surely forfeit all hope in the life to come. At times, goaded by this horror, he would cry aloud, imploring death to come and save him, as a terrified child cries for its mother. Thus the hours wore on; he had dropped into a feverish sleep, but awoke suddenly, trembling with terror at he could not tell what. The rain was over at last, but in the profound stillness that enwrapped him, Costantino fancied that he still heard it beating on the roof, and the drip, drip from the leak over the fireplace; only now the sounds seemed to come from far, far away, from a world that was already remote. He thought that he was already dead, or lingering on the extremest confines of life, in a place of shadows, of silence, of mystery. What would he find there--just beyond? The light of eternity, or--the darkness of eternity? He was afraid to open his eyes; he tried to cry out, but could not utter a sound. Then--a knock came on the door. The sound dragged him back from that vague tide on which he was floating; he opened his eyes without moving, conscious both of relief and regret at finding himself still alive. The knocking was repeated louder than before. Who could it be? Not Uncle Isidoro; he would have called out. Costantino neither stirred nor spoke. Possibly he had not the strength to get up, but in any case he had no wish to. Why must they come to disturb him? dragging him back from those mysterious shores on which he had almost set foot. Meanwhile the knocking continued still more vigorously, but after a little it ceased, and everything became perfectly still. A short time elapsed; then some one again approached the hut; presently the end of a stout stick was thrust under the door, serving as a lever; the frail barrier, secured only by a metal hasp, quickly yielded, and the figure of a woman, with a skirt thrown over her head and shoulders, appeared for a moment in the opening; stepping inside, she turned and replaced the rickety door before Costantino was able to recognise her. There was a moment of breathless silence, during which he could hear his visitor groping her way about, in the pitchy darkness, on the other side of the hut; then she spoke, and he recognised the voice of Aunt Bachissia. "Costantino! Are you there? Where are you? Are you dead or alive? Why don't you answer? Some one said you had not been seen for three days, and that Isidoro Pane was away. I came once before and knocked and knocked, but you wouldn't answer. What's the matter? are you sick?" Still he made no reply, burying his face like a sulky child. "My soul!" moaned the woman, "he must be ill as well." _As well!_ Then some one else was ill! Who, he wondered. Perhaps Giovanna. He listened intently, still keeping his face covered. "He has no fire and no light!" she muttered. "What does it all mean? Wait, I'll strike a light. Where are my matches?" The pale, blue flame of a sulphur match shot up for a moment, and then suddenly died away. Costantino could see nothing, but he heard Aunt Bachissia stumbling her way towards him, moaning: "Costantino, Costantino!" A wave of anger swept over him; he tried to cry out, to rise and fling himself upon her, choke her--but he was powerless. A cold sweat broke out all over him, and he knew that if he attempted so much as to speak, he would burst into tears. How hatefully weak he was! Aunt Bachissia struck another match, and began searching for a light of some sort, but all she could find was a rude iron lamp hanging on a nail, with neither wick nor oil. Then she groped her way to the fireplace, and, stooping down, held out her hand with the lighted match between her fingers. There were the saucepan full of water, the heap of wet ashes, the soaked hearthstone, and beyond, half in the circle of light, the figure of Costantino extended motionless on the pallet. The match flared up and then went out, and all became again perfectly dark and silent. For a moment Aunt Bachissia did not stir; she hardly seemed to breathe; then a long, choking sob broke from her. Of what had she been thinking in that moment of silence and darkness? Did that vision of Costantino lying apparently dead before her awaken a sudden, agonising sense of what she had done; of her iniquitous responsibility in the ruin that had been wrought in Giovanna's and Costantino's lives, and in the lives of every one concerned in the melancholy drama? Throwing herself on the floor beside the pallet, she passed her hands tremblingly over his body and face, sobbing in the darkness and silence: "Costantino, Costantino! are you alive? Answer me----Yes," she murmured presently, "he is alive, but ill, ill--you are ill, aren't you?" she went on coaxingly. "Is it a wound? Ah, God! If you only knew what terrible things have happened! Giovanna sent me; she was frightened, you know; she thought you might have been hurt, that some one might have been lying in wait for you; she's more dead than alive herself--Costantino----!" At last Costantino gave a moan; something hard in his breast seemed to melt; he was moved--affected. Then he was not forgotten, after all; Giovanna had been anxious; she had sent to find out about him; she was frightened, unhappy. Then, in his changed mood, Aunt Bachissia's words of a moment before came back to him with fresh meaning. "He is ill _as well_," she had said. Who was this other person who was ill? Again he thought of Giovanna, and his heart sank. "Is it a wound?" she repeated. "Yes," murmured Costantino. "Who did it?" "I don't know; some one hired by Aunt Martina Dejas." "Ah!" cried Aunt Bachissia, her voice thick with anger; then, in a changed tone, she said: "The saying goes that God does not pay on Saturday--well,--Brontu Dejas is dying--poor wretch!" Costantino felt as though an electric shock had gone through him; he started to his feet, swayed, and fell back on his knees. In the darkness his hands encountered those of Aunt Bachissia, and she felt that they were scorching hot and trembling. "Costantino! my soul!" she cried, alarmed lest in his weak and exhausted condition the shock of her news had been too great for him. "Costantino, what is it? You are shaking all over like a little kid! Yes; Brontu is very ill. He came back yesterday; it was a holiday, you know, and he came home so drunk that he was like something crazy. It seems that he has been drinking all the time lately, even up at the sheepfolds. So then yesterday when he came in he was horribly drunk, and he began quarrelling with his mother and Giovanna, and tried to beat them; they were so frightened that they ran up and locked themselves in their rooms. Brontu stayed down in the kitchen, and he must have stretched himself out alongside the fire. After some time they heard him crying out, but they thought it was just some drunken foolishness, and did not go down to see what it was. After a while, though, when he had become quiet, Aunt Martina went and found him lying there unconscious and frightfully burned. He had evidently fallen asleep and had put his legs right over the fire,[10] and then his clothing caught. There was an empty brandy bottle lying beside him. He hasn't come to since, and the doctor says he can't live through the night. Poor Brontu; he wasn't bad; he was weak, but not really bad--Costantino! Costantino!--what on earth is it? What are you doing?" For in the darkness Aunt Bachissia, who had told her story with moans and sighs of sympathy, partly for Costantino, partly for Brontu, heard what she at first took to be a burst of insane laughter. The young man's hands became rigid, his limbs contracted, and for one wild moment she thought he had lost his reason. Then the truth broke upon her; he was crying, weeping bitterly, half from weakness and reaction, but half, too, from horror and sympathy at the awful ending of a man whom, but a short while before, he had thought that he hated so much that he was in danger of killing him. * * * * * That same night Brontu died, and some time later Giovanna and Costantino were reunited. Old Aunt Martina, absorbed in her grief and completely shattered by it, like an oak-tree that has been struck by lightning, offered no objection, but neither did she forgive the young people, and she demanded that the little Mariedda should be left under her care. Thus the two, the old woman and the child, lived on in the white house, while Giovanna and Costantino returned to the little grey cottage. There, after a time, another child was born to them--Malthineddu. * * * * * It is a soft spring day. Overhead the sky is a tender blue, and all around the village the fields of grain sway like the waves of a green, encircling sea. Aunt Martina sits on the portico, spinning, and praying silently; a white, tragic figure, spiritualised by sorrow. Aunt Bachissia sits spinning likewise, before the door of the cottage. Giovanna is sewing, and hard by Costantino works at his bench. No one speaks, but the thoughts of all are turned on the past. In the middle of the common Mariedda and Malthineddu are playing together with gurgles and shouts of joyous laughter, as happy and unconcerned as the birds on the neighbouring hedges. Hither and thither they go, trotting from Aunt Martina to Costantino, from Aunt Bachissia to Giovanna, from Giovanna to Aunt Martina. And each in turn, even the desolate, heartbroken old grandmother, looks up to receive them with a smile of tender indulgence. They are the invisible woof of peace and mutual forgiveness. THE END FOOTNOTE: [10] In Sardinia the fireplaces almost always consist of four stones placed so as to form a square in the centre of the kitchen. They have no chimneys. ADVERTISEMENTS "From any point of view it is an unusual novel, as much better than some of the 'best sellers' as a painting is better than a chromo."--_World's Work._ [Illustration] THE DIVINE FIRE By MAY SINCLAIR $1.50 The story of a London poet. _Boston Transcript_: "=It is rare indeed to come across a novel in which there is so much genuine greatness.=" _N. Y. Tribune_, in notice of over a column: "We venture to count =the hero already among the memorable figures in romance, a great character ... breathlessly interesting....= It ought to give May Sinclair at once high rank among the novelists of the day.... =A novel which it is a pleasure to praise.=" _Nation_: "The hero is extremely interesting." _N. Y. Times Review_: "... The story is =as well written as it is strongly conceived=." _N. Y. Post_: "Told cleverly and well, and always with a frankness that carries conviction. =The humorous element is not lacking.=" _N. Y. Globe_: "The biggest surprise of the whole season's fiction." _Chicago Evening Post_: "If you wish to be interested, amused, tormented, discouraged and finally satisfied, =you will do well to read it=." _Providence Journal_: "=Rare artistic power....=" The Diary of a Musician Edited by DOLORES M. BACON With decorations and illustrations by CHARLES EDWARD HOOPER and H. LATIMER BROWN $1.50 Authorities agree that no particular musical celebrity is described or satirized; all review the book with enthusiasm, though some damn while others praise. _Times Review_: "Of extraordinary interest as a study from the inside of the inwardness of a genius." _Bookman_: "Much of that exquisite egotism, the huge, artistic Me and the tiny universe, that gluttony of the emotions, of the whole peculiar compound of hysteria, inspiration, vanity, insight and fidgets, which goes to make up that delightful but somewhat rickety thing which we call the artistic temperament is reproduced.... The 'Diary of a Musician' does what most actual diaries fail to do--writes down a man in full." Henry Holt and Company Publishers (I, '05) New York Two Noteworthy Detective Stories by Burton E. Stevenson The Marathon Mystery With five scenes in color by ELIOT KEEN 4th printing. $1.50 This absorbing story of New York and Long Island to-day has been republished in England. Its conclusion is most astonishing. _N. Y. Sun_: "Distinctly an interesting story--one of the sort that the reader will not lay down before he goes to bed." _N. Y. Post_: "By comparison with the work of Anna Katharine Green ... it is exceptionally clever ... told interestingly and well." _N. Y. Tribune_: "=The Holladay Case= was a capital story of crime and mystery. In =The Marathon Mystery= the author is in even firmer command of the trick. He is skillful in keeping his reader in suspense, and every element in it is cunningly adjusted to preserving the mystery inviolate until the end." _Boston Transcript_: "The excellence of its style, Mr. Stevenson apparently knowing well the dramatic effect of fluency and brevity, and the rationality of avoiding false clues and attempts unduly to mystify his readers." _Boston Herald_: "This is something more than an ordinary detective story. It thrills you and holds your attention to the end. But besides all this the characters are really well drawn and your interest in the plot is enhanced by interest in the people who play their parts therein." _Town and Country_: "The mystery defies solution until the end. The final catastrophe is worked out in a highly dramatic manner." The Holladay Case With frontispiece by ELIOT KEEN 7th printing. $1.25 A tale of a modern mystery of New York and Etretat that has been republished in England and Germany. _N. Y. 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Twenty printings of this novel have been called for. _Nation_: "Such delightful people, and such delightful scenes.... It should be a good, practical guide to those about to go over the same course, while its charming descriptions of travel afford an ample new fund of pleasure, tinged with envy here and there to the stay-at-homes." _N. Y. Sun_: "A pleasant and felicitous romance." _Springfield Republican_: "Wholly new and decidedly entertaining." _Chicago Post_: "Sprightly humor ... the story moves." The Pursuit of Phyllis By J. HARWOOD BACON With two illustrations by H. Latimer Brown 12mo. $1.25 A humorous love story with scenes in England, France, China and Ceylon. _Boston Transcript_: "A bright and entertaining story of up-to-date men and women." _N. Y. Tribute_: "Very enjoyable.... Its charm consists in its naturalness and the sparkle of the dialogue and descriptions." _N. Y. Evening Post_: "The story is brisk, buoyant and entertaining." _Bookman_: "Sparkling in fun, clean-cut and straightforward in style as the young hero himself." Henry Holt and Company New York (I, '05) Chicago 2d printing of "A novel in the better sense of a word much sinned against.... It is decidedly a book worth while." The Transgression of Andrew Vane By GUY WETMORE CARRYL 12mo. $1.50. TIMES' SATURDAY REVIEW:--"A strong and original story; ... the descriptions of conditions in the American colony [in Paris] are convincingly clever. The story from the prologue--one of exceptional promise in point of interest--to the climax ... is full of action and dramatic surprise." N. Y. TRIBUNE:--"The surprising developments we must leave the reader to find out for himself. He will find it a pleasant task; ... the surprise is not brought forward until precisely the right moment, and one is carried from the first chapter to the last with curiosity, and concern for the hero's fate kept well alive." N. Y. EVENING SUN:--"Everybody who likes clever fiction should read it." LITERARY WORLD:--"The prologue is as skilful a handling of a repellent theme as has ever been presented. The book is distinctly not one for the young person, but neither is it for the seeker after the risqué or the erotic.... In this novel are poured into a consistent and satisfying whole more of those vivid phases of Paris at which the author has shown himself a master hand." CHICAGO EVENING POST:--"The reader stops with regret in his mind that Guy Wetmore Carryl's story-telling work is done." CHICAGO TRIBUNE:--"A brilliant piece of work." WASHINGTON STAR:--"a more engaging villain has seldom entered the pages of modern fiction; ... sparkles with quotable epigrams." BUFFALO EXPRESS:--"The sort of a story which one is very apt to read with interest from beginning to end. And, moreover, ... very bright and clever." NEW HAVEN JOURNAL:--"By far the most ambitious work he undertook, and likewise the most brilliant." Henry Holt and Company _20 W. 23d St._ (VI '04) _NEW YORK_ Romances of Italian Life In the Twilight of the Medici A Night with Alessandro By TREADWELL W. CLEVELAND, Jr. With three scenes in color by ELIOT KEEN. $1.25 A tale of adventure in Florence from dusk to dawn. "A skilfully contrived bit of comedy. The author has not forgotten to write with care."--_New York Tribune._ "Told with a zest that holds the reader to the page until the end."--_Chicago Tribune._ In Garibaldi's Time The Gadfly By E. L. VOYNICH. $1.25 "It is nothing more or less than one of the most powerful novels of the decade."--_New York Tribune._ "One of the most interesting phases of the history of nineteenth-century Europe. The story of the Italian revolutionary movement ... is full of such incidents as the novelist most desires.... This novel is one of the strongest of the year, vivid in conception and dramatic in execution, filled with intense human feeling, and worked up to a tremendously impressive climax."--_Dial._ Modern Sicily On Etna By NORMA LORIMER. $1.50 A vivid tale of the experiences of an English girl in which bandits and the Mafia play important parts. "The situations are novel and daring, the style is epigrammatic and picturesque.... Ceres never forgets to be charming."--_N. Y. Sun._ "It will engross the attention to the end."--_Providence Journal._ "A story of strong human passion, showing deeply contrasting types and contains excellent descriptions of Sicilian life, told with unction and dramatic fire."--_Boston Herald._ Modern Sardinia After the Divorce. $1.50 By GRAZIA DELEDDA. Translated by M. H. LANSDALE A dramatic Sardinian tale by an author who is popular in Italy and France, and whose fame has reached America. It opens with a man being unjustly imprisoned for murder. Thereupon his wife gets a divorce and remarries. Henry Holt and Company Publishers (I, '05) New York * * * * * Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal signs=. A heading "ADVERTISEMENTS" has been inserted to divide the text from the advertisements which follow it. A page of advertisements at the front of the book has been moved to the end. There were two headings before the epilogue; one of these has been removed. On p. 138, the letter "n" in "no further" was not printed and is conjectural. The following are inconsistently hyphenated in the text: almond tree and almond-tree brandy bottle and brandy-bottle dog roses and dog-roses mountain side and mountain-side under lip and under-lip mean-time and meantime re-marriage and remarriage The following errors have been corrected: p. 135 "homesicknness" changed to "homesickness" p. 168 "responsibilty" changed to "responsibility" p. 247 "if Isidoro," changed to "of Isidoro," 
59277	----	[Frontispiece: "WHO IS SHE?" SHE DEMANDED ALMOST SHARPLY. Frontispiece--Page 46.] REDEEMED BY Mrs. GEORGE SHELDON DOWNS AUTHOR OF "Gertrude Elliott's Crucible," "Step by Step," "Katherine's Sheaves," etc. Illustrations by CLARENCE ROWE M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY CHICAGO NEW YORK Copyright, 1910 and 1911 By VICKERY & HILL PUB. CO. Copyright, 1911 By G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY _Redeemed_ CONTENTS CHAPTER I A WIFE REPUDIATED II THE FINAL RUPTURE III A BACKWARD GLANCE IV A YOUNG WIFE'S BRAVE STRUGGLES V FLUCTUATING EXPERIENCES VI AN OLD TEMPTATION REVIVED VII SERIOUS DOMESTIC COMPLICATIONS VIII HELEN PLANS HER FUTURE IX AFTER TEN YEARS X A BRIEF RETROSPECT XI A SEALED BOOK REOPENED XII THE SOUBRETTE XIII A TRYING INTERVIEW XIV "LOVE THY NEIGHBOR" XV A STARTLING APPARITION XVI SACKCLOTH AND ASHES XVII AS WHEAT IS SIFTED XVIII LOVING SERVICE XIX JOHN HUNGERFORD BEGINS LIFE ANEW XX FIVE YEARS LATER XXI SOME INTERESTING REVELATIONS XXII A HAPPY REUNION XXIII A FINAL RENUNCIATION XXIV A MASTERPIECE ILLUSTRATIONS "Who is she?" she demanded almost sharply . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ "To begin with, and not to mince matters, I want some money" She found herself face to face with John Hungerford "The stranger was--my father" [Transcriber's note: The last three illustrations were missing from the source book] REDEEMED CHAPTER I. A WIFE REPUDIATED. Two lives that once part are as ships that divide, When, moment on moment, there rushes between The one and the other a sea-- Ah, never can fall from the days that have been A gleam on the years that shall be. BULWER LYTTON. "Very well, John; I have nothing more to say. You can commence proceedings as soon as you choose. I shall not contest them." The speaker was a slight, graceful woman of perhaps thirty-five years. Her figure was a little above the medium stature, and symmetrical, almost perfect, in its proportions. Her beautiful, refined face and proudly poised, shapely head were crowned with a wealth of soft brown hair, in which there was a glint of red, and which lay in bright profusion above her white forehead, in charming contrast with the delicate fairness of her skin, which, at the present moment, was absolutely colorless. Drawn to her full height, she was standing opposite her companion, her large, expressive gray eyes, in which pity and scorn struggled for supremacy, lifted to his in a direct, unflinching gaze which bespoke the strength of purpose and straightforward character of one who possessed the courage of her convictions; while, in her rich-toned voice, as well as in her crisp, decisive sentences, there was a note of finality which plainly indicated that she had taken her stand regarding the matter under discussion, and would abide by it. "What! Am I to understand that you do not intend to contest proceedings for a divorce, Helen?" Surprise and an unmistakable intonation of eagerness pervaded John Hungerford's tones as he spoke, while, at the same time, he searched his wife's face with a curious, almost startled, look. At a casual glance the man impressed one as possessing an unusually attractive personality. He had a fine, athletic figure--tall, broad-shouldered, well-proportioned--which, together with an almost military bearing, gave him a distinguished air, that instantly attracted attention wherever he went. A clear olive complexion, dark-brown eyes and hair, handsomely molded features, and a luminous smile, that revealed white, perfect teeth, completed the _tout ensemble_ that had made havoc with not a few susceptible hearts, even before he had finally bestowed his coveted affections upon beautiful Helen Appleton, whom later he had made his wife. But upon closer acquaintance one could not fail to detect disappointing lines in his face, and corresponding flaws in his character--a shifty eye, a weak mouth and chin, an indolent, ease-loving temperament, that would shirk every responsibility, and an insatiable desire for personal entertainment, that betrayed excessive selfishness and a lack of principle. "No," the woman coldly replied to her husband's exclamation of astonishment, "I have no intention of opposing any action that you may see fit to take to annul our union, provided----" She paused abruptly, a sudden alertness in her manner and tone. "Well?" he questioned impatiently, and with a frown which betokened intolerance of opposition. "Provided you do not attempt to take Dorothy from me, or to compromise me in any way in your efforts to free yourself." The man shrugged his broad shoulders and arched his fine eyebrows. "I am not sighing for publicity for either you or myself, Helen," he observed. "I simply wish to get the matter settled as quickly and quietly as possible. As for Dorothy, however----" "There can be no question about Dorothy; she is to be relinquished absolutely to me," Helen Hungerford interposed, with sharp decision. "You appear to be very insistent upon _that_ point," retorted her companion, with sneering emphasis and an unpleasant lifting of his upper lip that just revealed the tips of his gleaming teeth. "I certainly am; that my child remains with me is a foregone conclusion," was the spirited reply. "The judge may decree differently----" "You will not dare suggest it," returned the wife, in a coldly quiet tone, but with a dangerous gleam in her eyes. "No judge would render so unrighteous a decree if I were to tell my story, which I certainly should do if driven to it. I have assented to your demand for this separation, but before I sign any papers to ratify the agreement you will legally surrender all claim to, or authority over, Dorothy." "Indeed! Aren't you assuming a good deal of authority for yourself, Helen? You appear to forget that Dorothy is my child as well as yours--that I love her----" "_Love her!_" Exceeding bitterness vibrated in the mother's voice. "How have you shown your love for her? However, it is useless to discuss that point. I have given you my ultimatum--upon no other condition will I consent to this divorce," she concluded, with an air of finality there was no mistaking. "I swear I will not do it!" John Hungerford burst forth, with sudden anger. An interval of silence followed, during which each was apparently absorbed in troubled thought. "Possibly it will make no difference whether you do or do not accede to my terms," Mrs. Hungerford resumed, after a moment, "for it has occurred to me that there is already a law regulating the guardianship of minors, giving the child a voice in the matter; and, Dorothy being old enough to choose her own guardian, there can be little doubt regarding what her choice would be." "You are surely very sanguine," sneered her husband. "And why should I not be?" demanded the woman, in a low but intense tone. "What have you to offer her? What have you ever done for her, or to gain her confidence and respect, that could induce her to trust her future with you? How do you imagine she will regard this last humiliation to which you are subjecting her and her mother?" John Hungerford flushed a conscious crimson as these pertinent questions fell from the lips of his outraged wife. His glance wavered guiltily, then fell before the clear, accusing look in her eyes. "Oh, doubtless you have her well trained in the rôle she is to play," he sullenly observed, after an interval of awkward silence, during which he struggled to recover his customary self-assurance. "You have always indulged her lightest whim, and so have tied her securely to your apron strings, which, it goes without saying, has weakened my hold upon her." His companion made no reply to this acrid fling, but stood in an attitude of quiet dignity, awaiting any further suggestions he might have to offer. But, having gained his main point--her consent to a legal separation--the man was anxious to close the interview and escape from a situation that was becoming exceedingly uncomfortable for him. At the same time, he found it no easy matter to bring the interview to a close and take final leave of the wife whom he was repudiating. "Well, Helen," he finally observed, assuming a masterful tone to cover his increasing embarrassment, "I may have more to say regarding Dorothy, later on--we will not discuss the matter further at present. Now, I am going--unless you have something else you wish to say to me." Helen Hungerford shivered slightly at these last words, and grew marble white. Then she suddenly moved a step or two nearer to him, and lifted her beautiful face to him, a solemn light in her large gray eyes. "Yes, I have something else I would like to say to you, John," she said, her voice growing tremulous for the first time during their interview. "This separation is, as you know, of your own seeking, not mine. A so-called divorce, though sanctioned a thousand times by misnamed law, means nothing to me. When I married you I pledged myself to you until death should part us, and I would have held fast to my vows until my latest breath. I may have made mistakes during the years we have lived together, but you well know that whenever I have taken a stand against your wishes it has always been for conscience's sake. I have honestly tried to be a faithful wife--a true helpmeet, and a wise mother. I have freely given you the very best there was in me to give. Now, at your decree, we are to part. I make no contest--I hurl no reproaches--I simply submit. But I have one last plea to make: I beg of you not to ruin your future in the way you are contemplating--you know what I mean--for life is worthless without an honored name, without the respect of your fellow men, and, above all, without _self-respect_. You have rare talent--talent that would lift you high upon the ladder of fame and success, if you would cease to live an aimless, barren existence. For your own sake, I pray you will not longer pervert it. That is all. Good-by, John; I hear Dorothy coming, and you may have something you would like to say before you go." She slipped quietly between the portières near which she had been standing, and was gone as a door opened to admit a bright, winsome lassie of about fifteen years. Dorothy Hungerford strongly resembled her mother. She was formed like her; she had the same pure complexion, the same large, clear gray eyes and wealth of reddish-brown hair, which hung in a massive braid--like a rope of plaited satin--between her shoulders, and was tied at the end with a great bow of blue ribbon. The girl paused abruptly upon the threshold, and flushed a startled crimson as her glance fell upon her father. "Where--is mamma?" she inquired, in evident confusion. "Your mother has just gone to her room," the man replied, his brows contracting with a frown of pain as he met his daughter's beautiful but clouded eyes. "Come in, Dorothy," he added, throwing a touch of brightness into his tones; "I wish to have a little talk with you." The maiden reluctantly obeyed, moving forward a few paces into the room and gravely searching her father's face as she did so. "I suppose you know that I am going away, Dorothy? Your mother has told you--ahem!--of the--the change I--we are contemplating?" John Hungerford inquiringly observed, but with unmistakable embarrassment. "Yes, sir," said Dorothy, with an air of painful constraint. "How would you like to come with me, dear? You have a perfect right to choose with whom you will live for the future." "I choose to live with my mother!" And there was now no constraint accompanying the girl's positive reply. The man's right hand clenched spasmodically; then his dark eyes blazed with sudden anger. "Ha! Evidently your mother has been coaching you upon the subject," he sharply retorted. "Mamma hasn't said a word to me about--about that part of the--the plan," Dorothy faltered. "Then you mean me to understand that, of your own free will, you prefer to remain with your mother altogether?" Dorothy nodded her drooping head in assent, not possessing sufficient courage to voice her attitude. "Pray tell me what is your objection to living with me--at least for a portion of each year?" The child did not immediately answer. The situation was an exceedingly trying one, and she appeared to be turning her father's proposition over in her mind. At length she lifted her head, and her eyes met his in a clear, direct gaze. "Where are you going to live?" she questioned, with significant emphasis. Her companion shrank before her look and words as if he had been sharply smitten. "That is not the question just at present," he said, quickly recovering himself. "I asked what objection you have to living with me. Don't you love me at all?" Again Dorothy's head fell, and, pulling the massive braid of her ruddy hair over her shoulder, she stood nervously toying with it in silence. "Dorothy, I wish you to answer me," her father persisted, greatly irritated by her attitude toward him, and growing reckless of consequences in his obstinate determination to force her to give him a definite answer. But Dorothy was not devoid of obstinacy herself. She pouted irresolutely a moment; then, tossing her braid back into its place, stood erect, and faced her father squarely. "Why are you going away--why will you not live here with mamma?" Again the man flushed hotly. He was guiltily conscious that she knew well enough why. "I--we are not congenial, and it is better that we live apart," he faltered, as he shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Then, becoming suddenly furious in view of being thus arraigned by his own child, he thundered: "Now I command you to give me your reason for refusing to live with me during some portion of each year! I know," he went on, more temperately, "that you love your mother, and I would not wish to take you from her altogether; but I am your father--I certainly have some claim upon you, and it is natural that I should desire to keep you with me some of the time. Now, tell me at once your objections to the plan," he concluded sternly. The interview had been a severe strain upon the delicately organized and proud-spirited girl, and she had found great difficulty in preserving her self-control up to this point; but now his tone and manner were like spark to powder. "Because---- Oh, because I think you are just horrid! I used to think you such a gentleman, and I was proud of you; but now you have shamed me so! No, I don't love you, and I wouldn't go to live with you and--and _that dreadful woman_ for anything!" she recklessly threw back at him. For a minute John Hungerford stood speechless, staring blankly at his child, his face and lips colorless and drawn. Her words had stabbed him cruelly. "Dorothy, you are impertinent!" he said severely, when he could command his voice. She caught her breath sharply; she bit her lips fiercely, her white teeth leaving deep imprints upon them; then passion swept all before it. "I know it--I _feel_ impertinent! I feel awful wicked, as if I could do something dreadful!" she cried shrilly and quivering from head to foot from mingled anger and grief. "You have broken mamma's heart, and it breaks mine, too, to see her looking so crushed and getting so white and thin. And now you are going to put this open disgrace upon her--upon us both--just because you are tired of her and think you like some one else better. I do love my mother--she is the dearest mother in the world, and I'm glad you're going. I--I don't care if I never----" Her voice broke sharply, at this point, into something very like a shriek. She had wrought herself up to a frenzy of excitement, and now, with great sobs shaking her slight form like a reed, she turned abruptly away, and dashed wildly out of the room, slamming the door violently behind her. CHAPTER II. THE FINAL RUPTURE. John Hungerford was stricken with astonishment and dismay by the foregoing outburst of passion from his child. As a rule, she had ever been gentle and tractable, rarely defying his authority, and never before had he seen her manifest such temper as she had just given way to. He had always believed that she loved him, although he had long been conscious of a growing barrier between them--that she invariably sought her mother's companionship when she was in the house, and held aloof from him. But he had been so absorbed in his own pursuits that he had not given much serious thought to the matter; consequently it had now come like a bolt from a clear sky, when she had openly declared that she did not love him, while he was at no loss for words to complete the scathing, unfinished sentence to which she had given utterance just before she had fled from his presence. It had taken him unawares, and, indifferent as he had become to his responsibilities as a husband and father; determined as he was to cut loose from them to gratify his pleasure-loving and vacillating disposition, his heart was now bruised and lacerated, his proud spirit humiliated as it never before had been, by Dorothy's passionate arraignment and bitter repudiation of him. His wife, greatly to his surprise, had received him with her accustomed courtesy, had quietly acceded to his wishes when he informed her that he contemplated seeking a divorce, and had calmly told him that she had no intention of contesting his application for a legal separation. He had not believed he would be able to secure his freedom so easily, and secretly congratulated himself that the matter had been so quickly adjusted, and had terminated without a scene, even though he had been not a little chagrined by his wife's dignified bearing and a certain conscious superiority throughout the interview; also by the absence of all excitement or sentiment, except as, now and then, a flash of scorn or pity for him leaped from her eyes or rang in her tones. But it had been quite another thing to have Dorothy, whom he had always fondly loved, in his selfish way, so openly denounce him for his faithlessness to her mother, and impeach him for the humiliation to which he was about to subject them both. As his anger subsided, as he began to realize something of what it meant, he was cut to the quick, and a sickening sense of loss and desolation suddenly swept over him, causing his throat to swell with painful tension and his eyes to sting with a rush of hot tears. His only child--his pet and little playmate for fifteen years--had practically told him that she would not care if she never saw him again. It seemed almost as if she had suddenly died and were lost to him forever. He wondered if he ever would see her again, hear her fresh young voice calling "papa," or feel her soft lips caressing his cheek. He stood for several minutes staring miserably at the door through which she had disappeared, a long, quivering sigh heaving his broad chest. Then his eyes swept the familiar, tastefully arranged room, which showed the graceful touch of his wife's deft hands in every detail, and finally rested upon the great bow of blue ribbon which had become loosened from Dorothy's hair and fallen to the floor almost at his feet. He stooped, picked it up, and thrust it into his bosom; then mechanically took his hat, and quietly left the house. But, as the outer door closed behind him, and the latch clicked sharply into its socket, there shot through all his nerves a thrill of keen pain which for many years repeated itself whenever the same sound fell upon his ears. There seemed to be an ominous knell of finality in it, and, mingling with it, a sinister jeer at his supreme folly in thus turning his back forever upon this attractive, though comparatively simple, home, with its atmosphere of purity and sweet, refining influences; in discarding the beautiful and loyal woman whom he had once believed he adored; in abandoning and forfeiting the affection and respect of a lovely daughter, who also gave promise of becoming, in the near future, a brilliant and cultured woman, and--for what? More than an hour elapsed after Dorothy fled from her father's presence before she could control herself sufficiently to seek her mother, who also had been fighting a mighty battle in the solitude of her own room. Even then the girl's eyes were red and swollen from excessive weeping; neither had she been able to overcome wholly the grief-laden sobs which, for the time, had utterly prostrated her. "Mamma, he has told me, and--he has gone," she faltered, almost on the verge of breaking down again, as she threw herself upon her knees by her mother's side and searched with anxious eyes the white, set face of the deserted wife. "Yes, dear; I heard him go." "Do you think it will be forever?" "That is what a divorce--a legal separation--means, Dorothy." The girl dropped her head upon her mother's shoulder, with a moan of pain, and Helen slipped a compassionate arm around the trembling form. "Mamma," Dorothy began again, after a few moments of silence. "Well, dear?" "I think it is awful--what he is doing; but don't you think that we--you and I--can be happy again, by and by, just by ourselves?" "I am sure we can, dearest," was the brave response, as Helen Hungerford drew her daughter closer to her in a loving embrace. Dorothy seized her mother's hand and kissed it passionately, two great, burning tears dropping upon it as she did so. "He asked me to go with him--to live with him some of the time," she presently resumed. "And you told him----" breathed Helen, almost inaudibly. "I was very disrespectful, mamma," confessed the girl humbly; "but I couldn't help it when I thought what it all meant. I said I wouldn't live with him for anything--I almost told him that I wouldn't care if I never saw him again. Where will he go now? What will he do? Will--he marry _that woman_?" she concluded, her voice growing hard and tense again. Her mother's lips grew blue and pinched with the effort she made to stifle a cry of agony at the shameful suggestion. But she finally forced herself to reply, with some semblance of composure: "I do not know, Dorothy, and we will try not to worry over anything that he may do. However, when he secures the necessary decree from the court he will have the legal right to do as he pleases." "The _legal_ right," repeated Dorothy reflectively. "Yes, the law will give him the right to marry again if he wishes to do so." "What an abominable law! And what a shameful thing for any man to want to do, when he already has a family! What will people think of us if he does?" queried the girl, with a shiver of repulsion. "My dear, ask rather what people will think of _him_," said her mother tenderly, as she laid her lips in a gentle caress against the child's forehead. "Of course, I know that nice people will not respect him; but I can't help feeling that the shame of it will touch us, too," opposed sensitive Dorothy. "No, dear; what he has done, or may do, cannot harm either you or me in the estimation of our real friends," replied Helen, throwing a note of cheer she was far from feeling into her tones. "It can only bring condemnation upon himself, and you are not to feel any sense of degradation because of your father's wrongdoing. We are simply the innocent victims of circumstances over which we have no control; and, Dorrie, you and I will so live that all who know us will be compelled to respect us for ourselves." Dorothy heaved a deep sigh of relief as her mother concluded, and her somber eyes brightened perceptibly. She sat silently thinking for f several minutes; then a cloud again darkened her face. "Mamma," she began hesitatingly, "you said the law would give p--him the right to do as he pleases--to marry that woman. Can you do as you please? Could you----" "Oh, hush, Dorothy!" gasped the tortured wife, in a shocked tone, and laying an icy hand over the girl's lips. "When I married your father," she went on more calmly after a little, "I promised to be true to him while we both lived, and you must never think of anything like that for me--never--_never_! He may choose another, but I---- Oh, God, my burden is heavier than I can bear!" Helen Hungerford buried her agonized face in her hands, cowering and shrinking from the repulsive suggestion as if she had been smitten with a lash. Dorothy was shocked by the effect of her thoughtless question. She had never seen her mother so unnerved before. "Oh, mamma, don't!" she cried wildly. "I love you dearly--dearly--I did not mean to hurt you so, and I _hate_ him for making you so wretched--for putting this dreadful disgrace upon us both. I will never forgive him--I never want to see him again. I know it is wicked to hate, but I can't help it--I don't care! I do--I do----" These incoherent utterances ended in a piercing shriek as the overwrought girl threw herself prone upon the floor at her mother's feet, in a violent paroxysm of hysteria. She was a sensitively organized child, proud as a young princess, and possessed of a high sense of honor; and grief over the threatened break in the family, together with fear of the opprobrium which she believed it would entail upon her idolized mother, as well as upon herself, had been preying upon her mind for several weeks; and now the climax had come, the cloud had burst, and, with the strenuous excitement and experiences of the day, had resulted in this nervous collapse. Hours elapsed before Helen succeeded in soothing her into any degree of calmness, and when at last she fell into a deep sleep, from utter exhaustion, the forsaken wife found something very like hatred surging within her own heart toward the faithless man who had ruthlessly wrecked their happiness. "Neither will I forgive him for imposing this lifelong sorrow and taint upon my child," she secretly vowed as she sat through the long, lonely hours of the night, and watched beside the couch of her daughter. In due time, she received formal announcement that her husband had secured his divorce, and that she also was free, by the decree of the court; and, following close upon this verdict, came the news that John Hungerford, the artist, had gone abroad again to resume his studies in Paris. It was significant, too, at least to Helen, that the same papers stating this fact also mentioned that the Wells Opera Company, which had just finished a most successful season in San Francisco, was booked for a long engagement, with Madam Marie Duncan as leading soprano, in the same city; the opening performance was set for a date in the near future. CHAPTER III. A BACKWARD GLANCE. Helen Gregory Appleton was the only child of cultured people, who, possessing a moderate fortune, had spared no pains or expense to give their daughter a thorough education, with the privilege of cultivating whatever accomplishments she preferred, or talent that she possessed. Helen was an exceptionally bright girl, and, having conscientiously improved her opportunities, she had graduated from high school at the age of seventeen, and from a popular finishing school at twenty, a beautiful and accomplished young woman, the joy and pride of her devoted parents, who anticipated for her not only a brilliant social career, but also an auspicious settlement in life. Her only hobby throughout her school life had been music, of which, from childhood, she had been passionately fond. "I don't care for drawing or painting," she affirmed, "so I will stick to music, and try to do one thing well." And with no thought of ever making it a profession, but simply for love of it, she had labored tirelessly to acquire proficiency in this accomplishment, with the result that she not only excelled as a pianist, but was also a pleasing vocalist--attainments which, later in life, were destined to bring her rich returns for her faithful study. It was during her last year in school that she had met John Hungerford, a graduate of Yale College, and a promising young man, possessing great personal attractions. He was bright, cheerful, and witty, always looking for the humorous side of life; while, being of an easy-going temperament, he avoided everything like friction in his intercourse with others, which made him a very harmonious and much-sought-after companion. Naturally courteous, genial, and quick at repartee, enthusiastically devoted to athletic sports, ever ready to lead in a frolic and to entertain lavishly, he was generally voted an "all-around jolly good fellow." Hence he had early become a prime favorite with his class, and also with the faculty, and remained such throughout his course. He was not a brilliant scholar, however, and barely succeeded in winning his degree at the end of his four years' term. He did not love study; he lacked application and tenacity of purpose, except in sports, or such things as contributed to his personal entertainment. At the same time, he had too much pride to permit him to fail to secure his diploma, and he managed to win out; but with just as little work and worry as possible. The only direction in which he had ever shown a tendency to excel was in art, the love of which he had inherited from his paternal grandfather, who, in his day, had won some renown, both abroad and in his own country, as a landscape painter; and from early boyhood "John Hungerford, Second"--his namesake--had shown unmistakable talent in the same direction. Possessing a small fortune, which had fallen to him from this same relative, the young man had given scarcely a serious thought to his future. Life had always been a bright gala day to him; money was easy, friends were plenty, and, with perfect health, what more could he ask of the years to come? And when questioned regarding what business or profession he purposed to follow, on leaving college, he would reply, with his usual irresponsible manner: "It will be time enough to decide that matter later on. I propose to see something of the world, and have some fun, before settling down to the humdrum affairs of life." Once the formality of their introduction was over, John had proceeded forthwith to fall desperately in love with beautiful Helen Appleton, and, as she reciprocated his affection, an early engagement had followed. Six months later they were married, and sailed for Europe, with the intention of making an extensive tour abroad. Helen's parents had not sanctioned this hurried union without experiencing much anxiety and doubt regarding the wisdom of giving their idolized daughter to one whom they had known for so short a time. But young Hungerford's credentials had appeared to be unquestionable, his character above reproach, his personality most winning, and his means ample; thus there had seemed no reasonable objection to the marriage. The young man's wooing had been so eager, and Helen so enamored of her handsome lover, who swept before him every argument or obstacle calculated to retard the wedding with such plausible insistence, that the important event had been consummated almost before they could realize what it might mean to them all when the excitement and glamour had worn away. Frequent letters came to them from the travelers, filled with loving messages, with enthusiastic descriptions of their sight-seeing, and expressions of perfect happiness in each other; and the fond father and mother, though lonely without their dear one, comforted themselves with assurances that all was well with her, and they would soon have her back with them again. After spending a year in travel and sight-seeing, the young couple drifted back to Paris, from which point they intended, after John had made another round of the wonderful art galleries, which had enthralled him upon their previous visit, to proceed directly home. But the artist element in him became more and more awakened, as, day after day, he studied the world-renowned treasures all about him, until he suddenly conceived the idea of making art his profession and life work; whereupon, he impulsively registered himself for a course in oils, under a popular artist and teacher, Monsieur Jacques by name. Helen would have preferred to return to her parents, for she yearned for familiar scenes, and particularly for her mother at this time; but she yielded her will to her husband's, and they made a pretty home for themselves in an attractive suburb of Paris, where, a little later, there came to the young wife, in her exile--for such it almost seemed to her--a great joy. A little daughter, the Dorothy of our opening chapter, was born to John and Helen Hungerford a few weeks after the anniversary of their marriage; and, being still deeply in love with each other, it seemed to them as if their cup of happiness was filled to the brim. Shortly afterward, however, with only a few days between the two sad events, cable messages brought the heartbreaking tidings that Helen's father and mother had both been taken from her, and the blow, for the time, seemed likely to crush her. John, in his sympathy for his wife, was for immediately throwing up his work, and taking her directly home; but Helen, more practical and less impulsive than her husband, reasoned that there was nothing to be gained by such a rash move, while much would have to be sacrificed in forfeiting his course of lessons, which had been paid for in advance; while she feared that such an interruption would greatly abate his enthusiasm, if it did not wholly discourage him from the task of perfecting himself in his studies. She knew that her father's lawyer, who had been his adviser for many years, was amply qualified to settle Mr. Appleton's business; and, having unbounded confidence in him, she felt that whatever would be required of her could be done as well by correspondence as by her personal presence. Consequently it was decided best to remain where they were until John should become well grounded in his profession, and able to get on without a teacher. But when Mr. Appleton's affairs were settled it was learned that the scant sum of five thousand dollars was all that his daughter would inherit from his estate. This unlooked-for misfortune was a great surprise to the young husband and wife; a bitter disappointment, also, particularly to John Hungerford, who had imagined, when he married her, that Helen would inherit quite a fortune from her father, who, it was generally believed, had amassed a handsome property. Helen very wisely decided that the five thousand dollars must be put aside for Dorothy's future education, and she directed the lawyer to invest the money for the child, as his best judgment dictated, and allow the interest to accumulate until they returned to America. Three years slipped swiftly by after this, and during this time John, who seemed really to love his work, gave promise of attaining proficiency, if not fame, in his profession. At least, Monsieur Jacques, who appeared to take a deep interest in his student's progress, encouraged him to believe he could achieve something worth while in the future, provided he applied himself diligently to that end. Helen, though chastened and still grieving sorely over the loss of her parents, was happy and content to live very quietly, keeping only one servant, and herself acting the part of nurse for Dorothy. Before her marriage she had supposed John to be the possessor of considerable wealth, and this belief had been confirmed during their first year abroad by his lavish expenditure. He had spared no expense to contribute to her pleasure, had showered expensive gifts upon her, and gratified every whim of his own. But when her father's estate had been settled he had betrayed deep disappointment and no little anxiety in view of the small amount coming to Helen; and it had finally come out that his own fortune had been a very moderate one, the greater portion of which had been consumed during their extravagant honeymoon. This startling revelation set Helen to thinking very seriously. She realized that the limited sum remaining to them would have to be carefully husbanded, or they would soon reach the end of their resources. John's studies were expensive, and it might be some time yet before he could expect to realize from his profession an income that could be depended upon, while, never yet having denied himself anything he wanted, he had no practical idea of economy. At length he sold a few small pictures, which, with some help in touching up from monsieur, were very creditable to him. But instead of being elated that his work was beginning to attract attention and be appreciated, he was greatly chagrined at the prices he received for them, and allowed himself to become somewhat discouraged in view of these small returns; and, during his fourth year, it became evident that his interest was waning, and he was growing weary of his work. He had never been a systematic worker, much to the annoyance of his teacher, who was rigidly methodical and painstaking in every detail. John would begin a subject which gave promise of being above the ordinary, and work well upon it for a while; but after a little it would pall upon his fancy, and be set aside to try something else, while Monsieur Jacques would look on with grave disapproval, and often sharply criticize such desultory efforts. This, of course, caused strained relations between teacher and student, and conditions drifted from bad to worse, until he began to absent himself from the studio; at first for only a day in the week; then, as time went on, he grew more and more irregular, and sometimes several days would elapse during which he would do nothing at his easel, while no one seemed to know where, or with whom, he was spending his time. Monsieur Jacques was very forbearing. He knew the young man possessed rare talent, if not real genius; he believed there was the promise of a great artist in him, and he was ambitious to have him make his mark in the world. He was puzzled by his peculiar moods and behavior, and strove in various ways to arouse his waning enthusiasm. He knew nothing of his circumstances, except that he had a lovely wife and child, of whom he appeared to be very fond and proud, and he believed him to be possessed of ample means, for he spent money freely upon himself and his fellow students, with whom he was exceedingly popular; hence he was wholly unable to account for his growing indifference and indolence, unless there were some secret, subtle influence that was leading him astray--beguiling him from his high calling. Two years more passed thus, and still he had made no practical advancement. He worked by fits and starts, but rarely completed and sold anything, even though everything he attempted was, as far as developed, alive with brilliant possibilities. Helen had also realized, during this time, that something was very wrong with her husband. He was often away from home during the evening, and had little to say when she questioned him regarding his absence; sometimes he told her he had been at the theater with the boys, or he had been bowling at the club, or having a game of whist at the studio. She was very patient; she believed in him thoroughly, and not a suspicion arose in her loyal heart that he would tell her a falsehood to conceal any wrongdoing on his part. But one night he did not return at all; at least, it was early morning before he came in, and, not wishing to disturb his wife, he threw himself, half dressed, upon the couch in the library, where Helen found him, in a deep sleep, when she came downstairs in the morning. She appeared relieved on seeing him, and stood for a minute or two curiously searching his face, noting how weary and haggard he looked after his night of evident dissipation, while the odor of wine was plainly perceptible in his heavy breathing. Her heart was very sore, but she was careful not to wake him, for she felt he needed to sleep, and she presently moved away from him, gathering up the light overcoat he had worn the previous evening, and which he had heedlessly thrown in a heap upon a chair on removing it. She gently shook out the wrinkles, preparatory to putting the garment away in its place, when something bright, hanging from an inner pocket, caught her eye. With the color fading from her face, she drew it forth and gazed at it as one dazed. It was a long, silken, rose-hued glove, that exhaled a faint odor of attar of roses as it slipped from its hiding place. It was almost new, yet the shape of the small hand that had worn it was plainly discernible, while on one of the rounded finger tips there was a slight stain, like a drop of wine. To whom did the dainty thing belong? How had it come into her husband's possession? Had it been lost by some one returning from a ball, or the opera, and simply been found by him? Or had it some more significant connection with the late hours and carousal of the previous night and of many other nights? A hundred questions and cruel suspicions flashed thick and fast through her mind and stung her to the quick, as she recalled the many evenings he had spent away from her of late, and his evasive replies whenever she had questioned him regarding his whereabouts. She shivered as she stood there, almost breathless, with that creepy, slippery thing that seemed almost alive, and a silent, mocking witness to some tantalizing mystery, in her hand. What should she do about it? Should she wake John, show him what she had found, and demand an explanation from him? Or would it be wiser to return the glove to its place of concealment, say nothing, and bide her time for further developments? She had never been a dissembler. As a girl, she was artless and confiding, winning and keeping friends by her innate sincerity. As a wife, she had been absolutely loyal and trustful--never before having entertained the slightest doubt of her husband's faithfulness to her. Could she now begin to lead a double life, begin to be suspicious of John, to institute a system of espionage upon his actions and pursuits, and thus create an ever-increasing barrier between them? The thought was utterly repulsive to her, and yet it might perhaps be as well not to force, for a time, at least, a situation which perchance would ere long be unfolded to her without friction or estrangement. She glanced from the rose-hued thing in her hand to the sleeper on the couch, stood thoughtfully studying his face for a moment; then she silently slipped the glove into the pocket where she had found it, dropped the coat back in a heap upon the chair, and stole noiselessly from the room. CHAPTER IV. A YOUNG WIFE'S BRAVE STRUGGLES. Another year slipped by, with no change for the better in the domestic conditions of the Hungerfords. When he felt like it, John would work at his easel; when he did not, he would dawdle his time away at his club, or about town, with companions whom, Helen began to realize, were of no advantage to him, to say the least. Meantime, his money was fast melting away, and there seemed to be no prospect of a reliable income from his art. Helen became more and more anxious regarding their future, and often implored her husband to finish some of his pictures, try to get them hung at different exhibitions, and in this way perhaps find a market for them. He was never really unkind to her, though often irritable; yet he was far from being the devoted husband he had been during the first three or four years of their married life. He would often make fair promises to do better, and perhaps work well for a while; then, his interest flagging again, he would drop back into his indolent ways, and go on as before. One morning, just as he was leaving the house, John informed his wife that he was going, with several other artists, to visit a noted château a few miles out of Paris, where there was a wonderful collection of paintings, comprising several schools of art, some of the oldest and best masters being represented; and the owner of these treasures, the Duc de Mouvel, had kindly given them permission to examine them and take notes at their leisure. It was a rare opportunity, he told her, and she was not to be anxious about him if he did not reach home until late in the evening. Helen was quite elated by this information; it seemed to indicate that John still loved his art, and she hoped that his enthusiasm would be newly aroused by this opportunity to study such priceless pictures, and he would resume his work with fresh zeal upon his return. She was very happy during the day, refreshing herself with these sanguine hopes, and did not even feel troubled that John did not come back at all that night. The owner of the château had probably extended his hospitality, and given the students another day to study his pictures, she thought. The third day dawned, and still her husband had not returned; neither had he sent her any message explaining his protracted absence. Unable longer to endure the suspense, Helen went in town, to the studio, hoping that Monsieur Jacques might be able to give her some information regarding the expedition to the Château de Mouvel. But her heart sank the moment she came into the artist's presence. He greeted her most cordially, but searched her face curiously; then gravely inquired: "And where is Monsieur Hungerford, madame? I hope not ill? For a week now his brushes they have been lying idle." "A week!" repeated Helen, with an inward shock of dismay. "Then, Monsieur Jacques, you know nothing about the excursion to the château of le Duc de Mouvel?" "Excursion to the galleries of le Duc de Mouvel!" exclaimed the artist, astonished. "But surely I know nothing of such a visit--no, madame." Helen explained more at length, and mentioned the names of some of those whom John had said were to be of the party. Her companion's brow contracted in a frown of mingled sorrow and displeasure. "I know nothing of it," he reiterated; "and the persons madame has named are dilettante--they are 'no good,' as you say in America. They waste time--they have a love for wine, women, and frolic; and it is regrettable that monsieur finds pleasure in their company." Helen sighed; her heart was very heavy. "Monsieur is one natural artist," the master resumed, bending a compassionate gaze on her white face; "born with talent and the love of art. He has the true eye for color, outline, perspective; the free, steady, skillful hand. He would do great work with the stable mind, but--pardon, madame--he is what, in English, you call--lazy. He will not exercise the necessary application. To make the great artist there must be more, much more, than mere talent, the love of the beautiful, and skillful wielding of the brush; there must be the will to work, work, work. Ah, if madame could but inspire monsieur with ambition--real enthusiasm--to accomplish something, to finish his pictures, he might yet win fame for himself; but the indifference, the indolence, the lack of moral responsibility, and the love of pleasure--ah, it all means failure!" "But--the Duc de Mouvel--is there such a man? Has he a rare collection?" faltered Helen, thus betraying her suspicion that her husband had deceived her altogether regarding the motive of his absence. "Yes, my child; I have the great pleasure of acquaintance with le Duc de Mouvel," kindly returned Monsieur Jacques, adding: "He is a great connoisseur in, and a generous patron of, all that is best in art; and if he has extended to your husband and his friends an invitation to view the wonderful pictures in his magnificent château at ---- they have been granted a rare honor and privilege." In her heart, Helen doubted that they had ever been the recipients of such an invitation; she believed it all a fabrication to deceive her and perhaps others. It was a humiliating suspicion; but it forced itself upon her and thrust its venomed sting deep into her soul. "If there is anything I can do for madame at any time, I trust she will not fail to command me," Monsieur Jacques observed, with gentle courtesy, and breaking in upon the troubled reverie into which she had fallen. Helen lifted her sad eyes to his. "I thank you, monsieur," she gratefully returned. "You are--you always have been--most kind and patient." Then, glancing searchingly around the room, the walls of which were covered with beautiful paintings, she inquired: "Are there any of Mr. Hungerford's pictures here?" "Ah! Madame would like to see some of the work monsieur has been doing of late?" said the artist alertly, and glad to change the subject, for he saw that his proffered kindness had well-nigh robbed her of her composure. "Come this way, if you please, and I will show you," he added, turning to leave the room. He led her through a passage to a small room in the rear of the one they had just left; and, some one coming to speak to him just then, excusing himself, he left her there to look about at her leisure. This was evidently John's private workroom; but it was in a very dusty and untidy condition, and Helen was appalled to see the many unfinished subjects which were standing against the walls, in the windows, and even upon chairs. Some were only just begun; others were well under way, and it would have required but little time and effort to have completed them and made them salable. She moved slowly about the place, pausing here and there to study various things that appealed to her, and at the same time recognizing the unmistakable talent that was apparent in almost every stroke of the brush. At length she came to a small easel that had been pushed close into a corner. There was a canvas resting on it, with its face turned to the wall, and curiosity prompted her to reverse it to ascertain the subject, when a cry of surprise broke from her lips as she found herself gazing upon the unfinished portrait of a most beautiful woman. John had never seemed to care to do portraits--they were uninteresting, he had always said--and she had never known of his attempting one before; hence her astonishment. The figure had been painted full length. It was slight, but perfect in its proportions; the pose exceedingly graceful and natural, the features delicate, the coloring exquisite. The eyes were a deep blue, arch and coquettish in expression; the hair a glossy, waving brown, a few bewitching locks falling softly on the white forehead, beneath a great picture hat. The costume was an evening gown of black spangled net, made _décoletté_, and with only an elaborate band of jet over the shoulders, the bare neck and beautifully molded arms making an effective contrast against the glittering, coal-black dress. The girl was standing by a small oval table, one hand resting lightly upon it, the other hanging by her side, and loosely holding a pair of long silken gloves. Helen's face flooded crimson as her glance fell upon the gloves. Even though they were black, they were startlingly suggestive to her, and her thought instantly reverted to the one, so bright-hued, which she had found in the inner pocket of her husband's overcoat some months previous. Had she to-day inadvertently stumbled upon the solution of that mystery which had never ceased to rankle, with exceeding bitterness, in her heart from that day to this? There was still much to be done before the picture would be finished, though it was a good deal further along than most of its companions. Enough had been accomplished, however, to show that there had been no lack of interest on the part of the artist while at work upon it. Who was she--this blue-eyed, brown-haired siren in glittering black? When and where had the portrait been painted? Had the woman come there, to John's room, for sittings? Or was she some one whom he met often, and had painted from memory? Helen did not believe she could be a model; there was too much about her that hinted at high life, and of habitual association with the fashionable world--possibly of the stage. She stood a long time before the easel, studying every line of the lovely face until she found that, with all its beauty, there was a suggestion of craftiness and even cruelty in the dark-blue eyes and in the lines about the mouth and sensuous chin. A step behind her caused Helen to start and turn quickly, to find Monsieur Jacques almost beside her, his eyes fastened intently, and in unmistakable surprise, upon the picture she had discovered. "Who is she?" she demanded, almost sharply, and voicing the query she had just put to herself. "Madame, I have never before looked upon the picture--I did not even know that Monsieur Hungerford had attempted a portrait," gravely returned the artist. "It is finely done, however," he added approvingly. "Has no woman been here for sittings?" "No, madame; no one except our own models--I am sure not. That is not allowed in my studio without my sanction and supervision," was the reply. "It may be simply a study, original with monsieur; if so, it is very beautiful, and holds great promise," the man concluded, with hearty appreciation. Helen replaced the portrait as she had found it, somewhat comforted by her companion's assurance and high praise of her husband's effort; then she turned to leave the room. "I thank you, monsieur, for your courtesy," she said, holding out to him a hand that trembled visibly from inward excitement. "Pray do not mention it, but come again, my child, whenever I can be of service to you. _Au revoir_," he responded kindly, as he accompanied her to the door and bowed her out. Helen went home with a heavy heart. She was well-nigh discouraged with what she had heard and seen. She had long suspected, and she was now beginning to realize, that her husband's chief aim in life was personal entertainment and love of ease; that he was sadly lacking in force of character, practical application, and moral responsibility; caring more about being rated a jolly good fellow by his boon companions than for his duties as a husband and father, or for attaining fame in his profession. Thus she spent a very unhappy day, haunted continually by that portrait, and brooding anxiously over what the future might hold for them; while, at the same time, she was both indignant and keenly wounded in view of John's improvidence, prodigality, and supreme selfishness, and of his apparent indifference to her peace of mind and the additional burdens he was constantly imposing upon her. John returned that evening, in a most genial mood. He made light of his protracted absence and of Helen's anxiety on account of it, but offered no apologies for keeping her in suspense for so long. He briefly remarked that the party had concluded to extend their tour, and make more of an outing than they had at first planned. It had evidently been a very enjoyable one, although he did not go into detail at all, and when Helen inquired about the Duc de Mouvel's wonderful collection of paintings, he appeared somewhat confused, but said they were "grand, remarkable, and absolutely priceless!" then suddenly changed the subject. Helen's suspicion that the party had never been inside the Château de Mouvel was confirmed by his manner; but she was too hurt and proud to question him further, and so did not pursue the subject. She thought it only right, however, to tell him of her visit to Monsieur Jacques, and what the artist had said about his talent, and the flattering possibilities before him, if he would conscientiously devote himself to his work. She referred to his disapproval of his present course, and the company he was keeping; whereupon John became exceedingly angry, in view of her "meddling," as he termed it; said Monsieur Jacques would do better to give more attention to his own affairs, and less to his; then, refusing to discuss the situation further, he abruptly left the room in a very sulky frame of mind. Helen had debated with herself as to the advisability of telling him of her discovery of the portrait. She did not like to conceal anything from her husband. She felt that every such attempt only served to establish a more formidable barrier between them; but after the experience of to-night she thought it would be wiser not to refer to the matter--at least until later. John evidently did some thinking on his own part that night, for he was more like his former self when he appeared at breakfast the next morning, and proceeded directly to the studio on leaving the house. He did better for a couple of months afterward, manifested more interest in his work, and finished a couple of pictures, which, through the influence of Monsieur Jacques, were hung at an exhibition and sold at fair prices, greatly to Helen's joy. But instead of being inspired to even greater effort by this success, John seemed content to rest upon his honors, and soon began to lapse again into his former indolent ways, apparently indifferent to the fact that his money was almost gone, and poverty staring himself and his family in the face. Long before this, Helen had given up her maid, had practiced economy in every possible way, and denied herself many things which she had always regarded as necessary to her comfort. But the more she gave up, the more John appeared to expect her to give up; the harder she worked, the less he seemed to think he was obliged to do himself. Thus, with her domestic duties, her sewing, and the care of Dorothy, every moment of the day, from the hour of rising until she retired at night, the young wife was heavily burdened with toilsome and unaccustomed duties. It was a bitter experience for this delicately nurtured girl, but no word of repining ever escaped her lips. She had pledged herself to John "for better or worse," and, despite the unremitting strain upon her courage, patience, and strength, despite her increasing disappointment in and constantly waning respect for her husband, she had no thought but to loyally abide by her choice, and share his lot, whatever it might be. The day came, however, when John himself awoke to the fact that he had about reached the end of his rope--when he was startled to find that less than two hundred dollars remained to his credit in the bank, and poverty treading close upon his heels. He knew he could no longer go on in this desultory way; something radical must be done, and done at once. He was tired of his art; he was tired of facing, day after day, Monsieur Jacques' grave yet well-deserved disapproval; while, for some reason, he had become weary of Paris, and, one morning, to Helen's great joy--for she believed it the best course to pursue--he suddenly announced his intention to return to the United States. They sublet their house, and were fortunate in selling their furniture, just as it stood, to the new tenant, thus realizing sufficient funds, with what money they already possessed, to comfortably defray all expenses back to San Francisco, which had been their former home, and to which Helen had firmly insisted upon returning, although John had voiced a decided preference for New York. "No, I am going home--to my friends," she reiterated, but with her throat swelling painfully as she thought she would find no father and mother there to greet her. "I have lived in exile long enough; I need--I am hungry to see familiar faces." "But----" John began, with a rising flush. "Yes, I know, we are going back poor," said his wife, reading his thought as he hesitated; "but my real friends will not think any the less of me for that, and they will be a comfort to me. Besides, all the furniture of my old home is stored there, and it will be useful to us in beginning life again." During the voyage Helen seemed happier than she had been for months. The freedom from household cares and drudgery was a great boon to her, and the rest, salt air, and change of food were doing her good; while the anticipation of once more being among familiar scenes and faces was cheering, even exhilarating, to her. To Dorothy the ocean was a great marvel and delight, and it was a pleasant sight to see the beautiful mother and her attractive little daughter pacing the deck together, enjoying the novelty of their surroundings, watching the white-capped waves, or the foaming trail in the wake of the huge vessel, their bright faces and happy laughter attracting the attention of many an appreciative observer. John, on the contrary, was listless and moody, spending his time mostly in reading, smoking, and sleeping in his steamer chair, apparently taking little interest in anything that was going on about him, or giving much thought to what was before him at his journey's end. One morning Helen came on deck with two or three recent magazines, which a chance acquaintance had loaned her. She handed two of them to her husband, and, tucking herself snugly into her own chair, proceeded to look over the other, with Dorothy standing beside her to see the pictures. By and by the child ran away to play, and Helen became interested in a story. A half hour passed, and she had become deeply interested in the tale she was reading, when she was startled by a smothered exclamation from John. She glanced at him, to find him gazing intently at a picture in one of the magazines she had given him. The man's face was all aglow with admiration and pleased surprise, and she noted that the hand which held the periodical trembled from some inward emotion. Wondering what could have moved him so, yet feeling unaccountably reluctant to question him, she appeared not to notice his excitement, and composedly went on with her reading. Presently he arose, saying he was going aft for a smoke, and left her alone; but, to her great disappointment, taking the magazine with him. Later in the day, on going to their stateroom, however, she found it in his berth, tucked under his pillow! Eagerly seizing it, she began to search it through, when suddenly, on turning a leaf, a great shock went quivering through her, for there on the page before her was the picture of a woman, the exact counterpart of the half-finished portrait she had seen in John's work-room during her visit to Monsieur Jacques. Like a flash, her eyes dropped to the name beneath it. "Marie Duncan, with the Wells Opera Company, now in Australia," was what she read. On the opposite page was a brief account of the troupe and the musical comedy, which, during the past season, had had an unprecedented run in Paris, and was now making a great hit in Melbourne, Miss Duncan, the star, literally taking the public by storm. "Well, _that_ mystery is finally solved! And doubtless she was the owner of that pink glove, also," mused Helen, her lips curling with fine scorn, as she studied the fascinating face before her. "Thank fortune," she presently added, with a sigh of thankfulness, as she closed the book and replaced it under the pillow, "she is away in Australia, and we are every day increasing the distance between us." She kept her own counsel, however, and gave no sign of the discovery she had made. The day preceding their landing in New York, Helen asked her husband what plans he had made for their future, how he expected to provide for their support upon reaching San Francisco. "Oh, I don't know!" he replied, somewhat irritably. "Possibly I may ask Uncle Nathan to give me a position in his office." "And give up your art, John!" exclaimed Helen, in a voice of dismay, adding: "You are better fitted for that than for anything else." "But I shall have to do something to get a start. You know, it takes money to live while one is painting pictures," he moodily returned. "But it would not take very long to finish up some of them--the best ones; and I feel sure they would sell readily," said his wife. "The best ones would require the help of a good teacher, or an expert artist, to complete," her husband curtly replied. Helen sighed regretfully over the time which had been so wantonly wasted in Paris, and during which, under the skillful supervision of Monsieur Jacques, he might have finished much of his work, and at the same time perfected himself upon many important points. She preserved a thoughtful silence for several moments; then gravely inquired: "Do you suppose, John, that, with another year of study, with some good teacher, you could finish and dispose of the various subjects you have begun?" "Possibly I might," he briefly observed, but there was very little enthusiasm in his tone or manner. "Do you feel in the mood? Have you any ambition for honest, painstaking effort--for hard work, John, to attempt this under a first-class artist?" Helen persisted. The man began to grow restive; he could never bear to be pinned down to committing himself to anything, or to yield a point. "You have no idea, Helen, what a grind it is to sit before an easel day after day, and wield a brush," he said, in an injured tone, and with a frown of annoyance. "Everything is a grind unless you put your heart into your work--unless one is governed by principle and a sense of moral responsibility," said Helen gravely. "Is that the way you have baked and brewed, washed dishes and made beds the past year?" queried her husband, with a covert sneer. "I certainly never baked and brewed, or washed dishes, solely from love of the work," she quietly but significantly replied, as her glance rested upon her wrist, where a faint scar was visible--the fading reminder of a serious burn sustained when she first began her unaccustomed duties as cook and maid of all work. John observed it also, then quickly looked away, as he remembered that she had never murmured or neglected a single duty on account of it. "But where is the money for a teacher coming from?" he inquired, after a moment, and referring to Helen's unanswered question regarding his unfinished work. "You know Dorothy's money has been accumulating all these years," she began in reply. "The interest now amounts to upward of fifteen hundred dollars, and I will consent to use it for this purpose, if you will agree to do your level best to make your unfinished pictures marketable during the coming year." Her husband flushed hotly--not because he experienced either gratitude or a sense of shame in view of becoming dependent upon his wife's bounty, but because it angered him to have conditions made for him. He appeared to be utterly devoid of ambition for his future, and Helen's suggestion possessed no real attraction for him. Painting had become a bore--the last thing he had really taken any interest in having been the portrait his wife had discovered in his studio just previous to the sailing of its original for Australia. John Hungerford had never performed a day's manual labor in his life, and even though he had said he might ask his uncle for a position on his arrival in San Francisco, he had no relish for the prospect of buckling down to a humdrum routine of duties in Nathan Young's flourishing manufactory. He sat chewing the cud of sullen discontent for some time, while considering the situation, and finally gave Helen a half-hearted promise to stick to his art, under a teacher, for another year. But his consent had been so reluctantly given, his manner was so indifferent, Helen felt that she had received very little encouragement to warrant that the future would show any better results than the past, and the outlook seemed rather dark to her. CHAPTER V. FLUCTUATING EXPERIENCES. Upon their arrival in San Francisco, the Hungerfords took a small apartment in a quiet but good location, where Helen felt she could ask her friends, and they would not hesitate to come to see her. This she tastefully fitted up with some of the simplest of her old-home furniture, which her father's lifelong friend and lawyer had carefully stored for her against her return. The more expensive pieces, with some massive, valuable silver, and choice bric-a-brac that Mr. Appleton had purchased to embellish the beautiful new residence which he had built a few years previous to his death--these extravagances having really been the beginning of his undoing--she sold, thus realizing several hundred dollars, which would go far, with careful management, toward tiding over the interval during which John was working to turn his paintings into money. As yet Dorothy had never attended school, Helen having systematically taught her at home; but the child was bright and quick to learn, and was fully up to the standard with, if not in advance of, girls of her own age. She could speak French like a Parisian, and her mother had also given her excellent training in music. Helen, thus far, had been very wise in her management of Dorothy. Profiting by the mistakes which she realized her own indulgent parents had made in rearing herself, as well as by the faults she had detected in her husband's character, she had determined that her daughter should not suffer in the future, along the same lines, for lack of careful discipline. At the same time, she by no means made her government irksome; indeed, it never seemed to the child that she was being governed, for the companionship between them was so close and tender that she fell naturally into her mother's way of thinking, and seldom rebelled against her authority, even though she was by no means devoid of spirit or a mind of her own. Now, however, feeling that Dorothy needed a wider horizon, with different environment and training, as she pursued her education, her mother decided to put her into the public school. This would relieve Helen of much care, and also give her more time to take up a systematic course of piano and voice culture, which she had determined to do, with the view of turning her talent for music to some practical purpose, at least until her husband was better equipped to provide suitably for his family. She had been cordially received on her return by most of her old friends, even though she had made no secret of the change in her circumstances. She had been a great favorite before her marriage, and her family highly respected; hence her reverses did not now appear to affect her social standing, at least among those who knew her best. Very grateful and happy in view of this proof of real friendship, Helen was encouraged to quietly seek pupils in music, and easily secured a class of ten, which were all she felt she could do justice to with her domestic duties and other cares. She felt very independent and not a little proud of the money thus earned, while she found it a great help in meeting the many expenses of her household. During the first year after their return from abroad, John also worked well. He liked his teacher--a German, who had studied many years in Italy--who spoke in high praise of his talent, as well as of the thoroughness of the instruction he had received from Monsieur Jacques, all of which was apparent in his beautiful but unfinished work, he said. Although Herr Von Meyer was not permanently located in San Francisco, his work had become popular, and he had quite a large following as students. He might almost have been called an itinerant artist, for he had traveled extensively in the United States and Canada, stopping for a longer or shorter time, as his fancy dictated, in numerous places, painting and sketching American life and scenery. He was now planning to return to his own country at the end of another year, to again take up work in his own studio in Berlin. It was, therefore, a rare opportunity for John to have found so talented a teacher just at this time; and, under his supervision, he completed and disposed of a goodly number of his paintings. Some of these were so well appreciated that he received orders to duplicate them, and the future looked promising. This success so elated and encouraged him that at the end of a year he concluded he was now competent to do business for himself without further assistance or instruction. Accordingly, he hired some rooms, furnished them attractively, and launched out upon an independent career with something like real enthusiasm. For a time all went well; more pictures were painted and sold, bringing good prices; while, after the departure of Herr Von Meyer, students began to flock to him. Young Hungerford, the artist, was beginning to be talked about in society and at the various clubs; he was also much sought after and admired in fashionable circles; his studio became a favorite resort for people interested in art, and here John shone a bright particular star. Helen became happy in proportion to her husband's advancement; she grew radiant with health; the lines of care and worry all faded out of her face; she was like a light-hearted girl, and John told her she was prettier than ever. It was almost too good to be true, she sometimes said to herself, as she remembered the sad conditions that had prevailed while they were in Paris. But she would not allow herself to dwell upon those unhappy experiences; the present was full of hope and promise, and she firmly believed that her husband's fame and fortune were assured. Had John Hungerford possessed "the stable mind," as Monsieur Jacques once expressed it, all must have gone well; if he had been less egotistical, selfish, and vain, more persevering and practical; had he not been naturally so indolent--"lazy," to quote his former teacher again--and pleasure-loving, he might have risen rapidly, and maintained his position. But, as time wore on, and the novelty of his popularity and prosperity began to pall upon him; as the demands upon his patience became greater, and the supervision of students required more concentration and attention to detail; as the filling of increasing orders for his own work made it necessary to stick closer to his easel, day after day, life began to seem "a grind" again. He grew discontented, irritable, restless. He lost patience with his students, and became indifferent to his duty to them, until they began to be disaffected, and dropped away from him. He neglected orders until his patrons became angry and withdrew them, and finally, becoming dissatisfied with his own work, he dropped back into his old habit of starting subject after subject, only to set them aside to try something else, rarely completing anything; all of which tended toward the ruin of his once prosperous business, as well as his reputation as an artist. All this came about so gradually that, for a long time, no one save Helen suspected how matters were going. She begged him to wake up and renew his efforts, both for her sake and Dorothy's, as well as for his own; and she encouraged him in every possible way. But nothing that she could say or do served to arouse him from the mental and moral lethargy that possessed and grew upon him. Fortunately, in spite of their recent prosperity, Helen had retained her pupils in music, more because of her love for the work than because she felt the need of money, as at first. Thus, when her husband's income began to fall off, she dropped, little by little, into the way of sharing the household expenses from her own earnings, and so assumed burdens which he should have borne himself. As month succeeded month, things continued to grow worse, until rumors of the truth got afloat, and his friends and patrons began to show their disapproval of his downward course, and even to shun his society. Yet these significant omens did not serve to arouse him. On the contrary, his indifference and indolence increased, and his old love for wandering returned; his studio would frequently be closed for days, sometimes for weeks, at a time, and only his boon companions knew where he could be found. Helen regarded these evidences of deterioration with a sinking heart, yet tried to be patient. She did not complain, even when their funds ran very low, but cheerfully supplied the needs of the family, and bravely tried to fortify herself with the hope that John could not long remain oblivious to his responsibilities, and would eventually retrieve himself. During all this time she had been making splendid progress in her own musical training--especially in the cultivation of her voice. She had often given her services in behalf of charitable entertainments, and not infrequently assisted her friends to entertain by singing a charming group of songs at parties and receptions; thus she had gained for herself the reputation of being a most pleasing vocalist. Recently these same friends, who sympathized with her domestic trials, and, recognizing her financial difficulties, had arranged for several musical functions, asking her to superintend them, and had paid her liberally for her services. This new departure seemed to Helen like the pointing of Providence to a more promising future, by making her entirely independent of her husband, and it would also enable her to give Dorothy advantages which she could never hope--judging from present indications--to receive from her father. Accordingly, she immediately issued attractive cards, advertising to provide musical entertainment for clubs, receptions, or social functions of any kind. It was somewhat late in the season when she conceived this project, and she secured only a limited number of engagements; but as she gained fresh laurels and had delighted her patrons in every instance, she believed she had paved the way for a good business by the following fall. During the month of May of this year John began to talk of going out of town for the summer. "We cannot afford it," Helen objected. "My pupils will leave me in June, and will not return to me until September, and we must not spend the money it would cost for such an outing." "But you need a change, as well as I, and--and some of--of Dorothy's money would be well spent in giving us all a good vacation," her husband argued. "That money is not to be touched," said Helen firmly. "That is sacredly devoted to a college course for her as soon as she leaves the high school. Dorothy and I are perfectly well; we have more comforts at home than we could find elsewhere without paying an extravagant price, and, with a short trip now and then, to some point of interest, we can manage to be very happy without going away." "We could go into the mountains, and camp out--that wouldn't cost very much," John persisted. "Camp out!" Helen exclaimed, astonished. "And where would we get our meals? You know very well that Hannah would not put up with the poor accommodations of any camp." "Oh, dismiss Hannah for a couple of months! We could get our own meals, and make them as simple as we chose," her husband suggested. Helen smiled wanly. She wondered what he meant by simple meals, for he was, as a rule, very particular what he had to eat and how it was cooked. She realized that such a move would result in simply making her a drudge, under very uncomfortable conditions, for the summer; she would lose a good maid, and be in no way refreshed on her return to town. "I think it would be very unwise," she gravely returned; "such an outing as that would have no rest or attraction for me; besides, I had planned to work diligently at my music during the next three months, to prepare for the winter." John was not at all pleased with this decided rejection of his proposition, as a protracted and sullen silence plainly indicated. "Well, _I_ am not willing to swelter in the hot city during the next three months, if you are," heat length burst forth, "and I want a change." "Oh, John, you ought to stay right here, and go to work for your family," said his wife, with a note of appeal in her tremulous tones. "We have hardly money enough left to pay our bills until fall, as it is." "I tell you I will not!" he said crossly, adding: "You can, of course, do as you choose. If you and Dorothy will not go with me, I'll turn Bohemian, take my kit along, and make sketches for work when I return." Helen knew it would be useless to oppose him, so said no more. All the same, judging from the past, she had little faith that his sketching would amount to much, and so when June opened she saw him depart with a heavy heart. She received brief letters from him from time to time; but he told her very little of what he was doing. His chief desire seemed to be to let her know where her letters and remittances would reach him. He returned in September, to find his wife and child blooming and happy. It was evident that they had enjoyed the summer far better than he, for he appeared jaded and spiritless, while he had very little to produce as material for the coming winter's work--a few rough sketches, carelessly done, were all he had to show. Helen, however, had worked to good purpose. Her voice was in splendid condition. She had added several choice selections to her repertoire; while Dorothy showed marked improvement upon the piano, and had learned to accompany her mother very effectively in some of her simpler songs. But it had not been all work and no play with them. They went out somewhere every fine day. They had little picnics to the park; they had sails upon the bay, sometimes visiting a popular resort; and once an old friend of Helen's asked them, for a week, to her summer home, a few miles out of the city. Dorothy was perfectly satisfied, even though most of her school friends were away, and once remarked to a friend who called upon them: "Mamma and I do have just the nicest times together; it's great fun to go about with her." John had very little to say relative to his own vacation, or the companions with whom he had spent it; he certainly gave no sign of renewed vigor, and showed no inclination to take up his long-neglected painting; but Helen asked no questions, made no comments or criticisms. Neither did she manifest either surprise or disapproval when he came in one day, a month after his return, and informed her that he had given up his studio and accepted a position in his Uncle Nathan's establishment. "Painting pictures, as a business, is fluctuating, monotonous, unsatisfactory," he said. "He believed it would be far better to have a salary, on which he could depend." Helen sighed for the money that had been wasted in rent for the studio during the summer; also for the rejected art for which John possessed talent, if not genius. But he lacked force, he hated personal responsibility, as well as work, and perhaps the salary, even though it was to be a moderate sum for the first year, would be better. The monthly payments from Mr. Young could be relied upon, and thus her own burdens would be somewhat lightened. CHAPTER VI. AN OLD TEMPTATION REVIVED. Helen had entered three new pupils on her books at the beginning of the fall, these increasing her class to thirteen, and she had also been engaged, for an early date in October, to sing at a charity fair, to be held under the auspices of one of the wealthy clubs of the city. This seemed quite a promising outlook so early in the season, and she was also hoping much from her new venture as entertainer at private social functions. The fair was extensively advertised, and was held for four afternoons and evenings of the second week in October, Helen appearing twice upon each occasion, and proving such a drawing card that a score of engagements for fashionable receptions was the result of her success. This was far more than she had dared to expect, and she was much elated over her good fortune. Everything moved along peacefully and prosperously until spring, John bearing his confinement in his uncle's office better than she had anticipated, and was apparently content with his salary. But as the warm weather came on again she could see that he began to chafe under his confinement in the city and to his work. He had his vacation of two weeks in August, however, when he made a trip to Chicago, instead of going into the country, greatly to his wife's astonishment at the time. On his return he seemed in high spirits, saying he had had a fine trip, and resumed his duties with apparent cheerfulness. A week later there appeared upon the billboards about the city flaring advertisements stating that the Wells Opera Company, with beautiful Marie Duncan as star, would present the "Prince of Pilsen" early in October. The newspapers also contained notices of the same fact, and stated that Miss Duncan had just concluded a summer engagement in Chicago, and was now resting for a few weeks before taking up her work in San Francisco. At once Helen understood John's motive in going to Chicago to spend his vacation; also his unusual cheerfulness upon his return; and a foreboding of impending trouble began to haunt her from that moment. When the Wells Opera Company arrived, Helen made it a point to attend a matinee, to ascertain for herself what the personality of the popular favorite was like. That she was exceedingly beautiful and peculiarly fascinating there was no denying, and her voice was a marvel of sweetness. John had never painted anything more true to life than the portrait she had discovered in his studio in Paris; although, if that were possible, the siren's charms were riper and even more alluring than at that time. Nevertheless, there was a vein of coarseness in her manner, a boldness in her glance and smile, a voluptuous abandon in her acting, that offended and repelled Helen's finer sensibilities, and sent her home sick at heart, with mingled fear and jealousy; for, down deep in her consciousness, she was forced to acknowledge that it was just these elements in Marie Duncan that appealed to something of the same nature in her husband's character, and was winning him from his allegiance to his wife. She wondered what had become of that portrait. She had never seen it since that never-to-be-forgotten day when she had visited Monsieur Jacques in such distress, to seek some explanation of John's prolonged absence from home. John certainly had not brought it back to America with him. Whither had it disappeared? Had he destroyed it, fearing it might some time betray him? Suddenly her outraged heart awoke to the truth, and her face flamed hotly with indignation and humiliation as she recalled the reproduction she had seen in the magazine she had found under John's pillow in his berth on the steamer, as they were returning from France. John had finished his picture; he had given it to the actress before she sailed for Australia, and she had allowed it to be copied by the press. It seemed to Helen that her cup of woe was filled to the brim--her endurance taxed to the limit, as she began to query within herself what would be the outcome of Marie Duncan's present engagement in San Francisco. But the courage that is born in heroes had also been planted in Helen Hungerford's heart, and, after the first shock of dismay had passed, she began to ask what she could do to counteract Marie's influence and keep her husband loyal to her and true to himself. To reveal her suspicions, to voice complaints, criticisms, or reproaches would only serve to make matters worse; for John was one who would never bear censure or opposition in any form. Her only hope lay in being tactful and diplomatic, in trying to make herself and their home so attractive that he would be weaned from his infatuation for the opera star, and realize the folly of ruining his reputation and domestic peace. So she bravely resolved to conceal every evidence of anxiety. John was in absolute ignorance of the fact that she even dreamed of his interest in the actress, and she realized the wisdom of still concealing it from him. She said nothing of her afternoon at the matinee; she never referred to the opera, or expressed a desire to see it; neither did her husband invite her to go, as was usual whenever anything new, of a musical nature, was running; but she began a systematic course of acting herself, using every possible device to keep him with his family, catering to his tastes and humoring his lightest wish or whim. She asked him to be her escort to and from the social functions at which she was entertaining; she planned pleasures that would include them all, and tried to interest him in books she was reading. But all was of no avail. He always had some plausible excuse to get away from home evenings, and often did not return until the small hours of the morning; he manifested less and less interest in his family; he was morose and preoccupied, avoiding conversation, and at times was exceedingly irritable with Dorothy. Previous to this, since he had been in his uncle's employ, he had cheerfully contributed a part of his salary to help defray household expenses; but now he suddenly began to withhold his money, or, if reminded that funds were needed, doled out a mere pittance so grudgingly that Helen shrank from the humiliation of asking assistance and being so inconsiderately treated. This state of things continued far into the winter, the breach between the man and his family continually widening, for Dorothy was beginning to take notice, while he began to be irregular at his business and to show the effect of late hours and dissipation. One afternoon, on returning from an engagement at an out-of-town reception, Helen found, to her great surprise, Mr. Nathan Young, John's uncle and employer, awaiting her. It was the first time she had seen him for many months, for, aside from his one act of giving her husband his present position, he had never manifested the slightest interest in the family. He was rated a very rich man, but, having a fashionable wife and four daughters to maintain, he was wholly absorbed in his business and individual responsibilities. Helen had never been asked to entertain at any of Madam Young's receptions, although she had sent her, early in the season, a card announcing her intentions; neither had she ever met any of the family in the homes of her patrons; and now, when, after greeting her visitor with graceful courtesy, she threw aside her wrap and stood before him in her fresh young beauty and charming costume, the man stared at her in astonishment. "Really, Mrs. John Hungerford, you look like the wife of a millionaire," he brusquely observed, a note of keen irony in his tones. Helen flushed consciously. She realized that she must appear extravagantly attired to one who did not understand the situation. The next moment she smiled frankly up into her companion's face. "Perhaps you do not know, Mr. Young, that, for two years, I have been singing at social functions given by fashionable people, to help John meet the expenses of the family?" she explained. "No, I didn't know it," he curtly returned, his shrewd eyes still studying her costume. "Of course," Helen went on, "going before such audiences, I am obliged to dress well; but"--with an air of quiet dignity, for she felt that the man was rude to her--"as I earn all my own clothes, as well as Dorothy's, I am wronging no one." "Humph!" Nathan Young grunted, although his glance softened; for truly Helen was very pleasant to look upon as she stood before him in her trailing gown of soft blue silk, tastefully trimmed with real lace that had belonged to her mother; she also wore some fine jewels which had come to her from the same source, and the man, now that he comprehended, secretly liked her spirit and frankness in telling him just how matters stood. She showed a turn for business that pleased him, and he chuckled within himself over her statement that she earned all her own and Dorothy's clothes. Money getting had been his one aim from his youth up; he liked to see people work hard for money; he had no patience with drones. He had always viewed John's idiotic dabbling in paints with undisguised contempt, and had never shown the least interest in his career as an artist. Presently he broke forth, almost sharply: "Where is that husband of yours?" "John? Hasn't he been at the office to-day?" Helen inquired, in a startled tone. "I've seen nothing of him for nearly a week," the gentleman replied, with a frown of displeasure. "You have not seen John for nearly a week!" repeated the astonished wife, aghast. "That is what I said," was the curt rejoinder. "And this isn't the first time he has neglected his business, by any means, though he has never stayed away so long before. I'm tired of his shilly-shallying, and he has always worked with an air of protest, as if he felt the position beneath him. I just dropped in to see if he were ill, or had any good reason to offer for his absence." "No, John is perfectly well, and I am amazed at what you have told me, Mr. Young," Helen observed, with tremulous lips, her composure sadly shaken. The man arose, an ominous gleam in his eyes. "Well, then, you can tell him from me that he need not show up at the office again," he coldly observed, at the same time laying an envelope on the table before Helen. "Here is his pay up to the end of the month. He hasn't earned it, but it's what I agreed to give him, and I'm a man of my word. I hoped," he continued, less sharply, after a momentary pause, during which his glance fell upon his companion's colorless face, "when he came to me for a position he had given up his nonsense about art, and had made up his mind to settle down to something worth while, and I meant to do well by him--take him in with me, by and by, perhaps, if he showed any backbone or interest in the business; but it is evident that he cares more for his own ease and pleasure than for anything else, and--I'm through with him." Helen's heart sank within her. She dare not think what might be the consequences if John lost his position just at this time. It would leave him with no responsibility, and with nothing to do but to dance attendance upon Marie Duncan. She felt it would mean utter ruin for their domestic happiness. He might not mend his ways even if his uncle retained him in his service, since his infatuation for the actress had become so strong; but it would at least be something to hold him from spending all his time with her. To be suddenly cut off like this seemed like the parting asunder of the cable that held their only anchor of hope, thus leaving them drifting helplessly upon a treacherous sea. "Oh, pray do not say that, Mr. Young!" she pleaded, with whitening lips. "John needs to be encouraged, to be held by some responsibility. Will you not kindly give him another trial?" "No, I have borne all I shall from him," gruffly replied Nathan Young, but shifting uneasily under the look in her imploring eyes. "John has no sense of responsibility, no idea of duty in connection with himself or any one else. His only thought is to drift comfortably with the current; when there is any rowing to be done he thrusts it upon some one else every time. I've been studying him ever since he came to me, and I know. He will never be 'held,' as you put it, except by his own will--at least, until he has had some lesson in life that will make a stronger impression upon him than any he has had yet. There, I've had my say! It has taken me longer to make up my mind to this, perhaps, than you have any idea, for he was my sister's boy, and I owed her something; but when I finally come to a decision about anything the matter is settled. I am sorry for you, though, Mrs. Hungerford--upon my word, I am. I don't believe it has been easy navigating for you, in spite of the brave front you show to the world," he concluded, with a touch of honest sympathy, while he wondered if she had any suspicion of how or where her husband was spending the most of his time. He had been investigating the movements of his recreant nephew of late, and he had learned that his companions and pursuits were not at all to his credit. Helen stood cold and haughty before him. She was stung to the quick by the man's harsh arraignment and curt dismissal of her husband; yet she knew, in her heart, that he was justified in both. At the same time, John was her husband, and the father of her child, and she was bound to defend him--to be loyal to him as long as defense and loyalty were possible. She saw that it was useless to expect any concession from Mr. Young, that it would be a waste of time and energy to argue with him. So she braced herself to meet the inevitable with what composure she could command, and observed, with an air of quiet dignity: "I will give Mr. Hungerford your message, Mr. Young. I deeply regret that you have been so disappointed in your expectations regarding him. I feel confident, however, that there is good in him," she went on, with wifely fealty; "that some time it will be developed, and that he will win for himself a place and a name in the world. I trust Madam Young and the young ladies are well?" she graciously concluded, as she saw that her visitor was becoming restive and anxious to terminate the interview. "Thank you; they are in their usual health," he replied, eagerly seizing the opportunity she had so gracefully made for him, and his hat at the same time. Helen followed him to the door, where she bade him a courteous "good afternoon;" then, as he passed from her presence, she sank, strengthless, upon a chair, looking the picture of despair. "Truly my burden is becoming heavier than I can bear," she moaned, in bitterness of spirit. CHAPTER VII. SERIOUS DOMESTIC COMPLICATIONS. When John Hungerford returned to his home and learned of his summary dismissal from his uncle's employ, instead of appearing disturbed by the unexpected information, he manifested undisguised relief and satisfaction. "Thank the propitious Fates! So the old crank has given me the grand bounce, has he?" he exclaimed, with sneering levity. "'_Propitious_ Fates!'" repeated Helen, with grave disapproval. "I regard it as a great misfortune. Pray, what do you intend to do for a living in the future, John?" "Oh, I'll look about and see what I can find--I reckon something will turn up," he returned, with an air of indifference that smote his wife keenly. Whether he "looked about," or made any effort to obtain a position, Helen had no means of knowing. But weeks passed, and he was still idle, having done absolutely nothing during that time for the provision of his family. He was sullen and disagreeable when at home, and resented all inquiries regarding his movements. Thus the husband and wife could only drift farther and farther apart; for Helen was becoming both discouraged and indignant in view of John's increasing apathy and neglect, which seemed to imply that he felt no personal responsibility and experienced no moral discomfort in allowing her to supply all the needs of the household indefinitely. Dorothy was now fourteen years of age, a very bright, attractive girl. She was keenly observant of what was going on around her, and, as she not infrequently was a sufferer from the inharmony pervading her home, she was beginning to realize that something was very wrong between her father and mother. Helen, however, never encouraged either comments or questions from her, and always evaded any reference to the strained relations between her husband and herself. But matters continued to grow worse, and were finally brought to a climax one day when Dorothy burst in upon her, on returning from school, in a state of great excitement, her face crimson from shame, her eyes flashing with anger. "Mamma, what _will_ you say?" she passionately exclaimed. "I saw papa, just now, riding in an auto with Marie Duncan, that opera singer who has been singing at the Grand Theater all winter. They were laughing, and joking, and having a great time together. Grace Winthrop was with me, and I was so mortified I thought I'd die!" Helen Hungerford lifted an ashen face to the speaker. "Dorothy, are you _sure_?" she gasped, the startled throbbing of her heart making her voice almost inaudible. "Of course I am sure!" was the positive reply. "There were so many teams in the street the auto had to slow down as it passed the car we were in, and papa saw us, and got awful red in the face. He nodded to us, but I just looked him straight back in the eye--I wouldn't notice him. Mamma, what makes him do such horrid things? Why can't he be nice, like other gentlemen? Oh, I am so ashamed! What will Grace think? What will everybody think?" she concluded wildly. "Hush, Dorrie, dear; it can do no good to get so excited over it," said Helen, her own lips quivering painfully as she folded the trembling girl in her arms and kissed her tenderly. Dorothy convulsively returned her embrace; then threw herself in a torrent of tears upon the couch beside which her mother had been sitting when she came in. Helen allowed her to weep unrestrained, believing that the storm would soonest spend itself in that way. She sat beside her, white-faced, heavy-hearted, and tried to confront the situation. John, openly riding, in broad daylight, through the streets of the city, with the opera star, betrayed a wantonness that defied all conventionality or decorum. It was an evidence of indifference to public opinion, to his own respectability, and to the notoriety that must reflect upon his family, which showed how thoroughly infatuated he had become. And in an automobile! Whose car was it? Did it belong to the actress, or was John guilty of the extravagance of hiring it to take the woman about? If so, where did he get the money to pay for it, when he was not supplying a dollar toward his own support or that of his family? When John Hungerford entered his home that night, late as it was, he found a wan-faced, hollow-eyed woman sitting up for him; yet, despite the serpent sting in her heart, busy at work upon the week's mending. "Well," he observed, in a half-jocose, half-defiant tone, although a flush of shame swept his face as he met his wife's sad eyes, "I suppose the kid told you?" "Yes, Dorothy has told me where, and with whom, she saw you this afternoon. John, what does it mean?" Helen gravely returned. Her manner, as well as his own accusing conscience, angered him, and he swore--another evidence of his degeneration, for, as a rule, he had been a gentleman, rarely allowing himself to use either profane or vulgar language. He had been deeply chagrined, that afternoon, on coming almost face to face with Dorothy and her friend, the daughter of one of San Francisco's highly respected citizens. He had known, of course, that Dorothy would tell her mother, which nettled him still more, and now to be arraigned by Helen, to have her presume to dictate terms to him, as he felt she would do, caused him to lose all control of himself. "I don't know that I am accountable to you for where I go, or with whom I spend my time," he sullenly replied. Helen sat erect, her own spirit now thoroughly aroused. "Yes, you _are_ accountable to me when you compromise the honor of your family--and in the presence of your own child," she said, her blazing eyes looking straight into his; then she added, with quiet but convincing firmness: "And the way we have been living of late cannot go on any longer." He regarded her with mingled surprise and inquiry. Had the worm turned at last? Had his gentle, loyal, patient wife reached the limit of her endurance? Would she--did she mean that she would leave him? It had never occurred to him that she would take such a stand as this. "What do you mean, Helen?" he demanded, with compressed lips. "I mean that you are making my life intolerable--my burdens are heavier than I can bear." "You are jealous of Marie Duncan?" he said, a slight smile curling his lips. "Jealous--of _her_? _No!_" cried Helen scornfully. "A woman who will accept the exclusive attentions of a married man, allowing him to lavish upon her money that is needed by and rightly belongs to his family, is worthy only of contempt. But I _am_ concerned for my own good name and yours, for the future of my child, that no taint shall mar her prospects and sap the joy from her life. So I say this state of things must _stop_." "Very well; let it stop, then!" John flung back angrily. "Do you want a divorce?" "A divorce! _I?_" cried Helen, scarce able to restrain a shriek of aversion at the suggestion. Then, swallowing hard, she panted: "I could not be divorced." "You are mistaken; the law will free you if you desire." "The _law_! It is an unholy law, made to accommodate vacillating natures that lightly wed to-day and weary of their bonds to-morrow; it is a blot and a shame upon the constitution that permits it, upon the country that tolerates it. No, no--it is not possible for me!" She sat silent for a moment or two, her companion studying her uneasily meanwhile. "John," she presently resumed, bending nearer to him, and he could see the pulses beating in her white throat from the intensity of her emotion, "when I married you it was no light thing I did. I gave _myself_ to you--all that I was then, or ever hoped to be in this life--until death should part us--_death_, do you understand?--not until you should become weary of me, or until I found my burdens heavier than I had thought, but for better or for worse, as long as time should endure for us. It was a vow that can never be annulled--a hundred divorces would avail nothing; I marvel that you could suggest the measure to me! I am your wife, united to you not only by that solemn ceremony that made us one, but by an indissoluble bond that involves my honor, my love, and my loyalty--by that moral law that never releases one from his voluntary oath--and your wife I shall remain as long as I draw breath." John Hungerford's face had changed many times from crimson to white as he sat spellbound while his wife poured forth this passionate revelation of her inmost self to him. "Do you mean that you would not, _under any circumstances_, seek a divorce from me?" he inquired, shifting uneasily in his chair, when she ceased. "Yes, that is what I mean." "Suppose--that I should seek a divorce for myself?" Helen's hand clenched spasmodically within the sock she had been mending. "I should still hold myself bound by my vows to you," she said, with white lips. The man shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. "Just what did you mean by saying that things cannot go on any longer as they are going with us now?" he questioned. "I meant that it devolves upon you to assume your share of the burden of providing for your family; that I will not support you in idleness any longer." This was surely straightforward speaking, and John regarded his wife curiously for a moment. Hitherto she had been so patient and yielding he had not believed her capable of taking such a stand. "Well, if you wish to be rid of me, I suppose I can relieve you of my presence." "Where will you go? How will you live?" "Oh, I suppose 'the wind will be tempered to the shorn lamb,'" he quoted, with mocking irreverence. Helen sprang to her feet, and faced him with flaming eyes. She felt disgusted with and outraged by his utter indifference to her long-suffering patience under many trials, and by his deplorable lack of manliness. "John Hungerford, where is your manhood?" she demanded, with cold scorn. "Where your respect for your wife, or your love for your child? Do you not even possess _self_-respect?" "I warn you not to push me too far," he retorted hotly, adding: "Perhaps you really want me to get out--do you?" and he leaned toward her, with a menacing look and air. "No, for your own sake, I do not wish you to do that; but I do want you to show yourself a man, and some recognition of your duty as a husband and father," Helen spiritedly replied. Then she dauntlessly continued: "But I tell you again we cannot live this way any longer." "'Duty!' 'Duty!' That is always a woman's fling at a man, even if he is down on his luck. I'm not at all fond of this nagging, and I believe, on the whole, we'd be better off apart," he angrily shot back at her. For a full minute Helen silently searched his face. It was flushed, sullen, dogged. Was he really weary of the ties that bound him? Was he tired of her and of Dorothy? Was he seeking an excuse to get out, hoping to rid himself thereby of his moral responsibility, and be free to indulge his admiration for the fascinating soubrette? She was forced to believe that he was--everything seemed to point to that end, and it was evident that he had no intention of yielding to her terms; he would assume no responsibilities that were irksome to him; no burdens to cumber him; and suddenly all her outraged womanhood, wifehood, motherhood were aroused to arms, overleaping the last point of endurance. She drew herself to her full height, and confronted him with a spirit he had never seen her manifest before. "_As--you--please!_" she said, with freezing deliberation; and, pulling from her hand the silken sock she had been mending for him when he came in, she tossed it upon the floor at his feet. She held his eye for another brief moment, and he cringed visibly beneath the contemptuous renunciation that he read in the look. The next he was alone. Helen had fled to her chamber, where she fell, half fainting, upon her bed, her heart broken, her spirit crushed. A little later she heard the outer door close with a bang, and knew that her husband had left the house. Would he ever return? Would she really care if he never returned? Her burdens and trials had been very heavy and perplexing during most of her married life. She had tried to be brave, loyal, and self-sacrificing; she had laid her all upon the altar of her love for this man, only to have her unceasing immolation ignored, as of no special value, except in so far as it had relieved him of care, clothed, fed, and sheltered him. Now the last straw had been laid upon her by his shameless devotion to a brazen actress, regardless of the taint upon his own reputation and the scandal it must entail upon his family. It seemed, as she lay there, half conscious, as if this blow had crushed every atom of affection for him out of her heart, and she began to feel that, as far as she was concerned, it might be a blessed release to be free from him forever. Yet for his own and Dorothy's sake, she would have continued to bear her cross indefinitely and without a murmur, to save him from sin and to shield her child from the disgrace that now threatened them all. Days passed and lengthened into weeks, during which she did not once see or hear from her husband; but one afternoon, upon returning from an engagement out of town, she found that he had been in the house and removed all of his personal belongings, together with the choicest of his paintings and some rare curios which he had collected during their honeymoon abroad. This act convinced her that he intended their separation to be final. She had told Dorothy something of the recent stormy interview between her husband and herself, because she believed it best to prepare her for what she feared might be the outcome of it before very long. During the earlier portion of her brief life Dorothy had been very fond of her father, and he had always manifested a strong affection for her; but during the last two years Helen had observed that the girl often avoided him, that she grieved over his growing indifference to his obligations and his home; while not infrequently she had openly resented his treatment of her mother. When Helen told her she thought it probable that her father would leave them altogether, the girl sat in silent thought for several minutes. Then she lifted adoring eyes to her mother's face. "Mamma, if he _wants_ to go away from such a lovely wife as you have been, because he--he likes that coarse, loud-talking woman I saw him with that day, I--I'd just _let_ him go, and--and be glad to have him away," she said, her face growing crimson, her eyes flashing resentment in view of her father's wrongdoing. "But, Dorrie, dear, he is your father, and----" "My _father_! He hasn't acted much like a father who cared anything for his daughter!" Dorothy indignantly interposed. "And he's been horrid to _you_, lots of times. He's been so _lazy_, too, lounging around the house and letting you work so hard, and taking your _money_. I've been so ashamed that he couldn't be like other gentlemen, and take care of _us_. I used to think I was proud of him, and loved him, for he _is_ handsome and can be nice when he feels like it. I--I don't like to go near him now, though, and I haven't wanted to kiss him for a long time. But I love _you_, mamma, dear, with all my heart; and if he does go away I will try to be so good to you that--that perhaps you won't mind it quite so much," the child concluded, with a burst of tears, as she threw herself into her mother's arms, and clung to her convulsively. Helen was deeply touched by this spontaneous outburst of love and loyalty, and, as she thought the matter over more and more, she began to feel that if John's infatuation could not be broken--if he was past redemption--it would be better for Dorothy, perhaps, to be away from his influence. A month later Helen received notice from a lawyer, informing her of her husband's intention of applying for a divorce; he also stated that Mr. Hungerford desired a personal interview for the purpose of definitely arranging the matter with her. Helen acceded to this request, and the scene recorded in our opening chapter followed a few days later, when John Hungerford learned, much to his surprise, that his wife would oppose no obstacle to his desire and efforts to secure a legal separation from her; when she had told him he might go free, as soon as the law would allow, provided he would relinquish all claim to Dorothy and did not attempt to compromise herself in any way. The result we already know. The divorce was granted. John Hungerford went immediately abroad, ostensibly to resume his art studies, but really to follow the woman who had won his allegiance from his wife, and Helen was left to meet the situation alone as best she could. CHAPTER VIII. HELEN PLANS HER FUTURE. "I have decided to leave San Francisco. I will not have Dorothy's life spoiled by this wretched scandal, which she will never be allowed to forget if we remain here. I am going to put three thousand miles between our past history and ourselves. I am going to New York City to live." Thus announced Helen Hungerford while discussing her future with her lifelong friend, Mrs. Horace Hamilton, who had been not only her chum throughout their college course, and her maid of honor at her marriage, but had faithfully stood by her in all her trials since her return from Europe. It was she who had helped her to secure music scholars, who had been first and foremost in introducing her as a chamber-concert singer, and launching her upon the career that had proved such a signal success. She had also been especially kind and loyal at the time of her husband's desertion, and shielded her in every possible way from the gossip and scandal attending the unfortunate separation. "Mercy, dear, won't it be flying in the face of Providence for you to race wildly off to the other side of the continent?" exclaimed Mrs. Hamilton, in a startled tone, adding sympathetically: "I am forced to admit that your position here is certainly very trying, Helen; but this seems to me like a perfectly mad scheme. Do you know a single soul in New York?" "No, I do not; and that is just the reason why I am going there." "But you are so well established, and have so many stanch friends here; the sympathies of every one who knows you and the trials you have had to encounter are with you," objected her companion. "I know that; everybody has been heavenly kind to me, and I fully appreciate it," said Helen, with starting tears. "But I don't want _sympathy_--I simply want to forget; and I will not have Dorothy weighed down with pity, and all the brightness and hope crushed out of her life," she concluded passionately, and flushing with hot resentment against her hard lot. "But I am afraid you will have an awfully hard struggle all alone in New York," said her friend, looking deeply troubled. "And yet--I don't know"--her face clearing suddenly--"Lena Jerome, Horace's sister, is prominent in society there. She is a dear, and would do anything to help a friend of ours. You certainly are a fine music teacher, Helen--you make all your pupils love you, and I believe that is one secret of your success; and you sing divinely at drawing-room functions. Lena would be just the one to aid you in securing the right kind of scholars, and to secure for you the entrée to society for entertaining, as you have done here. After all, I do believe it will be the very best thing for you to do, if--if the expense of such a change will not be too much for you," Mrs. Hamilton concluded, with some embarrassment, for she believed that John Hungerford had left his wife absolutely penniless. "I have saved some money from my own earnings," Helen explained. "It has been uphill work since John gave up business, but I have never allowed myself to spend every dollar of my income; I have managed to put away something every month--'an emergency nest egg,' I have called it. Then, the little my father left me I have sacredly hoarded to defray the expense of a college course for Dorothy; so I am sure I can manage very well, even in New York, until I can secure pupils and engagements. I shall be very grateful to Mr. Hamilton's sister if she will take me under her friendly wing for a little while, until I become established. Belle, what should I have done without you? You have been my sheet anchor in this heartbreaking storm." She reached out, clasped her friend's hand, and laid it against her lips, as she ceased speaking. Mrs. Hamilton slipped an affectionate arm about her waist, and drew her close, hot tears of rebellion welling to her eyes as she recalled the evening of Helen's brilliant wedding, when they had stood side by side beneath the great arch of white roses in the Appletons' lovely home, and contrasted the seemingly bright outlook of that occasion with her present blighted hopes and broken heart. "Well, you know it was always 'you and I together, love,' in the old days at college--one never had a pleasure or a trouble that the other did not share, and I am sure we love each other as well to-day, if not better, than we did then," she fondly replied; then added, with cheerful animation: "Now, let me tell you that your plan appeals to me more and more. I can see that you and Dorothy will escape a great deal of depressing and exasperating scandal by this change; thus, as you have said, the dear child's future will not be marred by continual reminders of the unhappy experiences of the last few years. You have brought her up admirably thus far, Helen--she gives promise of becoming a beautiful and talented woman; and I believe when we have you well settled in New York you will both be happier than you have been for a long time." "What a blessing it is to have a loyal friend!" breathed Helen gratefully. "You have cheered me more than I can tell you, and, with your assurance of Mrs. Jerome's influence to help me in my future career, my courage is greatly strengthened. I--I shall ask you to introduce us to her as--Mrs. and Miss Dorothy _Ford_," she concluded, with some hesitation, as she searched her friend's face to see how she would receive this suggestion. "That is another plan of which I heartily approve," returned Mrs. Hamilton, with unfeigned satisfaction. "Put away from you--_forget_--all that is possible pertaining to the sad past, and take a new lease of life and happiness. But for Dorothy, I would have advised that you resume your maiden name. 'Ford' will do very nicely, though. A new name may have the effect of strengthening your feeling of independence, and will not expose you to inquiries concerning John Hungerford. Now, dear heart, I must go straight home--it is almost dinner time, and I am eager to tell Horace of your plan for the future. I feel sure that he also will think well of it. I will send the car around for you and Dorrie to come and dine with us to-morrow night, and we will all talk it over together more at length." Mr. Hamilton, who was a wise counselor, did think well of Helen's contemplated change of residence, and as he advised her to get away as early as practicable from all unpleasant reminders, she began at once to prepare for her departure. She disposed of all her household furniture, knowing it would be very expensive and troublesome to move it across the continent; and, as she still had some fine old pieces that had been in her family for many years, she realized from this sale a snug sum, that would go far toward furnishing her new home upon reaching her destination. This involved much care and labor, and she found her fortitude and strength were well-nigh spent when all was over, and her once pretty apartment shorn of all that had once made it an attractive home. The Hamiltons had insisted upon having Dorothy and herself spend a week with them and have a good rest before leaving for New York, and Helen had deferred until this time a few errands and small matters of business that remained to be attended to. One of these was the withdrawal of Dorothy's money from the institutions where it had been deposited. But when she opened her treasure box, where she had always kept important papers, her mother's jewelry, and other choice mementoes, the bank books were not to be found. She could not believe the evidence of her own eyes, and searched the contents of the receptacle over and over, with, alas! the same result. With a sinking heart, she flew to the bank officials, to make inquiries, only to be told, with evident surprise, in view of her ignorance of the fact, that Mr. Hungerford had, as Dorothy's legal guardian, closed the accounts some three months previous. This terrible and unlooked-for blow was the overflowing drop in Helen's cup of woe, and for the first time in her life she was utterly prostrated, the shock resulting in a serious illness that kept her in bed for three miserable weeks. Once again faithful Belle Hamilton and her good husband proved the unfailing loyalty of their friendship. The pleasantest room in their beautiful home was assigned to the suffering woman; the family physician and a good nurse were drafted into her service, and nothing spared that would contribute to her comfort and restoration. But Helen was not only physically exhausted; she was also heartsick and weary of the struggle to live, and, for a time, it seemed doubtful which way the tide would turn. But her motherhood was her salvation, and the crisis was at length safely passed. "If it were not for Dorrie, I would gladly give up the battle," she said weakly to her friend one day, when she was beginning to convalesce, yet with her strength at a very low ebb. "If--if I _have_ to leave her, Belle, I know you will still be a good friend to her, as you have been to me." "Next to Horace and you, Dorrie is my best beloved, and I have no children of my own. I do not need to say more, Helen," returned Mrs. Hamilton, her composure sadly shaken. "But, dearie," she added cheerily, as she fondly stroked the brown head upon the pillow, "you will not have to leave her. Doctor Allen told Horace yesterday that you are coming out all right, and I beg you will not allow yourself to think anything else, for Dorrie needs her _mother_; no one else can do for her what you can do. Now, Helen," she went on, with grave authority, "you simply _must_ put out of your consciousness every desponding thought, for your own sake, as well as ours. Don't worry about money, or how you are going to manage when you get to New York; everything will be taken care of for you until you can take care of yourself, and I know if you will only call back your courage, take a fresh grip on hope, and do your best to get well, you will ultimately conquer every adverse circumstance, and you and Dorothy will yet have a beautiful and happy life together." This sensible advice, together with the love and cheerful atmosphere surrounding her, was very helpful to the invalid, and she improved more rapidly from that time. She _had_ "worried about money" and what would be the outcome of her overwhelming misfortune, for, with what little she had left, she knew it would be impossible to defray the expenses of the journey to and make a home upon her arrival in New York. It had almost seemed as if she were fated to remain in San Francisco and meekly take up again the work she had just relinquished, even though Dorothy's whole future might be marred thereby. But her friend's reassuring talk had put new heart into her, and she immediately began to plan her work for the coming winter. By another week she was able to be up and dressed, and, with her physician's sanction, the day of her departure was set seven days later. One evening, on coming home to dinner, Mr. Hamilton informed his wife, after they were all seated at the table, that important business called him to New York, and, with the time it would take going and returning, he would probably be absent from home nearly a month. He concluded by inquiring, in a matter-of-fact tone: "How would you like to come with me, Belle, and make that long-promised visit to Lena?" "How delightful! I should like it exceedingly," replied Mrs. Hamilton, lifting a searching look to her husband's face. This was the first she had heard about "business in New York," and she had a strong suspicion that some other motive had prompted this sudden trip. A twinkle shot into the gentleman's eyes as they met her own, which quickly suffused with tears as she realized that this plan was simply a ruse to protect and support Helen throughout her long journey and see her comfortably settled in her new home upon the far side of the continent. Mr. Hamilton hastened to her rescue, for he saw that she was very near losing her composure and spoiling everything. "We haven't had a real outing together, dear, for a long time," he smilingly observed; "and when Mr. Ashley told me this morning he thought we'd better send some one to New York and Washington to look into some complications that have arisen in connection with our new patents, I told him I would be glad to go myself. I thought it would be very pleasant for you and me to bear our departing friends company on their long journey--oh, Dorrie, what do you think of it?" he concluded, turning to the girl, who always sat at his right hand at table--a privilege she greatly appreciated. "Oh, Uncle Horace, I think it will be just--_grand_!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands for joy. "It won't seem _quite_ so much like going away from you and Aunt Belle altogether." He reached out a shapely hand and patted her softly on the shoulder, a suspicion of tears in his own eyes, for the child had greatly endeared herself to him during her stay in the house. "Well, then, Belle, dear, if you can get your grip packed by Monday morning, I will be ready to act as escort for the party to the great and terrible city of Gotham." "Grip, indeed!" exclaimed his wife, in mock indignation, but giving him a roguish look. "I am expecting to take a trunk, containing several empty trays, with me, if you please. Pray, did you imagine that you were going to take me to New York--the Paris of America--and bring me home again, without being well stocked with the prettiest things I could find?" Mr. Hamilton gravely put down his knife and fork, drew forth a very flat-looking wallet, and laid it upon the table before Dorothy, with a dejected air. "Open it, sweetheart, and tell me if you do not think your auntie is a very unreasonable woman and your uncle a much-abused man," he said, in an injured tone. Dorothy unfolded the receptacle, carefully looked it through, and brought to light a single twenty-dollar bill. Her brows contracted in perplexity. She studied the crisp note for a moment, then naïvely returned: "Why, Uncle Horace, that isn't _all_ you will have to spend in New York, is it? I--I thought you were--were very rich!" A burst of laughter greeted her innocent remark, at which Dorothy flushed rosily, to find a joke had been played upon her; then, quietly returning the bill to its place, she passed the wallet to Mr. Hamilton, and observed demurely: "I guess auntie knows what she is about, and where to find more when she wants it," at which a second outburst brought a dimple into her own cheeks. "Dorothy, I did not think that of you! Do you know what faithful Mrs. Micawber was in the habit of saying to Mr. Micawber?" inquired Mr. Hamilton, with an assumption of severity. "Yes, sir; but I don't think _Mr._ Micawber was in the habit of playing _tricks_ upon _Mrs._ Micawber," retorted Dorothy, the mischievous dimples deepening, while Mrs. Hamilton applauded gleefully with both hands. "So you are going to desert me, if I play tricks upon you! Well, I can't afford to lose my sweetheart, so we will try to be good friends--at least until we reach New York, and I promise you auntie shall not suffer for pretty things," said the gentleman, bestowing a fond look upon her and a smile upon his wife. "Oh, Uncle Horace, I wish _you_ were going to live in New York, too," the girl observed wistfully. "If I could only have you, and Aunt Belle, and Grace Winthrop, I would be perfectly happy." "You will miss Grace, but you will find nice friends wherever you go," said Mrs. Hamilton kindly; then the conversation turned upon plans for the coming trip. The next few days were busy ones, and Monday morning found the party of four en route for the East; and with her good friends to bear her cheerful company Helen bade a final farewell to her "Valley of Achor," and turned her face toward the rising sun, with something of hope in her heart, to begin anew the battle of life for herself and her child, in a great, unknown city. Upon their arrival in New York, the Hamiltons helped her to find and furnish a small apartment in a good location, these faithful friends manifesting a keen enjoyment and interest in their work that was most inspiring to Helen. It certainly was a very attractive little nest when the last touches were put to it--"a haven of rest," she told them, after her battle with the rough storms and winds that had wrecked her bark and left her bruised and broken upon the barren shore of despair. Before it was time for the Hamiltons to return to San Francisco, both mother and daughter began to feel quite at home in their quiet corner of the mighty city, and to manifest a serenity, even something of happiness, that was very gratifying to these good people, who felt deeply concerned for their future. They had been introduced to the Jeromes, who had cordially opened their hearts and home to them, and who assured Mr. Hamilton that they would do everything in their power to launch Mrs. Ford upon her career during the coming season; while Mollie Jerome, their daughter, about the same age of Dorothy, was at once greatly attracted to her new little friend. "Mamma, I think she is _almost_ as nice as Grace, and isn't it beautiful to have found some one to love so quickly?" Dorothy confided to her mother one night, on her return after having been entertained all day in the elegant home of the Jeromes. By the first of October, through the influence of Mrs. Homer Jerome, Helen had secured a number of pupils and an engagement to sing at a fashionable reception, the date of which was set for the third of November. With this small but promising beginning, her spirits began to rise, and she found all her former energy and love for her work returning. She was gaining rapidly in flesh and strength; the lines of care and trouble were fast fading out of her face, even though there were times when she was broken-hearted and passionately rebellious, in view of her husband's dishonor and faithlessness, and her own miserable position as a deserted wife. Her first work, after getting settled in her little home, was to put Dorothy into a good school, after which she gave herself up for several hours of every day to systematic practice to get in good voice for her first appearance in New York society as a drawing-room artiste. CHAPTER IX. AFTER TEN YEARS. The thorns I have reaped are of the tree I planted; they have torn me and I bled; I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed. BYRON. It is a brilliant, star-lighted night in December. In an even more brilliantly illuminated mansion on Fifth Avenue, New York City, a distinguished company is assembled. Elderly and middle-aged gentlemen, dignified and imposing, with the suggestion of opulence pervading every look and movement; young men, alert and full of vigor, all clad in conventional dress suits and immaculate linen; stately and beautiful matrons, elegantly robed in velvet and costly laces; younger women resplendent in all the tints of the rainbow, and flashing with diamonds and other many-hued gems; pretty débutantes, in diaphanous and saintly white, gleaming like spotless lilies in beds of variegated poppies; flowers and perfume everywhere; entrancing melody from an invisible orchestra, mingling with many musical voices, joyous laughter, and the rustle and swish of silk and satin--all contributed to produce a wonderful scene and an exhilarating atmosphere, which assumed life to be one long, gorgeous gala day, with never a cloud to dim its brightness or cast its shadow upon these gay votaries of fashion and pleasure. Suddenly the music of the orchestra ceased, and presently a few dominant chords were struck upon a fine-toned concert-grand piano, as if to demand attention and silence. The next moment a woman of beautiful and gracious presence stepped upon a low platform beside the instrument, whereupon the buzzing of many voices was hushed, and an air of eager expectation pervaded the company. The dominant chords were followed by a rippling prelude, which soon dropped into the more precise rhythm of an accompaniment; then a glorious voice, full, rich, and thrillingly sympathetic, broke upon the stillness, rising, falling, and trilling easily and naturally as a bird, that, conscious only of the supreme impulse within his throbbing breast and vibrating in his wonderful little throat, pours forth his joy-laden soul in enraptured and exquisite song. Every eye within range of her was fastened upon the singer, a queenly matron, charmingly gowned in some soft material of pale-pink lavender. Her abundant brown hair was becomingly arranged and surmounted by a glittering aigrette of jewels, her only visible ornament. She was good to look upon as well as to listen to, and bore herself with the ease and poise of one long accustomed to entertain fashionable audiences like the present, yet without a suggestion of self-consciousness to mar her excellent work. She rendered a group of three classical songs with artistic effect that won for her a round of hearty applause as she ceased. She gracefully acknowledged the tribute paid her, then turned and smilingly nodded to some one who had evidently been sitting near her. Immediately a lovely girl, robed in white, arose, and took her stand at the left of the artiste. A flutter of excitement throughout the room indicated the anticipation of some unusual treat as harp, violin, and cello, accompanied by the piano, rendered an inspiring introduction, which was followed by a familiar duet from one of the standard operas, and executed with an exquisite interpretation and spirit that held every listener spellbound to the end, and evoked a storm of enthusiastic approval upon its conclusion. "Jove! can't they sing! Who are they, Jerome? Sisters, I should judge, by their strong resemblance to each other, and the younger is simply adorable!" Mr. Homer Jerome, the host of the evening, smiled, his fine eyes twinkling with secret satisfaction at these flattering compliments bestowed upon the protégées of his wife by the aristocratic and fastidious Clifford Alexander, the son of an old college chum, who had recently returned from several years' sojourn in Europe. "The elder lady is Madam Ford, who has become quite noted in New York during the last ten years as a drawing-room artiste. She is in great demand among society people, and never fails to give satisfaction to an appreciative audience. Her companion is Miss Dorothy Ford, madam's daughter," Mr. Jerome explained. "You don't mean to tell me that the lady in lavender is the mother of the other! It doesn't seem possible!" exclaimed the first speaker, astonished. "I am sure Madam Ford would appreciate the flattering, though indirect, compliment you have paid her, my boy," observed his host, with a genial laugh. "Madam is certainly a very youthful-looking woman, considering her age and checkered experiences, for, some years ago, she was left penniless to battle, single-handed, with the world, and she has seen much trouble." "She is a widow, then?" "Um--er--I think it was about ten years ago that she lost her husband," was Mr. Jerome's somewhat noncommittal reply; then he hastened to add: "But she faced the situation with indomitable courage and energy, and, possessing much native talent, a beautiful voice, and a charming personality, she has achieved a brilliant career for herself." "Evidently she has found a very warm friend in Mr. Homer Jerome, to whom, perhaps, she may owe something of her success in life," observed Mr. Alexander, to whom his host's generous-spirited philanthropy was no secret. "I esteem it an honor to be numbered among Madam Ford's friends," heartily returned Mr. Jerome. "She was really a protégée of my wife's, to begin with, and we have seen a good deal of her during the ten years of our acquaintance--first, to admire her for her heroism and perseverance under difficulties, and later to love her for herself. The daughter is no less lovely than her mother," the gentleman continued, his eyes lingering fondly upon the girl. "Madam has given her every possible advantage, and when she discovered that she also possessed a promising voice she placed her under one of our finest teachers, here in New York, with what result you have just had the pleasure of ascertaining." "She is surely deserving of laurels for this evening's work," said the young man appreciatively. "Particularly as this is her first appearance in a professional rôle. Her voice is powerful, rich, and sympathetic. I would not be surprised if Miss Dorothy eventually outclasses her mother as an artist." And Mr. Jerome beamed satisfaction upon his favorite as he concluded. "Dorothy Ford," mused Clifford Alexander, his voice lingering upon the name while his fine eyes studied the face of the beautiful girl, who was now chatting socially with a group of people who were offering hearty congratulations to both mother and daughter. "It is a peculiarly euphonious name for a very attractive young woman. Introduce me, will you, Jerome?" "With the greatest pleasure," responded that gentleman, with a sly smile; and a few minutes later Mr. Alexander was making his best bow before Madam Ford, whom he found even more charming at close range than at a distance; and then the usually imperturbable young man found himself experiencing unaccustomed heart throbs upon being presented to the adorable Dorothy. The girl did not offer him her hand, but, after gracefully acknowledging the introduction, lifted her limpid gray eyes to the gentleman's face with an earnest, straightforward look which told him that she was one who judged people somewhat from first impressions. His glance held hers for a moment, during which he was particularly attracted by the sweet serenity of her gaze, while he was at the same time conscious that every feature of her lovely face was aglow with intelligence and vivacity. Her skin was fine and clear, with a touch of rose on her cheeks; her lips a vivid scarlet. A wealth of red-brown hair was arranged high on her head, thus adding to her stature and poise; her features, though by no means perfect, were fascinatingly expressive, especially when she spoke or smiled. Her graceful, symmetrical figure was clad in virgin white, with no ornament save a string of rare pearls that once had belonged to her grandmother Appleton; and, to her new acquaintance, Dorothy Ford appeared the embodiment of loveliness and purity. "Allow me to thank you both for the great pleasure I have just enjoyed," Mr. Alexander remarked, when their greetings were over, the sincerity in his tones saving his observation from seeming triteness. Madam Ford smiled with motherly pride as she gracefully thanked him, and, bending a fond glance upon Dorothy, added: "I really feel that my daughter is entitled to congratulations, since this is her first appearance, professionally, before a critical audience. I must confess, however, to having experienced some inward quakings in view of that fact; but her first note reassured me----" "Why, mamma, I am surprised!" laughingly interposed Dorothy, but flushing with pleasure, nevertheless, in view of her mother's commendation, Mr. Jerome's approving eyes, and the evident appreciation of her new acquaintance--"after all your careful coaching, not to mention Signor Rotoni's merciless training for this important event! Moreover, the burden of responsibility rested entirely upon you, and I wasn't conscious of a quake, though I confess I might not have felt quite so confident if I had been obliged to face all these people alone." "So this is your début before society, Miss Ford?" Mr. Alexander observed, and charmed by the maiden's refreshing ingenuousness. "Yes, as a vocalist; not socially, however, for Mrs. Jerome kindly introduced me, with Miss Jerome, some time ago," Dorothy replied, adding: "I have, perhaps, enjoyed some advantages to give me confidence which débutantes, as a rule, do not have. Mamma having been so much before the public, I have also had my responsibilities in the profession, for"--with a laughing glance at her mother--"I have frequently acted as her chaperon when she has had engagements at a distance from home." "'Chaperon!' That is rather good, Helen," Mr. Jerome here dryly interposed, and bending a pair of twinkling eyes upon madam. "Well, you do look almost youthful enough to need a chaperon; Alexander was saying only a few moments ago he thought you and Dorothy must be sisters." "There, mamma, now will you believe what I said to you before we left home?" gleefully exclaimed Dorothy. "I told her," she went on, nodding brightly at Mr. Jerome, "that she is growing younger every year, and no one would suspect that she is the mother of a twenty-five-year-old daughter----" "'Sh--'sh! Oh, Dorrie, _how_ indiscreet to tell it!" interposed her host, in pretended consternation at her frankness. "Perhaps it was," retorted the girl, with a roguish gleam in her eyes. "I did not realize what my admission would imply, and I humbly beg mamma's pardon for trespassing upon so delicate a subject," and she curtsied with mock humility to her mother, without a vestige of self-consciousness for having given away her own age. "Now, I suppose it behooves me to offer thanks to Mr. Alexander for a very pretty compliment," demurely observed Madam Ford, when the laugh at Dorothy's clever repartee had subsided. "Oh, Helen," groaned Mr. Jerome, who dearly loved to hector, "I am surprised to hear you giving thanks for a compliment at your charming daughter's expense!" Then, turning to Dorothy, he added, with an air of commiseration: "Dorrie, dear, you have my deepest sympathy in view of your aged appearance; if you had only not persisted in growing up, so early, to be so mature, tall, and stately, people would not have been so prone to mistake you for your mother's sister," he concluded, bestowing a reproachful look upon the young man standing beside her. "Really, Jerome," Clifford Alexander here laughingly interposed, but with heightening color beneath his friend's persistent banter, "I seem inadvertently to have stumbled upon dangerous ground, and there appears to be no way to either advance or retreat with any glory to myself. Pray tell me how I am to propitiate so gallant a champion as you have constituted yourself; also this fair lady"--with a deprecating glance at Dorothy--"whose cause you so ardently espouse." "This 'fair lady' and her 'champion,' as you are pleased to regard me, have been lovers ever since she was a small girl in short dresses, I would have you understand, and I warn you, young man, that I am very jealous for her--eh, Dorothy?" Mr. Jerome asserted, with a delightful air of proprietorship. "However," he continued, "I can assure you she is easily propitiated, for she is exceedingly amiable." "That, I am sure, goes without saying," affably assented the young man. "Exactly; and, taking her all in all, she is '_simply adorable!_'" retorted his host, in a significant tone, as he thus quoted the young man's own words of a few moments previous, and which again sent the quick color to his face. Dorothy had thoroughly enjoyed the tilt at her expense, but now she began to feel the situation becoming a trifle embarrassing, both for herself and her new acquaintance; and, turning brightly to him, she merrily observed: "Pray, do not mind him, Mr. Alexander; he is the greatest tease in New York. He has hectored me for years, and does not half realize that I have grown up to be almost mamma's double; for really we are more like two devoted chums or sisters than like mother and daughter." "Miss Ford, I am everlastingly obliged to you for the olive branch of peace you so kindly extend to me," the gentleman smilingly returned. "And now, as the room is very warm, won't you come and let me get you an ice, or a glass of punch? I am sure Mr. Jerome will kindly care for Madam Ford." "Thank you; I shall be glad to have an ice, if you will be so kind," Dorothy cordially assented. She nodded a gay adieu to her mother and Mr. Jerome, as she turned to accompany her escort, who shot a look of mock triumph at his host as he walked off with his coveted prize. "That is a mighty fine fellow, Helen," remarked her companion, as the two young people disappeared among the throng. "He is certainly good to look upon; not exactly what would be regarded as a handsome man, but decidedly distinguished in appearance, and with evidences of a fine character written on his strong face," madam replied. "You are right; but he has never been a 'ladies' man,' much to the chagrin of many of our New York mothers. I am surprised at his walking off so summarily with Dorothy--no," he corrected, "I am not surprised, either, for Dorrie would melt a statue of ice. Next to my Mollie, she is the most glorious girl I know." Madam Ford smiled as she bestowed a grateful look upon the speaker for his high praise. "You have idealized Dorothy, I am afraid," she returned, with evident emotion; "but one is prone to endow those in whom one is deeply interested with the rich qualities of his own nature. You are so thoroughly good yourself, my friend, you can see nothing but good in others." "Somebody else, I perceive, is looking through rose-tinted glasses at this very moment, Helen," lightly responded her companion. "Well, you must not forget that you have put some rose tints into my life during the last ten years; you have also been almost like a father to my child, and I am not likely to forget it--nor the heavenly kindness of your wife, either." Helen's lips were tremulous as she concluded. "My wife is a gem of the first water," responded her companion, in a low, intense tone, a fond look in his fine eyes, as they rested upon a stately woman standing in the full light of a brilliant chandelier not far from them. "Indeed, she is," Helen heartily assented, as her glance followed his; for never in her life had she met a couple who lived in such perfect accord with each other as Homer and Lena Jerome. CHAPTER X. A BRIEF RETROSPECT. Ten years have elapsed since Helen Hungerford was deserted by her husband, and left almost destitute to begin again the battle of life for herself and her child. After having been introduced to New York society, she began immediately to prosper. Mrs. Jerome, the sister-in-law of Helen's dearest friend, had at once interested herself in her career as a drawing-room artiste, with an enthusiasm there was no opposing; she started the ball rolling for her, and Helen's charming personality, with her cultured, delightful voice, her determination to please and to succeed, did the rest. Each year her engagements and pupils multiplied; and, having followed the advice of the Jeromes to set her prices at a figure to give dignity and value to her services, she soon became the fashion, with an ample and constantly increasing income at her command. This had, ere long, enabled her to locate in a more desirable part of the city, and to handsomely furnish a large apartment, with a studio for her musical work; and, with competent help to relieve her of all domestic drudgery, she found life easier and brighter than it had even been since the first year of her marriage. Neither did she relax effort in her own behalf; she put herself under a noted finishing teacher, both to enhance her own attractions and to keep her repertoire up to date. Dorothy, also, was given every advantage, and at the age of nineteen entered college, from which she graduated four years later. Meanwhile, she also had developed a decided talent for music, possessing a rich contralto voice that promised great things for the future; and the ensuing two years were spent in making the most of her talent, until, as we have seen, she was beginning to create quite a stir in musical circles, and to share honors with her mother. They had lived very harmoniously during most of this time, trying to forget the bitter past, and every year becoming nearer and dearer to each other, until, as Dorothy had told Clifford Alexander, they were "more like two devoted chums or sisters than mother and daughter." But all this had not been achieved without severe struggles on the part of Helen. During the first two years of her sojourn in New York, notwithstanding her almost phenomenal success, she had been bitterly unreconciled to the fate that had doomed her to live out her life as a deserted wife, to be both father and mother to her child, and had even necessitated the concealment of her identity in order to save Dorothy the mortification of being known as the daughter of a divorcee. She had seasons of wretched brooding, almost amounting to despair, during which it would seem that she could not force herself to fulfill her engagements; when she simply wallowed in the mire of bitter humiliation, rebellion, and self-pity, in view of having been made the target of a malicious fate, the football of an irresponsible man's fickleness, indolence, and selfishness; of an unscrupulous woman's blandishments and coquetry, and her life wrecked in its prime. For herself, aside from her child, the future seemed to hold no promise; she was not yet forty years of age; she might live forty years longer. Would she have courage sufficient to sustain her so long--to carry this intolerable thorn that rankled in her heart continually? And what made this thorn in the flesh so intolerable? she sometimes asked herself. If her husband had died, she might have grieved for a time over the memory of his unkind treatment of her; but eventually the sting of it would have ceased, and the wound would have healed, and she would have forgiven him. And what was this thorn, anyway? The question came to her, almost like an audible voice, one day, when she had been more than usually depressed; and, with a sudden inward shrinking from herself, it was forced upon her that it was of her own planting and nourishment, and its sting was her own bitterness, hate, and resentment against the living man, who had left her for another; and also hatred against the woman who had decoyed him from her. She recoiled from the shocking revelation with a sense of loathing. It was as if she had discovered a nest of poisonous vipers writhing in her own bosom, but which she had carefully and persistently nursed, calling them by other names--disgrace, injured innocence, martyrdom, righteous indignation, et cetera--hugging their stings and the corroding sores they produced. Immediately upon awakening to this she resolved to purify her consciousness from what she now recognized as willful sin and selfishness. She conscientiously tried to divest herself of the habit of dwelling upon the unhappy past; she strove to bury it so far out of sight by throwing herself more heartily into her work, and into Dorothy's interests and pleasures, that even its ghost could never arise to confront her again. As time passed, she gradually grew to feel that she was really rising above it. The clouds of depression began to lift, the sun of prosperity melted away the mists of anxiety and care for the future, while the appreciation and kindness of increasing friends broadened and cheered her life in many ways. It was generally believed among her many patrons in New York that Madam Helen Ford was a widow. None, barring the Jeromes, knew aught of her history, save--according to rumor--that she had belonged to a good family in the far West, and, having been left with a little one to rear and educate, had, upon the advice of her friends, come East to make the most of her beautiful voice. Mrs. Jerome's exceeding kindness to her, upon her arrival in that great, strange city, had at once won Helen's heart, impelling her to confide everything to her new friend, and thus relieve herself from the consequences of deception toward those who were doing so much for her; and from that hour the noble woman and her husband had been like brother and sister, and of the greatest comfort to her; while the simple fact that the Jeromes had introduced and vouched for her to society was sufficient guarantee to give her the entrée among some of the most cultured people in the metropolis. They also became very fond of Dorothy, and, having a daughter of about the same age, made much of the girl, often inviting her to their home and to share many of Mollie Jerome's pleasures. The two girls became very friendly, attended the same school, entered and graduated from college at the same time, and thus Dorothy, aided by her own personal attractions and sweetness of disposition, acquired a position among the younger generation in good society that was of great advantage to her. When Mollie Jerome made her début, Mrs. Jerome included Dorothy in the receiving party, and in this way she also was practically introduced, although she did not care particularly for so-called fashionable society, neither would her circumstances allow her to keep up with its arbitrary demands. Nevertheless, the kindness of these friends, together with the advantages her mother had given her, enabled her to enjoy many delightful opportunities which otherwise she would have missed, and fitted her for the position she was destined later to occupy. Now, after ten years, having made her professional début, in the home of her good friends, she felt she was well launched upon a career that would insure her independence for the future, and also enable her to relieve her mother of some of the burdens she had borne alone for so many years. On the evening of his introduction to her, Clifford Alexander had found her to be an exceedingly bright and cultured girl, full of energy and spirit, yet possessing an underlying purity and sweetness of character that were inexpressibly charming to him, who, having seen much of life abroad and in this country, had come to regard the majority of fashionable young ladies as frivolous and shallow, absorbed in worldly pleasures, and possessing little love for domestic life and its sacred duties. Thus he had yet never met any one with whom he felt willing to intrust his future happiness, and so had come to be regarded a confirmed bachelor--or, as Mr. Jerome had put it, "no ladies' man." After partaking of some refreshments together, Clifford Alexander, desiring to prolong the interview with his companion, suggested a visit to Mr. Jerome's wonderful library and picture gallery, which occupied the entire fourth floor of his dwelling, and contained many rare gems, both of art and literature, over which even connoisseurs were wont to become enthusiastic. Here they spent a delightful half hour, during which they discovered much pertaining to their individual aims, pursuits, and tastes that was congenial with each other. Then Dorothy was obliged to return to her mother, to assist further in the evening's entertainment. But during this brief interview she had unconsciously woven a magic web about the heart of her new acquaintance, that was destined to prove far stronger than the supposedly confirmed habit of reserve with which he had heretofore fortified himself against all allurements of the fairer sex. Clifford Alexander was now in his thirtieth year, and a man of no ordinary type. One look at him was sufficient to reveal the fact that he possessed a masterful, purposeful individuality, a character of unswerving integrity, and lofty ideals. An attractive, intellectual face; a pair of shrewd, yet genial, dark eyes; a pleasant, rich-toned voice, with a courtly, gracious manner, all bespoke the refined, high-minded gentleman. Since leaving college, most of his time had been spent in Europe, where he had attended to the foreign branch of a lucrative business established by his father. Now, Mr. Alexander, Senior, having recently retired, his son had been recalled to this country to fill his place, as the head of the house, while another member of the firm was deputed to look after the interests abroad. Following the evening of his introduction to them, young Alexander was enabled to keep pretty well posted, through his friends, the Jeromes--particularly through Miss Mollie Jerome--regarding the engagements and movements of Madam Ford and Dorothy. He did not fail to make the most of this information, and thus the way was opened to meet them frequently and cultivate their acquaintance; and it goes without saying that he made the most of every opportunity. Helen had been greatly attracted to him from the first, and, as the formalities of their early interview began to melt into more friendly relations, she gained a deeper insight of his character, which only served to increase her admiration and respect for him. Neither was she unmindful of the fact that Dorothy's eyes grew brighter, her smiles sweeter, the rose in her cheeks deeper whenever he sought her side. Hence when, one evening, at a social function, he gravely asked her if she would accord him the privilege of calling upon her and Miss Ford, she cordially granted his request, even though she could not fail to understand from his earnest manner the deeply rooted determination which had prompted his action. He pursued the advantage thus attained most industriously and vigorously. His wooing was ingenuous, straightforward, irresistible. He loved with all his heart, and he pressed his suit with no less earnestness of purpose. He won the prize he coveted, and six months from the evening of their introduction the engagement of Miss Dorothy Ford to Mr. Clifford Alexander was formally announced to their many friends. That it was a most desirable and suitable alliance was the general verdict of all who knew them. The Alexanders, as a family, were especially happy in view of it, for they had lost an only daughter some years previous, and they lovingly welcomed the beautiful and talented girl as the prospective bride of their son. Helen was filled with joy and exceeding gratitude, and a great burden was lifted from her heart. Dorothy's future was most luxuriously provided for, both in the wealth of affection bestowed upon her and the opulence that would henceforth shield her from all care or hardship. The name of Ford, by which Helen had never been addressed without a secret sense of fraud, would now be swallowed up by one that no breath of taint had ever touched, and her child would be protected from all danger of association with the unhappy events of her youth to mar her life. As the engagement was to be a short one, therefore, at Mr. Alexander's request, Dorothy withdrew from all professional work, and proceeded to give her time and attention wholly to the delightful occupation of preparing for her approaching marriage. CHAPTER XI. A SEALED BOOK REOPENED. One day shortly after the announcement of her engagement, Dorothy sought her mother, upon the departure of her last pupil, her face unusually grave and a trifle careworn. "Mamma," she began, with some hesitation, "I have been thinking, and do you not think, that we ought to tell Clifford about--about our past?" Helen turned upon her with a look of dismay, and flushed a startled crimson. This was the first time during many years that their unhappy history had been alluded to by either; for, soon after taking up their residence in New York, Helen had forbidden the topic. She wished Dorothy to forget the harrowing past, even if she herself could not; hence it had been carefully avoided by both. She had gradually grown to hope, if not actually to believe, that those wretched experiences had been blotted from her memory; or, at least, had become so vague and indistinct that they no longer disturbed her peace. Their life, for the most part, had flowed on so smoothly and harmoniously, they were so devoted to and happy in each other, and also in their social relations; they had a delightful if not an elegant home, with every comfort and many luxuries, while each succeeding year seemed to hold more and more of promise for them, that this tragic chapter of the long ago had become, even to Helen herself, very like some dream belonging to a previous existence. Hence Helen had not once thought of reviving the sad story in connection with Dorothy's prospective marriage, and when the girl gave utterance to her unexpected proposition she began to think, with a terror-stricken heart throb, that she had, perhaps, been very remiss in not having frankly confided to Mr. Alexander, when he had come to ask of her Dorothy's hand in marriage, the fact of her husband's disgraceful desertion of her, and that she was a divorced wife, practically living under an assumed name. This unforeseen predicament came upon her like a crushing blow, and, for the moment, the old rebellion and resentment, which she thought she had long ago conquered, took possession of and mastered her with even more than the old-time bitterness and force. How could she ever face it--this relentless test of her integrity! It was an ordeal before which she shrank affrighted. Did she need to face it? Why not let everything go on without uncovering this grave of the dead past, the outcome of which might prove very disastrous to Dorothy's bright hopes, and so break her own heart? The Alexanders were proud, high-toned people. How would they receive such a revelation? What if the story of John Hungerford's disgraceful career should ruin Dorothy's life at this supreme moment? Suppose, in spite of their apparently increasing affection for her, this aristocratic family should absolutely refuse their consent to the alliance of their son with the daughter of a divorcee? Oh, it was passing strange that she had not thought of all this before! It had been forced upon her now, however, with a shock that deprived her of every atom of strength, for she knew the truth must be told. "How do you feel about it, dearie?" she at length forced herself to inquire, after an interval of silence, and to gain more time to think before voicing a more definite reply. "Mamma, it seems dreadful! I cannot bear to revive unpleasant memories for you," Dorothy began, turning a troubled face upon her. "Still, we----" "But, Dorrie, our own past cannot be questioned--our lives have been pure and above reproach. Why, then, is it necessary to disclose that for which we are in no way responsible?" Helen questioned, after another long pause. "We have not heard a word from--from him during all these years. He may be dead--I think he must have died, or we should have heard something. At any rate, he is dead to us! Why, then, resurrect all that dreadful story?" Her voice quivered with repressed agony, and there was a note of despairing appeal in her tones that smote her listener keenly. "But would it be quite honest not to tell Clifford? My name is really Dorothy Hungerford, you know," she gravely responded. "The decree gave me the right to resume my maiden name, or to retain his--whichever I chose. If I preferred to keep the latter portion of his, I cannot think there would be any dishonesty in your being married as Dorothy Ford," Helen argued, but not feeling quite comfortable or honest in the position she had assumed. "All the same, there would be a deceptive thought back of it--something to conceal from my husband, which might some time cloud our lives if it should be discovered later," Dorothy persisted, a troubled look in her eyes. Helen groaned bitterly in spirit. She knew that the girl's attitude was the only safe one to adopt, but she shrank from the ordeal with a sickening dread. "Have you no fear that this confession may cloud your life even before your hopes are realized?" she questioned, almost sharply, in her despair. "Mamma, surely you do not fear _that_!" Dorothy cried, aghast, her face blanching suddenly snow white. "The Alexanders are very proud," sighed her mother. "Oh, I never thought of anything so dreadful!" said the girl unsteadily. "I have such faith in Clifford's love for me. The only reason I have hesitated was because I could not bear to wound you by recalling our trouble, by having to tell any one what you have had to bear. But now"--with a sudden dauntless uplifting of her head--"I must tell him immediately. If there is the least danger that this disclosure will change his regard for, or his intentions toward, me, or will make trouble between him and his people, it is better to know and meet it now than when it would be too late to remedy the mistake." "But could you bear it, Dorrie?" almost sobbed Helen. "Think, dear, what the worst would mean to you." "_Whatever_ comes, I _must bear it_! I cannot, will not, live a lie!" was the low-voiced, firm, but almost inaudible reply. "I know you are right, dear; but it seems so unjust that the innocent should have to suffer as we have suffered for the sins of another," said Helen rebelliously. Throughout their conversation there had been running in her mind, like a mocking refrain, a portion of the old Mosaic law--"visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children," et cetera--and she found herself vaguely wondering who could have formulated such a law. She could not believe God had made it, for God was good--Love, and surely there was nothing good or lovely about this seeming curse. Yet it had been handed down for ages--a menace to every generation. It was certainly very cruel. Here was Dorothy, a beautiful, cultivated girl, well fitted to grace the position her lover could give her, and now, to have her brilliant prospects blighted just on the verge of fulfillment seemed too dreadful to contemplate. Again there had been a long silence between mother and daughter, during which each had battled with her troubled thoughts and conflicting emotions. At length Dorothy arose, and, going to Helen, knelt down before her, leaned her elbows upon her lap, and dropped her pretty chin into her small, white hands. "Mamma, I am sure we will not have to suffer for being true," she said, lifting a clear, smiling look to her. "How faithless we are! How disloyal of me to think anything so unworthy of the best man that ever lived! I am not going to fear that telling the truth, in order that I may go to Clifford with a clear conscience, will spoil my life; he is too high-minded, too noble, to allow a wrong for which I am in no way responsible to part us. But--even if I knew it would, I should tell him all the same; it is the only honorable course to pursue," she concluded, with a look in her beautiful eyes that bespoke a purpose as unflinching as the spirit of a martyr. Helen bent and kissed her on the forehead. "You shame me, dear; but I know you are right," she said humbly, but adding, with a shiver of repugnance: "Do you want _me_ to tell him, Dorrie? If it will save you----" "No, indeed, mamma, dear! I could not think of subjecting you to anything so dreadful," interposed the brave girl, a quiver of repulsion in her tones. "I wish _I_ could have saved _you_ this trial," she went on yearningly; "but I knew it would not be right to keep the truth from Clifford, and now I want to tell him myself, because--I must look straight into his dear eyes as he listens; then I shall know----" "Oh, darling, forgive me if I have aroused a doubt in your thought--have implanted a fear in your heart, that he will not stand the test!" cried Helen remorsefully, as Dorothy's voice suddenly faltered and failed her. "You have not," returned her companion, almost defiantly. "_I know he is true blue_. I will not think anything else." So Dorothy told her lover her story, "looking straight into his eyes," when he came to her that evening, keeping nothing back, nor trying to gloss anything over; and when she was done, like the true-hearted man he was, Clifford Alexander gathered her into his arms, murmuring fondly: "Sweetheart, put it all out of your mind; never give it another anxious thought, for it belongs among the shades of the dim past, and the present and the future are all that concern us now. Just know that I love you for what you are, and that I honor your mother for the noble woman that she is. She has shown wonderful fortitude during all these years, and deserves the highest esteem of every one. As for your--that man--whether he be living or dead, he has passed forever out of your life; so be happy, dearest, and let none of these memories ever cloud your dear eyes again, or cause your dear heart a single tremor." "Clifford! Clifford!" tremulously breathed Dorothy, while she clung to the strong arm enfolding her. "I knew you would not fail me." But she was quivering in every nerve with repressed excitement, from the reaction produced by the blessed assurance of his unimpeachable loyalty, the unfailing love that was the light of her life, and had safely weathered this crucial hour. "Fail you, Dorothy!" he repeated, surprise and reproof blending in his tones. "Could I fail to cling to what is my very life? I am glad you told me, however; it shows the confidence you repose in me, and proves your absolute integrity," he concluded, with a smile that made her thrice glad she had not been tempted to withhold the truth from him. Helen's troubled heart was also set at rest, when, later, they sought her with radiant faces, and Clifford delicately yet feelingly referred to her early trials, and earnestly begged that she would allow him to be to her, through all her future, a son in truth as well as in name. Thus, with all fear regarding Dorothy's future forever dispelled, as she fondly believed, she joyfully resumed her preparations for their approaching union. CHAPTER XII. THE SOUBRETTE. Helen had seemed almost to renew her youth while making ready for Dorothy's marriage, and had thrown herself into the business before her with no less enthusiasm than that manifested by the fair bride-elect herself. She simply reveled in choosing the dainty and pretty things that were to comprise the trousseau, while with her own skillful fingers she fashioned many lovely accessories, which, had she purchased them, would have been very expensive, if not entirely beyond her means. Dorothy was to go into a beautiful and sumptuous home; she would mingle with fashionable and wealthy people, whom, in turn, she would also have to entertain; and, with rare judgment and faultless taste, Helen had planned an ample outfit for her, that was both elegant and suitable for all occasions, yet without being too costly for her income. One morning, a few days after Dorothy had related the story of their early troubles to her lover, mother and daughter started forth upon one of their interesting shopping expeditions. They were in their brightest mood, for, with the happy termination of the much-dreaded ordeal which their sense of honor had compelled them to face, with a free conscience, and increased love and respect for the man who was soon to assume closer relations with them, the world seemed all rose color and gold to these devoted chums as they pursued their way downtown with a long list of items upon their memorandum tablets. They spent a busy morning together, after which they had a light lunch, when, at one o'clock, Dorothy had an appointment with her dressmaker, and Helen went back to the stores alone. Among other things, there were handkerchiefs to be selected, and she slipped into Rolston's to see what she could find there. As she paused before the counter, she found herself standing beside a woman who was evidently waiting for her change and her purchase to be returned. Something about her figure and the contour of her face--which, she observed, was heavily powdered and rouged--impelled Helen to take a second look; when, as if actuated by some occult influence, the stranger turned a bold, rude stare upon her, and chain lightning could hardly have been more swift or blinding than the blazing, spiteful look which leaped into her eyes as they swept Helen from head to foot. A vindictive sneer began to curl her full, red lips; her heavy brows contracted in an ugly, frown, as, with a mocking shrug of her shapely shoulders, she shot forth a single venom-barbed word: "Well!" Instantly, with a shock that seemed to cleave her heart in twain, Helen recognized her. She was the soubrette, Marie Duncan, with whom John Hungerford had gone abroad ten years ago, and whom he had afterward married. But she was no longer the gay, captivating coquette she had been when she had lured him from his allegiance to his family. Her form had grown stout, less symmetrical than of yore; her features coarse and sensuous; her skin had become rough and porous, from too free use of cosmetics, and evidently the world was not at present using her very well, for she was cheaply clothed, though with a tawdry attempt at style which only accentuated the fact of her poverty. The terror inspired by this startling encounter was simply paralyzing to Helen. She deigned no reply to the actress' rude salutation; but, with a mighty effort to preserve her self-control, turned to a clerk, and, with a semblance of composure which she was far from feeling, inquired for what she wanted. The woman stood watching her for a minute or two, the sneer still curling her lips, as, with jealous eyes, she noted every detail of her costly, tailor-made costume, her simple though stylish hat, her perfectly fitting gloves, and the elegant shopping bag which she carried. Then, with a mocking, sibilant laugh that made her listener's flesh creep with painful revulsion, she swept insolently past her, and was lost in the crowd. Helen selected a dozen handkerchiefs at random, gave her address to have them sent to her; then, half fainting, a blinding haze before her eyes, a deafening ringing in her ears, groped her way from the store, and boarded a car for home. All the way uptown she sat like one dazed, vaguely wondering what had happened to her. Her heart lay like a great stone in her bosom; all her strength and vigor seemed suddenly to have withered within her, and the whole world to have grown dark, and desolate, and threatening. "It cannot be," she moaned, as she entered her apartment and mechanically began to remove her hat and coat. "How can I bear it? Oh, to have struggled all these years to outlive that dreadful experience, only to be faced with it anew at such a time as this!" She shivered as she recalled the brazen, defiant, mocking looks the woman had bestowed upon her; and that hissing, menacing laugh--what did she mean by it? She wondered if John had come back to this country with her--where and how they were living. Marie's clothing had told its own story of poverty and makeshift; perhaps now they would try to find her again; John might even seek to extort money from her as of old, and she would be subjected to a system of blackmail to protect herself and Dorothy from a harrowing scandal. She had tried to make herself believe that she would never see either of them again; she had long ago felt a sense of freedom in the thought that John must be dead, or she certainly would have heard something of, or from, him; and she shuddered now as she remembered that she had never quite dared to hope he was. It was a murderous thought, she knew; but, living, she felt she could never forgive him--dead, she could at least try to forget him. She was almost in despair, in view of this unexpected reappearance of Marie, which threatened to make havoc of her life. Must she tell Dorothy, to spoil her present happiness and cloud her approaching nuptials? No, she would not, she resolutely affirmed. It would be hard to bear her burden in silence, and wear a happy exterior, but she would, she must, rise to the occasion and help her carry out her plans as if nothing had happened--unless circumstances made it impossible to do so. She sat for hours, brooding wretchedly upon the situation--until she heard Dorothy's step on the stairs, when she braced herself to greet her with her usual welcoming smile as she entered the room. The following week Dorothy was invited to spend a few days with the Alexanders, at their delightful home on the Hudson. Helen had also been included in the invitation, but excused herself because of appointments with pupils and an entertainment for which she had to prepare. She thought it would, perhaps, be a relief to have Dorothy away for a while, at least, until she could recover more fully from the shock she had received, and she willingly let her go alone. While engaged with her pupils Helen found no time for brooding; but when the lessons were over and she was released from all restraint, she could not control her thoughts, and the fear and unrest of the previous week assailed her again. The second day of Dorothy's absence, which was the Sabbath, she felt that she could no longer bear the loneliness and silence, which were intensified and made hideous by haunting memories of her unhappy past; and she now deeply regretted that she had not heeded Mrs. Alexander's plea that she would at least join their house party for over Sunday. She was half tempted even now to take an early boat and go to them, just for the day; but, having once definitely refused the invitation, she did not like to retract; but do something, go somewhere, she must to distract her mind; she could not spend that long day alone with her wretched thoughts. She mechanically dressed herself for the street, and, boarding an uptown car, finally alighted near one of the entrances to Central Park. As she stepped upon the sidewalk her attention was attracted by a stream of well-dressed people that were pouring into a great church not a stone's throw beyond where she stood. Almost unconsciously she mingled with the crowd, passing with it into the beautiful temple, and up into the great auditorium, where the mellow sunlight, streaming in through the richly tinted windows, seemed to fall upon the gathering hundreds like a sacred, soothing benediction; while the wonderful organ, responding to the touch of skillful hands, rolled forth its paean of joyous greeting. A gentlemanly usher approached and offered to give her a seat, leading her almost to the center of the house, where, thanking him for his courtesy, she dropped into a luxuriously cushioned pew, wondering, with a sense akin to dismay, what occult influences could have combined to guide her wandering feet thither, instead of into the park, for which she had started. Presently she began to look about the elegantly appointed edifice, noting its softly tinted walls and beautiful windows; its rich and massive woodwork, its costly carpeting and upholstery. Then her glance swept over the congregation, and she found herself mentally exclaiming, with a pang of keen pain piercing her heart: "What a multitude of happy, peaceful faces! Where did they come from? What is the secret of their joy?" Presently the organ ceased, and the opening hymn was announced--an old, familiar tune, and lines that her mother had once loved to sing: In heav'nly love abiding, No change my heart shall fear. Quick, tender tears welled to her eyes--it almost seemed as if her mother were there beside her as the organ softly played it through; then a sense of awe fell upon her at the sublime burst of harmony that followed. She had never heard anything like it before. Everybody was singing, and yet the magnificent volume of sound that surged upward into space from that many-throated congregation was like one grand, gloriously inspired voice pouring forth its harmonious notes of praise to the author of "heavenly love." She never forgot it; it was like the momentary lifting of the opaque curtain 'twixt earth and heaven, beyond which she caught a fleeting glimpse of fields elysian, the entrance to which must be through the Gate of Love alone. The Bible reading followed, but she did not give much heed to it, for the spell produced by the music was still upon her, though now and then she caught a phrase which impressed her that Love was the subject or text chosen for the day, until suddenly, like a solemn message from Sinai, thundered out to her alone, came the startling words: "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." She sat erect, every sense now alert, and listened to the closing passage: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he has not seen?" She did not hear another consecutive sentence. She sat like one benumbed throughout the service, but with her heart in a turmoil such as she had never experienced before--the words "love" and "hate" ringing continual changes in her thought. She thought she had always known their full import; she had read those passages from the Bible perhaps a hundred times; but never until now had she been arraigned before the bar of an inexorable judge, to be sifted as wheat in the thought, and purpose, and intents of her heart toward her brother man. When the benediction was pronounced, a richly clad woman who had been sitting beside her turned, with cordially extended hand, to greet her. She was very beautiful to look upon, with peace written on every line of her face, love shining in her clear blue eyes, and a crown of snow-white hair rippling above her forehead; and yet she could not have been fifty years of age. "I think you are a stranger here?" she observed, with a smile that almost made Helen weep, it was so sunny, yet so sympathetic. "I hope you have enjoyed our service." What was there about her that so summarily broke down Helen's habitual self-control? She never could account for it afterward, but before she was really aware of what she was saying she burst forth: "What _is_ love? What is--_hate_?" "My dear," returned the stranger, with exceeding gentleness, while she studied Helen's set features with compassionate eyes, "that is a question which cannot be elucidated in a moment; but let me say, as I read your thought just now, love is not emotion, sentiment, mere personal attachment; it is the abiding desire to do good to our neighbor--to all men--for the _love of doing good_. 'Hate' is criticism, condemnation, resentment. Are you in haste?" she added, with a winning smile. "Could you stop for a little talk with me?" "I could not this morning," said Helen, with unsteady lips and voice, and just on the verge of a nervous burst of tears. "Then, will you come again some time? I am always in this pew on Sunday morning, and will be glad to see you. Good-by, dear." She slipped a card into Helen's hand, and turned to greet another, for she saw that her recent companion needed to be left to herself for the present. Helen quickly made her way from the church, anxious to get away from the crowd, and, crossing the street, entered Central Park. She was nearly spent with the inward conflict she had been undergoing during the last hour, and she was eager to get out into the open, under the blue sky and green trees, to be alone, to think, to analyze the new and startling phase of her own character that had been so strangely revealed to her. She glanced at the card in her hand. "Mrs. Raymond B. Everleigh," she read, and somehow the euphonious name soothed and appealed to her even as the beautiful face and winning voice of the woman had done. She strolled slowly about for a while, thinking deeply along the new lines suggested by what she had just heard within the church. Love, she had learned, was not a mere emotion or sentiment, to be put on or off according to the attraction to or repulsion for the personality of those with whom one lives or mingles. No, she had just been awakened to see it possessed a far deeper, higher significance than that. Love--to be love--must be a motive power, an indwelling principle, an all-absorbing desire always impelling one to do good. To do good to whom? To all men, she had been told. And hate? "Hate is criticism, condemnation, resentment," she repeated, a shiver sweeping swiftly through her frame. "Oh, I have never really _loved_!" she breathed, with an inward sense of aversion for herself. "But--I have hated all my life! I have simply been clinging to selfish, pleasurable emotions and sentiment, which have been aroused by the personal attractions and pleasing qualities of my friends, my child, and other dear ones, and which I have _called_ love; but I begin to see something which I have never dreamed of before." She dropped upon a near-by seat, to try to think out the problem more clearly; but the subject seemed infinite, and a sense of depression began to fall upon her as she became more and more involved in its intricacies. A sudden burst of merry laughter at length aroused her from her reverie, and she gradually became interested in other visitors to the park, and particularly in some happy children, who were abandoning themselves to the charms and freedom of the place and to their games. Carriages and other equipages were continually passing along the broad avenue, and presently her attention was attracted by a party of gay people who were approaching in an automobile. They were laughing and talking boisterously, and, as they drew nearer and then passed, a woman leaned forward in the vehicle and leered at her. It was Marie Duncan, the soubrette! Helen was almost convulsed with inward terror as she met her eyes, but she made no visible sign that she had recognized her, and the car swept on. CHAPTER XIII. A TRYING INTERVIEW. It could not have been more than five or ten minutes later, and before she had recovered any degree of composure, when rapidly approaching footsteps caused Helen to turn and glance over her shoulder, to find the actress almost beside her. "Mrs. Hungerford appears to be enjoying an outing this bright day, as well as others," the woman observed, in a flippant tone. Helen shrank sensitively at the sound of the old name, but made no reply, and arose to pass on. "Sit down!" curtly commanded her companion. "I have something to say to you; you need not pretend that you do not know me, for you do, and I have no intention of being ignored." "You certainly can have nothing to say to me that I care to hear," Helen quietly returned. "Indeed!" retorted Marie, with a short laugh. "Well, now, perhaps you may find yourself mistaken. At any rate, it may be for your interest to listen to me. To begin with, and not to mince matters, I want some money." "Money!" repeated Helen, amazed at the audacious demand. "Exactly. You appear to be in very comfortable circumstances, Mrs. Hungerford," said the actress, sweeping a comprehensive glance over Helen's rich and tasteful costume. "Fate seems to have treated you very kindly during the last ten years, and it is only fair that you should share the good things the gods have bestowed upon you with one less fortunate. Really, madam," she continued, with insolent sarcasm, "you appear to have gotten on better without your husband than you did with him; you must have become possessed of some potent mascot which has enabled you to rise above adverse circumstances and provide so handsomely for yourself. I heard, the last time I was in San Francisco, that you were in New York, making a lot of money as a crack music teacher; that you had given your daughter a fine education and many accomplishments; that you were living in luxury, and had made many influential friends. All this must have cost you a pretty sum, and your accounts can't be very small with your milliner and tailor, either, both of whom certainly do you and themselves great credit. Pray tell me how you have accomplished it all? I know you are a good manager; John told me that, and----" "Where is he?" The question slipped out almost before Helen was aware of what she was saying. She only knew she feared he might have been with the party in the auto and would also appear upon the scene before she could get away. "Blessed if I know, or care!" was the indifferent response. "I gave him the grand bounce three years ago." "Do you mean----" Helen began, then checked herself. Why should she lower herself talking with this coarse creature? Why ask questions or seek information from her? What did it matter to her what she had or had not done, or what her relations with John now were? "Do I mean that I divorced him?" the actress surmised the import of her question, and caught her up. "That is exactly what I did, and glad enough I was to be free from the lazy hanger-on! I was a fool ever to have anything to do with him. He had quite a bunch of money when we first went abroad, but when that was gone he just played the gentleman, and let me take care of him. I haven't seen him since--he may be dead, for all I know." The heartlessness of her tone as she concluded implied that she did not care if he were dead, and Helen remembered with a thrill of horror how a sense of freedom had come to her with the same thought, not long ago. Could it be possible that she had fallen to the level of this vulgar woman? What was the motive that prompted them both to wish another human being out of the world? What but hate, the deadliest of all impulses. The words she had recently heard smote her again, with accusing force: "He that hateth his brother is a murderer." The thought was so repulsive to her that involuntarily she threw out her hand in a gesture of repugnance and self-aversion. "I'm looking out for number one now, but I've had hard luck the past year," the actress resumed, her eyes dropping, with a look of greed, to the silver purse in Helen's hand. "I've _got_ to have some money, and I--I think, madam, you will find it to your interest to--to hand over a few dollars to me now and then." Helen's eyes began to blaze, in view of the underlying menace implied more by the woman's tone than by her words. "I! Why should _I_ give you money?" she indignantly demanded. "Well, I think you owe me something for taking care of that husband of yours for seven or eight years." "He wasn't my husband!" Helen sharply interposed. The woman laughed derisively. "Well, then, for taking him off your hands; surely that was doing you a good turn, and you should not begrudge me a share in the luck you have had since you got rid of him." Helen was disgusted. She felt degraded to be standing there and bandying words with her, and she turned resolutely away, determined to put an end to the revolting interview. Her companion planted herself in her path. "Oh, don't be in such a hurry, Mrs. Hungerford; for really you will have to open that pretty purse for me before you go," she said peremptorily. "I shall give you no money," Helen firmly replied. "I--think you--will, or----" "What do you mean to imply?" "I don't believe you would like to have that old scandal rehearsed here in New York," said the actress, in a menacing tone. "You would not dare----" began Helen excitedly, and heartsick at the thought. "One will dare most anything when one comes to the end of one's rope, and hasn't any friends to fall back on," was the dogged response. "Aren't you on the stage now?" "No." "Why not?" The erstwhile actress shrugged her shoulders and made a grimace. "Passée," she observed laconically, adding: "Besides, it has got to be a grind, as John used to say when he had anything like work to do." Helen with difficulty repressed a cry as this old, familiar phrase fell upon her ears; but she drew herself haughtily erect. "I shall give you no money," she reiterated. The actress laughed in her face. "I was told in San Francisco that your daughter has grown to be a beautiful young woman," she said. "How do you think she would enjoy having her father's history served up in the newspapers here? It would be a sweet morsel for your fine acquaintances--wouldn't it?--with the pictures of all three of you, and mine to go with them, to head the chapter! And I have them; I found them among John's things, and have kept them all these years. Now, I will sell them to you for a fair consideration, or I will give them, with that savory story, to the first reporter who will make it worth my while." This terrible threat nearly caused Helen to collapse. At the same time her brain was very active as she reviewed the situation. Marie had several times addressed her as Mrs. Hungerford, which convinced her that, although she had managed to obtain considerable information regarding her in San Francisco--how, she could not comprehend--it was evident she had not learned that she had repudiated her name; consequently, even if she attempted to give her story to the newspapers, it was doubtful if any one would suspect that Madam Helen Ford, the popular drawing-room artiste, of New York, was once the wronged and deserted wife of John Hungerford, of California. She had changed much in appearance, and Dorothy had entirely outgrown her girlish looks; hence those old photographs, even if reproduced in the newspapers, would not be associated with either herself or her daughter, for such cuts were seldom much better than caricatures, even at their best. She believed she would really gain nothing if she yielded to the actress' demand that she buy them from her, for, having once obtained money in this way, she would doubtless follow up her advantage with other efforts of a similar nature, and thus subject her to an intolerable bondage. As these thoughts flashed through her mind, Helen took courage and began to lose her temper at the same time. "I shall pay you nothing for those photographs, or bribe you to silence," she spiritedly returned, "and if you are so lost to all sense of honor and humanity as to seek to bring disgrace upon two innocent and long-suffering people, who, for years, have patiently struggled to rise above the desperate conditions imposed upon them through no fault of their own, you will have to take whatever satisfaction you may reap in carrying out your malicious purpose----" "You will be sorry for this, madam----" "You have told me that John had plenty of money when he went abroad with you," Helen continued, without heeding the interruption, while she looked straight into the bold, insolent eyes of her companion. "Do you know where he got that money which he frittered away upon you and his selfish, ignoble, unlawful pleasures? _He stole it from his own child_! It was a small legacy left me by my father, and, when I began to realize how improvident John was, I put it sacredly away in Dorothy's name, to save it for her education. When I was about to leave San Francisco, I went to the bank where this money had been deposited, to withdraw it, to help me make a new start in life. I was told that Mr. Hungerford, as the legal guardian of his child, had closed the account some months previous. This dastardly deed left us penniless. The blow crushed me--bereft me of both courage and hope, for the time. How much of this legacy John may have spent upon you I have no means of knowing! Doubtless no small part of it, for he was lavish as long as he had a dollar in his pocket. Now, in view of these circumstances, my refusal to comply with your present demand may not, perhaps, seem so unreasonable as at first you appeared to regard it." A great change had come over the actress while Helen was talking. At first she had faced her with brazen assurance, her eyes flashing anger and defiance when Helen dared her to carry out her malicious purpose; but when she had told her that John had stolen the money from his child, immediately following his desertion of his family, a hot, swift flush mounted to her brow, her face fell, and her aggressive attitude was supplanted by evident discomfiture and humiliation. She stood silent and thoughtful for a full minute after Helen ceased speaking, and when at length she slowly lifted her heavily fringed lids the previous expression of mockery and malice in her eyes had been replaced by a look of mingled dejection and shame. "Well--you've won!" she began, in a low, repressed tone; then she suddenly turned her back upon Helen, and stood looking stoically off over the green slope beyond them, where the happy children were still playing, their fresh young voices and joyous laughter falling musically upon the summer air. Helen watched her curiously, something in her attitude instinctively appealing to her, and preventing her from using her opportunity to slip away from the place, as she was half tempted to do. Presently the woman turned back to her, with an evident effort to control the emotions that had well-nigh overcome her. "Yes, you've won," she repeated, her chin quivering in spite of her. "You've given me a facer I didn't expect, and I have nothing more to say. You needn't be afraid, either, that I will ever lift a finger to harm you or the girl, after this. You're game, through and through, to have stood up under all that I know you have--to say nothing about that money--and weathered the breakers. I'm far from being a saint, but I am not all bad, and I do love little children. I used to think I would love to have a home, like other people, and a little daughter of my own, and I would live on crusts before I would ever rob a child of its birthright, and if I have helped to squander your girl's, why--I--it won't be very comfortable to remember for the rest of my days." Her voice suddenly broke, and she was obliged to pause. "Life is a strange muddle," she presently went on, with a queer catch in her breath, while she searched Helen's white face with a look of mingled respect and yearning, "and woman, somehow, seems to get the worst of it in the struggle. Some of us drift with the current when troubles come, and go steadily downstream to our ruin; others, like you, resolutely grip the helm, and work their way back to a safe harbor. I will never cross your path again, Helen Hungerford--you are justly entitled to the victory you have gained over adverse circumstances without being made to fight your battles all over again. I've envied you, and I've hated you, for John was continually throwing your superior virtues in my face; but you have robbed me of my fangs today, and from now on I will never place a straw in your path." Without pausing for a reply, the woman turned abruptly, and walked swiftly away, leaving Helen dazed and speechless, in view of this unexpected termination of the exciting interview. When she began to recover from her astonishment the actress was out of sight, and a sudden revulsion of feeling assailed her. A great pity welled up in her heart for the unfortunate woman whose lot in life, she was sure, had not been an easy one; perchance it had been even harder than her own. She had acknowledged that she was passée, that her profession had become a grind, and that she was in desperate need of money. Her clothing was cheap--shabby genteel--perhaps she even knew what it was to be hungry--and Helen wished now she could call her back and give her some money. "Truly life is a strange problem," she said to herself, as she slowly wended her way from the park and boarded her car for home, her spirit chastened by the experiences of the day, her heart strangely softened toward Marie Duncan, for whom she had always entertained only condemnation and resentment--bitter hate--because she had robbed her of her husband, and entailed a lifelong blight upon her own future. Now she was almost moved to tears for her. Surely she was "not all bad," as she had said, for, down deep in her heart, there was a germ of good, some redeeming qualities, which, under right conditions, might have expanded and ripened into a noble womanhood; for she "loved little children;" she had even yearned for "a little daughter" of her own. Who could say, had that sacred heart longing for motherhood been gratified, but that she might have become a power for great good in the world--the matron of a happy home, the mother of a promising family? Three days later, on taking up the morning paper, Helen read of a shocking accident that had occurred the previous evening. A party of actors and actresses had been precipitated down an embankment while returning from an out-of-town automobile trip. The chauffeur had lost control of his car, which he was running at a reckless speed; two had been instantly killed and three badly injured. Two of the latter were in a fair way to recover, but the once brilliant and beautiful Marie Duncan, of light-opera fame, was now lying in the Mercy Hospital, hovering between life and death, with no hope of recovery. "How strange, and how dreadful!" murmured Helen, in a tone of awe. Marie had told her that she was no longer before the public, that she was "passée," and without money; that she had, in fact, "come to the end of her rope." It seemed now almost like a prophecy come true. Helen wondered if she had a friend in the world to be with her, or to do anything for her in this supreme hour of her life. She sat thinking for a long time, evidently seriously considering some important move, for her face wore a grave and perplexed expression, while every now and then she restlessly changed her position, as if her thoughts annoyed her. At length she aroused herself, and deliberately tore the paper she had been reading into atoms. "Dorrie must not see this," she muttered, an anxious look in her eyes. Then she started violently, sprang to her feet, scattering the fragments upon the floor, and went directly to her telephone. "Good morning, Mr. Alexander! I hoped you would answer me," she said, when the connection she had asked for was made. "Everything is well with you all, I trust? Dorrie not down yet! Well, it is a little early, perhaps. Have you seen the morning papers? Have you read about the shocking accident of last evening? "Oh, thank you! How very thoughtful! I could not rest until I had asked you to destroy it," she said tremulously, as the answer to her query had come back, assuring her that the paper had already been burned, and Dorothy should be tenderly guarded from every possible chance of seeing the name that could not fail to recall the unhappy past. They conversed for a moment or two longer; then Helen hung up the receiver, the cloud of anxiety gone from her brow and a great burden from her heart. She gathered up the pieces of torn paper and threw them into the wastebasket; then, hurriedly dressing for the street, she went out. CHAPTER XIV. "LOVE THY NEIGHBOR." Helen hastened to the Mercy Hospital with all possible speed. At the office she gave her name as Mrs. Helen Hungerford, and was quick to observe that a peculiar look flitted over the face of the gentlemanly attendant as she did so. She inquired for Marie Duncan, and was told that although the woman was comparatively free from pain, and her mind clear, her injuries were of such a nature that she could not live many hours. "Would it be possible for me to see her?" Helen inquired. She believed that the once popular favorite was utterly friendless, as well as penniless--in fact, she had practically admitted as much, and with the revulsion of feeling that had followed after Marie had shown the better side of her nature, there had come the desire to help the unfortunate woman in some way. Hence, when she had read of the terrible accident and its probable fatal termination, she had hurried to the hospital to ascertain if she could be of some comfort to her in this bitter extremity, all her aversion and resentment submerged in pity for one who was nearing the dark river of death. She was not a little surprised, however, when in response to her inquiry the attendant observed: "It really seems a singular coincidence, madam, but the woman has begged at intervals during the night that we should send for a Mrs. Helen Hungerford; however, as she was unable to give us the address, and it could not be found in the directory, it has, of course, been impossible to grant her request. If you will be seated, I will send some one to ascertain if you can be admitted to the patient," he concluded, as he courteously placed a chair for her. Helen marveled at what she had heard. What could Marie Duncan want of her? It certainly was a peculiar situation--unique, she believed, in the annals of history, that she, the discarded wife of John Hungerford, should be entreated to come to the bedside of the dying woman who had robbed her of her husband! It was even more strange that she should have been impelled to come to her without a suspicion of Marie's desire for her presence. Perhaps she wished to leave with her some message for John, in case he were still living, and ever sought her again. Helen shrank with repulsion from the thought, and almost regretted that she had come. She had no desire ever to see him again, much less to be the bearer of any last words from Marie to him. She was beginning to be exceedingly nervous and uncomfortable, the more she thought of the approaching interview, when the messenger returned and said the nurse wished her to come immediately upstairs. She was presently ushered into a small room on the second floor, at the back of the building, and experienced a great sense of relief upon finding that she was not to be subjected to the trying scenes of a ward, as she had feared. Marie Duncan, white and wan, but looking far more womanly with the paint and powder of a few days previous removed from her face, threw out an eager hand to her as she drew near her cot. "Oh, I am sure God must have sent you!" she said weakly. "I have wanted you so, but they"--glancing at the nurse, who, having placed a chair for the visitor, was moving toward an adjoining room--"could not find your name in the directory, and I thought I'd have to go without seeing you." Almost unconsciously Helen clasped the hand extended to her, and dropped into the rocker beside the bed. "I came just as soon as I read about the accident," she said. "_Why_ did you come?" questioned Marie, her beautiful dark eyes hungrily searching Helen's face. "I--don't know--unless it was because you told me you had no friends." "What could it matter to you whether I had or not?" almost sharply demanded the patient. "You must hate me like the d----" She checked herself suddenly, with a gasp and an appealing look at Helen for pardon, in view of her slip. Helen bent nearer to her as she replied, with grave gentleness: "I am afraid I have thought very unkindly of you--at least, until last Sunday. I am glad to say I do not feel the same to-day." "And I tried to _blackmail_ you last Sunday!" said Marie, with a bitter curl of her white lips. "I know; but you also showed me something of your better self, which made me regret that I had not been a little more kind to you. I would have given you some money after that, if you had not left me so suddenly. But," Helen continued, with a glance at the door through which the nurse had disappeared, "I am afraid we are talking too much for your good----" "Talking won't harm me now," the woman interposed, her brows contracting painfully. "I know I have, at last, really got to the 'end of my rope.' I'm glad, though, it is not an end of my own making. I've sometimes thought that might be the easiest way out of this muddle we call life; but somehow I was ashamed to sneak out of a hard place in such a way, even though I'd leave nobody behind to care." "They told me downstairs that you were wishing to see me," Helen broke in to change the gruesome subject. "Why did you want them to send for me? Is there anything I can do for your comfort, now that I am here?" Marie lifted her great eyes and searched her companion's face curiously. "For my comfort! _You!_" she cried; then hastened to add: "No, but _I_ wanted to do something for you and your girl. I haven't had a very pleasant time since you told me about that money, and I want to give you those newspapers and photographs, so that they will not fall into the hands of any one else, to make mischief for you. This is my bag, hanging here on the bed; will you open it for me?" Helen took down the receptacle, and did as she had been requested. "There is a ring of keys in it. This one"--as Helen handed them to her--"is the house key--number one hundred and one Fourth Street, where I've lived lately; this unlocks the door of my room, and this is the key to my trunk--I've got reduced to one, and there isn't very much that is worth anything in it, either," she interposed, with a bitter smile. "Those newspapers and pictures are at the bottom; take them, and do what you choose with them. My marriage certificate is there, too, in a wallet. I'd like you to destroy it. It hasn't meant very much to me, for I have never felt as if I were really John's wife, or that I had any guarantee in it that he would remain true, and not divorce me, the same as he did you. In my opinion, divorces are worse than Mormonism," she sarcastically interposed, "for Mormons can't shirk their responsibilities after they have got tired of one wife and taken another." She paused to rest for a moment or two; then resumed: "I have never used his name very much, and I would prefer no one else to see the certificate; most people have always called me, and I am perfectly willing to have them remember me only as, Marie Duncan." Helen was surprised and deeply touched as she listened to her. What she had said hinted at more depth of character than she had ever given her credit for; while her wish to have only herself see the certificate, and her evident desire to be remembered only by her stage name, betrayed a delicate consideration for her and Dorothy that caused her to feel even more kindly toward her. "I know it will not be a very pleasant task for you to do what I ask," Marie went on apologetically; "but I thought you would like to have those papers----" "I would, indeed," said Helen earnestly, "and it is very thoughtful in you to arrange for me to get them. I will do anything else you wish that will be of any comfort to you." "The daughter of the woman with whom I have lived has been very good to me, and you can give her everything in the room and trunk belonging to me," said Marie, after thinking a moment. "My jewelry is all gone; this one ring"--holding up her left hand, on which there was a plain band of gold--"is, like my trunk, all I have left, and it can stay just where it is. But I have one nice stone in my purse"--glancing at the bag in Helen's lap. Helen drew forth the purse and searched until she found a small wad of tissue paper tucked into an inside pocket. Removing the wrapping, a diamond worth, perhaps, two hundred dollars fell into her hand; and there were also a few dollars in money in the purse. "I have kept that for--for such a time as--this," Marie faltered, "though there have been times when I've thought I would have to let it go. I'd like you to hand it, with what money there is, in at the office downstairs, to--to----" "I will; but pray do not try to talk any more now," interposed Helen, for she saw that, in spite of the brave front the woman was trying to keep up, she was stricken with terror whenever she thought of the fast-approaching end. The nurse now entered the room with a cup of nourishment in her hand. Helen arose to make room for her, saying inquiringly: "I think perhaps I ought to go now?" "No! Oh, please do not!" weakly pleaded Marie. "If you _can_ stay, it will be a comfort to her, and"--with a significant look which her patient could not see--"it will do her no harm." "Very well, then, I will remain for a while longer," Helen returned, as she moved to a window and stood looking out upon the grounds below while the nurse fed her patient. What a strange experience! she said to herself. What mysterious influence could have guided her steps thither that morning, in direct answer, as it seemed, to Marie's desire to see her? She could understand how Marie, awed and softened by the knowledge that she was soon to go out into the great beyond, might wish to make some restitution for the wrong in which she had been a partner, by trying to protect her own and Dorothy's future from the old scandal; but she could not account for the revulsion of feeling that had obliterated all ill will and resentment from her own consciousness, making her oblivious to everything but the fact that her rival was a suffering, dying woman, alone in a great extremity, and in sore need of being comforted and sustained as the shadows closed around her. A great peace fell upon her, and she was glad that she had come. Perhaps, she thought, she was beginning to learn something of the love of which Mrs. Everleigh had told her the previous Sunday--the desire to do good for the sake of doing good. When she looked around she found the nurse had gone, and Marie was in a light sleep. She went noiselessly back to her chair by the bed, to wait for her to waken, and as she studied the colorless face upon the pillow she was impressed more than ever by the remarkable beauty with which she had been endowed. The features were very symmetrical, and just now seemed more refined than she had ever seen them. She had smooth, shapely brows, and an abundance of dark-brown hair, while the tips of her white, still perfect, teeth were just visible between her slightly parted lips. She did not seem at all like the coarse, defiant, passée person, in tawdry attire, whom she had met only a few days before. Suddenly Marie opened her eyes; there was a wild, terrified look in them; but they at once softened into an expression of content as they rested upon Helen. "Oh, you _are_ here!" she breathed. "How good of you! I dreamed it was growing dark, and I could not find you." "I will stay as long as you wish me to," Helen assured her. "I am--_afraid_!" said Marie, after a moment of silence, a gray pallor settling over her face. "I haven't been a very good woman. What is there beyond? Oblivion, or doom?" "Neither," said Helen, with gentle compassion; "but, instead, an awakening to larger, better experiences and fresh opportunities." "How do you know?" And her listener's face and voice were full of eagerness. "I cannot say that I really '_know_' anything about what is beyond us when we go away from here," Helen gravely returned; "but I have grown to think that we are like children going to school. We have our various classes, or grades, and merge from one into another, according as we have done our work ill or well----" "I think that is beautiful!" broke in Marie, a thrill of something like hope in her tone. "Then, if one has wasted one's time, and learned nothing good here, one can begin all over again--one will have another chance?" "I believe so," Helen replied. "I believe it, too!" said Marie, after another interval of silence. "It seems reasonable, and surely all nature teaches it. A man may sow poor seed to-day and reap a poor harvest; but he will see his mistake, and have a chance to do better another season. I am so glad you told me--I don't seem to mind what is coming quite so much." She lay quietly thinking for a while, and Helen hoped she would fall asleep, but presently she resumed: "I have done you a great wrong, Helen Hungerford, for I knew about you in Paris; but I liked a good time, and I led John on--away from you. I am sorry now. And your daughter! I have never forgotten her face, that day in San Francisco, when my auto was detained beside the car she was in, and she saw her father with me--it was so ashamed, so distressed----" "I am sure you ought to rest--do not talk any more now," Helen again pleaded, for Marie was showing signs of weakness, while she herself shrank from these references to her unhappy past. She leaned forward to straighten her covering, which had become slightly disarranged, when Marie lifted a corner of the lace scarf she was wearing, and humbly laid it against her lips. Then she closed her eyes wearily, and was presently asleep. The nurse, coming in soon after, felt her pulse, and, turning to Helen, observed: "If you would like to go, I think you may; I do not believe she will waken again." "Perhaps I will, a little later," said Helen, who was not quite ready to forsake her post so soon after telling Marie that she would remain as long as she wished her to. An hour slipped by almost in silence, when, without a movement to show that she had wakened, Marie's white lids were lifted, and the ghost of a smile curled her lips, as her dark eyes met Helen's. "I--shall have another--chance! I shall--begin all over--again," she breathed weakly, but with no sign of fear. Once more she seemed to sleep, and at the end of another hour Helen went home. CHAPTER XV. A STARTLING APPARITION. The next four months slipped swiftly away. They were filled full with joyous anticipations and pleasant occupations, while Helen, now that she no longer feared Dorothy's happiness or prospects would be disturbed, regained her accustomed serenity, and once more became absorbed in the numberless details involved in making ready for a wedding. A great burden had been lifted from her heart, for all those menacing newspapers and photographs, with every other telltale evidence of the unhappy past, that had been treasured by the once popular opera favorite, had been destroyed, and nothing remained that could even remotely bear witness to it, save a small tablet, bearing the name of "Marie Duncan," that had been placed in a quiet corner of a distant churchyard outside the city. The months of August and September Dorothy and her mother spent in the Berkshires, on a pleasant farm adjoining "Avondale," the fine estate and summer home of the Alexanders. This arrangement was made for the benefit of the lovers, in order to enable them to see each other every day, and enjoy the pleasures of country life together, during the brief interval previous to their marriage. The wedding had been set for the first of October, and, at the request of the bride-elect, who shrank from the confusion and excitement of a society function, was quietly solemnized at noon on that date, in the pretty near-by village church. Here Helen gave her daughter away to the man whom she believed to be in every way worthy of her one treasure, and the simple ceremony was followed by a reception and an elaborate breakfast at Avondale for the limited number of friends who were bidden to grace the occasion. Thus, with apparently nothing to cast a shadow over her future, Dorothy Ford became the wife of Clifford Alexander, and the happy couple went away for a month or two of travel, while a beautiful home, adjoining the Alexander estate on the Hudson, was being prepared for their occupancy upon their return. Mr. and Mrs. Alexander, Senior, returned immediately to their home on the Hudson, and Madam Ford to New York to resume her work and prepare for her winter engagements. In planning his new residence, Clifford Alexander had arranged for a delightful suite of rooms which he placed at Helen's disposal, with a pressing invitation that she would make her future home with Dorothy and himself. Helen was deeply touched by this evidence of his sincere regard for her, but she gently declined, telling him she thought a newly wedded couple should begin their life and home making alone with each other; while, too, she would not be willing to give up her work for a long while yet; hence she must have her studio in the city, and it would be better for her to live there, as usual. "But you have labored continuously for many years--you have spent your life for this dear girl"--bending a fond look upon his fiancée--"whom I have won away from your nest. Now come and rest, and _play_ with us--at least, for a while," the young man had urged. And Dorothy had also pleaded: "Do come, mamma, dear; it will be lovely to have you with us." "I do not deny that my 'nest' will be lonely without her," Helen had replied, smiling bravely through a mist of sudden tears; "but I could not be idle, and the nestling must learn to use her own wings. All the same," she went on, more brightly, "I am not going to allow you to forget in the days to come that you have added a mother-in-law to your list of responsibilities, and I warn you that I intend to drop in upon you often enough to keep you both upon your best behavior." "Well, madam mother-to-be," said Mr. Alexander, smiling at her threat, "the rooms are there--they were planned for _you_, and I hope some time to see you very comfy in them. I would not impose any sense of obligation upon you; I wish you to be happy in your own way, but please bear in mind always that it would give us great pleasure to have you with us." Helen lifted a searching look to his face. "Pardon me; but are you sensitive regarding my occupation--my career?" she inquired. He laughed out softly as he read her meaning. "Pray do not fret yourself about that," he said. "I do not quite dare to tell you how exceedingly _proud_ I am of you and your career. I sometimes wish, though, that you did not keep so busy with _pupils_--I assure you there is not the slightest need----" "Oh, but I love the dear things!" Helen eagerly interposed. "They bring so much brightness and joy into my life." "Of which, believe me, I would not rob you in the least degree," the gentleman earnestly replied, and, seeing she was very much in earnest, he pressed the matter no further. So Helen resumed her work, as usual, upon her return to New York. She was in perfect health, and still a very beautiful woman. She was also happy in Dorothy's happiness; life seemed very bright, and she looked forward to the coming season with much of anticipation, even enthusiasm. One morning, about a week after the wedding, she went up the river to the new home, which was fast nearing completion. It was now in process of being decorated and furnished, under the supervision of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander, Senior, who insisted upon having her join them whenever she could spare the time, to give them the benefit of her taste and knowledge regarding Dorothy's preferences. They spent a delightful day together, overseeing the placing of china and bric-a-brac, the hanging of draperies, pictures, et cetera, and attending to numerous other details. At noon they enjoyed a dainty lunch, prepared and sent over by the cook at the other house, in Dorothy's bright, luxuriously appointed kitchen; then they resumed their pleasant occupations, working busily until it was time for Helen to go, when she was whirled down to the steamer landing in Mr. Alexander's fine limousine, just in time to catch the early evening boat back to the city. It was a balmy, almost summerlike, evening in spite of the fact that it was on the verge of November, and Helen, securing a camp chair, made her way to a sightly spot on the stern deck, and seated herself to enjoy the delightful atmosphere and lovely scenery as the steamer glided smoothly down the river. She was in a most harmonious frame of mind, for her heart was at rest and the future full of hope. There was a joyous light in her eyes, and a happy smile on her lips, as, in imagination, she looked forward to Dorothy's home-coming, and the delight she would experience in taking possession of that luxurious nest awaiting her among yonder beautiful hills, away from the dust and turmoil of the busy metropolis. As the boat drew near to its pier she rose and leisurely made her way inside to descend to the lower deck. She had just reached the head of the stairs, where she was forced to pause a moment because of the crowd ahead of her, when some one behind her gave utterance to a startled, but quickly repressed, exclamation. Involuntarily she glanced back over her shoulder at the sound, when her features suddenly froze into a look of horror. "Helen!" faltered a voice she could not fail to recognize, notwithstanding it was tremulous from emotion and hoarse from a heavy cold. But the man! Could that haggard, white-faced creature--that emaciated, poorly clad figure, with his shabby hat, neglected beard and hair, ever have been the cultured, debonair, elegant John Hungerford, who had wooed and won her girlish heart and hand more than twenty-five years ago? Instinctively she shrank away from him, and he, observing this involuntary act of repugnance, flushed scarlet from mingled pain and shame. Then the crowd surged in between them, and Helen, with a wildly throbbing heart and a sense of despair and hot rebellion almost suffocating her, forced her way on shore with all possible speed, sprang upon the first car she saw, and hoped she had effectually evaded that startling apparition. But her peace of mind had been destroyed. All the brightness and joy of that happy day were suddenly blotted out, swallowed in by the terror inspired by this unlooked-for calamity which now threatened anew both herself and Dorothy. It was a terrible, a crushing, blow. She could not sleep that night; she could not apply herself to work of any kind the following day; she dared not go out of the house, lest she meet that ghost of the past again, and every time her bell rang a shock of fear that he might be without, seeking entrance, went quivering through all her nerves. "Would he hunt her down?" she was continually asking herself. "Would he dare intrude himself upon her life again, after all these years?" She turned faint and heartsick at the thought. But the day waned, the dinner hour passed, and, with the curtains drawn and lights all about her, she began to experience more of a feeling of security; to take courage, and try to assure herself that she had successfully eluded him, and he would not be able to ferret her out in that great city, even if he tried. She had just settled herself for the evening with a new book--one of several that Dorothy had given her before going away, telling her, with a suspicion of tears in her voice: "For your evenings, mamma, dear, so you will not miss me quite so much"--and was beginning to get really interested in the plot of the story when her bell rang a sharp, shrill peal. Her maid, who had been with her for several years, had sailed for Scotland for a long-promised visit home, when Helen went into the country for the summer, and, not yet having secured another to take her place, she was obliged to answer the summons herself, which she did with a quaking heart. "A message for Mrs. Ford," came up through the tube. Helen's fear was instantly turned into joy. "A message from Dorothy," she thought, for she had received either a letter or a telegram from the happy bride almost every day since her departure. "Come up," she eagerly responded, as she pressed the button governing the lower entrance. Presently, hearing steps on the stairs, she swung open the door of her suite, when, with a gasp of dismay, she found herself face to face with John Hungerford. She would have shut the door upon him, but he was too quick for her. He forced his way inside, and then closed it himself. "I must see you, Helen," he panted, as he sank, pale and breathless, upon a chair in the reception hall. "Oh, why have you come?" she demanded, with white lips. "Because I could not bear it any longer; I was starving to see you and Dorothy. Where is she?" "She is married." "Married! Dorothy married! When?" "Two weeks ago yesterday." "To whom?" Helen straightened herself resolutely. "I shall not tell you that," she replied, with sharp decision. "She is happy, and I will not have her life clouded by anything to recall the troubles of the past." The man shivered at her words. He was but a miserable shadow of the John Hungerford of ten years ago. His form was shrunken, his clothing faded and worn, his face was pale, his cheeks hollow, and his eyes sunken and lusterless. "But, Helen, I want to see Dorothy--she is my child. I must see her!" he faltered, a note of agonized appeal in his tones that ended abruptly in a hoarse, hollow cough. "You must _not_ see her!" Helen emphatically returned, and thinking only of shielding Dorothy from the pain and shame of such a meeting. Her words and her apparent indifference to the uncontrollable yearning within him seemed to anger him. "She is as much my child as she is yours," he shot back, with a flash of his old-time doggedness. Helen flushed an indignant scarlet. "As much your child as she is mine!" she scathingly exclaimed. "You claim that! You, who deserted us both; who robbed her of her little fortune, and left me in poverty to rear and educate her as best I could, while you wasted your stolen thousands upon that woman and your degrading and sinful pleasures! Your child! _What_ have you ever done for her that entitles you to make the shameless boast?" The man cringed abjectly beneath her words, but made no attempt to reply, and Helen resumed, her indignation still at the boiling point: "I have spent my life for her; I have spared nothing to give her every advantage, to make her a noble, cultured woman, and to shield her from every sorrow. During the last ten years of her life she has known nothing but happiness; she has married a good man, and a gentleman in every sense of the word. He is prosperous, and belongs to a much-respected and well-known family here in New York. So Dorothy's future is very promising, and I will never allow you to cast a shadow upon it, or mar her joy in any way." Her listener shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "You seemed rather happy yourself, when I saw you yesterday," he observed, with a covert sneer, after an interval of awkward silence; "and"--glancing curiously about him--"you appear to be remarkably prosperous, also." "I am prosperous; I am well established in my profession here." "As 'Madam Ford,' I perceived, as I rang your bell. So you dropped the old name?" said John Hungerford, in a tone of exceeding bitterness. "Yes, the first half of it, as I also dropped that half of my life for all time; but for Dorothy, I would have retained no part of it," said Helen tersely. Her companion's lips twitched, while his bony hands gripped the arms of his chair convulsively. "You are handsomer than ever, Helen; you don't begin to show your years," he presently observed, as he swept her face and figure with yearning but gloomy eyes. She did not deign to reply, although she moved restlessly where she stood, as if his words annoyed her beyond endurance. "I suppose you haven't much love left for me?" he falteringly resumed, after a minute, the silence between them becoming embarrassing again. "Love--for _you_!" she retorted, with an emphasis that caused him to shrink as from a blow. "Well, I'm not claiming that I deserve anything of the kind from you," he remarked, in a weak voice, at the same time drawing in a quick, deep breath. "However, there is some solace in remembering that you were once fond of me. Maybe, not having heard from me for so long, you have believed me dead?" "I have, of course, had no means of knowing whether you were living or dead," Helen coldly replied. "Perhaps it might have been a relief to you if I had died," said John, as, with hopeless eyes, he searched her frozen face for some sign of the old-time gentleness. She made no answer. She was not quite heartless enough, even in her despair over his reappearance, to confirm this gruesome suggestion; yet she was keenly conscious that his presence was almost intolerable to her. A low, bitter laugh escaped him at her silence, and again a cruel cough racked him. "Have you a picture of Dorothy?" he inquired, when he recovered his breath. "Yes, several." "I want to see them," the man exclaimed, a mighty yearning in his voice; and, rising from his chair, he began to look eagerly around the room for some likeness of his child. Helen neither moved nor spoke to hinder him. She felt dazed, helpless in this terrible dilemma. She was frightened, rebellious, desperate to be thus confronted with this appalling skeleton of her past, this menace to Dorothy's bright hopes. John Hungerford passed from the reception hall into the parlor, a lovely room, most artistic and dainty in its coloring, decorations, and furnishings; and, shoving his hands into his coat pockets, as if to brace himself against a consciousness of intrusion and rudeness, he began his search for Dorothy's pictures. Helen, who had followed him, sank, quaking, upon a chair, too weak and unnerved to remain standing a moment longer, and wondering miserably what would be the outcome of this harrowing interview. Suddenly the man paused, an exclamation of delight escaping him. He had espied a full-length photograph of Dorothy, taken in her wedding robes. "This is----" he began tremulously, and turning a face quivering with uncontrollable emotion to Helen. "Yes," she briefly replied. "How beautiful she is! She looks as you looked the evening we were----" Helen shivered, and her white teeth came together with a snap that arrested the word on his lips. "Whom did she marry?" he demanded, almost fiercely, after studying the picture for a minute or two. "I shall not tell you," Helen doggedly reiterated, and unutterably thankful that Mr. Alexander's likeness was not beside the other to tell its own story. She had found it was, for some reason, beginning to curl, and she had taken it down and laid a heavy book on it only that morning. "But I will tell you this," she presently resumed: "Her husband is a man to whom any father or mother might be proud to give a daughter, and Dorothy will never know a care or sorrow which an absorbing affection and most unselfish devotion can avert." CHAPTER XVI. SACKCLOTH AND ASHES. John Hungerford flushed suddenly crimson; then paled to a sickly hue at Helen's words. Evidently her statement that Dorothy's life and happiness would be most tenderly shielded by a considerate and devoted husband aroused memories of the past that were far from pleasant. He stood silently studying the photograph for several minutes, his face showing evidence of deep inward emotion. Finally replacing it upon the mantel, he moved on, curiously observant of the handsome furniture, choice bric-a-brac, draperies, and pictures that were tastefully arranged about the room. As he drew near a door leading into an adjoining apartment that was used as a library, he paused, and stood irresolute. "Helen--may I look through the suite?" he eagerly questioned, but with evident embarrassment. "May I see Dorothy's room? I--I would like to know how you two have been living; it will be something to--to remember." Helen's head sank wearily back against her chair. She was white to her lips from her efforts at self-control. "I don't care--go where you like," she breathed, in a scarcely audible voice. The man passed noiselessly into the library, where he was no less observant of what it contained than he had been in the parlor. Presently he moved out into the hall, and on to a chamber which he realized at a glance must be Helen's. Leading from it was another and smaller one, and this, he was sure, as he entered it, had been Dorothy's. It was the daintiest room imaginable. Excepting the bed, which was of brass, the furniture was all of white enamel and willow ware in graceful designs. Spotless draperies of muslin over white shades hung at the windows, and were slightly looped with broad blue ribbons. A beautiful blue-and-white rug lay upon the light hardwood floor, and the fireplace was also tiled in the same colors. Here John Hungerford lingered for a long time, moving silently, and treading softly, as if he felt himself intruding upon some sacred place. He paused before each piece of furniture, noting every detail in outline and upholstery. Not an article of the frosted-silver toilet set upon the pretty dresser escaped his notice; he even noted her class pin and two small baby pins which he remembered seeing Dorothy wear as a child, that were stuck into the blue-and-white satin pin-cushion under the looking-glass. He examined all her books, the pictures on the walls, and studied the photographs of her friends and schoolmates, of which she had many. Now and then he would softly touch and caress a vase or an ornament with reverent, trembling fingers. A little workbasket, made of sweet grass, and sending its delicate perfume to his nostrils, stood upon a table, and some great tears splashed into it as he bent over it and noted a small silver thimble lying among its other implements. When he came to the pretty brass bed, with its dainty lace spread and shams, he seemed almost overcome. His head sank heavily upon his breast, and, reaching out a trembling hand, he gently patted one of the pillows, a great sob heaving his chest and shaking his entire frame as he did so. Then, with a gesture of despair that seemed also to imply the renunciation of some previous purpose, he turned abruptly away, and went back to a group of photographs fastened to the wall, where he had noticed a likeness of Dorothy. It was a class picture that had been taken of her in her graduating dress, just before leaving Vassar. The man studied it intently, his hungry, yearning eyes devouring its every detail. At last, with a stealthy glance over his shoulder, he reached up, took it down, pressed it passionately to his lips; then, hastily concealing it inside his coat, he left the room. He merely glanced into the pretty dining room beyond, without attempting to go farther, after which he slowly retraced his steps through the hall to the reception room, and paused in the doorway leading to the parlor, where Helen was still sitting. "I am going now, Helen," he observed, in a spiritless tone. "Thank you for letting me look around." She rose and went toward him. He was standing where the light fell full upon his face, and she was shocked to see how ghastly and ill he looked. "Where are you going?" she briefly inquired. "I don't quite--know; I----" "How did you find me?" "You didn't think I would lose sight of you, did you, after once getting a glimpse of you? I had to know something about Dorothy; I couldn't stand it--the silence and the uncertainty--any longer." "You will not come here again?" There was a note of blended authority and appeal in Helen's tone. "No, I will never trouble you again. I don't think I'll trouble anybody long," he said grimly. "But, Helen"--a scarlet streak shot vividly across his forehead--"could you let me have a little money? I have only a few cents, and I haven't had anything to eat since----" He broke off suddenly, and began to cough distressingly, his head bowed low in humiliation because of his destitution. Helen's heart bounded into her throat. John Hungerford hungry--begging for something to eat! The epicure, the prodigal, who, in days gone by, had never denied himself any luxury that he had craved, now absolutely penniless and shabby, almost starving! And that cough--how it racked him! A thrill of horror ran through her; she clenched her hands in an effort to repress the cry of dismay that arose to her lips. "Where are you staying?" she forced herself to inquire, with an appearance of composure. "I don't know where I shall stay to-night," he faltered. "To-morrow I am going back to San Francisco; Uncle Nathan has sent me a ticket." So he had not even a place to lay his head that night, and the few cents which he claimed to have surely would not provide him the humblest lodging, let alone something to appease his hunger. "Wait," said Helen, and, turning abruptly from him, a choking sensation in her throat, she swept into the library. Going to her desk, she wrote a few words upon a blank card, after which she opened a drawer, drew forth a crisp new bank note, and hastily folded it, with the numerals out of sight. She then returned to the hall, and slipped the card, with the money underneath, into the man's hand. "Here is the address of a good woman who sometimes works for me," she said. "She lives not far from here; take the first turn to the right, going downtown; the third street from there is Broad Street. Turn to your left, find number ninety-five, and Mrs. Harding lives on the lower floor. She will give you a comfortable room for the night and a good breakfast in the morning." As she concluded, Helen turned the catch and opened the door leading to the outer hall. She was trembling violently, and her face was as colorless as marble. John Hungerford stood for a moment, regarding her with a hopeless, heartbroken look; then, with bowed head and faltering steps, he passed out upon the landing. "Thank you; good-by--Helen," he breathed hoarsely. "Good-by, John," she mechanically returned, and the door was shut between them. She stood listening until she heard him leave the house. Then, after carefully fastening the burglar chain, she staggered to her chamber, where, falling face downward upon her bed, she collapsed in violent hysterics. "Oh, if it were only a horrible dream from which I could wake!" she moaned. "It cannot--cannot be possible that I have seen him again, and in such a miserable plight!" How would it all end? she wondered, as she lay there in abject misery. Would the shameful past, which she had believed forever annihilated, by the death of Marie Duncan and the destruction of those menacing newspapers and photographs, be resurrected, and the fair fabric of social prestige, almost of celebrity, which she had reared for herself and her child during the last ten years be ruthlessly overthrown, and crush them both to earth beneath the ruins? She had firmly believed for many years that she would never again meet the faithless man who had once been her husband. She had fondly imagined that she was absolutely free to live out the beautiful future she had grown to anticipate without once having her peace disturbed by any fear that he would ever cross her path again. But, alas, for the frailty of human hopes! To be sure, he had told her that he would never trouble her again, and there had been a hopeless finality in both his manner and words when he left her to-night, that seemed convincing. But would he keep his word? Would he--oh, would he? And to what depths he had fallen! Could that homeless, penniless, pitiful tramp be the once light-hearted, care-free John Hungerford? The man who had been her husband, and in whose companionship she had once believed herself to be supremely happy! And now--she cringed with shame and repugnance at the mere remembrance of his presence. How could he ever have sunk so low? Ah, she knew but too well! He had always depended upon some one else to make life easy for him, to help him over hard places, to care for his comfort, and cater to his entertainment; while he gathered only the honey along the way, shirking every manly duty, ignoring every sacred responsibility; and when his props, one by one, had fallen away from him, he had drifted aimlessly and helplessly with the current, sinking lower and lower, until, ill, hungry, and desperate, he had--as a last shameless resort--turned to her, his divorced wife, for help. Helen spent a wretched night. To sleep was impossible, with that gaunt figure, haggard face, and racking cough continually haunting her. Again and again she wished that she had given John twenty, instead of ten, dollars. How was he ever to get to California with any degree of comfort upon so small a sum? He certainly could not take a sleeper; he would have to ride all the way in a day coach, or go hungry--unless, perchance, his uncle had also sent him a ticket for a berth, which was doubtful. And what would become of him upon reaching San Francisco? He did not look fit for work, and she knew well, from past experience, that Nathan Young was not likely to tolerate laggards in his employ. What possible hope could the future hold for him--sick, spiritless, and with not a friend in the world to really care what became of him? She shivered as a vision of the home for the poor arose before her. Would he be driven to that? Or, something even worse, perhaps--the coward's refuge--suicide? These were some of the distracting thoughts that thronged her brain and drove sleep from her pillow during that long night. At the same time she was greatly relieved to know that the continent would separate them. He had promised that he would never trouble her again, and if he kept his word he would be gone to-morrow, and Dorothy need never know aught of this night's dreadful experience. Somewhat calmed by these reflections, she finally, just as day began to dawn, dropped into a profound slumber, from which she did not awaken until nearly ten in the morning. Fortunately it was Saturday; she had no pupils for that day, and her time was her own. But she was far from happy as she tried to busy herself with some light duties about the house. Her thoughts constantly reverted to her interview with John, and a sense of self-condemnation began to fasten itself upon her, in view of the attitude she had maintained toward him. She knew that she had not been kind to him; she had flung scorn and taunts at him when he was already crushed beneath a heartrending load of misery and shame. She had manifested antagonism, bitterness, and resentment toward him. These, summed up, meant hate, and hate meant--what? "He that hateth his brother is a murderer," was the text that came to her again with a revolting shock, in reply. John had implied that perhaps she had wished him dead. She knew, now, that she had, and involuntarily she passed her hand across her forehead as she thought of that old-time brand upon the brow of Cain. Had she fallen so low as that? Had she been simply a whited sepulcher all these years, showing an attractive, gracious, irreproachable surface to the world, while in her heart she had been nursing this deadly viper, hate? John had deeply wronged her, but he had wronged himself far more, and now his sins had brought their own punishment--had stripped and left him wounded by the wayside; while she, instead of binding up his wounds, pouring in the oil of kindness and the wine of cheer and good will, had smitten him afresh. Surely she would not have treated the veriest stranger like that! True, she had given him money, but how had she given it--what had been the motive? She knew it had been merely to get rid of him and to save herself the pain of thinking of him as a starving man. All this was something similar to, though more effective than, the sifting she had experienced that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday in church, so long ago. She realized now that she had not rooted out, but simply buried a little deeper, for the time being, the corroding bitterness within her heart. Her interest in Marie Duncan, the kindness and sympathy she had shown her during her last hours, the change in her own and in the woman's mental attitude toward each other, together with Marie's surrender of the menacing newspapers and photographs, which had eliminated all fear of exposure, had brought to her a deceptive peace, which she had believed to be a purified conscience. But the test that had come to her now proved to her that the serpent had only been sleeping, that she still had her battle to fight, her victory to win, or the evil would recoil upon herself, warp her nature, and poison her whole future. It was a season of sackcloth and ashes for Helen, but the searching introspection to which she subjected herself had uncovered the appalling effects which long years of secret brooding, self-pity, and self-righteousness had produced upon her, and awakened a wholesome sense of self-condemnation and repentance, thus opening the way for a more healthful mental condition and growth. She realized all this, in a way; but she did not know how to begin to tread down the conflicting forces that were rampant within her; how to silence the mental arguments that were continually affirming that she had been deeply wronged--that she might, perhaps, forgive, but could never forget; that John had made his own bed and must lie in it--he had no legal or moral right to expect either aid or sympathy from her--and so on to the end of the chapter--or, rather, the chapter seemed to have no end. "What shall I do?" she finally exclaimed, with a feeling of exhaustion. "The evil talks to me incessantly, and I do not know how to get the better of it." Suddenly she started from her chair, and, going to her desk, opened a drawer and found a card. "Mrs. Raymond B. Everleigh, number ---- Riverside Drive, New York," she read aloud, and then stood gravely thinking for a minute or two. Then she opened her telephone book, found the name and address she wanted, and called the number opposite over the phone. "Is this Mrs. Raymond B. Everleigh?" she inquired, when the connection had been made. The answer came back: "Yes, I am Mrs. Everleigh." "Does Mrs. Everleigh remember the lady who sat with her in church the third Sunday in May, and to whom she gave her card, asking her to come again?" Helen questioned. "Yes, indeed; and I have hoped to see her again--wondered why I have not." "It is she who is talking with you now. May I come to see you to-day? I know it is asking a great favor from a stranger, but----" Helen's appealing voice ceased while she listened to something that came from the other end. "At two o'clock? Oh, thank you! I will be there," she gratefully returned, as she hung up her receiver and hastened to her room to dress for the street. CHAPTER XVII. AS WHEAT IS SIFTED. At two o'clock Helen rang the bell of Mrs. Everleigh's palatial home on Riverside Drive. A man in livery admitted her, swept herself and her card with a comprehensive glance as she laid the bit of pasteboard upon his tray, obsequiously bowed her into an elegantly appointed reception room, and disappeared. Five minutes later Mrs. Everleigh came to her. Helen had thought her a rarely beautiful woman when she had seen her in church, more than four months previous; but she seemed a hundredfold more lovely now, dressed all in simple white, her abundant snowy hair coiled becomingly about her head, her only ornament an exquisite chain of turquoise set in silver and almost the color of her peaceful eyes, and her lips wreathed in sunny, welcoming smiles. "Mrs. Ford, I am more than glad to see you," she said, as she cordially clasped Helen's hand. "And now, if you will allow me to waive the formalities of a first call, I am going to ask you to come up to my private sitting room, where we can be wholly by ourselves." Helen thanked her, and followed her up the grand stairway, noting the costly furnishings of the great hall, the rare paintings, statuary, bric-a-brac, et cetera, on every hand; and almost gave vent to an exclamation of childish delight as she was ushered into an exquisite boudoir on the second floor, and which was furnished throughout in blue and white; the great chandelier in the center of the ceiling, and other appliances for lighting, together with many beautiful vases, being all of crystal or expensive cut glass. "What an ideal setting for an ideal woman!" she said to herself, as she entered the room. "Come and sit here, Mrs. Ford," said Mrs. Everleigh, as she preceded her to a great bow window, where there were two inviting rockers, with hassocks to match, a pretty onyx table on which rested a small easel supporting the photograph of a beautiful young girl, and, standing beside it, a costly cut-glass vase filled with fresh forget-me-nots. "What a lovely nook!" was Helen's involuntary tribute, as she sank into the luxurious chair offered her. "And, oh, that view!" she added, with a quick indrawn breath, as her glance fell upon the scene without, where, between splendid great trees, all glorious in their brilliant fall attire of red, yellow, and green, glimpses of the river, flashing in the sunlight, with the darker hills beyond, made a picture that one could never forget. "Yes, it is a scene of which I never tire," returned her hostess, as she took the other rocker, and thoughtfully pushed a hassock nearer her guest. "I hope, Mrs. Everleigh, I have not seemed intrusive in asking to come to you?" Helen observed, after a moment or two, during which she sat silently drinking in the beauty before her. "But your kindness to me that day in church emboldened me to beg the favor." "My dear, I am happy to have you come--I am glad to be helpful to any one, as opportunity offers," the elder lady graciously replied. Helen lifted a glance of surprise to her. She had not hinted that she was unhappy, or needed help of any kind. Mrs. Everleigh met her look with her winning smile. "Your voice told me over the phone, dear, that you were in trouble," she said. "Now, open your heart to me. What can I do for you?" Her tone was so kind, her smile and manner so loving, Helen's forced composure melted like wax in the sun, and a sudden flood of tears rendered her utterly helpless to respond for the moment. The strain and excitement of the last forty-eight hours had been very great, and the loss of two nights' sleep, together with the relentless mental vivisection to which she had since subjected herself, had robbed her of both strength and self-control. "Dear heart," gently entreated her companion, "let the bitterness all out; then there will be room to pour in the balm and oil." She leaned back in her chair, and sat silent, with bowed head and averted eyes, until Helen's weeping ceased, and she began to regain something of her customary self-possession. "Dear Mrs. Everleigh," she at length said, as she lifted her tear-stained face to her, "you have not attempted to question or comfort me, and yet it seems to me you have been pouring peace into my heart every moment since I came into this room; my trouble is the old puzzle regarding love and hate." "How is it a puzzle?" "All my life," Helen explained, "I have believed myself to be a good woman, a devoted wife and mother, faithful to my duties, charitable, conscientious, God-fearing, self-sacrificing to a fault, and absolutely loyal to my friends. I believed all this to be love. When trouble came, I bore it patiently, taking up my burdens with courage, and setting my face steadfastly toward the work of regaining for myself and my child that of which we had been cruelly robbed--home, position, and an honorable name. I thought I had won, that the goal had been attained, that I had so firmly established myself no taint of the past could touch me; and I believed I was happy in what I had achieved, until I suddenly awoke to the fact that all the fair fabric I had constructed and believed unassailable was only an outward show, built upon pride and self-righteousness; until I began to realize that I had all the time been possessed of a subconscious hate, the hate that wishes people dead and powerless to cross your path again! Does the picture appall you?" Helen paused, almost breathless from inward emotion and rapid speaking. "My dear, you have uncovered all this in connection with yourself?" gravely queried Mrs. Everleigh. "_Something_ has uncovered it," said Helen, with a bitter sigh. "And what is the result of such searching introspection?" "I feel like a whited sepulcher. I am appalled, shocked beyond measure at myself," said Helen, with a gesture of repugnance. "Do you think it was your real self who was nursing all the evil you have portrayed?" gently inquired her companion. Helen lifted a look of surprise to her. "My real self?" she repeated, in perplexity. "The real self is the purity--the innate consciousness that shrinks from evil, and would be clothed upon with the garment of righteousness, of right thinking and right living," said Mrs. Everleigh. "Then the evil-thinking is the unreal self, and every one possesses a dual nature? I recognize that--it is the old story of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde--but when one wakes up to find that even the good he _thinks_ he has done is evil, because of the worm at the core, it becomes a mocking paradox," said Helen bitterly. "No, dear; not the good he thinks and has done," opposed her companion gently, "for every good thought that has taken form in your consciousness, every good deed that has been the outgrowth of that thought, belongs to your true self, and nothing can rob you of it. Your efforts to conquer adverse circumstances, your determination to achieve success in your profession--I have recently heard Madam Ford sing, and have learned something of her career," the lady smilingly interposed--"and an honorable name and position for yourself and your child are all justifiable and praiseworthy. We have a right to set our standards high and do our utmost, with right motives, to attain them. But the undercurrent of bitterness, the sense of resentment, self-pity, self-righteousness--the thinking that is continually arguing about the faults and sins of the wrongdoer--everything that tends to self-justification by the condemnation of another is all wrong, and must be put out, if we hope ever to attain to our ideals, and know real peace of mind. It matters not how fair our outward living may seem, if the thinking is wrong." "I began to realize something of this, that Sunday in church," said Helen. "It seemed as if a wonderful searchlight had been turned upon my inner self, revealing lurking demons I never dreamed I was harboring." "Every one, sooner or later, must be sifted as wheat is sifted--must be refined as gold is refined; the dross and the chaff must be cast out," said her companion. "Oh, tell me how!" Helen exclaimed. "One yearns to be pure in thought as well as in deed, but the wrong-thinking seems to go on and on of itself. How can it be conquered?" "By putting self out of sight and giving loving service to others." "To those who have done us desperate wrong?" panted Helen, with an inward shock. "Even to those," said Mrs. Everleigh gently. "They need it most of all." "Oh, you cannot mean that we should take them back into our hearts and lives, and nourish and serve them again as if no wrong had been done, when every law of God and man had been violated, every tendril of affection ruthlessly trampled upon!" Helen's voice was almost inaudible as she concluded. Mrs. Everleigh did not immediately reply; she sat gravely thinking for several minutes. "Dear Mrs. Ford," she at length began, "we each have different problems in life to solve, and it is difficult and perhaps unwise for one to say to another what he or she would do under certain circumstances which had never come into one's own experience. Loving service is that which best promotes the welfare of the one served. What might be loving service and helpful for one might be just the reverse for another. The wrongdoer must suffer for his wrongdoing, else he would never recognize or repent his sin; it would be doing irreparable injury to remove his punishment, restoring joys he had forfeited, privileges he had trampled upon. That would be encouraging sin. We are commanded to 'cast not our pearls before swine.' We must not continue to shower blessings and favors indiscriminately upon those who have shown themselves unappreciative and unworthy of past benefits. Having cut themselves adrift, it is theirs to work out their own salvation, and it is not our duty to again put ourselves in contact with the error that has deliberately wronged and wounded us. And yet, there is loving service that we can still render even these; we can think and speak kindly of them, giving honor where honor is due, compassion instead of condemnation for the errors that hold them in bondage. Such an attitude cannot fail to crowd out and conquer the bitterness, self-pity, self-righteousness, condemnation--everything that robs us of our peace. When we attain to this we shall know that we have no partnership with hate." "I begin to understand something of what love means," Helen said, in a tone of awe. "I feel as if I were just beginning to see how to live. You surely have helped me to empty myself of much of the evil that seemed to be surging within me when I came here this afternoon. You have indeed 'poured in balm and oil,' and given me much food for thought." She arose to leave as she spoke, holding out her hand, a look of grateful appreciation in her eyes. "Oh, I am not going to let you go yet! I have not said half I wish," cried her hostess, clasping her extended hand, but forcing her gently back into her chair; and Helen, eager to learn more from the wisdom that fell from her lips, sank restfully down among her cushions again, and they talked on for an hour longer. "How glad I am you came to me, Mrs. Ford!" Mrs. Everleigh observed, when she finally said she must go. "I hope to see you often after this--I shall make it my way to do so, if you will allow me. I heard you sing at the Wardsworths' shortly after we met in church, and I intended to be introduced to you at that time, but you had left when I asked to be presented. You have a great gift, and I am going to beg you to use it for me some time." "It will give me great pleasure to do so, Mrs. Everleigh. I would love to show some appreciation of the good you have done me to-day," Helen heartily responded, adding, as her eyes sought those of her companion: "It is a privilege just to look into your peaceful face--one would think that no blight or sorrow had ever touched you in----" Mrs. Everleigh's hand closed over Helen's almost spasmodically, and her lips whitened suddenly, as her glance sought the beautiful photograph resting on the onyx table beside the vase of forget-me-nots. "No blight--no sorrow!" she repeated, as she gently drew her visitor a step nearer the likeness. "Oh, no one escapes the tragedies of this mortal life, my dear--they pass none of us by. This is a likeness of my daughter. Is she not beautiful? She was swept from my sight almost before I realized she was in danger. It seemed as if a whirlwind caught her away, and--she was all I had--the apple of my eye, the one darling of my heart. The blow left me with this crown of snow," she went on, touching with tremulous fingers the hair upon her forehead. "It broke my heart, crushed me to earth for the time being, and the battle I had to fight was much the same that you are fighting now. It is only step by step that we conquer in such experiences, but if we are sincere--'honest in mind and intention'--if we keep our armor on, and wield a merciless sword upon our secret foes, we must win in the end." Helen was very near weeping again as she listened to her. Surely, she thought, the tragedies of earth pass no one by! Those in palace and hovel meet on common ground in these great heart sorrows. She lifted the hand she held, and softly laid her lips against it--she was powerless to speak one word. But Mrs. Everleigh quickly quelled her momentary emotion, and her peaceful smile seemed like a benediction as she turned again to Helen. "But she made my life very bright while she was here. I have beautiful things to remember of her; I have very much to be grateful for," she said bravely. "We must not forget to number our blessings, dear Mrs. Ford," she continued gravely, "lest we drift back into the former bitterness and darkness. You still have your lovely daughter, if you have had other trials--I saw her also at the Wardsworths'--be thankful, and, in the light of that and other blessings, forget the wrong and blight of the past." They went downstairs together, Mrs. Everleigh accompanying her visitor to the door and exacting a promise that she would come again in the near future, for there was more she wished to say to her when the world seemed brighter to her. Helen went home with a sense of peace in her heart such as she had not known for many weeks. She felt like a different person from what she had been during the last forty-eight hours. She reviewed every step of her interview with Mrs. Everleigh, analyzing her arguments, making a personal application of them, and seeking to attain to a higher understanding of them. "Loving service for even those who have wronged us most!" This had impressed her more deeply than anything else she had said, and as she conned it o'er and o'er she came to see that to purify her own consciousness of evil-thinking against John--he who had wronged her most, who had put the worst possible humiliation and suffering upon her--would not only release her from the intolerable bondage of mental discord which she had suffered for years whenever he had come into her thought, but would also be obeying the divine command: "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you." She might never see or hear from John again--she hoped she would not; he had said he would trouble her no more; but whether he did or not, she knew that the bitterness of hate was past, and in its place there was dawning a peace that comes to all those who realize and practice the greatest of all virtues--"Charity, the love that thinketh no evil." CHAPTER XVIII. LOVING SERVICE. When Helen entered the vestibule to the Grenoble, where she lived, on her return from her visit to Mrs. Everleigh, she found Mrs. Harding, to whom she had sent John the night before, in the vestibule, just about to ring her bell, and knew instantly, from the woman's face, that something had gone wrong. "What is it?" she inquired, with quickened pulses. "You sent a man--Mr. Williams--to me last night?" "Yes." Helen was touched by the fact that John had taken pains to conceal his identity by giving his middle name to the woman. He had been taken ill in the night, Mrs. Harding told her, and she had found him delirious in the morning. She had sent for a physician--Doctor Wing--who seemed to think the case critical, and wanted him taken to some hospital, where he could have better air, and a constant attendant; but, Mrs. Harding explained, she felt she ought to come and talk with madam before consenting to the move. "That was right," observed Helen, who had been thinking rapidly while the woman was talking. "I knew Mr.--Williams years ago in San Francisco, and I am sure his friends would not wish him sent to a hospital. He told me he intended to start for California to-day--he had his ticket--so his friends will be looking for him next week." "Well, marm, it is my opinion that he'll never see San Francisco again," said the woman, with a grave shake of her head. "Oh!" cried Helen sharply; "is he as ill as that?" Was John going to die, after all? She was shocked through and through at the thought. No, he must not--he should not! She could never forgive herself for the dreadful things she had thought and said the night before, if he did. Had her repentance come too late? Was she to have no opportunity to prove the sincerity of her desire to put into practice the higher interpretation of love to which she was beginning to awake? "He's an awful sick man, marm," her companion replied. "When will Doctor Wing go to see him again?" "He said he'd drop in about six o'clock." "Then I will be there at six, also; I wish to talk with Doctor Wing," Helen observed, and Mrs. Harding, anxious to get back to her charge, but evidently relieved to have her responsibility shared, went her way. When Helen had leased her apartment at the Grenoble, she had hired another smaller suite of two rooms and bath, adjoining, and running at right angles with it. These she had fitted up attractively as a studio, where she gave her lessons and prepared for her social engagements, thus leaving her apartment free for Dorrie to entertain her friends whenever she wished. At her request, her landlord had cut a door between the suites, and this arrangement had enabled her to go back and forth without being obliged to pass through the public hall. While talking with Mrs. Harding she had conceived a plan to meet Doctor Wing's desire for better air and good care for his patient. She would put a bed and other comforts in the larger room of the studio. Mrs. Harding was a good, sensible, reliable woman, capable in every way--and she would engage her and a trained nurse, if necessary, to take care of the invalid. John should have every possible chance for his life that she could give him, and perhaps this would blot out that dreadful suspicion he had voiced that she had wished him out of the way. She unfolded this plan to Doctor Wing when she went to Mrs. Harding's to meet him, at six o'clock, and, the physician cordially approving it, in less than three hours the sick man was transferred to Helen's cheerful, well-ventilated rooms, with good Mrs. Harding as nurse and attendant. The woman said she would prefer to take care of him alone; she believed she could do it, and it would be much easier for her than to be subjected to the red tape and rigid rules of a trained nurse. Helen seconded this proposition, saying she, too, would do whatever she was able, and would stand ready to provide a trained nurse at any moment, if the plan did not work to Doctor Wing's entire satisfaction. The physician gave his consent somewhat reluctantly, but said they would try it for a day or two. He was somewhat at a loss to understand Madam Ford's interest in the man, even though she had frankly explained that she had known both him and his family when, years ago, she also had lived in San Francisco. However, it was no affair of his, only so far as it made better conditions for his patient; the rooms she offered were certainly more desirable than a cot in the public ward of a hospital would be, and madam, if she were doing this simply because of a friendly interest in him and his far-off family, was a rare woman, indeed. For two weeks it seemed a doubtful battle for the sick man, who was delirious and entirely unconscious of his condition and surroundings; but at the end of that time he began slowly to mend, although he manifested very little interest in the fact, obediently submitting to whatever was done or prescribed for him, but with a feeble air of protest that was discouraging to those interested in him. "He doesn't want to get well," Mrs. Harding told the physician, when he came one morning and found his patient very weak and unresponsive to his cheerful greeting. "I know it, poor fellow!" he gravely replied. "But we will do the best we can for him, although it looks as if that 'best' will not keep him here very long." "Where am I?" John asked his nurse a few days later. "Is this a hospital?" "No, it is a small suite," she told him. "Some one who was not going to occupy it for a while offered the use of it to Doctor Wing, so he brought you here and engaged me to take care of you." Helen had insisted that her agency in the matter was not to be known--at least, not at present, and when John came to himself she withdrew from the rooms altogether. "A man does not like to be under obligations to a woman," she had said, "and doubtless we shall soon hear from his friends, who will then assume the care of him." But John, as he slowly improved, in spite of his indifference to life, appeared intuitively to realize that he was not wholly indebted to the good doctor for the comforts he was enjoying. The rooms were handsomely furnished; there were dainty and womanly touches all around him that somehow suggested a familiar atmosphere; the bed linen and towels were fine and heavy; a rich, warm-hued dressing robe and nice underwear had been provided for him, and, with the artistic tray on which his food was served, the pretty hand-painted china, and bright flowers in unique vases, besides many luxuries to tempt his appetite, all betrayed a thoughtful interest that strangers, or a strange doctor, would hardly bestow upon one so destitute as himself. He talked very little with either his physician or Mrs. Harding; asked no questions, yet was always appreciative of any service rendered him. By the end of four weeks he was able to sit up in a great easy-chair by a sunny window, where he would remain as long as was permitted, sometimes sitting with closed eyes, apparently thinking; at others manifesting a trifle more interest than heretofore by studying the surrounding buildings and his rooms. He was now allowed to have a daily paper to look over, and Doctor Wing tried to draw him out on current events and other subjects, now and then telling a pleasant story or a piquant joke; but while John was always most courteous in his bearing and conversation he could hardly be said to be responsive to these efforts in his behalf. One day there came a tap on the door leading into Helen's apartment. John caught the sound, although the door of the room he was in was partially closed. Mrs. Harding answered the summons, there followed a few low-spoken words, and presently the woman returned, bearing in her hands a basket of luscious fruit, a few fragrant flowers carelessly scattered over it. "Where did you get it?" the man inquired, his face lighting with pleasure at the attractive offering. It was the first really spontaneous sign of interest he had manifested. "A lady who lives in the next suite sent it in to you," Mrs. Harding explained, as she laid a tempting peach, with a bunch of grapes, upon a plate and passed it to him. John sat suddenly erect, exhibiting an energy which betrayed to Mrs. Harding that he possessed more strength than she had supposed. He flushed a hot crimson, glanced alertly out of the window near him, then at the door leading into the hall, through which the doctor usually entered. He next set his plate upon a small table beside him, arose, and went to another window, where he stood for several minutes, studying the surroundings outside. Presently he returned to his chair and his fruit, a wan smile curling his lips, for between certain suspicions that had beset him of late and a rather accurate bump of location he had gotten his bearings at last, and thought he knew where he was. "Mrs. Harding, this house is the Grenoble, is it not?" he quietly inquired, as he began to pare his peach, but with hands that trembled in spite of his efforts to conceal his excitement. "Um--yes," she replied, with some reluctance. "And Madam Ford lives in the adjoining suite, does she not? It was she who sent me the fruit?" "You know, Mrs. Harding, it was Madam Ford who sent me to you the night I was taken ill," John resumed, in a matter-of-fact tone, without appearing to observe her confusion. "I would be glad to see her again; will you ask her if she will spare me a few moments?" On receiving this message, Helen knew that she could no longer keep out of sight; she had realized from the first that the truth would have to be revealed sooner or later, and she went to him at once, greeting him courteously, as if he had been simply an old acquaintance. "Helen, you are responsible for my being here. Why did you do this?" he exclaimed huskily, as the nurse left the room, closing the door after her. "If this is what you wished to see me about I am not going to stay, for you are not to get excited," Helen returned reprovingly; then she added kindly: "There was simply nothing else to do." "Yes, there was; you could have let them take me to some hospital, where they would have put me to die, like any other beggar. Why didn't you?" he demanded bitterly. "Because, for one reason, Doctor Wing thought this the better plan for you----" "But the expense of it!" he interposed, flushing hotly. "To say nothing about the imposition on you." "Oh, don't let that trouble you," said Helen calmly. "Of course, I wrote to your uncle, telling him of your illness. I thought he would be wondering, after sending you the ticket, why you did not put in an appearance at San Francisco." "Well, what did he say?" "He wrote me to see that you were made comfortable, and sent me some money." "How much?" "Fifty dollars," Helen confessed, rather reluctantly. A cynical smile curled John Hungerford's lips. "Fifty dollars! It has cost you many times that to provide for my needs, and the care I have had, to say nothing about the doctor's bill," he faltered. "Well"--with a reckless air--"I shall soon be where I will trouble no one, and--I am glad of it." "Why should you be glad of it?" Helen gravely asked. "Because I do not wish to be a burden to any one. I've been a failure from beginning to end, and I am weary of the race. Even if I were not, I know my fate is settled, and it would be useless to try to change it." "How do you know your fate is settled, as you express it?" He held up a trembling, transparent hand. "I have no blood; I have no strength, no courage, nothing to look forward to," he said, in a hopeless tone. "Don't you think it would be more brave if, instead of yielding to such gloomy thoughts, you made an effort to get well?" Helen gently suggested. "What for? _What_ have I to live for?" he cried, lifting agonized eyes to her. "For the sake of trying to live--_right_ for a while," she gravely but very kindly replied. A wave of scarlet shot over his wan face, and his head fell upon his breast. "By Heaven, I wish I could!" he exclaimed, looking up, after a moment, a ring of sincerity in his voice that Helen had never heard before. "Then, John, why not make an honest effort for it?" And Helen's tone was full of strength and encouragement. "It is too late--I am not going to get well. I am sure the doctor thinks I cannot," he wearily returned. "Simply because you have no wish to, and will not try; your own attitude is what is sending you to your doom. Don't let this inertia conquer you, John; buckle on your courage, take a fresh grip on hope, and rise above this weakness. There is hardly any situation in life so adverse that it cannot be overcome if one will go to work the right way. Then, think of your talent--it was a divine gift. Can you bear the thought of making no return for it--of leaving absolutely nothing behind you to show that John Hungerford, who was born with the soul of a great artist--you know, Monsieur Jacques told you that--ever lived? Oh, rouse yourself; start out anew, and make your mark in the world!" Helen had spoken very earnestly, and it was evident that her words had made a deep impression upon her listener, for it was with difficulty that he preserved his composure. "Do you think I can--now, after all the best of my life has been wasted?" he breathed eagerly, but swallowing hard to keep back a sob that almost got the better of him. "I am sure you can," she cheerily responded. "Make up your mind, first of all, that you are going to get well; that will be half of the battle won; and, with health and strength regained, the rest will be comparatively easy. I wish----" She paused suddenly, as if in doubt of the wisdom of what she had been about to say. "What do you wish?" he inquired, as he keenly searched her thoughtful face. "I wish you would allow me to bring a dear friend to see you--some one whom I feel sure would be a great help to you." "Who is this friend?" John demanded, almost sharply, and with suddenly averted face. "A Mrs. Everleigh--the purest, sweetest woman I have ever known." "Oh!" A great fear seemed to vanish as the man breathed the one word; but Helen, busy with her own thoughts, did not appear to heed him. "Does she know----" he began again, after a moment, and then faltered, a hot flush mounting to his forehead. "She knows nothing, except that a Mr. Williams, whom I once knew in California, has been very ill here at the Grenoble, and I, as a neighbor, have been interested in him," Helen assured him. During the four weeks of John's illness she had seen Mrs. Everleigh three times; once her new friend had come to see her, and twice she had been to her, and a strong affection had sprung up between them. Helen had been so benefited and uplifted by the woman's higher thought and its practical application to daily living, it had occurred to her that if she could bring John under her influence he might be inspired to desire a new lease of life, and to try to redeem his past. She had told her new friend of John, and of his sickness--had intimated, as she said, that she had known him years ago in her old home, San Francisco. She gave her some idea of his great talent, and how he had wasted it; but she had not mentioned the fact that he had once been her husband, and the author of her own troubles, or that he was under any obligation to her for the care and comforts he had received during his illness. "Why do you wish me to meet this Mrs. Everleigh?" John inquired, after silently considering the proposition for several moments. "I want you to know this grand woman. She will do you good; she will inspire you to take a different view--to have a better understanding--of life and its obligations," was Helen's earnest response. "She will not preach to you," she hastened to add, as she saw an uneasy look flit over his face. "She is no officious missionary, going about trying to reform the world at large, and I shall simply introduce her to you as a friend whom I thought it would be pleasant for you to meet after being shut up here for so long, and---- Well, I am sure you will find her irresistible." A smile, half of amusement, half of skepticism, curled her listener's pale lips. "You have certainly aroused my curiosity, and you may bring your friend whenever you see fit," he observed, but more to please Helen than because he felt any special desire to meet her paragon of excellence. "Let me say you have a rare treat in store," she returned, adding, as he manifested signs of weariness: "But you must not talk more now; try to rest and think cheerful thoughts, and you will be stronger to-morrow." She arose as she concluded, and, with a kindly good-by, quietly left the room. CHAPTER XIX. JOHN HUNGERFORD BEGINS LIFE ANEW. John was not as well the following day, and the new impulse with which Helen's visit of the previous day had inspired him seemed to have lost its grip upon him, while all his former listlessness and indifference to life returned. Previous to her call, Helen had interviewed Doctor Wing regarding the condition of his patient, and he had told her that, while the crisis appeared to have been well passed, and there were indications that he might rally for a time, he had grave doubts regarding his ultimate recovery; for, aside from certain threatening conditions, the man was laboring under great mental depression, and appeared to have no desire to live, which, of itself, was by no means an encouraging phase. Consequently she had not been wholly unprepared for John's own admission that he was glad he was not going to get well. But since her acquaintance with Mrs. Everleigh, Helen's views regarding many things pertaining to life had radically changed. She did not believe that John's case was hopeless, notwithstanding the unfavorable outlook, and she resolved that he should be saved--he should have another chance to prove himself a man, and a great artist, if there was any power that could save him; and she felt assured there was. She went immediately to her friend, to whom she explained the situation, and Mrs. Everleigh promised to go to see "Mr. Williams" the following day. She came late in the morning, when, refreshed by a good night's rest, he was feeling much brighter and stronger than on the previous day. And the moment he heard her speak, and looked into her eyes, he knew that all Helen had said of her was true. She was a brilliant as well as a beautiful woman, for, aside from having been finely educated, she had always enjoyed rare social advantages. There was also a merry vein in her nature, and she had not been many minutes in his presence before John found himself laughing out spontaneously over her vivid description of a ludicrous incident that had occurred on her way to the Grenoble to see him. This set him immediately at his ease with her, and they dropped into a free and interesting discussion of various topics that lasted for nearly an hour. When Mrs. Everleigh finally arose to go she observed, with charming cordiality: "I have enjoyed my call so much, Mr. Williams, I am coming again soon, if you will allow me." "You are very kind, Mrs. Everleigh, and I assure you it will give me great pleasure to have you do so," he replied, with all the old-time courtesy of the once elegant John Hungerford. "And I will send my car around for you as soon as you feel strong enough for a drive," the lady continued brightly. "You need to get out into this crisp fall air, and before long you will feel like a new man; the world will seem like a different place to you." John's face fell suddenly. Until this moment he had not once thought of himself since her coming. "I fear that will never be," he said, in a spiritless tone. "There are strong indications that before very long I may be in a different world from this." "Who has dared to pass such sentence upon you, Mr. Williams?" gravely questioned his companion. "Put that thought away from you at once; it is your rightful heritage to be a strong, well man, and--you still have work to do here." Then she smiled cheerily into his face as she held out her hand to take leave of him, adding: "But we will talk more of that when I come again." And she went away, leaving John with a sense of something new having been born into his consciousness. He walked to a window, and stood looking thoughtfully out over the roofs and chimney pots, while a voice within him, that seemed almost audible, repeated over and over: "It is your rightful heritage to be a strong, well man; and you still have work to do _here_." That same evening, the duties of the day being over, Helen went in to see him again, and to inform him that she had received a second letter from his uncle, Mr. Young, who had sent her another check for fifty dollars, which she laid before him as she spoke. He pushed it almost rudely from him. "Keep it," he said, flushing sensitively; "I cannot take it." She appeared to heed neither his act nor his words, but casually inquired, while she observed that he looked better and brighter than when she last saw him: "Where is your painting outfit, John?" "Sold at auction, I imagine," he replied; then continued, with painful embarrassment: "I may as well tell you exactly how matters stand with me. Marie left me--that is, we had a final falling out--more than three years ago. She immediately broke camp, sold off everything--even my kit--and cleared out; went West and got her bill from me, and I've drifted about ever since. We didn't have a very happy time together, and I----" "You need not tell me any more," Helen here abruptly interposed. "Forget it, if you can." "Oh, Helen," he burst forth, with exceeding bitterness, "I wish I _could_ forget it! I wish I could wake up to find these last ten years only a miserable nightmare!" "I think you are waking up from a very bad dream, John," she returned, in a friendly tone. "You are looking decidedly better, and it rests a good deal with yourself whether you continue to improve." "Marie is dead--was killed, or, rather, fatally injured, and died in the Mercy Hospital a few months ago," resumed John, not to be diverted from what he had been saying. "I did not learn of it until it was all over, or I would have gone to----" "Yes, I know; I read of the accident," Helen again broke in upon him, and somewhat startled to learn that he had been in New York at that time. But she felt that she could not discuss that chapter of his life with him. Her chief desire now was to start him upon the right road to redeem his past, if that were possible; then leave him to work his own way to a more prosperous future. "Now, let there be no more looking back," she hastened to add; "do not waste time in vain regrets over what is behind you, but keep your face steadfastly toward the light of the new day that is dawning upon you. You are really better--you are going to get well; you will take up your art again, and you will do something worth while." "Upon my soul, I wish I might!" he said, in a low, eager tone, and secretly encouraged by her positive assertions. "Then if you really wish it, suppose you begin at once," Helen proposed, with inspiring energy. "Take some of this money your uncle has sent, get what materials you need, and go to work, doing a little--what you are able--every day. Make out a list of what you require, and I will place the order for you; here are pencil and paper. I will come for the memorandum directly after breakfast to-morrow morning, take it to Bronson's, have the things sent up immediately, and you can make a beginning before the day is out." She pushed some writing materials across the cable to him, and then arose to go. The man lifted a wondering glance to her. "Helen, you are a marvel to me! You have put new life into me," he said, with deep emotion. "I am simply overwhelmed by your goodness--I wonder that your heart is not filled with bitter hatred for me." Helen flushed consciously at his words, and moved away to the mantel, where she stood musing for a few minutes as she gazed down upon the glowing logs in the fireplace below. How she had struggled with the demon of hate no one save herself would ever know. But she had finally conquered her foe. She knew she had, from the simple fact that she experienced only the feeling of satisfaction in knowing that John would get well--that she wanted him to get well; while she firmly believed that he would be a better man in the future for the helping hand she had given him and the interest she had manifested in him. No, she no longer bore him the slightest ill will; instead of cherishing antagonism and resentment, she had come to regard him as her "neighbor," a brother man, for whom she would do only as she would be done by; and, having once attained this attitude, a great burden of self-condemnation had rolled from her heart and left her at peace with him and the world. "No, John, I have no hatred for you," she at length gravely observed, but without turning toward him. "Once I--I could not have said this, but I have learned, through bitter experience, that hate harms the hater rather than the object of his hatred; that it corrodes, corrupts, and destroys him mentally, morally, and spiritually; and to-day I can truly say that I only wish you well--wish that you may grow strong, not only physically, but in every other higher and better sense of the word, and make for yourself a name and place in the world, that will compel all men to respect you. I know you can do it, if you will." As she ceased she turned abruptly, and, with a low-voiced good night, slipped from the room before he could detain her. The man sat motionless and absorbed in thought for a long time after she had gone. Every word she had spoken had sunk deep into his consciousness, and had shown him, directly and indirectly, not only what she had overcome and suffered in her struggles with adverse circumstances, but how she had won the greatest battle of all--the conquest over self. At last he lifted his bowed head, and revealed a face all aglow with a new and inspiring purpose; at the same time there was a look of keenest pain in his eyes. "I will do it!" he breathed hoarsely. "But, good God, what a royal heart I have trampled beneath my feet!" * * * * * * * Three weeks later John Hungerford left the Grenoble apartments, a comparatively well man. Meantime, having, through Helen's energetic efforts, obtained the necessary materials, he had labored industriously, and with a constantly growing interest, at his easel, gaining flesh and strength each day, while something seemed to be burning within him that he had never been conscious of before. What was it? he wondered, with almost a feeling of awe--this ever-increasing energy of purpose, this resistless zeal, that was pushing him forward and lifting him above anything he had ever aspired to in the years long gone by? Was it the soul of the great artist, in embryo, that at last was really beginning to expand in its effort to burst its long-imprisoning shackles and plume its wings for a lofty flight? Mrs. Everleigh came to see him every few days, and her talks with him opened up broader vistas of life and its obligations, and imbued him with higher ideals and desires. She insisted upon his going out every day, and frequently sent her car to take him out of the city for an invigorating drive in the country. All this--the cheerful thought, the better purpose and outlook, together with the kind attentions of those interested in him--could not fail to develop faith and hope, with better physical conditions, also, and his improvement was rapid. During this time he had completed two very attractive paintings, which, through the influence of his physician, were placed in a leading art store, and sold at a fair valuation--enough to enable him to begin business for himself, in a couple of inexpensive rooms in another part of the city, which, however, he intended only to be a stepping-stone to something better. On the morning of his departure for his modest studio he did not look like the same man who, bowed and broken, had come to Helen's door a few weeks previous. His form was erect, and had taken on a good coat of flesh; his eyes were clear and bright; his face, tinged with the glow of health, was full of hope, and his bearing characterized by a quiet dignity, and also by an unaccustomed energy that bespoke a definite purpose for the future. An expressman had already taken away his boxes, and he had just sealed and was addressing a letter, when Doctor Wing dropped in to give him a friendly handshake and wish him all success in his new undertaking. "May only prosperity attend you, my friend," he said, when, after chatting a few minutes, he arose to leave and begin his daily round of visits; "and, by the way, I have been sorry I didn't take one of those pictures that were sold at Arlington's the other day. Duplicate that autumnal scene for me, will you? Or make me something after the same style." John's lips quivered slightly as he received this, his first, order, and at the same time recognized the underlying motive that had prompted it. "With the greatest pleasure," he returned, his voice a trifle husky; "and, doctor, I can only regard this as another kindness added to the many favors I have already received from you and shall always gratefully remember." Mrs. Everleigh made her appearance just at this moment, and her breezy greetings relieved the physician of the embarrassment he was beginning to experience, in view of John's expressions of gratitude, and he was glad to be saved the necessity of replying. She had told John the previous day that she claimed the privilege of taking him downtown and installing him in his studio; she would call for him at eleven, and it was to keep this appointment that she now presented herself. The whole-souled doctor and the lady had become very good friends during John's convalescence, for not infrequently they had met in his rooms, and now and then enjoyed a pleasant tilt at each other's expense regarding certain differences of opinion. Upon this occasion her coming appeared to arouse afresh his spirit of jocosity, and they exchanged several glittering lances that put them all in a very merry frame of mind, which was a good thing, for John, not having seen Helen that morning, was somewhat depressed at the thought of going away without a few last words with her. At length Doctor Wing broke off in the midst of a hearty laugh over a bright repartee from Mrs. Everleigh, saying, as he caught up his hat and gloves: "Well, this will not do for me, much as I dislike to tear myself away from such pleasant company; but I am culpably neglecting my duties. Mrs. Everleigh"--extending a cordial hand to her--"it has been a great pleasure to know you, and I am hoping that our acquaintance will not end here, even though"--the old roguish look again dancing in his eyes--"you certainly stole a very clever march upon me here." "How so?" she questioned, with an assumed air of innocence, but with an answering gleam of amusement, for she could not fail to understand what he meant. "Why, as you well know, I lost my patient the day you first appeared in this apartment," he returned, with mock severity. Then he added, more gravely, and much to his listeners' surprise: "And it is not my first or second experience of the kind, either, with you people." "Do you regret those experiences, Doctor Wing?" the lady gently inquired. He hesitated an instant; then met her eyes squarely. "No, I do not," he frankly replied. "Honesty compels me to admit it, to confess that I have been exceedingly grateful for them, especially upon learning that the patient had been very quickly healed after changing practitioners--that a precious life had thus been saved, and I had escaped the most painful duty demanded of a physician. I do not believe," he continued thoughtfully, "that any conscientious physician, who had done his utmost to save life, has ever written the name of the patient he has lost upon a death certificate, and appended his own signature thereto, without experiencing a very depressing sense of the inadequacy of materia medica." Mrs. Everleigh had regarded the gentleman with mingled admiration and wonder while he was speaking. "Doctor Wing, you are a brave man!" she heartily exclaimed, as he paused. "And allow me to add that I appreciate the very noble attitude you have revealed more than I can express. I know of one other who, like you, having exhausted his resources in certain complicated cases, has even advised the patient to change the method of treatment, and quick healing has resulted. I presume there are many more physicians just as conscientious and broad-minded, and I say all honor to such men." "No doubt I would be severely censured by the majority of my profession for giving expression to such convictions," Doctor Wing continued, with a slight shrug of his shoulders; "but I believe human judgment is not the highest tribunal to which man is answerable for either his deeds or opinions, and one must be true to the voice within if he would preserve his integrity and peace of mind, and not become a mere puppet. Please do not misunderstand me," he interpolated, in lighter vein; "I am not attempting to depreciate my own school, and I intend to stick to it until I am convinced that there is a better. At the same time, there are existing conditions against which I, together with some of my colleagues, have the courage of my convictions, and am ready, if occasion requires, to take a radical stand." "Such as what, please?--if you have the time to spare to tell me," said Mrs. Everleigh, who had listened to him with deep interest. "Well, in my opinion there should be absolute medical freedom, as well as absolute religious freedom," he replied. "No one school has any moral right to persecute or seek to overthrow any other school, or usurp authority to compel the public to submit to its method of treatment, any more than any special religious denomination has the right to wipe out other denominations, compel mankind to adopt its tenets and submit to its mode of baptism. All men have equal rights--the right to say whether they will or will not have this or that remedy for their diseases; this or that doctrine to save their souls. Any other attitude of class or government savors of bigotry and tyranny; any law to enforce such conditions would be a criminal infringement of man's moral and civil freedom, and a rank violation of the boasted principles of our Constitution. I see by your shining eyes, my dear lady, that you fully agree with me upon these points," he concluded, with a chuckle of satisfaction, as he viewed her beaming face. "I certainly do, Doctor Wing--you are an advocate for justice after my own heart," Mrs. Everleigh heartily asserted. "And let me echo your words of a few moments ago: 'I hope our acquaintance will not end here.'" "Thank you, madam; and, since the desire appears to be mutual, we will see to it that it does not," he smilingly replied, as he bowed himself out. CHAPTER XX. FIVE YEARS LATER. That evening, when Helen came home from a visit to Dorothy, who had recently returned from her trip, and was pleasantly settled in her new home, she found her "neighbor" gone. Knowing that John was to leave that day, she had purposely planned to be away in order to save them both the embarrassment of a formal leave-taking. She had seen him the previous evening, when they had merely referred to the contemplated change, and had parted with a simple "good night." But John was not willing to leave her in any such unsatisfactory way, and when she reached home, after her day up the Hudson, she found the following note awaiting her: HELEN: I could not go without some expression of gratitude for what you have done for me, and which you persistently avoided last night. Through your divine charity, I am going out from this place, not only in perfect health, but a new man, mentally and morally. When I look back---- But you have told me there must be no looking back, no vain repining; I can see that is wise counsel, for I know that only by blotting out the terrible past can I remain steadfast in the new aspirations and purposes that have taken root in me since I have been a pensioner upon your bounty. Words are inadequate to portray what I feel, in view of what I owe to you, and volumes of promises, unfulfilled, have no weight; but I am going to try to make my future attest the sincerity of my present determination to retrieve the past. The father within me yearns mightily for his child, but I know I am not yet worthy to claim her as such. Some time, perchance, you may be willing to have her know that, after long years of starving among the husks and swine, the prodigal has come to himself, and is striving to redeem himself. JOHN. Helen's eyes were full of tears as she finished reading this note; but they were tears of thankfulness, in view of the fact that she had not, like the priest and Levite of old, "passed by on the other side," and left the wanderer to his fate. The lost had been found; the man had indeed become mentally and morally renewed, and she felt an absolute assurance that John Hungerford's name would yet rank high among those of other eminent artists of the world. She had told Dorothy nothing regarding these recent experiences in connection with her father's sudden reappearance. She had given much serious thought to the subject, for she wished to do right, to be just to both Dorothy and to John; but in whatever light she considered it, it did not seem wise that they be reunited at this time. It was true that John seemed to have really "come to himself, like the prodigal of old," as he had said; but she reasoned that it belonged to him to prove it. His regret for the past appeared to be absolutely sincere; he was full of enthusiasm to begin life anew upon a higher basis, and to put into practice the promptings of an awakened conscience, together with the better knowledge he had recently gained regarding man's individual responsibilities. But, as he had written her, "volumes of promises unfulfilled have no weight," and until he could show himself able to stand alone it were better for both, perhaps, that he did not come into Dorothy's life. She believed, too, that she owed it to Mr. Alexander and his family also that nothing relating to their tragic past be revived to cast a shadow upon their present harmonious domestic conditions or their name. Hence she decided that she would let everything rest as it was, trusting that the future, governed by a higher than human wisdom, would unfold that which was best for them all. She was exceedingly thankful that Dorothy had been away during John's entire illness. She had returned only a few days before he left the Grenoble, and had gone directly to her new home, where Helen and the senior Alexanders received the happy couple, and where they had since been busy getting settled. Helen had also arranged to spend the day that he moved with them, to make sure that Dorrie did not drop in unexpectedly upon her, to make startling discoveries, and also to avoid disturbing leave-takings with John. When the young bride at length came to her, the little studio was dismantled, and it was explained that the rooms had been given up, as her mother's living apartment was now ample for all her work. * * * * * * * Five years have passed. Madam Helen Ford still occupies her handsome suite in the Grenoble apartments, and pursues her chosen profession, still holding a warm place in the hearts of her many friends and patrons, and winning---literally and figuratively--golden laurels for herself, both as an artiste and a noble woman. Dorothy is supremely happy in her beautiful home, and in the devotion of her adoring husband. She is more lovely than ever, for she has developed something of her mother's sweet, womanly dignity; and, with her amiable disposition, her charm of manner, and reserve force of character, is becoming a recognized power in the circle where she moves. Mr. Alexander has ever been a very attentive and considerate son-in-law. He had always admired Helen exceedingly, from the evening of their introduction, but after learning the history of her earlier years--her sorrows, struggles, and conquests--he had regarded her as a wonder. Her unfailing courage, the depth, strength, and beauty of her character; her wisdom as a mother, and her steadfast devotion to her profession, all impressed him beyond measure, and he began to idealize her. That a woman whose life had been so blighted, who had been deserted and left penniless, with a child to rear and educate, could have risen to meet and conquer every adverse circumstance, assuming the burdens and duties of both father and mother, yet preserving through all the charm and sweetness of true womanliness, making the most of her talents, and winning for herself and her daughter both affluence and an enviable social position, seemed a marvel that caused him to bow in homage before her shrine. And Helen fully appreciated Dorothy's manly husband, and grew to love him as well as if he had been an own son. He had repeatedly pleaded with Helen to come and make her home with her "children," but she had invariably replied: "My 'children' do not need me, and I cannot become an idler yet." And, indeed, her many patrons would have regarded their loss as almost irreparable, had she ceased to grace their functions; for her voice had lost none of its brilliancy or sweetness, nor was her personality one whit less charming than of yore. She had, however, of late consented to give up some of her younger pupils, and this had given her more freedom--more time to spend and go about with her dear ones, for she was still young at heart, and loved to mingle with young people in their social pleasures. During these years she had never seen John. He had rigidly kept his word, thus far, that he would "never trouble her again." Through Mrs. Everleigh she had learned, shortly after he had opened his studio downtown, that he was doing well, having plenty of work, and getting fair prices; and this success, she was inclined to think, was, in a measure, at least, owing to the influence of that good lady herself. A few months after he left the Grenoble she had received a letter from him, but he wrote very briefly, to explain that the check he inclosed was intended to cover the expense of his illness while at the Grenoble, including a generous thank-offering to Mrs. Harding for her devotion to him at that time. Doctor Wing had later been remunerated for his services, and had felt himself more than repaid upon receiving a beautiful autumnal scene, done in oils, for which the artist refused to accept anything but the physician's receipted bill, he claiming that even then he was the debtor. Mrs. Everleigh also was the recipient of what she termed a "little gem," and Helen, while studying it during one of her visits to her friend, felt that it far exceeded anything she had ever yet seen from his brush. Then he suddenly disappeared from New York without telling any one of his intention or future plans. Long afterward, Helen read some complimentary notices, copied from both London and Paris papers, referring to the work of a rapidly rising American artist by the name of Hungerford; and this gave her great encouragement for the time, but for the last two years she had seen nothing relating either to his work or his whereabouts; and now and then the fear that perhaps he had again lapsed into old habits that had resulted in total failure would haunt and oppress her. One afternoon in December, having an engagement to dine out, Helen made an elaborate toilet, and had just put the finishing touches to it, when her bell rang, and a registered package was delivered at her door. Upon opening it, greatly to her astonishment, a bank book and a check book fell into her lap, together with a letter, the superscription of which she instantly saw was in John's handwriting. With trembling hands and quickened pulses, she unfolded the missive, and read: HELEN: The inclosed books will, to some extent, explain themselves, but I will add that I have deposited in the National Bank of Commerce of New York, subject to your order, the sum of twelve thousand dollars. If five thousand dollars were allowed to remain at interest for fifteen years at five per cent, the result would be somewhere in the neighborhood of the amount named above. I am not going to rehearse the past; I simply wish to say that I have put this money aside for Dorothy, if you think it best to give it to her and explain how it has come to her. If, on the other hand, you feel it will disturb the harmony of her life to recall a great wrong of the past, let it remain to your own account, and use it as your heart dictates--it was really your money, you know, although set apart for Dorothy. I offer it in all humility, as a tardy act of reparation, which conscience demands of me. I have prospered beyond my expectations. For a year after leaving New York I studied and worked under my old master, Monsieur Jacques, who has been more than kind to me. Since then I have had more orders than I could fill, and nay name and work have been winning honorable mention in various art centers. I am now in New York, on an important commission, but expect to return to Paris within a few weeks. May I come to see you, Helen, and ascertain if Dorothy, for whom my starved heart is yearning beyond expression, will accept my offering, and grant me an interview? Address me at the Hotel Astor. JOHN. Helen was deeply agitated while reading this letter. She fully appreciated the writer's position in wishing to make amends for the wrong he had done so long ago, and she wanted to deal justly by him in all things. But she did not quite know what to do about telling Dorothy, for the passing over of this little fortune, that had so unexpectedly fallen to her, would involve the rehearsal of many painful details, that might, perhaps, mar her present happiness. Dorothy had never known of her father's return, five years ago; for, having been away on her wedding trip during most of his stay at the Grenoble, Helen had no difficulty in concealing the fact of his presence in the house from her. Mr. Alexander was in prosperous circumstances; some time he would fall heir to great wealth, and Dorothy would never need this legacy. Still, it was a peace offering--an effort to atone, which she felt, in justice to John, should not be ignored or rejected. Had she any right to deprive Dorothy of the privilege of accepting or rejecting it, as she might see fit, or longer keep from her the fact of her father's reappearance, his reformation, and the renown he had recently achieved for himself? Did she, herself, wish to see him again? Would it be just or kind to deny him audience, withhold congratulations upon his success, and a Godspeed upon his future career? These were difficult questions, and for the time plunged her in deepest perplexity. But she tried to reverse the situation, to put herself in his position and to judge dispassionately what was the right thing to do. John had evidently made good his avowed determination to retrieve his past; the tone of his letter was both dignified and sincere; the spirit of humility and fervent desire to make restitution, pervading the letter throughout, deeply impressed her, and caused her to feel that he was at last worthy to claim his daughter, provided Dorothy wished to be reunited to her father. "Dorothy is a practical, sensible little woman," she sighed at last. "She is capable of deciding this matter, and certainly has the right to speak for herself. Yes, I must tell her." She glanced at the clock. It was after four, and Dorothy would be there presently. She was coming to spend an hour or two with her, then Mr. Alexander was to take them to the Waldorf to dinner, and afterward to hear Melba in "Il Trovatore." She resolved to improve the present opportunity, discuss the matter fully with her, and so free herself from further responsibility, as far as her child was concerned. She had barely arrived at this conclusion, when her bell rang again. "That must be Mrs. Alexander, Nora; I am expecting her," she observed to the maid who appeared to answer the summons. So Nora, as had been her custom with Dorothy, touched the button controlling the lower door, and, leaving the upper one ajar, went back to her work. Meanwhile Helen had stepped to the mirror over the mantel to refasten a brooch on her corsage, which had become unclasped; then, at the sound of approaching steps, she turned, with outstretched hands, to greet her dear one, a fond smile on her lips, a glad welcome in her eyes, only to find herself looking into the white, eager face of--John Hungerford! All the light went suddenly out of her own face; her arms fell limply to her sides; the smile froze upon her lips, and she caught her breath sharply, shocked beyond measure by his sudden appearance. "John!" she gasped, with white lips, a look almost of terror in her eyes. CHAPTER XXI. SOME INTERESTING REVELATIONS. "Yes; forgive me, but I simply could not wait to hear from you, Helen--I had to come; I could not endure the suspense, so followed close upon my letter, which," glancing at the package on the table--"I see you have received. Besides--I--had something else to say to you," he added, drawing nearer to her. "Something--else," she breathed, as he paused, yet scarcely knowing what she said. "Yes; I have dared to hope--dared to come and plead that you will forgive me the awful past and allow me to take care of you in the future," he resumed, in tremulous tones. "Wait--oh, wait!" he begged, as she put out a hand to check him, "let me speak--let me empty myself. I cannot conceive how I ever could have been so heartless, so selfish, so--brutal toward the most faithful and self-sacrificing wife in the world! Let me atone--let me try to blot it out during the coming years. You shall never know a care nor sorrow from which I can shield you. My financial future is assured, I know I am a better man, and I want to prove it to you. This newborn love for work, for right living, and noble achieving has made me yearn to mount even higher upon the ladder of success, and you would be a continual inspiration in my career; while, having been lifted out of the depths myself, I long to save others as you saved me, and we could work together in this way, for our faith and aims are now the same. Helen--oh, Helen! will you come back to me? Can you--can you?" He was as white as marble as he held out appealing, shaking hands to her, his burning eyes fastened in agonized yearning upon her lovely though colorless face. But in spite of her exceeding pallor, Helen had never appeared more beautiful in her life. She was the picture of health. Her splendidly developed form was clad in a rich evening gown of silver-gray chiffon velvet, elaborately decorated with duchess lace and touches of rose pink here and there to give it life. A costly comb of gold gleamed among the massive coils of her bright hair, which scarcely showed a thread of silver even yet; a curiously wrought chain, to which a diamond cross was attached, was clasped around her white throat, and handsome diamond-studded bands of gold--a recent gift from her devoted son-in-law--encircled her shapely arms. With her beautiful, high-bred face, and these becoming and elegant accessories of costume, she was a most attractive woman. While John was speaking, she had stood motionless regarding him with mingled astonishment and dismay. He had never seemed so manly to her before. He had become more erect; his form had expanded, and he bore himself with a masterful dignity and self-possession that bespoke a wonderful growth in character. His face was earnest and purposeful; his clothing was fine and rich in texture and fitted him perfectly; his linen was immaculate. What a contrast to the broken-down, shabby suppliant who had come to her door five years previous! He now looked the cultured, distinguished gentleman, and she knew he was a "better man"--clean within as well as without. Why, then, did not her heart respond, her pulses quicken, to his impassioned appeal? She could not tell; she was simply appalled, breathless, almost paralyzed by his words. "Oh," she faltered, when he ceased speaking, "why did you come?" A groan of agony escaped him at this involuntary betrayal of her attitude toward him. His hands clenched convulsively, then dropped heavily to his sides; the veins swelled out full and hard upon his forehead. "Because I could not keep away. Because, ever since that day when you bade me try to live, start out anew and make my mark in the world, I have had but one aim--one overmastering desire in life--to make myself worthy of your esteem; to win an irreproachable name and position in the world to offer you, and atone, if ever so little, for what I made you suffer during those dreadful years of our early life. It was you who aroused the dormant spark of manhood within me; now let me share with you the fruits of that awakening. Oh, Helen! I honor, reverence--I love you as never before; let me prove it." The man's voice, which had grown hoarse and painfully intense during this appeal, suddenly broke and became almost inaudible as he ended his appeal. Helen was also deeply moved. A great trembling seized her; the room began to grow dark; she swayed dizzily where she stood, and then sank weakly upon a near-by chair, but involuntarily throwing out a repelling hand, as John sprang forward to her assistance. He paused abruptly, at her gesture, as if he had received a mortal blow. Was his presence so repulsive to her that she could not endure to have him come near her? For the moment he was crushed, humiliated beyond the power of speech; then he slowly drew himself erect, his chest heaving with a long, shuddering breath as he strove to recover something of self-possession. "Helen!" the name burst sharply from his hueless lips; "that means that I have asked too much--that you cannot----" "No, John, I cannot," she gently interposed. The kindness in her tone half reassured him. He leaned eagerly forward to search her face, but knew instantly from the look in her sorrowful though unresponsive gray eyes that his hopes were vain. "Oh, I might have known you never could forgive----" he began, when she interrupted him again. "I have forgiven." Her voice was tremulous but very sweet. "I hold no bitterness against you in my heart--the last vestige was blotted out five years ago, as I then assured you, and to-day I realize that you are as worthy of my esteem as any other man who has resolutely overcome the errors of his past and is steadfastly adhering to high ideals and noble purposes. I can and do rejoice most heartily in the conquest you have won," she went on, speaking with more calmness--"in the fame and prosperity you have achieved, and which I am sure you will continue to win. But--John, the ties which once united us were too hopelessly severed to make it possible for us ever to piece them together again. When I pledged myself to you thirty years ago it was a lifelong vow I took. When the law annulled that union and--you formed other relations, it was the same to me as if death had claimed you--I gave you up, as absolutely and hopelessly as if you had literally been buried from my sight; it was an unconditional surrender--the bond that had united us was rent asunder, leaving a great gulf between us, and I knew that the void thus made could never be filled again. Then I took up my life to live it alone, and--thus I shall live until the end." The man had stood before her while she spoke, with averted face and bowed head, which sank lower and lower as she proceeded, until it rested upon his breast, while his attitude was like one bereft of hope. "I cannot bear it, Helen--even though I know the sentence is just," he faltered, at length breaking the silence. "It was through your heavenly compassion five years ago I gained a new lease of life, and that life I solemnly vowed should be spent in the effort to master the weaknesses that had been my ruin, and bereft me of all that a true man holds most sacred--family, home, and reputation. Clinging steadfastly to this resolve and your dauntless motto--'that there is hardly any situation in life so adverse that it cannot be overcome if one only goes to work in the right way'--I have conquered self in many ways. I have won a competence and some measure of renown as an artist; and my one inspiration throughout has been the hope of a blessed reunion with my dear ones. Failing in this, the future holds nothing but emptiness for me," he concluded dejectedly. "The future holds all good for you, John," Helen returned, and, as once before during his illness, her voice was full of strength and encouragement. "You have, as you say, learned how to overcome--how to govern your life by principle instead of by impulse, and so have found your true manhood. And you will keep on in the same way, for, as we know, there is but one goal for us all--one ultimate attainment really worth living for--the full stature of the perfect man." "But I wanted to atone to you--to take care of you--to bear burdens for you, as you once bore them for me; I want to make you happy, Helen----" "You have already done that," she said, smiling up at him through eyes that were full of tears. "To know what you have been doing--what you have been achieving during the last five years--to see you as you are to-night--redeemed--gives me greater joy than you can realize." He turned and walked away from her. He was crushed--almost on the point of breaking down utterly before her, notwithstanding his manhood, in view of this bitter disappointment. Yet he began to understand that the old ties, which he himself had so ruthlessly severed, could indeed never be pieced together again. There was between them a great gulf, in whose fathomless depths there lay a royal heart rent in twain, and a priceless love slain by his own reckless folly. How could he bear to live out his life bereft of all his fond hopes? Presently, having in a measure regained his composure, he returned to her. "At least you will allow me to make some substantial provision for your future," he observed, with a pathetic air of humility. "That surely is my right after my culpable improvidence of those early years. My income is ample, and constantly increasing. I will settle an annuity upon you for----" "But I do not need it, John, although I thank you for the kind thought," Helen gently interposed, her heart aching for him, and feeling that she herself could not much longer endure the strain of the interview. "My own income is more than sufficient for my support, especially now that Dorothy is settled in life; and, besides, I could not be happy to give up my work. Ah!" breaking off suddenly, as her bell rang once more--"that must be Dorothy; I am expecting her." "Dorothy! And I am here!" the man exclaimed, in dismay. Then, a sharp ring of pain in his tones: "Helen, am I never to see Dorothy?" She hesitated an instant, thinking rapidly. "Yes, I think you should see her," she then said. "At least, I will tell her that you have returned, show her your letter, and she shall decide for herself. But, wait! you cannot get out now without meeting her, and the shock would be too much for her to run upon you without any preparation; step into the library behind you for a few minutes." She waved him toward the room, and he slipped into it, partly closing the door, just as Dorothy blithely swept through the reception hall and clasped her mother in her arms. "Mamma, dear, how lovely you are!" Dorothy exclaimed, in a sprightly tone, as she fondly kissed her. "Your gown is vastly becoming; but aren't you a trifle pale to-night? or is it that tone of gray? Sit down, do, and when I get my things off I have something very important to tell you." She threw off her elegant evening cloak and stepped forth, radiant in a beautiful costume of pale-pink silk, chiffon, and lace, while the nodding plumes of the same color on her dainty hat lent a piquant charm to the happy, sparkling face beneath. "Now, I have great news for you," she resumed, sinking upon a low chair beside her mother, and beginning to pull off her long white gloves. "Whom do you think Clifford met to-day at the Gotham Club? Oh, I am sure you could never guess, and I--I don't quite know how to tell you without giving you a tremendous shock; but the--the stranger was--oh, mamma!"--with a little nervous catch in her breath--"my father!" "Dorothy!" It seemed to Helen the most marvelous coincidence in the world that Dorothy should have thus been already prepared, in a measure, for what she was about to reveal to her! "Wait, dearie--just try to be calm until I tell you all about it," Dorothy continued tenderly, as she slipped a supporting arm around Helen's waist. "It was Mr. Carruthers who was entertaining, and it goes without saying that he never dreamed he was introducing the father-in-law to his son-in-law. Clifford, evidently, was the only one of the company who comprehended the situation, for, of course, he recognized the name, and then I had shown him that photo, which I have always kept. It seems that he--my father--has been abroad again for several years, devoting himself to his art, and has won great honors; has had pictures hung in Paris and London exhibitions that have been raved over, and it is said he has made a great deal of money. Mr. Carruthers met him first in Paris, and says he stands high there with the best artists, and is a conscientious as well as a tireless worker----" "Dorrie--I----" Helen was on the point of checking her, for Dorothy's voice was so earnest, so full of animation, she thought John could not fail to hear every word. But Dorothy would not be checked. "Wait, mamma," she interposed; "I know just how you feel, for all the strength went out of me, and I almost broke down when Clifford told me about it, and what a prepossessing gentleman he is to-day; he says that whatever he may have been in the past, he is sure he is fine now, through and through. Dear," she went on tremulously, "it nearly takes my breath away to know that he has come back--is actually here in New York; and if he has changed--has become all that they say he has, it shows that there was good in him--I wonder what kind angel found him and rekindled the vital spark. It makes me sorry, too, that I was quite so bitter against him, and said such cruel things to him that last day--I could almost wish to see him again if--if it were not for--that woman----" "She is dead, Dorothy." "Mamma! how do you know?" "I have known it for more than five years, dear," Helen gravely returned; and, thinking she might as well tell her story now, for she saw that Dorothy was inclined to be lenient toward her father, and there was no reason why they should not meet at once. "While you were away on your wedding trip," she resumed, "he--your father--came here----" "Here!" "Yes; I have never mentioned it, for you have been so happy I could not bear to tell you anything unpleasant. He saw me one evening on the boat, as I was coming home after putting your house in order, and followed me here. He looked poorly--was really ill, and I sent him to Mrs. Harding for the night. He was taken alarmingly worse before morning, when I had him brought here, and Mrs. Harding took care of him, in the studio, for several weeks----" "In the studio!" repeated Dorothy, breathless from astonishment. "Did she know who he was?" "No, dear; he gave his name to her as Williams, and she has always believed he was some one whom I had once known in California, and wished to befriend in his trouble--at least, until his relatives could be notified." "Then he was here after I returned?" "Yes, for a few days only; but, before that, as soon as he began to gain strength, he seemed to want to take up his work again. He painted two lovely pictures here, then hired a couple of rooms downtown, where he worked until he made enough money to take him abroad again." "Mamma! then _you_ were the good angel who rekindled the vital spark!" cried Dorothy, who was now almost sobbing. "It has comforted me, dear, to think that I may have helped to inspire him to take up his art again," Helen returned, adding: "But it was Mrs. Everleigh who was really his 'good angel.'" "Mrs. Everleigh!" "Yes, I brought her here to see your father, and you know what she is able to do for people who will listen to her; but I will tell you more about that later." "Did she know _who_ he was?" Dorothy inquired. "No, dear; no one has ever known anything except as I told you--that he was an old acquaintance whom I would not allow to be taken to a hospital." "Have you never heard from him since he went away?" "Yes; several months after he opened his studio--I think it must have been just before he went abroad again--he wrote me a brief letter, and inclosed a liberal check to cover the expenses of his illness, he said," Helen explained. "Now and then," she continued, "I have seen a newspaper notice commenting favorably upon certain pictures he had painted, and I have rejoiced in his success. This afternoon I received a package from him----" "Oh!" "Here it is, with the letter accompanying it. Read it, dear, and then it will rest with you to say what shall be done regarding the matter of business to which he refers." Helen laid the missive on Dorothy's lap as she concluded. "How wonderful!" breathed the young wife, as she seized and unfolded it with eager hands. Tears rained over her cheeks, as she read; but she dashed them impatiently away and devoured the pages to the end. "Oh, what a transformation! And isn't it beautiful to read between the lines and realize all that it means?" she cried, a note of exultation in her tremulous tones. "He loves me still! he wants to see me! And--we should accept this money," she went on thoughtfully; "don't you think so? It would be unfair, unkind, to refuse it, when conscience has prompted him to make this restitution; unless, mamma, dear, you shrink from receiving it and from meeting----" "Dorothy," Helen hurriedly interrupted, "it shall be as you say; if your heart yearns for your father----" "It does--it really does; I feel that he is good and true and worthy." "I am sure he is, dear," said Helen heartily; "and if you can give him the welcome he craves, and so help to make his life brighter in the future, it will give me joy to have you reunited." "That is simply angelic of you, mamma," Dorothy eagerly exclaimed. Then, leaning nearer, she looked deep into her mother's eyes. "And you, dearest?" she questioned. But her mother's lips were mute. They held each other's gaze in silence for a minute; then Helen bent forward and softly kissed her daughter on the lips. It was as if she had said: "That book is sealed forever." Dorothy's beautiful face clouded with a look of keen pain. "Yes, I can understand," she murmured, scarcely above her breath, and with a regretful sigh. "But you will let him come, as he begs in his letter--you will see him just once, to--to congratulate and wish him well; will you not?" "Dearest, I have already seen him." "Mamma! when?" cried Dorothy, startled beyond measure. "Just before you came in--immediately after receiving the package. He could not wait for a reply to his letter--I had barely finished reading it when he came. He is here now--in the library--waiting to see you." Dorothy sprang to her feet as if electrified, as indeed she was. "Here!" she exclaimed, her voice resonant with joy. "My father here!" CHAPTER XXII. A HAPPY REUNION. What of the man sitting alone there in Helen's library during the interview between Dorothy and her mother as just related? Obeying Helen's behest, he had slipped into the room just as Dorothy entered the reception hall, where he had dropped into a chair, and sat, with his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands, like one bereft of hope--dazed, almost benumbed by his crushing disappointment in view of Helen's obvious attitude toward him. For five long years he had lived and labored for this hour; with one high aim and end--one coveted goal set before him. His aim was to redeem his wasted life. To do this meant, first of all, to make of himself a man worthy of the name--a man, the pattern of which he had caught an inspiring glimpse during Mrs. Everleigh's never-to-be-forgotten visits to him at the Grenoble five years ago. And second, to achieve fame and fortune by means of the great gift with which he had been endowed, but which he until now had never fully appreciated, or possessed the energy and stability to develop and perfect. And the end, the goal upon which his heart had been fixed, was to win back the beautiful and wonderful woman who had once been his wife, and with her his lovely daughter. Only he himself knew what battles he had been forced to wage, while trampling under his feet the John Hungerford of former years; with his indolence, ease-loving habits, with his aversion to everything like real work and the propensity to shirk every possible responsibility; or how, during his first year or two in Paris, he had struggled with poverty, living in one poor, ill-furnished room, denying himself the luxuries, sometimes almost the necessities, of life, in order that he might avail himself of the coveted instruction of his old teacher. Upon his arrival in Paris he had at once sought Monsieur Jacques--who, however, received him somewhat coldly at first--frankly stated his position to him and begged that he would accept him as a student again--at least until he could get a start for himself. When the kind-hearted Frenchman was convinced of his sincerity--when he saw how eager he was for real work, he was overjoyed, and all his former interest in, and enthusiasm for, his old favorite, who he felt assured possessed the soul of the great artist, was aroused, and from that hour he spared no pains to encourage and inspire him to the highest achievements. John himself was indefatigable. He gave the closest and most conscientious attention to his work; no criticism or suggestion from Monsieur Jacques was unheeded; the smallest details were most carefully observed, and his progress was almost phenomenal. The soul of the great artist was at last thoroughly awakened and began to live and breathe and glow in every stroke of his brush. At times his teacher was almost afraid that his zeal would exhaust itself, or his strength fail; and occasionally he would compel him to leave his easel and go with him to his country home for a day of rest and recreation. John's evenings were mostly spent in reading and study--in strange contrast to the opera-loving, theater-going habitué of former years. Many things that Helen had dropped, much that Mrs. Everleigh had said, during those weeks of his illness at the Grenoble had shown him that they were living in a higher and purer mental atmosphere than he had ever known, and he craved to learn more of the faith or motive power that made possible the invariable peace and serenity that illumined their faces and exhaled from their presence. He knew that if he were ever to win Helen again he must first rise himself, mentally and morally, to her stature. At the same time he was daily becoming aware that, even though this great boon were to be denied him--even though the broken threads of his life could never be pieced together again, he was yearning, and would ever continue to yearn, for this inspiring faith for its own sake. He had never forgotten the sense of something new having been born into his consciousness with Mrs. Everleigh's first visit to him--something that had been steadily expanding and unfolding within him until he had come to recognize it as the insatiable desire for conquest and dominion; conquest over self--dominion over all things unworthy in his life. When the merit of his work began to be recognized, when his pictures began to be sold as soon as they were hung, no one was more jubilant than Monsieur Jacques himself; indeed, he seemed proud as a father over a gifted son. "Ah, Monsieur Hungerford will be great--his work will live!" he was wont to say when asked for an opinion by would-be purchasers; and such praise could not fail to add value to the artist's productions and bring him plenty of orders. A strong and lasting affection grew up between the two men; they often visited each other's studio--for by the beginning of his third year John had been in a position to establish himself in a handsome suite of apartments, with the simple legend "Hungerford" hung in the great front window--where they spent many an hour in social converse, or in discussing the merits and possibilities of various schools of art. When, during the last year before his return to America, the great teacher passed from his sight, it seemed to John that he had lost a dear father as well as a wise counselor. Now, with name and fame established, with an enviable social position attained, together with an assured competence, he had come back to his own country, his heart beating high with the hope of a blessed reunion with his dear ones--a hope that had been suddenly dashed to earth during his recent interview with Helen; and despair filled his soul as he sat there alone in her library and awaited the next move on the checker board of his life. Dorothy's clear, sweet voice, as it floated to him from the next room, thrilled him through and through; and, as he could not fail to overhear much, if not all, that was said, he gradually became more calm, and began to take himself to task for his own shortsightedness. He reasoned that he had been very unwise in coming upon Helen so abruptly--walking in upon her without even announcing himself, like some unbidden and unwelcome specter of the past. He had been greatly surprised at having been admitted so unceremoniously; no one had inquired at the tube who was seeking entrance, and no one had answered when he asked if Mrs. Ford were in. Instead, the lower door had been immediately unlatched for him, and he had found the upper one open when he reached the suite. Even then he felt he should have rung her private bell and waited until some one came; but, in his excitement, he had mechanically pushed the door wider, when, seeing Helen standing at the mirror, looking more lovely than he had ever seen her, he forgot all else save that he was once more in her presence. He began to realize how he had startled--shocked her beyond measure by this impatient, unwarrantable intrusion upon her. He should have been more considerate--should have waited a day or two, until she had had an opportunity to thoroughly master the contents of his letter and become accustomed to the thought of his return; when she could calmly decide and write him whether she wished to see him or not. Yes, he had made what seemed to him an irreparable blunder, and he was proportionately miserable. Then, as he caught something of what Dorothy was saying, as he detected the ring of eagerness and even joy in her tones while she told of her husband's meeting him at Mr. Carruthers' lunch; when she had said that her heart really yearned to be reunited to him, for she now believed him to be good and true and worthy, and--bless her dear conscientious soul!--that she had been sorry, and condemned herself for the bitter things she had said to him, the last time he had seen her, when he deserved them all, and much more--he began to take courage again; and it seemed as if he could control himself no longer--as if he must go to her, take her in his arms, claim her as his own, and bless her for her heavenly charity. But he must not blunder again; he must not ruin his only chance by again being too precipitate. Perhaps, after all, Dorrie might be his salvation--the one link that would eventually unite him with the woman he adored. He almost wept when Helen had said if Dorothy could receive him and help to make his life brighter in the future, it would give her joy to have them reunited; then held his breath to catch her answer to Dorrie's question: "And you, dearest?" When there came no reply, his heart sank again; especially when the young wife had said she could understand, but begged her mother to meet him just once to congratulate him on his success and wish him well. But the minute following, when he caught those eager, joy-ringing words: "Here! my father, here!" he was thrilled to the depths of his soul--he could restrain himself no longer. The next moment he was in her presence! Dorothy stood breathless, motionless, for a brief interval, searching his face with earnest, yearning eyes; then involuntarily she drifted toward him with outstretched hands. With a great sob of joy welling up from his heart, John Hungerford gathered them in his, and, drawing her close to him, laid them upon his breast, holding them there while he feasted his hungry gaze upon her loveliness. "Dorothy, my darling! You do not repudiate me!" he faltered. "No, indeed, papa! I am glad--glad that you have come," she responded, with an emphasis that left no doubt of her sincerity. How his heart leaped with joy as the old childish form of address fell upon his ear! And there had been nothing forced about it, either; it had slipped out as spontaneously as in their happiest days long ago. As a child, Dorothy had been very fond of her father and he of her; but as she grew old enough to perceive his moral weakness, her respect for him had begun to wane. Then, later, his indifference to duty, his neglect of, and last his unfaithfulness to, his wife had hurt her cruelly, had mortified her girlish pride, and aroused hot resentment of her mother's wrongs. Yet there had been times when she had longed with all her heart for his cheery presence and genial companionship, and when she had grieved sorely over those last bitter, disrespectful words she had flung so passionately at him. "You--are--glad!" he repeated, with deep emotion. "Yes, to see you--to hear you speak; to know that you have found your true self and your own place in the world, and I am very proud, too, of that!" She was beginning to recover her composure, although there were tears in her voice as well as in her eyes. "You do not look so very different," she continued, smiling up at him through them, and drawing a little away from him for a better view, "and yet you do; you are stouter, you have grown a little gray--a little older, but your eyes are the same, yet they are clearer, more tranquil; your face is graver, but more peaceful, and you are more----" "I hope I am more of a _man_, dear," he broke in upon her passionately, then suddenly checked himself. "But I am not going to recall the past to mar this blessed reunion, and the future will prove whether I really am or not. I am filled with joy to find you willing to recognize the tie of kinship between us; it tells me that you have forgiven me; it augurs some measure of happiness for me in the coming years. You already know something of what I have been doing of late years," he continued, after a slight pause; "your mother has told you--I could not help overhearing some of the conversation between you--but you shall learn more in detail later. How strange that I should have met your husband to-day! Of course, I did not once suspect his relationship; he had the advantage of me there, and no doubt was sifting me with those clear, searching eyes of his. Your husband! To think of you being married, Dorothy! I cannot realize it! I am sure Alexander is a fine fellow, though." "Indeed he is!" asserted the fair wife, flushing with pleasure at this tribute to her dear one. "I am more proud of him than I can tell you, and very, very happy. Listen! I think he has just come in." Her quick ears had caught the sound of a latchkey being inserted in the outer door. The next moment she turned to see her husband standing upon the threshold, viewing, with evident astonishment, the interesting tableau before him. "Oh, Clifford, dear!" said Dorothy, throwing out a pretty, jeweled hand to him, "come and greet my father, although I know that you have already met him. Isn't it wonderful that I should have found him so soon after what you told me this afternoon?" Mr. Alexander came forward and smilingly possessed himself of his wife's hand, while at the same time he cordially greeted his new acquaintance. He had been strongly attracted to the man during their previous meeting earlier in the day, and truly John Hungerford had lost nothing of the personal charm of his earlier years. Indeed, he had gained much in a new and gentle dignity, and a certain purposeful poise that had come to him with his awakening to the higher demands of life, and the stern realities and experiences of the last five years. Mr. Alexander had been somewhat fearful that his wife's peace might be disturbed by her father's unexpected return, and now, even though he sympathized with her in her evident happiness, he secretly wondered how this reunion could be perfected without arousing unpleasant comment and curiosity regarding the past history of the family. He had searched Helen's face as he saluted her, but was unable to read her thoughts, although he observed that she was exceedingly pale. Dorothy graciously invited the gentlemen to be seated, and for fifteen or twenty minutes they chatted pleasantly of the events of the day; John keeping Dorothy close beside him and clinging to her hands as if he felt her to be his only anchor of hope in this critical hour. Now and then he ventured a look at Helen, who was sitting a little apart, apparently listening; but her face told him nothing. Her exceeding loveliness, however, impressed him as never before, and not a detail of her exquisite costume escaped his critical, artistic eye. At length, after glancing at his watch, he arose, observing that he had an appointment with a party who was about to place an important order with him, and he must not linger longer, even though he was sorely tempted to do so. Mr. Alexander had been considering the propriety of inviting him to join his party at dinner and later for the opera. While he thought Dorothy might be glad to have her father with them, he was not so sure about Helen--he knew that this meeting must have been a great strain upon her, and it was now quite a relief to him to have the matter settled by Mr. Hungerford's reference to his important appointment. "I have some pictures with me which I think will please you," John continued, including them all in his glance as he spoke. "I would be glad to have you come to my hotel to view them privately, at your leisure; and as soon as it will be convenient for you, for next week they are to be hung for the exhibition of the Excelsior Art Club." "We shall be delighted, and I can hardly wait to see them," said Dorothy eagerly. "May we come to-morrow?" "Do, by all means; come and lunch with me. Mr. Alexander, can you spare the time to join us?" John inquired, turning to the gentleman. "Certainly; and it will give me great pleasure to do so," he cordially responded. "Then shall we say one o'clock for the lunch?--if that will be convenient for the ladies," and John Hungerford bent an anxious look upon Helen as he concluded. Helen had remained quietly in the background during the foregoing interview, having merely nodded a smiling welcome to Mr. Alexander as he entered. She had been glad of the little respite to recover from the excitement occasioned by John's unlooked-for coming, and also by his impassioned appeal to her just preceding Dorothy's entrance. Her father's invitation to lunch with him brought Dorothy to herself with a sudden inward shock. "Mamma, have you any engagement for to-morrow?" she inquired, turning with an appealing look to her. "Yes, dear; I go to Yonkers for Mrs. Forsyth's reception." "Then let it be Wednesday, if that will suit you better," John quickly interposed. "Wednesday I am booked for a concert, and Thursday for a house party at Tuxedo. But pray do not let my plans interfere with yours; and, John, I will see the pictures later," Helen concluded, in a friendly tone, as she arose, came forward, and joined the group. But intuitively the man knew, with a sinking heart, that he would not see her again, except, perhaps, as they might meet casually at the art club or some social function. There was a suggestion of finality in her calm, self-possessed bearing, and even in her friendly tone, as she pleaded her engagements and promised to view his pictures later, which told him that his most cherished mission in returning to America had failed. An icy chill struck at his heart, blighting all his fond hopes, and marble could not be whiter than was his face as he mechanically made his adieus and passed from the room. At the door he turned and stood a moment, looking back at her, an expression of mingled reverence and despair in his eyes. Then, with a slight renunciatory wave of his shapely hand, he was gone. CHAPTER XXIII. A FINAL RENUNCIATION. The following day Dorothy and her husband lunched with Mr. Hungerford, as had been arranged, and afterward viewed with delighted appreciation the paintings that were soon to be exhibited at the Excelsior Art Club. There were twelve in all, and they displayed remarkable artistic ability, both in coloring and workmanship, together with certain realistic suggestions that appealed at once to the admiration and sympathies of the beholder. As one studied them carefully one could not fail to be impressed with the depths of thought and a certain something forcibly suggestive of high ideals portrayed in them; or to recognize both the dignity and purity of sentiment that had inspired the hand that had so skillfully wielded the brush. It was as if the artist's chief aim had been to give all that was best in himself to kindle the noblest qualities of heart in those who might look upon his pictures as long as they should endure. They were, in truth, beautiful poems in color, to feast the eye, elevate and refine the thought--"songs without words," to make glad and uplift all who were able to appreciate in any degree the divinity of art. Dorothy realized much of this as she went, day after day, to study these treasures which her father had brought from his atelier in Paris, and her heart glowed with ever-increasing pride in these unquestionable evidences of his genius. It also overflowed with devout gratitude as she read, beneath the surface, the story of a wonderful consecration; of the courage, fortitude, and perseverance which the man, in his lonely exile, must have exercised in order to have been able to rise out of the depths to which he had fallen to achieve such grand and noble results. One day she went alone for a last look at these beautiful pictures before they were hung for the public to view. Upon this occasion the father and daughter had a long heart-to-heart talk with each other, during which John confessed to Dorothy that he had allowed himself to cherish strong hopes of a reunion with her mother, if he could prove that he had become worthy of her. He realized now, however, he said, that under no circumstances could he be worthy, for he had cut himself off from her, absolutely and finally, by that irreparable mistake of long ago, and he ought to have known that such hopes could never be realized. Hence, as matters now stood, he thought it would be best that the world should never be enlightened regarding their relationship to each other as father and daughter. "It could not be done, dear," he said, with lips that trembled painfully, "without involving explanations and a rehearsal of past history which would make your mother unpleasantly conspicuous in the circle where she has maintained an honored position for so many years; and I could not bear to have a breath of gossip touch her, to mar her peace in any way." "That is very considerate of you, papa," replied Dorothy, who had been greatly exercised in view of the matter herself, after becoming convinced that the breach of fifteen years ago could never be bridged. She had already talked it over with her husband, and they had both agreed that, for her mother's sake, it would be better that the relationship between herself and the talented artist remain a secret among themselves. Still, it was not an easy task for her, as she sat beside him, looking into his yearning eyes and listening to his faltering tones, to assent to his self-sacrificing proposition to relinquish his claim upon her, also. John's heart sank at her words. He had not quite given up all hope until that moment; but Dorothy's noncommittal reply had seemed to confirm his worst fears, that there was absolutely no hope of a reunion with Helen. "Then, for her sake, we will agree to----" he began, in a hopeless voice. "For your own sake, papa, as well as for hers," interposed Dorothy, laying a gentle hand upon his arm, and almost weeping as she read the misery in his face. "We must not ignore the fact that it would not leave you unscathed in the midst of your honors; and, I imagine, there might arise other complications for us all." He captured her hand and stroked it tenderly with both of his own. "The problem might so easily have been solved if--if I could have won her anew; then we could all have come together again naturally, and no one would have been any the wiser regarding the past," he said. "Oh, Dorrie! do you think I could, even now? _Is_ there no hope?" His voice was hoarse from an agony of yearning as he concluded. She could not answer him for a moment. At length she lifted her tear-laden eyes to him. "Papa," she breathed, almost inaudibly, "I--know there is--a grave in mamma's heart." "The grave of a royal love brutally slain! The grave of a love for which there can be no resurrection!" he groaned. "I know it, too--God help me! Well," he went on, after a struggle to recover himself, "she has given you back to me as a pledge of her divine forgiveness, and for this I am unutterably grateful. So, dear, we will keep our secret from the world, and make the most of our love for each other. I shall go back to Paris within a couple of weeks, take up my work again, and keep on striving to accomplish something that will make the name of John Hungerford worth remembering. I shall, probably, never return to this country, Dorrie; but you will occasionally come to me, will you not? Say that you will grant me these oases in the desert of my future." He looked so crushed, yet seemed so patient under his bitter disappointment that Dorothy, with difficulty, refrained from sobbing outright; but, forcing herself to speak cheerfully, she replied: "I certainly shall. Paris is only a week away, and Clifford and I will enjoy slipping over now and then to spend a little time with you; besides, he always goes to London on business twice a year and takes me with him, so we shall see each other oftener than 'occasionally,' and I will write you every week." Thus it was arranged; and John tried to make the most of his reunion with Dorothy--tried to be grateful that there would be some blossoms of comfort to cull along the way, during what must otherwise be a very desolate future. Nevertheless, the crushing blow his hopes had received, the bitter cup of renunciation he was forced to drink, seemed, for the time, almost more than he could bear, and left their crucial impress upon him. He was a frequent visitor in Dorothy's lovely home on the Hudson during the remainder of his stay in New York, and both she and her husband exerted themselves to make his sojourn as delightful as possible, and so give him something pleasant to remember when he should leave them to resume his work and his lonely life abroad. All Dorothy's old affection for him was revived during this visit, while both her admiration and wonder increased more and more with every interview, in view of his mental and moral attainments, to say nothing of the rapid advancement he had made in his profession, and which seemed likely to place him, at no distant period, in the foremost rank of artists. He certainly was a distinguished-looking man, and one could not converse with him half an hour without becoming aware that beneath the attractive exterior there were depth and strength of character that would lead him still higher as years passed over him. His work won honors at the exhibition of the Excelsior Art Club. His two finest pictures were marked sold on the opening day, and were sent to grace Dorothy's home at its close. The others were all disposed of, and when the artist finally left for Paris he not only bore with him a rich harvest from his brush, but several orders for paintings to be executed at his convenience. He had made his presence in the city known to Mrs. Everleigh as soon as he could conveniently arrange to do so; and upon meeting him she had also appeared deeply impressed by the great change in him. It hardly seemed possible to her that he could be the same man who, five years previous, had expressed little hope of his life, and manifested no energy or wish to prolong it. At her request John had called upon her at her home. When he sent up his card bearing his own name instead of that of Williams, under which she had previously known him, she came to him wearing a look of perplexity; but she instantly recognized and greeted him cordially, although she studied his face earnestly as she shook hands with him. "My friend, there has certainly been a remarkable change in you," she said. "I am more than glad to see you, however, after all these years, and"--smiling into his eyes--"I am sure you have been forging straight ahead." "You once told me, Mrs. Everleigh, that 'there was still work for me to do here,' and I have been _trying_ to do it," John returned, with an answering smile. "I feel confident you have; but"--referring to the card in her hand--"how is it that you have sent me this--that you now call yourself John Hungerford?" John explained that at the time he first met her, when he was so low down in the world, he had dropped his last name, using his middle one instead, to avoid recognition. "You do not mean to tell me that you are John Hungerford, the artist, who has been exhibiting at the Excelsior Art Club?" the lady inquired, with sudden alertness. "Yes--the same," he quietly replied. "Well, I congratulate you!" she earnestly returned. "I have seen your pictures, but, of course, did not dream that I knew the artist. You certainly have been working to some purpose. But how was it that you ran away from us so unceremoniously five years ago?" "That must have seemed rather ungrateful of me, I am compelled to admit," said the gentleman, with a deprecatory smile. "But I had already been the recipient of too many favors; I felt I must begin to stand alone--I had to _prove myself_--so I suddenly cut my cables, and launched out into the deep." "We all have to stand alone in the sifting process," returned his companion. "We all have to prove ourselves, and I believed that you would make good; but I would have been glad of some tidings from you now and then." "Thank you; and it is very gratifying to know that you had that confidence in me," said John, with evident emotion. "I feel, however, that I owe much to you for the measure of success I have attained, for you taught me something of what life and its individual responsibilities mean. But for your and H--Mrs. Ford's unparalleled kindness to me in my darkest hour, I shrink from the thought of what might have been the alternative." Mrs. Everleigh shot a quick glance at him as he made the slip on Helen's name; then she gently observed, with her old winning smile: "We must not forget the Power behind, my friend." "No, dear lady, we must not; neither must we be unappreciative of His faithful messengers," John gravely returned. Then he proceeded to briefly outline something of his life and work abroad, speaking in high praise of his teacher, Monsieur Jacques, and his kindly interest in him; and referred modestly to his own success, both in Paris and also during his present visit to America. They spent a delightful hour together, and when he finally arose to go Mrs. Everleigh named an early date for him to come and dine _en famille_, "for," she told him, "I have not heard half enough even yet. I must see more of you while you are here." When he was gone she sat a long time in deep thought, evidently reviewing the very interesting story John had related to her. At last she looked up with a slight start, a peculiar look sweeping over her face. "Hunger--_ford_!" she said aloud, dwelling with emphasis on the last syllable of the name. "I wonder----" What she wondered can only be surmised, but, knowing what she did of Helen's life--even though she had never been told the story in detail--it is safe to say that a suspicion of the relationship between John, Helen, and Dorothy had been aroused in her mind. John did not see Helen again during the remainder of his stay in New York. Helen felt that it would be better for them both to avoid another interview, and she persistently kept herself in the background. But she went to see his pictures, as she had promised, after they were hung at the art club, choosing her opportunity one day when Dorothy and her father were out of town, and thus securing for herself plenty of time in which to examine his work without fear of a personal encounter, which would have been both awkward and painful for her. She afterward wrote him a frank, friendly letter, in which she expressed highest commendation of his beautiful pictures, and her assurance that the future would bring him even higher honors. She closed by asking him to paint her a portrait of Dorothy the first time she went to Paris to visit him, which, she knew, would be in about three months. This request was like balm and oil to the man's wounded spirit, for it assured him that she never would have made it if there had been aught but good will in her heart for him, and immediately upon his arrival in his adopted city--adopted, for he knew that it would henceforth be his permanent home--he at once proceeded to fulfill her wishes, doing what he could from memory and the aid of photographs, that he might not have so much to do when Dorothy should arrive to give him sittings for the finishing touches. Six months from the time she had made her request, Helen received a beautiful, richly framed, three-quarter size portrait of her dear one, that was to make her heart glad during all her future years--glad not only because of the faithful likeness, graceful pose, and artistic costume, but because of the masterly work that proclaimed it a production of high art, and which, to her, seemed like a priceless seal set upon the complete redemption of the man who had once been her husband. CHAPTER XXIV. A MASTERPIECE. Three years later, at the earnest solicitation of Dorothy and her husband, Helen temporarily gave up her work to make an extensive tour abroad with them. It proved to be, on the whole, a most happy and restful experience; and yet there were times when a tear would start, or a regretful sigh escape her lips as they went over ground and visited many places which she had traversed with John during their ideal honeymoon, so many years ago, and which could not fail to revive old associations. But her two devoted children were delightful traveling companions, well posted, observant, and thoroughly appreciative in their sight-seeing; always careful for her comfort, and allowing her to rest whenever she did not feel quite equal to their more vigorous desire to "miss nothing that was worth while." During these years previous to their trip, Dorothy had visited her father, in Paris, several times, and when at home had corresponded regularly with him; thus Helen had been in the way of knowing something of the details of his life and work. She had also read of various notable things he had done, from foreign papers and art journals. But he had never directly communicated with her, nor she with him, except to thank him most gratefully for, and express her delighted appreciation of, Dorothy's portrait when it came to her carefully packed and ready to hang upon her wall. She had realized that when they reached Paris, where they planned to remain longer than in most of the places they visited, she would be liable to see more or less of him, and she had taken this carefully into consideration before giving her consent to the trip. She felt that if she went she must cast no shadow upon the pleasure of the others. Dorothy had again become very fond and exceedingly proud of her father; Mr. Alexander also held him in highest esteem; hence, in justice to all, her own attitude must, in some measure, at least, conform to theirs. She believed, too, that John understood her, and would not allow himself to do or say aught that would disturb her harmony, while she would be able to avoid awkward situations by always having one or both of the young people with her. John received them, upon their arrival, with delightful hospitality, and they found that every possible arrangement had been made for their comfort in one of the best pensions of the city, as they preferred to be located thus, rather than in a less homelike hotel. He had also a most attractive program planned for nearly every day of their stay, subject, of course, to their preferences. But Helen found herself more weary than she had anticipated on reaching Paris, and decided it would be best for her to keep quiet for a few days before attempting to do very much sight-seeing. As usual, she was allowed to follow the dictates of her own judgment, while the others fell in with John's plans, and went about with their accustomed vigor. The third day after their arrival, one of Helen's former patrons, who was residing just out of the city, and had known of her coming, came to call upon her, and, seeing that she was not quite herself, begged the Alexanders to give her up into her hands for a week or two, promising to give her every care, and take her about to whatever points of interest she desired or felt able to visit. Dorothy was wise enough to see that it was not altogether weariness, but something of a mental strain, under which her mother was laboring, and she unhesitatingly, even eagerly, consented to the arrangement. So Helen was whisked away to Mrs. Hollis Hamilton's delightful villa, where, with an unacknowledged burden lifted from her heart, she began immediately to rally, and was quite herself again in a few days. She saw John only twice after that, until the day before they were to leave Paris. They had planned several times to visit his studio, but something unforeseen had interfered each day. Now they could put it off no longer, and that afternoon found them all gathered in his rooms to view his treasures and have a little last visit together before their departure on the evening express for Italy. It was the studio of an artist who had won both wealth and renown; richly furnished, artistically decorated, and hung with rare gems from his own brush, as well as from that of others; besides being graced with various costly curios, with some fine pieces of sculpture, upon which one could feast the eye for hours at a time, and never become weary of the privilege. John had a few minutes' chat alone with Helen after they had made a leisurely circuit of the rooms together, and during which he explained, among other things--what interested her most--the underlying thought that had inspired the subject and been wrought into many of his pictures. It was the last time he ever saw her, and the memory of her face as she listened to and talked with him never left him. As long as he lived, it shed its luster on his pathway. It was like a radiant star, newly risen, which would henceforth illumine the gloom of his darkened firmament and cheer his lonely hours. She had been charming, had seemed to forget everything but her interest in what he had been doing since his visit to America. She showed herself well versed in art, also--that she had kept up with the times, and was even well posted upon some of his own more important works that had received honorable mention in some of the art journals. She was eloquent, winsome, and witty by turns. Her manner was frank and gracious, without a vestige of self-consciousness to suggest that she even remembered the tragedy of their earlier years; something as her attitude might have been toward a brother or a friend in whom she was deeply interested. And when at length they paused in a great bow window that overlooked a beautiful view beyond the sunlit Seine, she observed, with glowing eyes: "What a glorious thing it is to be a 'great artist!' Yes," she added, as he made a gesture of dissent, "Monsieur Jacques' prophecy is proving true; I can see it unfolding more and more. It is a rare and noble gift to conceive exquisite mental pictures like these, and then be able to portray them for others to enjoy. Who can estimate their refining influence upon the world, especially when one can _feel_ the uplifting thought and inspiring lessons underlying their surface beauty? If you are putting as faithful work into your life problem, John, as you are expending upon your art, you surely are making rapid strides toward that 'goal' of which we talked three years ago." "I believe I am honestly trying to do so, Helen," was his quietly earnest reply; "but"--his lips whitening suddenly--"the way, at times, has seemed toilsome and--lonely." His voice almost broke on the last word. Helen's clear eyes drooped; her face clouded for an instant, and, with an inward shock of misery, John knew that his words had recalled the lonely way she had once trodden, bearing both her own burdens and his. He could have scourged himself for his thoughtlessness. He had charged himself that morning not to recall by look or word one sorrowful thought to mar her visit to him. But the next moment she looked up, serene and smiling. "That is an experience we all have at times, I fancy," she said. "It is a suggestion of that little demon--self-pity--that is liable to make a great deal of mischief for us if we do not speedily conquer him." "I have found that out for myself," he observed, with an answering smile; "he is at hand to trip at every step, if one is not alert." "And we know, John, there can be no company warfare, the battle is individual, one must toil and fight alone for self-conquest. It does seem wearisome at times, but it is grand, too, for every individual victory won is just so much more achieved toward the redemption of all, because it lessens the evil in the world in exact proportion to our achievements, and also becomes an incentive to others to buckle on their armor and do likewise." "That is a beautiful, helpful thought. I shall not forget it," he gravely returned. "And I shall not forget my visit here," Helen went on brightly, "nor this lovely view out over the Seine; these beautiful rooms, so artistically arranged--they make an ideal studio--and particularly your work. It has made me very glad to know what you are doing and how you are doing it." "Thank you for telling me that," was all that John could trust himself to say. "By the way," she continued, after a moment, during which her eyes had roved over the place with a lingering look, as if to impress it indelibly upon her mind, "what have you behind those draperies? I thought it a window as I passed them; now I see it is not." John glanced in the direction she indicated, then back at her, hesitated, and for a moment seemed at a loss to know how to answer her. At length he said: "That is a picture upon which I have been working, at intervals, for seven or eight years. Many times I have thought it finished, but I am not yet through touching it up--not quite satisfied with it." "It must be something intensely absorbing," said Helen. "What is the subject, if you will not deem it an impertinent question?" "I have called it 'My Inspiration,' because it and what it portrays have long been that to me." "How interesting! You make me very curious. May I see it, John?" Again he hesitated, flushing slightly, and Helen, thinking perhaps she had been presuming, was on the point of begging his pardon for her thoughtlessness, when he smiled faintly, and replied: "Yes; while I am showing Dorothy and Alexander a little gem in marble in the other room, go and look at it--no one as yet, save myself, has ever seen it." He turned to the younger couple, who were approaching, and, saying he had something to show them, led them into the adjoining room; while Helen, experiencing something very like a sense of guilt for having begged such a favor--a favor that as yet had never been granted another, not even Dorothy, it appeared--stole to the curtained alcove, loosened the knotted cords, parted the heavy draperies, and looked up. A low exclamation of astonishment escaped her. The picture was a full-length portrait of herself, wearing an evening dress of silver-gray velvet, garnished with costly lace and touches of rose pink, and standing just as she had stood that night, three years ago, when John took leave of her in her apartment at the Grenoble. The figure and costume were perfect in every detail. John had a remarkable memory, and he had caught not only the unconscious grace of her pose, but also the sheen of the velvet, and almost the exact pattern of the lace she had worn. And the face! It almost made her weep as she studied it, for she could not fail to read the tender, worshipful stroke of his brush in its every line and feature. She could not bear it; the story it told was too pathetic. She let the draperies fall gently back into place, reknotted the cords as she had found them, and stole softly from the room into the reception hall, where she waited, trying to recover her color and self-control, until the others rejoined her. Evidently they had been having a playful tilt over something, for Dorothy was bubbling over with merriment, and both gentlemen were smiling in sympathy with her mood. Thus Helen escaped any sense of awkwardness in meeting John again, or in the leave-takings that followed; no reference was made to the picture; he did not even seem to be curious as to how it had affected her, and she parted from him with what appeared to be but a cordial handshake and a simple good-by. But when they were gone, the man stood, white and motionless, for several moments where they left him, struggling mightily within himself. The supreme test had come--the test of absolute and final renunciation. At last, with a quick indrawn breath that was very like a sob, he went to the alcove where Helen had stood but a few minutes before, loosened and drew back the draperies, and studied his picture long and critically. Then he brought his pallet and brushes, and worked with great care upon it for nearly an hour. At last he stood back and searched the face again. He had changed the eyes in some way that made it seem almost as if a living soul were looking through them, and the lips wore a softer, tenderer expression that was like a gentle benediction. The new light in the eyes, and the sweeter lines about the mouth were the result of what he had caught from Helen herself an hour ago while they stood talking together in the great window overlooking the Seine. "It is finished; and it is my masterpiece!" he breathed, as he reverently drew the curtains over the picture again, and then went thoughtfully back to his workroom. * * * * * * * During many years that followed, the work of John Hungerford continued to win fame and fortune for the faithful artist. A "Hungerford painting" was regarded as a prize by its possessor, and its price as of secondary importance; while, as a man, his name became the recognized synonym of all that was benevolent, good, and philanthropic. Struggling artists of merit were generously and tactfully helped over hard places, and sent on their way rejoicing; the idler was kindly reproved and inspired to more persistent effort; the prodigal and profligate were sought after, and, with convincing argument and wise counsel, won from their degrading and enervating pleasures to higher appreciation of the talent with which they had been endowed; the faint-hearted were encouraged, the sick befriended, the homeless sheltered. In fine, the distinguished artist was not only recognized as an authority and a connoisseur in his profession, but also as a great-hearted _Man_, whose beautiful and hospitable home, as well as his studio, became a delightful and instructive resort for lovers of art, or a refuge in time of need, as the case might be, and open to all who, with worthy intent and honest endeavor, chose to avail themselves of his generosity and kindness. Thus John Hungerford not only labored assiduously to charm the eye, elevate and refine the taste, and mold the character through the medium of his art, but he also--having himself been disciplined and purified by suffering, and redeemed by faithfully working out his own salvation; having learned also the higher meaning of Life, and its sacred individual responsibilities--became the beloved benefactor of many who, in later years, followed in his footsteps, to enrich, in turn, the lives of others. Thus he abundantly fulfilled Helen's inspiring prophecy: "The future holds all good for you, John," and so found peace, if not absolute happiness, at eventide. THE END. 
41182	----	MRS. MAXON PROTESTS BY ANTHONY HOPE METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON _First Published in 1911_ CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. "INKPAT!" 1 II. A CASE OF NECESSITY 10 III. 'IN SOLUTION' 20 IV. KEEPING A PROMISE 31 V. THE GREAT ALLIES 42 VI. FRUIT OF THE TREE 53 VII. A CODE AND A THEORY 64 VIII. SUBVERSIVE 74 IX. NO PROCEEDINGS! 85 X. MAUVE ENVELOPES 96 XI. AN UNMENTIONED NAME 107 XII. CHRISTMAS IN WOBURN SQUARE 119 XIII. CHRISTMAS AT SHAYLOR'S PATCH 131 XIV. A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION 143 XV. MRS. NOBODY 155 XVI. A WORD TAKEN AT PLEASURE 167 XVII. THE TRACK OF THE RAIDER 180 XVIII. NOTHING SERIOUS 193 XIX. A POINT OF HONOUR 206 XX. AN HEROIC OFFER 219 XXI. IS HE A BULLY? 233 XXII. JUDGMENT ACCORDINGLY 247 XXIII. THE REGIMENT 261 XXIV. AN ENLIGHTENMENT 274 XXV. "PERHAPS!" 286 XXVI. A FRIEND DEPARTS 300 XXVII. A PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT 311 XXVIII. THE VIEW FROM A HOUSE 323 XXIX. IN THE RESULT 337 MRS. MAXON PROTESTS CHAPTER I "INKPAT!" "Inkpat!" She shot out the word in a bitter playfulness, making it serve for the climax of her complaints. Hobart Gaynor repeated the word--if it could be called a word--after his companion in an interrogative tone. "Yes, just hopeless inkpat, and there's an end of it!" Mrs. Maxon leant back as far as the unaccommodating angles of the office chair allowed, looking at her friend and counsellor with a faint yet rather mischievous smile on her pretty face. In the solicitor's big, high, bare room she seemed both small and very dainty. Her voice had trembled a little, but she made a brave effort at gaiety as she explained her cryptic word. "When a thing's running in your head day and night, week after week, and month after month, you can't use that great long word you lawyers use. Besides, it's so horribly impartial." She pouted over this undesirable quality. A light broke on Gaynor, and he smiled. "Oh, you mean incompatibility?" "That's it, Hobart. But you must see it's far too long, besides being, as I say, horribly impartial. So I took to calling it by a pet name of my own. That makes it come over to my side. Do you see?" "Not quite." He smiled still. He had once been in love with Winnie Maxon, and though that state of feeling as regards her was long past, she still had the power to fascinate and amuse him, even when she was saying things which he suspected of being unreasonable. Lawyers have that suspicion very ready for women. "Oh yes! The big word just means that we can't get on with one another, and hints that it's probably just as much my fault as his. But inkpat means all the one thousand and one unendurable things he does and says to me. Whenever he does or says one, I say invariably, 'Inkpat!' The next moment there's another--'Inkpat!' I really shouldn't have time for the long word even if I wanted to use it." "You were very fond of him once, weren't you?" She shrugged her thin shoulders impatiently. "Supposing I was?" Evidently she did not care to be reminded of the fact, if it were a fact. She treated it rather as an accusation. "Does one really know anything about a man before one marries him? And then it's too late." "Are you pleading for trial trips?" "Oh, that's impossible, of course." "Is anything impossible nowadays?" He looked up at the ceiling, his brows raised in protest against the vagaries of the age. "Anyhow, it's not what we're told. I only meant that having cared once made very little difference really--it comes to count for next to nothing, you know." "Not a gospel very acceptable to an engaged man, Winnie!" She reached out her arm and touched his coat-sleeve lightly. "I know, I'm sorry. I'm longing to know your Cicely and be great friends with her. And it's too bad to bother you with the seamy side of it just now. But you're such a friend, and so sensible, and a lawyer too, you see. You forgive me?" "I'm awfully glad to help, if I can. Could you give me a few--I don't want a thousand and one, but a few--instances of 'inkpat'?" "That wouldn't be much use. Broadly speaking, inkpat's a demand that a woman should be not what she is, but a sort of stunted and inferior reproduction of the man--what he thinks he would be, if he were a woman. Anything that's not like that gets inkpatted at once. Oh, Hobart, it is horrible! Because it's so utterly hopeless, you know. How can I be somebody else? Above all, somebody like Cyril--only a woman? It's absurd! A Cyrilesque woman! Oh!" "I don't know him very well, but it certainly does sound absurd. Are you sure you haven't misunderstood? Can't you have an explanation?" "Inkpat never explains; it never sees that there is anything to explain. It preaches, or lectures, or is sarcastic, or grumbles, or sulks--and I suppose it would swear, if Cyril didn't happen to be so religious. But explain or listen to an explanation--never!" She rose and walked to one of the tall windows that looked on to Lincoln's Inn Fields. "I declare I envy the raggedest hungriest child playing there in the garden," she said. "At least it may be itself. Didn't God make me just as much as He made Cyril?" It was high summer, and the grate held nothing more comforting than a dingy paper ornament; yet Hobart Gaynor got up and stood with his back to it, as men are wont to do in moments of perplexity. He perceived that there was not much use in pressing for his concrete cases. If they came, they would individually be, or seem, trifles, no doubt. The accumulation of them was the mischief; that was embraced and expressed in the broad sweep of incompatibility; the two human beings could not keep step together. But he put one question. "I suppose you've given him no really serious cause for complaint?" She turned quickly round from the window. "You mean----?" "Well, I mean, anybody else--er--making friction?" "Hobart, you know that's not my way! I haven't a man-friend, except you, and my cousin, Stephen Aikenhead--and I very seldom see either of you. And Stephen's married, and you're engaged. That's a ridiculous idea, Hobart." She was evidently indignant, but Gaynor was not disturbed. "We lawyers have to suspect everybody," he reminded her with a smile, "and to expect anything, however improbable. So I'll ask now if your husband has any great woman-friend." "That's just as ridiculous. I could be wicked enough to wish he had. Let somebody else have a try at it!" "Can't you--somehow--get back to what made you like him at first? Do you understand what I mean?" "Yes, I do--and I've tried." Her eyes looked bewildered, even frightened. "But, Hobart, I can't realize what it was. Unless it was just his looks--he is very handsome, you know." "He stands well at the Bar. He's getting on fast, he's very straight, and I don't think he's unpopular, from what I hear." She caught his hint quickly. "A lot of people will say it's my fault? That I'm unreasonable, and all in the wrong?" "You'd have to reckon with a good deal of that." "I don't care what people say." "Are you sure of that?" he asked quietly. "It's a pretty big claim to make for oneself, either for good or for evil." "It's only his friends, after all. Because I've got none. Well, I've got you." She came and stood by him. "You're against me, though, aren't you?" "I admit I think a wife--or a husband--ought to stand a lot." "It's not as if my baby had lived. I might have gone on trying then. It wouldn't have been just undiluted Cyril." "That makes some difference, I agree. Still, in the general interest of things----" "I must be tortured all my life?" Her challenge of the obligation rang out sharply. With a restless toss of his head, he sat down at his table again. She stood where she was, staring at the dingy ornament in the grate. "Life the other way mayn't turn out particularly easy. You'll have troubles, annoyances--temptations, perhaps." "I can face those. I can trust myself, Hobart. Can he prevent my going if I want to?" "No." "Can he make me come back?" "No. He can, if he chooses, get a formal order for you to go back, but it won't be enforced. It will only give him a right to a legal separation--not to a divorce, of course--just a separation." "You're sure they can't make me go back?" "Oh, quite. That's settled." "That's what I wanted to be quite clear about." She stepped up to his chair and laid her hand on his shoulder. "You're still against me?" "Oh, how can I tell? The heart knows its own bitterness--nobody else can." She pressed his shoulder in a friendly fashion; she was comforted by his half-approval. At least it was not a condemnation, even though it refused the responsibility of sanction. "Of course he needn't give you any money." "I've got my own. You got it settled on me and paid to myself." "It's very little--about a hundred and fifty a year. I want you to look at all sides of the business." "Of course you're right. But there's only one to me--to get away, away, away!" "It's just about five years since you came here with your mother--about the marriage-settlement. I thought it rather rough you should come to me, I remember." "Mother didn't know about the--the sentimental reason against it, Hobart--and it doesn't matter now, does it? And poor mother's beyond being troubled over me." "Where will you go--if you do go?" "I am going. I shall stay with the Aikenheads for a bit--till I'm settled on my own." "Have you hinted anything about it to--him?" "To Cyril? No. I must tell him. Of course he knows that I'm silly enough to think that I'm unhappy." "It'll be an awful facer for him, won't it?" She walked round the table and stood looking at him squarely, yet with a deprecatory droop of her mouth. "Yes, it will," she said. "Awful! But, Hobart, I not only have no love left, I've no pity left. He has crushed a great deal in me, and he has crushed that with the rest." Gaynor's hands played feebly with his big pad of blotting-paper. "That it should happen to you of all people!" he mumbled. His air expressed more than a lament for unhappiness; as well as regretting sorrow, he deplored something distasteful. But Winnie Maxon was deaf to this note; she saw only sympathy. "That's your old dear kindness for me," she smiled, with tears in her eyes. "You won't turn against me, anyhow, will you, Hobart?" He stretched out his hand to meet hers. "No, my dear. Didn't I love you once?" "And I do love your dear round face and your honest eyes. Yes, and the nose you used to be unhappy about--because it was a pug--in those very old days; and if my ship gets wrecked, I know you'll come out with the life-boat. Good-bye now, I'll write to you about it." The tender note struck at the end of their talk, old-time memories, the echo of her soft pleading voice, availed for some minutes after his visitor's departure to blind Hobart Gaynor's shrewd eyes to the fact that she had really put before him no case that could seem at all substantial in the eyes of the world. To her, no doubt, everything might be as bad, as intolerable and hopeless, as she declared; he did not question her sincerity. But as the personal impression of her faded, his hard common sense asserted forcibly that it all amounted to no more than that she had come not to like her husband; that was the sum of what the world would see in it. May women leave their husbands merely because they have come not to like them? Some people said yes, as he was aware. They were not people whom he respected, nor their theory one which he approved. He was of conservative make in all things, especially in questions of sex. He was now uneasily conscious that but for her personal fascination, but for his old tenderness, her plea would not have extorted even a reluctant semi-assent. The next moment he was denying that he had given even so much. Certainly the world in general--the big, respectable, steady-going world--would not accord her even so much. Talk about being "crushed" or having things crushed in you, needs, in the eyes of this world, a very solid backing of facts--things that can be sworn to in the box, that can be put in the "particulars" of your petition, that can be located, dated, and, if possible, attested by an independent witness. Now Mrs. Maxon did not appear to possess one single fact of this order--or surely she would have been eager to produce it? Comedians and cynics are fond of exhibiting the spectacle of women hounding down a woman on the one hand, and, on the other, of men betraying their brethren for a woman's favour. No exception can be taken to such presentments; the things happen. But when they are not happening--when jealousy and passion are not in the field--there is another force, another instinct, which acts with powerful effect. The professed students of human nature call it sex-solidarity; it is the instinct of each sex to stand together against the other. This is not a matter of individual liking or disliking; it is sex politics, a conflict between rival hosts, eternally divided. With personal prepossessions and special relations out of the way, the man is for the man, the woman for the woman. As minute followed minute after Mrs. Maxon's departure, it became more and more probable to Hobart Gaynor that Cyril Maxon had something to say for himself. And was not Hobart himself a prospective husband? Too much in love to dream of a like fate befalling his own marriage, he yet felt a natural sympathy for the noble army in which he was so soon to enlist. "Well, right or wrong, I promised to stand by her, and I will," was his final thought, as he drove himself back to the current business of his office day. Sympathy for Mrs. Maxon mingled in it with a certain vexation at her for having in some sense involved him in so obscure and troublesome a matter. He felt, without actually foreseeing, difficulties that might make his promise hard to keep. The tendency of personal impressions to lose their power when personal presence is withdrawn did not occur to Mrs. Maxon. As she drove home to Devonshire Street, she comforted herself with the assurance that she had not only kept a friend--as she had--but also secured a partisan. She thought that Hobart Gaynor quite understood her case. "Rather wonderful of him!" she reflected. "Considering that I refused him, and that he's at this moment in love with Cicely Marshfield." Her heart grew very warm towards her old friend, so loyal and so forgiving. If she had not refused him? But the temper of her present mood forbade the soft, if sad, conclusion that she had made a mistake. Who really knows anything about a man until she is married to him? And then it is too late. "Don't marry a friend--keep him," was her bitter conclusion. It did not cross her mind that friendship too--a friendship that is to be more than a distant and passive kindliness--must make reckoning with incompatibility. CHAPTER II A CASE OF NECESSITY Mrs. Maxon's memory of the evening on which she administered to her husband his "awful facer" was capricious. It preserved as much of the preliminary and the accidental as of the real gist of the matter. They dined out at the house of a learned judge. The party was exclusively legal, but the conversation of the young barrister who fell to her lot did not partake of that complexion. Fortune used him in the cause of irony. Much struck by his companion's charms--she was strung up, looked well, and talked with an unusual animation--and by no means imputing to himself any deficiency in the same direction, he made play with a pair of fine dark eyes, descanted jocularly on the loneliness of a bachelor's life, and ventured sly allusions to Mr. Cyril Maxon's blessed lot. "I hope he knows his luck!" said the young barrister. Well, he would know it soon, at all events, Winnie reflected. In the drawing-room afterwards, a fat gushing woman gave the other side of it. "We must be better friends, my dear," said she. "And you mustn't be jealous if we all adore your clever, handsome, rising husband." Such things are the common trivialities of talk. Both the fat woman and the young barrister had happened often before. But their appearance to-night struck on Winnie Maxon's sense of humour--a bitter, twisted humour at this moment. She would have liked to cry "Oh, you fools!" and hurl her decision in her husband's face across the drawing-room. Compliments on our neighbour's private felicity are of necessity attended with some risk. Why are we not allowed to abide on safe ground and say: "I beg leave to congratulate you on the amount of your income and to hope that it may soon be doubled"? Only the ruined could object to that, and treading on their corns is no serious matter. On the drive home--the judge lived in a remote part of Kensington--Cyril Maxon was perversely and (as it seemed to his wife) incredibly fertile in plans for the days to come. He not only forecast his professional career--there he was within his rights--but he mapped out their joint movements for at least three years ahead--their houses for the summer, their trips abroad, their visits to the various and numerous members of the Maxon clan. He left the future without a stitch of its dark mantle of uncertainty. Luckily he was not a man who needed much applause or even assent; he did not consult; he settled. His long, thoroughly lawyer-like, indisputably handsome and capable profile--he had a habit of talking to his wife without looking at her--chained the attention of her eyes. Was she really equal to a fight with that? A shadowy full-bottomed wig seemed even now to frame the face and to invest it with the power of life and death. "Then the year after I really do mean to take you to Palestine and Damascus." Not an idea that even of Cyril Maxon the rude gods might make sport! "Who knows what'll happen three years hence?" she asked in gay tones, sharply cut off by a gasp in the throat. "You've a cold?" he asked solicitously. He was not lacking in kindly protective instincts. Yet even his solicitude was peremptory. "I can't have you taking any risks." "It's nothing," she gasped, now almost sure that she could never go through with her task. Even in kindness he assumed a property so absolute. The brougham drew up at their house. "Nine-fifteen sharp to-morrow," Cyril told the coachman. That was no less, and no more, certain than Palestine and Damascus. He went through the hall (enlivened with prints of Lord Chancellors surviving and defunct) into his study. She followed, breathing quickly. "I asked the Chippinstalls to dine next Wednesday. Will you send her a reminder to-morrow morning?" He began to fill his pipe. She shut the door and sat down in a chair in front of the fireplace. There had always seemed to her something crushing in this workshop of learning, logic, and ambition. To-night the atmosphere was overwhelming; she felt flattened, ground down; she caught for her breath. He had lit his pipe and now glanced at her, puzzled by her silence. "There's nothing else on on Wednesday, is there?" "Cyril, we're not happy, are we?" He appeared neither aggrieved nor surprised at her sudden plunge; to her he seemed aggressively patient of the irrational. "We have our difficulties, like other married couples, I suppose. I hope they will grow less as time goes on." "That means that I shan't oppose you any more?" "Our tastes and views will grow into harmony, I hope." "That mine will grow into harmony with yours?" He smiled, though grimly. Few men really mind being accused of despotism, since it savours of power. "Is that such a terrible thing to happen to my wife?" "We're not happy, Cyril." "Marriage wasn't instituted for the sole purpose of enabling people to enjoy themselves." "Oh, I don't know what it was instituted for!" "You can look in your Prayer Book." Her chin rested on her hands, her white sharp elbows on her knee. The tall, strong, self-reliant man looked at her frail beauty. He was not without love, not without pity, but entirely without comprehension--nor would comprehension have meant pardon. Her implied claim clashed both with his instinct and with his convictions. The love and pity were not of a quality to sustain the shock. "I wish you'd go and see Attlebury," he went on. Attlebury was, as it were, the keeper of his conscience, an eminent clergyman of extreme High Church views. "Mr. Attlebury can't prevent me from being miserable. Whenever I complain of anything, you want to send me to Mr. Attlebury!" "I'm not ashamed of suggesting that you could find help in what he represents on earth." She gave a faint plaintive moan. Was heaven as well as this great world to be marshalled against her, a poor little creature asking only to be free? So it seemed. "Or am I to gather that you have become a sceptic?" The sarcasm was heavily marked. "Has a mind like yours the impudence to think for itself?" So she translated his words--and thereby did him no substantial injustice. If his intellect could bend the knee, was hers to be defiant? "I had hoped," he went on, "that our great sorrow would have made a change in you." The suggestion seemed to her to be hitting below the belt. She had seen no signs of overwhelming sorrow in him. "Why?" she asked sharply. "It made none in you, did it?" "There's no need to be pert." "When you say it to me, it's wisdom. When I say it to you, it's pertness! Yes, that's always the way. You're perfect already--I must change!" "This is becoming a wrangle. Haven't we had enough of it?" "Yes, Cyril, enough for a lifetime, I think." At last she raised her head, and let her hands fall on her lap. "At least I have," she added, looking at him steadily. He returned her glance for a moment, then turned away and sat down at his writing-table. Several letters had come by the late post, and he began to open them. He had made her angry; her anger mastered her fears. "I was brought up to think as you do," she said. "To think that once married was married for ever. I suppose I think so still; and you know I've respected my--my vows. But there are limits. A woman can't be asked to give up everything. She herself--what she owes to herself--must come first--her own life, her own thoughts, her freedom, her rights as a human being." He was reading a letter and did not raise his eyes from it. "Those are modern views, I suppose? Old-fashioned folk would call them suggestions of the Devil. But we've had this sort of discussion several times before. Why go over it again? We must agree to differ." "If you would! But you don't, you can't, you never will. You say that to-night. You'll begin drilling me to your march and cutting me to your pattern again to-morrow morning." He made no reply at all. He went on reading letters. He had signified that the discussion was at an end. That ended it. It was his way; if he thought enough had been said, she was to say no more. It had happened thus a hundred times--and she had inwardly cried "Inkpat!" Well, this time--at last--she would show him that the topic was not exhausted. She would speak again, and make him speak. Malice possessed her; she smiled at the grave-faced man methodically dealing with his correspondence. For the first time there came upon her a certain satisfaction in the actual doing of the thing; before, she had dreaded that to her heart, however much she desired the freedom it would bring. To hit back once--once after five long years! "Oh, about the Chippinstalls," she said. "You can have them, of course, but I shan't be here." He turned his head quickly round towards her. "Why not?" "I'm going to the Stephen Aikenheads' to-morrow." "It's not been your habit to pay visits alone, nor to arrange visits without consulting me. And I don't much care about the atmosphere that reigns at Aikenhead's." He laid down his letters and smiled at her in a constrained fashion. "But I don't want to give you a fresh grievance. I'll stretch a point. How long do you want to be away?" He was trying to be kind; he actually was stretching a point, for he had often decried the practice of married women--young and pretty married women--going a-visiting without their husbands; and he had just as often expressed grave disapproval of her cousin, Stephen Aikenhead. For him a considerable stretch! Her malice was disarmed. Even a pang of that pity which she had declared crushed to death reached her heart. She stretched out her slim arms to him, rather as one who begs a great boon than as the deliverer of a mortal defiance. "Cyril, I'm never coming back." For a full minute he sat silent, looking steadily at her. Incapable as he was of appreciating how she had arrived at, or been driven to, this monstrous decision, yet he had perception enough and experience enough to see that she was sincere in it and set on it; and he knew that she could give effect to it if she chose. In that minute's silence he fought hard with himself; he had a mighty temptation to scold, a still mightier to flout and jeer, to bring his heavy artillery of sarcasm to bear. He resisted and triumphed. He looked at the clock. It was a quarter-past twelve. "You'll hardly expect me to deal with such a very important matter at this hour of the night, and without full consideration," he said. "You must know that such separations are contrary to my views, and I hope you know that, in spite of the friction which has arisen, I have still a strong affection for you." "I shan't change my mind, Cyril. I shan't come back." He kept the curb on himself. "I really would rather not discuss it without more consideration, Winnie--and I think I have a right to ask you to give it a little more, and to hear what I have to say after reflection. Is that unfair? At least you'll admit it's a serious step?" "I suppose it's fair," she murmured impatiently. She would have given the world to be able to call it grossly unfair. "But it's no use," she added, almost fierce in her rejection of the idea that her determination might weaken. "Let us both think and pray," he said gravely. "This visit of yours to the Aikenheads' may be a good thing. It'll give you time to reflect, and there'll be no passing causes of irritation to affect your calmer judgment. Let us treat it as settled that you stay with them for a fortnight--but treat nothing else as settled to-night. One thing more--have you told anybody about this idea?" "Only Hobart Gaynor. I went and asked him whether I could do it if I wanted to. I told him I meant to do it." "He'll hold his tongue. Mention it to nobody else, please." "I won't till--till it's settled." She smiled. "We've actually agreed on one or two things! That's very unusual in our wrangles, Cyril." He came up to her and kissed her on the forehead. "For God's sake, think! You don't in the least know what it means to you--or to me either." She drew her head quickly back; a bitter retort was on the tip of her tongue. "Yes--but I know what life with you means!" She did not utter it; there was a pinched weariness in his face which for the moment disarmed her. She sighed disconsolately, turned away from him, and drifted out of the room, her shoulders bent as though by great fatigue. She had suffered one or two transient pangs of pity; having feared a storm, she had experienced relief at his moderation, but gave him no credit for it. She did not understand how hard it was to him. She was almost inclined to hold it a device--an exhibition (once again exhibited) of how much wiser, more reasonable, and more thoughtful he was than the happy-go-lucky being to whom he was mated. She carried her grievances out of the room on her bowed shoulders--just as heavy as ever, just as insupportable. The handsome, clever, rising man was left face to face with what he feared and hated most in this world--a failure. He had fallen in love with the pretty body; he had never doubted that he could shape and model the malleable mind. Why not? It was in no way a great or remarkable mind. She was not very talented, nor exceptionally strong-willed, nor even very obstinate. Nor ungoverned, nor ultra-emotional, nor unmoral. She was a woman more than ordinarily attractive, but hardly more than ordinary in other respects. And, looking back on five years, he realized the enormous and constant pains he had taken with her. It had been matter of conscience as well as matter of pride; when the two join forces, what is left to fight them? And they constantly form an alliance. Defeat threatened even this potent confederation--defeat at the hands of one whom he counted little more than a charming wilful child. Charming? Softer emotions, offspring of memory, suffered a resurrection not in the end charged with much real import. He was of the men who satisfy emotion in order to quiet it; marriage was in his view--and in the view of authorities in which he believed--better than being in love as well as different from it. In the sense appropriate to voluptuaries, he had never been in love at all. What remained, then, to combat his profound distaste and disapproval for all she now advanced, her claims, pretensions, and grievances? In the end two disparate, yet closely allied forces--loyalty to a great cause and hatred of personal defeat. Let him make himself champion of the cause: the two became one. Could heaven and he conjoined succumb to any onslaught? He faced his theory logically and boldly. "She is my wife. I'm as responsible for her as I am for myself. She may deny that--I can't." For good or evil, for joy or pain, one flesh, one mind, one spirit, _usque in æternum_. There was the high uncompromising doctrine. His wife did not consciously or explicitly dissent from it. As she had told him, she was bred to it. Her plea was simply that, be it right or be it wrong, she could not live up to it. She could observe the prohibitions it implied--she had kept and would keep her restraining vows--but she could no longer fulfil the positive injunctions. If she sought at all for an intellectual or speculative justification, it was as an afterthought, as a plea to conciliate such a friend as Hobart Gaynor, or as a weapon of defence against her husband. To herself her excuse was necessity. If she had given that night the truest account in her power of what she felt, she would have said that she was doing wrong, but that she could not help it. There were limits to human endurance--a fact of which Divine Law, in other matters besides that of marriage, has not been considered by the practice (as apart from the doctrine) of Christendom at large to take adequate account. CHAPTER III 'IN SOLUTION' "Well, you see, things are rather in solution just now." Most people have a formula or two by which they try to introduce some order into the lumber-room of the mind. Such a lot of things are dumped down there, and without a formula or two they get so mixed. The above was Stephen Aikenhead's favourite. Many of his friends preferred to say "in transition." That phrase, he maintained, begged the question. Perhaps, after all the talk and all the agitation, nothing would be changed; the innovators might be beaten; they often had been; the mass of mankind was very conservative. Look at the ebb and flow of human thought, as history recorded it--the freedom of Athens and the licence of Rome followed by the Dark Ages--the Renaissance tamed, if not mutilated, by the Counter-Reformation on the one hand and the rigours of Puritanism on the other. Certainly the foundations of all things were being, or were going to be, examined. But it is one thing to examine foundations, a different one to declare and prove them unsound. And even when the latter process has come about, there is the question--will you shore the building up or will you pull it down? The friends who favoured "transition" often grew impatient with this incurable doubter; they were as convinced that the future was going to be all right and going to come very soon as they were certain that the present was all wrong and could not possibly resist the assault of reason for many years more. They were sanguine people, apt to forget that, right as they undoubtedly were (in their own opinion), yet the Englishman at least accords his support to progress only on the definite understanding that it shall be slow. "Put the brake on!" he urges, envisaging innovation as a galloping downhill. Stephen's friends pathetically pictured it as a toilsome assent--toilsome, yet speedily to be achieved by gallantly straining horses. No need of brakes, though! Argument by metaphor is perilous either way. In this case the formula was administered to Winnie Maxon, within the space of two hours after her arrival at Shaylor's Patch. Stephen's pretty house in Buckinghamshire--it lay Beaconsfield way--took its unassuming title presumably from a defunct Shaylor and certainly from a small plot of grass which lay between two diverging roads about a hundred yards on the way down to the station. The house was old, rambling, and low--a thoroughly comfortable dwelling. The garden was fair to see with its roses, its yews, and its one great copper-beech, with its spread of smooth lawn and its outlook over a wide-stretching valley. "A home of peace!" thought Winnie, relaxing weary body (she had packed that morning for more than a fortnight's absence) and storm-tossed mind, as she lay on a long chair under the shade of the copper-beech. Stephen sat opposite to her, a tall man of three and thirty, fair, inclining to stoutness, with a crop of coarse, disorderly, mouse-coloured hair; always and everywhere he wore large horn-rimmed spectacles. He had inherited a competence more than merely sufficient; he had no profession, but wrote articles when the spirit moved him and had them published more rarely. At twenty-two he had married. It was before the days when he began to doubt whether people ought to--or anyhow need--marry, and his union had been so happy that the doubt could not be attributed to personal experience. His wife was not pretty, but pleasant-faced and delightfully serene. She had very strong opinions of her own, and held them so strongly that she rarely argued and was never ruffled in argument. If anybody grew hot over a discussion, she would smile at him, and hand him a flower, or at appropriate moments something nice to eat. They had one child, a girl now ten years old, whom they had just sent to a boarding-school. It was in connexion with little Alice's being sent to the boarding-school that the formula made its appearance. Winnie had expressed the proper wonder that her parents "could bear to part with her." Stephen explained that they had been actuated by a desire to act fairly towards the child. "If I was sure I was right, and sure the ancients were wrong, I would teach her myself--teach her to believe what I believe and to disbelieve what they believe. But am I sure? What do I believe? And suppose I'm right, or at all events that they're wrong, most people mayn't think so for many years to come. I should be putting her against the world, and the world against her. Is that fair, unless I'm bang sure? Not everybody can be happy when the world's against them. I can't teach her what I can't believe, but why shouldn't she learn it from people who can? She must settle it in the end for herself, but it seems fair to give her her chance of orthodoxy. While things are, as I said, in solution--in a sort of flux, don't you know?" "What do you mean by things being in solution--or in a flux?" The daughter of a clergyman, wife of Cyril Maxon since she was nineteen, a devout member of Attlebury's flock, she came quite fresh to the idea. In her life and her world things had seemed tremendously solid, proof against an earthquake! "I suppose it's really been the same in every age with thinking people, but it's more widespread now, isn't it? It gets into the newspapers even! 'Do we Believe?' 'Is Marriage a Failure?' It's not the answers that are most significant, you know, but the questions." "Yes, I think I see what you mean--partly." The words came in slow ruminating tones. "Do you go very far?" she went on, in accents drolly apprehensive. He laughed jovially. "There are no bombs. I'm married to Tora. Is it terrible that I don't go to church very often? Never, I'm bound to add in candour, if I can help it." "I shall go while I'm here. Do you think it funny that I should suddenly propose myself for a visit?" "To tell the truth, I didn't think Maxon would come." "Or that I should come without him?" "We pictured you pretty extensively married, I confess." "So I was--so I am, I mean." She remembered her promise; she was not to mention her great resolve. But it struck her that the pledge would be hard to keep. Already the atmosphere of Shaylor's Patch suggested that her position was eminently one to talk over, to discuss with an open-minded sympathetic friend, to speculate about in all its bearings. "But you mustn't think I'm absolutely hidebound," she went on. "I can think--and act--for myself." She was skirting the forbidden ground. "I'm glad of it. Is Maxon?" There was a humorous twinkle behind his spectacles. "Why are we to talk of Cyril when I've just begun my holiday?" Yet there was nothing else that she really wanted to talk about. Oh, that stupid promise! Of course she ought to have reserved the right to lay the case before her friends. But a promise is a promise, however stupid. That certainly would be Cyril's view; and it was hers. Was it, she wondered, the Shaylor's Patch view? Or might a question of ethics like that be to some extent "in solution"? "He thinks me an awful reprobate?" Stephen asked. She nodded, smiling. "So they do down here, but my friends in London call me a very mild specimen. I expect some of them will turn up while you're here, and you'll be able to see for yourself." "You don't mind being thought a reprobate down here?" "Why should I? I don't want their society, any more than they want mine. I'm quite well off, and I've no ambitions." He laughed. "I'm ideally placed for defying the world, if I want to. It really needs no courage at all, and would bring me no martyr's crown." "You mean it would be different if you had to work for your living?" "Might be--or if I wanted to go in for public life, or anything of that kind." "Or if you were a woman?" "Well, if I were a woman who was sensitive about what society at large thought of her. That's one of the reasons why I don't preach my views much. It's all very well for me, but my converts, if any, might end by thinking they were paying too dear, while the prophet got off for nothing." He had a book, she a newspaper. With an easy absence of ceremony he began to read; but she left her paper lying on the ground beside her, and let her thoughts play as they would on the great change which had come over her life and on what it would mean to her if it persisted, as she was resolute that it should. "I can think--and act--for myself," she had said. Perhaps, but both would be new and strange exercises. She had walked on lines very straightly ruled; she had moved to orders peremptorily conveyed. A fear mingled with the relief of emancipation. They say that men who have been long in prison are bewildered by the great free bustling world. It may be as true of prisons of the mind as of the Bastille itself. Stephen interrupted his reading to give another statement of his attitude. "It's like the two horses--the one in the stable-yard and the wild one. The one gets oats and no freedom, the other freedom and no oats. Now different people put very various values on freedom and on oats. And at any rate the wild horse must have fodder of some kind." His face vanished behind the book again, and she heard him chuckling merrily over something in it. If he did not get oats, he certainly seemed to thrive excellently on such other fodder as he found. But then it was undeniable that Cyril Maxon throve equally well--successful, rising, with no doubts as to his own opinions or his own conduct. Or had her resolve shaken him into any questionings? He had shown no signs of any when she parted from him that morning. "I shall be glad to see you back at the end of your fortnight," he had said. The words were an order. Tora Aikenhead, on her way to the rose-beds, with a basket and scissors in her hand, came up to them. "Resting?" she asked Winnie, in her low pleasant voice. In the telegram in which she had proposed her visit, Winnie had said that she was a little "knocked up" with the gaieties of town, but she fancied that her hostess's question referred, though distantly, to more than these, that she had discerned traces of distress, the havoc wrought by the passing of a storm. "Beautifully!" Winnie answered, with a grateful smile. "Dick Dennehy is week-ending with Godfrey Ledstone, and they're coming to lunch and tennis to-morrow; and Mrs. Lenoir is motoring down to lunch too," Tora went on to her husband. "Mrs. Lenoir?" He looked up from his book with that droll twinkle behind his big spectacles again. "Yes. Quite soon again, isn't it? She must like us, Stephen." Stephen laughed. His wife had not in the least understood the cause of the twinkle. She would not, he reflected. It never occurred to her that any human being could object to meeting any other, unless, indeed, actual assault and battery were to be feared. But Stephen was awake to the fact that it might be startling to Winnie Maxon to meet Mrs. Lenoir--if she knew all about her. Naturally he attributed rigid standards to Mrs. Cyril Maxon, in spite of her proud avowal of open-mindedness, which indeed had seemed to him rather amusing than convincing. "Ledstone's our neighbour," he told Winnie, "the only neighbour who really approves of us. He's taken a cottage here for the summer. You'll like him; he's a jolly fellow. Dennehy's an Irish London correspondent to some paper or other in the States, and a Fenian, and all that sort of thing, you know. Very good chap." "Well, I asked no questions about your guests, but since you've started posting me up--who's Mrs. Lenoir?" "Tora, who is Mrs. Lenoir?" "Who is she? Who should she be? She's just Mrs. Lenoir." Tora was obviously rather surprised at the question, and unprovided with an illuminating answer. But then there are many people in whose case it is difficult to say who they are, unless a repetition of their names be accepted as sufficient. "I must out with it. Mrs. Lenoir was once mixed up in a very famous case--she intervened, as they call it--and the case went against her. Some people thought she was unjustly blamed in that case, but--well, it couldn't be denied that she was a plausible person to choose for blame. It's all years ago--she must be well over fifty by now. I hope you--er--won't feel it necessary to have too long a memory, Winnie?" "I don't exactly see why it's necessary to tell at all," remarked Tora. "Why is it our business?" "But Winnie does?" The question was to Winnie herself. "I know why you told me, of course," she answered. She hesitated, blushed, smiled, and came out with "But it doesn't matter." "Of course not, dear," remarked Tora, as she went off to her roses. All very well to say "Of course not," but to Mrs. Cyril Maxon it was not a case of "Of course" at all. Quite the contrary. The concession she had made was to her a notable one. She had resolved to fall in with the ways of Shaylor's Patch in all possible and lawful matters--and it was not for her, a guest, to make difficulties about other guests, if such a thing could possibly be avoided. None the less, she was much surprised that Mrs. Lenoir should be coming to lunch--she had, in fact, betrayed that. In making no difficulties she seemed to herself to take a long step on the road to emancipation. It was her first act of liberty; for certainly Cyril Maxon would never have permitted it. She felt that she had behaved graciously; she felt also that she had been rather audacious. Stephen understood her feelings better than his wife did. He had introduced himself to the atmosphere he now breathed, Tora had been bred in it by a free-thinking father, who had not Stephen's own scruples about his child. In early days he had breathed the air which up to yesterday had filled Winnie's lungs--the Maxon air. "I suppose these things are all wrong on almost any conceivable theory that could apply to a civilized community," he remarked, "but so many people do them and go scot-free that I'm never inclined to be hard on the unfortunates who get found out. Not--I'm bound to say--that Mrs. Lenoir ever took much trouble not to be found out. Well, if people are going to do them, it's possible to admit a sneaking admiration for people who do them openly, and say 'You be hanged!' to society. You'll find her a very intelligent woman. She's still very handsome, and has really--yes, really--grand manners." "I begin to understand why you let her down so easy," said Winnie, smiling. He laughed. "Oh, well, perhaps you're right there. I'm human, and I dare say I did do a bit of special pleading. I like her. She's interesting." "And nothing much matters, does it?" she put in acutely enough. "Oh, you accuse me of that attitude? I suppose you plausibly might. But I don't admit it. I only say that it's very difficult to tell what matters. Not the same thing--surely?" "It might work out much the same in--well, in conduct, mightn't it? If you wanted to do a thing very much, couldn't you always contrive to think that it was one of the things that didn't matter?" "Why not go the whole hog, and think it the only proper thing to do?" he laughed. She echoed his laugh. "You must let me down easy, as well as Mrs. Lenoir!" "I will, fair cousin--and, on my honour, for just as good reasons." Stephen had enjoyed his talk. It amused and interested him to see her coming, little by little, timidly, out of her--should he call it sanctuary or prison-house?--to see her delicately and fearfully toying with ideas that to him were familiar and commonplace. He marked an alertness of mind in her, especially admiring the one or two little thrusts which she had given him with a pretty shrewdness. As he had said, he had no itch to make converts; it was not his concern to unsettle her mind. But it was contrary to all his way of thinking to conceal his own views or to refuse to exchange intelligent opinions because his interlocutor stood at a different point of view. Everybody stood at different points of view at Shaylor's Patch. Was conversation to be banned and censored? Winnie herself would have cried "No" with all her heart. Revelling in the peace about her, in the strange freedom from the ever-present horror of friction and wrangles, in the feeling that at last she could look out on the world with her own eyes, no man saying her nay, she reached out eagerly to the new things, not indeed conceiving that they could become her gospel, her faith, but with a half-guilty appreciation, a sense of courage and of defiance, and a genuine pleasure in the exercise of such wits as she modestly claimed to possess. She had been so terribly cramped for so long. Surely she might play about a little? What harm in that? It committed her to nothing. As she got into her bed, she said, as a child might, "Oh, I am going to enjoy myself here--I'm sure I am!" So it is good to fall asleep, with thanks for to-day, and a smile of welcome ready for to-morrow. CHAPTER IV KEEPING A PROMISE Modern young women are athletic, no doubt with a heavy balance of advantage to themselves, to the race, and to the general joyousness of things. Yet not all of them; there are still some whose strength is to sit still, or at least whose attraction is not to move fast, but rather to exhibit a languid grace, to hint latent forces which it is not the first-comer's lot to wake. There is mystery in latent forces; there is a challenge in composed inactivity. Not every woman who refuses to get hot is painted; not every woman who declines to scamper about is tight-laced. The matter goes deeper. This kind is not idle and lazy; it is about its woman's business; it is looking tranquil, reserved, hard to rouse or to move--with what degree of consciousness or of unconsciousness, how far by calculation, how far by instinct, heaven knows! Of this kind was Winnie Maxon. Though she was guiltless of paint or powder, though her meagre figure could afford to laugh at stays (although arrayed in them), yet it never occurred to her to scamper about a lawn-tennis court and get very hot and very red in the face, as Tora Aikenhead was doing, at half-past eleven on a Sunday morning. (Be it observed, for what it is worth, that in spite of her declaration of the day before Winnie had not gone to church.) Tora's partner was her husband; she was very agile, he was a trifle slow, but a good placer. Against them Dennehy rather raged than played--a shortish thick-built man of five-and-thirty, with bristling sandy hair and a moustache of like hue, whose martial upward twist was at the moment subdued by perspiration. He could not play anywhere--and he would play at the net. Yet the match was a tight one, for his partner, Godfrey Ledstone, was really a player, though he was obviously not taking this game seriously. A brilliant shot at critical moments, with a laughing apology for such a fluke, betrayed that he was in a different class from his companions. The game ended in the defeat of the Aikenheads, and the players gathered round Winnie. Dennehy was grossly triumphant, and raged again when his late opponents plainly told him that his share in the victory was less than nothing. He declared that the "moral effect" of his presence at the net was incalculable. "That quality is certainly possessed by your strokes," Stephen admitted. Under cover of the friendly wrangle, Winnie turned to Ledstone, who had sat down beside her. She found him already regarding her; a consciousness that she desired his attention made her flush a little. "How easily you play! I mean, you make the game look so easy." "Well, if I want to impress the gallery, old Dennehy's rather a useful partner to have, isn't he? But I did use to play a good bit once, before I went into business." "No time now? I'm told you go to London as much as three days a week!" "I see Mrs. Aikenhead's been giving me away. Did she tell you anything else?" "Well, she told me what you looked like, but I know that for myself now." "Did she do me justice, Mrs. Maxon?" He had pleasant blue eyes, and used them to enhance the value of his words. "I don't want to put you and her at loggerheads," smiled Winnie. "Ah, you mean she didn't?" Winnie's smile remained mysterious. Here was a game that she could play, though she had perforce abstained from it for many many days. It is undeniable that she came back to it with the greater zest. "I shall ask Mrs. Aikenhead what she said." "That won't tell you what I think about it." "Then how am I to find out?" "Is it so important to you to know?" "I feel just a sort of--well, mild interest, I must admit." There seemed ground for supposing that lawn-tennis was not the only game that he had played, either. "Mere good looks don't go for very much in a man, do they?" said Winnie. "There now, if you've given me anything with one hand, you've taken it away with the other!" "What is your business, Mr. Ledstone?" "I draw designs--decorative designs for china, and brocades, and sometimes fans. I can do a lot of my work down here--as Mrs. Aikenhead might have told you, instead of representing me as a lazy dog, doing nothing four days in the week." "I've been led into doing you an injustice," Winnie admitted with much gravity. "Is it a good business?" "Grossly underpaid," he laughed. "And I may have eaten off one of your plates?" "Yes, or sat on one of my cushions, or fanned yourself with one of my fans." "It seems to serve as an introduction, doesn't it?" "Oh, more than that, please! I think it ought to be considered as establishing a friendship." The other three had strolled off towards the house. Winnie rose, to follow them. As Ledstone took his place by her side, she turned her eyes on him. "I haven't so many friends as to be very difficult about that," she said, with a note of melancholy in her voice. The hint of sadness came on the heels of her raillery with sure artistic effect. Yet it was genuine enough. The few minutes of forgetfulness--of engrossed satisfaction in her woman's wit and wiles--were at an end. Few friends had she indeed! She could reckon scarcely one intimate outside Shaylor's Patch itself. Being Mrs. Cyril Maxon was an exacting life; it limited, trammelled, almost absorbed. Husbands are sometimes jealous of women-friends hardly less than of men. Cyril was one of these. Ledstone's vanity was flattered, his curiosity piqued. The hint of melancholy added a spice of compassion. His susceptible temperament had material enough and to spare for a very memorable first impression of Mrs. Maxon. Though still a young man--he was no more than seven-and-twenty--he was no novice either in the lighter or in the more serious side of love-making; he could appreciate the impression he received and recognize the impression he made. It is to the credit of Mrs. Maxon's instinctively cunning reserve that as they walked back to the house he still felt more certain that he wanted to please her than that he had already done it to any considerable extent. The reserve was not so much in words--she had let her frank chaff show plainly enough that she liked her companion; it lay rather in manner and carriage. Only on the hint of melancholy--only that once--had she put her eyes to any significant use. He was conscious of having made greater calls on his. That was right enough; he was the man, and he was a bachelor. Ledstone could not be charged with an exaggerated reverence for marriage, but he did know that he paid a married woman a poor compliment if he assumed beforehand that she would underrate the obligation of her status. When they entered the long, low, panelled parlour that gave on to the garden, Mrs. Lenoir had already arrived and was sitting enthroned in the middle of the room; she had a knack of investing with almost regal dignity any seat she chanced to occupy. She was a tall woman of striking appearance, not stout, but large of frame, with a quantity of white hair (disposed under an enormous black hat), a pale face, dark eyes, and very straight dark eyebrows. She had long slim hands which she used constantly in dramatic gesture. Stephen Aikenhead had credited her with a "really grand" manner. It was possible to think it just a trifle too grand, to find in it too strong a flavour of condescension and of self-consciousness. It might be due to the fact that she had been in her own way almost an historical figure--and had certainly mingled with people who were historical. Or it was possible to see in it an instinct of self-protection, exaggerated into haughtiness, a making haste to exact homage, lest she should fail even of respect. Whatever its origin, there it was, though not in a measure so strong as fatally to mar the effect of her beauty or the attraction of her personality. Save for the hat, she was dressed very simply; nay, even the hat achieved simplicity, when the spectator had enjoyed time to master it. On one hand she wore only her wedding-ring--she had married Mr. Lenoir rather late in life and had now been a widow for several years--on the other a single fine diamond, generally considered to be ante-Lenoirian in date. Lord Hurston was a probable attribution. Winnie was at sea, but found the breeze exhilarating and was not upset by the motion. She was a responsive being, taking colour from her surroundings. A little less exaction on the part of her husband might have left her for ever an obedient wife; what a more extended liberty of thought, of action, of the exploitation of herself, might do--and end in--suggested itself in a vague dim question on this her first complete day of freedom. At lunch Dick Dennehy could not get away from his victory at lawn-tennis. He started on an exposition of the theory of the game. He was heard in silence, till Tora Aikenhead observed in her dispassionate tones, "But you don't play at all well, Dick." "What?" he shouted indignantly, trying to twist up a still humid moustache. "Theory against practice--that's the way of it always," said Stephen. "Well, in a sense ye're right there," Dennehy conceded. "It needs a priest to tell you what to do, and a man to do it." "Let's put a 'not' in the first half of the proposition," said Ledstone. "And a woman in the second half?" Mrs. Lenoir added. "That must be why they like one another so much," Dennehy suggested. "Each makes such a fine justification for the existence of the other. They keep one another in work!" He rubbed his hands with a pleasantly boyish laugh. "I always try to be serious, though it's very difficult with the people who come to my house." Stephen was hypocritically grave. "Ye're serious because ye're an atheist," observed Dennehy. "I'm not an atheist, Dick." "The Pope'd call you one, and that's enough for a good Catholic like me. How shouldn't you behave yourself properly when you don't believe that penitence can do you any good?" "The weak spot about penitence," remarked Tora, "is that it doesn't do the other party any good." Winnie ventured a meek question: "The other party?" "There always is one," said Mrs. Lenoir. Stephen smiled. "I always like to search for a contradictory instance. Now, if a man drinks himself to death, he benefits the revenue, he accelerates the wealth of his heirs, promotes the success of his rivals, gratifies the enmity of his foes, and enriches the conversation of his friends. As for his work--if he has any--_il n'y a pas d'homme nécessaire_." "It seems to me it would be all right if nobody wasted time and trouble over stopping him," said Dennehy--a teetotaller, and the next instant quaffing ginger-beer immoderately. "He would be sure to be hurting somebody," said Mrs. Lenoir. "And why not hurt somebody? I'm sure somebody's always hurting me," Dennehy objected hotly. "How would the world get on else? Don't I hold my billet only till a better man can turn me out?" "Yes," said Stephen. "'The priest who slew the slayer, and shall himself be slain'--that system's by no means obsolete in modern civilization." "Obsolete! It's the soul of it, its essence, its gospel." It was Mrs. Lenoir who spoke. "A definition of competition?" asked Stephen. "Yes, and of progress--as they call it." Tora Aikenhead was consolatory, benign, undismayed. "To be slain when you're old and weak--what of that?" "But ye don't think ye're old and weak. That's the shock of it," cried Dennehy. "It is rather a shock," Mrs. Lenoir agreed. "The truth about yourself is always a shock--or even another person's genuine opinion." Winnie Maxon remembered how she had administered to her husband his "awful facer"; she recollected also, rather ruefully, that he had taken it well. You always have to hurt somebody, even when you want so obvious a right as freedom! A definite declaration of incompatibility must be wounding--at any rate when it is not mutual. It is an irksome thing to have--nay, to constitute in your own person--an apposite and interesting case, and to be forbidden to produce it. If only Winnie Maxon might lay her case before the company while they were so finely in the mood to deal with it! She felt not merely that she would receive valuable advice (which she could not bring herself to doubt would be favourable to her side), but also that she herself would take new rank; to provide these speculative minds with a case must be a passport to their esteem. Bitterly regretting her unfortunate promise, she began to arraign the justice of holding herself bound by it, and to accuse her husband's motives in extorting it. He must have wished to deprive her of what she would naturally and properly seek--the counsel of her friends. He must have wanted to isolate her, to leave her to fight her bitter battle all alone. To chatter in public was one thing, to consult two or three good friends surely another? Promises should be kept; but should they not also be reasonably interpreted, especially when they have been exacted from such doubtful motives? Thus straying, probably for the first time in her life, in the mazes of casuistry, the adventurous novice was rewarded by a really brilliant idea. Why should she not put her case in general terms, as an imaginary instance, hypothetically? The promise would be kept, yet the counsel and comfort (for, of course, the counsel would be comfortable) would be forthcoming. No sooner conceived than executed! Only, unfortunately, the execution was attended with a good deal of confusion and no small display of blushes--a display not indeed unbecoming, but sadly compromising. It was just as well that they had got to the stage of coffee, and the parlour-maid had left the room. Dennehy did not find her out. He was not an observant man, and he was more interested in general questions than in individual persons. Hence Winnie had the benefit of listening to a thoroughgoing denunciation of the course she had adopted and was resolved to maintain. Kingdoms might--and in most cases ought to--fall; that was matter of politics. But marriage and the family--that was matter of faith and morals. He bade Winnie's hypothetical lady endure her sufferings and look for her reward elsewhere. At the close of his remarks Tora Aikenhead smiled and offered him a candied apricot. He had certainly spoken rather hotly. Stephen guessed the truth, and it explained what had puzzled him from the first--the sudden visit of his cousin, unaccompanied by her husband. He had suspected a tiff. But he had not divined a rupture. He was surprised at Winnie's pluck; it must be confessed that he was also rather staggered at being asked to consider Cyril Maxon as quite so impossible to live with. However, Winnie ought to know best about that. "Oh, come, Dick, there are limits--there must be. You may be bound to take the high line, but the rest of us are free to judge cases on the merits. At this time of day you can't expect women to stand being sat upon and squashed all their lives." Godfrey Ledstone had not talked much. Now he came forward on Winnie's side. "A man must appreciate a woman, or how can he ask her to stay with him?" "I don't see why she shouldn't do as she likes," said Tora. "Especially as you put a case where there are no children, Winnie." Mrs. Lenoir was more reserved. "Let her either make up her mind to stand everything or not to stand it at all any more. Because she'll never change a man like that." Only one to the contrary--and he a necessarily prejudiced witness! She claimed Mrs. Lenoir for her side, in spite of the reserve. The other three were obviously for her. Winnie was glad that she had put her case. Not only was she comforted; somehow she felt more important. No longer a mere listener, she had contributed to the debate. She would have felt still more important had she been free to declare that it was she herself who embodied the matter at issue. For such added consequence she had not long to wait. After the guests had gone, Stephen Aikenhead came to her in the garden. "I don't want to pry into what's not my business, but I think some of us had an idea that--well, that you were talking about yourself, really, at lunch. Don't say anything if you don't want to. Only, of course, Tora and I would like to help." She looked up at him, blushing again. "I promised not to tell. But since you've guessed----" "I'm awfully sorry about it." "At least I promised not to tell till it was settled. Well--it is settled. So I've not broken the promise, really." Stephen did not think it necessary--or perhaps easy--to pass judgment on this point. "At any rate it's much better we should know, I think. I'm sure you'll find Tora able to help you now." She was not thinking of Tora--nor of Dennehy's tirade, nor even of Mrs. Lenoir's reserve. "Do you think Mr. Ledstone--guessed?" Stephen smiled. "He took a very definite stand on the woman's side when you put your parable. I should say it's probable that he guessed." Thus it befell that the secret leaked out, though the promise was kept; and Winnie found herself an object of sympathy and her destinies a matter of importance at Shaylor's Patch. It is perhaps enough to say that she would have been behaving distinctly well if, for the sake of a scrupulous interpretation of her promise, she had forgone these consolations. They were very real and precious. They negatived the doleful finality which she had set to her life as a woman. They transformed her case; instead of a failure, it became a problem. A little boldness of vision, a breath of the free air of Shaylor's Patch, a draught of the new wine of speculation--and behold the victim turned experimentalist! CHAPTER V THE GREAT ALLIES Although the Reverend Francis Attlebury was vowed in his soul to celibacy and had never so much as flirted since he took his degree at Oxford twenty-three years ago, he had more knowledge of the mind of woman than most married men pleasurably or painfully achieve. Women came to him with their troubles, their grievances, even sometimes their sins; it was no more his business to pooh-pooh the grievances than to extenuate the sins; one does not carry a cross the more cheerfully or, as a rule, any further, because a bystander assures one that it is in reality very light. He was a tall stout man--a grievance of his own was that he looked abominably well-fed in spite of constant self-denial--and possessed a face of native and invincible joviality. He was looking quite jovial now as he listened to Cyril Maxon, agreed that he had been shamefully used, and concluded in his own mind that if the negotiations were to be carried on in that spirit they might just as well not be initiated at all. The thing was not to prove how wrong she had been in going, but to get her back. She was more likely to come back, if it were conceded to her that she had at least a fair excuse for going. Would Cyril Maxon ever make such a concession--or let somebody make it for him? The two men were old and intimate friends; moreover Maxon was even eager to acknowledge an authority in Attlebury's office, as well as a confidence in his personal judgment. "You won't make her think she was always wrong by proving that you were always right, Cyril." "Am I to say I was wrong where I know I was right?" "You've probably said you were right already. Need you repeat it?" "I'm ready to forgive her--absolutely and unreservedly." "Would you go a little further--do something rather harder? Accept forgiveness?" The diplomatist smiled. "Conditional forgiveness we might call it, perhaps. Forgiveness in case there might be anything for her to forgive?" Maxon broke out in natural impatience at the incomprehensible. "On my honour, I don't understand what she's got to complain of. I took her from a poor home, I've given her every luxury, she shares my career--I needn't use mock modesty with you, Frank--I've given her absolute fidelity----" He ended with a despairing wave of his hands. Attlebury neither argued nor rebuked. "Is there anybody who has influence with her--whom she likes and relies on?" "I should hate anybody else being dragged into it--except you, of course. I asked her to come to you." "Oh, I know I'm suspect. I should be no good." He smiled contentedly. "Nobody you can think of?" "Well, the man she consulted about it was Hobart Gaynor." His tone was full of grudging dislike of such a consultation. "Hobart Gaynor? Yes, I know him. Not a bad choice of hers, Cyril, if she felt she had to go to some one. Not quite our way of thinking, but a very good fellow." "Why is he to poke his nose into my affairs?" "Come, come, she poked her pretty nose into his office, no doubt, and probably he'd much rather she hadn't. I've experience of ladies in distress, Cyril. I am, in fact, as the Great Duke said of authors--when he was Chancellor of Oxford, you know--much exposed to them." "I didn't come here to discuss Hobart Gaynor." "I hope we sometimes do wiser things than we come to do--or what's the good of a talk? Let's discuss Hobart Gaynor in the light of--say--an ambassador, or a go-between. You're looking very formidable, Cyril. Did you often look at Mrs. Maxon like that? If so, I hope she'd done something really wicked. Because, if she hadn't, you did." For just that moment the note of rebuke and authority rang clear in his voice. The next, he was the friend, the counsellor, the diplomatist again. "Let Gaynor go to her with a message of peace. Bygones to be bygones, faults on both sides, a fresh start, and so on." Cyril Maxon had felt the rebuke; he bowed his head to it. But he fretted terribly. "I can't bring myself to speak to him about it." "Let me. She's your wife, you know. If she went wrong, mightn't you feel that some effort of yours would--well, have made the difference?" "What am I to tell him to say?" "Let me tell him what to say--you try to honour my draft when it's presented. Perhaps--God knows--we're fighting for her soul, Cyril, and we shall be asked how we've borne ourselves in the fight, shan't we?" Cyril Maxon was always ready to own that he might have been wrong--to own it to God or to God's representative; he hated owning it to a fellow-creature uninvested with prerogatives. Attlebury had skilfully shifted the venue and changed the tribunal. A man may be sure he is right as against his wife--or _vice versâ_. Who dares enter an unqualified 'Not Guilty' before High Heaven's Court? There some count in the indictment is sure to be well laid and well proven. "I think I know my faults," he said, in a complacent humility. Attlebury's smile became more jovial still. "O learned gentleman!" The disciple still held the natural man under control. Maxon smiled, if sourly. "I may have been exacting." "You may have been an ass," sprang to the clergyman's lips, but stayed unuttered. "Allowances, Cyril, allowances!" he murmured gently. "We all have to work through allowances." "Do as you like, Frank. I want the thing put straight. You know I do. I think I ought to have from her an expression of--well, of regret." "Won't coming back convey it?" Attlebury smiled. "In fact, rather forcibly?" Left alone, the priest indulged himself in a bout of one of his diversions--the contemplation of the folly of his disciples. Not folly in believing in him and his authority--on that he was unimpeachably sincere. What moved his satiric vein was that they all had to be gulled--and were all gullible. Before they could be made better, they all had to be persuaded that they were better than they were already. Miserable offenders? Certainly. But with "potentialities"? Even more certainly--and to an unusual degree. No question of breaking the bruised reed--it must be put in splinters. And the smoking flax would be revived with a dash of kerosene. That Pope had been entirely wrong about Tannhäuser; he should have told him that his recent doings did not represent his true self. There is joy over a sinner that repenteth. To Attlebury there was excitement in one that might. He knew it, he chid himself for it; the glory was not in him or to him. But the sporting instinct was deep--a cause of sore penitence, and of unregenerate perpetual amusement at himself. "I'd like to beat these free-thinking beggars!" A.M.D.G.? He prayed on his knees that it might be so--and so exclusively--that the Reverend Francis Attlebury might look for and gain no advancement, no praise, not even the praise of God, but might still say "I am an unprofitable servant," and still believe it. Besides all this--right down in the depths of his being--came the primitive rivalry of man to man--obstinate in the heart of the celibate priest. "Dear old Cyril is a fool about women. He doesn't know a thing about them." This phase of thought was sternly repressed. It is not a branch of knowledge on which it behoves a man--not even a clergyman--to flatter himself. In the first place it is wrong; in the second--or same--place, dangerous. Thus great forces began to deploy into line against little Winnie Maxon, holding her assertion of freedom to be grave scandal and offence. There was the Family, embodied in her lawfully wedded husband; there was nothing less than the Church Catholic, speaking inexorably in Mr. Attlebury's diplomatic phrases; the Wisdom of the World, its logic, its common sense, were to find expression--and where better expression?--in the sober friend, the shrewd lawyer, the moderate man Hobart Gaynor. Could she hurl defiance at these great allies? If she did, could she look for anything save utter and immediate defeat? Just one little woman, not very strong, not very wise, with really no case save a very nebulous hazy notion that, whatever they all said, it was too bad that she should be miserable all her life! The allies would tell her that many people were miserable all their lives, but (they would add) nobody need be. Between them they had a complete remedy. Hers was the blame, not theirs, if she would not swallow it. At Shaylor's Patch, as the summer days passed by in sunshine and warm flower-scented breezes, where she was comforted, petted, made much of, where an infinite indulgence reigned, she was swallowing something quite different from the medicine that the allies proposed for her treatment. She was drinking a heady new wine. She was seeing with new eyes, travelling through new lands of thought and of feeling. Her spirit rejoiced as in a great emancipation--in being allowed, at last, to move, to live, to find itself, to meet its fellows, to give thanks to a world no longer its taskmaster, but the furnisher of its joys and the abetter in its pleasures. Of what should she be afraid in such a mood, of what ashamed? At Shaylor's Patch it seemed that rebellion might not only be admirable, as it often is, but that it would be easy--which it is very seldom. For the real Great World--that amalgam of all the forces of the three allies, that mighty thing which so envelopes most people from the cradle to the grave that their speculations stray beyond it no more--and often much less--than their actions--this great thing had hardly a representative among all who came and went. These folks belonged to various little worlds, which had got as it were chipped off from the big one, and had acquired little atmospheres and little orbits of their own; from time to time they collided with one another, but nobody minded that--neither planet seemed a pin better or worse for the encounter. Each was inhabited by a few teachers and a body of disciples sometimes not much more numerous; teachers and disciples alike seemed very busy, very happy, and (to be frank) in many cases agreeably self-satisfied. Afraid of the big world--lest they should come into collision with that and be shattered to miserable atoms? Not a bit of it! For, you see, the big world was, for all its imposing and threatening appearance, really moribund, whereas they were young, vigorous, growing. Paralysis had set in in the Giant's legs. He could not catch them. Presently the disease would reach his heart. He would die, and they would parcel out all his possessions. Would they quarrel among themselves, these children of progress? Probably they would, as they cheerfully admitted. What matter? Such quarrels are stimulating, good for brain and heart, illuminating. Nay, in the end, not quarrels at all. The only real deadly quarrel was with the Giant. Would there be no danger of a new Giant coming into being, born of a union of all of them, just as despotic, just as lethargic, as the old? Into this distant speculation they did not enter, and their discreet forbearance may pardonably be imitated here. On the whole they were probably too hard on the Giant; they did not allow enough for the difficulties involved in being so big, so lumbering, so complex. They girded at him for not trying every conceivable experiment; he grumbled back that he did not want to risk explosion on a large scale. They laughed at him for not running; a creature of his bulk was safer at a walk. They offered him all manner of new concoctions; he feared indigestion on a mighty scale. Some of them he dreaded and hated; at some he was much amused; for others he had a slow-moving admiration--they might be right, he would take a generation or two to think about it, and let them know in due course through his accredited channels. Of some of Stephen Aikenhead's friends it was a little difficult to think as human beings; they seemed just embodied opinions. Doctor Johnson once observed--and few will differ from him--that it would be tiresome to be married to a woman who would be for ever talking of the Arian heresy. Mrs. Danford, a bright-eyed, brisk-moving woman, was for ever denouncing boys' schools. Dennis Carriston wanted the human race to come to an end and, consistently enough, bored existing members of it almost to their extinction or his murder. These were of the faddists; but the majority did not fairly deserve that description. They were workers, reformers, questioners, all of them earnest, many clever, some even humorous (not such a very common thing in reformers), one or two eminent in achievement. But questioners and speculators all of them--with two notable exceptions, Mrs. Lenoir and Godfrey Ledstone. These two had no quarrel with orthodox opinion, and a very great respect for it; they would never have thought of justifying their deviations from orthodox practice. They were prepared to pay their fines--if they were caught--and did not cavil at the jurisdiction of the magistrate. Godfrey Ledstone would have made a fine "man about town," that unquestioning, untroubled, heathenish master of the arts and luxuries of life. Chill penury--narrow means and the necessity of working--limited his opportunities. Within them he was faithful to the type and obedient to the code, availing himself of its elasticities, careful to observe it where it was rigid; up to the present anyhow he could find no breach of it with which to reproach himself. He was committing no breach of it now. Not to do what he was doing would in his own eyes have stamped him a booby, a fellow of ungracious manners and defective sensibilities, a prude and a dolt. The breeze stirred the trees; in leisurely fashion, unelbowed by rude clouds, there sank the sun; a languorous tranquillity masked the fierce struggle of beasts and men--men were ceasing from their labour, the lion not yet seeking his meat from God. "I shall go to my grave puzzled whether the profile or the full face is better." She stirred lazily on her long chair, and gave him the profile to consider again. "Beautiful, but cold, distant, really disheartening!" "You talk just as much nonsense as Mrs. Danford or Mr. Carriston." "Now let me make the comparison! Full face, please!" "You might be going to paint my picture. Now are you content?" "I'm more or less pacified--for the moment." Stephen Aikenhead lounged across the lawn, pipe in mouth. He noticed the two and shook his shaggy head--marking, questioning, finding it all very natural, seeing the trouble it might bring, without a formula to try it by--unless, here too, things were in solution. She laughed lightly. "You must be careful with me, Mr. Ledstone. Remember I'm not used to flattery!" "The things you have been used to! Good heavens!" "I dare say I exaggerate." Delicately she asked for more pity, more approval. "I don't believe you do. I believe there are worse things--things you can't speak of." It will be seen that by now--ten days since Winnie's arrival--the famous promise had been pitched most completely overboard. "Oh, I don't think so, really I don't. Isn't it a pretty sky, Mr. Ledstone?" "Indeed it is, and a pretty world too, Mrs. Maxon. Haven't you found it so?" "Why will you go on talking about me?" "Mayn't I talk about the thing I'm thinking about? How can I help it?" Her smile, indulgent to him, pleaded for herself also. "It is horribly hard not to, isn't it? That's why I've told all about it, I suppose." Stephen Aikenhead, after the shake of his head, had drifted into the house, seeking a fresh fill for his pipe. He found the evening post in and, having nothing in the world else to do, brought out a letter to Mrs. Maxon. "For you," he said, making a sudden and somewhat disconcerting appearance at her elbow. He puffed steadily, holding the letter out to Winnie, while he looked at his friend Godfrey with a kindly if quizzical regard. "Good gracious, Stephen!" "Well, I always like letters worth a 'Good gracious,' Winnie." "Hobart Gaynor's coming here to-morrow." "Don't know the gentleman. Friend of yours? Very glad to see him." "Coming from--from Cyril!" "Oh!" The little word was significantly drawn out. "That's another pair of shoes!" it seemed to say. She sat up straight, and let her feet down to the ground. "To make me go back, I suppose!" "You could hardly expect him not to have a shot at it--Cyril, I mean." Her eyes had been turned up to Stephen. In lowering them to her letter again, she caught in transit Godfrey Ledstone's regard. For a second or two the encounter lasted. She swished her skirt round--over an ankle heedlessly exposed by her quick movement. Her glance fell to the letter. Godfrey's remained on her face--as well she knew. "I must see Hobart, but I won't go back. I won't, Stephen." "All right, my dear. Stay here--the longer, the better for us. Shall I wire Gaynor to come?" "Will you?" Stephen's last glance--considerably blurred by tobacco smoke--was rather recognisant of fact than charged with judgment. "I suppose all that will count," he reflected, as he went back once again to the house. It certainly counted. Godfrey Ledstone was doing nothing against the code. All the same he was introducing a complication into Winnie Maxon's problem. At the start freedom for her had a negative content--it was freedom from things--friction, wrangles, crushing. Was that all that freedom meant? Was not that making it an empty sterile thing? "You'll be firm, Mrs. Maxon?" Godfrey leant forward in his chair; the change of attitude brought him startlingly near to her. She sprang quickly to her feet, in instinctive retreat. "I must hear what Hobart has to say." She met his eyes once more, and smiled pleadingly. He shrugged his shoulders, looking sulky. Her lips curved in a broader smile. "That's only fair to Cyril. You're not coming to dinner? Then--good night." CHAPTER VI FRUIT OF THE TREE Hobart Gaynor undertook his embassy with reluctance. He was busily occupied over his own affairs--he was to be married in a fortnight--and he was only unwillingly convinced by Mr. Attlebury's suave demonstration of where his duty lay, and by the fine-sounding promises which that zealous diplomatist made in Cyril Maxon's name. Waiving the question whether things had been all wrong in the past, Attlebury gave a pledge that they should be all right in the future; all that a reasonable woman could ask, with an ample allowance for whims into the bargain. That was the offer, put briefly. Gaynor doubted, and, much as he wished well to Winnie Maxon, he did not desire to become in any sense responsible for her; he did not want to persuade or to dissuade. Indeed, at first, he would undertake no more than a fair presentment of Maxon's invitation. Attlebury persisted; the woman was young, pretty, not of a very stable character; her only safety was to be with her husband. Her old friend could not resist the appeal; he came into line. But when he asked Cicely Marshfield's applause for his action, he could not help feeling that she was, to use his own colloquial expression, rather "sniffy" about it; she did not appear fully to appreciate his obligation to save Winnie Maxon. He arrived at Shaylor's Patch before lunch. Stephen Aikenhead received him with cordiality, faintly tinged, as it seemed to the visitor, with compassion. Tora's manner enforced the impression; she treated him as a good man foredoomed to failure. "Of course you must have your talk with her," Stephen said. "You shall have it after lunch." He spoke of the talk rather as a ceremony to be performed than as a conference likely to produce practical results. "I hope you'll back me up--and Mrs. Aikenhead too?" said the ambassador. The Aikenheads looked at one another. Tora smiled. Stephen rubbed his forehead. At the moment lunch was announced, and, the next, Winnie came into the room, closely followed by Godfrey Ledstone. When Hobart saw her, a new doubt smote him--a doubt not of the success (he was doubtful enough about that already), but of the merits of his mission. She looked a different woman from the despairing rebel who had come to him in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Her eyes were bright, there was colour in her cheeks; her manner, without losing its attractive quietude and demureness, was gay and joyous. There might be something in what she had said about being "crushed" at her husband's house! It might not be merely a flourish of feminine rhetoric. "The country has done wonders for you, Winnie," he said, as he shook hands. "I'm having a lovely rest." To Hobart she seemed to add, "Why need you come and disturb it?" Another omen unfavourable in the envoy's eyes was the obvious pleasure she took in Ledstone's presence and conversation; and yet another was the young man's unobtrusive but evident certainty that all he said and did would be well received. On Ledstone's fascinating attentions, no less than on the Aikenheads' affectionate and indulgent friendship, he had to ask her to turn her back. For what? A parcel of promises made by Attlebury in Maxon's name! Were they of much more practical value than what godfathers and godmothers promise and vow at a baby's christening? Could they change the natural man in Maxon and avail against his original sin? But, on the other hand, were not indulgent friendships, and, still more, charming attentions, exactly the dangers against which he had come to warn her? She was young, pretty, and not of a very stable character--Attlebury's words came back. The indulgent friendship would mine her defences; then the charming attentions would deliver their assault. No--Attlebury was right, his own mission was right; but it bore hard on poor Winnie Maxon. A reluctant messenger, a prophet too sensible of the other side of the argument (which prophets should never be), he found himself no match for the forces which now moved and dominated Winnie Maxon. She had been resolved when she was only crying for and dreaming of liberty. Would she be less resolved now that she had tasted it? And was now enjoying it, not amid frowns or reproofs, but with the countenance of her friends and the generally, though not universally, implied approval of all the people she met? Attlebury could make the disapproval of the great world outside sound a terrible thing; sheltered at Shaylor's Patch, Winnie did not hear its voice. Attlebury might hint at terrible dangers; such men thought it "dangerous" for a woman to have any pleasure in her life! She listened to Hobart kindly and patiently enough, but always with reiterated shakes of her pretty head. At some of the promises she fairly laughed--they were so entirely different from the Cyril Maxon she knew. "It's no use," she declared. "Whatever may be right, whatever may be wrong, I'm not going back. The law ought to set me free (this was an outcome of Shaylor's Patch!). Since it doesn't, I set myself free, that's all." "But what are you going to do?" "Either take a cottage down here or a tiny flat in London." "I didn't ask where you were going to live, but what you were going to do." Hobart was a patient man, but few people's tempers are quite unaffected by blank failure, by a serene disregard of their arguments. "Do? Oh, I dare say I shall take up some movement. I hear a lot about that sort of thing down here, and I'm rather interested." "Oh, you're not the sort of woman who buries herself in a movement, as you call it." "I can make friends, like other people, I suppose. I needn't bury myself." "Yes, you can make friends fast enough! Winnie, you're avoiding the crux of the matter." "Oh, you're back to your dangers! Well, I think I can trust myself to behave properly." "You ought to be sure of it." "Are you being polite?" "Oh, hang politeness! This is a vital question for you." The colour mounted in her cheeks; for the first time she showed some sign of embarrassment. But the embarrassment and the feelings from which it sprang--those new feelings of the last fortnight--could not make her waver. They reinforced her resolution with all the power of emotion. They made "going back" still more terrible, a renunciation now as well as a slavery. Her eyes, though not her words, had promised Godfrey Ledstone that she would not go back. What then, as Hobart Gaynor asked, was she going to do? The time for putting that question had not come. There was the pleasure now--not yet the perplexity. She gave a vexed laugh. "Whether it's vital or not, at any rate it's a question for me, as you say yourself, and for me only. And I must risk it, Hobart. After all, there are different--well, ideas--on that sort of subject, aren't there?" Here Shaylor's Patch showed its influence again. "I rather wish you hadn't come to this house," he said slowly. "I've been happier here than anywhere in the world. What have you against it?" "Well, I can't claim to know much about it, but don't some queer people come?" "Plenty!" she laughed. "It's very amusing." He smiled, frowned, looked, and indeed felt, a little foolish--as the average man does when he finds himself called upon to take the moral line. "Rather--er--unsettling?" he hazarded lamely. "Very stimulating." "Well, I can say no more. I've done my job. Take care of yourself, Winnie." "Oh yes, I will; you may be sure of that. Hobart, will you tell Cyril that I'm very, very sorry, and that I hope he'll be happy, and wish him splendid success and prosperity?" "I'll tell him--if you won't write yourself." "I couldn't. That would open it all again. I'll write to you, if there's any business to be settled." Hobart Gaynor, thinking over the conversation on his way back to town, decided that Winnie had got on apace. Well, if she chose to take her life into her own hands, she herself must make the best of it. He did not pretend to feel quite easy--he could not get Godfrey Ledstone out of his head--but he said nothing about such apprehensions when he reported the failure of his mission. He also delivered Winnie's message to her husband. Cyril Maxon's lips set hard, almost savagely, over it. "We shall see," he said. He could not prevent her from doing what she had done, but he would not acknowledge it as setting up a permanent or recognized state of affairs. For the time disobedient, Winnie was still his wife. He would not accept her valediction. His house was still open to her and, after a decent period of penance, his heart. A plain case of Stephen Aikenhead's "In solution"! What to Cyril was an indissoluble relationship (and more than that), not even temporarily suspended, but rather defied and violated, was to his wife a thing now at last--by her final decision--over and done with so far as it affected her position towards Cyril himself. He was out of her life--at last. She had her life--at last. Not quite entirely free, this life she had won by her bold defiance. She still acknowledged limitations, even while she nibbled at the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that grew at Shaylor's Patch. Yet how incomparably more free than the old life! She was amazed to find with how little difficulty, with how slight a pang, and with how immense a satisfaction she had broken the bond--or had broken bounds, for she felt remarkably like a school-boy on a forbidden spree. What great things a little courage will effect! How the difficulties vanish when they are faced! Why, for five whole years, had she not seen that the door was open and walked out of it? Here she was--out! And nothing terrible seemed to happen. "Well, I've done it now for good and all," she said to Stephen Aikenhead. "Oh yes, you've done it. And what are you going to do next?" "Just what Hobart asked me! Why should he--or why should you? If a woman doesn't marry, or becomes a widow, you don't ask her what she's going to do next! Consider me unmarried, or, if you like, a widow." "That's all very well--excellently put. I am rebuked!" Stephen smiled comfortably and broadly. "You women do put things well. But may I observe that, if you were the sort of woman you're asking me to think about, you'd probably be living pretty contentedly with Cyril Maxon?" The point was presented plainly enough for her. She smiled reflectively. "I think I see. Yes!" "People differ as well as cases." She sat down by him, much interested. They were, it seemed, to talk about herself. "Hobart Gaynor's rather uneasy about me, I think." "And you about yourself?" "No, I'm just rather excited, Stephen." "You're a small boat--and it's a big sea." "That's the excitement of it. I've been--land-locked--for years. Oh, beached--whatever's your best metaphor for somebody wasting all this fine life!" "Do you suppose you made your husband happy?" The question was unexpected. But there was no side of a situation too forlorn for Stephen's notice. "I really don't know," said Winnie. "I always seemed to be rather--well, rather a minor interest." "I expect not--I really expect not, you know." "Supposing I was, or supposing I wasn't--what does it amount to?" "I was only just looking at it from his point of view for a minute." "Did he make me happy?" "Oh, certainly the thing wasn't successful all round," Stephen hastily conceded. "He said marriage wasn't invented solely to make people happy." "Well, I suppose he's got an argument there. But you probably thought that the institution might chuck in a little more of that ingredient incidentally?" "Rather my feeling--yes. You put things well too, now and then, Stephen." "You suffer under the disadvantage of being a very attractive woman." "We must bear our infirmities with patience, mustn't we?" She was this evening in a rare vein of excited pleasure, gay, challenging, admirably provoking, exulting in her freedom, dangling before her own dazzled eyes all its possibilities. Stephen gave a deep chuckle. "I think I'll go in and tell Tora that I'm infernally in love with you," he remarked, rising from his chair. "It would be awfully amusing to hear what she says. But--are you?" A rolling laugh, full of applause, not empty of pity, rumbled over the lawn as Stephen walked back to the house. No, Stephen was not in love with her; that was certain. He admitted every conceivable doubt as to his duty, but harboured none as to his inclination. That trait of his might, to Winnie's present mood, have been vexatious had he chanced to be the only man in the world, or even the only one in or near Shaylor's Patch. Winnie sat in the twilight, smiling roguishly. She had no fears for herself; far less had she formed any designs. She was simply in joyful rebound from long suppression. Her spirit demanded plenty of fun, with perhaps a spice of mischief--mischief really harmless. So much seemed to her a debt long overdue from life and the world. Yet peril was there, unseen by herself. For there is peril when longings for fun and mischief centre persistently round one figure, finding in it, and in it only, their imagined realization. But was peril the right word--was it the word proper to use at Shaylor's Patch? Being no fool, Stephen Aikenhead saw clearly enough the chance that a certain thing would happen--or was happening. But how should this chance be regarded? The law--formed by this and that influence, historical, social, and religious--had laid upon this young woman a burden heavier than she was able to bear. So Stephen started his consideration of the case. Retort--she ought to have been stronger! It did not seem a very helpful retort; it might be true, but it led nowhere. The law then had failed with the young woman. Now it said, "Well, if you won't do that, at least you shan't do anything else with my sanction--and my sanction is highly necessary to your comfort, certainly here, and, as a great many people believe, hereafter." That might be right, because it was difficult to deny the general proposition that laws ought to be kept, under pain of penalties. Yet in this particular instance there seemed something rather vindictive about it. It was not as if the young woman wanted to rob churches or pick pockets--things obviously offensive and hurtful to her neighbours. All she would want (supposing the thing did happen) would be to behave in a perfectly natural and normal fashion. All she would be objecting to would be a law-enjoined sterilization of a great side of her nature. She would be wronging her husband? If wrong there were, surely the substantial wrong lay in deserting him, not in making the best of her own life afterwards? She might have children--would they suffer? Living in the social world he did, Stephen could not see that they need suffer appreciably; and they were, after all, hypothetical--inserted into the argument for the sake of logical completeness. She would wound other people's convictions and feelings? No doubt, but that argument went too far. Every innovator, every reformer, nay, every fighting politician, does as much. The day for putting ring-fences round opinions, and threatening trespassers with prosecution, was surely over. Well, then, would she hurt herself? The argument descended abruptly from the general to the particular. It left principle, and came to prudence, asking no longer what she had a right to do, but what she would be wise to do in her own interests. A man may hold a thing not wrong, and yet be a fool if he does it in a place where the neighbours are so sure of its iniquity that they will duck him in the horse-pond. But suppose him to be a mighty man of valour, whom nobody cares to tackle! He can snap his fingers at the neighbours and follow his own conscience or inclination, free from fear and heedless of disapprobation. "That's as far as I can get," Stephen concluded, rubbing his forehead, as his habit was in moments of meditation. The conclusion did not seem wholly moral, or wholly logical, but it might work out fairly well in practice; government by the law--that is, the opinion of the majority--for the weak (themselves the majority), government by their own consciences and inclinations for the strong. Probably it was a rough statement of what generally happened, if the terms weak and strong might be taken to sum up the complex whole of a man's circumstances and character; both must by all means be considered. But who are the strong? How can they judge of their prowess until they are in the thick of the fray? If it fails them then, it's too late--and away to the horse-pond! You do poor service to a friend if you flatter him in this matter. When he finds himself in the pond, he will not be so grateful for your good opinion. Winnie came in, bright-eyed, softly singing, making for upstairs at a hasty pace. "I shall be late for dinner!" she cried. "I met Mr. Ledstone, and he made me go for a little walk." "Did you enjoy it?" asked Stephen politely. "Yes, thank you, Stephen, very much." She was gone. Stephen sighed. She had only one life--that was the unspoken plea of her youth, her beauty, and her new-born zest in living. Say what you like, the plea was cogent. CHAPTER VII A CODE AND A THEORY To probe Godfrey Ledstone's mind would be to come up against the odd bundle of ideas which constitutes the average young man's workaday morality--the code before mentioned. This congeries of rules, exceptions, compromises, strictnesses, and elasticities may be condemned; it cannot be sneered at or lightly dismissed. It has, on the whole, satisfied centuries; only at rare intervals has it been seriously interfered with by the powers that be, by Church, or State, or Church-ruled State. To interfere seriously with it is to rouse a hive of questions, large, difficult, so profoundly awkward as to appal statesmen, lay or ecclesiastical--questions not only moral and religious, but social and economic. Formal condemnation and practical tolerance leave these questions sleeping. The code goes on, exercising its semi-secret underground jurisdiction--a law never promulgated, but widely obeyed, a religion with millions of adherents and not a single preacher. Rather a queer way for the world to live? Rather a desperate attempt at striking a balance between nature and civilization? No doubt. But then, of course, it is only temporary. We are all going to be good some day. To make us all good, to make it possible for us all to be good, immediately--well, there is no telling but what that might involve a radical reconstitution of society. And would even that serve the turn? The code never had a more unquestioning, a more contented adherent than Godfrey. Without theorizing--he disliked theories and had a good-natured distrust of them--he hit just that balance of conduct whereof the code approves; if he had talked about the matter at all (the code does not favour too much talking) he might have said that he was "not a saint" but that he "played the game." His fellow-adherents would understand perfectly what he meant. And the last thing in the world that he contemplated or desired was to attack, or openly to flout, accepted standards. The code never encourages a man to do that. Besides, he had a father, a mother, and a sister, orthodox-thinking people, very fond and proud of him; he would not willingly do or say anything to shock them. Even from a professional point of view--but when the higher motives are sufficient to decide the issue, why need they invoke the somewhat compromising alliance of others purely prudential? By now he was very much in love with Winnie Maxon, but he was also desperately vexed with her, and with all the amiable theorizers at Shaylor's Patch. The opportunity had seemed perfect for what he wanted, and what he wanted seemed exactly one of the allowed compromises--an ideal elasticity! Whom would it wrong? Not Cyril Maxon, surely? He was out of court. Whom would it offend? There was nobody to offend, if the affair were managed quietly--as it could be here in the country. And she liked him; though he had made no declaration yet, he could not doubt that she liked him very much. But the theorizers had been at her. When he delicately felt his way, discussing her position, or, professedly, the position of women in general whose marriages had proved a failure, she leant back, looking adorably pretty, and calmly came out with a remark of a profoundly disconcerting nature. "If I ever decided to--to link my life with a man's again, I should do it quite openly. I should tell my husband and my friends. I should consider myself as doing just the same thing as if I were marrying again. I talked it all over with Tora the other night, and she quite agreed with me." Agreed with her! Tora had put it into her head, of course, Godfrey thought angrily. The idea had Tora's hall-mark stamped large in its serene straightforward irrationality. "But that'd mean an awful row, and the--a case, and all that!" "I hope it would. But Cyril doesn't approve of divorce." "Then you'd never be able to--to get regular, as long as he lived." "I think I should be regular, without getting regular," she answered, smiling. "What's the good of defying the world?" "Isn't that the only way bad things get altered?" "It needs a good deal of courage to do things like that--right or wrong." "I should rely on the man I loved to give me the courage." Godfrey did not wish to admit that the man whom (as he hoped) she loved lacked courage. The answer irritated him; he sat frowning sulkily, his usual gaiety sadly overcast. Winnie's eyes scanned his face for a moment; then, with a sigh, she looked over the lawn to the valley below. She was disappointed with the reception of her great idea. "Of course the two people would have to be very much in love with one another," she added, with a little falter in her voice. He found a way out of his difficulty. "The more a man loved a woman, the less likely he'd be to consent to put her in such a position," he argued. His face cleared; he was pleased with his point; it was good, according to the code. "It would be the only honourable position for her," Winnie retorted. He rose to his feet in a temper; it was all so unreasonable. "I must go." "Are you coming to anything to-morrow?" "No, I shall be in town to-morrow. I dare say I shall stay a night or two." This was by way of revenge--or punishment. Let her see how she liked Shaylor's Patch without him! She turned to him, holding out her hand; in her eyes was raillery, half-reproachful, half-merry. "Come back in a better temper!" she said. "I'm a fool to come back at all." He kissed her hand and looked steadily into her eyes before he went away. Himself at once a poor and a pleasure-loving man, Godfrey had the good luck to own a well-to-do and devoted friend, always delighted to "put him up" and to give him the best of hospitality. Bob Purnett and he were old schoolfellows and had never lost sight of one another. Bob had four thousand a year of his own (though not of his own making), and in the summer he had no work to do; in the winter he hunted. He was a jovial being and very popular, except with the House Committee and the cook of his club; to these unfortunate officials he was in the nature of a perpetual Assize Court presided over by a "Hanging Judge." He gave Godfrey a beautiful dinner and a magnum of fine claret; let it be set down to his credit that he drank--and gave--fine claret at small dinners. He knew better than to be intemperate. Did he not want to go on hunting as long as possible? Nor was Godfrey given to excess in wine-drinking. Still the dinner, the claret, the old friendship, the liqueur, the good cigar, did their work. Godfrey found himself putting the case. It appeared to Bob Purnett a curious one. "But it's rot," he observed. "You're married or you're not--eh?" He himself was not--quite distinctly. "Must be very pretty, or she wouldn't expect you to stand it?" Godfrey laughed. There was a primitive truthfulness about Purnett's conversation. He was not sophisticated by thought or entangled in theory--quite different from the people at Shaylor's Patch. "She is very pretty; and absolutely a lady--and straight, and all that." "Then let it alone," counselled Bob Purnett. "I can't help it, old chap." Again the primitive note--the cry that there are limits to human endurance! Godfrey had not meant to utter it. The saying of it was an illumination to himself. Up to now he had thought that he could help it--and would, if he were faced with theories and irrationality. "Let's go to a Hall?" Bob suggested. "I'd like a quiet evening and just a jaw." Bob looked gravely sympathetic. "Oh, you've got it in the neck!" he said, with a touch of reverent wonder in his voice--something like the awe that madmen inspired in our forbears. Godfrey was possessed! "Yes, I have--and I don't know what the deuce to do." "Well, what the deuce are you to do?" asked Purnett. His healthy, ruddy, unwrinkled face expressed an honest perplexity. "Must be a rum little card--isn't she?" "I can't help it, Bob." "Dashed awkward!" In fact these two adherents of the code--may it be written honest adherents, for they neither invented nor defended, but merely inherited it?--were frankly puzzled. There is a term in logic--dichotomy--a sharp division, a cutting in two, an opposing of contradictories. You are honest or not honest, sober or not sober. Rough reasoning, but the police courts have to work on it. So you are regular or irregular. But people who want to make the irregular regular--that is as great a shock to the adherents of the code as their tenets are to the upholders of a different law. The denial of one's presuppositions is always a shock--because one must start from somewhere. It is a "shock to credit"--credit of some kind--and how are any of us to get on without credit? "Bring two more old brandies, Walter," Mr. Purnett commanded. It was the only immediate and practical step. "Not for me, old chap." Bob nodded accordingly to Walter. His face was inconceivably solemn. "I sometimes feel like cutting the whole thing," said Godfrey fretfully. "Well, there are other women in the world, aren't there?" "No, no. I mean the whole thing. What's the good of it?" The young man's fresh face looked for the moment weary and old; he flung his good cigar, scarcely half-smoked, into the fireplace. Bob Purnett knew better than to argue against a mood like that; one might just as well argue against a toothache. "Let's go home and have an early bed," he suggested. He yawned, and tried to hide the action. He was devoted to his friend, but his friend had raised a puzzle, and puzzles soon fatigued him--except little ones made of wood, for which he had a partiality. For three whole days Godfrey Ledstone fought; really trying to "cut the whole thing," to master again the feelings which had mastered him, not to go back to Shaylor's Patch. On one day he went to see his people, the father, mother, and sister, who were orthodox-thinking, and so fond and proud of him. They lived in Woburn Square. The old gentleman had been an accountant in a moderately good way of business, and had retired on a moderately good competence; at least, he was not old really, but, like some men, he took readily, even prematurely, to old age. Everything in the house seemed to Godfrey preternaturally settled; it even seemed settled somehow that Amy would not marry. And it was odd to think that Mr. and Mrs. Ledstone had once married, had (as it must be presumed) suffered from these terrible feelings, had perhaps doubted, feared, struggled, enjoyed. To-day all was so placid in Woburn Square; the only really acute question was the Income Tax--that certainly was a grievance to Mr. Ledstone. Godfrey appreciated the few hours of repose, the fondness, and the pride. It seemed then quite possible to "cut the whole thing"--yes, the whole of it. Bob Purnett went off on a short visit, leaving his comfortable flat at his friend's disposal. Why not stay in London, do a good turn at work, and see some more of his people in Woburn Square? A good and wise programme. But on the fourth day came a gust that blew the good and wise programme clean out of the window--a gust of feeling like a draught of strong wine, heady and overpowering. He flung down his pencil, crying aloud, "It's no use!" He was tried beyond that he was able. He laid an indictment, vague and formless, yet charged with poignant indignation, against the general order of things, against what forced a man into folly, and then branded him "Fool" with irons hissing-hot. The old protest, the creature's cry against the injustice of creation! An hour later he was on his way to the country--back to Shaylor's Patch. So far as he was concerned, the thing was settled. He might not realize it; he went, not led by purpose, but driven by craving. But "On my terms if I can, on hers if I must," interprets the confused and restless humming of his brain. To a man in such case the people he meets as he fares along seem strangely restful, impossibly at peace. The old man with his pipe, the young clerk with his sporting paper, the labourer in the field, the toddler with its toy, all present an illusion of untroubled existence, at which the man with the gadfly looks in envy and in scorn. They possess their souls--he is possessed. Well might Bob Purnett wear that expression of awe! For some day the normal man must resume possession, and he may find that the strangest pranks have been played by the temporary tenant--furniture smashed, debts incurred, and what not, for all of which dilapidations and liabilities he, unfortunate soul, is held responsible! Happily it chances, after all not so seldom, that the temporary tenant has made beauty, not havoc, and left behind him generous gifts, to the enrichment of life till life itself shall pass away. Stephen Aikenhead sat on the lawn with his little girl Alice, newly come home for the holidays. She was reading aloud to him; he smoked his pipe, and now and again his big hand would pass caressingly over the little bowed head with its soft brown hair. The story was about a certain Princess, to whom a Fairy had given the Gift of Eternal Youth on the condition that she never fainted either from fear or from joy. All went well for a very great many years. Generations were born and died, and the Princess was still sweet seventeen. She outlived seventy-seven Prime Ministers. But at last a very handsome groom, who had appeared at the Castle gates rather mysteriously and been taken into the Princess' service without (as it seemed) any "character," was thrown from his horse while he was in attendance on his Royal Mistress, and, lo and behold, the Princess fainted for fear that he might be dead, and fainted again for joy when she found he wasn't! So he revealed himself as the King of the neighbouring kingdom, and they married one another, and lived happily ever afterwards. Only, of course, the Princess lost the Gift of Eternal Youth. "I love these stories about Princesses, Alice," said Stephen. "Read me another. I wish there were lots more Princesses. There aren't half enough of them nowadays. They're so picturesque, and such jolly things happen to them. Hallo, Godfrey, you back?" Godfrey had sent the cab on with his luggage, and let himself in by the garden gate. He arrived just in time to hear the end of the story. Reader and listener were close to the parlour door. As his name was spoken, Godfrey heard a little movement from within--the sound of the movement of a woman's skirts. His impressionable nature responded to a new appeal, his readily receptive eyes beheld a new vision. As he looked at the big man and his little girl, so happy in one another, so at peace yet never in tedium, he wished that it--his affair--could be neither on his terms nor on hers--could be neither a deceit nor a defiance, but could be the straight regular thing, the good old-fashioned thing that, after all, served most people's turn well enough. There were failures, but it was in the broad way of nature and broadly successful. Who really objected to it, or questioned it? To whom was the Institution obnoxious? Rips and cranks, he answered in his concise vernacular; really it did well enough for everybody else--with, no doubt, allowances made here and there. The soft rustle sounded again from within the parlour. Then Winnie Maxon stood in the doorway with shining, welcoming eyes. "Well, would you like the story of the Princess with the Broken Heart?" asked Alice. "Anything about a Princess!" said Stephen, with handsome liberality. "It sounds sad, Alice. If it's sad, don't let's have it," Winnie pleaded. "Oh, after all the old doctors had tried to mend it, one came, looking much older and much more wrinkled than all the rest----" "I shall keep my eye on that practitioner, all the same," Stephen interposed. "I'm beginning to know the ropes!" "And he mended it with an enormous gold ring that he'd cut off the little finger of a giant he had once killed on a walk he took." "What a fellow!" said Stephen. "Prince in disguise, Alice?" "Why, father, of course he was!" Stephen shook his big head and turned his big spectacles up to heaven. "And that fellow Dennehy dares to call himself a republican! Now who--who, I ask you--would give a fig for a President in disguise? Read me some more Princesses, Alice." They all enjoyed the Princesses. So sometimes, for an hour, a little child shall lead us into peace. CHAPTER VIII SUBVERSIVE Embedded in his own conceptions as in a rock, Cyril Maxon refused to believe that his wife would not soon "have had enough of it." He refused to accept the failure of the envoy through whose mouth he had been induced to make such great concessions and such generous promises. Could they, in the end, fail to move her? His duty towards her--that inexorable duty from which no act of hers could free him--called upon him for another effort. Attlebury was with him in this view, though now with less hope of a favourable issue; he detected the fact that his disciple's desire for self-vindication was no less strong than his hope of saving Mrs. Maxon, and feared for the result of this admixture of objects. He ventured on a reminder. "Of course you want to be able to feel you've done all you could, but the great thing is to do it successfully. As we regard it, she has more at stake than you." "I believe I can persuade her, if I go and see her." Did he really mean persuade--or did he mean frighten? Attlebury doubted, and, because he doubted that, doubted yet more of the issue. The disciple did not give the cause fair play; a teacher has often to complain of that. In whatever shape Cyril Maxon may have forecast in his own mind the interview that he proposed, there was no question as to how Winnie received the notice of his intention to seek her out in her asylum at Shaylor's Patch. It filled her with sheer panic; it drove her to what seemed now her only refuge. Her terror must surely make an appeal irresistible alike to the ardour and to the chivalry of her lover? Or he was no lover. Tora and she were at one on the point, though it was not put too bluntly between them. "I can't see him; I won't," she declared to Stephen Aikenhead, running to the man of the house at last, rebel against male domination as she was. "Rather difficult to refuse, if he comes here!" "Then I won't be here when he comes, that's all." Her fright made her unjust. "If you won't protect me--or can't--I must act for myself." She flung out of the room, leaving Stephen no chance of protesting that the bolts and bars of Shaylor's Patch were at her service, and a siege by an angry lawyer all in the day's work. She was afraid of herself; she distrusted her courage. She wanted to have a motive compulsory in its force; her instinct was to do something which should make a return home irrevocably impossible. Her husband's insistence hastened the crisis, though his patience could hardly have averted it. Godfrey Ledstone had the news first from Tora Aikenhead. Her calm eyes asked him plainly enough what part it was his to play. Tora had taken her line and at once conceived hesitation to be impossible. His native idea would have been to comfort her before Maxon came, and again after he had gone, and to lie by in snug hiding when he was there. So ran the code, discreet and elastic. By now he knew--only too well--that this was not what these uncompromising people expected of him. In their odd view he had already gone too far for that convenient expedient. Social liberty might, it seemed, be more exacting than social bondage. For if you were always free to do as you liked, it was obviously necessary to be very careful about intimating too unreservedly what it was that you would like to do; since there could be no such thing as pleading impossibility in defence of a pledge unfulfilled. "She's terribly unhappy. She declares that she must be gone before he comes. She daren't meet him." "Why not?" he asked sharply. Another feeling was stirred in him. "Well, he's always dominated her. He might break down her will again." "You mean she might go back? Cave in, and go back?" "That seems to be what she's afraid of, herself." Tora entertained no more doubt of the soundness of her ideas than Cyril Maxon of his. Why should she, she would have asked, merely because hers were new, while his were old? To her mind newness was a presumption of merit in a view, since the old views had produced a world manifestly so imperfect all round. Holding her opinion strongly, she did not hesitate to use the weapons best suited to secure its triumph. If Godfrey's jealousy helped to that end, why was it illegitimate to let it play its part? Never was a woman less afraid of what men call responsibility. "It's just awful to think of the poor little lady going back to that brute of a fellow," he said. "Oh, don't abuse him. I dare say he's as unhappy as she is. And he thinks he's right. I'm not sure you don't think he's right, really." Tora smiled over her shrewd thrust. "So you're the last person who ought to abuse him." "Oh, what does it matter what I think?" he cried impatiently. There was still enough of his old mood and his old ideas in him to stir a resentment against Tora, to make him feel that she was forcing his hand and constraining him to accept a bigger liability than he had bargained for. Theorists must always be up to that! They seem to take a positive pleasure in proving that you are bound to go to lengths--to all lengths! That the comfortable half-way will never serve! Perhaps they do not enough reflect that the average man is not thereby encouraged to start at all. But Winnie herself had genuine power to stir his heart--and now, indeed, as never before, since she seemed helpless save for him, and hopeless save in him, yet in and through him both brave and confident--the most profound, the most powerful, flattery from sex to sex. Mere friends could not help now; mere convictions, a naked sense of being in the right, would not avail. These she had, but she must have love too. To this mood all the man in him responded. "It only needed this final trouble to--to make me speak." "I don't think I need speak," she whispered, with her delicately quavering smile. "You know it all--all the great thing it is. I'm not ashamed of it, Godfrey. And you won't be ashamed of me, will you?" The question did not disconcert him now. For the time he had lost that vision of the future which had once disquieted and alarmed him. His phrases might be well-worn, but they were heartily sincere when he told her he would face the world, if only she were by his side. "It shall all be just as you said you wished it to be, if ever you joined your life to a man's again." He quoted almost verbally, just missing her poetic "link." Winnie kissed him in warm and pretty gratitude. "That takes away my last doubt," she told him. "I shall be proud now, as proud as any woman! And to-day--just for a few hours--let's forget everything, except that we're plighted lovers." She put her arm through his. "You'll kill the giant, take his ring, and mend the Princess' Broken Heart!" "I say, are you making me a Prince in disguise, Winnie?" "Well, don't you feel like a Prince now?" she asked, with the sweet audacity of a woman who knows that she is loved, and for her lover boldly takes herself at her lover's valuation. Obedient to her wish, the outside world effected one of its disappearances--very obliging, if not of long duration. Even Woburn Square made tactful exit, without posing the question as to what its opinion of the proceedings might likely be. Of course, that point could be held immaterial for the present at least. For the second time then, in Winnie Maxon's recent experience, with a little courage things proved easy; difficulties vanished when faced; you did what you held you had a right to do, and nothing terrible happened. Certainly nothing terrible happened that evening at Shaylor's Patch. There was a romantic, an idyllic, bit of courting, with the man ardent and gallant, the woman gay but shy; it was all along orthodox lines, really conventional. He had undertaken that the affair should be carried through on Winnie's lines; this was his great and fine concession--or conversion. He observed it most honourably; she grew more and more gratefully tender. "Another man than you--yes, even another man I loved--might have wounded me to-night," she murmured, as they parted at the door after dinner. "I could never wound you--even with my love." She took his hand and kissed it. "I'm trusting you against all the world, Godfrey." "You may trust me." Her heart sang, even while her lover left her. For what followed in the two or three days during which she still abode at Shaylor's Patch people shall find what names they please, since her history is, of necessity, somewhat concerned with contentious matters. Some may speak of unseemly travesty, some of idle farce; others may find a protest not without its pathos--a protest that she broke with the old order only because she must, that she would fain carry over into her new venture what was good in the old spirit, that her enterprise was to her a solemn and high thing. They were to be man and wife together; he must buy her the ring that symbolised union; they must have good and true witnesses--nothing was to be secret, all above-board and unashamed. There must even be a little ceremonial, a giving and taking before sympathetic friends, a declaration that she held herself his, and him hers, in all love and trust, and to the exclusion of all other people in the world. For ever? Till death did them part? No--the premises peremptorily forbade that time-honoured conclusion. But so long as the love that now bound them together still sanctified the bond which it had fastened. Satisfied in her heart that the love could never die, she defined without dismay the consequences of its death. At all events, she would have answered to an objector, could they be worse than what had befallen her when her love for Cyril Maxon died a violent death by crushing--died and yet was, in the name of all that is holy, denied decent burial? And yet there were qualms. "Will people understand?" was her great question. Tora--uncompromising, level-headed--answered that most of them would not even try to, and added, "What matter?" Stephen asked, "Well, so long as your friends do?" Her lover vowed that, whether her action were approved or not, no tongue could wag against her honour or her motives. The last day came--the day when the pair were to set out together, Godfrey from his summer cottage in the village of Nether End, near Shaylor's Patch, Winnie from her haven under the Aikenheads' friendly roof. A home has been taken in London, but they were to have a week's jaunt--a honeymoon--in North Wales first. Winnie was now putting the finishing touch to her preparations by writing her luggage labels. The name she wrote seemed happily to harmonize personal independence with a union of hearts and destinies--Mrs. Winifred Ledstone. The sound of a man's footstep made her look up. She saw Dick Dennehy before her. He had come in from the garden, and was just clutching off his hat at the sight of her. "Mr. Dennehy! I didn't know you were coming here to-day." "No more did I, Mrs. Maxon, till a couple of hours ago. I found I had nothing to do, so I ran down to see how you were all getting on." "Some of us are just getting off," smiled Winnie. "You're in time to say good-bye." "Why, where are you off to? I'm sorry you're going." With a saucy glance Winnie pushed a luggage label across the table towards him. He took it up, studied it, and laid it down again without a word. "Well?" said Winnie. He spread out a pair of pudgy splay-fingered hands and shook his shock-haired head in sincere if humorous despair. "You're all heathens here, and it's no good talking to you as if you were anything else." "I'm not a heathen, but if the Church backs up the State in unjust laws----" He wagged a broad forefinger. "Even a heathen tribe has its customs. Any customs better than none! Ye can't go against the custom of the tribe for nothing. I speak as heathen to heathen." "Can't customs ever be changed?" Winnie was back at her old point. "You're not strong enough for the job, Mrs. Maxon." His voice was full of pity. But Winnie was in no mood to accept pity. "You call me a heathen. Suppose it was A.D. 50 or 100, and not A.D. 1909. I think you'd be a heathen, and I--well, at any rate I should be trying to screw up my courage to be a Christian martyr." He acknowledged a hit. "Oh, you're all very clever!" he grumbled. "I'll bet Stephen taught you that. That's from his mint, if I know the stamp! Take it as you say then--are you looking forward to your martyrdom?" Perhaps she was, and in what must be admitted to be the proper spirit--thinking more of the crown than of the stake. "I don't look very unhappy, do I?" she asked radiantly. "Going off with him to-day, are you?" She nodded gaily. The natural man suddenly asserted itself in Dennehy. He smiled. "It's more than the young dog deserves, sure it is!" "Oh, well, you're being a heathen now!" laughed Winnie, distinctly well-pleased. "I'm wondering what Mrs. Lenoir will say about it." Winnie's pleasure suffered a slight jar. "Why should Mrs. Lenoir be any judge of a case like mine?" she asked rather coldly. "Oh, I'm not making comparisons," he murmured vaguely. Still there was a point of comparison in his mind. Mrs. Lenoir, too, had been a rebel against the custom of the tribe, and, though the motives of rebellion differ, the results may be the same. "Well, I'll wish you luck anyhow," he continued, holding out his hand. "I hope he'll make you happy, for you're giving him a lot, by the powers, you are!" "I hope I'm giving anything like as much as I'm getting." He grumbled something inarticulate as he passed by her and out of the door into the garden. Winnie looked after him with a smile still on her lips. If this were the worst she had to expect, it was nothing very dreadful. It was even rather amusing; she did not conceive that she had come off in any way second-best in the encounter. Stephen came in a moment later and, on her report of Dennehy's arrival, went to look for his friend in the garden. But Dennehy was nowhere to be found; he was seen no more that day. He went straight back to London; he could not stop the deed, but he would not be an accomplice. "Well, if he doesn't agree with what we're doing, I think he's right not to stay," said Tora. Yet Winnie felt a little hurt. Then came the travesty, or the farce, or the protest, or whatever it may be decided to call it, in which Winnie formally--to a hostile eye perhaps rather theatrically--in the presence of her witnesses, did for herself what the powers that be would not do for her--declared her union with Cyril Maxon at an end and plighted her troth to Godfrey Ledstone. Godfrey would rather have had this little ceremony (if it had to be performed at all) take place privately, but he played his part in it with a good grace. It would be over soon--and soon he and she would set out together. What of little Alice during all this? She had been sent to play with the gardener's daughter. It would be a portentous theory indeed that forced a child to consider the law of marriage and divorce before she attained the age of eleven. Even Tora Aikenhead did not go so far, and, as has been seen, Stephen's theorizing tendencies were held in check in his child's case. Then off they went, and, on their arrival in London, they were met by Bob Purnett, who gave them a hearty welcome and a champagne luncheon, where all was very merry and gay. There was indeed a roguish twinkle in Bob Purnett's eye, but perhaps it was no more than custom allows even in the case of the most orthodox of marriages--and in any event Bob Purnett's was not that class of opinion to which Winnie's views could most naturally be expected to appeal. He treated Winnie most politely and called her Mrs. Ledstone. She did not realize that he would have done just the same if--well, in the case of any lady for whom a friend claimed the treatment and the title. The next morning two letters duly and punctually reached their respective destinations. All was to be open, all above-board! Winnie had not found hers hard to write, and Godfrey had said nothing to her about how extraordinarily difficult he had found his. One was addressed to Cyril Maxon, Esquire, K.C., at the Temple; the other to William J. Ledstone, Esquire, at Woburn Square. Now in neither of these places were the views of Shaylor's Patch likely to find acceptance, or even toleration. No, nor Bob Purnett's either. Though, indeed, if a choice had to be made, the latter might have seemed, not more moral, but at least less subversive in their tendency. A thing that is subversively immoral must be worse, surely, than a thing that is merely immoral? Granting the immorality in both cases, the subversive people have not a leg to stand on. They are driven to argue that they are not immoral at all--which only makes them more subversive still. And the dictionary defines "subversion" in these terms: "The act of overturning, or the state of being overturned; entire overthrow; an overthrow from the foundation; utter ruin; destruction"--anyhow, clearly a serious matter, and at that we may leave it for the moment. CHAPTER IX NO PROCEEDINGS! At Cyril Maxon's chambers in the Temple--very pleasant chambers they were, with a view over a broad sweep of the river--the day began in the usual fashion. At half-past nine Mr. Gibbons, the clerk, arrived; at a quarter to ten the diligent junior, who occupied the small room and devilled for the King's Counsel, made his punctual appearance. At ten, to the stroke of the clock, Maxon himself came in. His movements were leisurely; he had a case in the paper--an important question of demurrage--but it was not likely to be reached before lunch. He bade Mr. Gibbons good morning, directed that the boy should keep a watch on the progress of the court to which his case was assigned, passed into his own room, and sat down to open his letters. These disposed of, he had a couple of opinions to write, with time left for a final run through his brief, aided by the diligent junior's note. Half an hour later Mr. Gibbons opened the door. Maxon waved him back impatiently. "I'm busy, Gibbons. Don't disturb me. We can't be on in court yet?" "No, sir. It's a gentleman to see you. Very urgent business, he says." "No, no, I tell you I'm busy." "He made it a particular favour. In fact, he seems very much upset--he says it's private business." He glanced at a card he carried. "It's a Mr. Ledstone, sir." "Oh," said Maxon. His lips shut a little tighter as he took up a letter which lay beside the legal papers in front of him. "Ledstone?" The letter was signed "Winifred Ledstone." "Yes, sir." "What aged man?" "Oh, quite elderly, sir. Stout, and grey 'air." The answer dispelled an eccentric idea which had entered Maxon's head. If this couple so politely informed him of their doings, they might even be capable of paying him a call! "Well, show him in." He shrugged his shoulders with an air of disgust. Stout and grey-haired (as Mr. Gibbons had observed), yet bearing a noticeable likeness to his handsome son, Mr. Ledstone made a very apologetic and a very flustered entrance. Maxon bowed without rising; Gibbons set a chair and retired. "I must beg a thousand pardons, Mr. Maxon, but this morning I--I received a letter--as I sat at breakfast, Mr. Maxon, with Mrs. Ledstone and my daughter. It's terrible!" "Are you the father of Mr. Godfrey Ledstone?" "Yes, sir. My boy Godfrey--I've had a letter from him. Here it is." "Thank you, but I'm already in possession of what your son has done. I've heard from Mrs. Maxon. I have her letter here." "They're mad, Mr. Maxon! Mean to make it all public! What are we to do? What am I to say to Mrs. Ledstone and my daughter?" "You must really take your own course about that." "And my poor boy! He's been a good son, and his mother's devoted to him, and----" Cyril Maxon's wrath found vent in one of those speeches for which his wife had a pet name. "I don't see how the fact that your son has run away with my wife obliges, or even entitles, me to interfere in your family affairs, Mr. Ledstone." Acute distress is somewhat impervious to satire. "Of course not, sir," said Mr. Ledstone, mopping his face forlornly. "But what's to be done? There's no real harm in the boy. He's young----" "If you wish to imply that my wife is mainly in fault, you're entirely welcome to any comfort you and your family can extract from that assumption." Ledstone set his hands on the table between them, and looked plaintively at Maxon. He was disconcerted and puzzled; he fancied that he had not made himself, or the situation, fully understood. He brought up his strongest artillery--the most extraordinary feature in the case. "The boy actually suggests that he should bring your--that he should bring Mrs.--that he should bring the lady to see Mrs. Ledstone and my daughter!" He puffed out this crowning atrocity with quick breaths, and mopped his face again. "You're master in your own house, I suppose? You can decide whom to receive, Mr. Ledstone." He pushed his chair back a little; the movement was unmistakably a suggestion that his visitor should end his visit. Mr. Ledstone did not take the hint. "I suppose you'll--you'll institute proceedings, Mr. Maxon?" "I'm not a believer in divorce." "You won't?" "I said I was not a believer in divorce." Growing exasperation, hard held, rang in his voice. A visible relief brightened Mr. Ledstone's face. "You won't?" he repeated. "Oh, well, that's something. That gives us time at all events." Maxon smiled--not genially. "I don't think you must assume that your son and the lady who now calls herself Mrs. Ledstone will be as much pleased as you appear to be." "Oh, but if there are no proceedings!" murmured Ledstone. Then he ventured a suggestion. "Private influence could be brought to bear?" "Not mine," said Cyril Maxon grimly. "Still, you don't propose to take proceedings!" He munched the crumb of comfort almost affectionately. Cyril Maxon sought refuge in silence; not to answer the man was probably the best way to get rid of him--and he had defined his attitude twice already. Silence reigned supreme for a minute or two. "I suppose my wife and daughter must know. But as for the rest of the family----" Mr. Ledstone was discussing his personal difficulties. Maxon sat still and silent as a statue. "It may all be patched up. He'll see reason." He glanced across at Maxon. "But I mustn't keep you, Mr. Maxon." He rose to his feet. "If there are no proceedings----" Maxon sharply struck the handbell on his table; Gibbons opened the door. "Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Maxon." Maxon's silence was unbroken as his visitor shuffled out. Maxon's nature, hard and proud, not tender in affection, very tenacious of dignity, found now no room for any feeling save of disgust--a double disgust at the wickedness and at the absurdity--at the thing itself and at the despicable pretence in which the pair sought to cloak it. Ledstone's intrusion--so he regarded the visit of Godfrey's father--intensified his indignant distaste for the whole affair. To have to talk about it to a man like that! To be asked to use his influence! He smiled grimly as he tried to picture himself doing that. Pleading with his wife, it must be supposed; giving wise counsel to the young man perhaps? He asked nothing now but to be allowed to wash his hands of them both--and of the Ledstone family. Really, above all, of the Ledstone family! How the thought of them got on his nerves! Mr. Attlebury's teaching about the duty of saving a soul passed out of sight. Was not he, in his turn, entitled to avail himself of the doctrine of the limits of human endurance? Is it made only for sinners--or only for wives? Maxon felt that it applied with overwhelming force to any further intercourse with the Ledstone family--and he instructed Mr. Gibbons to act accordingly, if need should arise. Mr. Gibbons had noticed Winnie's handwriting, with which naturally he was acquainted, on her letter, and wondered whether there could be any connection between it and the odd visit and the peremptory order. He had known for some two or three weeks that Mrs. Maxon was no longer in Devonshire Street; he was on very friendly terms with the coachman who drove Cyril Maxon's brougham. Mr. Ledstone, mercifully ignorant of the aspect he assumed in Maxon's thoughts, walked home to Woburn Square, careful and troubled about many things. Though he was a good man and of orthodox views, it cannot be said that he either was occupied primarily with the duty of saving souls; saving a scandal was, though doubtless not so important, considerably more pressing. He was, in fact, running over the names of all those of his kindred and friends whom he did not wish to know of the affair and who need know nothing about it, if things were properly managed, and if Godfrey would be reasonable. He wished to have this list ready to produce for the consolation of his immediate family circle. They--Mrs. Ledstone and his daughter--must be told. It would be sure to "get to" them somehow, and Mrs. Ledstone enjoyed the prestige of having a weak heart; it would never do for a thing like this to get to her without due precautions. Angry as he was with his son, he did not wish the boy to run the risk of having that on his conscience! As a fact, the way things get to people is often extremely disconcerting. It is a point that Shaylor's Patch ought to have considered. In view of the weak heart--Mrs. Ledstone never exposed it to the sceptical inspection of a medical man--he told Amy first, Amy concerning whom it seemed to be settled that she would never be married, although she was but just turned twenty-five. He showed Amy the letter from Godfrey his son; he indicated the crowning atrocity with an accusing forefinger. "Oh, she made him put that in," said Amy, with contemptuous indifference--and an absolute discernment of the truth. Mr. Ledstone boiled over. "The impudence of it!" Amy looked down at her feet--shod in good stout shoes, sensible, yet not ugly; she was a great walker and no mean hockey player. "I wonder what she's like," said Amy. "I've seen Mr. Maxon's name in the _Mail_ quite often. What did you think of him, daddy?" She had always kept the old name for her father. Mr. Ledstone searched for a description of his impressions. "He didn't strike me as very sympathetic. He didn't seem to feel with us much, Amy." "Hates the very idea of us, I suppose," remarked Amy. She turned to Godfrey's letter again; a faint smile came to her lips. "He does seem to be in love!" "The question is--how will mother take it?" "Yes, of course, dear," Amy agreed, just a trifle absently. Yet, generally considered, it is a large question; it has played a big part, for good and evil, in human history. Mrs. Ledstone--a woman of fifty-five, but still pretty and with prettily surviving airs of prettiness (it is pleasant to see their faded grace, like the petals of a flower flattened in a heavy book)--took it hardly, yet not altogether with the blank grief and dismay, or with the spasm of the heart, which her husband had feared for her. She did indeed say, "The idea!" when the crowning atrocity--the suggestion that Winnie should be brought to see her--was mentioned; and she cordially endorsed the list of kindred and friends who need know nothing about it. Also she paid a proper and a perfectly sincere tribute to outraged proprieties. But behind all this was the same sort of interest as had appeared in her daughter's comments--and had existed more explicitly in her daughter's thoughts. These Maxons--this Mrs. Maxon, for the husband was a subordinate figure, although with his own interest--had abruptly made incursion into the orderly life of Woburn Square, not merely challenging its convictions, but exciting its curiosity, bringing it suddenly into contact with things and thoughts that it had seen only in the newspapers or (in Amy's case) now and then at the theatre, where dramas "of ideas" were presented. Of course they knew such things happened; one may know that about a thing, and yet find it very strange when it happens to oneself. "There was always something about that boy," said Mrs. Ledstone. The vagueness was extreme, but pride lurked in the remark, like onion in the salad. And she, like her husband, was immeasurably comforted by the news that there would be no proceedings. "His career won't suffer, father." She seemed to draw herself up, as though on the brink of moral laxity. "But, of course, it must be put a stop to at once." She read a passage in Godfrey's letter again. "Oh, what a goose the boy is! His head's turned; you can see that. I suppose she's pretty--or what they call smart, perhaps." "The whole thing is deplorable, but the grossest feature is the woman's effrontery." The effrontery was all the woman's--an unkind view, but perhaps in this case more unkind than unjust. "How could she look you in the face, mother?" Mr. Ledstone squeezed his wife's hand sympathetically. "Well, we must get him away from her as soon as possible." A pessimist--one of those easily discouraged mortals who repine at nothing being effected within the brief span of their own generation--might liken the world to a ponderous ball, whereunto are attached five thousand strings. At the end of each somebody is tugging hard; but all of them are tugging in different directions. Universal effort, universal fatigue--and the big ball remains exactly where it was! Here was Winnie, heart and soul in her crusade, holding it great, almost holy. But the only idea in Woburn Square was to put an end to it as soon as possible!--And meanwhile to cover it up, to keep it quiet, to preserve the possibility of being able to say no more about it as soon as it was happily over. No proceedings! What a comfort! "Of course we can have nothing to do with her. But what about him--while it lasts, I mean?" Mr. Ledstone propounded the question. "We ought to mark our--our horror." "Yes, father, but we can't abandon the poor boy because he's been deluded. What do you think, Amy? After all, you're a grown-up woman now." (Mrs. Ledstone was defending herself against an inward sense of indelicacy in referring to the matter before her unmarried daughter.) "Oh, the more we can get him here, the better," was Amy's view. "He'll realize how we feel about it then." "Amy's right," the father declared emphatically. "And so are you, mother. We mustn't abandon him. We must bring our influence to bear." "I want to hear the poor boy's own story--not a letter written with the woman at his elbow," said Mrs. Ledstone. "Will he come without her?" Amy asked. "Without her--or not at all! It's my duty to shield you and your mother, Amy. And now, really, I must read my paper." In the excitement of the morning, in his haste to find Cyril Maxon, in his terror of proceedings, he had omitted the rite. "I haven't been through the wash yet," said Mrs. Ledstone. "It's time for Snip's walk," added Amy. Life had to go on, in spite of Winnie Maxon--just as we read that some people lived their ordinary routine throughout the French Revolution. Snip was Amy Ledstone's Aberdeen terrier--and, let it be said at once, an extremely attractive and accomplished dog; he "died" for the King and whined if one mentioned the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Amy lavished on him her surplus of affection--what was left after her love for mother, father, and brother, her affection for uncles, aunts, and cousins, and a stray friendship or two which survived from schoolgirl days. Dogs sometimes come in for these windfalls. But to-day her thoughts--as she made her way along the Euston Road and into Regent's Park--were less occupied with Snip than was usually the case. Obstinately they fastened themselves on Winnie Maxon; on more than Winnie Maxon--on ill-regulated affections in general. She had read about them in novels (which are so largely occupied with them), seen them exhibited in plays, pursed her lips over them in newspapers. All that was not the same thing--any more than an earthquake in China is the same thing as a burglary in one's own house. Here they were--actually in the family circle! Not mere "dissipation," but a settled determination to set the rules at naught. What manner of woman was this Mrs. Maxon? What had driven her to it? She had "borne more than any human being could"--so said Godfrey's letter. She now "claimed a little happiness," which "wronged nobody." She only "took what the law ought to give her--freedom from unendurable bondage." The phrases of the letter were vivid in Amy's recollection. A woman who rebelled against the law--ought not her case against it to be heard? Hadn't she at least a right to a hearing? After all, as things stood, she had nothing to do with making it--nothing direct, at any rate. That sounded a plausible plea for Mrs. Maxon. But on the other hand, because she had been wronged, or suffered ill-treatment, or had bad luck, to go on and do what was, by Amy's training and prepossession, the one absolutely unpardonable thing, the thing hardly to be named--"I don't see how she could, whatever she thinks!" exclaimed Amy, as she entered the Broad Walk. People will, when they are allowed, go to see other people hanged, or to see murderers in their cells, or to watch a woman battling in open court for her fame as for her life. It was something of this sort of interest that fastened Amy's thoughts on Winnie Maxon. There is some admiration, some pity, in the feeling--and certainly a high curiosity about such people in the average mind, the law-keeping, the non-speculative mind, the mind trained to regard conventions as eternities and national customs as laws divine. Suddenly a smile came on her lips. Would it be very wrong? She and Godfrey had always been "awfully good friends." She would like to be that still. What an awfully good friend he would think her if--if she did not treat Mrs. Maxon as dirt! If she--Amy trembled intellectually as the speculation developed itself--without saying anything about it at home, went to see her, made friends, tried to understand her point of view--called her "Winnie"! Calling her "Winnie" seemed the supreme point, the pivot on which her attitude turned. Then came a cold doubt. "Will she care to be called Winnie?" "Will she care about seeing me?" "She's pretty, she's smart, she has been in society." Falling in love with a man may not involve a concern about the opinion of his maiden sister. How pretty was Mrs. Maxon, how smart? Interest in Winnie Maxon accumulated from source after source. Yes, and on Amy Ledstone's part, interest in herself accrued also, mingled with a little uneasiness. She seemed to have travelled far in her meditations--and she had almost forgotten Snip. Yet it was hardly likely that these speculations would in the end issue in much. Amy herself recognized that. They would probably produce nothing save a touch of sympathy, treacherous to her home, in regard to Winnie barren and unexpressed. They could not prevent her from being against Winnie; they could only make her sorry that she had to be. Even so much was a victory--hard won against the prepossessions of her mind and the canons of her life. CHAPTER X MAUVE ENVELOPES The first condition of being able to please yourself is to have enough to live upon. Stephen Aikenhead was entirely right about that. Thrift, exercised by yourself or by some beneficent forerunner, confers independence; you can live upon the world, and yet flout it. (Within the limits of the criminal law, of course, but why be a criminal if you have enough to live upon? You lack the one really good excuse.) Imagine the state of affairs if it were not so--if banks, railways, docks, and breweries could refuse you your dividends on the ground of irregularity in your private life! What a sudden and profound quarter-day reformation of manners among the well-to-do classes opens before our fantastic vision! Really enough to turn the clergy and ministers of all denominations green with envy! This economic condition was fulfilled for Godfrey Ledstone's establishment--just fulfilled according to Winnie's ideas, and no more. She had a hundred and fifty pounds a year; Godfrey's earnings averaged about two hundred, or a trifle more. His father had been in the habit of giving him a cheque for fifty at Christmas--but that addition could scarcely be relied on now. It was not riches; to one accustomed to Devonshire Street and a rising King's Counsel's income it was by no means riches. But it was enough; with care it would support the small quarters they had taken near Baron's Court Station in West Kensington--a studio, a small dining-room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and "the usual offices" (unusually cramped "the usual offices"). No room for expansion! But they did not mean to expand at present. Here Winnie sat down to defy or to convert the world. She had to begin the process with her cook-housemaid. Defiance, not conversion, was here certainly the word, and Godfrey was distinctly vexed at Winnie's opening of the matter to the cook-housemaid. Since there were to be no proceedings, need the good woman have been told at all? The occasion of this--their first--tiff was small, but by no means insignificant. Winnie was holding Godfrey to his promise that he would not be ashamed of her. "Among our friends, I meant, of course," Godfrey explained. "Among educated thinking people who can appreciate your position and our point of view. But this woman will simply think that you're--well, that you're what you're not, you know." "How can she, when I told her all about it?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Wait till you blow her up about something; you'll see what I mean," said he. "Then I shall dismiss her." Winnie's proud little face was very flushed. There were sides of life which Godfrey had observed. They had three cook-housemaids in quick succession, and were approaching despair when Dick Dennehy found them an old Irish woman, who could not cook at all, but was entirely charitable. She had been told about the situation beforehand by Dick; there was no occasion for Winnie to refer to it. Winnie did not, and tried not to feel relieved. Also she ceased to tell the occasional charwomen, who came in "by the day." Godfrey was perhaps right in thinking that superfluous. Dennehy came often, and they had other visitors, some bachelor friends of Godfrey's, others belonging to the Shaylor's Patch frequenters--Mrs. Danford and Mr. Carriston, for example. Mrs. Lenoir also came--not of her own accord (she never did that), but in response to an invitation from Winnie. Godfrey did not seem very enthusiastic about this invitation. "But you seemed to like her so much at Shaylor's Patch," said Winnie, in surprise. "Oh yes! Ask her then, if you like." He formulated no objection; but in his mind there was the idea that Winnie did not quite realize how very careful she ought to be--in her position. Such were the little passing clouds, obscuring for a moment the happiness of one or other of them. Yet they were very happy. Godfrey was genuinely in love; so was Winnie, and to her there was the added joy--the new wonder--of being free. Free, and yet not lonely. She had a companion and yet not a master. Hers was the better mind of the two. She did not explicitly realize it, but unconsciously and instinctively she took the lead in most of their pursuits and amusements. Her tastes guided their interests and recreation--the books they read, the concerts and theatres which they "squeezed" out of their none too large margin of spare cash. This initiative was unspeakably delightful to the former Mrs. Maxon, an absolutely fresh thing in her life, and absolutely satisfying. This freedom, this liberty to expand, to grow, to develop, was what her nature had craved. Even if she set her love altogether on one side--and how should she?--this in itself seemed to justify her refusal to be any longer Mrs. Maxon and her becoming Mrs. Winifred Ledstone. In fact it was bound up with her love, for half the joy of these new travels and adventures of the mind lay in sharing them with Godfrey. It still seemed as if everything were possible with a little courage, as if all the difficulties disappeared when boldly faced. Could there have been a difficulty more tremendous than Cyril Maxon? He had vanished into space! After some six weeks of this pleasant existence--during which the difficulties at least tactfully effaced themselves, save in such trifles as have been lightly indicated--a phenomenon began to thrust itself on Winnie's notice. Godfrey was not a man of much correspondence; he did most of his business in person and conducted other necessary communications mainly by telephone (that was a luxury which they had agreed that they must "run to" at the cost of some other, and unspecified, luxury to be forgone). Now he began to receive a certain type of envelope quite often--three times a week perhaps. It was a mauve envelope, rather larger than the ordinary. Winnie was careful not to scrutinize these envelopes--she did not even inspect the postmarks--but she could not help observing that, though the envelopes were always alike, the handwriting of the address varied. In fact she noted three varieties. Being a woman of some perspicacity, she did not really need to inspect the postmarks. Godfrey had a father, a mother, a sister. They were writing to him, writing rather bulky letters, which he did not read in company, but stowed away in his pocket; they never reappeared, and presumably were disposed of secretly, on or off the premises. Nor did she ever detect him in the act of answering one; but in the course of his work he spent many hours away from home, and he belonged to a modest little club in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden; no doubt it had writing-paper. These mauve envelopes began to afflict the peace, or at least the happiness, of the little household. The mornings on which they came were less cheerful than other mornings; a constraint showed itself in greetings and farewells. They were reminders--ominous reminders--of the big world outside, the world which was being defied. His family was at Godfrey Ledstone--three of his family, and one of them with a weak heart. Three weeks of the mauve envelopes did their work. One had come on the Saturday; on the Sunday morning Godfrey made an apology to Winnie. He would not be able to join her in their usual afternoon excursion--for a walk, or to a picture gallery, and so forth. "My mother's not very well--she's not strong, you know. I must go to my people's." "Of course you must, Godfrey. But--without me?" "Yes." Passing her on his way to the mantelpiece, he pressed her hand for a moment. Then he stood with his back to her, as he filled his pipe with fingers unusually clumsy. "Oh, I've tried! They've been at me for weeks--you probably guessed--and I've been back at them--letter after letter. It's no use! And yesterday father wrote that mother was really seriously upset." He turned round, and spoke almost fiercely. "Don't you see I must go, Winnie?" "Of course you must," she said again. "And I can't come if they--if they won't let me in!" She managed a smile. "It's all right. I'll have a walk by myself." He tried to find a bright side to the situation. "I may have a better chance of convincing them, if I go. I'm no good at letters. And mother is very fond of me." "Of course you must go," Winnie repeated yet again. What else was there for Winnie to say--with Mrs. Ledstone not strong and really seriously upset? "I haven't seen any of them for--oh, it must be three months--and I used to go every Sunday, when I was in town." "Well, you're going to-day, dear. That's all settled!" She went up to him and kissed him daintily. "And we won't despair of them, will we? When do you go?" "I--I generally used to go to lunch. They want me to. And come away after tea." "Well, do just what you used to. I hope I shall be doing it with you in a few weeks." "Oh, I hope so, dearest." He had not the glimmer of such a hope. To ask him if he had even the wish would have been to put an awkward question. The code wherein he was Bob Purnett's pupil recognizes quite a strict division of life into compartments. He was Winnie's lover of a certainty; quite doubtfully was he her convert. Being her lover was to break the law; being her convert was to deny it. Before he met her, he had been of the people who always contemplate conforming to the law--some day; at the proper time of life, or at the proper time before death--whichever may be the more accurate way of putting it. He was ready to say to the Tribunal, "I have done wrong"--but not to say, "You--or your interpreters--have been wrong." A very ordinary man was Godfrey Ledstone. So after a solitary lunch (a sausage left cold from breakfast and a pot of tea) Winnie started on a solitary expedition. She took the train from Baron's Court to Hyde Park Corner, with the idea of enjoying the "autumn tints" along by Rotten Row and the Serpentine. But, as she walked, her thoughts were not so much on autumn tints as on Woburn Square--on that family so nearly related to her life, yet so unspeakably remote, to whom she was worse than a menace--she was a present and active curse--who to her were something wrong-headed, almost ridiculous, yet intensely formidable--really the concrete embodiment of all she had to struggle against, the thing through which the great world would most probably hit at her, wound her, and kill her if it could. And both the family and Winnie thought themselves so absolutely, so demonstrably, right! Right or wrong, she knew very well, as she walked on towards the Serpentine, that now--this instant--in Woburn Square they were trying to get her man away from her; to make him ashamed of her (he had sworn never to be), to make him throw her over, to leave her stranded, to the ridicule and ruin of her experiment. With a sudden catch in the breath she added, "And the breaking of my heart!" Just as she came near to the lake she saw--among the walkers who had till now seemed insubstantial shades to her preoccupied mind--a familiar figure, Hobart Gaynor! Her heart leapt in sudden joy; here was an old, a sympathetic friend, the man who understood why she had done what she had. But Hobart Gaynor was not alone. His radiant and self-satisfied demeanour was justified by the fair comeliness of the girl who walked beside him--his bride, wedded to him a month ago, Cicely Marshfield. Winnie had sent him congratulations, good wishes, and a present; all of which had been cordially acknowledged in a letter written three days before the wedding. The ceremony had taken place in the country, and quietly (because of an aunt's death); no question had arisen as to who was or was not to be asked to attend it. Her heart went out to Hobart. He had loved her; she had always been very fond of him. In her drab uneventful girlhood he had provided patches of enjoyment; in that awful married life he had now and then been a refuge. She did not know Cicely, but Hobart would surely have chosen a nice girl, one who would be a friend, who would understand it all, who could be talked to about it all? With a happy smile and a pretty blush she met Hobart and his bride Cicely. She saw him speak to her, a quick, hurried word. Cicely replied--Winnie saw the rapid turn of her head and the movement of her lips. He spoke once more--just as Winnie nodded and smiled at him, and he was raising his hand to his hat. Then came the encounter. But before it was fairly begun, Winnie's heart was turned to lead. Hobart's face was flushed; his hand came out to hers in a stiff reluctance. The tall fair girl stood so tall, so erect, looking down, bowing, not putting out a hand at all, ignoring a pathetically comic appeal in her embarrassed husband's eyes. Winnie's eager words of congratulation, of cordiality and friendship, met with a chilly "Thank you," uttered under an obvious protest, under _force majeure_. Winnie set her eyes on Hobart's, but his were turned away; a rigid smile on his lips paid a ghastly tribute to courtesy. Winnie carried the thing through as briefly as possible. She was not slow to take a cue. "Well, I'm glad to have run across you," she said, "and when you're settled in, I must come and see you. You won't want to be bothered just yet." Again Hobart's glance appealed desperately to his wife. But his wife left the answer to him. "We are a bit chaotic still," he stumbled. "But soon, I hope, Winnie----" "I'll give you notice. Don't be afraid! Now I must hurry on--good-bye." "Good-bye," said Cicely, with another inclination of her head--it seemed so high above Winnie's, looking down from such an altitude. "Good-bye, Winnie." A kindliness, queerly ashamed of itself, struggled to expression in Hobart's voice. When the pair had passed by--after a safe interval--Winnie turned and looked at their retreating figures, the haughty erect girl, dear old Hobart's broad solid back, somewhat bowed by much office work. Winnie was smiling; it is sometimes the only thing to do. "This isn't my lucky day." So she phrased her thoughts to herself, coupling together the encounter in Hyde Park with what was now--at this moment--going on in Woburn Square; for it was not yet tea-time, and Godfrey's visit would last, according to custom, till after tea. She got home and waited for him in the dusk of the autumn evening. An apprehension possessed her; she did not know how much effect Woburn Square might have had upon him. But he came in about six, cheerful, affectionate, unchanged. On the subject of his home-visit, however, he was rather reticent. "They were all very kind--and I really don't think mother's any worse than usual. About her frail ordinary." He seemed inclined to dismiss the matter with this brief summary. "And what did you do with yourself?" "I took the Tube up to the Park and had a walk." She paused. "I met Hobart and Cicely Gaynor." "Oh, the happy pair! How were they flourishing?" "They--well, they warned me off, Godfrey. At least she did--and he had to follow suit, of course." Godfrey had been helping himself to whisky and soda-water; tumbler in hand, he walked across the studio and back again. "Hobart's one of the very few people in the world I'm really fond of." "Well, you know, Winnie, you wanted it this way. I assure you I don't find it altogether comfortable either." He emptied the tumbler in a long draught and set it down on the table. She jumped up quickly, came to him, and clasped her arms round his neck; she could but just reach, for he was tall. "And they've all been at me--and at you about me--in Woburn Square too, I suppose?" "On my honour, you weren't once mentioned the whole time, Winnie. They were all three just awfully kind, and glad to see me." Winnie's face wore much the same smile as when she had regarded Cicely Gaynor's erect back in retreat from her. "That was rather clever of them," she remarked. "Never to have mentioned me!" "Are you being quite just?" He spoke gently and kissed her. "No, dear," she said, and burst into tears. "How can I be just when they're trying to take you from me?" "Neither they nor anybody else can do that." And then--for a space again--she believed her lover and forgot the rest. But on the Monday morning there came two mauve envelopes. Winnie was down first as it chanced--and this time she looked at the postmarks. Both bore the imprint, "W.C.," clearly indicative of Bloomsbury. Winnie smiled, and proffered to herself an excuse for her detective investigation. "You see, I thought one of them might be from Cicely Gaynor. I'm quite sure she uses mauve envelopes too." The world of propriety seemed to be draping itself in mauve--not, after all, a very cheerful colour. Godfrey came in, glanced at the two mauve envelopes, glanced across at Winnie, and put the envelopes in his pocket. After a silence, he remarked that the bacon was very good. CHAPTER XI AN UNMENTIONED NAME As autumn turned to winter, Godfrey's Sundays at Woburn Square firmly re-established themselves as a weekly custom. Winnie could hardly deny that in the circumstances of the case they constituted a fair compromise. Woburn Square had a right to its convictions, no less than had Shaylor's Patch; it was not for her to deny that, however narrow she thought the convictions; and it would be neither just nor kind in her, even if it proved possible, to separate Godfrey from his family. At all events, as the visits became regular, the mauve envelopes arrived less frequently; some consolation lay in that, as one sound buffet may be preferred to a hundred pinches. She tried to reconcile herself to finding her own amusements for Sunday, and Godfrey, in loyalty, perhaps in penitence, dedicated Saturday's half-holiday to her instead. Yet a weight was on her spirit; she feared the steady unrelenting pressure of Woburn Square, of the family tie, the family atmosphere, Mrs. Ledstone's weak heart. In truth she had greater cause for fear than she knew, more enemies than she realized. There was her lover's native and deeply rooted way of looking at things, very different from the way into which she had forced or cajoled him. There was the fact that it was not always only the members of the family whom he met in Woburn Square. In spite of Godfrey's absence and Hobart Gaynor's defection, Winnie was not without friends and distractions on her Sundays. Sometimes Dick Dennehy would come, quite unshaken in his disapproval, but firm also in his affection, and openly scornful of Woburn Square. "You'd be bored to death there," he told her. "And as for the principle of the thing, if you can turn up your nose at the Church Catholic, I should think you could turn it up at the Ledstone family." A reasonable proposition, perhaps, but not convincing to Winnie. The Church Catholic did not take her lover away from her every Sunday or fill her with fears about him. Mrs. Lenoir would come sometimes, or bid Winnie to tea with her. With the stateliness of her manner there was now mingled a restrained pity. Winnie was to her a very ignorant little woman, essaying a task meet only for much stronger hands, and needing a much higher courage--nay, an audacity of which Winnie made no display. When her first passion had worn off, what she had got and what she had lost would come home to her. She was only too likely to find that she had got nothing; and she had certainly lost a great deal--for Mrs. Lenoir was inclined to make light of Cyril Maxon's "crushing." She was quite clear that she would not have been crushed, and thought the less of Winnie's powers of resistance. But, being a sensible woman, she said nothing of all this--it was either too late or too soon. Her view showed only in that hint of compassion in her manner--the pity of the wayworn traveller for the youth who starts so blithely on his journey. Winnie found consolation and pleasure in discussing her affairs with both of these friends. Another visitor afforded her a healthy relief from the subject. Godfrey had brought Bob Purnett to the studio one day. His first visit was by no means his last. His working season had set in; he hunted five days a week; but it was his custom to get back to town on Saturday evening and to spend Sunday there. So it fell out, naturally and of no malice aforethought, that his calls generally happened on Sunday afternoons, when Godfrey was away; sometimes he would stay on and share their simple supper, often he would take the pair out to dinner at a restaurant, and perhaps come back again with them--to talk and smoke, and so go home, sober, orderly, and in good time--ready for the morrow's work. Winnie and he were wholesome for one another. She forgot her theories; he kept better company than was his wont. They became good comrades and great friends. Godfrey was delighted; his absences on Sunday seemed in a way condoned; he was not haunted by the picture of a lonely Winnie. He ceased to accuse himself because he enjoyed being in Woburn Square, and therefore enjoyed it the more and the more freely. To be glad your lover can be happy in your absence is a good and generous emotion--whether characteristic of the zenith of passion is another question. Accustomed rather to lavishness than to a thrifty refinement, Bob marvelled at the daintiness of Winnie's humble establishment. He admired--and in his turn pitied. His friend's circumstances were no secret to him. "I wonder how you do it!" he would exclaim. "Do you have to work awfully hard?" "Well, it sometimes seems hard, because I didn't used to have to do it. In fact I used to be scolded if I did do it." She laughed. "I'm not pretending to like being poor." "But you took it on fast enough, Mrs. Ledstone. You knew, I mean?" "Oh yes, I knew, and I took it on, as you call it. So I don't complain." "I tell you what--some day you and Godfrey must come for a spree with me. Go to Monte Carlo or somewhere, and have a high old time!" "I don't believe I should like Monte Carlo a bit." "Not like it? Oh, I say, I bet you would." "I suppose it's prejudice to condemn even Monte Carlo without seeing it. Perhaps we shall manage to go some day. I think Godfrey would like it." "Oh, I took him once, all right, with--with some other friends." "And all you men gambled like anything, I suppose?" "Yes, we did a bit." Bob was inwardly amused at her assumption of the nature of the party--amused, yet arrested by a sudden interest, a respect, and a touch of Mrs. Lenoir's pity. If there had been only himself to confess about, he would have confessed. "You want keeping in order, Mr. Purnett," she said, smiling. "You ought to marry, and be obliged to spend your money on your wife." She puzzled Bob. Because here she was, not married herself! He could not get away from that rigid and logical division of his--and of many other people's, such as Dennehy and the like. "I'm not a marrying man. Heaven help the woman who married me!" he said, in whimsical sincerity. She saw the sincerity and met it with a plump "Why?" Bob was not good at analysis--of himself or other people (though he was making a rudimentary effort over Winnie). "The way a chap's built, I suppose." "What a very conclusive sort of argument!" she laughed. "How's Godfrey built, Mr. Purnett?" "Godfrey's all right. He'd settle down if he ever got married." The theories came tumbling in through the open door. Cowardly theories, had they refused an opening like that! "Well, isn't he?" asked Winnie, with dangerously rising colour. Bob Purnett was a picture of shame and confusion. "I could bite my tongue out, Mrs. Ledstone--hang it, you don't think I'm--er--what you'd call an interfering chap? It's nothing to me how my friends choose to--to settle matters between themselves. Fact is, I just wasn't thinking. Of course you're right. He--well, he feels himself married all right. And so he is married all right--don't you know? It's what a chap feels in the end, isn't it? Yes, that's right, of course." The poor man was terribly flustered. Yet behind all his aghastness at his blunder, at the back of his overpowering penitence, lay the obstinate question--could she really think it made no difference? No difference to a man like Godfrey Ledstone, whom he knew so well? Submerged by his remorse for having hurt her, yet the question lay there in the bottom of his mind. People neither regular nor irregular, people shifting the boundaries (really so well settled!)--how puzzling they were! What traps they laid for the heedless conversationalist, for the traditional moralist--or immoralist! "Oh, I don't expect you to understand!" Winnie exclaimed petulantly. "I wonder you come here!" "Wonder I come here! Good Lord!" He reflected on some other places he had been to--and meant to go to again perhaps. "You're a hopeless person, but you're very kind and nice." The colour faded gradually and Winnie smiled again, rather tremulously. "We won't talk about that any more. Tell me how the chestnut mare shapes?" Yet when she heard about the mare, she seemed no more than passably interested, and for once Bob was tongue-tied on the only subject about which he was wont to be eloquent. He could not forgive himself for his hideous inexplicable slip; because he had sworn to himself always to remember that Mrs. Ledstone thought herself as good as married. But so from time to time do our habits of thought trip up our fair resolutions; a man cannot always remember to say what he does not think, essential as the accomplishment is in society. Winnie regained her own serenity, but could not restore his. She saw it, and in pity offered no opposition when he rose to go. But she was gracious, accompanying him to the door, and opening it for him herself. He had just shaken hands and put on his hat, when he exclaimed in a surprised tone, "Hullo, who's that?" The studio stood a little back from the street; a small flagged forecourt gave access to it; the entrance was narrow, and a house projected on either side. To a stranger the place was not immediately easy to identify. Just opposite to it now there stood a woman, looking about her, as though in doubt. When the door opened and the light of the hall gas-jet streamed out, she came quickly through the gate of the forecourt and up to the house. Bob Purnett emitted only the ghost of a whistle, but Winnie heard it and looked quickly at him. There was no time to speak before the visitor came up. "Is this Mrs. Godfrey Ledstone's?" she began. Then, with a touch of surprise, she broke off, exclaiming, "Oh, you, Mr. Purnett!" It was not surprise that he should be there at all, but merely that she should chance to come when he was there. "Yes, er--how are you?" said Bob. "I--I'm just going." "If you know this lady, you can introduce me," Winnie suggested, smiling. "Though I'm afraid I'm receiving you rather informally," she added to the visitor. "I'm Mrs. Ledstone." "Yes," said the visitor. She turned quickly on Bob. "Mr. Purnett, please say nothing about this to--to Godfrey." "It's his sister." Bob effected the introduction as briefly as possible, and also as awkwardly. "They don't know I've come, you see." Amy Ledstone spoke jerkily. "Oh, that's all right, Miss Ledstone. Of course, I'm safe." He looked desperately at Winnie. "I--I'd better be off." "Yes, I think so. Good-bye. Do come in, Miss Ledstone." She laughed gently. "You've surprised us both, but I'm very glad to see you, even though they don't know you've come. Good-bye again, Mr. Purnett." She stood aside while Amy Ledstone entered the house, then slowly shut the door, smiling the while at Bob Purnett. After the door was shut, he stood where he was for several seconds, then moved off with a portentous shake of his head. He was amazed almost out of his senses. Godfrey's sister! Coming secretly! What for? More confusion of boundaries! He thought that he really had known Woburn Square better than this. The memory of his terrible slip, five minutes before so mercilessly acute, was engulfed in a flood of astonishment. He shook his head at intervals all the evening, till his companion at dinner inquired, with mock solicitude, where he had contracted St. Vitus's dance, and was it catching? Amy Ledstone was in high excitement. She breathed quickly as she sat down in the chair Winnie wheeled forward. Winnie herself stood opposite her visitor, very still, smiling faintly. "I came here to-day because I knew Godfrey wouldn't be here. Please don't tell him I came. He won't be back yet, will he?" "Not for an hour later than this, as a rule." "I left him in Woburn Square, you know." Winnie nodded. "And made my way here." "From what you say, I don't suppose you've come just to call on me, Miss Ledstone?" "No." She paused, then with a sort of effort brought out, "But I have been wanting to know you. Well, I'd heard about you, and--but it's not that." "Please don't be agitated or--distressed. And there's no hurry." "I wonder if you know anything of what daddy--my father--and mother are doing--of what's going on at home--in Woburn Square?" "I suppose I can make a guess at it." She smiled. "First the letters, then the visits! Didn't you write any of the letters?" "Yes--some." She stirred restlessly. "Why shouldn't I?" "I haven't blamed you. No doubt it's natural you should. But then--why come here, Miss Ledstone?" "How pretty you are!" Her eyes were fixed intently on Winnie's face. "Oh, it's not fair, not fair! It's not fair to--to anybody, I think. Do you know, your name's never mentioned at home--never--not even when we're alone?" "That part of it is done in the letters, I suppose? What am I called? The entanglement, or the lamentable state of affairs--or what? I don't know, you see. If you don't talk about me, we don't talk much about you here either." "Oh, well, it is--bad. But that's not what I meant--not all I meant, at least." She suddenly leant forward in her chair. "Does Godfrey ever talk of the people he meets besides ourselves?" "No, never. I shouldn't know anything about them, should I?" "Has he ever mentioned Mabel Thurseley?" "Mabel Thurseley? No. Who is she?" "They live near us--in Torrington Square. Her mother's a widow, an old friend of ours." "No, Godfrey has never said anything about Miss Thurseley." "She's rather pretty--not very, I think. They're comfortably off. I mean, as we think it. Not what you'd call rich, I suppose." She was remembering Mrs. Maxon. "My idea of riches nowadays isn't extravagant. But please tell me why you're talking to me about Miss Thurseley. Did you come here to do that?" "Yes, I did. You're never mentioned to her either. That's it." Winnie had never moved through the talk. Her slim figure, clad in close-clinging black, was outlined against the grey wall of the studio. "Oh, that's it! I see." "So I had to come. Because how is it right? How is it decent, Mrs. Maxon?" Winnie let the name pass, indeed hardly noticed it. "Wouldn't your ideas be considered rather eccentric?" she asked, with a smile. "Oh, I feel--I don't have ideas," murmured Amy Ledstone. "In your home I'm considered the thing that exists, but isn't talked about--that's done and got over." Again Amy's fixed gaze was on her companion. "Yes," she said, more than half assenting to Winnie's description of herself, yet with a doubt whether "thing" were wholly the word, whether, if "thing" were not the word, the home doctrine could be altogether right. "What about her then?" she went on. "What about----?" "Why, Mabel--Mabel Thurseley." "Oh yes! Well, I suppose she--she knows what everybody knows--she knows what often happens." "Oh, but while it's absolutely going on here! They might have waited a little at all events." "You mean that--it's happening?" Amy's figure rose erect in her chair again. "Try and see if you can get him to utter Mabel's name to you!" Winnie was struck with the suggestion. Her interest in her visitor suddenly became less derivative, more personal. She looked at Amy's passably well-favoured features and robust physique. There was really nothing about her to suggest eccentric ideas. "Oh, do please sit down! Don't stand there as if you were turned to stone!" Amy's appeal was almost a wail. The slim figure was so motionless; it seemed arrested in its very life. "I like you. It's very kind of you. I--I'm trying to think.... I can't take your word for it, you know. I love him--I trust him." Amy fidgeted again uncomfortably. "Daddy and mother are always at him. They think it--it will be redemption for him, you see." "Yes, I suppose they do--redemption!" Suddenly she moved, taking two steps nearer to Amy, so that she stood almost over her. "And you think----?" Amy looked up at her, with tears in her eyes. "Oh, I don't know! What am I to think? Why did you do it? Why did you make everything impossible either way? Somebody must be miserable now!" "Somebody was miserable before--I was. And I've been happy for a bit. That's something. It seems to me only one person need be miserable even now. Why is that worse?" The clock struck six. Amy started to her feet in alarm. "He might come back a little sooner than usual--we finish tea about half-past five. By the Tube----" She was nervously buttoning her jacket. "If he caught me!" she murmured. "Caught you here?" "Oh, how can I go against them? I'm not married--I have to live there." Winnie stretched out her thin arms. "Would you be with me if you could? Would you, Amy? I had such a bad time of it! And he was mine first, you know." Amy drew back ever so little. "Don't!" she gasped. "I really must go, Mrs.--oh, I really must go!" "Yes, you must go. He might come back soon now. Shall we ever meet again, I wonder?" "Oh, why did you?" "It's not what I did. It's what you think about it." "Because you seem to me wonderful. You're--you're so much above him, you know." "That doesn't help, even if it's true. I should hate to believe it." "Good-bye. You won't let anybody know I came? Oh, not Godfrey?" "You may trust me--and Mr. Purnett too, I think." "Oh yes; I can trust him. Good-bye!" Without offering her hand, far less with any suggestion of a more emotional farewell, Amy Ledstone drifted towards the door. This time Winnie did not escort or follow her guest. She stood still, watching her departure. She really did not know what to say to her; Amy's attitude was so balanced--or rather not balanced, but confused. Yet just before the guest disappeared, she found herself calling out: "I am grateful, you know. Because thinking as you do about me----" Amy turned her head for a moment. "Yes, but I don't know that you'll come worst out of it, after all," she said. Then Winnie was left alone, to wait for Godfrey--and to see whether he would make mention of Mabel Thurseley's name, that entirely new and formidably significant phenomenon. CHAPTER XII CHRISTMAS IN WOBURN SQUARE When holiday seasons approach, people of ample means ask: "Where shall we go?"; people of narrow: "Can we go anywhere?" The imminence of Christmas made Winnie realize this difference (no question now, as in days gone by, of Palestine and Damascus); but the edge of it was turned by a cordial invitation to spend Friday till Tuesday (Saturday was Christmas Day) at Shaylor's Patch. Her eyes brightened; her old refuge again looked peaceful and comforting. She joyfully laid the proposal before Godfrey. He was less delighted; he looked rather vexed, even a little sheepish. "They do jaw so," he objected. "Arguing about everything night and day! It bores a chap." "You weren't bored when you were there in the summer." "Oh, well, that was different. And I'm afraid mother will be disappointed." "About the Sunday, you mean? Mightn't you run up for the day?" He laid his hand on her shoulder. "I say, I leave it to you, Winnie. I leave it absolutely to you--but mother's set her heart on my spending Christmas with them. I've never missed a Christmas all my life, and--well, she's not very well, and has a fancy about it, you see." "Do it, of course, Godfrey. And come down to me on Sunday." Winnie was now determined that Woburn Square should have no grievances, except the great, inevitable, insuperable one. "You are a good sort, Winnie." He kissed her cheek. "But I don't know how you'll shift for yourself here!" "Oh, I'll put up in Woburn Square for a couple of nights, and do a theatre on Friday perhaps." So it was settled, with some embarrassment on Godfrey's part, with a faint smile on Winnie's. He would have two nights and a whole day at Woburn Square; and he had never mentioned Mabel Thurseley's name, not even though Winnie had made openings for him, had tried some delicate "pumping." And with whom did he think of "doing a theatre" on Friday night? Godfrey Ledstone--with whom everything was to have been straightforward, all above-board--found himself burdened with a double secret. He couldn't bring himself to tell Winnie of Mabel Thurseley. In the early days of his renewed intercourse with Mabel, he had half-heartedly proposed to his mother that the girl should be informed of his position; he had been tearfully prayed not to advertise the shame of his family. He had lost any sort of desire to advertise it now. He could not now imagine himself speaking of the matter to Mabel--telling her, right out, that he was living and meant to live with a woman who was not his wife in law; wives of any other sort were so entirely outside Mabel's purview. That he had been a bit of a rake--she would understand that, and perhaps in her heart not dislike it; but she would not understand and would thoroughly dislike Winnie Maxon. Anyhow, by now it was too late; he had played the bachelor too long--and, as a flattering if remorseful inner voice whispered, too successfully--on those Sundays in Woburn Square, whither Mabel often came, whence it was easy to slip across to Torrington Square. Mr. and Mrs. Ledstone never grudged him an hour's leave of absence if it was spent in calling on Mrs. Thurseley, their esteemed friend and neighbour. It was not that he had conceived any passionate love for Mabel. An amiable, steady, rather colourless girl, and (as Amy Ledstone said) not very pretty, she was hardly likely to engender that. He had not for her--and probably never could have--the torrent of feeling which carried him off his feet at Shaylor's Patch, and made him dare everything because of Winnie's bidding. And he was still very fond of Winnie herself. But the pull of the world--of his old world--was strong upon him; Mabel embodied it. Bob Purnett had been right about him; in his scheme of life, after the gaieties of youth, came "settling down." And when it came to seeing things as they were, when the blurring mists of passion lifted, he found it impossible to feel that life with Winnie was settling down at all. Life with Winnie--was that being settled, tranquil, serene, ready to look anybody in the face? No, it was still to be irregular, to have secrets, to be unable to tell people with whom you spent your time. It was neither one thing nor the other; it was the bond, without the guerdon, of service, it was defiance without the pleasures of lawlessness. Covertly, persistently, let it in justice be added lovingly, his mother and father worked upon him. The old pair showed diplomacy; they made no direct attack on Winnie nor upon his present mode of life; they only tried to let him see what a much pleasanter mode of life was open to him, and what joy he would give those who loved him best in the world if only he would adopt it. Bringing grey hairs with sorrow to the grave--not a pleasant thing for a son to feel that he is doing! Without scruple they used Mabel Thurseley in their game; without scruple they risked the girl's happiness; their duty, as they saw it, was to their son, and they thought of him only. Mabel had no throng of suitors and none of the arts of a coquette. The good-looking young man soon made his impression, and soon perceived that he had made it. All looked easy, and this time really straightforward. It was a powerful assault to which he exposed himself when he once again began to frequent Woburn Square. Amy Ledstone looked on, irritable, fretful, in scorn of herself, calling herself a traitor for having told Winnie of Mabel, and a coward for not daring to tell Mabel about Winnie. But she dared not. A lifelong habit of obedience, a lifelong custom of accepting parental wisdom even when she chafed under it, the tyranny of that weak heart, were too much for her. She lacked the courage to break away, to upset the family scheme. And to work actively for Winnie was surely a fearful responsibility, however strongly she might pity her? To work for Winnie was, in the end, to range herself on the side of immorality. Let Winnie work for herself! She was warned now--that was enough and more than enough. Yet Amy's sympathy made her cold and irritable to her brother. He misconstrued the cause of her attitude, setting it down to a violent disapproval of Winnie and a championship of Mabel Thurseley. The old people petted, Amy kept him at arm's length, but to Godfrey their end and purpose seemed to be the same. "Winnie doesn't realize what I go through for her," he often thought to himself, when his sister was cross, when his mother said good-bye to him with tears in her eyes, when his father wrung his hand in expressive silence, when he manfully made himself less agreeable than he knew how to be to Mabel Thurseley. Yet--and the fact was significant--in spite of all, it was with a holiday feeling that, after seeing Winnie off to Shaylor's Patch, he packed his bag and repaired home--he thought of Woburn Square as home. He was greeted with great joy. "Fancy having you with us for two whole days!" said his mother. "Like old times!" exclaimed his father, beaming with smiles on the hearthrug. The theatre had been arranged for. Mrs. Ledstone's health forbade her being a member of the party, but Mr. Ledstone was ready for an outing. Amy would go; and Mabel Thurseley had been invited to complete the quartette. Amy looked after her father, to Godfrey fell the duty of squiring Miss Thurseley. They had good seats in the dress-circle; Mr. Ledstone, Amy, Mabel, Godfrey--that was the order of sitting. The play was a capital farce. They all got into high spirits, even Amy forgetting to chide herself and content to be happy. Mabel's life was not rich in gaiety; she responded to its stimulus readily. Her cheeks glowed, her eyes grew bright and challenging. She made a new appeal to Godfrey. "I can't let her think me a fool." So he excused his attentions and his pleasure in them. "I suppose you go a lot to the theatre, don't you?" she asked. "I expect you're _blasé_!" "No, I don't go much." "Why not? Don't you care about going alone?" "Now why do you assume I need go alone?" "No, of course you needn't! How silly of me! Do you ever take--ladies?" She was roguish over this question. "Yes, now and then." "Mamma wouldn't let me go alone with a man." "Oh, we don't ask mamma. We just go." "Do you go out somewhere every evening?" "Oh no. I often stay at home, and read--or work." He had said nothing untrue, but it was all one big lie, what he was saying--a colossal misrepresentation of his present life. The picture his last answer raised in her mind--the man alone in his lonely room, reading or working! Poor man, all alone! "We girls get into the way of thinking that bachelors are always gay, but I suppose they're not?" "Indeed they're not." Godfrey's answer was decisive and rather grim. "Or else," she laughed, "they'd never want to marry, would they?" "Anyhow, one gets tired of gaiety and wants something better." His eyes rested on hers for a moment. She blushed a little; and the curtain rose on the second act. "How your mother adores you!" she began at the next interval. "She'd die for you, I think. She says you're the best son in the world, and have never given her any trouble." Godfrey's conscience suffered a twinge--no less for his mother than for himself. "I'm afraid mothers don't know all about their sons, always." "No, I suppose not. But there are some people you know you can trust." "Come, I say, you're making me out too perfect by half!" She laughed. "Oh, I don't accuse you of being a milksop. I don't like milksops, Mr. Godfrey." So she went on, innocently showing her interest and her preference, and in the process making Godfrey feel that his family and himself were accomplices in a great and heinous conspiracy. But there was still time to get out of it, to put an end to it. There were two ways out of it, just two and no more, thought Godfrey. Either she must be told, or there must cease to be anything to tell her. But the sternest moralist would hardly demand that momentous decisions and heart-rending avowals should be made on Christmas Day. That surely is a close time? So thought Godfrey Ledstone, and, the religious observances of the day having been honoured by all the family, the rest of it passed merrily in Woburn Square. The Thurseleys, mother and daughter, came to spend the afternoon, and came again to dinner. "So good of you to take pity on us," said Mrs. Thurseley, a soft-voiced pleasant woman, who was placid and restful, and said the right thing. She would make an excellent mother-in-law--for some man. Like the old-fashioned folk they were, they had a snapdragon and plenty of mistletoe and plenty of the usual jokes about both. As there was nobody else on whom the jokes could plausibly be fastened (Mr. Ledstone's reminiscences of his own courting tended towards the sentimental, while the subject was, of course, too tender in widowed Mrs. Thurseley's case), they were naturally pointed at Mabel and Godfrey. Mabel laughed and blushed. Really Godfrey had to play his part; he could not look a fool, who did not know how to flirt. He ended by flirting pretty hard. He had his reward in the beams of the whole circle--except Amy. She seemed rather out of humour that Christmas; she pleaded a headache for excuse. When Mrs. Ledstone said good-night to her son, she embraced him with agitated affection, and whispered: "I feel happier than I've done for a long while, Godfrey darling." This was the pressure, the assault, of love--love urgent and now grown hopeful. But his Christmas was not to end on that note. There was also the pressure of disapproval and of scorn. Neither was easy to bear to a disposition at once affectionate and pliable. The old people went to bed. Amy stayed, watching her brother light his pipe. "Not going to bed, Amy? One pipe, and I'm off!" "What do you think you're doing?" He turned from the fire, smiling in his disarming way. "I've known all the evening I was going to catch it from you, Amy. I saw it in your eye. But what can a fellow do? He must play up a bit. I haven't actually said anything." "What does Mabel think?" There was a formidable directness about her. But he had his answer, his defence to what he supposed to be the whole indictment. "Come now, be fair. I wanted to tell her--well, I wanted her to have a hint given her. I told the mater so, but the mater wouldn't hear of it. The bare idea sent her all--well, absolutely upset her." The events of the day and the two evenings had affected Amy Ledstone. "You wanted to tell her? Her? Which?" "Good Lord, Amy!" He was knocked out. What a question to be asked in Woburn Square! "Which?" Had they both rights? Strange doctrine, indeed, for Woburn Square. "I was speaking of Miss Thurseley, and I think you knew it." "Oh, I knew it." "Anything else isn't your business at all. I never understood why the pater told you." "There are just two decent things for you to do, Godfrey--let Mabel alone or drop Mrs. Maxon." His own feelings, most concisely put, most trenchantly interpreted! His vague consciousness that the thing came to that was crystallized into an ultimatum. Against this he could not maintain his peevish resentment at his sister's interference or his assumed prudishness over her talking about Winnie. The pretext of shame would not serve, and his weak nature turned for help to a stronger. She was sitting by the table, rigid, looking straight before her. He sat down by her, laying his pipe on the table. "By Jove, you're right! I'm in an awful mess. Which is it to be, Amy?" "Oh, that's not my business. But you needn't be a sneak to both of them, need you?" He laid his hand on hers, but she drew hers away sharply. "You don't understand how I was led into it. I say, you're not going to--to give me away to Mabel, are you?" "No. I'm afraid of father and mother. I believe I ought to, but I daren't." "I say, above all things, for heaven's sake, don't think of that!" "But you say you proposed it yourself, Godfrey." He jumped up from his chair in an agony of restlessness. He had proposed it, but only as a thing to be rejected. He had proposed it, but that was weeks ago--when he had not been coming to Woburn Square for very long, and had not seen so much of Mabel Thurseley. The idea seemed quite different now. He stared ruefully at Amy. His entreaty, her reply, threw a cold, cruel light on the recent workings of his mind. He saw now where he was going, where he was being led and driven, by love, by scorn, by the world he had been persuaded to think himself strong enough to defy--his world, which had only one name for Winnie Maxon. He was exasperated. Why did the two things rend him asunder, like wild horses? "Well, what is it to be, Amy?" he asked again. The maiden sister sat unmoved in her chair, her eyes set on the ugly brown paper on the wall opposite. Her voice came level, unimpassioned, with a suggestion of dull despair. "What's the good of asking me, Godfrey? What do I know about it? Nobody has ever loved me. I've never even been in love myself. I don't know what people do when they're in love. I don't know how they feel. I suppose I've been awfully unkind to you?" "Well, of course, a fellow isn't himself." He turned sharp round on her. "It was only to last as long as we both wanted--as long as we both wanted one another. O Lord, how can I talk about it, even to you?" "You needn't mind that. I've seen her. I went to see her. I asked her if she knew anything about Mabel. She didn't. Does she now? I think her wonderful. Miles above you or me, really. Oh, I know she's--she's whatever daddy and mother would choose to call her. But you made her that--and you might as well play fair, Godfrey." "I don't understand you, Amy. I thought you--of all people----How in the world did you come to go and see her? When?" "One Sunday, when I knew you were here." "She never said a word to me about--about Mabel Thurseley." "She never would. I'm not taking her part. But I should like my brother to be a man." "She's never told me that you came. I can't understand your going." He was opposite to her now. She raised her eyes to his, smiling bitterly. "Don't try. Still, she's a woman, and my brother's--friend." "Oh, you don't know a thing about it!" "I said so. I know it. That's how it is with girls like me. Girls! Oh, well! If I did know, I might be able to help. I'm not your enemy, really, Godfrey." "Everybody makes it fearfully hard for me. I--I want to keep faith, Amy." "You're not doing it." He threw himself into the big arm-chair that flanked the grate and its dying fire. He broke out against Winnie in a feeble peevishness: "Why did she make me do it? Any fool could have seen it would never work!" "You needn't have done it," she retorted mercilessly. "Needn't have done it? Oh, you don't know anything about it, as you say. What could you know? If you did know, you'd understand how men--yes, and by George, women too--do things. Things they can't stand by, and yet want to, things that are impossible, and yet have been done and have to be reckoned with. That's the way it happens." Full of despair, his voice had a new note of sincerity. Amy looked across the table at him with a long, scrutinizing gaze. "I expect I haven't allowed for all of it," she said at last. "I expect I don't know how difficult it is." She rose, moved round the table, and sat on the arm of the big chair beside him. "I'm sorry if I've been unkind, dear. But"--she caressed his hair--"don't be unkind to her--not more than you can help." "To Mabel?" He was looking up to her now, and whispering. "Oh no," she smiled. "You're going to marry Mabel. You aren't married to Mrs. Maxon, you see." She kissed his brow. "Make it as easy as you can for Winnie." "By God, I love Winnie!" Again her hand smoothed and caressed his hair. "Yes, but you can't do it," she said. "I don't think I could. But mightn't you tell her you can't? She's got more courage than you think, Godfrey." She rose to her feet, rather abruptly. "You see, when she knows the truth about you, she won't care so much, perhaps." Her brother made her no answer; he lay back in the big chair, staring at the dead fire. Nor did she seem to have any more to say to him. She had said a good deal in the whole conversation, and had summed up a large part of it in her last sentence. When Winnie knew all about him she might not care so much! Was that true--or was it the judgment of the maiden sister, who thought that love was dependent on esteem? "I'm going to bed. I've been a wet blanket this Christmas, Godfrey." "My Lord, what a Christmas!" For the capital farce, and the merry dinner, the snapdragon, mistletoe, and jokes were all forgotten. The woman who knew nothing about the matter had set the matter in its true light. With another kiss, a half-articulate 'My dear!' and a sudden sob, she left him to the contemplation of it. CHAPTER XIII CHRISTMAS AT SHAYLOR'S PATCH On Christmas Eve Winnie had regained her old haven at Shaylor's Patch. It seemed as restful and peaceful as ever, nay, even to an unusual degree, for the only other guest was Dennehy, and Dennehy and Alice (again home for holidays) exercised some restraining force on sceptical argument. Both father and mother were intent on giving the child 'a good time,' and Stephen at least could throw himself into a game with just as much zest as into a dispute or a speculation. Here, too, were holly and mistletoe; and, if not a snapdragon, yet a Christmas tree and a fine array of presents, carefully hidden till the morrow. As they had preceded the Faith, so the old observances survived all doubts about it. But though the haven was the same, the mariner was in a different case. When she had come before, Shaylor's Patch had seemed the final end of a storm-tossed voyage; now it was but a harbour into which her barque put for a few hours in the course of a journey yet more arduous, a journey which had little more than begun; the most she could look for was a few hours of repose, a brief opportunity to rest and refit. Her relation towards her friends and hosts was changed, as it seemed to her, profoundly; she looked at Stephen and Tora Aikenhead with new eyes. The position between them and her was to her feelings almost reversed. They were no longer the intrepid voyagers to whose stories her ignorance hearkened so admiringly. In ultimate truth, now newly apparent, they had made no voyages; from the safe recesses of the haven they did but talk about the perils of the uncharted sea. She was now the explorer; she was making the discoveries about which they only gossiped and speculated. She remembered Mrs. Lenoir's kindly yet half-contemptuous smile over Stephen's facile theories and easy assurance of his theories' easy triumph. She was not as Mrs. Lenoir by the difference of many years and much knowledge; for Mrs. Lenoir still had that same smile for her. None the less, something of the spirit of it was in her when she came the second time to Shaylor's Patch. But she resolved to take her brief rest and be thankful for her respite. Tora's benignant calm, Stephen's boyish gaiety, the simplicity of the child, Dennehy's loyal friendship--here were anodynes. For the moment nothing could be done; why then fret and worry about what to do? And if she spoke of or hinted at trouble, might it not seem to be in some sense like imputing a responsibility to her hosts? Yet she was asking much of herself in this resolve. She could hold her tongue, but she could not bind her thoughts. In the morning Dennehy was off early on a five-mile walk to the nearest town, to hear Mass. The question of attending church Stephen referred to Alice's arbitrament; she decided in the affirmative. "Whose turn?" asked Stephen of his wife. "Mine," said Tora, with the nearest approach to an expression of discontent that Winnie had ever seen on her face. Winnie stepped into the breach. "Oh, you look rather tired, and we've a busy day before us! Let me take Alice." So it was agreed, and Alice ran off to get ready. "Do you always leave the question to her?" "What else could we do? We say nothing against it, but how could we force her?" "She's forced at school, I suppose?" "I don't think any doubts suggest themselves. It's just part of the discipline. As a fact, I think the child's naturally religious. If so----" He waved his hands tolerantly. Winnie laughed. "If so, she'll soon be rather shocked at her parents." "It's quite arguable, Winnie, that it's a good thing for children to see their parents doing some things which they would naturally think--or at any rate be taught to think--wrong. They know by experience that the parents are on the whole a decent sort--kind and so on--and they learn not to condemn other people wholesale on the strength of one or two doubtful or eccentric practices. Do you see what I mean? It promotes breadth of view." "I dare say it's arguable--most things are here--but I won't argue it, or we shall be late for church." When Godfrey Ledstone attended church with his family on the same day, he went without any questioning, not conscious of any peculiarity in his attitude towards the Church, though well aware of what the Church's attitude would be towards him, if its notice happened to be called to the facts. What of that? One compromised with the Church just as one compromised with the world; the code had provisions as applicable to the one negotiation as to the other. He did not go to church regularly, but, when he did, he took part in the service with an untroubled gratification, if not with any particular spiritual benefit. On this occasion he achieved what was, considering the worries which oppressed him, a very creditable degree of attention. Neither was Winnie--in the little church at Nether End--convicted of sin; after all, that is not the particular note sought to be struck by a Christmas service--the Church has its seasons. But she was overcome by an unnerving sense of insignificance. The sermon dwelt on the familiar, yet ever striking, theme that all over the world, in well-nigh every tongue, this service was being held in honour of, and in gratitude for, the great Event of this day. That seemed a tremendous thing to stand up against. There is majesty in great organizations, be they spiritual or secular. Are insignificant atoms to flout them? Or can the argument from insignificance be turned, and the rebel plead that he is so small that it does not matter what he does? The organizations will not allow the plea. Insignificant as you are, they answer, little as your puny dissent affects us, yet it is of bad example, and if you persist in it we will, in our way, make you unhappy and uncomfortable. Now mankind has been, in the course of its eventful history, from time to time convinced that many things do matter and that many do not, and opinions have varied and shall vary thereanent. But nobody has had any real success in convincing mankind that it does not matter whether it is happy or not--in the long run. Mankind is obstinately of the contrary opinion. At the church door Dennehy was waiting for her and Alice--his Mass heard and ten good miles of country road behind him; spiritually and physically fortified. He was not handsome, but middle-age on its approach found him clean in wind and limb--temperate, kindly (outside politics), and really intensely happy. "It's a concession for me to come as far as the door of this place," he said, smiling. Winnie glanced warningly at Alice. "You needn't mind her--the poor child hears everything! But it's my belief that Heaven has made her a fine old Tory, and they can't hurt her." "You approving of Tories! Mr. Dennehy!" She turned to the child. "You liked it, Alice?" "Didn't you hear me singing?" It seemed a good retort. Alice had sung lustily. She did not seem inclined to talk. She walked beside them in a demure and absent gravity. Over her head they looked at one another; the child was thinking of the story of the Child, and finding it not strange, but natural and beautiful, the greatest of all her beloved fairy stories--and yet true. Dennehy gently patted Alice's shoulder. "In God's good time!" he murmured. "What do you mean?" Winnie asked, in a low voice. "True people will find truth, and sweet people do sweet things," he answered. Then he laughed and snapped his fingers. "And the Divvle take the rest of humanity!" "Everybody except the Irish, you mean?" "I mustn't be supposed to let in Ulster," he warned her with a twinkle. "But there's an English soul or two I'd save, Mrs. Ledstone." "I don't like your being false to your convictions. I've one name that I've not denied and that nobody denies me. It's Winnie." "Winnie it shall be on my lips too henceforth," he answered. "And I thank you." Respect for his convictions? Yes. But there was more behind her permission, her request. There was a great friendliness, and, with it, a new sense that 'Mrs. Winifred Ledstone' might prove to be a transitory being, that the title was held precariously. Why need her chosen friends be bound to the use of it? Richard Dennehy was by now one of that small band. He was so loyal and sympathetic, though he was also very cocksure in his condemnations, and terribly certain that he and his organization alone had got hold of the right end of the stick. Yet the cocksureness was really for the organization only; it left him in himself a humble man, not thinking himself so clever as the emancipated persons among whom he moved, rather regretting that such able minds should be so led astray. One habit indeed he had, of which Stephen Aikenhead would humorously complain; he used emotion as an argumentative weapon. There are words and phrases which carry an appeal independent of the validity of the idea they express, a strength born of memory and association. They can make a man feel like a child again, or make him feel a traitor, and either against his reason. "Spells and incantations I call them," said Stephen, "and I formally protest against their use in serious discussion." "And why do you call them that?" "Because they depend for their effect on a particular form of words--either a particularly familiar or a particularly beautiful formula. If you expressed the same idea in different language, its power would be gone; at least it would seem just as legitimately open to question as any profane statement that I may happen to make. Now to depend for its efficacy on the exact formula and not on the force of the idea is, to my mind, the precise characteristic of a spell, charm, or incantation, Dick." "I dare say the holy words make you uncomfortable, my boy!" "Exactly! And is it fair? Why am I, a candid inquirer, to be made uncomfortable? Prove me wrong, convince me if you can, but why make me uncomfortable?" Winnie, an auditor of the conversation, laughed gently. "I think that's what you tried to do to me, coming back from church--when you talked about 'God's good time,' I mean." Dennehy scratched his head. "I don't do it on purpose. They just come to my lips. And who knows?--It might be good for you!" Alice ran in, announcing that it was time for the Christmas tree. Even at Shaylor's Patch discussion languished for the rest of the day, and Winnie had her hours of respite. Indeed, it was a matter of hours only; peace was not to endure for her even over the Sunday. Early in the morning the maid brought her a telegram from Godfrey Ledstone: "Caught slight chill. Think better not travel. Don't interrupt visit. Shall stay Woburn Square.--GODFREY." It was significant of how far her mind had forecast probabilities that she brushed aside the excuse without a moment's hesitation. Does an hour's journey on a mild morning frighten a strong man if he really wants to go? At any rate Winnie was not inclined to give Godfrey the benefit of that doubt. He did want to stay in Woburn Square, or he did not want to come to Shaylor's Patch. Whichever way it was put, it came to much the same thing. It was another defeat for her, another victory for the family. And for Mabel Thurseley? That, too, seemed very likely. Her heart quailed in grief and apprehension, as it looked into a future forlorn and desolate; but not for a moment did she think of giving up the struggle. Instead of that, she would fight more resolutely, more fiercely. This was not the common case of a variable man's affections straying from one woman to another. She knew that it was his courage which had failed first, and by its failure undermined the bastion of his love. He had been ashamed of her first; if he had now ceased--or begun to cease--to love her, it was because she made him ashamed before his family and friends, because she put him "in a false position" and made things awkward and uncomfortable. That he felt like that was in part--nay, largely--her own fault. Either from mistaken confidence, or chivalry, or scruple, or a mixture of the three, she had exposed him, unsupported, to the fullest assault of Woburn Square, and of all it represented. She had been wrong; she should have stood on her rights and forbidden him to go there unless she were received also. At the beginning she could have done it; she ought to have done it. Was it too late to do it now? She formed a plan of campaign. She would take him away, put the sea between him and his people, the sea between him and Mabel Thurseley. There was money in the till sufficient for a holiday. His very weakness, his responsiveness to his surroundings, favoured success. He would recover his courage, and hence-forward a ban should rest on his family till his family removed its ban from her. There was no church for her that morning; she was not in the mood. Stephen had to go, since Tora sophistically maintained that she had attended by proxy the day before. Winnie strolled with Dick Dennehy, when he came back from his early expedition. "It's funny we're such friends, when you think me so wicked," she said. "You're not wicked, though you may do a wicked thing--through wrong-headedness." "You can't understand that I look on myself as Godfrey's wife for all my life or his." "Didn't you once think the same about Mr. Maxon?" "Oh, you really are----!" Winnie laughed irritably. "And you ran away from him. What happens if Master Godfrey runs away from you?" Winnie glanced at him sharply. Rather odd that he should put that question! Was there any suspicion among her friends, any at Shaylor's Patch? "Because," Dennehy continued, "you wouldn't go on from man to man, being married to each of 'em for life temporarily, would you?" Winnie laughed, if reluctantly. But there is hardly anything that a ready disputant cannot turn to ridicule. "How you try to pin people down!" she complained. "You and your principles! I know what I should like to see happen, Mr. Dennehy." "Ah, now--'Dick'--as a mere matter of fairness, Winnie!" "Well, Dick, what I should just love to see is you in love with somebody who was married, or had been divorced, or something of that sort, and see how you'd like your principles yourself." She looked mischievous and very pretty. Dennehy shook his head. "We're all miserable sinners. But I don't believe I'd do it." "What, fall in love, or give way to it?" "The latter. The former's out of any man's power, I think." "What would you do?" "Emigrate to America." "Out of the frying-pan into the fire! It's full of divorced people, isn't it?" "Not the best Irish society." He laughed. "Well, you're chaffing me." "Oh no, I'm not. I'm serious. I should like to see the experiment. Dick, if Godfrey does run away, as you kindly suggest, give me a wide berth! Oh, is it quite impossible that, if I tried, I might--make you miserable?" "If you'll flirt with me after this fashion every time we meet, I'll not be miserable--I'll be very happy." "Ah, but that's only the beginning! The beginning's always happy." The sadness in her voice struck him. "You poor dear! You've had bad luck, and you've fallen among evil counsellors, in which term, heaven forgive me, I include my dear friends here at Shaylor's Patch." "I'll try your principles another way. If you were Godfrey, would you leave me--now?" He twisted his moustache and hesitated. "Well, there you have me," he admitted at last. "If a man does what he did, as a gentleman he must stand to be damned for it." "Godfrey's free to go, of course--that's our bargain. But you wouldn't have made a bargain like that?" "I would not, Winnie. To do me justice, I believe I'd think it enough to be ruining one woman, without providing for my liberty to ruin another as soon as I wanted to." Winnie laid her hand on his arm for a moment. "How pleasantly we quarrel!" she said. "And why wouldn't we?" he asked, with native surprise that a quarrel should be considered a thing inherently unpleasant. "Ah, here come Stephen and Alice, back from church! I'll go and run races with her, and get an appetite for lunch." Stephen lounged up, his pipe in full blast. "Stephen, how is it that this old world gets on at all, with everybody at loggerheads with everybody else?" "I've often considered that. The solution is economic--purely economic, Winnie. You see, people must eat." "So far the Court is with you, Stephen." "And in anything except a rudimentary state of society they must feed one another. Because no man has the genius to make for himself all the things he wants to eat. Consequently--I put the argument summarily--you will find that, broadly speaking, all the burning and bludgeoning and fighting, all the killing in short, and equally all the refraining from killing, are in the end determined by the consideration whether your action one way or the other will seriously affect your supply of food--to which, in civilized society, you may add clothes, and so on." "Does that apply to the persecution of opinions?" "Certainly it does--usually by way of limitation of killing, though an exception must be made for human sacrifice. There have been temporary aberrations of judgment, but, generally speaking, they never killed more than a decent minimum of any useful heretics--not, anyhow, where secular statesmen had the last word. They had to make some kind of a show, of course, to satisfy, as they supposed, their superior officers. Still--they left a good many Jews, Winnie!" "Wasn't that the spread of toleration?" "Certainly--toleration based on food, originally, and afterwards perhaps reinforced by doubt." He broke into a laugh. "But even to-day I'm hanged if I'd trust to the doubt without the food!" He beamed on her. "I'll tell you a secret--religion's all food, Winnie." Winnie had asked for the exposition--but she had had enough of it. Even Stephen's last--and rather startling--thesis failed to draw further inquiries. "It seems to follow that we oughtn't to keep lunch waiting," she said, laughing, as she put her arm through his. "I do love Shaylor's Patch," she went on, gently patting his arm. "You can always forget yourself and your troubles by talking nonsense--or sense--about something or other. If I come to grief again"--her voice shook for an instant--"you'll give me a shed to lie in here, won't you, Stephen?" "My poor house is thine, and all that is in it," he answered orientally. "Yes, in a way I know it is--and so I needn't quite starve," said Winnie. CHAPTER XIV A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION To Winnie's few but devoted adherents Cyril Maxon was not a man, but a monster, a type of tyranny, the embodied symbol of an intolerable servitude; even Dick Dennehy, staunch champion of the institution, had no charity for the individual. Needless to say that this was not at all the view Mr. Maxon took of himself, and not entirely the judgment which an impartial observer would form of him. There were many women with whom he might have got on very well, women of a submissive temper, meek women, limited women, sly women who hoodwinked under a show of perfect obedience. He would not have been hard to hoodwink, had Winnie been content to attack her problem in that old-fashioned way. Or, again, an extremely clever and diplomatic woman--but she can make a good husband out of the rawest of raw material, mere flesh and bone with (as Stephen Aikenhead would certainly have added) the economic prerequisite. From the moment that his wife had identified herself with the Ledstone family--his memory of Mr. Ledstone was vivid and horrible--he had set aside the idea that she would soon 'have had enough of it.' It was no longer in his power to hold to that conclusion. Now it was he himself who had had more than enough of it. She was done with. He took up his life alone. At first he sought to mitigate solitude by constant work. It was not a complete success. Then he installed an unmarried sister in his house. She was his senior, her temper was akin to his; the experiment lasted just a month, after which Miss Maxon returned to Broadstairs. Then gradually he began to seek society again, to show his face at his old resorts, to meet the women who admired him, who gushed over him as interesting, clever, and rising. They gushed still more now, hinting, each with what degree of delicacy nature had given her, their sympathy with him, and their unlimited astonishment at the folly and perverseness of Mrs. Maxon. He found this the most effective specific that he had tried. It would be unpardonably rash to generalize, but it may be hazarded that in some cases the man who treats his wife worst misses her most. A comrade can perhaps be replaced, a new slave is hard to come by. Besides, Cyril Maxon's principles forbade the search for one, and now he had to apply his principles to his own case. A year ago nothing in the whole world would have seemed so unlikely--Fate at its pranks again! It makes us pay for sins and principles alike--perhaps the best way (with deference to the _à priori_ philosophers) of learning to appraise either. Cyril Maxon was very rising by now; people called him a certainty for a judgeship in some ten years' time (he was only thirty-eight); and the ladies were very sympathetic. Several of them were members of Mr. Attlebury's congregation, and the personal friends of that genial but exacting apostle. Some of the ladies wondered how Mr. Attlebury could be so responsive, and yet so definitely restricted in his responsiveness; they thought of his demeanour as of an occult art, and might have been right had they stopped at calling it esoteric. Attlebury himself felt no difficulty, not even a consciousness of effort. He met them in absolute intimacy of soul to soul. Happily in all creeds--and discreeds--there are men and women who can do it. At first Cyril Maxon had refused to talk about his misfortune, which, of course, soon became public property, and the hints about it had to be almost impossibly delicate. But, as time went on, he found two or three friends to whom he could, more or less, open his heart. There was Mrs. Ladd, an elderly woman with hearty kindly ways and a mind shrewdly matter of fact. There was Miss Fortescue, one of Attlebury's best 'workers,' a benevolent sensible spinster of five-and-forty. There was also Lady Rosaline Deering, daughter of a Scotch peer, widow of a Colonial Administrator. She was a woman of three-and-thirty, or thereabouts, tall and of graceful carriage; her nose was too long, and so was her chin, but she had pretty hair and fine eyes. She was a bit of a blue-stocking and dabbled in theology and philosophy. "Not afraid to think for myself," was the way in which she defined her attitude, in contradistinction (as she implied) from the attitude of most of the women who sat at Mr. Attlebury's feet. She admired Attlebury, but she thought for herself. "One can't quite give up one's reason," she would say, with a winning smile. "Besides, I was brought up in the Church of Scotland, you know." This ecclesiastical origin seemed to give her independence; she paid only so much voluntary allegiance as she chose to Attlebury and his Church; she could in case of need fall back on her Church of origin, as though on a domicile never finally forfeited. Also in her husband's lifetime she had seen the cities of men and known their minds. In fact she might be considered emancipated, and her adherence to Mr. Attlebury's school was rather æsthetic than dogmatic; she thought that religion should be invested with beauty, but she was not afraid to talk of some of its doctrines as possibly 'symbolic.' All the three ladies took a great interest in Maxon, but by common consent the first place was yielded to Lady Rosaline. Mrs. Ladd could fortify him, Miss Fortescue could cheer him up; they both recognized that Lady Rosaline could do something else, a subtle thing into which femininity entered more specifically; one of the things which Mrs. Maxon ought to have given him, but obviously had not; perhaps something like what Lady Rosaline herself derived from Attlebury's church services, a blend of intellectual and æsthetic satisfaction. Mrs. Ladd and Miss Fortescue were weak in the æsthetic element. Moreover there was a special bond of sympathy between Lady Rosaline and Maxon. The late Colonial Administrator had been by no means all that he should have been as a husband, and when death severed the union, it was but a very slender string that its shears cut. Mrs. Ladd and Miss Fortescue had hinted at this sad story; Lady Rosaline herself told it, though in reticent outline only, to Cyril one evening in November when he happened to have leisure to go to tea with her at her flat in Hans Place. "It's a terrible thing to have to say, but really his death--poor fellow!--ended a situation which had become almost unendurable to any woman of fine feelings. He was never rude or unkind to me, but one's pride! And the solitude of the soul, Mr. Maxon!" "Still you endured it bravely." His tone subtly asked sympathy, while his words gave it. "I wonder if I could have gone on! I should shock Mr. Attlebury, I suppose, but I thought more than once of divorce. Our home--when we were at home--had always been in Scotland. That would have made it easier, and it needn't have hurt his career anything like so much. He could just have left me and stayed away the necessary time, you see. After the last--the last trouble--he offered me that, if I wished it." "You must have been under a considerable temptation." "Yes. But then his health began to fail, and--and things were different. I had to stay and look after him; and so we became better friends at the end. I really don't bear malice now." "I think with Attlebury on that question, you know." "Yes, I suppose you do. But then, isn't there--room for doubt?" "I scarcely think so, Lady Rosaline." "Oh, but it is hard sometimes, then!" she murmured, looking into the fire. "Do you think there's nothing in the view that the offence itself is a dissolution?--That it's the offender himself--or herself--who puts asunder, not the judge, who merely deals with the legal consequences?" "No, I can't see that." He paused, frowning, then went on: "I can understand a man maintaining that it's given as a counsel of perfection, rather than an absolutely binding rule--I mean, that a man should try, but, if it proves beyond his strength, he might not be absolutely condemned." "Does it hurt you to talk about it?" "Not to people who understand." "How strange she didn't understand you better! Do you mind my saying that?" "If I'd ever had any doubts about the substantial rights of the matter, her subsequent proceedings would have dispelled them completely." "Yes, they throw a light back, don't they?" Cyril Maxon threw more light, setting forth the preposterous charges which his wife had levelled against him before she went away. He put them as honestly as he could; they were to him so unreasonable that he was not in the least afraid to submit them to an impartial judge. They seemed just as unreasonable to Lady Rosaline. She was as secure of herself as was Mrs. Lenoir; she was not afraid of being 'crushed.' (Perhaps being 'Lady Rosaline' helped her a little there.) And Winnie's alleged grievances fell so short of her own tale of wrongs as to seem a ridiculously inadequate excuse. "I can't understand her any more than you can," she said. "There's really no use in saying any more about her, Lady Rosaline. It's a matter of character." "And she's actually with this man Ledstone now?" He spread out his hands and bowed his head. It was both answer and comment enough. "They'd marry, I suppose, if they could?" Cyril Maxon was not quick at marking the delicate shades of a woman's mood; there at least Winnie was right. He did not now detect the underlying note of pity in Lady Rosaline's voice. It was, indeed, no more than hinted. He made another gesture--this time of pronounced impatience and distaste. Lady Rosaline smiled faintly, and changed the subject. When he had left her, she sat on by the fire, musing. She was a widow with few happy memories and no fond regrets; she was childless; in spite of her high connections she was by no means rich; she could not afford to travel much in the style she desired, or to entertain much. And she was thirty-three. Surveying her position as a whole, she did not take a roseate view of it. "I'm bound to drop out in a few years"--that was how she summed up her prospects--not a cheerful summary, it must be admitted. She had not the contentment of a Mrs. Ladd nor the philanthropic zeal of a Miss Fortescue. She had a good deal of ambition, a love of luxury, and (as has been said) a commendable self-confidence. Masterful herself under all her graceful gentleness, she liked rather than feared masterful men; Cyril Maxon attracted her none the less because he had 'crushed' Winnie. "A poor little thing like that!" So ran her verdict on Winnie, whom she had met half a dozen times. And he was very rising. She found herself recalling the precise words that he had used about 'a counsel of perfection.' It needs little acuteness to detect a congruity between the interpretation of a rule as a counsel of perfection, and the doctrine of the limits of human endurance. In fact they come to very much the same thing and are invoked, rightly or wrongly, plausibly or unplausibly, on much the same occasions and under very similar circumstances. If a man strikes you lightly on one cheek, you turn the other. But if he strikes the first cheek very hard? If he forces you to go a mile with him, will you go with him twain? Does the amenity of the road make no difference? If he takes your coat, shall he take your cloak also? Something might turn on the relative value of the two garments. In such cases the human race makes accommodations; and accommodations are not confined to any one class of thinkers. Cyril Maxon had afforded scant countenance to Lady Rosaline's suggestion that the offender himself severed the tie. She had picked it up from an article of Catholic complexion, which set out the authorities for it only to confute them. His logical mind saw that the position implied rather startling consequences; for if an act can sever, an act can bind. But he did not so easily or readily reject his own idea of the counsel of perfection. Arguing before a Court, he could have made a good case for it. Argued in the forum of his own conscience, it found pleas and precedents. Yet it was slowly that it gained even a hearing from the judge, and only by much dexterous pleading; for at first sight the authorities to which he bowed were all against it. They had seemed absolutely and immediately conclusive on the morning when Mr. Ledstone called in the Temple. 'No proceedings!' Save as a record of his own attitude, Maxon attached no importance to the utterance so charged with relief to its auditor. It was in no sense a pledge; it was merely an expression of present intention. On what conceivable theory had that Ledstone family any right to pledges from him? If a pledge at all, it was one to himself and to the school of thought to which he belonged. To the Ledstones? Never! So the slow hidden current of his feelings began to bore for itself a new channel--a way round the rock of principle that barred direct advance. Another change there was in him. A woman--his wife--had gibbeted him as a man impossible to live with. He was secretly, almost unconsciously, afraid of the world's agreeing with her. Seeking sympathy, he tried to manifest it; afraid of being misunderstood, he embarked on an effort to be understanding. He made a fair success of it. People said that he was human after all, and that Mrs. Maxon ought to have seen it. The work which Winnie had done redounded to her discredit; it is not an uncommon case. The rebels are shot, flogged, or have to fly the kingdom. But reforms are introduced into the administration, and these make the rebels seem more guilty still--because, of course, the reforms were just going to be introduced anyhow, if only the rebels would have had a little faith, a little patience. Who has not read it a score of times in the newspapers? "That little wife of his can't have known how to manage a man," said old Mrs. Ladd, who had owned two husbands, the first an over-festive soul, the second a hypochondriac. "The Vicar has the highest opinion of him," remarked Miss Fortescue. Mrs. Ladd smiled. "He won't have such a high opinion of him if he goes gadding after Rosaline Deering." Miss Fortescue was shocked and interested. "My dear, is there any chance of that?" Mrs. Ladd pursed up her lips. "I don't see much harm in it myself," she said. "Oh, Mrs. Ladd! If the Vicar heard you!" "If you may marry again when your husband's dead----" "It's allowed, but it's--it's not exactly recommended, is it?" "Well, on the Vicar's theory, I don't see in the end any difference between the two cases--or, at any rate, not much." Mrs. Ladd destroyed her logic by a concession to her friend's pained surprise. She ought to have stuck to there being no difference at all. Then on Attlebury's theory she had an argument; 'not much' came perilously near to cutting the roots of it. Speculation as to Mr. Attlebury's attitude was not confined to these good members of his flock. It had a place in Cyril Maxon's own mind, so soon as he began to consider the idea of freeing himself from the legal bond of marriage--and of reviewing his situation after that was done. But here the idiosyncrasy of the man came in, and cut across the loyalty of the Churchman. He had given to Attlebury a voluntary allegiance. But if Attlebury tried to extort a forced obedience? Cyril's face set at the thought. Winnie's great offence had been that she would not 'adapt herself.' In his heart he demanded that the priest and the Church should adapt themselves also, should recognize his services and his value, and find a way out for him, if necessary. The 'counsel of perfection' theory seemed more and more, on consideration, to be a possible way out, and already he began to feel, in anticipation, a resentment against the man or the institution that should say the contrary. He chafed beforehand at such dictation, such interference with a view conscientiously held by a man whom all must admit to be sincere and devout--and, moreover, an adherent very much worth having. Among the various influences which caused the project of freeing himself to take definite shape in his mind, Rosaline Deering had to be reckoned first, no doubt, but she was not the only woman who counted. Done with as she was, out of his life, yet Winnie Maxon also had her share in the work. He felt a primitive desire to 'show her,' as children say--to show her that she had not the power to destroy his life, that there were women wiser than she, women who did not think him impossible to live with, but would hold it high fortune to become his wife. As soon as he began to think of Rosaline Deering, he thought oftener of his wife, setting the two women in opposition as it were, and endowing Rosaline with all the virtues which Winnie had so conspicuously lacked. Even such an adventitious thing as Rosaline's courtesy title counted in this connexion; it would help to convince Winnie of her own insignificance, of what a much greater career than her own she had tried--vainly tried--to spoil. When she was little better than a vagabond--he did not put things mercifully--Mr. Justice and Lady Rosaline Maxon might be entertaining in Devonshire Street--or perhaps Berkeley Square. When the Law Courts rose for the Christmas vacation he went to Paris, and Lady Rosaline was gracious enough to make no secret of the fact that his presence there had a share in determining her also on a short visit. They did some of the sights together, they had many talks over the fire, and it was there--on the same Christmas Eve whereon Winnie had gone to Shaylor's Patch and Godfrey Ledstone to Woburn Square--that he told her that he had made up his mind to seek legal dissolution of his ill-starred marriage. "I have looked at the question from all sides, and I have satisfied my conscience," he said. "Now I must act on my own responsibility." In the last words there sounded anticipatory defiance of Mr. Attlebury--a defiance which indicated that the satisfaction of his conscience was not quite complete. The case rather was that his conscience had come to terms with the other influences, and under their pressure had accepted the way out. "I think I may justly plead that the circumstances are exceptional." He leant forward towards her and asked, "You don't condemn me?" "What's my opinion worth? You know much more about it; you're much more able to form a judgment." "But I want to know that I haven't forfeited your good opinion, your regard, if I may hope that I have ever gained it." "No, I don't condemn you, if your own conscience doesn't, Mr. Maxon." She rose and stood--leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece, her back half turned towards him. The pose displayed well the grace of her tall figure; his eyes rested on her in satisfaction. "Thank you," he said. "That--that means a great deal to me, Lady Rosaline." Her elbow rested on the mantelpiece, her face on her hand; her mouth was hidden. But unseen by him a smile bent her lips. His words were entirely decorous--from a man still married--but they were explicit enough. "I can have him if I want him," probably sums up pretty accurately the lady's comfortable conclusion. CHAPTER XV MRS. NOBODY In spite of the untoward telegram, her visit to Shaylor's Patch heartened up Winnie in two ways. It checked the searching of conscience which is the natural and frequent result of threatened failure; by the evidence it afforded her of Stephen's affection and Dick Dennehy's loyal admiration, it strengthened her woman's confidence in her power to hold her man. After all, Mabel Thurseley was not very pretty; with the sea between Godfrey and Woburn Square, there would be full cause for hope. She dreamed of Italian skies. Though she had recalled and recognized his liberty, under their bargain, to leave her, it was not prominent in her mind. The natural woman was fighting--and fights, it may be supposed, much the same, whatever her status by law or her rights by agreement. She had telegraphed to Godfrey the proposed time of her arrival at the studio, and expected to find him there; for surely the slight chill would be better by now? He was not there; yet apparently the chill was better, for he had been there earlier in the day. The old Irish servant gave her this news, looking at her in what Winnie felt to be rather an odd way. The woman lingered by the door for a minute, glancing round the room, seeming half in a mind to say something more, and half in a mind not to. In the end she said nothing, and went out in silence--as a rule she was loquacious--when her mistress told her that she would give any necessary orders after she had unpacked. Winnie's mind was on the idea of carrying Godfrey off that very night. Short as her absence had been, the studio looked somehow unfamiliar; it had less of the 'lived in' look which she associated with it as a pleasant feature. She scanned it with awakening curiosity. The board on which he stretched his drawing-paper--what had become of that? His tobacco-jar was not in its usual place; technical books of his were missing from their appointed shelf. He must have felt inclined for work in spite of the chill, and come to fetch them; at least, that would account for the board and books, if not as well for the tobacco-jar. She moved towards the kitchen, to inquire of the servant, but suddenly came to a full stop in the middle of the room. She stood there for a moment, then turned sharp round and went up the stairs that led to the bedrooms--not to unpack, for she left her own trunk and dressing-bag on the floor of the studio. She went upstairs slowly, determinedly calm, but with beating heart and a touch of vivid colour on her cheeks. The door of his bedroom stood wide open. The furniture was all in its place; the toilet table was no barer than his visit to Woburn Square accounted for; the little clock she had given him ticked away on the mantelpiece. But Winnie made straight for the chest of drawers, and quickly opened and shut one after another. They were all empty. The wardrobe yielded the same result. All his clothes had gone, and his boots--all of them. She went back to the landing and opened the door of a cupboard, where his portmanteau was usually stowed away; it was gone. Preparation for a long stay--somewhere! Yet the chill was so much better that he had been able to visit the studio that morning, when, no doubt, he had carried off all these things--all of them, not merely drawing-board, books, and tobacco-jar. She moved quickly into her own room. There all was as usual; but she had thought that perhaps there would be a letter. None was visible. A curious quiet, almost a desolation, seemed to brood over the little room; it too took on, suddenly, an uninhabited air. She sank into a wicker arm-chair and sat there quite still for some minutes. Then she sprang briskly to her feet again, exclaiming, "Oh, but nonsense!" She was seeking indignantly to repel the conviction which was mastering her mind. Surely he would not, could not, do it like this? In her rare contemplation of their possible parting, as bargained for, there had always been not indeed argument, much less recrimination, but much friendly discussion, a calm survey of the situation, probably an agreement to 'try it again' for a longer or shorter time, till a mature and wise decision, satisfactory to the reason, if not to the feelings, of both, should be arrived at. But this would be sheer running away--literal running away from her, from the problem, from the situation. It could not be. There must be some explanation. Sounds were easily audible in the small flimsy dwelling. She heard the front door bell ring--and sat listening for his voice calling her, his step across the studio floor, and then coming up the stairs. Neither voice came, nor step; besides--odd she had not remembered it before--of course he would have used his latchkey. She got up, took off her jacket, unpinned her hat, laid it on the bed, looked to her hair, and then went slowly downstairs again. Amy Ledstone was standing in the middle of the studio; the knock had been hers. Then in an instant Winnie knew, and in an instant she put on her armour. Her tone was cool and her manner self-possessed; they need not both be cowards--she and Godfrey! "How do you do, Miss Ledstone? You've come to tell me something?" "Yes." Amy Ledstone was neither cool nor self-possessed. Her voice trembled violently; it was an evident effort for her not to break into sobbing. "He--he still loves you; he told me to tell you that." "Told you to tell me! Isn't that rather odd?--After all our--well, he's been able to tell me for himself before. Won't you sit down?" She sat herself as she spoke. "No, thank you. But he can't bear to see you; he can't trust himself. He told me to say that. He said you'd understand--that you had a--an understanding. Only he couldn't bear to say good-bye." "He's not coming back?" "He was really rather seedy on Sunday--so he stayed. And--and on Sunday night mother had a bad attack; we were really alarmed." Winnie nodded. Always, from the very beginning, a dangerous enemy--mother's weak heart! "Mother had been with him all day--she wouldn't leave him. I suppose she got over-tired, and there was the strain of--of the situation; and daddy--my father--broke out on Godfrey the next morning; and I'd broken out on him Christmas night." "You?" There was a touch of reproach in the question. "Yes, I told him he must choose. He really made love to Mabel all the time. So I told him----" "I see." She smiled faintly. "The poor boy can't have had a pleasant Christmas, Miss Ledstone!" "We were all at him, all three of us!" She stretched out her hands suddenly. "Do try to understand that he had something to bear too. And that we had--thinking as we do about it. It was hard for other people besides you. Father's getting old, and Godfrey's all mother and I----" Winnie nodded her understanding of the broken sentence. "I haven't said a word against him or any of you. He had a right to do what he has done, though he's done it in a way I didn't think he'd choose." "He doesn't trust himself, and mother--oh!" Her forlorn murmuring ended hopelessly in nothing. "Mother! Yes! What a lot of things there are to think of! I had just made up my mind to take him right away from all of you, to take him abroad. I could have done it if I'd found him here. Perhaps I could do it still--I wonder?" Amy shivered uncomfortably under the thoughtful gaze of her companion's eyes. "I might write letters too--as you used to--and contrive secret meetings. He's said nothing about Miss Thurseley to me--I don't suppose he'd say anything about me to Miss Thurseley. But he'd meet me all the same, I think. That seems to be his way; only before your last visit I didn't know it." "Indeed he won't think of Mabel--not for a long while. He's so--so broken up." Winnie raised her brows slightly; she was beginning to form an opinion of her own about that--an opinion not likely to be too generous to Godfrey. Amy spoke with obvious effort, with an air of shame. "Mother begged and prayed me to--to try and persuade you----" She broke off again. "To let him alone? I suppose she would. She thinks I've done all the harm? As far as he's concerned, I suppose I have. If we'd gone about it in the ordinary way, he really needn't have suffered at all." Again came Amy's uncomfortable shiver; she was not at home with steady contemplation of the ways of the world; it had not come across her path any more than love-making had. "You can tell your mother that I'll let him alone. Then, I hope, she'll get better." "Oh, I don't understand you!" "No? Well, I didn't understand Godfrey. But in your case it doesn't matter. Why should you want to? You can all put me out of your thoughts from to-day." "I can't!" cried Amy; "I shall never be able to!" Suddenly she came over to Winnie, and, standing before her, rather awkwardly, burst into tears. "How can you be so hard?" she moaned. "Don't you see that I'm terribly unhappy for you? But it's hopeless to try to tell you. You're so--so hard. And I've got to go back home, where they'll be----" Winnie supplied the word--"Jubilant? Yes." She frowned. "You cry, and I don't--it is rather funny. I wonder if I shall cry when you've gone!" "Oh, do you love him, or don't you?" Winnie's brows were raised again. In view of what had occurred that day, of the sudden revelation of Godfrey, of the abrupt change his act had wrought in her relations to him, the question seemed to imply an unreal simplicity of the emotions, a falsely uncomplicated contrast between two states of feeling, standing distantly over against one another. Such a conception in no way corresponded with her present feelings about Godfrey Ledstone. The man she loved had done the thing she could not forgive--did she love him? Yet if she did not love him, why could she not forgive him? Unless she loved him, it was small matter that he should be ashamed and run away. But if he were ashamed and ran away, how could she love? Love and contempt, tenderness and repulsion, seemed woven into one fabric of intricate, almost untraceable pattern. How could she describe that to Amy Ledstone? "I suppose I love my Godfrey, but he seems not to be the same as yours. I can't put it better than that. And you love yours, and not mine. I think that's all we can say about it." Amy had her complications of feeling too. She dried her eyes, mournfully saying, "That's not true about me. I like yours best--if I know what you mean. He was a man, anyhow. But then I know it's wicked to feel like that." Winnie looked up at her. "Of course you must think it wicked--I quite see that--but you do understand more than I thought," she said. "And you won't think I'm abusing him? It wouldn't seem wicked to me at all--if I'd happened on the right man. But I didn't. That's all. And this way of ending it seems somehow to--to defile it all. The end spoils it all. That seems to me shamefully unfair. He had a right to go, but he had no right to be ashamed. And he is ashamed, and almost makes me ashamed. I could almost hate him for it." "We've made him ashamed. You must hate us." "I like you. And--no--how could I hate your father and mother? They made me no promise; I've given nothing to them on the strength of a promise. But to him I've given everything I had; not much, I know, but still--everything." Amy twisted her gloved hands round one another. She was calmer now, but her face was drawn with pain. "Yes, that's true," she said. Then she came out abruptly with what had been behind her spoken words for the last ten minutes, with what she had to say before she could bring herself to leave Winnie. "At any rate, you've pluck. Godfrey's a coward." Winnie's lips bent in a queer smile. "Don't! Where does it leave me? Oh yes, it's true about him, I suppose. That's my blunder." Amy walked back to the mantelpiece; she had left her muff on it. She took it up and moved towards the door. "I'll go. You must have had enough of the lot of us!" Winnie had an honest desire to be just, nay, to be kind, to reciprocate a friendliness obviously extended towards her, and extended in spite of a rooted disapproval. But those limits of endurance had been reached again. She had, indeed, had enough of the Ledstones; not even her husband could have suffered more strongly from the feeling. She made an effort. "Oh, you and I part friends," she called after her visitor's retreating figure. Without turning round, Amy shook her head dolefully, and so passed out. Her mission was accomplished. Almost directly after Amy left, the servant, Dennehy's old Irish woman, came in with tea and buttered toast. She drew a chair up to the gas stove, and a little table. "Make yerself comfortable, me dear," she said. "Did he say anything to you, Mrs. O'Leary?" "Said he was going to visit his relations in the North for a bit." Then, after a pause, "Cheer up, mum. There's as good fish----!" And out the old woman shuffled. Now that was a funny thing to say! 'There's as good fish----!' But Winnie's numb brain was on another tack; she did not pursue the implications of Mrs. O'Leary's remark. Nor did the tender mood, on whose advent she had speculated when she said, 'I wonder if I shall cry, when you've gone,' arrive. Nor was she girding against the Ledstones and Woburn Square any more. Her thoughts went back to her own parting from her husband. "Anyhow, I faced Cyril--we had it out," was the refrain of her thoughts, curiously persistent, as she sat before the stove, drinking her tea and munching her toast, enjoying the warmth, really (though it seemed strange) not so much miserable as intensely combative, with no leisure to indulge in misery, with her back to the wall, and the world--the Giant--advancing against her threateningly. Because her particular little rampart had collapsed entirely, the roof was blown off her shelter, her scheme of life in ruins--a situation cheerfully countered by Mrs. O'Leary's proverbial saying, but not in reality easy to deal with. Her boat was not out fishing; it was stranded, high and dry, on a barren beach. "I did face Cyril!" Again and again it came in pride and bitter resentment. Here she was faced with a _dénoûment_ typical of a weak mind--at once sudden, violent, and cowardly. She smoked two or three cigarettes--Ledstone had taught her the habit, undreamed of in her Maxon days--and the hands of the clock moved round. Half-past six struck. It acted as a practical reminder of immediate results. She had no dinner ordered; if she had, there was nobody to eat it with. There was nobody to spend the evening with. She would have to sleep alone in the house; Mrs. O'Leary had family cares, and got home to supper and bed at nine o'clock. She need not dine, but she must spend the evening and must sleep, with no company, no protective presence, in all the house. That seemed really rather dreadful. Her luggage lay on the floor of the studio, still unpacked. She had not given another thought to it; she did now. "Shall I go back to Shaylor's Patch to-night?" It was a very tempting idea. She got up, almost determined; she would find sympathy there; even the tears might come. She was on the point of making for her bedroom, to put on her hat and jacket again, when another ring came at the bell. A moment later she heard a cheery voice asking, "Mrs. Ledstone at home?" "But I'm not Mrs. Ledstone any more. Nor Mrs. Maxon! I don't see that I'm anybody." The thought had just time to flash through her mind before Bob Purnett was ushered in by Mrs. O'Leary. "Mr. Purnett, mum. Ye'll find the whisky in the usual place, sor, and the soda." It was known that Bob did not affect afternoon tea. "I thought you'd be back, Mrs. Ledstone. Where's Godfrey? I've a free night, and I want you and him to come and dine and go to a Hall. Don't say no, now! I'm so lonely! Don't mind this cigar, do you, Mrs. Ledstone?" There seemed a lot of 'Mrs. Ledstone' about it; but she knew that was Bob's good manners. Besides, it was a minor point. How much candour was at the moment requisite? Even that was not the main point. The main point was--'Here's a friendly human being; in what way am I required by the situation to treat him?' It was a point admitting of difficult consideration in theory; in practice it needed none whatever. Winnie clutched at the plank in her sea of desolation. "Godfrey's staying over the night with his people; he's got a chill. I didn't know it, so I came back all the same from the Aikenheads'."--How glib!--"And I'm rather lonely too, Mr. Purnett." He sat down near her by the stove. "Well--er--old Godfrey wouldn't object, would he?" "You mean--that I should come alone? With you?" "Hang it, if he will get chills and stay at Woburn Square! This doesn't strike one as very festive!" He looked round the studio and gave a burlesque shudder. "It isn't!" said Winnie. "Shall I surprise you, Mr. Purnett, if I tell you that I have never in my life dined out or gone to the theatre alone with any man except Mr. Maxon and Godfrey?" She puzzled Bob to distraction, or, rather, would have, if he had not given up the problem long ago. "I believe it if you say so, Mrs. Ledstone," he rejoined submissively. "But Godfrey and I are such good pals. Why shouldn't you?" "I'm going to," said Winnie. He rose with cheerful alacrity. "All right. I'll meet you at the Café Royal--eight sharp. Jolly glad I looked in! I say, what price poor old Godfrey--with a chill at Woburn Square, while we're having an evening out?" He chuckled merrily. "It serves Godfrey quite right," she said, with her faintly flickering smile. Mrs. O'Leary was delighted to be summoned to the task of lacing up one of Winnie's two evening frocks--the better of the two, it may be remarked in passing. "Ye might have moped, me dear, here all by yourself!" she said, and it certainly seemed a possible conjecture. There was only one fault to be found with Bob Purnett's demeanour during dinner at the Café Royal. It was quite friendly and cheerful; it was not distant; but it was rather overwhelmingly respectful. It recognized and emphasized the fact of Godfrey Ledstone's property in her (the thing can hardly be put differently), and of Bob's perfect acquiescence in it. It protested that not a trace of treason lurked in this little excursion. He even kept on expressing the wish that Godfrey were with them. And he called her 'Mrs. Ledstone' every other sentence. There never was anybody who kept the straitest rule of the code more religiously than Bob Purnett. But he was in face of a situation of which he was ignorant, and of a nature which (as he was only too well aware) he very little comprehended. Winnie looked very pretty, but she smiled inscrutably. At least she smiled at first. Presently a touch of irritation crept into her manner. She gave him back copious 'Mr. Purnett's' in return for his 'Mrs. Ledstone's.' The conversation became formal, indeed, to Bob, rather dull. He understood her less and less. It was, on Winnie's extremely rough and not less irritated computation, at the one hundred and fourth 'Mrs. Ledstone' of the evening--which found utterance as they were driving in a cab from the restaurant to the selected place of entertainment--that her patience gave as with a snap, and her bitter humour had its way. "For heaven's sake don't call me 'Mrs. Ledstone' any more this evening!" "Eh?" said Bob, removing his cigar from his mouth. "What did you say, Mrs. Led----Oh, I beg pardon!" "I said, 'Don't call me "Mrs. Ledstone"'--or I shall go mad." "What am I to call you, then?" He was trying not to stare at her, but was glancing keenly out of the corner of his eye. "Let's be safe--call me Mrs. Smith," said Winnie. On which words they arrived at the music hall. CHAPTER XVI A WORD TAKEN AT PLEASURE The excellent entertainment provided for them acted as a palliative to Winnie's irritation and Bob Purnett's acute curiosity. There are no 'intervals' at music halls; they were switched too quickly from diversion to diversion for much opportunity of talk to present itself; and during the 'orchestral interlude,' half-way through the programme, Bob left his place in search of refreshment. When they came out, the subject of 'Mrs. Smith' had not advanced further between them. Winnie refused her escort's offer of supper. By now she was tired out, and she felt, though reluctant to own it, a childish instinct--since she had to sleep in that desert of a house--to hide her head between the sheets before midnight. This aim a swift motor-cab might just enable her to accomplish. Nor did the subject advance rapidly when the cab had started. Winnie lay back against the cushions in a languid weariness, not equal to thinking any more about her affairs that night. Bob sat opposite, not beside her, for fear of his cigar smoke troubling her. She often closed her eyes; then he would indulge himself in a cautious scrutiny of her face as the street lamps lit it up in their rapid passage. She looked exceedingly pretty, and would look prettier still--indeed, 'ripping'--with just a little bit of make-up; for she was very pale, and life had already drawn three or four delicate but unmistakable lines about eyes and mouth. Bob allowed himself to consider her with more attention than he had ever accorded to her before, and with a new sort of attention--on his own account as a man, not merely as a respectful critic of Godfrey Ledstone's taste. Because that remark of hers about not being called 'Mrs. Ledstone'--on pain of going mad--made a difference. Perhaps it meant only a tiff--or, as he called it, a 'row.' Perhaps it meant more; perhaps it was 'all off' between her and Godfrey--a final separation. Whatever the remark meant, the state of affairs it indicated brought Winnie more within her present companion's mental horizon. Tiffs and separations were phenomena quite familiar to his experience. The truth might be put higher; tiffs were the necessary concomitant, and separations the inevitable end, of sentimental friendships. They came more or less frequently, sooner or later; but they came. Growing frequency of tiffs usually heralded separations. But sometimes the 'big row' came all at once--a storm out of a blue sky, a sudden hurricane, in which the consort ships lost touch of one another--or one went under, while the other sailed away. All this was familiar ground to Bob Purnett; he had often seen it, he had experienced it, he had joked and, in his own vein, philosophized about it. The thing he had not understood--though he had punctiliously feigned to accept--was the sanctity and permanence of a tie which was, as everybody really must know, neither sacred nor likely to be permanent. There he was out of his depth; when tiffs and separations came on the scene, Bob felt his feet touch bottom. And he had always been of opinion, in his heart, that, whatever Winnie might believe, Godfrey Ledstone felt just as he did. Of course Godfrey had had to pretend otherwise--well, the face opposite Bob in the cab was worth a bit of pretending. Winnie spoke briefly, two or three times, of the performance they had seen, but said nothing more about herself. When they arrived at her door, she told him to keep the cab. "Because I've got nothing for you to eat, and I think you finished even the whisky! Thanks for my evening, Mr. Purnett." He walked through the little court up to the door with her. "And you look as tired as a dog," he remarked--with a successful suppression of 'Mrs. Ledstone.' "What you want is a good sleep, and--and it'll all look brighter in the morning. May I come and see you soon?" "If I'm here, of course you may. But I haven't made up my mind. I may go back to the country, to the Aikenheads, my cousins--where I met Godfrey, you know." He could not resist a question. "I say, is there trouble? You know how I like you both. Has there been a row?" She smiled at him. "Godfrey avoided any danger of that. I don't want to talk about it, but you may as well know. Godfrey has gone away." "Oh, but he'll come back, Mrs.----He'll come back, I mean, you know." "Never. And I don't want him. Don't ask me any more--to-night, anyhow." She gave him her hand with a friendly pressure. "Good-night." "Good Lord! Well, I'm sorry. I say, you won't cut me now, will you?" "I haven't so many friends that I need cut a good one. Now, if you drive off at once, you'll be back in time to get some supper somewhere else." She smiled again, and in a longing for comfort owned to him--and to herself--her childish fears. "And I want to be snug in bed before the spooks come out! I feel rather lonely. So, again, good-night." He had a last vision of her small pale face as she slowly, reluctantly it seemed to him, shut the door. A great rattle of bolts followed. "Well, I'm left outside, anyhow," Bob reflected philosophically, as he walked back to the cab. But his mind was occupied with the picture of the proud forlorn woman, there alone in the empty house, very much alone in the world too, and rather afraid of 'spooks.' All his natural kindliness of heart was aroused in pity and sympathy for her. "I should like to give her a really good time," he thought. In that aspect his impulse was honestly unselfish. But the image of the pale delicate face abode with him also. The two aspects of his impulse mingled; he saw no reason why they should not, if it were really 'all off' between her and Godfrey Ledstone. "I think she likes me well enough--I wonder if she does!" He did not, to do him justice, ask an extravagant degree of devotion in return for any 'good times' which he might find himself able to offer. When it is so easy for two people with good tempers, sound digestions, and plenty of ready cash to enjoy themselves, why spoil it all by asking too much? Surely he and Winnie could enjoy themselves? The idea stuck in his mind. Again, why--to him--should it not? His scrupulous behaviour hitherto had been based on loyalty to Godfrey Ledstone. It appeared that he was released from the obligation by his friend's own act. "He can't say I didn't play the game, while the thing lasted," thought Bob, with justifiable self-satisfaction. The morrow of a catastrophe is perhaps harder to bear than the hour in which it befalls us. The excitement of battling with fate is gone; but the wounds smart and the bruises ache. Physically refreshed by sleep--a sleep happily unbroken by assaults from without or ghostly visitants within the house--Winnie braced her courage to meet the call on it. Her task, not easy, yet was plain. She would not weep for her Godfrey Ledstone; she would try not to think of him, nor to let her thoughts stray back to the early days with him. She would and must think of the other Godfrey, the one in Woburn Square. What woman would weep for such a man as that--except his mother? On him she would fix her thoughts, until she need think no more of either of them. She had to think of herself--of what she had done and of what she was now to do. On the first head she admitted a blunder, but no disgrace--a mistake not of principle or theory, only a mistake in her man; with regard to the second, she must make a decision. Just before she had fairly settled down to this task, she had a visitor. At half-past eleven--early hours for her to be out and about--Mrs. Lenoir appeared. "I was supping at the Carlton grill-room last night," she explained, "with a couple of girls whom I'd taken to the play, and Bob Purnett came in. He drove me back home, and--I don't know if he ought to have--but he told me about some trouble here. So, as I'm an interfering old woman, I came round to see if I could be of any use." Her manner to-day was less stately and more cordial. Also she spoke with a certain frankness. "You see, I know something about this sort of thing, my dear." Winnie, of course, distinguished her 'sort of thing' very broadly from 'the sort of thing' to which Mrs. Lenoir must be assumed to refer, but she made no secret of the state of the case or of her own attitude towards it. "I accept it absolutely, but I'm bitterly hurt by the way it was done." "Oh, you can put it that way, my dear; but you're human like the rest of us, and, of course, you hate having him taken away from you. Now shall I try what I can do?" "Not for the world! Not a word, nor a sign! It's my mistake, and I stand by it. If he came back, it would never be the same thing. It was beautiful; it would be shameful now." Mrs. Lenoir smiled doubtfully; she had an imperfect understanding of the mode of thought. "Very well, that's settled. And, for my part, I think you're well rid of him. A weak creature! Let him marry a Bloomsbury girl, and I hope she'll keep him in fine order. But what are you going to do?" "I don't quite know. Stephen and Tora would let me go back to Shaylor's Patch for as long as I liked." "Oh, Shaylor's Patch! To talk about it all, over and over again!" A note of impatience in her friend's voice was amusingly evident to Winnie. "You mean the less I talk about it, the better?" she asked, smiling. "Well, you haven't made exactly a success of it, have you?" The manner was kinder than the words. "And I didn't make exactly a success of my marriage either," Winnie reflected, in a puzzled dolefulness. Because, if both orthodoxy and unorthodoxy go wrong, what is a poor human woman to do? "Well, if I mayn't go to Shaylor's Patch--at present, anyhow--I must stay here, Mrs. Lenoir; that's all. The studio's in my name, because I could give better security than Godfrey, and I can stay if I want to." "Not very cheerful--and only that dirty old Irishwoman to do for you!" "Oh, please don't abuse Mrs. O'Leary. She's my one consolation." Mrs. Lenoir looked at her with something less than her usual self-confidence. It was in a decidedly doubtful and tentative tone that she put her question: "I couldn't persuade you to come and put up with me--in both senses--for a bit?" Winnie was surprised and touched; to her despairing mood any kindness was a great kindness. "That's really good of you," she said, pressing Mrs. Lenoir's hand for a moment. "It's--merciful." "I'm an old woman now, my dear, and most of my cronies are getting old too. Still, some young folks look in now and then. We aren't at all gay; but you'll be comfortable, and you can have a rest while you look about you." There was a trace of the explanatory, of the reassuring, about Mrs. Lenoir's sketch of her home life. "What's good enough for you is good enough for me, you know," Winnie remarked, with a smile. "Oh, I'm not so sure! Oh, I'm not speaking of creature comforts and so on. But you seem to me to expect so much of--of everybody." Winnie took the hand she had pressed and held it. "And you?" she asked. "Never mind me. You're young and attractive. Don't go on expecting too much. They take what they can." "They? Who?" "Men," said Mrs. Lenoir. Then out of those distant, thoughtful, no longer very bright eyes flashed for an instant the roguish twinkle for which she had once been famous. "I've given them as good as I got, though," said she. "And now--will you come?" Winnie laughed. "Well, do you think I should prefer this empty tomb?" she asked. Yes--empty and a tomb--apt words for what the studio now was. "You weren't as nice as this at Shaylor's Patch--though you always said things that made me think." "They've all got their heads in the air at Shaylor's Patch--dear creatures!" "I shall enjoy staying with you. Is it really convenient?" Mrs. Lenoir smiled. "Oh, but that's a silly question, because I know you meant it. When may I come?" "Not a moment later than this afternoon." "Well, the truth is I didn't fancy sleeping here again. I expect I should have gone to Shaylor's Patch." Again Mrs. Lenoir smiled. "You're full of pluck, but you're scarcely hard enough, my dear. If I'm a failure, Shaylor's Patch will do later, won't it?" "I shall disgrace you. I've nothing to wear. We were--I'm very poor, you know." "I'd give every pound at my bank and every rag off my back for one line of your figure," said Mrs. Lenoir. "I was beautiful once, you know, my dear." Her voice took on a note of generous recognition. "You're very well--in the _petite_ style, Winnie." But by this she evidently meant something different from her 'beautiful.' Well, it was matter of history. That afternoon, then, witnessed a remarkable change in Winnie's external conditions. Instead of the desolate uncomfortable studio, charged with memories too happy or too unhappy--there seemed nothing between the two, and the extremes met--peopled, also, with 'spooks' potential if not visualized, there was Mrs. Lenoir's luxurious flat in Knightsbridge, replete, as the auctioneers say, with every modern convenience. The difference was more than external. She was no longer a derelict--left stranded at the studio or to drift back to Shaylor's Patch. No doubt it might be said that she was received out of charity. Amply acknowledging the boon, Winnie had yet the wit to perceive that the charity was discriminating. Not for her had she been plain, not for her had she been uninteresting! In a sense she had earned it. And in a sense, too, she felt that she was in process of being avenged on Godfrey Ledstone and on Woburn Square. A parallel might be traced here between her feelings and Cyril Maxon's. They had made her count for nothing; she felt that at Mrs. Lenoir's she might still count. The sorrow and the hurt remained, but at least this was not finality. She had suffered under a dread suspicion that in their different ways both Shaylor's Patch and the solitary studio were. Here she had a renewed sense of life, of a future possible. Yet here too, for the first time since Godfrey left her, she lost her composure, and the tears came--quite soon, within ten minutes after Mrs. Lenoir's greeting. Mrs. Lenoir understood. "There, you're not so angry any more," she said. "You're beginning to see that it must have happened--with that fellow! Now Emily will make you comfortable, and put you to bed till dinner-time. You needn't get up for that unless you like. There's only the General coming; it's one of his nights." Oh, the comfort of a good Emily--a maid not too young and not too old, not too flighty and not too crabbed, light of hand, sympathetic, entirely understanding that her lady has a right to be much more comfortable than she has ever thought of being herself! In Maxon days Winnie had possessed a maid. They seemed far off, and never had there been one as good as Mrs. Lenoir's Emily. She had come into Mrs. Lenoir's life about the same time as Mr. Lenoir had, but with an effect that an impartial observer could not but recognize as not only more durable, but also more essentially important--save that Lenoir had left the money which made Emily possible. Mrs. Lenoir had paid for the money--in five years' loyalty and service. Winnie reposed between deliciously fine sheets--why, it was like Devonshire Street, without Cyril Maxon!--and watched Emily dexterously disposing her wardrobe. It was not ample. Some of the effects of the Maxon days she had left behind in her hurried flight; most of the rest had worn out. But there were relics of her gilded slavery. These Emily tactfully admired; the humbler purchases of 'Mrs. Ledstone' she stowed away without comment. Also without comment, but with extraordinary tact, she laid out the inferior of Winnie's two evening dresses. "There's nobody coming but the General, miss," said she. "Now why does she call me 'miss'--and who's the General?" These two problems rose in Winnie's mind, but did not demand instant solution. They were not like the questions of the last few days; they were more like Shaylor's Patch conundrums--interesting, but not urgent, willing to wait for an idle hour or a rainy day, yielding place to a shining sun or a romp with Alice. They yielded place now to Winnie's great physical comfort, to her sense of rescue from the desolate studio, to her respite from the feeling of finality and of failure. With immense surprise she realized, as she lay there--in a quiet hour between Emily's deft and charitable unpacking and Emily's return to get her into the inferior frock (good enough for that unexplained General)--that she was what any reasonably minded being would call happy. Though the great experiment had failed, though Godfrey was at this moment in Woburn Square, though Mabel Thurseley existed! "Oh, well, I was so tired," she apologized to herself shamefacedly. She got down into the small but pretty drawing-room in good time. Yet Mrs. Lenoir was there before her, clad in a tea-gown, looking, as it occurred to Winnie, rather like Mrs. Siddons--a cheerful Mrs. Siddons, as, indeed, the great woman appears to have been in private life. "I got my things off early, so as to leave you Emily," said the hostess. She obviously did not consider that she had been getting anything on. "What a dear she is!" Winnie came to the fire and stood there, a slim-limbed creature, warming herself through garments easily penetrable by the welcome blaze. "Quite a find! The General sent her to me. Her husband was a sergeant-major in his regiment--killed in South Africa." The General again! But Winnie postponed that question. Her lips curved in amusement. "She calls me 'miss.'" "Better than that silly 'Mrs. Smith' you said to Bob Purnett. Only unhappy women try to make epigrams. And for a woman to be unhappy is to be a failure." "Isn't that one--almost--Mrs. Lenoir?" "Quite quick, my dear!" her hostess commented. "But if it is, it's old. I told Emily you were a second cousin. I never know exactly what it means, but in my experience it's quite useful. But please yourself, Winnie. Who will you be?" "Did Emily believe what you told her?" The twinkle came again. "She's much too good a servant ever to raise that question. What was your name?" "My maiden name? Wilkins." "I think names ending in 'kins' are very ugly," said Mrs. Lenoir. "But a modification? What about Wilson? 'Winnie Wilson' is quite pretty." "'Miss Winnie Wilson'? Isn't it rather--well, rather late in the day for that? But, I don't want to be Ledstone--and it's rather unfair to call myself Maxon still." "Names," observed Mrs. Lenoir, "are really not worth troubling about, so long as you don't hurt people's pride. I used to have a fetish-like feeling about them--as if, I mean, you couldn't get rid of the one you were born with, or, my dear, take one you had no particular right to. But one night, long ago, somebody--I really forget who--brought an Oxford don to supper. We got on the subject, and he told me that a great philosopher--named Dobbs, if I remember rightly--defined a name as 'a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark.'" She looked across the hearthrug, confidently expecting Winnie's approval. "I liked it, and it stuck in my memory." "It does make things simpler, Mrs. Lenoir." "Mind you, I wouldn't take a great name I hadn't a right to. Courtenays and Devereauxes in the chorus are very bad form. But I don't see why you shouldn't be Wilson. And the 'Miss' avoids a lot of questions." "All right. Miss Winnie Wilson be it! It sounds like a new toy. And now, Mrs. Lenoir, for the other problem that Emily has raised. Who's the General?" Mrs. Lenoir liked her young friend, but possibly thought that she was becoming a trifle impertinent. Not that she minded that; in her heart she greeted it as a rebound from misery; in the young it often is. "If you've any taste in men--which, up to now, you've given your friends no reason to think--you'll like the General very much." "Will he like me?" "The only advantage of age is that I shan't mind if he does, Winnie." Winnie darted towards her. "What a dear you've been to me to-day!" "Hush, I think I hear the General's step." The parlour-maid--not Emily, but a young woman, smart and a trifle scornful--announced, "Sir Hugh Merriam, ma'am--and dinner's served." CHAPTER XVII THE TRACK OF THE RAIDER The General was old-fashioned; he liked to be left alone with the port--or let us say port-wine, as he always did--after dinner for a quarter of an hour; then he would rejoin the ladies for coffee and, by their never assumed but always solicited permission, a cigar in the drawing-room. Thus Winnie had a chance of gratifying her lively curiosity about the handsome old man with gentle manners, who had seen and done so much, who talked so much about his sons, and came to dine with Mrs. Lenoir twice a week. "I've fallen in love with your General. Do tell me about him," she implored her hostess. "Oh, he's very distinguished. He's done a lot of fighting--India, Egypt, South Africa. He first made his name in the Kala Kin Expedition, in command of the Flying Column. And he invented a great improvement in gun-carriages--he's a gunner, you know--and----" "I think," interrupted Winnie, with a saucy air of doubt, "that I meant something about him--and you, Mrs. Lenoir." "There's nothing to tell. We're just friends, and we've never been anything else." Winnie was sitting on a stool in front of the fire, smoking her Ledstone-learnt cigarette (destined, apparently, to be the only visible legacy of that episode). She looked up at Mrs. Lenoir, still with that air of doubt. "Well, why shouldn't I tell you?" said the lady. "He wanted something else, and I wouldn't." "Were you in love with somebody else?" "No, but he'd brought those boys--they were just schoolboys then--to see me, and it--it seemed a shame. He knew it was a shame too, but--well, you know what happens sometimes. But, quite soon after, his wife fell ill, and died in four or five days--pneumonia. Then he was glad. But he went abroad directly--without seeing me--and was abroad many years. When he came home and retired, I met him by accident, and he asked leave to call. He's very lonely--so am I rather--and he likes a change from the club. I don't wonder! And, as you'll have gathered, we've known all the same people in the old days, and always have lots to talk about. That's the story, Winnie." "I like it. Do you ever see the sons?" "They all come to see me when they're home on leave; but that's not often." "The Major's coming next week, though. The General said so. Let's see if I've got them right. There's the Major--he's the eldest--in Egypt. But the second one is cleverer, and has become a colonel first; he's in Malta now. And then the one in India has only just got his troop; he ought to have had it before, but they thought he gave too much time to polo, and horse-racing, and private theatricals." "That's Georgie--my favourite," said Mrs. Lenoir. "I'm for the Major--because I think it's a shame that his younger brother should be made a colonel before him. I'm glad it's the Major that's coming home on leave next month." Mrs. Lenoir looked at Winnie, and patted herself on the back. All this was much better for Winnie than the empty studio. She knew that the animation was in part an effort, the gaiety in some measure assumed--and bravely assumed. But every moment rescued from brooding was, to Mrs. Lenoir's mind, so much to the good. According to some other ways of thinking, of course, a little brooding might have done Winnie good, and would certainly have been no more than she deserved. Coffee came in, and, quick on its heels, the General. He produced his cigar, and advanced his invariable and invariably apologetic request. "Please do. We neither of us mind, do we, Winnie?" said Mrs. Lenoir. There was really more reason to ask the General if he minded Winnie's cigarette, which had come from the studio and was not of a very fine aroma. Winnie stuck to her stool and listened, with her eyes set on the fire. At first the talk ran still on the three sons--evidently the old soldier's life was wrapped up in them--but presently the friends drifted back to old days, to the people they had both known. Winnie's ears caught names that were familiar to her, references to men and stories about men whom she had often heard Cyril Maxon and his legal guests mention. But to-night she obtained a new view of them. It was not their public achievements which occupied and amused the General and Mrs. Lenoir. They had known them as intimates, and delighted now to recall their ways, their foibles, how they had got into scrapes and got out of them in the merry thoughtless days of youth. Between them they seemed to have known almost everybody who was 'in the swim' from thirty years to a quarter of a century before; if the General happened to say, 'So they told me, I never met him myself,' Mrs. Lenoir always said, 'Oh, I did'--and _vice versâ_. "It was just before my dear wife died," the General said once, in dating a reminiscence. There was a moment's silence. Winnie did not look up. Then the General resumed his story. But he cut it rather short, and ended with, "I'm afraid our yarns must be boring this young lady, Clara." Evidently he accepted Winnie entirely at her face value--as Miss Winnie Wilson. The anecdotes and reminiscences, though intimate, had been rigidly decorous, even improbably so in one or two cases; and now he was afraid that she was bored with what would certainly interest any intelligent woman of the world. Winnie was amused, yet vexed, and inclined to wish she had not become Miss Wilson. But she had made a good impression; that was clear from the General's words when he took his leave. "Bertie will come and see you directly he gets home, Clara. It'll be in about six weeks, I expect." He turned to Winnie. "I hope you'll be kind to my boy. He doesn't know many ladies in London, and I want him to have a pleasant holiday." "I will. And I wish they were all three coming, Sir Hugh." "That might end in a family quarrel," he said, with a courtly little bow and a glance from his eyes, which had not lost their power of seconding a compliment. "Well, I think you've made a favourable impression, though you didn't say much," Mrs. Lenoir remarked when he was gone. Winnie was standing, with one foot on her stool now. She frowned a little. "I wish you'd tell him about me," she said. There was a pause; Mrs. Lenoir was dispassionately considering the suggestion. "I don't see much use in taking an assumed name, if you're going to tell everybody you meet." "He's such a friend of yours." "That's got nothing to do with it. Now if it were a man who wanted to marry you--well, he'd have to be told, I suppose, because you can't marry. But the General won't want to do that." "It seems somehow squarer." "Then am I to say Mrs. Maxon or Mrs. Ledstone?" There it was! Winnie broke into a vexed laugh. "Oh, I suppose we'd better leave it." Thus began Winnie's cure, from love and anger, and from Godfrey Ledstone. Change of surroundings, new interests, kindness, and, above all perhaps, appreciation--it was a good treatment. Something must also be credited to Mrs. Lenoir's attitude towards life. She had none of the snarl of the cynic; she thought great things of life. But she recognized frankly certain of its limitations--as that, if you do some things, there are other things that you must give up; that the majority must be expected to demand obedience to its views on pain of penalties; if you do not mind the penalties, you need not mind the views either; above all, perhaps, that, if you have taken a certain line, it is useless folly to repine at its ordained consequences. She was nothing of a reformer--Winnie blamed that--but she was decidedly good at making the best of her world as she found it, or had made it for herself; and this was the gospel she offered for Winnie's acceptance. Devoid of any kind of penitential emotion, it might yet almost be described as a practical form of penitence. Winnie heard nothing of or from Woburn Square; there was nobody likely to give her news from that quarter except, perhaps, Bob Purnett, and he was away, having accepted an invitation to a fortnight's hunting in Ireland. But an echo of the past came from elsewhere--in a letter addressed to her at Shaylor's Patch, forwarded thence to the studio (she had not yet told the Aikenheads of her move), and, after two or three days' delay, delivered at Knightsbridge by Mrs. O'Leary in person. It was from her husband's solicitors; they informed her of his intention to take proceedings, and suggested that they should be favoured with the name of a firm who would act for her. Winnie received the intimation with great relief, great surprise, some curiosity, and, it must be added, a touch of malicious amusement. The relief was not only for herself. It was honestly for Cyril Maxon also. Why must he with his own hands adjust a lifelong millstone round his own neck? Now, like a sensible man, he was going to take it off. But it was so unlike him to take off his millstones; he felt such a pride in the cumbrous ornaments. 'What had made him do it?' asked the curiosity; and the malicious amusement suggested that, contrary to all preconceptions of hers, contrary to anything he had displayed to her, he too must have his weaknesses--in what direction it was still uncertain. The step he now took might be merely the result of accumulated rancour against her, or it might be essential to some design or desire of his own. Winnie may be excused for not harbouring the idea that her husband was acting out of consideration for her; she had the best of excuses--that of being quite right. For the rest--well, it was not exactly pleasant. But she seemed so completely to have ceased to be Mrs. Maxon that at heart it concerned her little what people said of Mrs. Maxon. They--her Maxon circle, the legal profession, the public--would not understand her provocation, her principles, or her motives; they would say hard and scornful things. She was in safe hiding; she would not hear the things. It would be like what they say of a man after he has gone out of the room and (as Sir Peter Teazle so kindly did in the play) left his character behind him. Of that wise people take no notice. But Godfrey? It must be owned that the thought of him came second; indeed third--after the aspect which concerned her husband and that which touched herself. But when it came, it moved her to vexation, to regret, to a pity which had even an element of the old tenderness in it. Because this development was just what poor Godfrey had always been so afraid of, just what he hated, a thing analogous to the position which in the end he had not been able to bear. And poor Woburn Square! Oh, and poor Mabel Thurseley too, perhaps! What a lot of people were caught in the net! The news of her husband's action did much to soften her heart towards Godfrey and towards Woburn Square. "I really didn't want to make them unhappy or ashamed any more," she sighed; for had not her action in the end produced Cyril's? But, as Mrs. Lenoir would, no doubt, point out, there was no help for it--short of Winnie's suicide, which seemed an extreme remedy, or would have, if it had ever occurred to her: it did not. Her solicitude was not misplaced. The high moralists say _Esse quam videri_--what you are and do matters, not what people think you are or what they may discover you doing. A hard high doctrine! "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." Mr. Cyril Maxon also had found occasion to consider these words. For Winnie had been right. Jubilation had reigned in Woburn Square, provisionally when Godfrey fetched his portmanteau away from the studio, finally and securely (as it seemed) when Amy made known the result of her mission. Father read his paper again in peace; mother's spasms abated. There was joy over the sinner; and the sinner himself was not half as unhappy as he had expected--may it be said, hoped?--to be. Mercilessness of comment is out of place. He had been tried above that which he was able. Yet, if sin it had been, it was not of the sin that he repented. It had been, he thought, from the beginning really impossible on the basis she had defined--and extorted. In time he had been bound to recognize that. But he wore a chastened air, and had the grace to seek little of Miss Thurseley's society. He took another studio, in a street off Fitzroy Square, and ate his dinner and slept at his father's house. Things, then, were settling down in Woburn Square. By dint of being ignored, Winnie and her raid on the family reputation might soon be forgotten. The affair had been kept very quiet; that was the great thing. (Here Woburn Square and the high moralists seem lamentably at odds, but the high moralists also enjoin the speaking and writing of the truth.) It was over. It ranked no more as a defiance; it became merely an indiscretion--a thing young men will do now and then, under the influence of designing women. There was really jubilation--if only Amy would have looked a little less gloomy, and been rather more cordial towards her brother. "I don't understand the girl," Mr. Ledstone complained. "Our line is to make things pleasant for him." "It's that woman. She must have some extraordinary power," his wife pleaded. Winnie's extraordinary power made it all the easier to forgive her son Godfrey. Probably few young men would have resisted, and (this deep down in the mother's heart) not so very many had occasion to resist. Then came the thunderbolt--from which jubilation fled shrieking. Who hurled it? Human nature, Winnie, Lady Rosaline Deering--little as she either had meant to do anything unkind to the household in Woburn Square? Surely even the high moralists--or shall we say the high gods, who certainly cannot make less, and may perhaps make more, allowances?--would have pitied Mr. Ledstone. Beyond all the disappointment and dismay, he felt himself the victim of a gross breach of trust. He fumed up and down the back room on the ground floor which was called his study--the place he read the papers in and where he slept after lunch. "But he said there were to be no proceedings. He said he didn't believe in it. He said it distinctly more than once." Mrs. Ledstone had gone to her room. The sinner had fled to his studio, leaving Amy to break the news to Mr. Ledstone; Amy was growing accustomed to this office. "I suppose he's changed his mind," said Amy, with a weary listlessness. "But he said it. I remember quite well. 'I am not a believer in divorce.' And you remember I came home and told you there were to be no proceedings? Monstrous! In a man of his position! Well, one ought to be able to depend on his word! Monstrous!" Exclamation followed exclamation like shots from a revolver--but a revolver not working very smoothly. "It'll have to go through, I suppose, daddy." "How can you take it like that? What'll your Uncle Martin say? And Aunt Lena--and the Winfreys? It'll be a job to live this down! And my son--a man with my record! He distinctly said there were to be no proceedings. I left him on that understanding. What'll Mrs. Thurseley think? I shall go and see this man Maxon myself." Of all sinners Mr. Maxon was ranking top in Woburn Square to-day--easily above his wife even. "I don't expect that'll do any good." "Amy, you really are----Oh, well, child, I'm half off my head. A man has no right to say a thing like that unless he means it. No proceedings, he said!" "I expect he did mean it. Something's changed him, I suppose." Something had--and it never occurred to Cyril Maxon that the Ledstone family had any right to a say in the matter. He would have been astonished to hear the interpretation that Mr. Ledstone put on the interview which he remembered only with vivid disgust, with the resentment due to an intrusion entirely unwarrantable. So the poor old gentleman must be left fuming up and down, quite vainly and uselessly clamouring against the unavoidable, an object for compassion, even though he was thinking more of the Thurseleys, of Uncle Martin, Aunt Lena, and the Winfreys than of how his son stood towards divine or social law on the one side, and towards a deserted woman on the other? Respectability is, on the whole, a good servant to morality, but sometimes the servant sits in the master's seat. The culprit's state was no more enviable than his father's; indeed it appeared to himself so much worse that he was disposed to grudge his family the consternation which they displayed so prodigally and to find in it an unfair aggravation of a burden already far too heavy. Nothing, perhaps, makes a man feel so ill-used as to do a mean thing and then be baulked of the object for whose sake he did it. A mean thing it undoubtedly was, even if it had been the right thing also in the eyes of many people--for to such unfortunate plights can we sometimes be reduced by our own actions that there really is not a thing both right and straight left to do; and it had been done in a mean and cowardly way. Yet it was now no good. Things had just seemed to be settling down quietly; he was being soothed by the consolatory petting of his mother and father. Now this happened--and all was lost. His decent veil of obscurity was rent in twain; he was exposed to the rude stare of the world, to the shocked eyes of Aunt Lena and the rest. He had probably lost the girl towards whom his thoughts had turned as a comfortable and satisfactory solution of all his difficulties; and he had the perception to know that, whether he had lost Mabel or not, he had finally and irretrievably lost Winnie. Everybody would be against him now, both the men of the law and the men of the code; he had been faithful to the standards of neither. He had not the grace to hate himself; that would have been a promising state of mind. But fuming up and down in his studio off Fitzroy Square (just like his father in the back room in Woburn Square) and lashing himself into impotent fury, he began to feel that he hated everybody else. They had all had a hand in his undoing--Bob Purnett and his lot with their easy-going moralities, Shaylor's Patch and its lot with their silly speculations and vapourings over things they knew nothing about, Cyril Maxon who did not stand by what he said nor by what he believed, Winnie with ridiculous exacting theories, Mabel Thurseley (poor blameless Mabel!) by attracting his errant eyes and leading him on to flirtation, his parents by behaving as if the end of the world had come, his sister because she despised him and had sympathy with the deserted woman. He was in a sad case. Nobody had behaved or was behaving decently towards him, nobody considered the enormous--the impossible--difficulties of his situation from beginning to end. Was there no justice in the world--nor even any charity? What an ending--what an ending--to those pleasant days of dalliance at Shaylor's Patch! What was deep down in his heart was--"And I could have managed it all right my way, if she'd only have let me!" He did not go home to dinner that evening. He slunk back late at night, hoping that all his family would be in bed. Yet when he found that accusing sister sitting alone in the drawing-room, he grounded a grievance on her solitude. She was sewing--and she went on sewing in a determined manner and in unbroken silence. "Well, where's everybody? Have you nothing to say? I'm sent to Coventry, I suppose?" "Mother's in bed. Oh, she's pretty easy now; you needn't worry. Daddy's in his study; he was tired out, and I expect he's gone to sleep. I'm quite ready to talk to you, Godfrey." Perhaps--but her tone did not forebode a cheerful conversation. He got up from the chair into which he had plunged himself when he came in. "Pretty gay here, isn't it? Oh, you do know how to rub it in, all of you! I should think living in this house would drive any man to drink and blue ruin in a fortnight." Amy sewed on. She had offered to talk, but what he said seemed to call for no comment. He strode to the door and opened it violently. "I'm off to bed." "Good-night, Godfrey," said Amy; her speech was smothered by the banging of the door. Poor sinner! Poor creature! Winnie Maxon might indeed plead that her theory had not been fairly tried; she had chosen the wrong man for the experiment. Here, then--save for the one formality on which Cyril Maxon now insisted--Winnie and the Ledstone family were at the parting of the ways. Their concurrence had been fortuitous--it was odd what people met one another at Shaylor's Patch, Stephen's appetite for humanity being so voracious--fortuitous, and ill-starred for all parties. They would not let her into their life; they would not rest till they had ejected her from her tainted connexion with it. Now they went out of hers. She remembered Godfrey as her great disappointment, her lost illusion, her blunder; Amy as it were with a friendly stretching-out of hands across a gulf impassable; the old folk with understanding and toleration--since they did no other than what they and she herself had been taught to regard as right. How could the old change their ideas of right? Their memory of her was far harder--naturally, perhaps. She was a raider, a brigand, a sadly disturbing and destructive invader. At last she had been driven out, but a track of desolation spread behind her retreating steps. Indeed there were spots where the herbage never grew again. The old folk forgave their son and lived to be proud of him once more. But Amy Ledstone had gauged her brother with an accuracy destructive of love; and within twelve months Mabel Thurseley married a stockbroker, an excellent fellow with a growing business. She never knew it, but she, at least, had cause for gratitude to Winnie Maxon. Godfrey returned to the obedience of the code. He was at home there. It was an air that he could breathe. The air of Shaylor's Patch was not--nor that of the Kensington studio. CHAPTER XVIII NOTHING SERIOUS "By the law came sin----" quoted Stephen Aikenhead. "He only meant the Jewish law. Man, ye're hopeless." Dennehy tousled his hair. The February afternoon was mild; Stephen was a fanatic about open air, if about nothing else. The four sat on the lawn at Shaylor's Patch, well wrapped up--Stephen, Tora, and Dennehy in rough country wraps, Winnie in a stately sealskin coat, the gift of Mrs. Lenoir. She had taken to dressing Winnie, in spite of half-hearted remonstrances and with notable results. "But the deuce is," Stephen continued--this time on his own account and, therefore, less authoritatively--"that when you take away the law, the sin doesn't go too." Winnie's story was by now known to these three good friends. Already it was being discussed more as a problem than as a tragedy. Some excuse might be found in Winnie's air and manner. She was in fine looks and good spirits, interested and alert, distinctly resilient against the blows of fortune and the miscarriage of theoretical experiments. So much time and change had done for her. "And it seems just as true of any other laws, even if he did mean the Jewish, Dick," Stephen ended. "Don't lots of husbands, tied up just as tight as anything or anybody can tie them, cut loose and run away just the same?" asked Tora. "And wives," added Winnie--who had done it, and had a right to speak. "It's like the old dispute about the franchise and the agricultural labourer. I remember my father telling me about it somewhere in the eighties--when I was quite a small boy. One side said the labourer oughtn't to have the vote till he was fit for it, the other said he'd never be fit for it till he had it." "Oh, well, that's to some extent like the woman question," Tora remarked. "Are we to change the law first or people first? Hope a better law will make better people, or tell the people they can't have a better law till they're better themselves?" "Stephen, you've a glimmer of sense in you this afternoon." "Well, Dick, we don't want to end by merely making things easier for brutes and curs--male or female." "I think you're a little wanting in the broad view to-day, Stephen. You're too much affected by Winnie's particular case. Isn't it better to get rid of brutes and curs anyhow? The quicker and easier, the better." Tora was, as usual, uncompromising. "Everybody seems to put a good point. That's the puzzle," said Stephen, who was obviously enjoying the puzzle very much. "Oh, ye're not even logical to-day, Tora," Dennehy complained, "which I will admit you sometimes are, according to your wrong-headed principles. Ye call the man a brute or a cur, and this and that--oh, ye meant Godfrey! What's the man done that he hadn't a right to do on your own showing? His manners were bad, maybe." "It's our own showing that we're now engaged in examining, if you'll permit us, Dick," Stephen rejoined imperturbably. "When a man's considering whether he's been wrong, it's a pity to scold him; because the practice is both rare and laudable." "Oh, you mustn't even consider whether I've been wrong, Stephen," Winnie cried. "Wrong in principle, I mean. As to the particular person--but I don't want to abuse him, poor fellow. His environment----" "That's a damnable word, saving your presence," Dennehy interrupted. "Nowadays whenever a scoundrel does a dirty trick, he lays it to the account of his environment." "But that's just what I meant, Dick." "Say the devil, and ye're nearer the mark, Winnie." "Environment's more hopeful," Stephen suggested. "You see, we may be able to change that. Over your _protégé_ we have no jurisdiction." "He may have over you, though, some day! Oh, I'll go for a walk, and clear my head of all your nonsense." "Don't forget you promised to take me to the station after tea," said Winnie. "Forget it!" exclaimed Dick Dennehy in scorn indescribable. "Now will I forget it--is it likely, Winnie?" He swung off into the house to get his walking-stick. Tora Aikenhead shook her head in patient reproof. No getting reason into Dick's, no hope of it at all! It was just Dick's opinion of her. A short silence followed Dennehy's departure. Then Stephen Aikenhead spoke again. "You've had a rough time, Winnie. Are you sorry you ever went in for it?" "No, it was the only thing to try; and it has resulted--or is just going to--in my being free. But I did fail in one thing. I was much more angry with Godfrey than I had any right to be. I was angry--yes, angry, not merely grieved--because he left me, as well as because he was afraid to do it in a straightforward way. I didn't live up to my theories there." "I don't know that I think any theory easy to live up to," said Tora. "Is the ordinary theory of marriage easy to live up to either?" "It's always interesting to see how few people live up to their theories." Stephen smiled. "It seems to me your husband isn't living up to his." "No, he isn't, and it's rather consoling. I don't fancy it ever entered his head that he would have to try it in practice himself. Rather your own case, isn't it, Stephen? You've never really found what any--any difficulty could mean to you." "Oh, I know I'm accused of that. I can't help it; it's absolutely impossible to get up a row with Tora. And even I don't say that you ought to walk out of the house just for the fun of it!" "We prove our theory best by the fact of the theory making no difference," said Tora. "I suppose that in the end it's only the failures who want theories at all," Winnie mused. "Probably--with the happy result of reducing, _pro tanto_, the practical importance of the subject, without depriving it of its speculative interest," laughed Stephen. "Love, union, parentage, partnership--it's good to have them all, but, as life goes on, a lot of people manage with the last two--or even with only the last. It grows into a pretty strong tie. Well, Winnie, you seem to have come through fairly well, and I hope you won't have much more trouble over the business." "I shan't have any, to speak of. I've put it all in Hobart Gaynor's hands. I went to see him and told him all he wanted to know. He's taken charge of the whole thing; I really need hear no more about it. He was awfully kind--just his dear old self." She smiled. "Well, short of asking me to his house, you know." "Oh, that's his wife," said Tora. "Mrs. Gaynor seems to live up to her theories, at any rate," chuckled Stephen. "It's not so difficult to live up to your theories about other people. It's about yourself," said Winnie. "I think your going to Mrs. Lenoir's is such a perfect arrangement." Tora characteristically ignored the large body of opinion which would certainly be against her on the question. "I'm very happy there--she's so kind. And I seem quite a fixture. I've been there nearly two months, and now she says I'm to go abroad with her in the spring." She paused for a moment. "The General's very kind too. In fact I think he likes me very much." "Who's the General? I don't know about him." Winnie explained sufficiently, and added, "Of course he thinks I'm just Miss Wilson. Mrs. Lenoir says it's all right, but I can't feel it's quite straight." "As he appears to be nearly seventy, and Mrs. Lenoir's friend, if anybody's----" Stephen suggested. Winnie smiled and blushed a little. "Well, you see, the truth is that it's not only the General. He's got a son. Well, he's got three, but one of them turned up about a fortnight ago." "Oh, did he? Where from?" "From abroad--on long leave. It's the eldest--the Major." "Does he like you very much too, Winnie?" Winnie looked across the lawn. "It seems just conceivable that he might--complicate matters," she murmured. "I haven't spoken to Mrs. Lenoir about that--aspect of it." Stephen was swift on the scent of another problem. "Oh, and you mean, if he did--well, show signs--how much ought he to be told about Miss Wilson?" "Yes. And perhaps even before the signs were what you'd call very noticeable. Wouldn't it be fair? Because he doesn't seem to me at all a--a theoretical kind of person. I should think his ideas are what you might call----" "Shall we say traditional--so as to be quite impartial towards the Major?" "Yes. And especially about women, I should think." Stephen looked across at his wife, smiling. "Well, Tora?" Without hesitation Tora gave her verdict. "If you'd done things that you yourself knew or thought to be disgraceful, you ought to tell him before he grows fond of you. But you're not bound to tell him what you've done, on the chance of his thinking it disgraceful, when you don't." "I expect it's more than a chance," Winnie murmured. "I'm groping after Tora's point. I haven't quite got it. From the Major's point of view, in the hypothetical circumstances we're discussing, what's of importance is not what Winnie thinks, but what he does." "What's important to the Major," Tora replied, "is that he should fall in love with a good woman. Good women may do what the Major thinks disgraceful, but they don't do what they themselves think disgraceful. Or, if they ever do, they repent and confess honestly." "Oh, she's got an argument! She always has. Still, could a good woman let herself be fallen in love with under something like false pretences?" "There will be no false pretences, Stephen. She will be--she practically is--an unmarried woman, and, if she married him, she'd marry him as such. The rest is all over." "It may be atavistic--relics of my public school and so on--but it doesn't seem to me quite the fair thing," Stephen persisted; "to keep him in the dark about our young friend, Miss Wilson, I mean." "I think I agree with you, Stephen." Winnie smiled. "If he does show signs, that's to say!" "Oh, only if he shows signs, of course. Otherwise, it's in no way his business." "Because, whatever his rights may be, why should I risk making him unhappy? Besides, in a certain event, he might find out, when it was--from his point of view--too late." Stephen laughed. "At least admit, Tora, that from a merely practical point of view, there's something to be said for telling people things that they may find out for themselves at an uncomfortably late hour." "Oh, I thought we were trying to get a true view of a man's--or a woman's--rights in such a case," said Tora, with lofty scorn. "But it seems I'm in a minority." "You wouldn't be happy if you weren't, my dear. It's getting dusk, and here comes Dick back. Let's go in to tea." Dick Dennehy often grew hot in argument, but his vexation never lasted long. Over tea he was in great spirits, and talked eagerly about a new prospect which had opened before him. The post he held as correspondent was a poor affair, ill-paid and leading to nothing. He had the chance of being appointed a leader-writer on a London daily paper--a post offering a great advance both in pay and in position. The only possible difficulty arose from his religious convictions; they might, on occasion, clash with the policy of the paper, in matters concerning education for instance. "But they're good enough to say they think so well of me in every other way that the little matter may probably admit of adjustment." "Now don't you go back on your theories--or really where are we?" said Stephen chaffingly. "I won't do that; I won't do that. I should be relieved of dealing with those questions. And, Stephen, my boy, I'd have a chance of a decent place to live in and of being able to put by my old age pension." They all entered eagerly into the discussion of these rosy dreams, and it was carried, _nem. con._, that Dick must build himself a 'week-end' cottage at Nether End, as near as might be to Shaylor's Patch. Perhaps Winnie could find one to suit her too! "And we'll all sit and jaw till the curtain falls!" cried Stephen Aikenhead, expressing his idea of a happy life. "Ye're good friends here, for all your nonsense," said Dennehy. "I'd ask no better." "Moreover, Dick, you can marry. You can tie yourself up, as Tora puts it, just as tightly as you like. Choose a woman, if possible, with some breadth of view. I want you to have your chance." "Oh, I'm not likely to be marrying." A cloud seemed to pass over his cheery face. But it was gone in a moment. "Well, who'd look at me, anyhow?" "I think you'd make an excellent husband, Dick," said Winnie. "I should marry you--yes, even tie you up--with the utmost confidence." He gave her a queer look, half-humorous, half-resentful. "Don't be saying such things, Winnie, or ye'll turn my head and destroy my peace of mind." "Oh, last time I flirted with you, you said you liked it!" she reminded him, laughing. On the way to the station, Winnie walked with her arm through his, for the evening had fallen dark, and the country road was rough. With a little pressure of her hand, she said, "I'm so glad--so glad--of the new prospects, Dick. I believe in you, you know, though we do differ so much." He was silent for a moment, and then asked abruptly, "And what prospects have you?" "Oh, I suppose I'm rather like the politician who had his future behind him. But I haven't made up my mind what to do. I'm living rather from hand to mouth just now, and taking a holiday from thinking." "Oh, I'll mind my own business, if that's what you mean." "Dick, how can you? Of course it wasn't. Please don't be huffy about nothing." "I'm worried about you. Don't let those people up at the Patch get at you again, Winnie--for pity's sake, don't! Take care of yourself, my dear. My heart bleeds to see you where you stand to-day, and if you got into any other trouble--you don't understand that you're a woman a man might do bad as well as good things for." Emotion was strong in his voice; Winnie lightly attributed it to his nationality. "Don't fret about me. I've got to pay for my blunders, and, if I've any sense at all, I shall be wiser in future." "If ye're ever inclined to another man, for God's sake try him, test him, prove him. Ye can't afford another mistake, Winnie. It'd kill you, wouldn't it?" "I shouldn't--like it," she answered slowly. "Yes, I shall be cautious, Dick. And it would take a good deal to make me what you call 'inclined to' any man just yet." She broke into a laugh. "But it's your domestic prospects that we were discussing this afternoon!" "I have none," he answered shortly, almost sourly. "Oh, you've only just begun to think of it," she laughed. "Don't despair of finding somebody worthy some day!" They had just reached the station--nearly a quarter of an hour ahead of their time. Dennehy was going back to sleep at the Aikenheads', but he sat down with her in the waiting-room under a glaring gas lamp, to wait for the train. Seen in the light, Dennehy's face looked sad and troubled. Winnie was struck by his expression. "Dick," she said gently, "I hope we haven't been chaffing you when--when there's something serious?" He shrugged his shoulders. "No, no, ye couldn't call it serious." "I believe it is, because you were in good spirits till we began about that. Then you looked funny and--well, you don't look at all funny now. If there is anything--oh, don't despair! And all good, good wishes, dear Dick! Oh, what a pity this should come, just when everything else is looking so bright for you!" "I tell ye, Winnie, there's nothing serious." Winnie nodded an entirely unreal acquiescence. "Very well, my friend," she said. A long silence fell between them. In direct disobedience to a large notice, Dennehy lit a cigarette and smoked it quickly, still looking sad and moody. Winnie, troubled by his trouble and unconvinced by his denial, was wondering why in the world she had never thought of such a thing happening to Dick Dennehy. Why not? There was no reason; he was a man, like the rest. Only we are in the habit of taking partial and one-sided views of our friends and neighbours. The most salient aspect of them alone catches our eye. To cover the whole ground we have neither time nor, generally, opportunity. They come to stand, to us, for one quality or characteristic--just as the persons in a novel or a play often, perhaps generally, do, however much the writer may have endeavoured to give the whole man on his canvas. Now the quality of lover--of even potential lover--had never seemed to associate itself at all necessarily or insistently with Dick Dennehy, as it did, at once and of necessity, with Godfrey Ledstone. So Winnie had just not thought of it. Yet she knew enough to understand how it is that this very kind of man takes love hard, when it does chance to find him out--takes it hard and keeps it long--long after the susceptible man has got over his latest attack of recurrent fever. Was poor Dick Dennehy really hard hit? "Who'd look at me, anyhow?" he had asked. Well, he certainly was not handsome. But Winnie remembered her two handsome men. "I should like to have a word with that girl!" she thought. Her reference was to Dick's hard-hearted mistress. But Winnie was not of the women--if indeed they exist--whose innocence merges in denseness and who can successfully maintain for a twelvemonth a total ignorance of the feelings of a man with whom they are thrown into familiar acquaintance. Suddenly, some two minutes before her train was due, her brain got to work--seized on the pieces of the puzzle with its quick perception. Here was a man, naturally ardent, essentially sanguine, in despair--surely about a woman? He did not deny the woman, though he protested that the matter was not 'serious.' Merely to look at him now proved it, for the moment at least, grievous. Well, for 'serious' she read practicable; for 'not serious' she substituted hopeless. Then he had looked at her in that queer way; the words had been all right, conceived in the appropriate vein of jocular flirtation; but the look was out of joint. And then his extreme and emotional concern for her welfare and prudent conduct! Would he, even though a Celt, have felt that anxiety quite so keenly, if another and hopeless affection had been dominating his mind? "Who'd look at me, anyhow?" That protest his modesty made consistent with an aspiration for any lady; it need not be taken too seriously. But his abrupt curt answer about his prospects--"I have none"----? The pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit pretty well, yet the proof was not conclusive. Say that the evidence was consistent, rather than demonstrative. Somehow, intangibly and beyond definition, there was something in the man's bearing, in his attitude, in the totality of his words and demeanour, which enforced the conviction. There even seemed an atmosphere in the bare, dirty little waiting-room which contained and conveyed it--something coming unseen from him to her, in spite of all his dogged effort to resist the transference. He smoked a second cigarette fiercely. Why, when he had been serene and cheerful all the afternoon, should he be so suddenly overcome by the thought of an absent woman that he could not or would not speak to or look at a friend to whom he was certainly much attached? The train rumbled into the station. "Here it is!" said Winnie, and rose to her feet. Dick Dennehy started and jumped up. For a second his eyes met hers. "Come along and put me into a carriage," she added hastily, and made her way at a quick pace to the train. "Where are the thirds?" They found the thirds, and she got in. He shut the door, and stood by it, waiting for the train to start. "You've got a wrong idea. I tell ye it's not serious, Winnie." He made his protest again, in a hard desperate voice. Then, with an effort, he took a more ordinary tone. "I'm full of business over this new idea--and with winding up the old connection, if I do it. I mayn't be seeing you for a few weeks. You will take care of yourself?" "Surely if anybody's had a warning, I have! Good-bye, Dick." She put her hand out through the window. He took it and pressed it, but he never lifted his eyes to hers. A lurch back, a plunge forward, and the train was started. "Good-bye, Dick!" she cried again. "Cheer up!" Leaning out of the window, she saw him standing with his hands in his pockets, looking after her. He called out something, which she heard imperfectly, but it embraced the word 'fool,' and also the word 'serious.' She could supply a connexion for the latter, but travelled to town in doubt as to the application of the former. Was it to her or to himself that Dick Dennehy had applied the epithet? "Because it makes a little difference," thought Winnie, snuggling down into the big collar of her sealskin coat--quite out of place, by the way, in a third-class carriage. CHAPTER XIX A POINT OF HONOUR Mrs. Lenoir's boast was not without warrant; in the course of her life she had held her own against men in more than one hard fight. She admired another woman who could do the same. In her refugee from the West Kensington studio she rejoiced to find not a sentimental penitent nor an emotional wreck, but a woman scarred indeed with wounds, but still full of fight, acknowledging a blunder, but not crushed by it, both resolved and clearly able to make a life for herself still and to enjoy it. She hailed in Winnie, too, the quality which her own career had taught her both to recognize and to value--that peculiarly feminine attractiveness which was the best weapon in her sex's battles; Winnie fought man with her native weapons, not with an equipment borrowed from the male armoury and clumsily or feebly handled. Under the influence of this sex-sympathy pity had passed into admiration, and admiration into affection, during the weeks which had elapsed since she brought Winnie to her roof. Her ethical code was pagan, as perhaps is already evident. When she hated, she hurt if she could; when she loved, she helped--she would not have quarrelled with the remark that she deserved no credit for it. She was by now intent on helping Winnie, on giving her a fresh start, on obliterating the traces of defeat, and on co-operating in fresh manoeuvres which should result in victory. But to this end some strategy was needful. Not only other people, but Winnie herself had to be managed, and there was need of tact in tiding over an awkward period of transition. As a subsidiary move towards the latter object, Mrs. Lenoir projected a sojourn abroad; in regard to the former she had to be on her guard against two sets of theories--the world's theories about Winnie, which might perhaps find disciples in her own particular friends, the General and his son, Major Merriam, and Winnie's theories about the world, which had before now led their adherent into a rashness that invited, and in the end had entailed, disaster. She had pleasant memories of Madeira, which she had visited many years ago under romantic circumstances. She outlined a tour which should begin with that island, include a sea-trip thence to Genoa, and end up with a stay at the Italian lakes. On the day that Winnie spent at Shaylor's Patch she sketched out this plan to her friend, the General. "Upon my word, it sounds uncommonly pleasant. I should like to come with you, but I don't want to leave Bertie for so long, now he's at home for once." "No, of course you don't." For reasons of her own, she preferred that any suggestion should come from him. The General pondered, then smiled rather roguishly. "What would you say, Clara, if two handsome young officers turned up at Madeira, for a few days anyhow? Just to bask in the sun, you know?" "I should say that two handsome young women wouldn't be much annoyed." "By Jove, I'll suggest it to Bertie!" All right--so long as it was the General who suggested it! Mrs. Lenoir smiled at him. "Of course it would be very pleasant." A slight emphasis on the last word suggested that, if there were any reasons to weigh against the obvious pleasantness, they were matters for her friend's consideration, not for hers. If he chose to go out of his way to expose his eldest son to the fascination of a young woman about whom he knew nothing at all, it was his own look out. By now there was no doubt that Bertie Merriam was quite conscious of the fascination, though by no means yet dominated by it. "We should make a very harmonious quartette," the General declared. "I shall certainly suggest it to Bertie." "Oh, well, you must see how it strikes him. Remember, he may prefer the gaieties of London. Don't press him on our account!" She would not in any way invite; she preserved the attitude of a kindly, but not an eager, acquiescence in any decision at which Bertie might arrive. But she was strongly of opinion that the handsome officers would turn up--on the island, and not improbably even at Southampton docks. All this, then, was in Mrs. Lenoir's mind when Winnie came back from Shaylor's Patch, her thoughts still occupied with two questions. One related to Dick Dennehy; it was a private matter and did not concern her hostess. But the problem of conduct which she had submitted to the Aikenheads did. On that she was bound in loyalty to consult Mrs. Lenoir. That lady had indeed given an opinion once, but circumstances alter cases. As she ate her dinner, she described humorously the difference of opinion between husband and wife, putting the case in the abstract, of course, without explicit reference to the Major, and taking the liberty of implying that it was Stephen who had initiated the debate. These concessions to modesty and discretion scarcely deceived Mrs. Lenoir, though she accepted them decorously. Both women knew that it was Bertie Merriam who might make a settlement of the point necessary before many days, or, at all events, many weeks, were out. Worldly-wise Mrs. Lenoir took up a middle position. She was not prepared for Tora's uncompromising doctrine; yet she agreed with the view that there was much to be said for telling people what they might probably find out--and find out too late in their own opinion. All the same, she dissented from Stephen's extreme application of the rule of candour. "You wouldn't accept a man without telling him, but you needn't blurt it out to anybody who makes you a few pretty speeches." "Wouldn't it be fair to tell him before he got much in love?" "If he wasn't much in love, he'd be rather inclined to smile over your telling him, wouldn't he?" The suggestion went home to Winnie. "I shouldn't want to risk that." "Unless circumstances make it absolutely necessary, I should let things stay as they are till your case is over, at all events. It'll be so much pleasanter for you to be incog. till then." There was something in that suggestion too. Not great on theory, Mrs. Lenoir took good practical points. "It's rather giving up my point of view," Winnie objected. Mrs. Lenoir smiled in a slightly contemptuous kindness. "Oh, my poor child, take a holiday from your point of view, as well as from all the rest of it. And really it's quixotic of you to be so much afraid of giving some man or other a little shock, after all they've made you suffer." Winnie felt the appeal to the cause of the sex also. In short all Mrs. Lenoir's points told; they seemed full of workaday wisdom and reasonable common-sense. "Just don't think about it again till after the case. Promise me." "That is best, I think, in the end. Yes, I promise, Mrs. Lenoir." Mrs. Lenoir said nothing about the possibility of the two officers 'turning up' at Madeira--or at Southampton docks. Diplomacy forbade; the connection would have been too rudely obvious; it might have led Winnie to reconsider her pledge. In fact things were so managed--mainly by a policy of masterly inactivity, tempered by just one hint to the General--that the first Winnie heard of this idea came neither from Mrs. Lenoir nor from the General, but from Bertie Merriam himself. Emanating from that quarter, the suggestion could not be brusquely repelled; it was bound to meet with courteous consideration. Indeed, to refuse to accept it would be extremely difficult. To Mrs. Lenoir Winnie might have avowed the only possible objection; she could not so much as hint at it to the Major. Mrs. Lenoir knew her way about, as the colloquial phrase has it. Winnie's relations with Bertie Merriam had now reached the stage which a mature and retrospective judgment, though not, of course, the heat of youth, may perhaps declare to be the pleasantest that can exist between man and woman--a congenial friendship coloured into a warmer tint by admiration on the one side and a flattered recognition of it on the other. Winnie's recent experience raised recognition to the height of gratification, almost to that of gratitude. Not only her theory had suffered at Godfrey Ledstone's hands; deny it though she might, her vanity also had been wounded. She welcomed balms, and smiled kindly on any who would administer them. After an unfortunate experience in love, people are said often to welcome attentions from a new-comer 'out of pique'; it is likely that the motive is less often vexation with the offender than gratitude to the successor, who restores pride and gives back to life its potentiality of pleasure. This was Winnie's mood. She was willing to take Mrs. Lenoir's advice not merely on the specific point on which it was offered. She was willing to accept it all round--willing, so far as she could, to forget her theories and her point of view, as well as what they had entailed upon her. She wanted to enjoy the pleasant things of life for awhile; one could not be playing apostle or martyr all the time! She was ready to see what this new episode, this journey and this holiday, had to offer; she was not unwilling to see how much she might be inclined to like Major Merriam. Yet all this is to analyse her far more than she analysed herself. In her it was, in reality, the youthful blood moving again, the rebound from sorrow, the reassertion of the right of her charms and its unimpeded exercise. Such a mood is not one where the finer shades of scruple are likely to prevail; it is too purely a natural and primitive movement of mind and body. Besides, Winnie could always, as Mrs. Lenoir reminded her, soothe a qualm of conscience by a staggering _tu quoque_ launched against the male sex in general. Again, in an unconscious and blindly instinctive way, she was a student of human nature, and rather a head-strong one. She did not readily rest in ignorance about people, or even find repose in doubt. She liked to search, test, classify, and be guided by the result. Her history showed it. She had tested Cyril Maxon, classified him, and acted on her conclusion. She had experimented on Godfrey Ledstone, classified him, found that she had miscalculated, paid the expense of an unsuccessful experiment, and accepted the issue of it. Here, now, was new material--men of a kind to whom her experience had not previously introduced her in any considerable degree of intimacy. She might often have dined in the company of such; but under Maxon's roof real knowledge of other men was not easily come by. Men of views and visions, men of affairs and ambitions, men of ease and pleasure--among these her lot had been cast since she left her father's house. The Merriams were pre-eminently men of duty. They had their opinions, and both took their recreations with a healthy zest; but the Service was as the breath of their nostrils. The General was the cleverer soldier of the two, as the Kala Kin Expedition bore witness. The son was not likely ever to command more than a regiment or, at most, a brigade; higher distinctions must be left to the second brother. Bertie's enthusiasm corresponded nicely with his gifts. He adored the regiment, and in due course a few months would see him Lieutenant-Colonel; if only the regiment could see service under his command, how joyously would he sing his _Nunc dimittis_, with duty done and his name on an honourable roll! Winnie sat regarding his pleasant tanned face, his sincere pale blue eyes, and his very well-made clothes, with a calm satisfaction. She had been hearing a good deal about the regiment, but the gossip amused her. "And where do the officers' wives--I suppose some of you have wives?--come in?" she asked. "Oh, they're awfully important, Miss Wilson. The social tone depends so much on them. You see, with a parcel of young chaps--the subalterns, you know--well, you do see, don't you?" "Well, I think I can see that, Major Merriam. They mustn't flirt with the subalterns? At any rate, not too much?" "That's rotten. But they ought to teach them their manners." "Ought to be motherly? You don't look as if that sounded quite right! Elder-sisterly?" "That's more like it, Miss Wilson." He said 'Miss Wilson' rather often, or so it struck Winnie--just as Bob Purnett used to say 'Mrs. Ledstone' much too often. He gave her another little jar the next moment. He left the subject of officers' wives, and leant forward to her with an ingratiating yet rather apologetic smile. "I say, do you know what the General has had the cheek to suggest to your cousin?" Winnie had forgotten her cue. "My cousin?" she exclaimed in surprise. "Why, Mrs. Lenoir! She is your cousin, isn't she?" The lie direct Winnie disliked. Yet could she betray her benefactress? "It's so awfully distant that I forget the cousin in the friend," she said, with an uneasy little laugh. "But what has the General had the cheek--your phrase, not mine--to suggest to Mrs. Lenoir?" She seemed to have forgotten the cousin again, for she said 'Mrs. Lenoir,' not 'Cousin Clara.' As, however, the Major had never heard her say anything else, the point did not attract his notice. "Why, that we four might make a party of it as far as Madeira. Nice little place, though I suppose it won't be as lively now as it was when the war was going on." "It sounds delightful." "I've got a paper to read to the Naval and Military Institute in six weeks' time. I could just fit it in--and write the thing out there, you know." "We'd all help you," said Winnie. The Major detected raillery. "I should have a go at it before you were up in the morning." "Oh, well, then I must be content with the humble function of helping to relax your mind afterwards." "But you wouldn't mind our coming?" "You don't appreciate how fond I am of the General." "Well, he half-worships you, Miss Wilson. And you'll put up with my company for his sake?" "He's too distinguished a man to carry the rugs and cushions." "You can fag me as much as you like on board. The difficulty is to get enough moving about." "On that distinct understanding, I won't veto the party, Major Merriam." She laughed. "But, of course, I've really got nothing to say to it. It's for Mrs. Lenoir to decide, isn't it?" Bertie Merriam felt that he had obtained permission, but hardly encouragement--just as the General was convinced that he had made a suggestion and not received one. But permission was enough. "I shall tell the General I've squared you," he said, beaming. "There are jolly excursions to be made, you know. You can either ride, or be carried in a hammock----" "I wonder if Mrs. Lenoir will care for the excursions!" "Well, if the seniors want to take it easy, we could do them together, couldn't we, Miss Wilson?" "To be sure we could," smiled Winnie. "More rugs and cushions for you! Won't it be what you call fatigue duty?" "I'll take it on," he declared. "I don't shirk work in a good cause, you know." One thing about him surprised Winnie, while it also pleased her. Obviously he considered her witty. She had never been accustomed to take that view of herself. Cyril Maxon would have been amazed at it. Though Stephen Aikenhead now and then gave her credit for a hit, her general attitude towards him was that of an inquirer or a disciple, and disciples may not becomingly bandy witticisms with their masters. Because Bertie Merriam visibly enjoyed--without attempting to equal--her fencing, she began to enjoy it herself. Nay, more, she began to rely on it. No less than her staggering _tu quoque_ to the male sex, it might serve, at a pinch, to quiet a qualm of conscience. "I can always keep him at his distance." That notion in her mind helped to minimize any scruples to which his admiration, the expedition, the excursions, the rugs and the cushions, might give rise. For if fencing can accord permission, it can surely also refuse it? If the Merriams were anything in this world, they were gentlemen. In matters of the heart a gentleman need not be very clever to take a hint; he feels it. But the most dexterous soother of qualms and scruples was Mrs. Lenoir. Her matter-of-fact treatment of the joint excursion shamed Winnie out of making too much of it. What reason was there to suppose that Bertie would fall in love? A pleasant passing flirtation perhaps--and why not? Moreover--here the subject was treated in a more general way, though the special application was not obscure--suppose he did! What did it matter? Men were always falling in love, and falling out of it again. A slight shrug of still shapely shoulders reduced these occurrences to their true proportions. Finally she took occasion to hint that Bertie Merriam was not what he himself would call 'pious.' He accepted the religion of his caste and country as he found it; he conformed to its observances and had an honest uninquiring belief in its dogmas. It was to him a natural side of life and an integral part of regimental discipline--much, in fact, as church-going was to Alice Aikenhead, at school. But there was no reason to suppose that he would carry it to extremes, or consider that it could ask more of him than the law asked. So far as the law went, all objections would vanish in a few months. Strong in her influence over the General, Mrs. Lenoir foresaw, in the event of the falling in love coming to pass, a brief trouble and a happy ending. The second was well worth the first. In fact she was by now set on her project--on the fresh start and the good match for Winnie. She was ready to forward it in every way she could, by diplomacy, by hard fighting if need be, by cajolery, and, finally, by such an endowment for Winnie as would remove all hindrances of a financial order. Though most of her money was sunk in an annuity, she could well afford to make Winnie's income up to four hundred a year--not a despicable dower for the wife of a regimental officer. With three sons in the army the General was not able to make very handsome allowances; the four hundred would be welcome with a bride. She would have been interested to overhear a conversation which took place between the General and his son while they were dining together at Bertie's club two days before the expedition was to set out. The General filled his glass of port and opened the subject. "Bertie, my boy, you ought to get married," he said. "A C.O., as you will be soon, ought to have a wife. It's good for the regiment, in my opinion--though some men think otherwise, as I'm aware--and it makes it much less likely that a man will get into any scrape on his own account--a thing a bachelor's always liable to do, and in these days a much more serious matter than it used to be." The General, at least, did not sound unpracticably 'pious.' Mrs. Lenoir might take comfort. Bertie Merriam blushed a little through his tan. "Well, to tell the truth, I have been just sort of thinking about it--in a kind of way, you know." "Anybody special in your eye?" asked the General. "It's rather early days to give it away," Bertie pleaded. "Yes, yes. I quite see, my boy. I beg your pardon. But I'm very glad to hear what you say. I know you'll choose a good girl--and a pretty one too, I'll lay odds! I won't ask any more. A little bit of money wouldn't hurt, of course. Take your own time, Bertie, and I'll wait." Thus the General ostensibly passed from the subject. But after finishing his glass and allowing it to be refilled, he remarked, "I'm looking forward to our jaunt, Bertie. It was a happy idea of mine, wasn't it? I shall enjoy talking to Clara--I always do--and you'll be happy with little Miss Wilson. I like her--I like her very much. Of course, twenty years ago it wouldn't have been wise for Clara to chaperon her, but at this time of day it's all forgotten. Only old fogies like me remember anything about it. It oughtn't to prejudice the girl in any sensible man's eyes." He exchanged a glance with his son. Nothing explicit was said. But a question had been answered which Bertie had desired to put. It was now quite clear to him that, if he were desirous of courting Miss Winnie Wilson, he need expect no opposition from the General. "I'm quite with you there, father. It would be very unfair to Miss Wilson." With what mind would Mrs. Lenoir--and Miss Wilson--have overheard the conversation? Might they have recognized that they were not giving quite such fair treatment as was being accorded to them? Or would Winnie's theories and her ability to launch a staggering _tu quoque_, and Mrs. Lenoir's practical points of difficulty, still have carried the day? It is probable that they would. Taken all together, they were very powerful, and Stephen Aikenhead's atavistic 'public-school' idea of honour could hardly have prevailed. Father and son walked home, arm in arm. The talk of his son's marriage, the prospect of his son's commanding his regiment, moved the old soldier to unwonted feeling. "I shall be a proud man when I can boast of two Colonels--and if that scamp George'll stick to work, he ought to give me a third before many years are over. There's no finer billet in the world than the command of a regiment--no position in which you can do more good, in my opinion, or serve the King to better purpose. And a good wife can help you, as I said--help you a lot." He pressed his son's arm and added, "Only you mustn't let her interfere with your work. The regiment must still come first in everything, Bertie--aye, even before your wife! That's the rule of the Service." CHAPTER XX AN HEROIC OFFER Bob Purnett spent nearly two months in Ireland; it was much longer than he had intended, but he liked the hunting there, and, when that was over, found excellent quarters and amusing society at the house of a squire whom his prowess in the field had won to friendship and who maintained the national tradition in the matter of good claret. Bob had no cause for hurry; his year's work was done. A holiday on the Riviera was the next item in his annual programme. He arrived in London two days before the expedition to Madeira was to start. Of it he knew nothing. He had written a couple of friendly breezy letters to Winnie (under the idea that she might be down-hearted), and the answer to the first--she had not answered the second--told him where she was and conveyed the impression that she still found life bearable. Where she was possessed a certain significance in his eyes; he nodded his head over it. It was a factor--precisely how important he could not say--in answering the question he had been, not with oppressive frequency yet from time to time, asking himself in the intervals of hunting and of drinking his host's good claret. "Why shouldn't she?" was the form the question assumed in his thoughts. If she had with Godfrey Ledstone--not much of a chap after all!--why shouldn't she with somebody else? True, Winnie had always puzzled him. But there was the line of division--a fixed line surely, if anything was fixed? She had crossed it once. He could not see why, with the proper courtesies observed, she should not make another transit. Yet, because she had always puzzled him, he was, as he told himself, stupidly nervous about making the proposition. People who do things, and yet do not seem to be the sort of people who generally do them, occasion these doubts and hesitations, confusing psychology and perplexing experience. Yet, finally, he was minded to 'chance it'--and, let it be said, not without such a sense of responsibility as it lay in his nature to feel. She had crossed the line, but he knew that she did not regard herself as a denizen of the other side. He was ready to concede that, to allow for it, to be very much on his good behaviour. Above all, no hint of the mercantile! He had the perception to see not only how fatal, but how rude and unjustifiable such a thing would be. He was (in a sentence) prepared to combine a charming companionship with an elevating influence. Permanently? Ah, well! If bygones are to be bygones, futurities may, by a parity of treatment, be left to the future. He called at the flat in Knightsbridge on Friday afternoon. In the drawing-room neighbourhood no signs of the impending expedition were visible; invaluable Emily restricted the ravages of packing to the bedrooms and their immediate vicinity. Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie were together, drinking tea. Winnie received him with glad cordiality; in the hostess he felt vaguely a hint of reserve. Mrs. Lenoir, full of her new project, did not see why Bob Purnett should come. She had nothing against him, but he was irrelevant; if her scheme succeeded, he would naturally drop out. She was distantly gracious--the 'grand manner' made its appearance--and, after giving him a cup of tea, went back to her packing, concerning which neither she nor Winnie had said a word--Winnie waiting for a lead from her friend, and her friend not being minded to give it. Winnie had not thought of Bob for weeks, but her heart warmed to him. "He saved my life that first night," was her inward utterance of gratitude. She lounged back on the sofa, and let him talk. But he did not talk idly for long; Bob Purnett took his fences; after all, he had made a thorough inspection of this particular 'teaser' before he mounted his horse. "I've been thinking a lot about you, since I've been away." "Flattered, Mr. Purnett." "Oh, rot. I mean, hoping you weren't unhappy, and so on, you know." Winnie moved her small hands in a gesture expressive of a reasoned endurance. "But, I say, pretty quiet here, isn't it?" "Oh yes, but I don't mind that." "Don't want to sit down here all your life, do you?" "That is rather a large order, isn't it? Have you anything else to suggest?" "You've begun to laugh at a fellow already!" "Already? Good gracious, is there anything tremendous coming?" Bob got up from his chair, moved across the hearthrug, and stood by her. He cleared his throat and lit a cigarette. Winnie began to be curious; she smiled up at him. "I believe you've got something on your mind. Out with it." A sudden idea flashed into her head. "You've not come from Godfrey? Because that's utterly impossible." "What do you take me for? I haven't seen the fellow. I say, what made you think that?" "Oh, I beg your pardon--I'm sorry. But you asked whether I wanted to stay here; that was like suggesting I should go somewhere else, wasn't it? So I thought you might mean that I should go--go back, you know. I'd sooner kill myself." "Oh, please drop it. I wasn't talking about that. I'm off to Monte Carlo on Tuesday." He looked down at his well-polished broad-welted brown boots; he was always admirably shod. Yet he seemed to find no inspiration, or not a very happy one. "Got over it, haven't you?" Winnie shrank into her shell. "I think I prefer your dumb sympathy. How can you expect me to talk about it?" "Put my foot in it?" "Well, yes, rather." Her right hand beat a tattoo on the arm of her chair. "Always do," remarked Bob reflectively, his eyes still on his boots. He was not surprised that she thought his question badly phrased--necessary preliminary as it was in substance. "Oh, nonsense. You're a dear. But have you really anything you're trying to say?" He must jump now--or he must refuse. He saw it, and courage came with the need for it. "I say, could you think of coming with me to Monte?" He raised his eyes, and looked her full in the face as he put the question. He had courage--but the puzzle was terribly persistent. "Will she come, or will she kick me out?"--is a brief summary of his inward questioning; he thought it about equal betting. "Come with you?" "Yes. Have a bit of fun, you know. We'd have a rare time." He was down at his boots again. "And everything just as you like, honour bright, Winnie, till--till you saw what you wanted, don't you know?" Winnie sat quite still for a few moments. She looked at Bob Purnett with an inquiring glance. He was a very good fellow. That she knew. Was he quite sane? He was certainly funny--so funny that indignation refused to adorn the situation. Slowly a smile bent the lines of her mouth. Here was a pretty contrast to Dick Dennehy's heartfelt appeal to her to 'take care of herself'; and not less to Bertie Merriam's respectfully cautious attentions. Aye, and to Mrs. Lenoir's schemes! She was aware that Bob had never grasped the true significance of her action in regard to Godfrey Ledstone. But to think that he had missed it so tremendously as this! And there were the trunks packed, not for Monte Carlo, but for Madeira--trunks redolent of respectability. She might be amused, but her amusement could not be devoid of malice; she might smile, but Bob must suffer--well, just a little, anyhow. She looked up at him, smiling still in treacherous amiability. "Is this a proposal of marriage, Bob?" she asked. He flushed. "Well--er--you can't marry, can you, Winnie?" "Not at the moment. But I can in a little more than six months. Would you and Monte Carlo wait for me?" "In a little more than----? What, is Maxon----?" "Yes, he is--very soon now." "You never told me!" "Up to now, I had no reason to suppose you were interested." Bob Purnett was obviously upset, very much upset indeed. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes seeming prominent in their aghast surprise. "Good Lord!" he muttered, and started striding across the room, then back again--like Mr. Ledstone in the back room at Woburn Square or Godfrey in his new studio. He went on with this for three or four minutes. Winnie sat with her head resting on the high back of her arm-chair, her eyes following him in scornful amusement and gratified malice. Bob was suffering for his presumption, his inability to appreciate plain differences, his gross misjudgment of her. His wrigglings under the chastisement were entertaining to watch. In his unfortunate person she seemed to be punishing all the great world which had refused to understand her; she was getting a little bit of her own back at last. Once, as he walked, he looked at her. His face was red, and he was frowning. Winnie's steady smile seemed to give him no comfort. With a queer jerk of his head he resumed his restless pacing. Indeed, Bob felt himself fairly caught. What a fool he had been not to reconnoitre the ground before an advance which had proved so rash! But he was not a scoundrel; he prided himself on 'playing the game.' Some men he knew would lightly give a promise if it were likely to serve their purpose and make no bones about breaking it six months hence. That was not his way, even where it would serve his purpose. What he was asking, as he paced, was whether he were bound to make the promise; if he made it, it should be kept. Of course it was the last thing he had ever meant; it was entirely outside his scheme of life, and his feeling for Winnie was not nearly strong enough to oust his scheme from the first place in his affections. But could he get out of the hole he was in without brutality, without insulting her? He did not see that he could. She had not married Godfrey Ledstone--it had been impossible. In his heart Bob had never believed in there being any other really operative reason. Her theories had been just a making the best of it. Now it would be possible, shortly, for her to marry him. It was, he conceded, entirely natural that she should jump at the chance. Could he decline, after his first proposal? That would to put the case--both his and her cases, in fact--in disagreeably plain terms. But he felt that it was terribly bad luck, and he, too, had his resentment--an angry protest against inconsistency. Why did Maxon first refuse, and then take back his refusal? Why did Winnie cross the line, and then want to cross back again? They 'let a man in' by behaviour like that--let him in very badly. Still, he was in his way very fond of her; and he was sorry for her. It did not lie in him to hurt her wilfully, even though not hurting her were to his own damage. And, then, it would be rather heroic--so very much the right thing to do. In common with most of mankind, he was susceptible to the attractions of the heroic; the glamour of it would, or, at all events, might, help him to bear the situation. He came and stood in front of her, his hands in his pockets; he looked rather sheepish. "All right, Winnie. Just as soon as it's possible. There's my word on it." He mustered a smile. "Don't be too down on me, though. I never pictured myself as a husband, you know." "You certainly needn't picture yourself as mine," said Winnie. "You mean--you won't do it?" "Of course I won't--any more than I'll go with you to Monte Carlo." She broke into a laugh at the perplexity of his red face. "Oh, you old goose, to think that I should do either!" Bob knew that his first proposal was irregular, and might have been taken as insulting--at least by a woman so inconsistent as Winnie; his second was undoubtedly handsome and heroic. He could not see that either was ridiculous. He flushed redder still under the friendly contempt of Winnie's words. "I don't see anything so particularly absurd about it. When I thought you couldn't marry, I didn't ask you to. When you told me you could, I did. What's the matter with that?" "Why, you are--and I am--very much the matter with it! But don't fly out at me, Bob. I might have flown out at you, but I didn't." "Oh, you got home all right in your own way. You've made me look an ass." His tone expressed a grudging resentful admiration; his glance was of the same order. He was furious, and Winnie, in her animation and triumph, was very pretty. "I don't see that it's altogether my doing. I think you helped. Come, don't be cross. You know that you're most awfully relieved. Your face, as you considered the question, was a study in consternation." He was certainly relieved about the marriage; but he was disappointed and hurt about the trip to Monte Carlo. If she had 'flown out' at him in moral indignation, that would have been intelligible, though, again, in his opinion hardly consistent, conduct on her part; as it was, she had called him, not a scoundrel, but a goose, and had played her trick on him with a smiling face, looking the while most attractive and hopelessly unapproachable. "Well, I mean what I say. My offer stands. Perhaps you'll think better of your answer." His voice was doggedly angry now. He plainly suggested that she--in her position--might go farther and fare worse. Winnie did not miss the hint, but let it pass with a gay contempt. "I won't quarrel; I don't mean to. If I had, I should have quarrelled at the beginning." She jumped up from her chair, and laid a hand on his arm. "Let's forgive each other, Bob!" Under a sudden impulse he caught her round the waist. Winnie's figure stiffened into a sudden rigidity, but she made no other movement. Bob's arm fell away again; he walked off towards a chair behind the door, on which he had left his hat and gloves. "I expect I'd better go," he said, in an unsteady voice, without turning his head towards her. "Please, Bob." The situation was relieved, or, at least, ended, by the opening of the door. The parlour-maid announced, "Major Merriam, miss!" The Major came in briskly. A large funnel-shaped parcel of white paper proclaimed a bouquet of flowers. Bob, behind the door, was not within the Major's immediate range of vision. "Well, Miss Wilson, are you all ready for the voyage? I've brought you a few flowers for your cabin." "Oh, thank you so much. May I--er--introduce you to my friend, Mr. Purnett? Mr. Purnett--Major Merriam." The Major bowed politely; Bob rather stiffly. "I was just off," he said, coming back towards Winnie, with hat and gloves in his left hand. He was wondering 'who the devil that chap is'--and 'what was that about a voyage and a cabin.' "Yes, we're actually nearly ready, women though we are! Emily's so splendid at it! Must you go, Bob? It'll be some time before we meet again. We're off to Madeira to-morrow morning, and then on to Italy--to the Lakes." She smiled on Bob. "But I'm afraid we shan't get to Monte Carlo!" "I didn't know you were--were going away." "I was just going to tell you when Major Merriam came in. We're all looking forward to it; aren't we, Major? Major Merriam and his father are coming with us as far as Madeira." "The ladies are good enough to accept our escort and our company for two or three weeks," said Bertie Merriam. He thought the other fellow looked rather sulky. "Going to be away long?" Bob jerked out the inquiry. "Oh, about three months, I think. Well, if you must go, good-bye, Bob. So good of you to come and see me." She smelt the nosegay which she had taken from Bertie. "Your flowers are delicious, Major Merriam!" Bob Purnett had never dreamt of such a factor in the situation as the Major now presented--this perfectly equipped, much-at-ease Major, who had no doubt that his flowers would be welcome, and whose company was accepted as far as Madeira--for two or three weeks, indeed, in Madeira. The feelings which had prompted him to put his hand round Winnie's waist transformed themselves into a fierce jealousy. She had laughed at his proposal--his heroic offer. Would she laugh at the Major's, if he made one? In one way and another his feelings had by now carried him far from the mood in which he had originally braced himself up to the proposal. He had made it for honour's sake. He would have made it now to stop her from going to Madeira with the Major. His mind was not quick of movement, yet he suddenly realized that not improbably he would see no more of her. His world was not, save in the casual intercourse of the hunting-field, the world of men like the Major. "Well, good-bye; I wish you a pleasant voyage," he managed to say, under the eyes of the Major. "Good-bye--and _au revoir_--when I come back!" How he hated the eyes of the Major! He did not dare even to press her hand; the Major would detect it and laugh at him! A limp shake was all he could give. Then he had to go away, and leave her with the Major--leave her to make ready, not for Monte Carlo with him, but for Madeira with the Major. That was a fine reward for an heroic offer! Certainly, in her duel against the male sex, Winnie had scored some hits that afternoon. Listlessly and disconsolately he strolled towards Piccadilly. He was at odds with the world. He had nobody to go to Monte Carlo with--nobody he cared a straw about. Indeed, whom did he care about really, or who really cared about him? He had a lot of friends of a sort; but how much did he care for them, or they for him? Precious little--that was the truth, seen in the unusual clarity of this afternoon's atmosphere. Other men had wives, or children, or devoted friends. He seemed to have nobody. Disgusting world it was! And he liked Winnie--nay, he more than liked her. He had learnt that also this afternoon. And he had, in the end, proposed the handsome thing. For nobody else in the world would he have done that. His reward had been ridicule from her--and the appearance of the Major. "It's all a bit too thick," reflected poor Bob Purnett, thus suddenly brought up against the sort of thing that is prone occasionally to happen to people who lead the sort of life he led. But he did not explicitly connect the sort of life and the sort of thing. He had no more than a general, but desperate, sense of desolation. The times were out of joint. When a man is miserable, he is under sore temptation to hurt somebody--even some blameless individual, whose only crime is that he forms a minute (and involuntary) part of the world which is behaving so badly. Should a particularly vulnerable person chance to pass by, let him look out for himself! One connected, however remotely, with the cause of the misery, for instance. Misery is apt to see a foe everywhere--and to seek a companion. Just as Bob was passing Hyde Park Corner, he ran plump into Godfrey Ledstone, who came out from the Park at a quick walk. The street lamp revealed them to one another. Godfrey would have passed by with a nod and a 'How are you?' That was not at all Bob's idea. He was resolute in buttonholing his friend, in saying how long it was since they had met, in telling him about his doings in the meantime. He enjoyed Godfrey's uneasiness; for Godfrey set him down as a sympathizer with Winnie and was in fear of reference to the topic. Bob made the reference in his own good time. "Funny I should meet you!" he observed, with a strong draw at his cigar. "Is it? I don't know. I often take this walk." "Because I've just come from calling on Winnie." He eyed his prospective victim gloatingly. He was like a savage who thinks that he can unload some of his misfortune on to his neighbour by employing the appropriate ceremonies. "Oh, I--I hope she's all right?" "Seems blooming. I didn't have much talk with her, though. There was a chap dancing attendance--a Major somebody or other. Oh yes, Merriam--Major Merriam. He came in pretty soon, with a bouquet of flowers as big as your head. Seems that she and Mrs. Lenoir are off abroad to-morrow, and our friend the Major goes too. I don't think you need make yourself unhappy about Winnie, old chap." "Who is he? I never heard of him." "Well, I didn't suppose you and she were keeping up a correspondence! If you come to that, I should rather doubt if he ever heard of you." Bob smiled in a fashion less amiable than was his wont. "Well, I'm in a hurry. Good-bye, old man." "Walking my way?" He indicated Piccadilly and eastwards. It had been Godfrey's way home. "I've got to go to a shop in Sloane Street," said Godfrey. "Ta-ta then! It'll be a relief to you if she settles down all right, won't it?" Godfrey said nothing more than 'Good-bye.' But his face, as he said it, was very expressive; it quite satisfied Bob Purnett's impulse to hurt somebody. Godfrey Ledstone did not like Major Merriam any more than he himself did! The magical ceremony had worked; some of his misfortune was unloaded. Well, the two were in the end much in the same case. Winnie had led Godfrey into the great experiment, and through it into the great failure. She had, this afternoon, made Bob Purnett, in his turn, false to his settled plan of life, had sent him away sore and savage because he could not do the one thing which he had always scornfully declared that he would never do. She had left them both--left Godfrey to those proceedings, to the family woe, to Miss Thurseley's immediate repudiation; left Bob to contemplate a lost pleasure, a fruitless heroism, and the Major in Madeira. The two ought to have sympathized with one another. Yet their thoughts about one another were not friendly. "If I'd known the sort of chap he was, I'd have had a shot at it sooner," thought Bob. Godfrey's protest went deeper. "Of course it'll happen, but why in heaven's name need he tell me about it?" For Bob had suppressed all that part of the story which accounted for his telling. They went their separate ways--artificially separate on this occasion, since there was no shop in Sloane Street at which Godfrey Ledstone desired to call. They went their ways with their thoughts, in whose mirror each saw Winnie smiling on the Major. Precisely what Miss Wilson was doing at the moment! Jealous men see more than happens, but what happens they generally see. CHAPTER XXI IS HE A BULLY? Cyril Maxon's strong-willed and domineering nature registered its own decrees as having the force of law and regarded its own resolutions as accomplished facts. When he had once achieved the requisite modification of his opinions, and had decided that he wanted to many Lady Rosaline in due time, he thought of her in his secret soul as already his--at any rate, as set apart for him--and he found no difficulty in declaring that she had given a tacit consent in their interview in Paris and in the relations of friendship which now existed between her and himself. But, naturally, the lady did not adopt the same view either of his rights or of her own actions. The 'very most' she had given him was leave to try his fortune, to recommend himself to her during the interval of time which was unavoidable. She was really rather glad of the interval, and observed one day to Mrs. Ladd that it would be no bad thing if everybody were forced to wait eight or nine months before they married. "Especially if we are to be bound by Mr. Attlebury's opinion!" she added, laughing. She liked the idea of the marriage; it was suitable, and she was lonely and not rich. She was not yet sure how much she liked the man as she came to know him more intimately; now and then she saw signs of something which helped her to a better understanding of Mrs. Maxon's attitude. "Oh, I'm not afraid of fighting," she would then say to herself; "but I don't want to have to fight all the time. It's fatiguing, and rather vulgar." So she temporized, as the situation enabled her to do; for Maxon was still a tied man, however technical the tie had become; he was not in a position to force the pace. This accidental fact helped her to hold her own against his strong will and domineering instincts; for his conscience had granted him relief only on one point (if really on that), and it did not allow him to forget that he was still a married man. Lady Rosaline's attitude excited, of course, the liveliest curiosity and an abundance of gossip on the part of her friends, Mrs. Ladd and Miss Fortescue. What did Rosaline mean to do? "Oh, she means to have him," exclaimed Miss Fortescue, "in the end, you know!" "I think she will, but I believe that quite a little thing might turn her," was Mrs. Ladd's more cautious verdict. Cyril Maxon would not have received it pleasantly. The good ladies' great disappointment was that they could not induce their revered pastor to say a word on the subject, accessible and, indeed, chatty as he generally was with his flock. When Maxon had taken the first step in those proceedings which had so maddened poor old Mr. Ledstone, he had written to his friend a long and highly argumentative letter, justifying his course. Attlebury had replied in kind, and suggested an interview. This Maxon declined as painful to him, and ended with an asseveration that his conscience approved the course he was taking. "If it does, there's not much use in my saying any more; but make sure it does," was Attlebury's answer. Maxon took some offence at it, as though it impugned his sincerity. There was no open rupture, but the men did not meet any more in intimate friendship; there was a reserve between them. Yet Attlebury had said no more, or very little more, than Lady Rosaline herself; she also had asked that his own conscience should approve. But Attlebury could not, or, at all events, did not, keep the note of authority out of his counsel. Maxon stiffened his neck instinctively. Before the necessary interval had run half its course, this instinct was powerfully seconded by another. He had gone to tea with Mrs. Ladd one Sunday. They were old acquaintances, and for several years back he had been accustomed to pay her five or six calls in the course of a twelvemonth; on which occasions, since his marriage, Mrs. Ladd had discreetly condoled with him over Winnie's shortcomings. But Winnie had disappeared for good; there was now a topic even more attractive. "Rosaline and I talk of a little trip abroad together in a month's time." She smiled at him. "Will you forgive me if I take her away for three or four weeks?" "I shall miss you both very much. I wish I could come too, but it's quite impossible." "I think she wants a change." What Mrs. Ladd wished to convey was that the necessary interval might be tiresome to Lady Rosaline, but she did not quite see how to put it delicately. "It's a long drag from Christmas to Easter, isn't it? Have you seen her lately?" "I paid her a late call one day last week--that's all. I'm very busy." "Of course you are--with your practice! Have you met a Sir Axel Thrapston at Rosaline's?" "Axel Thrapston? No, I don't think so. No, I'm sure not." He very seldom met anybody at Lady Rosaline's, as his visits were timed so as to avoid, as far as possible, such a contingency. "Who is he?" "I don't know much about him myself. He comes from Northumberland, I think, and lives there generally. I believe his wife was an old friend of Rosaline's; she died about two years ago. I've met him there twice--a middle-aged man, rather bald, but quite good-looking." "No, I haven't met him, Mrs. Ladd." "He seems just to have made his appearance, but I think he's rather assiduous." She laughed again. "And two years is just about the dangerous time, isn't it?" Thus Mrs. Ladd, hinting to Cyril Maxon, in all friendship, that he was not the only man in the world and had better not forget the fact. Friend as she was, she knew enough of her man to feel a certain pleasure in administering the wholesome warning. It needed more to drive Cyril Maxon from his confident appropriation of Lady Rosaline, but that something more was not long in coming. He, too, met Sir Axel at her flat--once or twice in the hours which he had grown into the habit of considering as reserved for himself; he tried very hard to show neither surprise nor annoyance, but he felt an immediate grievance. Here was he, the busiest of men, painfully contriving a spare hour; was he to spend it in three-cornered trivial talk? Thrapston had all the long idle day to call. Lady Rosaline really might give him a hint! But it appeared not to strike her that she might. And she seemed to like Sir Axel's company--as, indeed, most people would. He was a simple country gentleman, no fool at all at his own business, but without much pretension to intellectual or artistic culture. This, however, he could recognize and respect; he recognized and respected it in Lady Rosaline, was anxious to learn from her, and deferred to her authority. "When people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others which a sensible person would always wish to avoid." Jane Austen perhaps allows herself a little malice in this remark, but we cannot deny that she speaks with authority on human nature. On one occasion, when he did find his friend alone, Maxon complained of the times when he had not. "I've nothing against him, of course, but it's you I come to talk to. Why, I scandalize my clerk, and sometimes my clients, for the sake of coming!" He managed to keep voice and manner playful. She was gracious, admitting the force of his plea. "It was stupid of me not to think! Of course Sir Axel can come at any time. I'll give him a hint to call earlier. Is that satisfactory, my lord?" She sometimes called him by that title--partly in anticipation of the judgeship, but also with a hint of raillery at the domineering nature. "It's very kind--and don't you like it better like this yourself?" "Perhaps I do. And clearly you do. And"--she smiled--"very likely Sir Axel does. We shall all three be pleased! Delightful!" "I wasn't thinking of his point of view, I confess." He was rather too scornful. "No, but he may think of it, I suppose? And I suppose I may, if I like, Mr. Maxon?" He looked at her sourly for just a moment, then recovered himself and, without replying, passed on to the subject of a book which he had brought her. But he was annoyed that she should resist him, stand up to him, and claim her liberty--especially her liberty to receive Sir Axel alone. However, it was not good fighting ground; he had brought her rebuke upon himself. Lady Rosaline was quite alive to the fact that Sir Axel's appearance and Sir Axel's attentiveness were a valuable asset to her, but she did not think of her old friend's husband in any other light. To begin with, he himself, though assiduous, had shown no sign of sentiment. If he were moving in that direction at all, he was moving slowly and secretly. And then she was still inclined to Maxon. She had a great opinion of his ability--she was more sure about that than about how much she liked him--and the chances of a high career for him allured her. But Sir Axel and his assiduity enhanced her value and buttressed her independence. They helped her to establish her position; she had an idea that the more firmly she established it now, the better it would resist any attacks on it, if and when she became Lady Rosaline Maxon. Here she was probably right. But she had another idea too. She was not going to be dictated to; she would not be browbeaten into becoming Lady Rosaline Maxon. In this state of external affairs and internal dispositions, the 'proceedings' came and went--really meaning no more than a transitory quarter of an hour's annoyance to the rising Cyril Maxon, for whom everything was made as easy and sympathetic as possible. Other effects in Woburn Square, no doubt--possibly others in Madeira! Yet transitory and formal as they were, the proceedings left behind them a state of affairs more essentially transitory and formal still. The tie was now a mere technicality, and when conscience took the position that Cyril Maxon was still a married man for all purposes, conscience began to seem to put the matter too high. For present conduct, yes--and he had no wish to run counter to the injunction, for reasons both moral and prudential; but for laying down the future on definite lines? That seemed a different point. He reconsidered his attitude--not without being influenced, more or less consciously, by Lady Rosaline's independence and by the assiduity of Sir Axel Thrapston. The hint that she still considered herself free, the notion of a rival, turned the necessary interval from a mere nuisance into a possible danger. Moreover she was going abroad with Mrs. Ladd, and he could not follow. Mrs. Ladd was a friendly influence, but he would like to define the situation before Lady Rosaline went. Not desiring to risk a peculiarly annoying collision with Sir Axel, he wrote and asked her for an appointment. She neither desired to refuse the interview, nor well could. But she scented an attack, and stood instinctively on the defensive. She wanted just the opposite of what Cyril Maxon did; the trip first and the decision afterwards was her order of events. She relied on the necessary interval, while he was now out of patience with it. "I won't be rushed!" she said to herself. She gave him the appointment he asked on a Saturday afternoon (he had suggested that comparatively free day) at half-past four, but she let drop to Sir Axel that she would be at home at half-past five on the same afternoon. Her motive in doing this was rather vague--just a notion that some discussions can go on too long, or that she might like to relax an agitated mind in talk with a friend, or, possibly, that she might like to be told that she had done right. Her reasons for the intimation to Sir Axel defy conclusive analysis. "Lady Rosaline," said Cyril Maxon, as he put down his empty teacup, "last week saw the end of an episode in my life." (Mr. Attlebury would hardly have referred to it as an episode.) "The future is my concern now. I took the action I did take on the fullest consideration, and I'm glad to think, from what you said in Paris, that it had your approval." He paused a moment. "I hope I'm not wrong in thinking that you understood why I took it, when once I had made up my mind that it was permissible?" "Oh, you mustn't make too much of what I said in Paris. I'm no authority. I left it to you." He smiled. "The question of permissibility--naturally. But the other altogether? Well, never mind that." He rose from his chair and stood by her. "You must know that it was for your sake that I took the step I did?" She moved restlessly, neither affirming nor denying. She knew it very well. "Before the world we must remain as we are for the present. But it would make a vast difference to me, during this time of waiting, to know that I--that I could rely on you, Rosaline. You can have no doubt of my feelings, though I have exercised self-restraint. I love you, and I want you to be my wife as soon as possible." "Well, it's not possible at present, is it?" "No. But there's no reason why we shouldn't have a perfect understanding between ourselves." "Wouldn't it make gossip, and perhaps raise awkward questions, if we--well, if we arranged anything definitely now--before the time's up?" "It would be quite between ourselves. There could be no questions. There would be no difference in our present relations--we should neither of us wish that. But the future would be secure." "I can't see the good of being engaged now, if it's to make no difference," she murmured fretfully. "It'll make an enormous difference in my feelings. I think you know that." "It seems to me to set up rather a--rather a difficult state of things. You know how much I like you--but why shouldn't we both be free till the time comes?" She took courage to raise her eyes to his on this suggestion. "I have no desire to be free." His voice grew rather harsh. "I didn't know that you had. In Paris----" She flared out suddenly; for her conscience was, in fact, not quite easy. "Well, what did I say in Paris after all? You never said in Paris what you're saying now! If you had--well, I should have told you that I wasn't at all ready to give a decision. And I'm not ready now. I want this time of waiting to make up my mind. You're trying to drive me into saying 'Yes' before I'm ready. What's the good of that, even to you? Because what prevents me from changing my mind in the next six months--even if you make me say 'Yes' to you now?" "I took an important--and to me a difficult--step in reliance on your feelings towards me. I seem to have been mistaken about them." His voice was sombre, even rather rancorous. "Don't say that, Cyril. But why must I give up my liberty long before--well, long before I can get anything instead of it?" She smiled again, propitiating him. "Let me go abroad, anyhow. I'll try to tell you when I come back. There!" "I confess to thinking that you had practically told me long ago. On the faith of that, I acted." "You've not the smallest right to say that. I liked you and let you see it. I never pledged myself." "Not in words, I allow." "Cyril, your insinuation isn't justifiable. I resent it. Whatever I may have felt, I have said and done nothing that I mightn't have with anybody." He had held his temper hard; it gave a kick now. "With Thrapston, for instance?" he sneered. "Oh, how absurd! I've never so much as thought of Sir Axel in that way!" As she spoke, she glanced at the clock. No, there was plenty of time. She did not desire an encounter between the two this afternoon. She rose and stood by Maxon. "You're being rather exacting and--and tyrannical, my lord," she said. "I don't think I like you so much to-day. You almost bully me--indeed you do!" He bent his eyes on hers, frowning heavily. "I did it for you." "Oh, it's not fair to put that on me! Indeed it isn't. But, please, don't let's quarrel. It's really such a little thing I ask--not much more than a month to think it over--when nothing can happen for more than six! Indeed, I think a year would--well, would look better for both of us." "Oh, make it two years--make it five!" he growled. "Cyril, if you go on like this, I'll make it never--here, now, and for good!" Even he saw that he had gone too far. He contrived to smooth brow and voice, and put in the man's usual plea to excuse his rough impatience. "It's only because I love you." "Yes, but you needn't be like a bear making love," she retorted pettishly. Yet, to a certain extent, she was appeased by the apology; and she by no means wanted to 'make it never' then and there. His rudeness and his apology together gave her a tactical advantage which she was not slow to use. "But if you do love me as you say, you won't refuse what I ask of you," she went on. Then she indulged him with a touch of sentiment. "If I say 'Yes,' I want to say it without any doubt--with my whole heart, Cyril. 'Yes' now wouldn't be what it ought to be between you and me." She maintained her advantage to the end of the interview. She won her respite; nothing more was to be said till after her return from abroad. Meanwhile they would correspond as friends--"As great friends as you like!" she threw in, smiling. As friends, too, they parted on this occasion; for when he offered to embrace her, she held out her hand gracefully, saying, "That'll do for to-day, I think, Cyril." His frown came again, but he submitted. In fact, in the first encounter between them, Cyril Maxon was beaten. She stood up against him, and had won her way. True, she was almost bound to; her position was so much the more favourable. Yet, however defeat came, Maxon was not accustomed to it, and did not like it. And he liked her the less for inflicting it--he used one or two hard words about her as he drove home from Hans Place--but he did not the less want to marry her. The masterful element in him became the more urgent to achieve that victory, to make up all the ground that he had lost to-day--and more. But, if he contrasted to-day's interview with his previous assumptions, it was plain that he had lost a lot of ground. What had seemed the practically certain became merely the reasonably probable. Instead of being to all intents and purposes accepted, he was told that he was only a suitor, though, no doubt, a suitor who was entitled to entertain good hopes of success. Yes, very good hopes, if nothing intervened. But he hated the trip abroad, and he hated Sir Axel Thrapston--in spite of Lady Rosaline's disclaimer of any sentimental interest in that gentleman. The mere fact of her asking for a delay made every delay dangerous, and, while she doubted at all, any man much about her might make her more doubtful. "If she throws me over now----" he muttered angrily to himself; for always in his mind, as now and then on his lips, was that 'I did it for you.' She had accepted the sacrifice of his conscience; was she now to refuse to answer his prayer? In the new light of her possibly refusing, he almost admitted the sacrifice. At any rate, he asserted, he had acted on a conclusion full of difficulty and not quite free from doubt. It was beyond question that the case of conscience might vary in aspect, according as Lady Rosaline Deering did or did not say 'Yes.' If the vanquished combatant was decidedly savage, the victorious was rather exhausted. Lady Rosaline lay prone in a luxurious arm-chair before the fire, doing nothing, feeling very tired. She had won, but a succession of such victories--a perpetual need of such victories--would be Pyrrhic in its effect on her nerves. The room seemed suddenly filled with an atmosphere of peace. She gave a little stretch, a little yawn, and nestled down farther into her big chair. Thus Sir Axel Thrapston, punctual to his half-past five and missing Cyril Maxon by some ten minutes, found her. His arrival did not disturb her sense of repose and, perhaps, rather accentuated it; for with him she had no quarrel, and about him no complication of feelings difficult to unravel. Moreover, he was an essentially peaceful person, a live-and-let-live man. She received him graciously, but without rising from the big chair. "Forgive my not getting up; I'm rather tired. You take the little chair, and draw it up." He did as he was bid. "Been doing too much?" he asked. "Oh, not particularly, but I am tired. But you'll rest me, if you'll sit there, and not mind if I don't talk much." However, she went on talking. "There are some people whom one likes and admires tremendously, and yet who are rather--well, exacting, aren't there?" Sir Axel would have been dull not to surmise that his friend had had recent experience of some such person as she described. "No, exacting isn't quite the word I want. I mean, they take their own point of view so strongly that it's really a struggle--a downright struggle--to make them see that there may be another." "I know the sort of fellow. My Scotch gardener's one of 'em." "Well, I don't know your Scotch gardener, but I do know one or two men of the sort." "I should think you could stand up for yourself!" His glance was one of friendly appreciation of her--and of her appearance. She certainly looked well in the firelight. "Oh, I think I can, but one doesn't want always to be having to do it." "Not good enough to live with people like that, Lady Rosaline!" He meant no personal reference, but his companion had little difficulty in finding a personal application. Her eyes wandered from the fire and settled on his face in a meditative gaze. "Unless, I mean, you were quite sure of coming out on top. And even then--well, I hate rows, anyhow." "So do I--even when I win, Sir Axel! I do so agree with you." The eyes took on a grateful look. Sir Axel was making a more favourable impression than the good man had any idea of. Cyril Maxon was responsible for Sir Axel's success this afternoon; it was a true instinct that had led Lady Rosaline to make a second appointment! Her nerves were soothed; her weariness passed into a pleasant languor. She smiled at him indolently, in peaceful contentment. "When did you say you were off?" she inquired. In asking when he might come to see her, he had founded his plea on the ground of an early departure from London. "Next Tuesday. I'm looking forward to it. I've never seen Venice. I shall be at Danieli's." "Now did I ask for your address, Sir Axel?" He laughed. "Oh, I was playing my own hand. I thought perhaps, if I couldn't stand my own society all the time, you'd let me pay a call on you at the Lakes on my way back." Lady Rosaline and Mrs. Ladd had planned an absolutely quiet time at the Italian Lakes. But, then, Sir Axel was absolutely quiet--after Cyril Maxon. "Well, I might go so far as to send you an address. Don't consider it a command--or even an invitation!" "You see, I don't know a soul out there, and can't speak a word of the language." "Well, if absolute desperation drives you to our door, perhaps we'll let you stay a little." "Oh, I say, I didn't quite mean that!" "The fact is, you're not very good at pretty speeches, are you? But I don't mind that--and you know I should always be glad to see you." Sir Axel departed well-pleased, not knowing to whom or to what the better part of his pleasure might justly be attributed. So may we profit by our neighbours' blunders, and find therein some consolation for our sufferings from their superior brilliancy. CHAPTER XXII JUDGMENT ACCORDINGLY Certainly the quartette made a very agreeable party in Madeira. It proved to be as happily composed as the Major had anticipated. The two elders enjoyed the sunshine, the fine nights, the casino, much gossip with one another and with casual coevals who had anything to add. The young couple made their excursions, had their bath and a little lawn-tennis (Winnie could not be roused to enthusiasm over this), gambled mildly and danced enthusiastically. Not all these things with one another exclusively. There were other young women there, and other young men. The Major was in request among the former; Winnie among the latter. There was no overdoing of the _tête-à-tête_. Among the colours, the flowers, and the fun, life ran very pleasantly. But Mrs. Lenoir was a little impatient. Her pet scheme seemed to hang fire. She could not quite make out why. It was not, she thought, the other young men and women; there was no sign of any foreign attraction such as might induce either of her predestined lovers to wander from the appointed path. Yet the Major's advances were, in her judgment, painfully deliberate, and Winnie's good fellowship with him was almost demonstratively unsentimental. Mrs. Lenoir felt her experience at fault; she had expected that, in such a favourable climate, the affair would ripen more quickly. But there are ways of forcing plants, and she was a skilful gardener. One day, a week after the party had arrived on the island, she came out into the hotel garden after lunch and settled herself, with the General's gallant assistance, in a long chair; the spot commanded a view over the harbour. The General, his offices performed, sat in a shorter chair and smoked his cigar. Far below them the ramshackle pretty town seemed to blink in the sunshine; a rather sleepy blinking is the attitude it takes towards existence, except when a tourist ship comes in, or a squadron of men-of-war. Then it sits up, and eats, and anon sleeps again. "I suppose, when they come down from the Mount, they'll go straight to the casino," said the General. "Yes, I told them we'd meet them there. Hugh!" She did not very often call him Hugh. In the use of his name he was in the habit of recognizing some rather special call on his services or his attention. "Yes, my dear Clara? Now you're not going to worry about your share of the wine again?" "No," said she, smiling, "I'm not. I've a little confession to make to you. I told you a fib about Winnie. I told you the fib I told everybody--that she was a distant cousin. She isn't. I met her at some friends'--very nice people. She was quite adrift. I asked her to come to me for a bit, and we got on so well that she's stayed. She's an orphan, I know--her father was a parson--and I think she's quite alone in the world, though she has a small income." She laughed. "You see what a long story it is. With most people it's so much easier to tell the little fib. But I've told you the truth about her now." Yet not all the truth. Mrs. Lenoir's conscience certainly seemed sometimes to work on easy springs. "Thank you for telling me, Clara. I suppose I know why you told me. But I think my boy knows already that, if he has any designs about Miss Winnie, he'll not find me an obstacle. Only she doesn't seem to me to be anything more than friendly towards him." "Well, she'd naturally wait for a lead, wouldn't she?" "You think it's that?" Mrs. Lenoir's slight wave of her fan was non-committal. "He's a very conscientious fellow. He looks at a thing all round. I'm sure he'd consider not only whether he liked her, but whether he could satisfy her--whether the life he could offer her would be to her liking. Being a soldier's wife isn't all beer and skittles. And getting on with all the regiment!" "Dear me, is there all that to consider?" Her tone was playful, yet rather contemptuous. "It doesn't look as if he was desperately in love." "Men differ," mused the General. "Look at my three sons. Bertie's as I tell you--slow and solid--make an excellent husband to a woman of sense. The Colonel never looks at a woman, so far as I know. George runs after every petticoat he meets, and hangs the consequences--confound him!" "And which," asked Mrs. Lenoir, "is most like father, Hugh?" "Ancient history, ancient history!" he murmured, half in pleasure, half in contrition, yet with a glance at his companion. "Shall I tell him what you've told me about Miss Winnie?" "Just as you like." She laughed. "I don't think he's gone far enough to have any rights yet, you know." "I don't think he has," agreed the General, laughing too--and not aware of the bearings of his admission. Mrs. Lenoir, however, treasured it in her armoury: she might have need of it. Plainly the General might consider that, confession once begun, confession ought to have gone further. She had the same plausible answers she had given to Winnie herself. She had another; she acknowledged her own fib, but she would plead that she had no right to betray her friend. In the end she had not much doubt that she could manage the General. She had managed him before--in a much more difficult case; and he was very fond of Winnie. Something of partisanship influenced her mood; the free lance renewed memories of old raids in this little skirmish against convention; she was minded to fight at the best advantage she could--with the father 'contained' and the son as deeply committed to his position as she could get him before the blow was struck. As a result of this conversation the General carried away an uneasy idea--born of the confidence so pointedly reposed in him, enforced by the slight touch of contempt in Mrs. Lenoir's voice--that one of the ladies, even possibly both, considered his son, if not a laggard, yet at least somewhat prosaically circumspect in his love-making. Such a view, if really entertained, did some injustice to Bertie Merriam. He was not impulsive; he was not passionate. He took time to make up his mind. It would be almost true to say that, before falling in love, he made up his mind that he would--not the commonest order of events. But he had pretty well made up his mind by now. Only he received very little encouragement. Winnie was always 'jolly' to him; but she asked nothing of him, made no special claims on him--and took the same liberty as she accorded. In the pleasant round of their life he was one comrade among many; more intimate than the rest, no doubt, by reason of his habitual escort, the excursions, and the messing together at table, but not different in kind. Vaguely the Major felt that there was some barrier, real but imperceptible, which he could not pass--a thing made up out of a thousand unobtrusive trifles, yet composing in the mass a defence that he could not see how to penetrate. There was a curious little man in the hotel--a man of about forty-five, short, bald, shabby, yet clean, though he did not bathe. In fact he did nothing--no excursions, no sports, no dancing, no flirtation. He did not even read; he sat about--meditating, it must be presumed. Something in him made the girls giggle and the men wink, as he passed by; the men said 'Dotty!' and the girls sniggered at the witticism. His name, sought out in the hotel register, proved to be Adolphus Wigram. The wit who had made the search called him 'Dolly'--and the name became his at once, varied back to 'Dotty' sometimes by an ultra-witticism. When Winnie came home from the casino this evening, having some minutes to spare before dressing for dinner, she went on to the hotel balcony, which overlooks the town from a loftier and, so to say, a more condescending altitude than the garden. She rested her elbows on the balcony and surveyed the beauty of the scene, so artfully composed of hill and slope and sea that one can hardly conceive it the outcome of nature's mere--and probably violent--caprice. She was lost in thought, and was startled to find elbows on a level with hers and a head in close neighbourhood, though rather lower. She recognized 'Dolly'--in the shabbiest of all suits, looking meditatively down on the lights of the town and harbour of Funchal. "Quite a small place, Miss Wilson," said 'Dolly.' "Full of people!" "I suppose it is," Winnie agreed politely. She had come out on the balcony occupied with another question than the population of Madeira. "I tried to understand things once--to grasp them in the large, you know. Seems easy to some people, but I couldn't do it. I teach history. I was a bit overworked; some of my friends subscribed to send me out here for just a fortnight. Doing me good." Winnie turned her face towards the funny jerky little man. "Are you going to grasp things in the large when you get back?" she asked. "No, no; I'm afraid not. Thirty thousand or so of them down there, I suppose! All thinking they're very important. All being born, or dying, or love-making, or starving, or filling their bellies, and so on. Quite a small place!" Winnie smiled. "Yes, I dare say. It sounds true, but rather trite. I have problems of my own, Mr. Wigram." "So have I--income, and taxation, and necessary expenditure. Still, these thirty thousand are interesting." "They're awfully lucky to want very few clothes and hardly any fires, and to live in such a beautiful place. What do you mean by things in the large, Mr. Wigram?" "Well, I mean truth," said the absurd little man, clutching the balcony railings, just as if he were going to vault over them and crack his skull on the nut-shaped stones which served for a path thirty or forty feet beneath. "Truth is things in the large, you know." "I don't think I know that, but I know a friend in England who talks rather like you." "Poor devil! How much money does he make?" "He's got independent means, Mr. Wigram." "Then he can afford to talk a great deal better." "You really make me rather uncomfortable. Surely everybody can say what they like nowadays?" The little man gave an abrupt hoarse laugh. "I teach history in a school, and get a hundred and fifty pounds a year for it. Can I say what I like? Do I tell the truth about the history? Oh dear, no!" "I've got just a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Can I do what I like?" asked Winnie. 'Dolly' turned to her with a queer ridiculous solemnity. "It seems to me," he observed, "a competency for an able-bodied young woman. I don't know what you can do, but I think you're quite in a position to tell the truth--if you happen to know it. Anybody dependent on you?" "Not a soul," smiled Winnie. "I've a mother and an unmarried sister. You see the difference? I think I heard the gong. Good evening." "Good evening, Mr. Wigram." Winnie rushed in to dress for dinner, pitiful, smiling, and thoughtful. The quartette was not as merry as usual that evening. Bertie Merriam was rather glum, and when Winnie perceived it she grew remorseful. Up at the Mount he had, at last, shown signs of making a definite advance; if she had not snubbed him, she had at least fought him off by affected unconsciousness of his meaning, by persistent unsentimentality. It was almost against her own will; she could not help it; the instinct in her was irresistible. She might have been equal to standing by Tora Aikenhead's view--"As long as my own conscience is clear, it's no affair of yours what I did before I knew you, and I shan't say a word about it." She could certainly have followed Stephen's atavistic 'public-school' idea of honour with perfect readiness. These were both, in their different ways, forms of defiance. But Mrs. Lenoir's compromise--"I'll wait till the truth can't hurt me, though it may hurt you"--was not defiance; it was deceit. Under the influence of gratitude to the friend to whom she owed so much kindness, and of the deference which she honestly accorded to her adviser's experience and wisdom, she had accepted it. All very well to accept it in words! She found that she could not act upon it. Instead of making Bertie Merriam like her so well that the truth could be told to him without risk--or, at any rate, with the minimum of risk--she was spending her time in trying to prevent him from liking her in that way at all. If she went on, she would succeed; he was sensitive, proud, easy to discourage. Yet, as things stood, she knew that she would not be able to resist going on. Then it came to this--Mrs. Lenoir's compromise would not work. It might or might not be justifiable, but it simply would not work in Winnie's hands. She could not carry it out, because it meant in the end that she was to behave just as Godfrey Ledstone had. The gravamen of his offence was that he had been ashamed of her; now she was being ashamed of herself. He had conceded to his family the right to think her shameful; she was allowing the same right to the Major, and merely trying to curry favour enough to override his judgment. Such a course was not only flat against her theories; it was flat against the nature which had produced the theories. And, in practice, it resulted in a deadlock; it kept the Major at a standstill. He did not retreat, because his feelings dictated an advance. He could not advance, because she would not let him. There he stuck--up against that impalpable, impenetrable barrier. "I've been talking--out on the balcony--with that funny little man they call 'Dolly,'" she remarked. "He told me that, if you had nobody dependent on you, and had a hundred and fifty pounds a year, you were in a position to tell the truth." "Is it exactly a question of what money you've got, Miss Winnie?" asked the General. She let the question pass. "Anyhow, that happens to be exactly my income. Rather funny!" She looked across the small table at Mrs. Lenoir--and was not surprised to find that Mrs. Lenoir was looking at her already. "I suppose he meant that if you weren't absolutely obliged to get or keep some job----" the Major began. "That's what he meant; and there's a lot in it, isn't there, Major Merriam?" "Well, it's not what we're taught at school, but perhaps there is." "More luxuries for the rich," smiled Mrs. Lenoir. "The Radicals can make a new grievance out of it at the next election," said the General. Of course, the two men did not know what underlay Winnie's talk. Equally of course, Mrs. Lenoir did; she saw it in a minute, and her reading hardly needed the confirmation of Bertie's glum demeanour. Winnie was in rebellion--probably in irreconcilable rebellion. Mrs. Lenoir glanced across at her with a satirically protesting smile. Winnie smiled back, but her eyes were resolute--rather merrily resolute, as though she liked this new taste of her favourite cup of defiance. "There are times and seasons," said Mrs. Lenoir. "Isn't there even a thing called the economy of truth? I don't think I know the exact doctrine." "You wouldn't tell a child everything--or a fool either," observed the General. "Would you choose the wrong time to tell the truth to anybody?" Mrs. Lenoir asked. "Are you entitled to settle what's the right time--all by yourself?" Winnie retorted gaily. Her spirits had begun to rise. This was almost like a discussion at Shaylor's Patch. There was a deeper reason. With her determination had come a sense of recovered honesty, and, more, of liberty regained. Whatever the Merriams might think, she would be herself again--herself and no longer Miss Winnie Wilson, a young person whom, in the last week or so, she had begun to hate cordially. Winnie did not go to the casino that evening; she left the General and his son to walk there together. She followed Mrs. Lenoir into the drawing-room, and sat down by her. "So you've made up your mind, Winnie?" Mrs. Lenoir did not seem angry or hurt. She merely recognized Winnie's resolution. "Yes. I can't go on with it. And it's a good moment. The newspapers come to-morrow, and, if what Hobart Gaynor told me was right, there'll be something about me in them." "Yes, I remember. Well, if you're set on doing it, that doesn't make such a bad--occasion." Mrs. Lenoir was considering how the 'occasion' could best be twisted into a justification of previous silence. With the Major that would not be so much a pressing question--other factors would probably decide his action--but it was a point that her friend the General might raise. She looked thoughtfully at Winnie. "How much do you like him?" she asked. "I like him as much as I know him, but I don't know him very much. I shall know a little more to-morrow." She paused. "I should like the life, the whole thing, very much, I think." "She's not in love, but she'd take him," Mrs. Lenoir inwardly interpreted. "I'm sorry to act against your advice, after all you've done for me. It does look ungrateful." "Oh, I don't expect people to give up their liberty, just because I'm fond of them." She rose. "I'm off to my room, my dear. Good night--and good luck." Winnie went out on the balcony, to seek for Mr. Adolphus Wigram and some more talk about truth. But he was not there; he had gone down to the casino, where he lost exactly half a dollar with unbroken bad luck every night--probably one of the things which the claims of his family and the figure of his salary would cause him to suppress the truth about when he got back to his school. So she remembered that there was an impromptu dance going on downstairs, and went and danced and flirted furiously till midnight. The girls said that they had never seen Miss Wilson look so well, and never had the young men crowded round Miss Wilson so eagerly. In fact Miss Wilson had her fling. Small blame to her. It was the last night of her life--at least, so far as that life had any real significance. Though Winnie did not propose to change her name in the hotel book or on the lips of casual companions during her stay in Madeira, yet for essential purposes that night saw an end of Miss Winnie Wilson. Since English newspapers arrive in the island only once a week, the competition for them on the mail day is formidable. Persons who combine agility and selfishness with a healthy interest in public affairs may be observed sitting on five copies of their favourite journal, reading a sixth, and anon glaring angrily round at potential applicants for one of the spare copies. Winnie took no part in the scramble, and attacked nobody's reserve pile of intelligence. She knew that her paper would come in a separate wrapper, addressed to her personally by Hobart Gaynor; she wanted only one day's paper. She found it laid by her plate at lunch--a meal which passed in the discussion of the news of the world; the Major had been a successful competitor in the struggle, and was well-primed. Winnie rose when coffee appeared, her paper in her hand. She addressed Bertie Merriam rather pointedly. "I'm going into the garden--that seat under the trees. You know?" "I'll come too. Directly I've drunk my coffee." As Winnie walked off he exchanged a glance with his father. They had had a confidential little talk at the casino the evening before, in which Winnie's behaviour was the subject of some puzzled comment. This invitation to the garden looked more promising. Mrs. Lenoir was busy reading a letter. Winnie had read one letter too--from Hobart Gaynor, telling her all she needed to know, and referring her to a certain page of her paper. Yes, there it was--very short, matter-of-fact, and hard. Well, what else should it be? Only it seemed oddly to reproduce Cyril Maxon himself. The report sounded as if his exact words, nay, his very tones, had been caught; they seemed to echo in her ears; she almost heard him saying it all. And what more appropriate, what so inevitable, an ending could there be to Cyril's utterances than the words which closed this brief record--'Judgment accordingly'? Those words might always have been written at the end of Cyril's remarks. 'Judgment accordingly.' It seemed to sum up, as well as to close, the story of her relations with him. From the beginning right through to this, the end, on her and her works--on all she did and was--there had been 'Judgment accordingly.' She let the copy of the _Times_ fall on her lap, and sat idle--waiting for Bertie Merriam, yet not thinking much of him. The figure of 'Dolly' shuffled into view. The odd little man was smoking a cigarette, and, in the intervals of puffing, was apparently talking to himself in a cheerful and animated way--no sounds, but the lips moved quickly. As he passed, Winnie hailed him. "Had your mail, Mr. Wigram?" He stopped. "I've had good news, Miss Wilson--good news from home. They've raised my salary." "Oh, I am glad, Mr. Wigram." "A twenty-pound rise, Miss Wilson. Well, I've done fifteen years. But still it's liberal." He seemed to swell a little. "And it's a recognition. I value it as a recognition." The transient swelling subsided. "And it'll help," he ended soberly. "Shall you be able to tell the truth to any greater extent, Mr. Wigram?" "Oh, I think not, I think not. I--I hadn't thought of it from that point of view, Miss Wilson." "I've had no rise in my income, but I'm going to do it." He was not really listening. He gave a feeble cackle of a laugh. "I'm just making a few calculations, Miss Wilson." On he went, apportioning every penny of that hard-earned increase of twenty pounds per annum. Valuable--but not enough to enable him to teach true history. Major Merriam sauntered towards her with his cigar. He was really rather eager, but he did not look it. The invitation might be merely a tardy apology for the snubs of yesterday. "May I sit down by you?" "Please do. Have you seen the _Times_?" "I looked through the lot of them." "Have you seen this one--the 26th?" She held up her copy. "I suppose I have. I had a run through them all." "Read that." Her finger indicated the report. He read it; the process did not take long. He took his cigar out of his mouth. "Well, Miss Wilson?" "I was Mrs. Maxon; that's all," said Winnie. CHAPTER XXIII THE REGIMENT Had Bertie Merriam displayed righteous indignation or uncontrollable grief, Winnie would have left him to digest his emotion in solitary leisure. Since, however, he merely looked extremely thoughtful, as he let the _Times_ flutter to the ground and took a long pull at his cigar, it seemed natural to tell him the story. This she proceeded to do, neither boastfully nor apologetically, but with sober veracity, tempered by a humorous appreciation of how the various parties to it, herself included, came out of their various ordeals. Now and then her auditor nodded his understanding of the points--of the impossibility of life with Cyril Maxon; of how Shaylor's Patch enlarged the horizon; of the experiment with Godfrey Ledstone and its comico-tragic failure; of how Maxon, for reasons unascertained, had found open to him a course which he had always declared to be lawfully open to no man; finally, of the considerations, sufficient or insufficient, which had led to the incarnation of Miss Winnie Wilson. In fact, so far as it lies within a human being's power to tell the truth about himself or herself, Winnie told it; she had no dependents and she had a hundred and fifty pounds a year. As has been said, the Major was not an especially religious man. He had himself lived an unusually steady and regular life, keeping himself in strict training for the work to which his whole heart was devoted, but his moral ideas were those of his class and generation. He was not strait-laced. Moreover he was heavily biassed in favour of the lady who now took him into her confidence, and not only had the advantage of telling her side of the story without anybody to criticize or contradict, but succeeded in telling it so as to carry conviction of her sincerity, if not of her wisdom. He was ready to see with her eyes, at least to the point of admitting excuse where she pleaded justification. Though he imputed to her a great want of worldly wisdom in her dealings with Godfrey Ledstone, her moral character did not suffer in his estimation, nor (what was perhaps more remarkable) were his feelings towards her perceptibly chilled. Neither did he cherish any personal grievance. She was entitled to protect herself from the idle curiosity of casual acquaintances. So soon as she had definite ground for according to him a special treatment, she had dealt openly with him and made a clean breast of it. "Thank you," he said at the end. "I shall respect your confidence." "What I've told you is meant for the General too, please." "Thank you again. It's very straight of you. You must be glad to have it all over at last?" Winnie made the slightest grimace. "Isn't that rather a sanguine view?" Her own views about things being 'all over' had become less sanguine than of yore. "Well, yes, I suppose it is." Even while he had been speaking, the same idea was at the back of his own mind. Things have a way of never getting 'all over,' of possessing no absolute ends, of continuing, for good and evil, to affect life till life itself ends--and even, after that, of affecting other lives sometimes. Bertie Merriam himself, thoughtfully considering, saw that the thing was by no means 'all over' with the coming of the news contained in the _Times_ of the 26th. "And now," said Winnie, rising from her chair, "I'm going to talk nonsense with the Layton girl and the Anstruther boys, and forget all about it for a bit." She stood looking at him for a moment in a very friendly, rather puzzled, way. She wanted to convey to him that she would consider it very natural for her disclosure to make all the difference, but the assurance was not easy to frame without assuming more than she was, by the forms of the game, entitled to assume. She got as near to it as she could. "I've been prepared to accept the consequences all through. If I claim liberty of opinion myself, I allow it to others, Major Merriam." "Yes, yes, I quite understand. You surely don't fear a harsh judgment from me?" He added, after the briefest pause, "Or from my father?" "I don't think I need. You've both been such kind good friends to me." She broke into a smile. "And, of course, on my theory I don't admit that I'm properly a subject of judgment at all." "But you admit that I may think differently if I like?" "Yes, I admit that. We may all think what we like, and do as we like, so long as we do it sincerely." "Wouldn't things get rather--well, chaotic--under that system?" he asked, smiling in his turn. "I knew I shouldn't convert you--you stickler for discipline!" He heard the description with a laugh, but without protest or disclaimer. To his ears it was a compliment. Nor did he think Winnie, so far as he claimed to understand her, quite so scornful of all discipline as her playful taunt implied, nor in practice so thoroughgoing an anarchist as her theory of the unbridled liberty of private judgment required in logic that she should be. She did not appear to him a naturally lawless woman, nor even unusually volatile. She had had 'hard luck' and had fought against it blindly and recklessly. But, given good conditions, she would readily conform to the standards, since she would not want to do anything else. Taking this view, he saw little reason to revise his judgment or to alter his intentions, so far as the judgment and intentions depended on his estimate of the woman herself. Her candour was even a new point in her favour. So far then neither Winnie nor even Mrs. Lenoir need regret the disclosure. The case, when fully explained, seemed to the Major eminently pardonable--at worst, a piece of visionary folly in which an ignorant young woman had rashly matched herself against the world. But there was another aspect of the case. _Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner._ Perhaps. But some people shrink from understanding things for that very reason; the consequences seem too alarming and even revolutionary. And the great bulk of people, even if they were willing to understand every case, have really no time to do it; it cannot be expected of them in this busy life. They find themselves obliged to work by generalizations and categories, to bind by rules and prohibitions admitting of no exception. It is the only way by which people in a society can tackle the job of estimating the conduct of other people, or indeed of regulating their own. The world labels in rows and pronounces judgment on squads, an inevitably rough-and-ready method, but--the world pleads--the only practical alternative to a moral anarchy against which it must protect itself, even though at the cost of constantly passing the same sentence on offenders of widely different degrees of criminality. Now the world, or society, or public opinion, or whatever collective term may be used for that force to which all gregarious animals, whether they like it or not, are of necessity amenable--possessed for Major Merriam a meaning which was to him all-important, but to which Winnie and Mrs. Lenoir had accorded only the faintest, if indeed any, consideration; it meant something not vague and distant, but near, potent, with close and imperative claims on him. This thing it was which occupied his mind as he walked through the garden to the annex in which his father and he were lodged, and where he would find the General reading on the verandah until it should be time to go to the casino. For society at large, for the moralists or gossips of London, he had not much regard. He was not a prominent man; few people would know, of those few half would not care, and the thing would soon blow over. But neither his life nor his heart was in London, and it was not about the feelings or views of the great city that he went, with Winnie's copy of the _Times_ in his hand, to consult his father. The General had been reading, and was now dozing, on the verandah. He woke up at the sound of his son's step. "Ready for the casino, my boy?" he asked briskly. "Well, I've something I want to talk about first, if you don't mind." He laid the _Times_ on the table. When the General heard the story, told more briefly than Winnie had related it, but with no loss to its essential features, he conceived a grudge against Mrs. Lenoir--Clara's silence, rendered more deceitful by that delusive half-confidence of hers, seemed to him unkind--but, as regards the prisoner at the bar herself, his judgment was even more lenient than his son's, as perhaps might be expected from his more various experience. The thing was annoying, distinctly annoying, but he liked Winnie none the less. The poor girl had been in a fix! "However it's really not our business to judge her," he concluded, looking across at his son. "We've got nothing to do with that. That's for her and her own conscience." "She's had devilish hard luck," said Bertie. "Yes, she has. Heavens, my boy, who am I to be hard on her?" The Major gazed out over the garden. "As far as I'm concerned myself, I'd take the chances and go on with it." He knew that his father would understand what he meant by 'it.' "Well, well, there are things to consider----" Bertie turned sharply round again. Conviction rang in his voice as he interrupted: "By Jove, there are! There's the regiment!" The General pursed up his lips and gave two quick little nods of his head. "Yes. In a few months you'll be in command." "It might not get out, of course. There's always that chance." "Next year you go to India. Everything gets out in India." "Of course, if people could be got to understand the case as we do----" "Don't you build on that, Bertie. The mere fact of this"--he tapped the _Times_--"will be all they want; take my word for it. They wouldn't make things comfortable for her." For the moment at least Bertie's mind was not on that point; it was directed towards the subject on which he had once discoursed to Winnie herself--the influence which the wife of a commanding officer does and ought to exercise on the tone of the small society over which she is naturally called upon to exercise a sort of presidency. "Would it be good for the regiment?" The General wore a mournful air as he took out and lit a long lean cheroot. He did not look at Bertie, as he murmured, "Must consider that, in your position." Certainly that had to be considered; for here the two men touched what was their real effective religion--the thing which in truth shaped their lives, to which they were both loyal and uncompromising adherents, in regard to which the son was almost a fanatic. What was important to the regiment was of vital importance to Bertie Merriam and to his life's work. One of the things important to the regiment was the wives of its officers; most important was their influence on the 'young chaps'--as he had said to Winnie. It ought to be, if not motherly, at least 'elder-sisterly.' Viewed in this connection, there was evidently matter for consideration, assuming that everything got out in India, as according to the General it did. To present to the 'young chaps' such an 'elder sister' as Winnie--certainly consideration was needed. Later in the afternoon Mrs. Lenoir sat in a wicker chair on the casino terrace which overlooks, from a respectable and precipitous height, the roadstead and the sea. She had spent a lonely afternoon, she had seen none of her three friends, and by herself had drifted down to a solitary cup of tea at this resort, which she was at the moment feeling to be insecurely entitled to be called one of pleasure. She had an instinct that something was happening, that things were being settled behind her back. The feeling made her fretful; when she was fretful, the lines on her face showed a deeper chiselling. And by a very human instinct, because she thought that her friend the General was going to be angry with her, she began to get angry with him--so as not to start the quarrel at a disadvantage. They were making a fuss; now what in heaven's name was there to make a fuss about? Hugh to make a fuss! A smile more acrid, less kind, than usual, bent Mrs. Lenoir's lips; it made her look older. Suddenly, without seeing where he came from, she found the General beside her--rather a stiff General, raising his hat very ceremoniously. "You've had your tea, Clara? May I sit down by you?" "Yes, I've had my tea, thank you. And you?" "No, thank you. I--in fact I've had a whisky and soda." The indulgence was unusual. It confirmed Mrs. Lenoir's instinct. "Where's Bertie?" "He's gone for a walk to Camara de Lobos." The instinct was proved infallibly correct. A stride along the one level road--clearly a case of mental disturbance needing physical treatment! The General sat down. He was not even smoking; he rested the big silver knob of his stick against his lips. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Oh yes, certainly yes! When he spoke, it was abruptly. "I don't know exactly how long you mean to stay here, Clara, but I'm afraid Bertie and I must take the next boat home. We must get back to London." "Who's inconsolable in London?" "I've had a letter which makes it advisable----" "Oh, nonsense!" She did not disguise her impatience. "She's told him, has she?" "I don't think you've treated me quite fairly." The sun began to sink below the promontory which bounded the view on the right. The growing sombreness of the atmosphere seemed to spread over Mrs. Lenoir's face. Her voice was hard too, when she spoke. "I've treated you absolutely fairly. You men always want to play with your cards held up, and ours down on the table. That's the masculine idea of an even game! Oh, I know it! For my part I think she's silly to have told him so soon. I wouldn't have. And so she's not good enough for him, isn't she?" Mrs. Lenoir had certainly done well to whip up her anger. It enabled her to deliver the assault, and forestall the General's more deliberate offensive movement. Also by her plainness she exposed ruthlessly her friend's tactful invention of a letter from London making it advisable for him and his son to take the next boat back to England. "It's not quite a question of that," said the General, his pale-brown old cheek flushing under the roughness of her scornful words. "You know how much I like her, and how much Bertie likes her too. But we must look facts in the face--take things as they are, Clara. It's not so much a matter of his own feelings. There's the regiment." Mrs. Lenoir grew more annoyed--because she perceived in a flash that, old student of men as she was, she had neglected an important factor in the case. Being annoyed, and being a woman, she hit out at the other women who, as she supposed, stood in her way. "A parcel of nobodies, in a garrison or cantonment somewhere!" Whatever the judgment on her life, she was always conscious that she herself had been famous. "I suppose you're referring to the women? I wasn't thinking so much of them. It'd be sure to get out, and it wouldn't do with the youngsters." She turned to him almost fiercely, but his next words struck a new note. "And it'd prejudice my boy's career, Clara." The sun had set. There was an interval of cold light before the glories of the afterglow. Mrs. Lenoir's face looked wan and hard. "Yes, it would follow them all over the world," she said. "Now a mail ahead of them, now a mail behind--always very close. Yes, the women would chatter and lift their skirts; the old men would snigger and the youngsters make jokes. Is there anything at all to choose between us, Hugh--between you men and us women? Anything at all?" He would not enter on that. "You don't quite understand. I may think about his interest--well, I'm his father, and he's my eldest. He sees it in the light of his duty to the Service." "My poor little Winnie!" Gradually the afterglow was coming and seemed to soften the hard lines of her face. "You know I--why, I fairly love her myself!" His voice trembled for a moment. "Pretty nearly as much, I believe, in the end, as the boy does. But--could I tell him anything different? I'd give a year's pay not to hurt her feelings." "A year's pay! You old goose, Hugh! You'd give your life--but you wouldn't give one button off the tunic of one of the soldiers in your blessed regiment." She held out her hand to him, smiling under misty eyes. "You men are queer," she ended. After a stealthy look round, the General raised her hand to his lips. They were friends again, and he was glad. Yet she would not forgo her privilege of ridicule and irony--the last and only weapon of the conquered. "I don't know that anything need be said----" "So you two valiant soldiers have decided that I had better say it?" she interrupted. "How could either of us so much as hint that she--that she was the least interested in our movements?" "Not even in your retreats? Oh, I'll tell her you're going by the next boat. Nearly a week off, though, isn't it?" She hinted maliciously that the week might be difficult--even dangerous. Whether it would be depended on how Winnie took their decision. Mrs. Lenoir's unregenerate impulse would have been to make that week rather trying to the Major, had she been in Winnie's place. By being disagreeable to him? No, she would have found a better way than that. A merry laugh sounded from the door of the casino. Winnie was there, in animated conversation with the Anstruther boys. A great event had happened, calculated to amuse the whole hotel. 'Dolly' had come down with his usual half-dollar--and had lost it as usual. He walked round the room, then up and down the concert-room adjoining. He went to the other table, he came back to the one at which he had played. He fidgeted about, behind the second Anstruther boy, for some minutes. Then he fished out another half-dollar, and put it on a single number--twenty! Could Winnie, his confidante, doubt what was in his mind? The number twenty was the gage of Dame Fortune; he would wear it on his sleeve! Number twenty came up; the little man, with a quick gasp for breath, pounced on his handful of money. "Well, any of us may win after that!" said the elder Anstruther boy, who had been strongly for the view that Mr. Wigram was a 'hoodoo' to the whole hotel. With rapid yet gracious dexterity Winnie got rid of her companions. She had caught sight of the General's tall figure as he left Mrs. Lenoir's side. She came down to her friend's chair, and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Not cold?" Mrs. Lenoir shook her head. "Well, let's go home, anyhow--shall we? I've had a long afternoon with those boys--I'm tired." "Sit down for a minute, child. So you let the cat out of the bag?" "I told you I had to. Has he been here? I haven't seen him." "Bertie? No--only the General. Bertie's gone for a walk by himself. But, before he went, he told the General." "Well?" Winnie was drawing on the gloves she had taken off to count out her money in the room. "They're going home by the next boat." Winnie gave no sign, made no movement. "A letter from London--if you want to observe the usual fiction." Her malice, her desire that her sex should fight for itself and avenge its injuries, twinkled in her eyes again. "But they can't go till Tuesday!" Winnie's eyes turned out to sea. "Tuesday, or Tuesday twelvemonth--what difference does it make?" She gave a little sigh; she had liked the idea of it--of the life it meant, of seeing the world, of a fresh start, of his great courtesy and kindness. "I don't think that we need consider ourselves responsible for a broken heart," she added suddenly. "No, but he'd have gone on, even after you told him." Her voice took on its ironical inflexion. "He'd have gone on but for the regiment." Winnie had been leaning back in her chair. She sat up straight, almost with a jerk. "Gone on but for what?" she asked, in a tone of genuine amazement. Mrs. Lenoir's acrid smile penetrated the twilight. After a moment's blank staring, Winnie's parted lips met in a smile too. To both of them, in the end, it seemed funny--rather unaccountable. "The regiment, Winnie!" Mrs. Lenoir repeated, as she rose from her seat. "It really never entered my head," said Winnie. CHAPTER XXIV AN ENLIGHTENMENT It might well seem that by now Winnie would have become accustomed to the discovery that things which had never entered her head might none the less occupy a large and unassailable position in the heads of other people--nay, that she might, for safety's sake, allow for the likelihood of such a revelation when she laid plans or embarked on a course of conduct. But, in fact, this would be asking her to have learned very early a very hard lesson. It was not as if there were only one or two of these entrenched convictions; fresh ones leapt, as it were, from ambush at every step of her advance, at every stage of her pilgrimage, and manifested a strength on which she had not calculated, for which the airy and untrammelled flight of Shaylor's Patch speculation had not prepared her. It was all very well for her to declare that she accorded to others the freedom of thought and opinion which she claimed for herself. Of course she did; but the others made such odd uses of their liberty! Maxon's point of view, Dick Dennehy's point of view, Woburn Square's point of view, Bob Purnett's point of view (his--and Godfrey Ledstone's!)--let these be taken as mastered and appreciated. Between them they had seemed to cover the ground pretty completely, to comprehend all the objections which could be raised by standards religious, social, or merely habitual. But no. Here was a man who was willing, for himself, to waive all the usual objections, but suddenly produced a new cult, an esoteric worship, a tribal fetish of his own, evidently a very powerful fetish, to be propitiated by costly sacrifices, which he regarded himself as obviously necessary, and had no doubt would be easily understood by other people. "How could I be expected to think of the regiment?" asked Winnie pathetically. "I declare I thought of everything else--that's why I told him. He doesn't mind all the great world, but he does mind half a dozen women and a dozen boys somewhere in India! People are queer, aren't they, Mrs. Lenoir?" But by now Mrs. Lenoir had been schooled; talks with both father and son had made her understand better, and, since the thing had to be thus, it was desirable that Winnie should understand also. "Well, Winnie, that may be all his regiment is to you--a pack of women and boys in India; indeed that's pretty much what I called it myself. But, in justice to Bertie, we must remember that to him it's a great--a great----" "A great what?" Winnie was looking malicious over her friend's hesitation. "Well, a great institution," Mrs. Lenoir ended, rather lamely. "An institution! Yes!" Winnie nodded her head. "That's it--and I'm absolutely fated to run up against institutions. They wait for me, they lie in hiding, they lurk round corners. And what a lot of them there are, to break one's shins over!" "They all come back to one in the end, I think," said Mrs. Lenoir, smiling. She was glad to hear Winnie's philosophizing. It was a fair proof that neither here was there a broken heart, though there might be some disappointment and vexation. "I was very hurt at first," she went on, "and it made me rude to the General. It's no use being hurt or angry, Winnie. We bring it on ourselves, if we choose to go our own way. Whether it's worth taking the consequences--that's for each of us to decide." "Worth it a thousand times in my case," said Winnie. "All the same I didn't in the least understand what it would be like. Only--now I do understand--I'm going to face it. Fancy if I'd had fewer scruples, and effected a furtive entrance into the regiment! What mightn't have happened?" Three days had elapsed from the date of Winnie's confession to the Major; they had changed the relative attitudes of the two women. Mrs. Lenoir had got over her disappointment and returned to her usual philosophy, her habitual recognition of things as they were, her understanding that with men their profession and their affairs must come first. Winnie had hardened towards her late suitor. Ready to be rejected on her own account, she could not bring herself to accept rejection on account of the regiment with meekness. After the great things she had defied, the regiment seemed a puny antagonist. All the same, little thing as it was, a mere dwarf of an institution compared with her other giant antagonists, it, not they, now vanquished her; it, not they, now held Bertie Merriam back. It must be confessed that she behaved rather maliciously during the days when the two officers were waiting for their ship. An exaggerated interest in the affairs of the regiment, an apparently ingenuous admiration of the wonderful _esprit de corps_ of the British service, earnest inquiries as to the means by which the newly promoted Commanding Officer hoped to maintain a high moral tone among his subalterns--these were the topics with which she beguiled the hours of lunch and dinner. The Major wriggled, the General looked grave and pained; Mrs. Lenoir affected to notice nothing, for she saw that her young friend was for the moment out of hand and only too ready to quarrel with them all. For the rest, Miss Wilson--whose artificial existence was to end when she got on the steamer for Genoa--flirted with the Anstruther boys and lost her money gambling. So time went on till the eve of the departure of father and son. At dinner that night Winnie was still waywardly gay and gaily malicious; when the meal was over she ran off into the garden, and hid herself in a secret nook. The Anstruther boys sought her in vain, and discontentedly repaired to the casino. But there was a more persistent seeker. She was roused from some not very happy meditations by finding Bertie Merriam standing opposite to her. He did not apologize for his intrusion nor, on the other hand, ask leave to sit by her; he stood there, looking gravely at her. "Why do you take a pleasure in making me unhappy?" he asked. "Why do you try to make me look ridiculous, and feel as if I'd done something ungentlemanly? I'm not ridiculous, and I'm not aware of having done anything ungentlemanly. The subject is a very difficult one for me even to touch on with you; but I'm acting from honest motives and on an honest conviction." Winnie looked up in a moody hostility. "Whenever I've acted from honest motives and on honest convictions, people have all combined to make me unhappy, Major Merriam." "I'm sincerely, deeply sorry for that, and I don't defend it. Still, the cases are not the same." "Why aren't they?" "Because you wanted to do what you did. No doubt you were convinced you had the right, but you wanted to, besides. Now I don't want to do what I'm doing. That's the difference. I want it less and less every hour I spend with you--in spite of your being so disagreeable." He smiled a little over the last words. Winnie looked at him in curiosity. What was he going to say? "You're not consistent. You say you like people to act up to their convictions; you feel wronged when people blame you for acting up to your convictions. Yet you punish me for acting up to mine. Will you let me put the thing before you frankly--since we're to part, probably for good, to-morrow?" "Yes, you can say what you like--since we're to part to-morrow." "Mine isn't the absurd idea you think it is, and I'm not the grandmother you try to make me out. I'm going to be called on to serve the King in a position of great responsibility, where my example and my standards will affect many lives. I must be true to my responsibilities as I see them. If I did what my feelings incline me to do--pray believe that I assume nothing as to yours--I shouldn't be true to them. Because in the regiment you wouldn't be understood--neither your position nor your convictions. What do most officers' wives, and what do most young men in the army, know about the sort of society or the sort of speculations which produce convictions like yours? They would neither understand nor appreciate them. And if they didn't--well, what opinion must they hold about you? And what effect would that opinion have? I don't speak of your position--that would be for you to consider--but what effect would it have on my position and my influence?" "They'd just put me down as an ordinary--an ordinary bad woman?" "Let's say the ordinary case of a woman who has made a scandal. Because I agree with you in thinking that such a woman needn't be a bad woman. But even when she's not bad, she may in certain positions be injurious to the commonwealth--and a regiment's a commonwealth. I'm not clever, as my brother is. I'm not likely ever to get a bigger job than this. It'll be the most important trust I shall get, I expect. I want to be loyal to it. I'm being loyal to it at a great cost to me--yes, a great cost now. And you try to make me look ridiculous! Well, let that pass. Only, feeling as I do, I want to put myself right in your eyes, before we say good-bye." "I'm sorry I tried to make you look ridiculous. Is that enough, Major Merriam?" "It's something," he smiled. "But couldn't you go so far as not to think me ridiculous?" "Have I got to think the officers' wives and the subalterns not ridiculous too?" "I can leave that to your later reflections. They're not going to part from you to-morrow, and they don't care so much about your good opinion." "No, I don't think you ridiculous any more." She spoke now slowly and thoughtfully. "I didn't understand. I see better what you mean and feel now. Only understanding other people doesn't make the world seem any easier! But I think I do understand. The King pays you for your life, and you're bound to give it, not only in war, if that's required of you, but in peace too--is it something like that?" "Yes, that's the sort of thing it is. Thank you." "And you mustn't do anything that makes the life he's bought less valuable to him either in war or peace?" "Yes, that's it too." He smiled at her more happily now and in a great kindness. "In fact, you've sold yourself right out and quite irrevocably?" "Ah, well, that's not quite the way I should put it. We Merriams have always done it." "Hereditary slaves!" smiled Winnie. "It's really rather like marriage, as Cyril conceived it. You mustn't have another wife. The regiment's yours. It would be bigamy!" "Charming people can talk great nonsense," the Major made bold to observe. He was rather chilled again. "We're veering round in this discussion. Now you're making out that I'm ridiculous!" He made a gesture of protest. Winnie laughed. "Six days ago I didn't care particularly about you, but I should have married you if you'd asked me." "So you told me why I'd better not ask you? Yes?" "Now I like you very particularly, but nothing on earth would induce me to marry you," said Winnie. She shot a quick glance of raillery at him. "So, if you're struggling, you needn't struggle." "I am struggling rather, Winnie." "To-morrow ends it." "Yes, but what's going to happen to you?" "That's become rather more difficult to answer than it used to be." She rose from her chair. "But now I'm going in, to beg the General's pardon for having been so naughty." She stood there before him, slim, almost vague, in the soft darkness. Her black gown was a darker spot on the gloom; her face and shoulders gleamed white, her brows and the line of her red lips seemed black, and black, too, the eyes with which she regarded him, half-loving, still half-ridiculing, from across the gulf that parted them. He made a quick impulsive step towards her, putting out his arms. It seemed to him that hers came out to meet them; at least she did not retreat. With a sigh and a shiver she yielded herself to his embrace. "I'm half sorry it's so utterly impossible all round," she whispered. After his passionate kiss the man let her go and drew back. "Now I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself," he said. "Oh, my dear, you needn't be. Here we are, two small puzzled things, together on this beautiful night for just a little while, and then a long way from one another for ever! And we've done nothing very dreadful. Just what you like in me has kissed me, and just what I like in you has kissed you, and wished you God-speed, and been sorry for the trouble I've made, and told you how much I hope for you and your dear regiment. I'm glad you did it, and I'm glad I did it. Surely it makes us friends for always that our lips have met like that?" "I'll give it all up if you ask me, Winnie." "No, no. I've been learning to think how one will feel about things to-morrow. Forget you said that. You don't really mean it." He stood silent for a moment. "No, I didn't really mean it. I beg your pardon." "I bear you no malice. I liked you to think it for just a minute. It's all over." She smiled reassuringly. "But I shall remember--and like to remember. Everything of me won't leave you, nor everything of you leave me now, to-morrow--not absolutely everything. Well, it never does, with people you've met intimately, I think. But what you leave to me is all good. I was getting hard. This glimpse of you as you really are has stopped it. Dear friend, kiss me once again, and so good-bye." Very gently now he kissed her lips again--for it was her lips she gave him in a perfect confidence. "Let's go in now," said Winnie, putting her arm through his. They sauntered slowly through the fragrant garden. The night was still; no envious wind disturbed the island's rest. Merriam, deeply moved, but now master of himself, did not speak, but once or twice gently pressed the hand that lay on his arm. With Winnie there was a sense of sadness, yet also of peace. She had made a friend, and now was to lose him--yet not wholly. And, in winning him, she had won back herself also, and had done with the Miss Wilson who had been flouting and flirting these last few days, with intentions none too kind and manners none too good; she was again trying to understand, to be fair, to strike a true balance between herself and other people. "You're very different from the others," she said suddenly; "but, somehow, you're helping me to be more just to them too." She gave a little sigh. "But justice is most awfully difficult. It's really much more comfortable to believe that there's absolutely nothing to be said for people. You believe that about a lot of people, don't you? You'd believe it about my friend Dick Dennehy, I expect, who wants to have Ireland independent, and to destroy the monarchy, and put down the army and navy, and all that sort of thing. Yet he's one of the greatest gentlemen." "Then I'd hang him, but I'd shake hands with him first," said the Major. "Rather like what he's done to me!" thought Winnie to herself; but Merriam did not read the meaning of the glance, the smile, and the gentle pressure on his arm. "But he's got his regiment too!" she went on. Then, glancing up at her companion, she saw that he was not heeding her words, and the rest of her meditation over the parallel was conducted in silence. The General was not to be found that night--he had retreated to his own quarters in the annex. Winnie said her farewell to him on the balcony after breakfast the next morning, as they stood and looked at the big hull of the liner in the roadstead; she was to start in a couple of hours' time. "Have you forgiven me, General? Will you say good-bye to me? I said good-bye to your son last night." "He'll be gone before you get back to England. He told me something about last night. You're friends, he and you, now? And, of course, my dear, you and I. And we shall meet." The ship sent out a warning hoot. "Come on, if you're coming," she seemed to say. "But he and I shan't meet. I'm so glad we have met--just for an hour once." The funny little man, 'Dolly,' fussed on to the balcony, monstrously encumbered with impedimenta--a rug, a 'nest' of wicker baskets, a cap and a pair of shoes of the country, a huge bunch of bananas, and a specimen of sugar cane. The ship hooted again, and he made a hurried rush up to Winnie. "Good-bye, Miss Wilson, good-bye," he said, dropping half a dozen things on the floor in order to give her a handshake. "I've got something for everybody, I think. I won--yes, I won--last night, and I went down to the town early and bought these presents." "How fine! Good-bye, Mr. Wigram. Tell all the truth you can, won't you?" He put his head on one side, in a comical seriousness. "I've been thinking--since I talked to you, Miss Wilson--that my senior class could stand a little." Another hoot! "Oh, good-bye!" he exclaimed, in an extraordinary fluster, as he picked up the things he had dropped, and made a bolt for the stairs. Winnie watched him running down the steps that led through the garden to the landing-stage. "I think the senior class can stand a little, don't you, General?" "You're over-young to be in it, my dear." She turned to him. "I'm not unhappy, and I don't reckon myself unfortunate, because I think that, to some extent at least, I can learn. The only really unhappy people are people who can't learn at all, I think. Fancy going through it all and learning absolutely nothing!" A longer, more insistent hoot! Bertie Merriam sauntered on to the balcony. No observer would have guessed that the hoot meant anything to him or that he had any farewell to make. The General held out his hand to Winnie. "I'll take the steps gently--Bertie can overtake me. _Au revoir_, Miss Winnie, in London!" Bertie Merriam came to her. "You slept well?" he asked. "Oh yes. Why not? I was so at peace. Say nothing this morning. We said good-bye last night." "Yes, I know, but----" He was obviously embarrassed. "But I want to ask you one thing. It'll seem jolly absurd, I know, and rather conceited." "Will it?" asked Winnie, with bright eyes glistening. "Well, if there should be any little row in India--I know people at home don't take much notice of them--any little expedition or anything of that kind, could you keep your eye on it? Because we might have the luck to be in it, and I should like you to know how the regiment shows up." "If you've the luck to be getting killed, I'll read about it," said Winnie. She smiled with trembling lips. "It's really the least I can do for a friend, Major Merriam." "Killed? Oh, rot! Just see first how near to full strength we turn out--that's my great test--and then, if you read of any other fellows showing us the way, you might let me know, and I'll inquire about it--because we don't reckon to let it happen very often. Hullo, that whistle really sounds as if she meant business!" He gripped her hand tightly and looked into her eyes. "Here's the end, Winnie!" "I wouldn't have had it not happen; would you?" "I shall often wonder if I did right." She smiled. "You needn't. What you did would have made no difference--only you'd have been a little less loyal to your duty." "I wish I knew what was going to become of you." "I'm not afraid any more. God bless you, dear." He waited one moment longer. "You've no grudge against me?" Winnie turned sharply away, and leant over the balcony. "Oh, please, please!" she stammered. When she saw him again, he was half-way down to the landing-stage. He turned, waved his hand, and so passed out of sight--and out of life for Winnie Maxon. CHAPTER XXV "PERHAPS!" "Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Ladd, laying down her knife and fork. From her table in the dining-room of the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne at Bellaggio, she commanded a view of the door, and could scrutinize her fellow-guests as they entered. The hotel was full of fresh birds of passage every evening, for the end of the season was approaching, and all the world was travelling through on its way northwards. A lady of lively curiosity, possessed, moreover, by that sense of superiority over the casual visitor which a long stay in a hotel always gives, Mrs. Ladd allowed few of the new-comers to escape without comment or criticism. Lady Rosaline, whose back was towards the door, often felt compelled to twist her head round, in order to estimate for herself the justice of her companion's remarks; but on this occasion she merely asked, "What's the matter, dear?" "Why, that woman who's just come in!" Her voice was full of pleasurable excitement. "It's Cyril Maxon's wife. Who is it with her, I wonder!" Mrs. Ladd was not acquainted personally, or even by hearsay, with Mrs. Lenoir. Lady Rosaline's head went round, not quickly or eagerly, but with a well-bred show of indifference. She watched Winnie walking down the room. "Did she see us?" she asked of Mrs. Ladd. "No, she didn't look this way. What shall we do, Rosaline? It's very awkward." Awkward as it was, Mrs. Ladd sounded more puzzled than pained. "I only knew her very slightly--three or four quite formal calls--in the old days." "Oh, I used to see her now and then, though it was her husband who was my friend, of course." "Well, then, I think we can do as we like." "I don't know. As friends of his--well, what's the right thing towards him?" "I don't mind what's the right thing--towards Mr. Maxon," said Lady Rosaline pettishly. "It won't hurt him if we're civil to her. I shall please myself. I shan't go out of my way to look for her, but if we meet I shall bow." "Oh, well, I must do the same as you, of course. Only I must say I hope Cyril won't hear about it and be hurt. He always expects his friends to make his quarrels theirs, you know!" Lady Rosaline allowed herself a shrug of the shoulders; she was not bound to please Cyril Maxon--not yet. The friendly correspondence was still going on, but things looked as if it would either cease or assume a different complexion before long. She had a letter upstairs in her writing-case at this moment--an unanswered letter--in which he informed her that the last tie between Winnie and himself would be severed in a few weeks, and asked leave to join her at Bellaggio, or wherever else she was going to be, for two or three days during the Whitsuntide vacation. "Then there will be nothing to prevent our arriving at a complete understanding," he added. Lady Rosaline knew what that meant. She must make up her mind. Unless she could make it up in the manner desired by Mr. Maxon, she did not think that they had better meet in the Whitsuntide vacation; he would not be an agreeable companion if his wishes were thwarted. Even now, while he was still in hope and had every motive to be as pleasant as he could, there ran through the friendly letter a strain of resentment imperfectly repressed. Under these circumstances, with this decision of hers to make, it was not strange that Lady Rosaline should be interested by the chance which threw across her path the woman who had been--and technically still was, for a little while longer--Cyril Maxon's wife. Mrs. Ladd, who guessed her friend's situation pretty shrewdly, was hardly less curious, though more restrained by her loyalty to Cyril. Still she was glad that Lady Rosaline had determined that they need not cut Mrs. Maxon. That she was 'Mrs. Maxon'--'Mrs. Winifred Maxon'--became apparent from an examination of the visitors' book, which Mrs. Ladd initiated directly after dinner. Winnie was sailing under her own flag again, and proposed to continue to fly it, unless Cyril Maxon objected. If he heard of it, he probably would object; then she could find another sobriquet if Mrs. Lenoir was still obdurate as regards the ''kins' which disfigured her own maiden name of 'Wilkins.' "And the woman with her seems to be a Mrs. Lenoir. At least, their names are next one another, and so are their rooms. Did you ever hear of her?" "Never," answered Lady Rosaline. It was just as well; they had plenty of material for gossip already. They were sitting in the hall of the hotel, where wicker chairs and little tables were set out, and where it was customary to take coffee after dinner. Mrs. Ladd had made her inspection and rejoined her friend. "Have they come out from dinner yet?" she asked. "No. They were late in beginning, you see. Where we're sitting, they needn't pass us when they do come out. Well, we don't want to make a rush for them, do we, Mrs. Ladd?" "Indeed, no. I shall only speak if it's forced on me--just not to be unkind, Rosaline. But I do wish they'd come out!" At last the new-comers entered the hall, Mrs. Lenoir leading the way. She looked handsome still, but rather old and haggard. By bad luck the voyage had been stormy the last two days, and the railway journey had wearied a body not very robust. But Winnie looked well, bright, and alert. They did not pass Mrs. Ladd and Lady Rosaline, but sat down at a table near the dining-room door. As they sat, their profiles were presented to the gaze of the two ladies who were observing them so closely. "The other woman must have been very handsome once," Mrs. Ladd pronounced. "I wonder who she was!" Mrs. Lenoir's air of past greatness often caused people to speak of her in a corresponding tense. "Winnie Maxon's looking well, too. I think she's somehow changed; don't you, Mrs. Ladd? There's a new air about her, it seems to me--a sort of assured air she hadn't before." "My dear, she must carry it off! That's the meaning of it." "I wonder!" Lady Rosaline was not satisfied. Her memory of Winnie, slight as it was, reminded her quite definitely that Cyril Maxon's wife possessed a rather timid air, a deprecatory manner. The woman over there was in no way self-assertive or 'loud,' but she seemed entirely self-possessed and self-reliant, and was talking in an animated fashion. Mrs. Ladd looked again. "Cyril said she accused him of tyrannizing over her. I'm sure she doesn't look as if she'd been tyrannized over," she remarked. "All nonsense, I've no doubt." Lady Rosaline made no answer; she merely went on looking. But she could not forget that many months had passed since Winnie ended her married life with Cyril Maxon. No encounter between the two couples occurred that night; indeed Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie remained unconscious of the scrutiny to which they were subjected, and of the presence of the ladies who were conducting it. Wearied by travel they went early to bed, and Mrs. Ladd, feeling immediately very dull, went and hunted out an elderly novel from the drawing-room shelves. Lady Rosaline did not read; she sat on idly in the hall--thinking still of Winnie, and of Mrs. Ladd's remark which she herself had not answered. Should she--could she--question the one person who might give it a pertinent answer? Could even she answer to any purpose? That is, would Winnie's experience and opinion be any guide to Lady Rosaline in settling her own problem? Perhaps it would be strange to question, and perhaps no answer, useless or useful, would be forthcoming. Yet, on the other hand, it might be possible to get some light. These thoughts engrossed her mind till she went discontentedly to bed, and, even after she had got into bed, remained to vex and puzzle her still. But there was really no doubt what, in the end, she would do. She was bound to try. Both curiosity and personal interest drove her on. They were too strong to be suppressed, either by the fear of a snub or by the doubt of useful results. The next morning, directly after breakfast, she went out on to the broad terrace in front of the hotel, and sat down on a bench close by the main doorway. No one could leave the house without her seeing. She reckoned on the new-comers being early afoot, to explore their surroundings; she even surmised that the young woman would very likely be out before her elderly companion--and that (said Lady Rosaline's secret thoughts) would afford the best chance of all. She put up her parasol and waited. She was safe from Mrs. Ladd, whom she did not want at that moment, for Mrs. Ladd was upstairs, repairing some ravages suffered by one of her gowns. "It's a funny situation!" So Lady Rosaline reflected, and she wondered, in a whimsical mood of speculation, what Cyril Maxon himself would think of it. "What I really want to do is to ask for his character from his last place!" Yes, that was what it came to; and the parallel held good still further, in that it was quite likely that the character would not tell her very much, would not show whether the applicant were likely to suit her, however well or ill he had suited in his previous situation. Still, it must surely reveal something about him or about his wife herself; even knowledge about the wife who had left Maxon would be, in a way, knowledge about Maxon himself. But it was an odd situation. What would Cyril think of it? A surprising number of people came out of that doorway before Winnie; but in the end Lady Rosaline's forecast was justified. Winnie did come out, and she came out alone. She wore her hat, carried a parasol, and walked with a quick step, as though she were bound on an expedition. Lady Rosaline rose from her chair, and intercepted her. "I thought it was you last night, at table d'hôte, and now I'm sure! How do you do, Mrs. Maxon? You remember me--Rosaline Deering?" She held out her hand. "I'm so glad to see you." Winnie shook hands. "Yes, I remember you, Lady Rosaline, and I'm glad to see you--if you're glad to see me, I mean, you know." She smiled. "Well, you needn't have shaken hands with me if you hadn't wanted to, need you? Isn't it lovely here?" "It is, indeed. Mrs. Ladd--you remember her too, of course?--and I have been here together for nearly a month, and hope to be here another fortnight. Are you staying long?" "We hoped to, but my friend isn't very well--she's staying in bed this morning--and I'm afraid she's set her mind on getting home. So we might be off really at any moment." Clearly Lady Rosaline had no time to lose. "Are you going for a walk?" she said. "Oh, I'm just going to saunter through the town and look about me." "May I come with you?" "Of course! It'll be very kind." There was just the faintest note of surprise in Winnie's voice. Her acquaintance with her husband's friend, Rosaline Deering, had been very slight; it had never reached the pitch of cordiality on which it seemed now, rather paradoxically, to be establishing itself. Off they went together--certainly a strange sight for Cyril Maxon, had his eyes beheld it! But even eager Lady Rosaline could not plunge into her questions at once, and Winnie, full of the new delight of Italy, was intent on the sights of the little town, and on the beauty of the lake and the hills. It was not till they had come back and sat down on a seat facing the water that the talk came anywhere near the point. Yet the walk had not been wasted; they had got on well together, the cordiality was firmly established--and Lady Rosaline had enjoyed an opportunity of observing more closely what manner of woman Cyril Maxon's wife was. The old impression of the timid air and deprecatory manner needed drastic revision to bring it up to date; these were not words that anybody would use to describe the present Winnie Maxon. Still Lady Rosaline found it hard to begin, hard to make any reference, however guarded, to the past. In fact it was Winnie herself who in the end gave the lead. Lady Rosaline was thankful; she had begun to be afraid that a nervous desperation would drive her into some impossibly crude question, such as "Do you think I should be a fool if I married your husband?" "I suppose you see Cyril sometimes, Lady Rosaline? Is he all right?" "Oh yes, he's very much all right, I think, and I see him pretty often, for so busy and sought-after a man." She decided that she must risk something if she were to gain anything. "Isn't it rather a strange feeling, after having been so very much to one another, to be so absolutely apart now? I hope you'll tell me if you'd rather not talk?" "I don't mind," smiled Winnie. "It's a great change, of course, but really I don't often think of him--nor he of me, I expect." She added, with a little laugh: "At least I hope he doesn't, because he wouldn't think anything complimentary. Of course I was surprised about the divorce." "We were all rather surprised at that," Lady Rosaline murmured discreetly; her object was to obtain, not to give, information. "It's the one inconsistent thing I've ever known him do." She laughed. "I wonder if it's possible that he's fallen in love with somebody else!" Lady Rosaline threw no light. "Oh, well, he wouldn't have to ask in vain, I should think." Winnie said nothing. She looked at the sea with a smile which her companion felt justified in calling inscrutable. Lady Rosaline took another risk. "So much the worse for the woman, you'd say, I suppose?" "I don't want to say anything. What I felt seems pretty well indicated by what I did, doesn't it, Lady Rosaline? Because I wasn't in love with anybody else then, you know." No, what she felt was not sufficiently indicated for Lady Rosaline's purposes. What Winnie had done showed that, to her, life with Cyril was impossible; but it did not show why. Just the point essential to Lady Rosaline was omitted. "I should think some women might get on very well with him, though?" she hazarded. Winnie gazed over the lake; she appeared to ruminate. Then she turned to her companion, smiling. "Perhaps!" she said. "And now I really must go and see how Mrs. Lenoir--my friend--is. I hope we shall have another talk before we go--I don't mean about Cyril!" Lady Rosaline watched her erect figure and her buoyant step as she walked back to the hotel, recalled her gaiety and the merriment of her smile as she enjoyed lake, mountains, and the little town, caught again the elusive twinkle of her eyes as she referred to the one inconsistent thing that Cyril Maxon had ever done. And that 'Perhaps!'--that most unsatisfactory, tantalizing 'Perhaps!' Was it a genuine assent, or merely a civil dismissal of the question, as one of no moment to the person interrogated? Or was it in effect a dissent--a reception of the suggestion profoundly sceptical, almost scornful? Probably a different woman could--possibly some woman might--no woman conceivably could--that 'Perhaps!' seemed susceptible of any of the three interpretations. Lady Rosaline made impotent clutches at the slippery word; it gave her no hand-hold; it was not to be tackled. It was no use consulting Mrs. Ladd; she had not heard the elusive answer. Could Lady Rosaline unbosom herself plainly to Mrs. Maxon? That was her secret and urgent instinct, but, somehow, it did not seem an admissible thing to do; it was bizarre, and distasteful to her feelings. Yet before long she must answer Cyril's letter. To allow him to come and meet her would be tantamount to an acceptance. To refuse to allow him would be, at least, such a postponement as he would bitterly resent and probably decline to agree to; he would either take it as a definite rejection, or he would come without leave--and 'bully' her again? She could hide herself--but could she? Mrs. Ladd would want to know why, and laugh at her--and not improbably put Cyril on the track. Lady Rosaline felt herself wrapped in perplexity as in a garment. "Bother the man!" she suddenly said to herself aloud. Then she started violently. A tall, handsome, elderly lady, carrying a parasol, a large cushion, and a book, was absolutely at her elbow. She recognized Winnie's companion, Mrs. Lenoir. "I'm afraid I startled you? May I sit down here? Winnie Maxon told me who you were, and you've been talking to her, haven't you?" Mrs. Lenoir's amused expression left no doubt that she was aware of the subject of the conversation. "Oh, she only just mentioned that you were a friend of Mr. Maxon's," she added. "She didn't betray your confidences." "I really don't think I made any," smiled Lady Rosaline. "But Mr. Maxon is a friend of mine. Oh, do let me settle that cushion comfortably for you. You're not feeling very well this morning, Mrs. Maxon told me." "I feel better now," said Mrs. Lenoir, graciously accepting the proffered service. "And the day's so beautiful that I thought I'd come out. But I didn't mean to make you jump, Lady Rosaline." She gave a sigh of contentment as she achieved a satisfactory position in regard to the cushion. "I don't know Mr. Maxon myself," she remarked. "I like him very much." "Yes?" She was just as non-committal as Winnie had been with her 'Perhaps!' "Of course, you've heard her side of the story." "I have," said Mrs. Lenoir. "Or as much of it as she'd tell me." Lady Rosaline determined to try what a little provocation would do. "Of course, we who are his friends think that all might have gone well with a little more wisdom on her part." Mrs. Lenoir raised her brows ever so slightly. "Oh, perhaps!" she murmured gently. It was really exasperating! To be baffled at every turn by that wretched word, with its pretence of conceding that was no real concession, with its feigned assent which might so likely cloak an obstinate dissent! It was like listening for an expected sound from another room--the noise of voices or of movements--and finding, instead, absolute silence and stillness; there was something of the same uncanny effect. Lady Rosaline passed from mere perplexity into a vague discomfort--an apprehension of possibilities which she was refused the means of gauging, however vitally they might affect her. Dare she walk into that strangely silent room--and let them bolt and bar the door on her? "After all, it's not our business," Mrs. Lenoir remarked, with a smile. "Winnie couldn't stand it, but, as you say, perhaps a wiser woman----" "Couldn't stand what?" Lady Rosaline broke in impatiently. "Oh, Cyril Maxon, you know." Not a step in advance! Silence still! Lady Rosaline, frowning fretfully, rose to her feet. Mrs. Lenoir looked up, smiling again. She was not sure of the case, but she was putting two and two together, helped by the exclamation which she had involuntarily overheard. In any case, she had no mind to interfere. This woman was Cyril Maxon's friend, not Winnie's. Mrs. Lenoir instinctively associated the husband's women-friends with the wife's hardships. Let this friend of Maxon's fend for herself! "But, of course, one woman's poison may be another woman's meat. Are you going in?" "Yes, I think so. The sun's rather hot." "Oh, I'm a salamander! Good-bye, then, for the present, Lady Rosaline." Lady Rosaline had come from abroad for a breathing space, to take stock of the situation, to make up her mind about Cyril Maxon. It had not proved easy, and her encounter with these two women made it harder still. The perplexity irked her sorely. She bore a grudge against the two for their baffling reticence; insensibly the grudge extended itself to the man who was the ultimate cause of her disquiet. He was spoiling her holiday for her. "I shall fret myself into a fever!" she declared, as she wandered disconsolately up to her bedroom, to make herself tidy for _déjeuner_. On her dressing-table lay a letter--from Venice. She had not forgotten her promise to send an address to the Hôtel Danieli. Now Sir Axel Thrapston informed her that he was starting for home in a couple of days' time, and would make it convenient--and consider it delightful--to pass through Bellaggio on his way; would she still be there, and put up with his company for a day or two? "Pictures and churches and gondolas are all very well; but I shall like a gossip with a friend better still," wrote Sir Axel. As she read, Lady Rosaline was conscious of a relief as vague as her discomfort had been, and yet as great. The atmosphere about her seemed suddenly changed and lightened. Almost with a start she recalled how she had experienced a similar feeling when Cyril Maxon had gone and Sir Axel had come that afternoon in Hans Place. The feeling was not of excitement, nor even primarily of pleasure; it was of rest, instead of struggle--of security, as against some unascertained but possibly enormous liability. And it was present in her in even stronger force than it had been before, because of those two women and their baffling slippery 'Perhaps!' As she took off her hat and arranged her hair before going downstairs, the import of this vague change of feeling began to take shape in her mind. Slowly it grew to definiteness. Lady Rosaline was making up her mind at last! The possibilities lurking in the darkness of that 'Perhaps!' were too much for her. "If I feel like this about it, how can I dare to do it?" was the shape her thoughts took. Yet, even if she dared not do it, there was trouble before her. Cyril Maxon would not sit down tamely under that decision. He would protest, he would persist, he might 'bully' her again; he might seek her even though she forbade him, and, if he found her, she was not quite confident of her power to resist. A smile came slowly to her lips as she looked at herself in the pier-glass and put the finishing touches to her array. It would be pleasant to have Sir Axel's company; it might even be agreeable to travel home under Sir Axel's escort, if that gentleman's leisure allowed. Lady Rosaline's thoughts embraced the idea of Sir Axel as an ally, perhaps envisaged him as a shield. Possibly they went so far as to hazard the suggestion that a man who will not bow before a decision may be confronted with a situation which he cannot but accept. At any rate, when she went downstairs to the dining-room, Lady Rosaline's fretful frown had disappeared; passing Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie in the doorway, she smiled at them with no trace of grudge. "I'm glad I met them now," was her reflection. She forgave 'Perhaps!' CHAPTER XXVI A FRIEND DEPARTS Mrs. Lenoir and Winnie stayed at Bellaggio four or five days, during which time their acquaintance with the other two ladies blossomed into more intimate cordiality. Yet neither of the two who knew the position, nor yet the one who confidently suspected it, thought it well to suggest to Winnie the existence of any special situation or any urgent question in which Lady Rosaline and Cyril Maxon were concerned. Such a disclosure would, it was felt by all three, lead to awkwardness. But when once the two parties had said farewell, and Winnie and she were on their way home, Mrs. Lenoir saw no reason against mentioning the conclusion at which she had arrived, or against conjecturing what, if any, bearing on the state of affairs the arrival of Sir Axel Thrapston might have; he had reached Bellaggio the day before their own departure, and had been received by Lady Rosaline with much graciousness. Winnie had not stumbled on the truth for herself; indeed her mind had been occupied with the thought of another man than Cyril Maxon. She heard it from her friend without surprise, and was not unable to appreciate Mrs. Lenoir's grimly humorous embroidering of the situation. Yet her native and intimate feeling was one of protest against that way of the world which, under the pressure of her various experiences, she was beginning to recognize and to learn that she would have to accept. On the day she left Cyril Maxon's house for good and all, she had conceived herself to be leaving Cyril Maxon also for good and all, to be putting him out of her life, away from and behind her, without the right or power to demand one backward glance from her as she trod a path conditioned, indeed, in one respect by his existence, but, for the future, essentially independent of him. The course of events had hardly justified this forecast. Freedom from the thought of him had not proved possible; he did more than impose conditions; he still figured as rather a determining factor in life and her outlook on it. She seemed to take him with her where she went, so to say, and thus to bring him into contact with all those with whom she had relations herself. Both in small things and in great it happened--as, for example, in this queer encounter with Rosaline Deering, and in the moving episode of her acquaintance with Bertie Merriam, no less than in the earlier history of the West Kensington studio. She had not succeeded in disassociating her destiny from his, in severing to the last link the tie which had once so closely bound her to him. Complete freedom, and the full sense of it, might come in the future; for the moment her feeling was one of scorn for the ignorant young woman who had thought that a big thing could so easily be undone--robbed of effect and made as if it had never been. And suppose that complete freedom, now possible in action to her, should really come, and with it a corresponding inward emancipation; yet there stood and would stand the effect on those other lives--effects great or small, transitory or permanent, but in the mass amounting to a considerable sum of human experience, owing its shape and colour in the end to her own action. Though she had not loved Bertie Merriam, their intercourse, his revelation of himself, and the manner of their parting had deeply affected her. For the first time she had seen the enemy, convention--the established order, the proper thing--in a form which she could not only understand, but with which she was obliged to sympathize. What had seemed to her hard dogmatism in her husband and Attlebury, and a mere caste-respectability, external, narrow, and cowardly, in the denizens of Woburn Square, took on a new shape when it was embodied in the loyalty of a soldier and found its expression, not in demands upon another, but in the sacrifice of self to an obligation and an ideal. Liberty had been her god, and she would not desert the shrine at which Shaylor's Patch had taught her to worship; but Merriam had shown her, had brought home to her through the penetrating appeal of vivid emotion, that there were other deities worthy of offerings and noble worshippers who made them. It was a great revulsion of feeling which drove her to declare that Merriam could do no other than sacrifice his hope of her to his sworn service and to the regiment. In justifying, or more than justifying, himself, in some sort Merriam pleaded for Cyril Maxon. Winnie held herself to a stricter account of her dealings with her husband. When she understood why he had deviated from his strict conviction, and how it was likely that the deviation would be in vain, she was anxious to rid her soul of any sense of responsibility. She recalled just what she had said, as near as she could; she listened carefully to Mrs. Lenoir's account of her own conversation with Lady Rosaline. "Do you think that we influenced her--that we stopped her?" she asked. "Because I wouldn't have done that on purpose." "I certainly wouldn't have encouraged her on purpose. And, if you ask me, I think that our attitude of--well, of reserve (Mrs. Lenoir was smiling) will have its weight--combined, perhaps, with Sir Axel's attractions." "I'm sorry. If Cyril does want her, and it doesn't come off, he'll hate me worse than ever." "He won't guess you've had anything to do with it--supposing you have." "No, but he'll trace the whole thing back to me, of course. He'll blame me for having forced him into acting against his conscience." "Tut, tut, he shouldn't have such a silly conscience," said Mrs. Lenoir easily. To her, consciences were not things to be treated with an exaggerated punctilio. "After all, if she'd asked you right out, what would you have said?" "I should have refused to say anything, of course." "She probably thought as much, so she tried to pump you indirectly. I think you seem to have been very moderate--and I'm sure I was. And, as one woman towards another, you ought to be glad if Lady Rosaline does prove quick at taking a hint. I shall be glad too, incidentally, because I like her, and hope to see something of her in town--which I certainly shouldn't do, if she became Lady Rosaline Maxon." "Well, I had no idea how matters stood, and I said as little as I could," Winnie ended, protesting against any new entry on the debit side of her account with Cyril--a column about which she had not been wont greatly to concern herself. Winnie soon found distraction from curious probings of her conscience in the care and tendance of her friend, in which she assisted the invaluable Emily. As they travelled gradually homewards, Mrs. Lenoir developed a severe and distressing cough, which made sleep very difficult and reduced her none too great strength to dangerous weakness. Yet home she would go, rejecting almost curtly any suggestion of a return to a milder climate. She faced her position with a fatalistic courage, and her attitude towards it was marked by her habitual clearness of vision. "If I'm going to die--and I rather think I am--I'd sooner die at home than in a hotel." "Oh, don't talk about dying!" Winnie implored. "What am I to do?" Indeed she was now bound to her friend by a strong affection. "Well, there's just you--and the General. But the General will die too quite soon, and you'll go away anyhow. Oh yes, you'll have to, somehow; it'll happen like that. There's nobody else who cares. And I don't know that women like me do themselves any good by living to be old. I'm not complaining; I chose my life and I've enjoyed it. Let me go home, Winnie!" The appeal could not be resisted, and the beginning of May found them at home. A late cold spring filled Winnie with fears for her friend. Yet Mrs. Lenoir neither would nor, as it now seemed, could make another move. She lay on her sofa, her beautiful eyes steadily in front of her. She moved and spoke little. She seemed just to be waiting. Often Winnie wondered through what scenes of recollection, through what strains of meditation, her mind was passing. But she preserved all that defensiveness which her life had taught her--the power of saying nothing about herself, of giving no opening either to praise or to blame, of asking no outside support. Perhaps she talked to the General. He came every day, and Winnie was at pains to leave them alone together. Towards the rest of the world, including even Winnie, she was evidently minded to maintain to the end her consistent reticence. Sickness puts a house out of the traffic of the world; day followed day in a quiet isolation and a sad tranquillity. What had passed left its mark on Winnie's relations with the General. He was, of course, courteous and more than that. He was uniformly kind, even affectionate, and constituted himself her partner in all that could be done or attempted for the patient whom they both loved. That link between them held, and would hold till another power than theirs severed it. But it was all that now kept them together; when it was gone, he would be in effect a stranger to her. If she said to herself, with a touch of bitterness, "He has lost all his interest in me," there was a sense in which she spoke the truth. He had pictured her as coming into the inner circle of his life, and had urgently desired the realization of the picture. Now she was definitely relegated to the outskirts; she was again just Mrs. Lenoir's young friend--with this change--that he cherished a pathetically amiable grudge against her for the loss of the picture. How much he knew of what had passed between herself and his son on that last evening, she was not aware; but he knew the essence of it. Though in charity he might refrain from censure, she had been an occasion of sore distress to his best-beloved son. To her sensitive mind, in spite of his kindness, there was a reserve in his bearing; he now held their friendship to its limits. The love he had borne her was wounded to death by the pain she had given him. She could imagine his thoughts made articulate in the words, "You shan't have it in your power to hurt mine and me again." She opened her eyes to the fact that she had lost a good friend, in these days which menaced her, only too surely, with the loss of a dear one. This chapter of her life seemed like to come to its end--as other chapters had before. One visitant from the outside world--the General seemed a part of the household--made an appearance in the person of Mrs. Ladd. She came to call on Mrs. Lenoir, unaware of her illness; it was one of the patient's days of exhaustion, and Winnie had to entertain the good lady and, after listening to her appropriate sympathy, to hear her news. She had come back to England alone. Rosaline had gone to stay with friends at Biarritz. "I think she didn't want to come home just now," said Mrs. Ladd, with a glance at Winnie which plainly fished for information. "Mrs. Lenoir has told me a certain impression of hers, which I didn't form for myself at Bellaggio," Winnie remarked. "Are you referring to that, Mrs. Ladd?" "Yes. Rosaline told me that you suspected nothing. But since it's all settled, there's no harm in speaking of it now. Sir Axel is at Biarritz too. I think they'll probably be married as they pass through Paris on their way home." "Oh, it's as settled as that, is it?" Winnie's speculations revived. How much had she and Mrs. Lenoir between them contributed to the settlement? "I think she's right to bring it to a point. It avoids all question." Mrs. Ladd put her head on one side. "I've seen Mr. Maxon. Of course he doesn't know that you've ever seen Rosaline since--since the old days--much less that you had anything to do with it?" "Had I? I never meant to have." "Oh, I think so. Rosaline spoke vaguely, but I think something in your manner--of course you couldn't help it, and you didn't know. And, as I say, he has no notion of it." "I'm glad. He'd be so angry with me, and I don't want him to be more angry than he must." "I don't think he's got any anger to spare for you. He never referred to you. But her! Oh, my dear!" Mrs. Ladd's kindly old face assumed an almost frightened expression. "Well, I just had to stop him. I told him Rosaline was my friend, and that I wouldn't listen to it. He declared that he had a promise from her, and that on the faith of it, and of it alone, he--well, you know, don't you? Of course I said that there must have been a complete misunderstanding, but he wouldn't have it. Really, we all but quarrelled, if not quite." How well Winnie knew! The domineering man, so sure both of his desires and of his claims, so confident in his version of the facts, so impervious to any other impression of them--from out the past the picture of him rose complete. "I knew, of course, that he liked his own way," said Mrs. Ladd. "But, really, I was rather startled." She suddenly leant forward and patted Winnie's hand. No words passed, but Winnie understood that Mrs. Ladd had been, to some extent at least, revising a judgment, and wished her to know it. "He'll marry, though--mark my words! I know him, and I know something about that sort of man. He'll marry in a twelvemonth, if it's only to show Rosaline he can, and to hold up his end against Mr. Attlebury. I told Mr. Attlebury so. 'He's taken his line, and he'll go through with it,' I said, 'as soon as he finds a woman to help him.'" "What did Mr. Attlebury say?" "Nothing! He wouldn't talk about it. He just waved his hands in that way he has. But you may take it from me that that's what will happen." The prophecy, born of the old woman's amiable worldly wisdom, seemed likely of fulfilment. There was nothing Cyril Maxon hated so much as failure or the imputation of it, nothing he prized so dearly as proving himself right, to which end it was ever necessary to refuse to admit that he had been wrong. Winnie seemed to hear him grimly declaring that, since he had taken his course, not Lady Rosaline, not a dozen Attleburys, should turn him from it. He would follow it to the end, even though he had little desire for it; antagonism was often to him stimulus enough. Thus it was that he became an implacable enemy to the liberty of those about him, warring with them if they asserted any independence, tyrannizing if they submitted. Such people create resistance, as it were out of a vacuum--even a wild and desperate resistance, which takes little heed of what it may hurt or overthrow in its struggle against domination. Venerable institutions, high ideals, personal loyalty may have to pay the price. All go by the board when the limits of human endurance are reached. Had Winnie Maxon received a classical education--the absence of which had not in her case proved a panacea against all forms of failure--she might have found in wise old Mrs. Ladd a good embodiment of the Greek Chorus--usually people with little business of their own (as would appear for all that appears to the contrary) and bent on settling other people's on lines safely traditional; yet with a salt of shrewdness, not revolutionaries, but brave enough to be critics, admitting that acceptance and submission present their difficulties--but you may go further, and far worse by a great deal! Those limits of endurance must be stretched as far as possible. On the next day but one, the expected blow fell. Pneumonia declared itself; the patient took the doctor's diagnosis as a death-sentence--final, hardly unwelcome. Her nights were pain; day brought relief, yet increasing weakness. Now the General could not endure much of the sick-room; he came, but his visits were briefer. Besides his grief for his friend, some distress was upon him--distress still for her sake, perhaps also for the sake of others who had gone before, even for himself, it may be. He knew so much more than Winnie did. Infinitely tender to his dying friend, he said but one word to Winnie. "When I suggest that she might see somebody, she only smiles." Winnie understood the suggestion. "We must all of us settle that for ourselves in the end, mustn't we? I think she seems happy--at least, quite at peace." He made a fretful gesture of protest. She had no right to be quite at peace. He lived in the ideas in which he had been bred. If he had offended a gentleman, let him apologize before it was too late. Insensibly he applied the parallel from the seen world to the unseen--as, indeed, he had been taught. His mind stuck in particular categories of conduct; for some credit was to be given, for some penalties had to be paid; it was a system of marks good and bad. Even in the education of the young this is now held to be a disputable theory. He thought that he had known very intimately his dear old friend who now lay dying. He found that he knew her very little; he could not get close to her mind at the end. For Winnie Maxon she had one more revelation. Mrs. Lenoir would not 'see anybody'--she also detected the special meaning, and, with a tired smile, repelled the suggestion--but in hints and fragments she displayed to Winnie in what mood she was facing death. Courageously--almost indifferently; the sun was set, and at night people go to bed--tired people they are generally. She had not thought much of responsibility, of a reckoning; she suffered or achieved none of the resulting impulse to penitence; she even smiled again at the virtue of a repentance become compulsory, because it was possible to sin no more. "Some women I've known became terribly penitent at forty," she said to Winnie. "I never knew one do it at twenty-five." Her attitude seemed to say that she had been born such and such a creature, and, accordingly, had done such and such things--and thus had lived till it became time for the conditioned, hardly voluntary, life of the creature to end. On the religious side it was pure negation, but on the worldly there was something positive. As verily as the General, as Bertie Merriam himself, she had 'played the game.' Her code was intact; her honour, as judged by it, unsmirched. "I've been straight, Winnie," she said, in almost the last conscious minute. Then came oblivion; the soul was rid of its burden many hours before the body was. She passed from the life in which she had been so great an offender against the rules, had played so interesting a part, had done so many kind things, had been such a good friend, even on occasion so resolute a resister of temptation--and a woman not to be mentioned. As Winnie wept over her and paid her the last offices of love--for she, at least, had received the purest gold of unseeking love--her heart suffered a mighty searching pang of tenderness. Old words, of old time familiar, came back. "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in." Such things had her dead friend done for her. An exaltation and a confidence took hold on her after she had kissed the cold brow. But outside the room stood the old General, sad, grey, heavy of face. His voice was broken, his hands tremulous. "I wish--I wish she'd have seen somebody, Winnie!" Winnie threw herself into his arms, and looked up at him, her eyes streaming with tears. "Dear General, she sees nothing or she sees God. Why are we to be afraid?" CHAPTER XXVII A PHILOSOPHICAL PROJECT Mrs. Lenoir did not, as the phrase runs, "do as much for" Winnie Maxon as she had been prepared to do for the prospective Mrs. Bertie Merriam. Perhaps because, though she had accepted the decision, her disappointment over the issue persisted. Perhaps merely because, as matters now stood, her bounty would not go in the end to benefit her old friend's stock. After providing an annuity for her precious Emily, and bequeathing a few personal relics to the General, she left to Winnie the furniture of her flat and fifteen hundred pounds. The residue which was at her disposition she gave--it may be with a parting kick at respectability; it may be because she thought he would enjoy it most--to her favourite, and the least meritorious, of the General's sons--the one who went in for too much polo and private theatricals in India. "There's no immediate need for you to hurry out of here," the General added; he was the executor. "The rent must be paid till the summer anyhow, and Clara told me that she wished you to stay till then if you liked. I've no doubt Emily will stay with you." "It was very kind of her, but I can't afford to live here long." "Oh, well, just while you look about you, anyhow. And if there's anything I can do for you, you won't hesitate to let me know, will you?" Winnie promised to call upon his services if she required them, but again the feeling came over her that, however kind and obliging he might be, the General did in his heart--even if unwillingly--regard their connexion with one another as over. The bond which Mrs. Lenoir had made was broken; that other and closer bond had never come into existence. It would have been unjust to say that the General was washing his hands of her. It was merely a recognition of facts to admit that fate--the course of events--was performing the operation for him. They had no longer any purchase on one another's lives, any common interest to unite them. His only surviving concern now was in his three sons, and it had been irrevocably decided that there Winnie was not to count. The consciousness of this involuntary drifting apart from the old man whom she liked and admired for his gentleness and his loyalty intensified the loneliness with which Mrs. Lenoir's death afflicted Winnie. She was in no better case now than when her friend had rescued her from the empty studio and thereby seemed to open to her a new life. The new life, too, was gone with the friend who had given it. Looking back on her career since she had left Cyril Maxon's roof, she saw the same thing happening again and again. She had made friends and lost them; she had picked them up, walked with them to the next fork in the road, and there parted company. "Is it mere chance, or something in me, or something in my position?" she asked herself. A candid survey could not refuse the conclusion that the position had contributed largely to the result. The case of Godfrey Ledstone, the more trivial instance of Bob Purnett, were there to prove it. The position had been a vital and practically exclusive factor in bringing about her parting from Bertie Merriam; she had an idea that its action was to be traced in the continued absence and silence of Dick Dennehy. The same thing which had parted her from her men-friends had forbidden her friendships with women. She could, she felt, have made a friend of Amy Ledstone. To-day she would have liked to make a friend of kindly shrewd old Mrs. Ladd; but though Mrs. Ladd came to see her at the flat which had been Mrs. Lenoir's, she received no invitation to Mrs. Ladd's house. The pressure of public opinion, the feelings of Mr. Attlebury's congregation, the 'awkwardness' which would arise with Mrs. Ladd's old, if too exacting, friend, Cyril Maxon, forbade. The one friendship which had proved able to resist the disintegrating influence was ended now by death. Well, great benefits cannot reasonably be expected for nothing. If she was alone, she was also free--wonderfully free. And, of a certainty, complete freedom can seldom be achieved save at the cost of a voluntary or involuntary severing of ties. Must every one then be either a slave or a solitary? She was not so soured as to accept that conclusion. She knew that there was a way out--only she had not found it. The Aikenheads had, down at Shaylor's Patch! Thither--to her old haven--her thoughts turned longingly. While it stood, she did it injustice in calling herself friendless. Yet to retire to that pleasant seclusion went against pride; it seemed like a retreat, a confession that the world had been too much for her, that she was beaten. She was not prepared to acknowledge herself beaten--at least, not by the enemy in a fair square fight. Her disasters were due to the defection of her allies. So she insisted, as she sat long hours alone in the flat--ah, now so quiet indeed! Shaylor's Patch had not forgotten her. The Aikenheads did not attend their friend Mrs. Lenoir's funeral--they had a theory antagonistic to graveside gatherings, which was not totally lacking in plausibility--but Stephen had written to her, promising to come and see her as soon as he could get to town. He came there very seldom--Winnie, indeed, had never met him in London--and it was above a fortnight before he made his appearance at the flat. Delighted as Winnie was by his visit, her glad welcome was almost smothered in amazement at his appearance. He wore the full uniform of a man about town, all in the latest fashion, from the curl of the brim of his silk hat to the exact cut of his coat-tails. Save that his hair was a trifle long and full, he was a typical Londoner, dressed for a ceremonial occasion. As it was, he would pass well for a poet with social ambitions. "Good gracious!" said Winnie, holding up her hands. "You got up like that, Stephen!" "Yes, I think I can hold my own in Piccadilly," said Stephen, complacently regarding himself in the long gilt mirror. "I believe I once told you I had atavistic streaks? This is one of them. I can mention my opinions if I want to--and I generally do; but there's no need for my coat and hat to go yelling them out in the street. That's my view; of course it isn't in the least Tora's. She thinks me an awful fool for doing it." Winnie did not feel it necessary to settle this difficult point in the philosophy of clothes--on which eminent men hold widely varying opinions, as anybody who takes his walks abroad and keeps his eyes open for the celebrities of the day will have no difficulty in observing. "Well, at any rate, I think you look awfully nice--quite handsome! I expect Tora's just afraid of your being too fascinating in your best clothes." He sat down with a laugh and looked across at her inquiringly. "Pretty cheerful, Winnie?" "Not so very particularly. I do feel her loss awfully, you know. I was very fond of her, and it seems to leave me so adrift. I had an anchorage here, but the anchor won't hold any more." "Come and anchor at Shaylor's Patch. The anchor always holds there for you." Winnie both made her confession and produced her objection. "I can't deny I've been thinking of you rather wistfully in these melancholy days, but it seems like--like giving up." "Not a bit of it. You can be absolutely in the thick of the fight there, if you like." He looked across at her with his whimsical smile. "I'm actually going to do something at last, Winnie. I'm about to start on my life's work. I'm going to do a Synopsis of Social Philosophy." "It sounds like a life's work," Winnie remarked. His society always cheered her, and already her manner showed something of its normal gaiety. "Yes, it's a big job, but I'm a healthy man. You see, I shall take all the great fellows from the earliest time down to to-day, and collect from them everything that bears on the questions that we of to-day have to face--not worrying about their metaphysics and that sort of stuff, but taking what bears on the things we've really got to settle--the live things, you know. See the idea? There'll be a section on Education, for instance, one on Private Property, one on Marriage, one on Women and Labour. I want it to reach the masses, so all the excerpts will be in English. Then each section will have an appendix, in which I shall collate the excerpts, and point out the main lines of agreement and difference. Perhaps I shall add a few suggestions of my own." "I think you very likely will, Stephen." "Now don't you think it's a ripping idea? Of course I shall take in poetry and novels and plays, as well as philosophers and historians. A comparison between Lecky and Ibsen, for instance! Bound to be fruitful! Oh, it'll be a big job, but I mean to put it through." He leant forward to her. "That's not giving up, is it? That's fighting! And the point is--you can help me. You see, there'll be no end of books to read, just to see if there's anything of possible use in them. You can do lots of spade-work for me. Besides, you've got very good judgment." "Wouldn't Tora help you better than I could?" His eyes twinkled. "I wouldn't trust Tora, and I've told her so plainly. She's so convinced of what she thinks herself that she considers the other view all nonsense--or, if she did hit on a particularly clever fellow who put the case too well against her, it's my firm belief that she'd have no scruple about suppressing him. Yours is much more the mind for me. We're inquirers, not dogmatists, you and I. With you, and a secretary learned in tongues, and a couple of typewriters, we shall make a hole in the work in no time." Winnie could not be sure that he was not building a golden bridge for her retreat. Perhaps she did not wish to risk being made quite sure. The plan sounded so attractive. What things she would read and learn! And it was certainly possible to argue that she would still be fighting the battle of liberty and progress. After all, is it not the students who really set the line of advance? They originate the ideas, which some day or other the practical men carry out. It was Moltke who won the campaign, not the generals in the field. Such was the plea which inclination offered to persuade pride. "But, Stephen, apart from anything else, it would mean quartering myself on you practically for ever!" "What if it did? But, as a matter of fact, Tora thought you'd like to have your own place. You remember that cottage Godfrey had? He took it furnished; but it's to be let on lease unfurnished now, and if you liked it----" "Oh, I shouldn't mind it. And Mrs. Lenoir has left me her furniture." "The whole thing works out beautifully," Stephen declared. He grew a little graver. "Come and try it, anyhow. Look here--I'll take the cottage, and sublet it to you. Then you can give it up at any moment, if you get sick of it. We shall be a jolly little colony. Old Dick Dennehy's house--you remember how we put him up to it?--is almost finished, and he'll be in it in six months. Of course he'll hate the Synopsis, and we shall have lots of fun with him." "Oh, my dear, you're good!" sighed Winnie--and a smile followed the sigh. For suddenly life and activity, comradeship and gaiety, crossed her path again. The thing was not over. It had almost seemed over--there in the lonely flat. "How is dear old Dick Dennehy?" she asked. "We've hardly seen him--he's only been down once. He's left me to build his house for him, and says encouragingly that he doesn't care a hang what it's like. He's been settling into his new job, I suppose. After a bit, perhaps, he'll be more amiable and accessible. You'll come and give it a trial, Winnie?" He got up and came over to her. "You've done enough off your own bat," he said. "I don't quite know how to put it to you, but what I think I mean is that no single person does any good by more than one protest. Intelligent people recognize that; but if you go on, you get put down not as a Protestant, but just as an anarchist--like our poor dear old friend here, you know." He touched, with a true and discerning hand, on one of the great difficulties. If you were burnt at the stake for conscience' sake, it was hard to question your sincerity--though it appears that an uncalled-for and wanton quest of even the martyr's crown was not always approved by the soberer heads of and in the Churches. It was far harder to make people believe or understand that what you wanted to do might seem also what it was your duty to do--that the want made the duty. Only because the want was great--a thing which must be satisfied if a human life were not to be fruitlessly wasted--did the duty become imperative. A doctrine true, perhaps, but perilous! Its professors should be above suspicion. "It's awfully difficult," Stephen went on, stroking his forehead the while. "It's war, you see, and in any war worth arguing about both sides have a lot to say for themselves. We shall bring that out in the Synopsis." "Don't be too impartial, Stephen!" "No, I've got my side--but the other fellows shall have a fair show." His smile grew affectionate. "But I think you're entitled to come out of the fighting line and go into the organizing department--whatever it's called technically." "I'll tell you all about it some day. I'll wait a little. I seem only just to be getting a view of it." "You're very young. You may have a bit more practical work to deal with still. At any rate, I shall be very glad to hear all about it." He rose and took his resplendent silk hat--that symbol of a sentimental attachment to the old order, from which he sprang, to which his sceptical mind had so many questions to put. "Look here, Winnie, I believe you've been thinking life was finished--at any rate, not seeing any new start in it. Here's one--take it. It'll develop. The only way to put a stopper on life is to refuse to go along the open lines. Don't do that." He smiled. "I rather think we started you from Shaylor's Patch once. We may do it again." The plain truth came suddenly in a burst from her. "I'm so tired, Stephen!" He laid down the hat again and took her two hands in his. "The Synopsis will be infinitely restful, Winnie. I'm going straight back to take the cottage, and begin to whitewash it. Send me word when you're ready to come. I'll tell you the truth before I go--or shan't I? Yes, I will, because, as I've told you before now, you've got pluck. You tell yourself you're facing things by staying here. You're not. You're hiding from things--and people. There are people you fear to meet, from one reason or another, in London, aren't there? Leave all that then. Come and live and work with us--and get your nerve back." She looked at him in a long silence, then drew her breath. "Yes, I think you're right. I've turned afraid." She threw out her arms in a spreading gesture. "Here it is so big--and it takes no notice of me! On it goes--on--on!" "You didn't expect to stop it, all on your own, did you?" asked Stephen, smiling. "Or if it does take notice for a minute, half of it shudders, and the other half sniggers! Is there nothing in between?" "Oh, well, those are the two attitudes of conservatism. Always have been--and, I suppose, always with a good deal of excuse. We do blunder, and we have a knack of attracting ridiculous people. It sets us back, but it can't be helped. We win in the end." He took up his hat again. "And the Synopsis is going to leaven the lump. Send me a wire to-morrow, Winnie, and the whitewashing shall begin!" Faith, patience, candour--these were the three great qualities; these composed the temper needed for the work. Stephen Aikenhead had them, and, even though he never put himself to the ordeal of experience, nay, even though he never finished the Synopsis (a contingency likely enough), encouragement radiated from him, and thus his existence was justified and valuable. There were bigots on both sides, and every cause counted some fools among its adherents. Probably, indeed, every individual in the world, however wise and open-minded in the sum, had his spot of bigotry and his strain of folly. After Stephen's departure Winnie did much moralizing along these and similar lines, but her moralizing was at once more cheerful and more tolerant than it had been before he came. She had a greater charity towards her enemy the world--even towards the shudders and the sniggers. Why, the regiment would have been divided between shudders and sniggers--exactly the attitudes which Bertie Merriam had sketched--and yet she had felt, under his inspiration, both liking and respect for the regiment. Why not then for that greater regiment, the world? Liking and respect, yes--but not, therefore, assent or even acquiescence. And on her own proceedings, too, Stephen enabled her to cast new eyes--eyes more open to the humorous aspect, taking a juster view of how much she might have expected to do and could reasonably consider herself to have done. Both seemed to come to very little compared with the wear and tear of the effort. But, then, if everybody did even a very little--why, the lump would be leavened, as Stephen said. Three days later--just after she had made up her mind for Shaylor's Patch and the Synopsis, and had given notice to the General--and to Emily--of her approaching departure, there came a short note from the obstinately absent and invisible Dick Dennehy. It was on the official notepaper of the great journal: "I hear from Tora that you're going back to Shaylor's Patch, to settle down there quietly. Thank God for it! Perhaps I shall see you there before very long, but I'm still very busy.--Yours, R. D." She read with a mixture of affection and resentment. She had been arriving at her own verdict on her efforts and adventures. Here was Dick Dennehy's! He thanked God that efforts and adventures were at an end, and that she was going to settle down quietly--in fact, to take care of herself, as he had put it that evening when he walked with her to the railway station. A very unjust verdict, thought Winnie, but then--she added, smiling--"It's only old Dick Dennehy's!" What else was to be expected from him--from him who liked her so much and disapproved of her 'goings-on' so strenuously? What about his own? How was he settling that question of his? Or how had he settled it? That problem which was 'not serious'! "Perhaps I shall see you"! Only 'perhaps'? Yet she was going to settle down at Nether End, and he was building his house there. The probabilities of an encounter between them seemed to warrant more than 'perhaps.' The atmosphere of the railway waiting-room, the look on his face, that shout, muffled by engine-snorts, about somebody being a fool--they all came back to her. "But I'm very busy"--meaning thereby--Winnie took leave to add the innuendo--"I shan't be able to see you often!" Irresistibly her lips curved into a smile. It looked as if the problem weren't quite settled yet! If it were finally settled either way, why should Dick be so busy, so entirely unable to give reasonable attention to his house, or--as Stephen had told her--to care a hang about it? "Oh, nonsense!" Winnie contrived to say to herself, though not with absolute conviction. "If it ever was that, he must have got over it by now, and I shall bury myself in the Synopsis." It was really rather soon to find herself pitted against another Institution! CHAPTER XXVIII THE VIEW FROM A HOUSE Winnie shut Dr. Westermarck on _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ with a bang. "I'm not going to do any more at the Synopsis to-day," she announced. "It's much too fine. And what are you chuckling at, Stephen?" With the help of Liddell and Scott, and a crib, Stephen was digesting Aristophanes' skit on Socrates. "An awful old Tory, but it's dashed good stuff. On no account work if you don't want to, Winnie. This job's not to be done in a day, you know." It certainly was not--and least of all in one of his working days, in which the labour of research was constantly checked by the incursion of distantly related argument. Winnie could not make out how far he was in earnest about the Synopsis. Sometimes he would talk about its completion--and the consequent amelioration of society--in sanguine words, yet with a twinkle in his eye; at other moments he would declare in an apparent despair that it was properly the work of fifty men, and forthwith abandon for the day a labour impossibly Herculean. Tora maintained towards the great undertaking an attitude of serene scorn; she did not see the use of delving into dark ages in search of the light which only now, at last, was glimmering on the horizon of the future. Alice, however, was all for the Synopsis; it was to make her father famous, and itself became famous among her school-mates these many years before there was the least chance of its coming to birth. "To find out all that anyone ever said since the world began, and tell us whether it's true or not," was Alice's handsome description of the proposed work; no wonder the school-mates were impressed. Though the 'awful old Tory' might well have seen in Shaylor's Patch a lesser Phrontisterion, to Winnie Maxon the passage of the summer months there proved a rest-cure. The tissues of brain and heart recovered. She was neither oppressed as in the days of her marriage, nor hurried from emotion to emotion as in the period of struggle which had followed her escape. Her memories--of exultation, of pain, of poignant feeling--softened in outline; becoming in some degree external to all that she had done and suffered, she was the better able to assess it and to estimate where it left her. A great gulf separated her from the woman who had fled from Cyril Maxon; yet the essential woman had passed through the flood of the gulf undrowned--with all her potentialities of life, with her spirit schooled, but not broken. This is, perhaps, to say that she had fought a drawn battle with the world; if it really came to that, it was no mean achievement. Dick Dennehy's new house was finished--at least it wanted only its last coat of paint and, if the weather held fine, would soon be dry enough to receive it profitably. By fits and starts consignments of its necessary gear--conceived on extremely Spartan lines--arrived from London. But the master of it had himself made no appearance. Every invitation from Shaylor's Patch--and now and then the invitation amounted to an entreaty, since Tora could not for the life of her make out what he wanted done at the house--was met by protestations of absorbing work. The problem which Winnie's imagination had forecasted did not arise--or at least it exhibited no development. Dick's obstinate absence did not disprove its existence, but might be said to suspend its animation. Winnie, dwelling in the cottage where Godfrey Ledstone once abode, had a rest from the other sex; here, too, a truce was called, after her brisk series of engagements. She welcomed it; it would have seemed shallow to pass too quickly from the thought of Bertie Merriam. She neither rejected nor winced at the idea that the truce might be perpetual. With Dennehy still away, the thought of the problem died down, leaving traces only in the compassionate amusement with which she again, from time to time, reflected that he had 'got over it.' She acquiesced very willingly in the conclusion. As matters stood, life was full, pleasant, peaceful, and fruitful in the growth of her mind. "I don't know whether you'll ever transform the world, but at least you're educating one ignorant woman, Stephen," she said. Dr. Westermarck being finished, Stephen had, with a sudden jump, transferred her to the study of Utopias, old and new; for these, of course, must figure in the Synopsis. "Ah, you bring some knowledge of life with you now. That makes learning ever so much easier." He smiled at her. "I really ought to go and get into some scrapes too. But there--I couldn't put my heart into the job, so it wouldn't be much use." "Wouldn't Tora object?" "I'm the one exception which mars the otherwise perfect harmony of Tora's conception of the male sex. She would be bound to greet any lapse on my part with scientific exultation. But, I say, I'm not going to have you burying yourself in the Synopsis." "That's just what I came here to do--exactly as I put it to myself!" "You shan't do it. You're much too young and pretty. I shall get some young men down, to tempt you." Two or three young men came, but they did not tempt Winnie. She found herself possessed by a great caution. Her old confidence in her own impulses was replaced by a deep distrust of any impulse. She stood on the defensive against the approach of even a liking; she constituted herself _advocatus diaboli_ whenever Stephen ventured to praise any of his young friends. She found one shallow and conceited, another learned but a bore, a third--well, there were limits to the allowable degree of ugliness, now weren't there? Stephen laughed; his poor friends were contributing to the payment of a score run up by other men. At last in very decency Dick Dennehy had to come; Stephen sent him word that, as he had built the house, so he would pull it down, if its owner continued to show such a want of appreciation of his friendly labours. He arrived early one afternoon in mid-September. He was perceptibly changed; being broken into London harness had set its mark on him in manner and in appearance. He was better groomed, his hair had been persuaded to lie down, he had cut off the upturned bristly ends of his moustache. His brogue had lost in richness; he said 'ye' much seldomer when he meant 'you.' His ways were quieter, his arguments less tempestuous, and his contradictions not so passionate. Though thus a little outwardly and possibly inwardly conventionalized, he displayed all his old friendly heartiness in his greeting of Tora and Stephen--Alice had just gone back to school. Only when he turned to Winnie, who was in the garden with them, did a shade of constraint appear in his demeanour. She put it down to the memory of the note he had sent her; she had not replied, and probably he thought that she had resented it. The constraint was due to a deeper cause. He had determined not to make love to Winnie Maxon, and now, at the sight of her, he found that he wanted to do it, and that the assurances which he had managed to make to himself that he would not want to do it--at least would not be seriously tempted to do it--were all in vain. In loyalty to his convictions, and in accordance with a personal obstinacy which buttressed the convictions, all these months he had fought his fight. Winnie was forbidden to him; he had taken no pains to conceal his views from his and her friends; he had taken great pains to conceal his feelings from her, and conceived that he had, in the main at least, succeeded. But for that house of his--but for wounding the Aikenheads' feelings--he would have given himself a little longer period of quarantine. Yet he had felt pretty safe until he saw Winnie. And he had brought his bag; he was booked for a three days' stay--there in the very zone of danger. "I was a fool to come," he kept saying to himself, while he was being politely, and now and then urgently, requested to take note of and to admire this and that feature of his new house. In truth he could take very little interest in the house, for it had come over him, with sudden but irresistible certainty, that he would never be able to live in it. He could not say so, of course--not just now, and not without a much better parade of reasons than he could manage to put into line impromptu. But there the certainty was--full-blown in his mind. Unless he could away with his convictions and his obstinacy, unless he could undertake and succeed in his quest, it would be impossible for him to live in the house here on the hill, with Winnie hardly a stone's throw away at the cottage on the road to Nether End. The idea was preposterous. Yet he had to go on looking at the house and admiring it. The Aikenheads demanded nothing short of enthusiasm. About a house he could never live in! Poor Dick Dennehy did his best to pump it up, but the trials inherent in his position were terribly aggravated by this incidental addition of the house. Cyril Maxon and Bertie Merriam, in their kindred struggles with loyalties and convictions, had at least been spared this irritating feature. Why, there, actually visible from his study windows, were the chimneys of Winnie's cottage! Tora triumphantly pointed them out to him. Dick Dennehy had the gift--the genius--of his race; he saw the fun of his own sufferings. As he surveyed the tops of Winnie's chimneys--with Winnie at his elbow, discreetly awaiting his opinion as to whether their presence enhanced the beauty of the landscape--his face wore a look of rueful amusement, instead of the simple admiration which the outlook from his study ought to have inspired in him. At the moment Tora and Stephen were having an animated wrangle in the passage outside, relative to the merits of a dustbin, sent on approval. "I hope I don't intrude?" said Winnie, waving her hand towards her chimney-pots. "I'll be reminded of you, if I'm ever in danger of forgetting." "We could almost start a system of communication--flag-wagging, or even wireless. Anything except thought-transference! I couldn't risk that with you--though you could with me quite safely." "Ah, you're always teasing me, Winnie." "You've not been nearly enthusiastic enough about the house, you know. Make an effort." "I'll be trying to say a few words on it after dinner. Will you be at dinner?" "I shall. Tora has asked me, to entertain you." "You can do that--and more when you've the mind to it." "I must warn you at once that I take most of my meals, except breakfast, at the Patch--in brief intervals of relaxation from the Synopsis." Dick had heard of the Synopsis. "You'll be learning a lot of nonsense," he remarked. "Oh, I don't need the Synopsis to learn that. Just talking to people is quite enough." "We won't have a telegraph; we'll have a telephone, Winnie. Then I'll hear your voice and admire your conversation." "And not see your face," he had very nearly added. Winnie demurely surveyed the landscape again. "My chimneys are a pity, aren't they? They spoil the impression of solitude--of being alone with nature--don't they? But judging from Tora's voice--it sounds really aggrieved--I think it's time we went and umpired about the dustbin. When those two do quarrel, the contempt they express for one another's opinions is awful." If the situation had its pathetic side for poor Dick Dennehy, there was more than one aspect on which a sense of humour could lay hold. Besides Dick, impelled by love yet racked by conscience, and, in consequence, by chimney-pots in the middle distance, there were the Aikenheads. Engrossed in one another, in their studies and theories, they saw nothing of what was going on under--and seemed now to Winnie as plain to see as--their noses. They had bestowed immense pains on the house, and had counted on giving Dick a triumphant surprise. His behaviour--for even after dinner he achieved but a very halting enthusiasm--was a sore disappointment. They understood neither why he was not delighted nor why, failing that, in common decency and gratitude he could not make a better show of being delighted. Good-tempered as they were, they could not help betraying their feelings--Tora by a sudden and stony silence touching the house of whose beauties she had been so full; Stephen by satirical remarks about the heights of splendour on which Dick now required to be seated in his daily life and surroundings. Dick marked their vexation and understood it, but could not so transform his demeanour as to remove it, and, being unable to do that, began by a natural movement of the mind to resent it. "They really might see that there's something else the matter," he argued within himself in plaintive vexation. Within twenty-four hours of his arrival, the three were manifestly at odds on this false issue, and the tension threatened to become greater and greater. It was all ridiculous, a comedy of mistakes, but it might end in a sad straining of an old and dear friendship. To avert this catastrophe, Winnie determined to give the go-by to coy modesty. Dick Dennehy had not told her that he loved her, but she determined to acquaint the Aikenheads with the interesting fact. What would happen after that she did not know, but it seemed the only thing to do at the moment. After lunch on the second day of the visit, Dick Dennehy, in a desperate effort to be more gracious, said that he would go across and have another look at the house. Nobody offered to accompany him. Tora seemed not to hear his remark; Stephen observed sarcastically that Dick might consider the desirability of adding a ball-room and a theatre, and with that returned to his labours on the Synopsis. Winnie sat smiling while Dick departed and left her alone with Tora. "You think he's not appreciative enough about the house, don't you, Tora?" she asked. "I think he just hates it, but I really don't know why." "It's not his own house that he hates; it's my chimneys." "Your chimneys? What in the world do you mean?" "He can see them from his study window--just where he wants to be undisturbed." Tora might be a profound speculative thinker, but, no, she was not quick in the little matters of the world. "Do you mean to say that the man objects to seeing any single house from his windows? Really Dick is putting on airs!" "It depends on who lives in the single house." "But you live there." Tora stared at her. "Have you quarrelled with him? Do you mean to say he dislikes you?" Winnie broke into a laugh. "On the contrary, Tora." At last light dawned. A long-drawn "Oh!" proclaimed its coming. "I see. I never do notice things like that. Then you've refused him, have you?" "Oh no, he's never asked me. He never told me anything about it--not directly, or meaning to, at least." This qualification in view of the talk at the railway station. "But I'm sure of it." "Then why doesn't he tell you? Or have you snubbed him hopelessly?" "I haven't done much either way, but it's not that. You see, he thinks that he's not free to marry me, and that I'm not free to marry anybody." "Then he'd better stop thinking such nonsense," said Tora, with her habitual and most unphilosophical contempt for other people's opinions. "I don't know about that." Winnie shook her head doubtfully. "But I think that it would ease the situation if you gave Stephen just a hint." "I'll go and tell him at once." Hints were not in Tora's line. The first result of her friend's mission which reached Winnie's ears was a ringing peal of laughter from the sanctum where the Synopsis was in course of preparation. It was Wednesday--a half-holiday for the assistants--and Stephen was alone. When once the situation was elucidated, he enjoyed the humour of it immensely. "Well, we have been a pair of dolts, you and I, Tora. Poor old Dick! He must have been wishing us, and the house too, at the bottom of the sea. But what's to be done?" "Why, you must tell him not to be so silly, of course; I don't know what she'll say, but let him take his chance." "I'm getting a bit shy of taking a hand in these complications. We didn't make much of a success out of the Ledstone affair, among us! I think I shall let it alone, and leave them to settle it for themselves." "You never have the courage of your convictions. It's one of your worst faults, Stephen." With this condemnation on her lips, Tora departed into the garden. When Winnie went in to resume her labours, Stephen looked up from his books with a twinkle in his eye. "Trouble again, Winnie?" "I really thought you'd better know about it, or you'd burn Dick's house down." "You seem to have a knack of setting fires ablaze too." "You might just let it appear that you've come to the conclusion that it's not the house which makes Dick so grumpy. Don't say a word about me, of course." "He'll think me much cleverer than I have been." "Well, I should think you'd like that, Stephen. I should, in your place." He laughed good-humouredly. "Oh, well, I deserve that dig." "It's rather funny how this sort of thing pursues me, isn't it? But it's quite half your fault. If you will collect a menagerie of opinions, and throw me into the middle of it----" "It's not strange that the animals like the dainty morsel, even though the keepers don't approve of the diet? But I didn't collect all the animals." "No," said Winnie, smiling reflectively. "I did pick up one or two for myself in the course of my journeyings through the world. I'm not quite sure I want any others." "He's an awfully good fellow, old Dick." "Yes. And now I'm going back to Utopia--where animals like only their proper diet." Meanwhile Dick Dennehy was not taking another look at his house, nor endeavouring to form a more favourable estimate of it. He was walking up and down in the field behind it, which under Tora Aikenhead's skilled care had already assumed something of the semblance of a garden. He had to settle his question one way or the other. If one way, then good-bye, for a long while at least, to the new house and to Shaylor's Patch; if the other, he would try his fortune with a good courage. Although his case had points of similarity enough to justify Winnie in linking it with those others which had presented themselves in her experience, it was not identical with any one of them, but had its own complexion. He was not called upon to defy public opinion and to confuse the lines of social demarcation, as Godfrey Ledstone had been. Nor to revolutionize his ideas and mode of life, like Bob Purnett. Nor to be what he must deem disloyal to his profession and false to his work in the world, like Bertie Merriam. Cyril Maxon's case was closer; yet Cyril had only to pass, by an ingeniously constructed bridge, from the more extreme to the less extreme of two theories, and in so doing found abundance of approval and countenance among men of his own persuasion. Dick was confronted with a straight, rigid, unbending prohibition from an authority which he had always respected as final and infallible. Yet he seemed asked to give up the whole of his real life, to empty life of what made it worth living. Save for one or two boyish episodes of sentiment, he had kept clear of love-affairs. He brought to Winnie's service both the fresh ardour of a young man and the settled conviction of maturity. He had never a doubt in his mind that for him it was this woman or no woman; his knowledge of himself and his past record made the certainty more trustworthy than it generally is. Given then that he had a chance of winning her, it was a mighty sacrifice which was demanded of him--even to the spoiling and maiming of his life, and the starvation of his spirit. His was a perfectly straight case; there was no confusing it, there could be no golden bridge; a supreme authority on the one side, on the other the natural man, fortified by every secular justification--for he would be breaking no law of the land, infringing no code of honour, injuring no man whose rights or feelings he was under an obligation to respect. And he would be affording to the creature he loved best in the world happiness, as he believed, and, of a certain, peace, protection, and loving care--things of which she stood in need; to Dick Dennehy's notions, notwithstanding his love and admiration, her record showed that she stood sorely in need of them. Here, on one side of his mind, he found himself in a paradoxical agreement with the authority which the other side wanted to defy. It and he agreed about her past doings, but drew from them a different conclusion. He adored her, but he did not think that she could take care of herself. He believed that he could take care of her--at the cost of defying his supreme authority; or he would not use the word defying--he would throw himself on its mercy in a very difficult case. The creature he loved best of all things in life would do, he feared, more unpardonable things, unless he himself did a thing which he had been taught to think unpardonable in itself. He invited her to nothing that she was obliged to hold as wrongdoing; he did not ask her to sin against the light she possessed. That sin would be his. His chivalry joined forces with his love; to refrain seemed cowardice as well as almost impossibility. There was the dogma--but should there be no dispensation? Not when every fibre of a man's heart, every impulse of a man's courage, cried out for it? The sun sank to its setting. He stood in the garden, and watched how its decline made more beautiful the gracious prospect. A little trail of smoke rose in leisurely fashion from the chimneys of Winnie's cottage. The air was very still. He turned and looked at the new house with a new interest. "Would it be good enough for her, now?" asked Dick Dennehy. The sudden vision of her in the house--of her dainty ways and gracious presence, her chaff and her sincerity--swept over his mind. She had been wrong--but she had been brave. Braver than he was himself? To the horizon sank the sun. Dick Dennehy turned to look at it again. As the glow faded, peace and quiet reigned. Very gradually evening fell. He lifted his hat from his head and stood watching the last rays, the breeze stirring his hair and freshening his brow. He stood for a long time very still, as he was wont to stand, quiet, attentive, obedient, at the solemn offices of his Church--the Church that was to him creed, conscience, and half-motherland. Suddenly his soul was at peace, and he spoke aloud with his lips, even as though in response to the voice of One walking in the garden in the cool of the day. "I must do what I must do, and leave it to the mercy of God." CHAPTER XXIX IN THE RESULT "On further inspection it turns out to be a perfectly corking house--a jewel of a house, Stephen!" Winnie had gone home, and Stephen was working alone at the Synopsis when Dick Dennehy walked into the room with these words on his lips. Stephen looked up and saw that something had happened to his friend. The embarrassed hang-dog air had left his face. He looked a trifle obstinate about the mouth, but his eyes were peaceful and met Stephen's straightforwardly. "In fact, there's only one fault at all to be found with it." "Give it a name, and Tora will put it right," said Stephen, in genial response to his friend's altered mood. Dick smiled. "I'm afraid Tora can't, but I know of another lady who can--if she will. It's a bit big for a bachelor; I'll be feeling lonely there." "Oh, that's it, is it?" Stephen laughed. "Now I rather thought it was, all along." At some cost to truth, he was carrying out Winnie's injunction. "You were so--well--restless." "I was. And Tora was cross with me, and you laughed at me, and then I got savage. But it's all over now--so far as I'm concerned, at least. You know who it is?" "Well, I almost think I can guess, old fellow. We're not blind. Winnie?" Dick Dennehy nodded his head. "I'll have it settled before I'm many days older." His mouth was now very firm, and his eyes almost challenging. It was evident even to the lover of discussion that here was a decision which was not to be discussed, one which only the man who came to it himself could judge. Stephen felt the implication in Dick's manner so strongly that he even retrenched his faint smile of amusement, as he held out his hand, and said, "Good luck!" Dick nodded again, gave a tight grip, and marched out of the room. Leaving the patient Synopsis and lighting a pipe, Stephen indemnified himself for the self-restraint he had exercised in not talking the case over with Dick by indulging in a survey of a wider order--one which embraced all Winnie's career from the time of her rebellion; there were few features with which confidential talks, interspersed between their labours, had not familiarized him. His mind was not now on Winnie's share in the matter--neither on how she had conducted herself nor on how she had been affected by her experiment and experience. It fastened, with its usual speculative zest, on the conflict and clash of theory and practice, opinion and conduct, which the story revealed throughout its course and exemplified in instance after instance. When put to a searching personal test, everybody, or almost everybody, had in some way or another broken down; if they were to be judged by the strict standards which they professed, or by the canons which habitually governed their lives, they had been failures. Here was Dick Dennehy ending the series with a striking example. But Godfrey Ledstone had begun it. His was a twofold failure; he was false to his own theories--to that code of his--when he adopted Winnie's; he was false in turn to Winnie's when he was ashamed of her and fled back to respectability tempered by elasticities. Cyril Maxon followed suit, bartering his high doctrine, wriggling out of its exacting claims, for the chance of Rosaline Deering. Even that fellow Purnett, to whom regularity and domesticity were anathema, had offered to become regular and domestic. The only exception seemed to be the soldier Merriam; even here Stephen doubted the existence of a sure exception. Winnie had left the details of that talk in the garden at Madeira in obscurity, yet it was clear enough that she had not put out her power. Supposing she had? Yet, granting the exception, he proved it to his own satisfaction to be more apparent than real. Merriam's case was not a conflict of opinion and conduct; it was more properly a clash between two allegiances, both in essence personal in their nature; between inclination and a conception of duty, no doubt, but of a duty so specialized and (if the word might be used) so incarnated as to lose its abstract quality and, by virtue of concreteness, to acquire a power of appeal really as emotional in character as the emotion with which it came into collision. It seemed to him that here was a case of an apparent exception testing the rule, not disproving it. The rule emerged triumphant from the test--so declared Stephen Aikenhead, very anxious to find a clue to the labyrinth and fast colours in the shifting web of human nature. When it came to a pitched battle, the views and theories were worsted; the man himself won the day, calling to his aid reserves ordinarily hidden in the depths of his nature. By a pardonable instinct they all made the best case they could for their failures and deviations--explanations, excuses, bridges; they saved the show of consistency as far as they could. But however great or small the success of this special pleading, it did not alter the truth. The natural, essential--to use a new word, the subliminal--man himself in the end decided the issue. Small wonder! thought Stephen; for these opinions were a motley host--enemies among themselves. If one of them were putting up a good fight, another was already ready to fall on its flank. If one were making a strong case, there was another to whisper its weak point in the adversary's ear, or to suggest insinuatingly--"Well, if he can't allow you what you want, try me! I'm much more accommodating. I recognize exceptions. I know the meaning of counsels of perfection. I understand the limits of human nature." Or conversely--"You'll get no real comfort from that shifty fellow. He'll betray you in this world, to say nothing of the next. Rest on me. I'm a rock. Rocks make hard beds, you say? A little, perhaps, now and then, but think how safe they are! And how they appeal to your imagination, rising foursquare to heaven, unshakable, eternal!" And then there was that plausible little rogue of an opinion which protests always that it is not an opinion at all--nothing so troublesome--"Don't bother your head with any of those fellows. Please yourself! What does it matter? Anyhow, what do any of them really know about it? You might just as well toss up as try to decide between them. I'm an opinion myself, you say--just as bad as they are? Not at all! How dare you?" So they went on, betraying, competing, outbidding one another--like a row of men selling penny toys in the street, each trying to shout louder and to get more custom than the other. In such an irreverent image did Stephen Aikenhead envisage the Quest after Truth, whereof he was himself so ardent a devotee. He had got back to his old formula. Things were 'in solution.' It was a very welter of opinions. Was that state of things to last for ever? "Or"--he mused--"shall we to some future age seem, oh, ridiculously mixed? Will they have settled things? Will they have straightened out the moral and social world as the scientific fellows are straightening out the physical universe? If they have, they'll never understand how we doubted and squabbled. Only some great historian will be able to make that intelligible to them. Or will men go on for ever swirling round and round in a whirlpool, and never sail on a clear strong stream to the ocean of truth?" So the muser mused in his quiet study, with the roar of the water in his ears. Had he chanced to think of it, he would have found that he was himself an example of the conclusion to which his survey of Winnie Maxon's experiences had led him. His speculations might ask, with 'jesting Pilate,' 'What is truth?' and stay not for an answer that could never come. The natural man, Stephen Aikenhead, was irresistibly bent on finding out. He returned briskly to the Synopsis--to his own little task of blasting away, if by chance he could, one fragment of the rocks that dammed the current. He worked on, reading and making notes. The clock struck six, and seven, and half-past. He did not notice. Five minutes later the door opened, and Winnie came in. "What's come over the house?" she asked. "You invited me to dinner at half-past seven! Here you are, not only not dressed, but with your hair obviously unbrushed! And Tora and Dick went off to the new house, Ellen tells me, at half-past five, with a lantern, and haven't come back yet!" "Oh, did they? Then Dick's evidently made it all right with Tora too." He rose and stretched himself. "I think you'll have to look out for something to-night or to-morrow, Winnie. Dick has made up his mind; he's decided that the house is otherwise delightful, but has just one fault. He'd be lonely in it as a bachelor." Winnie sat down and looked at him thoughtfully. "I wish it hadn't come so soon. I'm not ready. And I do have such bad luck!" "He'll wait as long as you like. And how does the bad luck come in here?" "I'm always forced into seeming to exact a sacrifice of some sort." "Well, from some points of view that was likely to follow from the line you took. From your own side of the matter, is it altogether a bad thing that a man should have to search his heart--to ask what you're really worth to him?" "Suppose he should bear me a grudge afterwards?" "Dick's too square with his conscience to do that. He knows it's his own act and his own responsibility." "At any rate I won't have any more vows, Stephen, no more on either side. I don't like them. I broke mine once. I thought I had a right to, but I didn't like doing it. Cyril had broken most of his, in my view, but people seem so often to forget that there's more than one." She gave an abrupt little laugh. "Cyril vowed to 'comfort' me! Imagine Cyril being obliged to vow to comfort anybody, poor man! He couldn't possibly do it." "In the matter of vows they let you down easy at the registry office." "In his heart Dick won't think that a marriage at all." "You put that just wrong. In his opinions he mayn't, in his heart he will. I know Dick Dennehy pretty well, and you may be sure of that." "I never wanted to be a lawless woman. But it was coming, or had come, to hatred; and it's such awful ruin to live with a person you hate--much worse, I think, than the things they do set you free for." Stephen smiled. "I can find you some very respectable authority for that--a good passage in Döllinger--but, I think, don't you, to-morrow? After all, there's such a thing as dinner!" "There is, and it'll be disgracefully overcooked." She rose and came across to him. "Give me your blessing and a kiss, Cousin Stephen. I think I see happiness glimmering a long way off." "I don't think it's ever very far off, if you can see it," said Stephen, and kissed her. Winnie shook her head doubtfully. She had suffered such a tossing and buffeting; the quiet of harbour seemed a distant goal, even if she could now steer a straight course towards it. Her feelings were still on edge; she shrank instinctively from any immediate call to strong emotion. There was another trouble in her mind secret, hardly explicit, but real; if, because of what she had done, Dick Dennehy, still dominated by the convictions which he meant to disobey, should show that he thought she was to be had for the asking, she would resent it bitterly--even to a curt and final refusal. That would be almost as great a failure as Godfrey Ledstone's, and such a rock might still lie in the way of her ship to its harbour. Much turned on Dick Dennehy's bearing towards her. But the days that ensued at Shaylor's Patch were full of healing grace. There was the cordiality of friendship again unclouded, Tora's serenity, Stephen's alert and understanding comradeship. Dick came when his work allowed--it may be surmised that he stretched its allowance to the full--and there were now infinite interest and unbounded fun over furnishing his house. In this work a formula was hit upon, suitable to the state of suspense in which the master's affairs stood. "Eventualities must be borne in view," said Stephen, with treacherous gravity. Dick bore them in view to the full limit of his purse--and how could Winnie refuse a friendly opinion on questions of taste? Nobody mentioned Mrs. Lenoir's furniture, now at the cottage. It was not really very suitable for a country house, and in any case it would be pleasanter to make the fresh start in wholly fresh surroundings. Winnie mentally transmuted it into new frocks, in which shape it would serve a purpose, temporary indeed, but less charged with associations. In no set confession, but in various intimate talks, the whole of her story, and the whole of her own attitude towards it, came to Dick's knowledge. She attempted to conceal neither her passion for Godfrey Ledstone nor the attraction with which at the last Merriam had drawn her. The latter case she was especially anxious that he should understand. "I was angry at first at being thought impossible, but he made me see his point of view, and then I almost fell in love with him," she said, smiling. "Only almost!" It was not the old Dick Dennehy who listened; he would have had a ready explanation of how all the troubles had come about, and a vehement, though good-humoured, denunciation for the origin of them. Not only his feeling for Winnie, but his own struggle, with its revelation and its compromise, changed him. He listened with a grave attention or, sometimes, with a readily humorous sympathy. If he was rightly or wrongly--probably he himself would have used neither word, but would have said 'perforce'--disobeying his supreme authority, yet, as a man here in this world, he found some compensation in an increased humanity, a widened charity, an intensified sense of human brotherhood. He deliberately abandoned the effort to strike a balance between loss and gain, but the gain he accepted gladly, with a sense, as it were, of discovery, of opened eyes, of a vision more penetrating. He got rid of the idea that it was easy for everybody to believe what he believed, if only they would be at the pains, or that it was mere perverseness of spirit which prevented them from acting in exact accord with his standards--or even with their own. Thus, as the days passed, his aim was no more to forgive and forget, but to appreciate and to understand. With Winnie this was an essential, if their harmony were to be complete. So much of the spirit--or the pride--of the theorist survived in her. She would not take even a great love if it came accompanied by utter condemnation; perhaps she could not have believed in it, or, believing in it for the time, would have seen no basis of permanence. In the early days the ardour of love was all on his side; her heart was not so easily kindled again into flame. Only gradually did the woman's absolute faith and grateful affection for the man blossom into their natural fruit--even as by degrees Winnie's joy in life and delight in her own powers emerged from their eclipse. Again, now, her eyes sparkled and her laugh rang out exultantly. "She sounds in a good humour," said Stephen Aikenhead. "If one did happen to want anything of her, it might be rather a good moment to ask it, I should think." Dick looked up from the evening paper. "Is she ready, Stephen?" "I think so, Dick." With a buoyant step Dick Dennehy walked out into the garden, whence the laugh had come. Winnie was alone; her laugh had been only for a hen ludicrously scuttling back to her proper territory in fear of the menace of clapped hands. She wore a black lace scarf twisted about her head; from under its folds her eyes gleamed merrily. "Would you be walking with me in the meadow a bit, by chance?" he asked. Something in his gaze caught her attention. She blushed a little. "Yes, Dick." But they walked in silence for a long while. Then she felt her eyes irresistibly drawn to him. As she turned her head, he held out his hands. Slowly hers came forward to meet them. "You couldn't send me away now, could you, Winnie?" "Oh, Dick, have you thought it all over, looked at every side of it--twenty times, a hundred times, five hundred times?" "Not I! I looked at it all round once for all, and I've never doubted of it since. I've been waiting for you to do all that." His smile was happy and now confident. "Well, in the end, I like it better like that. I like you to think so, anyhow, even if you're deceiving yourself. Because it shows----" She broke off mischievously. "What does it show, Dick?" "Why, that you're the jewel of the world! What else would it be showing?" "But what about the lady you were unhappy over, that evening at the station?" "You knew it was yourself all the time!" "Then how did you dare to say it wasn't serious? And to call yourself--or me--a fool?" "You're teasing me to the end, Winnie." She grew grave and slipped her arm through his. "I knew really why it wasn't and couldn't be serious to you--and why just in that way it became terribly serious. Time was when I should have thought you silly to think it so serious, and when you would have kept it 'not serious' right to the end. We've changed one another, Dick. I you, you me--and life both of us! And so we can make terms with one another." "Terms of perfect peace," he answered. He knew what was in her mind. "I give you my honour--in my soul I'm at peace." "Then so be it, dear old Dick. For neither am I ashamed." She turned round to face him, and, putting her hands on his shoulders, kissed his lips. "Now let's go over to your house, and see that this eventuality really has been properly borne in view. Dear Stephen! He'll philosophize over us, Dick!" That was, of course, only to be expected. Yet it did not happen when Stephen and his wife were told the great news after dinner. On the contrary, after brief but hearty congratulations, the host and hostess disappeared. Winnie thought that she had detected a glance passing between them. "They needn't be so very tactful!" she said laughing. They were very tactful; for even to lovers the time they stayed away was undeniably long. There could be no illusion about the progress of the hands of the clock. Yet when Tora and Stephen came in and were accused of an excessive display of the useful social quality in question, Tora blushed, denied the charge rather angrily, and bade them all a brief good night. Stephen glared through his spectacles in mock fury. "You two think yourselves everybody! As a matter of fact, for the last hour or so--how late is it? Eleven! Oh, I say! Yes, of course! Well, for the last two hours or so, Tora and I have forgotten your very existence; and, if I may use the candour of an old friend, it's rather a jar to find you here. You'd better escort your friend home, Mr. Dennehy." "Well, what have you been doing then?" laughed Winnie. "It's one of Tora's theories that I should propose to her all over again about once a year--and somehow to-night seemed rather a suitable opportunity," Stephen explained. "She's at perfect liberty to refuse me, and, as a matter of fact, she's generally rather difficult about it. That's why it's so late." His eyes twinkled again. "She imposes all sorts of conditions as to my future conduct. I argue a bit, or she wouldn't respect me. Then I give in--but, of course, I don't observe them all, or what fun would it be next year? She's accepted me this time, but she says it's the last time, unless I mend my ways considerably." A spark of Dick Dennehy's old scorn blazed out. "So that's the way she gets round her precious theory, is it? And the woman a respectable wife and mother all the time!" Winnie laid her hand on his arm. "There is one thing that can get round everything, Dick." "A fact which, in all its bearings for good and evil, must be carefully brought out in the Synopsis," said Stephen Aikenhead. They left him twinkling luminously at them through clouds of tobacco smoke. "Hang the man, is he in earnest about his old Synopsis, as he calls the thing?" asked Dick Dennehy, as they started for the cottage. Winnie considered. "I don't quite know. That's the fun of Stephen! But, anyhow"--she pressed his arm--"if this thing--our thing--doesn't end before the Synopsis does, we're all right! It'll last our lives, I think, and be still unfinished." Her laugh ended in a sigh, her sigh again in a smile. "Oh, I'm talking as if it were a fairy-tale ending, out of one of Alice's stories. Well, just for to-night! But it isn't really--it can't be, Dick. It's not an ending at all. It's a beginning, and a beginning of something difficult. Look what you're giving up for me--the great thing I'm accepting from you! And it's not a thing to be done once and for all. It'll be a continuing thing, always cropping up over other things great and small. Oh, it's not an ending; it's only a start. Is it even a fair start, Dick?" "It's a matter of faith, like everything else in the world that's worth a rap," said Dick Dennehy. "At all events, we know this about one another--that we're equal to putting up a fight for what we believe in and love. And odds against don't frighten us! I call that a fair start. What do you make of life, anyhow, unless it's a fight? We'll fight our fight to a finish!" His voice rang bravely confident; his sanguine spirit soared high in hope. When she opened the cottage door, and the light from a hanging lamp in the narrow passage fell on him, his face was happy and serene. With a smile he coaxed her apprehensions. "Ah, now, you're not the girl you were if ye're afraid of an experiment!" She put her hands in his. "Not the girl I was, indeed! How could I be, after it all? But here's my life--am I to be afraid of it? Any use I am, any joy I have--am I to turn tail? I won't, Dick!" "Always plucky! As plucky as wrong-headed, Winnie!" "Wrongheaded still?" she laughed, now gaily. "That question, like everything else, is, as Stephen says, 'in solution.' It's not my fate to settle questions, but it seems as if I couldn't help raising them!" To those who would see design in such matters--in the interaction of lives and minds--it might well seem that here she put her finger on a function to which she had never aspired, but for which she had been effectually used in several cases. She had raised questions in unquestioning people. Her management of her life put them on inquiry as to the foundations and the canons of their own. For Dick Dennehy even her chimney-pots had streaked the sky with notes of interrogation! She had been, as it were, a touchstone, proving true metal, detecting the base, revealing alloy; a test of quality, of courage, of faith; an explorer's shaft sunk deep in the ore of the human heart. She had struck strata scantily auriferous, she had come upon some sheer dross, yet the search left her not merely hopeful, but already enriched. Twice she had found gold--in the soldier who would not desert his flag even for her sake, in the believer who, for her soul's sake and his love of her, flung himself on the mercy of an affronted Heaven. Both could dare, sacrifice, and dedicate. They obeyed the call their ears heard, though it were to their own hurt--in this world or, mayhap, in another. There was the point of union between the man who forswore her for his loyalty's sake and the man who sheltered her against his creed. In the small circle of those with whom she had shared the issues of destiny she had unsettled much; of a certainty she had settled nothing. Things were just as much 'in solution' as ever; the welter was not abated. Man being imperfect, laws must be made. Man being imperfect, laws must be broken or ever new laws will be made. Winnie Maxon had broken a law and asked a question. When thousands do the like, the Giant, after giving the first-comers a box on the ear, may at last put his hand to his own and ponderously consider. * * * * * _Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED _Edinburgh_ * * * * * BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE GOD IN THE CAR A CHANGE OF AIR A MAN OF MARK THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO PHROSO SIMON DALE THE KING'S MIRROR QUISANT� THE DOLLY DIALOGUES A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC TALES OF TWO PEOPLE THE GREAT MISS DRIVER 
56310	----	[Frontispiece: Her lover was beside her and was suggesting that he escort her home.] THE UNDERCURRENT BY ROBERT GRANT WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY _F. C. Yohn_ CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK :::::::::::::: 1904 COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published, October, 1904 TO MY WIFE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Her lover was beside her and was suggesting that he escort her home . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ "I have missed you two young people at church lately" "Oh, Emil, my husband, how could you!" she moaned "Give it to me, Paul," demanded the young woman imperiously "I am sure that this woman will tell me her story" There were moments, even from the first, when he let her perceive that he regarded her as a social companion Constance would find her in possession at Lincoln Chambers "I should like to marry because I am in love" "Refuse a man like that who's crazy to marry you!" The flowers were the bright, shining milestone "I have surrendered" THE UNDERCURRENT "Those whom God has joined together let no man put asunder." It seemed to the bride that the Rev. George Prentiss laid especially solemn stress on these words, and as she listened to the announcement that, forasmuch as Emil Stuart and Constance Forbes had consented together in holy matrimony, he pronounced them to be man and wife, her nerves quivered with satisfaction at the thought that she was Emil's forever. The deed was done, and she was joyous that the doubt which had harassed her in her weak moments--whether she was ready to renounce her ambition to help in the great work of education for the sake of any man--was solved and merged in the ocean of their love. Doubtless Emil was not perfect, but she adored him. No one had even hinted that he was not perfect, but she had made up her mind not to be ridiculous in her rapture, and to look the probable truth squarely in the face as became an intelligent woman. She knew that until recently he had been only a clerk with Toler & Company, lumber merchants, and that he had just started in business on his own account. He was dependent for support on his individual labors, but she had in her own name the nice little nest-egg of five thousand dollars, realized from the sale of the family homestead at Colton, the country town, ten miles distant, from which, an orphan, she had come to Benham a year previous. She was marrying for love a young man who had his own way to make, just as hundreds of others were doing every day, and she was proud of her part in the compact. A great happiness had come into her life, almost against her will, but now that it had come she recognized that it was nature working in the ordinary way, and that she would not remain single for all the kindergartens in creation. She had known Emil only a year; still that year had been one of courtship, and no one had ever spoken ill of him, though she had been told that Mr. Prentiss, as a rector charged with overseeing the destinies of friendless girls who were members of his parish, had made inquiries. Moreover, Mr. Prentiss had agreed that two young people, situated as they were, whose hearts were united, did well to marry on a small income and trust somewhat to the future. How otherwise, as he sagely remarked, was ideal love to flourish, and were mercenary considerations to be kept at bay? Emil was twenty-five, and she just twenty. Youthful, but still of a proper age, and they were growing older every day. Decidedly it was a prudent love-match, and she had a right to be joyful, for there was nothing to reproach herself with or to regret. It will thus be observed that Constance Forbes was no happy-go-lucky sort of girl, and that though she was marrying younger than she had expected, she was marrying with her eyes open. She had scrutinized severely the romantic episode which had made her and her lover acquainted, and had even refused him the first time he asked her in order to counterbalance the glamour resulting from that meeting. The episode was a sequel to an accident to the train on which she was travelling from Colton to Benham. The engine ran into the rear of some freight cars, owing to a misplaced switch, and the tracks were strewed with splintered merchandise, so that the train was delayed four hours. The natural thing for passengers with time to kill was to inspect the wreckage, which, besides the dilapidated railroad apparatus, consisted of mangled chairs and tables, and bursted bags of grain, a medley of freight impressive in its disorder. Constance found herself presently discussing with a young man the injuries to the cow-catcher of the engine, which had been twisted ludicrously awry. A moment before two other persons, one of them a woman, had been on the spot, and the conversation had been innocuously general, but they had drifted off. Constance was conscious of having noticed the young man in her car, and of having casually observed that he had an alert expression, and that his hair rose perpendicularly from his brow, suggesting the assertiveness of a king-bird. To allow a young man to scrape acquaintance with her in cold blood would ordinarily have been entirely repugnant to her ideas of maidenly propriety, but she resisted her first impulse to turn her back on him and abruptly close the interview as needlessly harsh. It would surely be prudish to abstain from examining the battered locomotive, which lay on one side, with its nose in the air, as though it had fallen in the act of rearing, merely because a respectable-looking male passenger happened to be equally interested in the results of the catastrophe. So it chanced that after they had exchanged observations concerning the injuries to the overthrown "Vulcan" and speculated as to how long they were likely to be delayed, their conversation became less impersonal. That is, the young man informed her that he was in the employ of Toler & Company, lumber merchants, and was returning to Benham after having made some collections for them in the neighboring country. Then he was familiar with Benham? Familiar? He should say so. He had been settled there for three years, and--(so he gave Constance to understand)--there was absolutely nothing regarding the place which he could not tell her. First of all, Benham was a growing, thriving city. Its population had quadrupled in fifteen years. Think of that! So that now (in 1886) there were upward of three hundred and fifty thousand souls in the city's limits. It was a hustling place. A shrewd, energetic man, who kept his wits active, ought to make his fortune there in ten years, if he were given a proper chance. Was she going to live in Benham? Constance admitted that she was, and, helped along by friendly inquiries, she told him briefly her story. That she had lost her father and mother within a few months of each other, and that she had decided to come to Benham, of which, of course, she had heard as a progressive city, in order to learn the kindergarten methods of teaching. Subsequently she hoped to obtain an appointment as a school-teacher, and so earn her own living. "When you've finished your lessons and are ready to teach, let me know. I may be able to help you. I'm a little in politics myself, and a word to the school committee from a free and independent constituent might get you a place." He spoke jauntily though respectfully; but the offer reminded Constance that the conversation was taking a more intimate turn than she had bargained for. She thanked him, and began to move slowly away, not with any definite idea of direction, but as a maidenly interruption. Mr. Stuart--for he had told her his name--kept pace with her and seemed quite unconscious of her purpose. In the few minutes during which they had been chatting she had observed that he was somewhat above the average height and rather spare, with a short mustache which curled up at the ends and was becoming. Also, that he had small, dark eyes, which he moved rapidly and which gave him, in conjunction with his rising brow and hair, a restless, nervous expression. As they walked along the track the conductor was coming toward them. He had been to the telegraph office and was returning with a telegram in his hands. "Well, what are our chances of getting away from here?" Emil asked, with the manner of a man to whom time is precious. "It'll be a good three hours before the wrecking train arrives and the road is clear." The youth and the maid looked at each other and laughed at the gloominess of the situation. "In that case," said Constance, glancing at the sloping banks bordering the railroad tracks, which were bright with white weed and other flora of the early summer time, "we shall have to dine on wild flowers." "I have some chocolate in my bag." Constance flushed slightly with embarrassment. Her random remark seemed almost to amount to a premeditated invitation to share his resources. Emil's gaze had followed hers in her allusion to the wild flowers. "I'll tell you what," he exclaimed, impulsively, "since we have three hours to wait, why shouldn't we escape from this culvert and see what there is to be seen from the top of the bank? I shall be able to show you Benham," he added, noticing, perhaps, that she looked doubtful, "for we are only nine or ten miles away." This was tempting. Besides it would surely be ridiculous to remain where she was rather than explore the country merely because he was a casual acquaintance and had some chocolate in his travelling bag. The circumstances were harmless and unavoidable, unless she wished to write herself down a prude. The result was the logic of common-sense prevailed, and Constance gave her consent to the proposal. So they climbed the bank presently, pausing on the way to gather some posies, with which the party of the second part proceeded to adorn her hat, after they had established themselves on an eligible fallen tree commanding a pleasing view. The fallen tree was at the edge of a copse of pine wood some two hundred yards from the bank. Thus they were sheltered from the sun. Out of the copse, almost at their feet, ran a bubbling brook, which added a touch of romance to the landscape rolling away in undulating and occasionally wooded farming land, as far as the eye could reach, until it terminated in a stretch of steeples and towers surmounted by a murky cloud. There was Benham. Although they were too distant to discern more than a confused panorama, Emil essayed a few topographical details. He explained that twenty-five years earlier Benham had comprised merely a cluster of frame houses in the valley of the peaceful river Nye, which still served as an aid to description. Primarily a village on the south side of the stream, it had first developed in a southerly direction, spreading like a bursting seed also laterally to east and west. Its original main street, once bordered by old-fashioned frame houses with grass-plots and shade trees, had evolved into Central Avenue, at first the desirable street for residences, but now, and considerably prior to his advent, the leading retail shopping artery, alive with dry-goods shops, into which the women swarmed like flies. To the west of Central Avenue lay the tide of social fashion culminating two miles distant in the River Drive, a wide avenue of stately private houses, situated where the Nye made a broad bend to the north, and the new district beyond the river, where the mansion of Carleton Howard, the railroad magnate, stood a pioneer among Elysian fields of real estate enterprise, sanctified by immaculate road surfaces and liberal electric light. Constance listened eagerly. She was interested to know particulars concerning the city where she was to live, and she enjoyed the lively sardonic touches which relieved his description. Though possessing an essentially earnest soul, she was susceptible to humor, and had an aversion for lack of appreciation of true conditions. To the east of Central Avenue, Stuart further explained, lay first the shops and the business centre, and then the polyglot army of citizens who worked in the mills, oil yards, and pork factories. Across the river to the south, approached by seven bridges of iron, replacing two frail wooden bridges of former days, were the mills and other industrial establishments. Beyond these still further to the north was Poland, so called, a settlement of the Poles, favorite resort of the young ladies of Benham's first families eager to offer the benefits of religion and civilization to the ignorant poor. Following the Nye in its sweep to the north, until it deflected again to the east, so as to run almost parallel to its first course, but in the opposite direction, were the public park, the land bonded for an Art Museum, Wetmore College (the Woman's Academy of learning), and the other more or less ornamental institutions. This region of embryo public buildings, garnished with august spaces, was a sort of boundary line on the north, turning the current of industrial population more to the east. Just as the tide to the west of Central Avenue was one of increasing comfort and fashion, this to the southeast, stretching out as the city spread, and forced constantly forward by the encroachments of trade, was one of common workaday conditions, punctuated (as he phrased it) now and again by poverty and distress. "I tell you, Miss----" "Forbes, Constance Forbes is my name." "Thank you. I tell you, Miss Forbes, Benham is a wideawake city. We have all the modern improvements. But the rich man gets the cream every time. I heard millionaire Carleton Howard, the railroad magnate, say the other day from the platform, that there is no country in the world where the poor man is so well off as in this. Yet it's equally true that the rich are all the time getting richer and the poor poorer. He neglected to state that." He laughed scornfully, and his eyes sought Constance's face for approval. She knew little concerning millionaires or the truth of the proposition he was advancing, but it interested her to perceive that he was evidently on the side of the unfortunate, for she cherished a keen pity for the ignorant poor almost as a heritage. Her father had been a country physician--an energetic, sympathetic man, whose large vitality had been spent in relieving the sufferings of a clientage of small tillers of the soil over an area of fifteen miles. He had often spoken to her with pathos of the patient struggles of the common people. Her own susceptibility to human suffering had been early quickened by the destiny of her mother, who had been thrown from a sleigh shortly after Constance's birth, and had remained a paralytic invalid to the day of her death, requiring incessant care. "When I run for Congress," he resumed, scowling slightly as he fixed his gaze on the murky cloud surmounting Benham, "it'll be on a platform advocating government ownership of railroads, telegraphs, water-works, electric street cars, and all the other fat things out of which our modern philanthropists with capital squeeze enormous profits at the expense of their fellow-citizens. I'm against all that sort of thing. Buy a gas plant to-day and consolidate it with another to-morrow. Profit to the promoter two hundred per cent., without leaving the office. What does the consumer get? Cheaper gas and greater efficiency. That's the fine-sounding tag; and some of the horny-handed multitude are guileless enough to believe it. It won't be long though now before I make my own pile," he added, not quite relevantly. "I'd have made it before this if they hadn't hindered me." Constance perceived that he expected her to inquire what this meant, and she was curious to know. So she asked. "My employers, Toler & Company. If I had had the capital and the opportunities of those people, I should be wearing diamonds. I've tried to point out to them more than once that they were throwing big chances away by being so conservative and old-fashioned in their methods instead of branching out boldly and making a ten strike. One thing is certain, I'm not going to invent ideas for them for a pitiful one thousand dollars a year much longer. If they think they can afford not to raise my salary and give me a chance to show what I can do, I'm going to let them try after January first. It isn't very pleasant, Miss Forbes, to be doing most of the work and see someone else reaping all the profits. They can't help making money, old fogies as they are." It was certainly a galling situation. Constance, who was young herself, felt that she sympathized with his desire to compel recognition. "It doesn't seem right at all," she said, "that you should be kept down." "I've made up my mind to give them notice that I must have an interest in the business after the first of the year, or I quit and start on my own account. I've my eye on a man with five thousand dollars who will go into partnership with me I hope." Constance thought of her own five thousand dollars. She would almost like to lend it to him, though, of course, that was out of the question. Still, there would be no harm in offering moral support. "If I were a man," she said, "and had faith in my own abilities, I wouldn't remain in a subordinate position a moment longer than was really necessary." In response to this note of sympathy Emil opened his bag and produced two sticks of chocolate. He broke them apart and presented one to his companion. He also exhibited a compressible metal drinking-cup, which he filled from the bubbling brook. A crow cawed in the pine copse as though to call attention to the idyl, but only the two philosophers on the fallen tree-trunk were within hearing of his note of irony, and they regarded it merely as an added rural charm. "Would you object to my smoking my pipe?" "Not in the least. My father was devoted to his pipe." Another bond of sympathy. Or at least an indication to the swain that here was a maiden who was no spoil-sport and who would not have to be wooed by the sacrifice of personal comfort. Moreover, it was not lost on him that she was an attractive-looking maiden, and that her voice was well modulated and refined. Yet he was not thinking of her, but merely of her sex in general, when he said, "Besides, I hope to be married some day. How could I support a wife in Benham on one thousand dollars a year in the manner in which I should wish her to live?" Constance could not answer this question, and did not try. It belonged to the category of remarks which were to be treated by a single woman as monologues. But she was keenly interested. One thousand dollars a year did not seem to her a very pitiful sum for a young couple just starting in life. She had heard her father say that when he married her mother he had only a hundred dollars in the world, and no assurance of practice. But that was not in Benham. She had already divined that Benham was to be a land of surprises. At all events she could not help admiring Mr. Stuart's chivalric attitude toward his future wife. His ambition was obviously quickened by the thought of his future sweetheart, whoever she might be; which was an agreeable tribute to her own sex, suggesting susceptibility to sentiment. "Yes, I'd have been married before this if Toler & Company had not, as you say, kept me down," he continued, pensively, blowing a ring of smoke to emphasize his mood. "When after working hard all day I go to my room at night and take up my violin, I often think that if I could play to the woman I loved, instead of to the blank wall, how much happier I should be. But I suppose some of my friends would declare that I was a fool to desire a yoke around my neck before fate placed it there." His own readiness to relieve the stress of his confession by a sardonic turn counteracted the constraint which his intimate avowal had aroused. Incredible as it is that a man in his sober senses should offer himself to a woman the first time he beholds her, no woman is altogether unaware that he is liable to do so. A modest and thoughtful young girl shrinks from precipitate progress in affairs of the heart. Obviously the ground was less dangerous than it had for a moment appeared, but Constance sought the avenue of escape which his allusion to music offered. Besides it pleased her to hear that he was æsthetic in his interests. "You play on the violin, then?" she asked. "I envy anybody who has the talent and the opportunity for anything of that sort. I sing a little, but my voice is uncultivated, for in Colton there was no one to tell us our faults." The earnest gleam in her fine dark eyes seemed to second the fresh enthusiasm of her tone. The warning scream of the whistle, not the voice of the crow, broke in at this point on their preoccupation with each other. This was the romantic episode from which their acquaintance dated--an episode which might readily have signified nothing. But on the other hand, it naturally supplied to the party of the second part a fair field of memory in which her imagination might wander when stirred by the subsequent attentions of this young knight with sympathy for the unfortunate, resolute confidence in his own abilities, generous views in regard to matrimony and a sensitive, æsthetic soul. For Emil Stuart sought her out at once, visited her at her lodgings and gave unmistakable signs that his purpose was both honorable and definite. Within six months she knew from his own lips that he wished to make her his wife. She took another three in which to conquer her scruples and maidenly disinclination to be won too easily. Why should she not yield? He was her first lover, and she loved him, and he declared with fervor that he adored her. Contact with the conditions of a large city had shown her unmistakably that only after years of struggle could she hope to be more than a mere hand-maiden in the work of education, and that during the early period of her employment, if not indeed for life, the hours of work would be long and confining and her pleasures few. Here was a companion who would provide her with a home, and upon whom the tenderness of her woman's nature could be freely bestowed. It was the old, old story, she said to herself, but was there a better one? II The young couple bought a small house on the outskirts of the city, some distance beyond the Nye, where it flows at right angles with its original course, and in the general region of fastidious growth, but in a settlement of inexpensive villas to one side of the trend of fashion. The bridegroom had not forgotten his liberal intention to begin housekeeping on a somewhat more ambitious scale than his salary as a clerk had warranted. He was now the senior partner in the firm of Stuart & Robinson, lumber dealers, which had been in existence six months. He had parted from his employers, Toler & Company, on the first of January, because of their refusal to accede to his demands, and had been able to persuade the comrade with five thousand dollars, to whom he had referred at his first meeting with Constance to enter into a business alliance. Robinson was three years his junior, and without commercial experience, but eager to turn the windfall, which had come to him through the death of an aunt into a cool million. What could be more natural than to take advantage of the experience which Stuart offered him--an experience which gave promise of swift and lucrative operations in the near future? It was a very modest establishment, from the standpoint of affluence. A neat little house of eight rooms supplied with modern improvements, and, though one of a builder's batch, designed with some regard for artistic effect, which indicated that a preference for harmonious beauty was working in the popular mind of Benham against the idols, colorless uniformity and bedizened ugliness. To the bride, whose experience of housekeeping was limited to a country town where colorless uniformity ruled undisturbed and modern improvements were unknown, the expenditure of her nest-egg of five thousand dollars in this complete little home seemed an investment no less enchanting than wise. Five thousand for the house, with a subsequent mortgage upon it of one thousand for the purchase of the furniture and to provide a small bank balance for emergencies. This was her contribution to the domestic partnership, and she rejoiced to think that her ability to help to this extent would leave Emil a free hand for the display of his business talent. The basis of a newly married woman's peace of soul is trust. She feels that the responsibility is on her husband to make good the manly qualities with which she has endowed him, and because of which she has consented to become his mate. Occasionally during the first few months of her married life Constance laughed to think that all her maidenly eagerness to solve the riddle of life brilliantly, and all her profound searching of the mysteries of the universe should have ended in her becoming an every-day housewife with dustpan and brush, and the wife of one who, to all outward appearances, was an every-day young man. But her laugh savored of gladness. She had given herself to him because she had faith that his energy, self-reliance, fearless humor and sympathetic hatred of shams would distinguish him presently from the common herd of men, and vindicate her infatuation. She had given herself to him, besides, because he loved her--a delightful consciousness. Accordingly, she enclosed herself in the web of happiness which her confidence in him had spun about her, and took up her domestic duties with light-hearted devotion. Nevertheless, no woman emerges from her honeymoon with exactly the same estimate of her lover as before. If nothing else, she has seen his mental and moral characteristics in their undress, so to speak, and become habituated to their sublimity. We may be no less fond of a person whose anecdotes have grown familiar to us, and analogously a wife does not weary of her husband's qualities merely because they have lost the glamor of novelty. On the contrary she is apt to continue to adore them because they are his. Still she feels free to scrutinize them closely and--unconsciously at least--to submit them to the test of her own silent judgment. She discovers, too, of course, that he has sides and idiosyncrasies the existence of which she never suspected. Ordinarily she finds to her surprise that his attitude in regard to this or that matter has shifted perceptibly since marriage, so that, instead of being lukewarm or ardent, as the case may be, he has become almost strenuous or indifferent in his attitude. Hence she divines that during their courtship some of his real opinions and tendencies have been kept in retreat. Constance sensibly had decided in advance that Emil was not perfect, so she was prepared to discover a blemish here and there. In spite of her happiness it became obvious to her during the first six months of their married life that the self-confidence which had attracted her verged at times on braggadocio, and moreover that opposition or disappointment made him sour and morose. If his affairs were prospering, his spirits rose, his wits scintillated, and he spoke of the world with a gay, if sardonic, forbearance, which suggested that it was soon to be his foot-ball. But if matters went wrong, he not only became depressed, but was prone to dwell upon his own ill-luck, and inveigh bitterly against the existing conditions of society. She had noticed from the first days of their acquaintance that there appeared to be an inconsistency between his eagerness to grow rich and his enmity toward the capitalists of Benham; but she had gathered that he was merely eager to put himself in a position where his sympathy for the toiling mass could be fortified by the opportunities which wealth would afford. But now that his feverish absorption in business had apparently banished all interest in philanthropic undertakings from his thoughts, the inconsistency was more conspicuous. Constance spoke to Emil about this at last. Naturally, she broached the topic when he was in one of his sanguine moods. In response he took out his pocket-book and asked her how much she required, having jumped to the conclusion that she was beating around the bush and had some particular object of charity in view. "You don't understand, exactly, Emil," she answered. "I'm not asking for money; I was merely hoping that having me to provide for isn't going to cut you off from your former associations--to lessen your sympathy with political movements for the protection of the people such as you used to take part in before we were married." Stuart frowned, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets as he was apt to do when he felt his oats. "You don't seem to realize, Constance, that a man starting in business needs all his energy and watchfulness to avoid having his head thrust under water by the fellows who are on the surface of the commercial whirlpool and who don't want company. When I've got the sharks in my line of trade where I want them, which is, metaphorically speaking, at the bottom of the pond, it'll be time enough to take up politics. You'd like to see me in Congress some day, wouldn't you? Well, that will be plain sailing for me in this district as soon as I control the lumber business of Benham, little saint." This sounded plausible, and did not seem to admit of argument, provided the consummation of the business supremacy indicated by her husband was not deferred too long. She dismissed the matter from her mind for the time being. It was less easy to dispose of another tendency which had revealed itself in unmistakable guise since their marriage, and this was Emil's indifferent attitude, not merely toward her form of religious faith, but toward all religion. Within a short time after their acquaintance began she had discovered that he was not an Episcopalian, and that his views regarding the spiritual problems of the universe were not those of orthodox Christians. But on the other hand, although he was fond even then of blowing down her card-houses, as he called them, with an occasional blast of scientific truth, he had been ready to accompany her to church and had never seemed lacking in reverence. She had asked herself the question why she should stifle her love for him merely because his conception of the eternal mysteries did not coincide with her own, and she had answered it by the independent assurance that his attitude toward life was the important consideration. She had even been fascinated by his broad outlook on the universe, with his flashing eyes and his righteous contempt for some of the dogmas of the sects. He had seemed to her imagination at such times almost as a reforming archangel purging away the dross of superstition and convention from the essentials of religious faith. He did not believe in the miracles, it is true, because he regarded them as violations of the laws of the universe; but was he not a firm believer in the spirit of Christian conduct? She had reasoned thus as a maiden, and had never doubted the soundness of her self-justification. But the sequel was disturbing to her peace of mind and to her hopes. It was not Emil's refusal to go to church, nor his dedication of the Sabbath to mere rest and recreation which distressed her, but his scornful tone in regard to any form of religious ceremonial; his scornful tone toward her own reverence for the faith in which she had been educated. Even the term of endearment which he coined for her, "little saint," was a jocose and condescending appellation reflecting on her susceptibility to ideas which clever people had discarded as fatuous. She could have borne without complaint going to church alone had he been willing to respect her opinions as she respected his. But on her return from service he was sure to greet her with some ironical jest which made painfully clear that he regarded her habit of worship as a sign of mental inferiority. His own habit on Sunday was to remain in bed until after the church hour. Then he would establish himself in a loose-fitting woolen garment, which he called his smoking-jacket, on the porch or in the sitting-room and read the Sunday papers, with a pipe in his mouth. Sometimes he played on his violin, and by the time Constance returned he was ready for a short walk, ostensibly for the sake of exercising a small black and white terrier. His wife could not accompany him on this stroll, for she could not neglect their mid-day dinner, and when he sat down at table he was apt, if the weather was fine, to refer pathetically to the sin of having wasted it in the city. "If only you were content, little saint, to worship nature with me," he would say, "we would get away into the country with a luncheon basket the first thing in the morning and make a day of it in the woods." There was something winsome in this proposition, especially as the inability to enjoy an outing because of her reluctance to renounce church worship seemed to spoil his day in a double sense. For, as a consequence, he ate a huge Sunday dinner, including two bottles of beer, smoked more than his wont, and after a tirade against the evils of monopoly or some kindred topic invariably fell into a heavy slumber on the lounge, from which he did not awaken until nearly sunset. "Another Sunday wasted," he more than once remarked by way of melancholy comment on this state of affairs. No wonder that Constance was perplexed as to her duty. Since coming to Benham she had been a member of Rev. George Prentiss's parish. Her mother was of English descent, and Constance had been brought up in the Episcopal faith. At Colton there had been no church of that denomination, and to attend the Episcopal service one had to drive or walk two miles to a neighboring village. It had often seemed to Constance more important to remain at home with her invalid mother than to take this excursion. Consequently, during her girlhood, she had been irregular in her attendance at church. Frequently, in order to be able to return home more speedily, she had worshipped at the Methodist or Unitarian meeting-house in the village. Sometimes she had stayed away altogether; therefore she understood the fascination of communion with books or with spring buds or autumn leaves as a substitute for worship in the sanctuary. Her untrammelled experience had made her open-minded and independent, but on the other hand the difficulty of kneeling at her own shrine had nourished her sentiment for the Episcopal faith, so that she had rejoiced spiritually in the opportunity, which her residence in Benham afforded, to become a regular and devoted member of Mr. Prentiss's flock. Moreover, the vital character of St. Stephen's as a religious body had appealed to her. The little church near Colton had been a peaceful and poetic, but poor and unenterprising establishment. Contrasted with it, St. Stephen's appeared a splendid and powerful influence for righteousness, stirring deeply her æsthetic sensibilities, and at the same time proving its living, practical grasp on human character through its able pastor and active organization. St. Stephen's never slumbered; St. Stephen's prided itself on its ardent faith and essentially modern spirit; and St. Stephen's, by common acceptance, was synonymous with its rector, Rev. George Prentiss. Mr. Prentiss had grown up with the church. That is, he had been curate to the Rev. Henry Glynn, an Englishman who had selected Benham as a promising pasture for the propagation of the Episcopal faith beyond the pale of the mother country, who had gone forth into the wilderness and had lived to see a goodly flock of sheep browsing beneath his ministrations. Mr. Glynn was a pioneer, and had gone forth in the early seventies when Benham was in the throes of rapid progress and extraordinary development from month to month. His mission had been to spread the tenets of his sect by the zeal and eloquence of his testimony, and to provide a suitable edifice for the human souls attracted by his teachings. In his time the congregation forsook the small and primitive structure, erected in hot haste within a year of his arrival, for a commodious and sufficiently æsthetic building. Before his death, which occurred prematurely, Benham had become a large and important municipality. His successor found himself not only the pastor of the leading Episcopal Church of the city--which had also in the process of social evolution become the most fashionable and probably the richest church in the city--but a shepherd in a wilderness of a different sort. In other words, he was brought suddenly face to face with the problems which confront earnest spirits eager to redeem human nature in a huge industrial community. The former wilderness had blossomed, even with the rose, but the thistles, tares, and rank grass which fought for mastery with the wholesome vegetation had revolutionized the soil. There were scores of saloons in Benham; there was a herd of immoral women on the streets of Benham; and, most perplexing problem of all, perhaps, there were, only a mile apart, the picturesque neighborhood of the Riverside Drive with its imposing, princely, private mansions, and Smith Street, boulevard of unwholesome tenement-houses, garnished with rumshops and squalid lives--contrast repugnant and disconcerting to American ideals, and to him as an American. But Rev. George Prentiss was not the man to shrink from deep and important responsibilities. On the contrary, it might be said of him that he revelled in them. The consciousness that, in spite of Benham's mushroom-like growth as a proud testimonial to the sacredness of institutions established by the free-born, the city had begun closely to resemble large cities everywhere was sobering, but on the whole, inspiriting to him as a worker. His mission was clearly disclosed to him--a mission worthy of the energies of a clergyman eager to bring his church into closer touch with everyday life and common human conditions. For Mr. Prentiss as an American and a churchman was ambitious for the future of the Episcopal faith. His predecessor and friend had seen in their pastorate only a glorious continuation of English orthodoxy--a spiritual revolt from dissent, transcendentalism and cold, intellectual independence, which would, in the end, gather sixty million people into a Protestant fold, national in its title and dimensions. Mr. Prentiss shared this delectable vision, but he would not have American Episcopacy a mere blind imitation of the mother church or a colonial dependency. He felt that it behooved those of his faith on this side of the Atlantic to gird their loins zealously, and to guide their sheep fearlessly, receiving with respectful attention the interpretations of the spiritual lords of Great Britain regarding dogma, but exercising intelligent discretion in regard to their adoption. This attitude, which might be called patriotism, in some sense reflected the pride which Dante, that stern censor of prelates, condemns. Was the Church of England to prescribe doctrine to the thriving, hardy child of its loins forever? Surely not, now that that child, waxing in size and resources and dignified with power, promised soon to rival its parent. It was agreeable to the rector of St. Stephen's to reflect that the tide of fashion was bearing the children of Unitarian and other indeterminate faiths into the fold of the true and living church of Christ. It was also agreeable to behold in his mind's eye that church--the American church--taking advantage of this splendid opportunity and accepting with fearless and uncompromising zeal the challenge of infidelity and materialism. The people were tired, he believed, of intellectual, spiritual dissipation, in which each soul formed its own conception of God, and defined the terms of its own compact with Him. They were welcoming fervor, passion, color and all the symbols of a faith which beholds in man a miserable sinner redeemed through the blood of Christ. If the people of his nationality had been reluctant in the days of their early history, when population was sparse and sin was kept at bay by primitive economic conditions, to admit that man was a sinner, could they doubt it now? Was not Benham with its bustling, seething, human forces an eloquent testimonial to the reality of evil and the intensity of the struggle between the powers of darkness? The Church's mission--his mission--was to take an active part, in a modern spirit, in the great work of regeneration by bringing light to the blind, sympathy and relief to the down-trodden and protection to the oppressed. Mr. Prentiss had carried his theories energetically into practice. He had striven to make St. Stephen's a tabernacle for the prosperous and the fortunate and also for the desolate and the friendless. His wish would have been to see them intermingled at morning service without regard to vested rights, but his wardens assured him that the finances of the church could not be conducted successfully except on the basis of inviolable pew ownership until after the morning service had begun. But he was able to throw the church open in the afternoon to the general public, and to reserve in the morning certain gallery and less desirable benches for the accommodation of young men and women students who wished to worship regularly and could not afford to hire seats. If it was at first a tribulation to him that his congregation was rich and fashionable and a little stolid, their liberality on collection days was a great compensation, for it gave him scope for extending his influence along the line of his ambition by the establishment of the mission church, known as the Church of the Redeemer, in the heart of Benham's arid social quarter, as an adjunct to St. Stephen's, and to be maintained by the generosity of that body of Christians. When this undertaking was in full operation, under the direction of a competent curate, Mr. Prentiss experienced fewer qualms as he looked down from his reading-desk at the gay bonnets and costly toilets of his own parishioners. He had been assured by several women active in church work that the independent poor were not fond of worshipping where their clothes would show at a disadvantage. As a Christian who was an American, he deplored the formation of classes in the sheep-fold of the church; yet he reasoned that the preferences of human nature could not be ignored altogether in a matter of this kind, and it was evident that his parishioners preferred to worship God in full possession of their property rights, surrounded by their social acquaintance. There was a zest, too, in the knowledge that he was the rector of the important and powerful people of the city, and that he had the opportunity to denounce the commercial spirit of the age in the presence of men like Carleton Howard, the millionaire, and women like his sister, Mrs. Randolph Wilson, and their friends. If he could reach their hearts, what might he not hope for? Obviously by the support of this class the Church could not fail to increase its revenues and extend its power. The triumph of the Church was after all, for him, the essential thing--the illumination of the souls of men through faith in the Christian ideal. So with this end constantly in view, Rev. George Prentiss ministered to his well-favored congregation in St. Stephen's, and vicariously, and often by personal service, conducted a crusade against ignorance and sin in the Church of the Redeemer and its neighborhood. III Constance Forbes had been one of the students who found a haven on the free benches at St. Stephen's. Almost at once Mr. Prentiss noticed her and, struck by her interesting face, he sent the church deaconess, Mrs. Hammond, to visit her at her lodgings. She was invited to join a Bible class of young women of her own age, and welcomed to the social parlor in the vestry provided for girls who, like herself, were strangers in Benham. Here there were magazines, writing materials, and afternoon tea. While availing herself of these privileges, Constance frequently met her rector. He inquired sympathetically concerning her work and aspirations, and showed afterward that he kept her distinctly in mind. She felt that she could freely consult him if she were in need of advice; once or twice she did consult him about her reading; and she was gratified by the interest which he took in her marriage. Consequently, the idea of not attending morning service was distressing to her. She felt sure that Mr. Prentiss would notice it and be disappointed. Yet, what were Mr. Prentiss and his feelings in comparison with her obligation to her husband? Emil's Sundays were spoiled because she would not accompany him to the country instead of going to church. His attitude was unreasonable and absurd, but the fact remained that he did not go alone, and lounged at home instead. After all, she was no longer a girl, and her religious faith would not be imperilled were she to miss church now and then. Moreover, though she held fast to her creed and deplored Emil's radical views, she knew in her heart that she was more critical than formerly of what she heard in church, and that she was sometimes driven by her doubts as to the possibility of supernatural happenings to seek refuge behind the impenetrable fortress of a righteous life. There she was safe and happy, and free, it seemed to her, from the responsibility of harassing her young housewife's brains with non-essentials. Might it not be for her own advantage to take a respite from religious functions? Certainly her companionship to Emil seemed more important at the moment than her own habit of public worship. She began by staying away from church occasionally. Emil expressed delight at her reasonableness and carried out with zest his plan of a Sunday outing. It was a simple matter on their bicycles, or by a few minutes in the train, to reach country air and sylvan scenes, and he was entirely satisfied to spend the day in tramping through the woods and fields, stopping to fish or to lie in the sun as the humor seized him. The working-man's Sabbath, he termed it. The programme was restful and alluring to Constance also. Her husband on these occasions seemed less at odds with the world, and willing to enjoy himself without rancor or argument. After their luncheon he would smoke complacently for awhile and then take up his fiddle and practise upon it with genuine content for an hour or more, while she sat with her back against a tree or a bank, reading. He still drank his bottles of beer, but if he slumbered, it was only for a brief period. He never neglected his fiddle, and its influence appeared, as it were, to soothe his savage breast, and to make him good-humored and agreeably philosophic. He was too fond of theorizing to neglect altogether these opportunities for the enunciation of his grievances against civilization, but he was lively instead of bitter, a distinction which meant much to his wife. When their first baby was born, these Sunday excursions were temporarily discontinued; but Constance was eager to renew them, for Emil, after going alone a few times, relapsed into his old habits. Accordingly, as soon as the little one was able to toddle, a child's wagon was procured, which Emil was ready to draw, and by avoiding fences and other barriers, the difficulties presented by this new tie were overcome. By the time the child was a year and a half old, Constance realized that she had been to church but once in the last twelve months. This had been partly due to the action of the rector of St. Stephen's, for Constance knew within a few weeks of her first absences from church that her conduct had been noticed. The curate, Mr. Starkworth, inquired at the door if there had been illness in the family. Later the deaconess made a call of friendly observation, in the course of which it transpired that Mr. Prentiss had observed that Mrs. Stuart no longer occupied her seat. The culprit did not attempt to explain, and within a fortnight she received a visit from the rector himself. No one could have been more affable and reassuring. He established himself in an easy chair and accepted graciously the cigar which Emil proffered him. He was a large man of dignified mien and commanding person, clerical as to his dress and visage, but with a manner of conversation approximating that of men of the world--an individual manifestation which was intended to reveal a modern spirit. He was clearly a person with whom liberties could not be taken, and yet evidently one who desired to divest his point of view of cant, and to put religion on a man to man, business basis so far as was consistent with his sacred calling. He asked genial questions concerning their domestic welfare, and the progress of the new lumber firm, spoke shrewdly of local politics in which he supposed that Stuart was engaged, and sought obviously to give the impression that he was an all-round man in his sympathies, and that he took an active interest in temporal matters. When at last there was a favorable pause in the current of this secular conversation, Mr. Prentiss laid his hands on his knees, and, bending forward and looking from one to the other in a friendly way, said with decision: "I have missed you two young people at church lately." [Illustration: "I have missed you two young people at church lately."] Constance winced at the inquiry, and her eyes fell beneath the clergyman's searching gaze. She could not deny the impeachment, which was embarrassing. At the same time the color had scarcely mounted to her cheeks before she felt the force of her defence rising to her support, and she looked up. She appreciated that it was incumbent on her, as the active church member, to respond, and she became suddenly solicitous lest Emil might, and so make matters worse. In truth, Emil's first impulse had been toward anger. It was one of his maxims not to submit to browbeating. But what he regarded as the humor of the proceeding changed his wrath into scorn, and he closed his teeth on his pipe with the dogged air of a master of the situation willing to be amused withal. Mr. Prentiss divined in a flash, from the insolence of this expression, that he had to deal with a hopeless case--so far as the human soul can ever seem hopeless to the missionary--a contemptuous materialist, and his own countenance grew grave as he turned back to the wife. "Yes, we have been very little, Mr. Prentiss. My husband, you know, does not belong to your church. He went with me while we were engaged, but--but now I think I can help him best by staying away for the present." "You go elsewhere, then?" "No. We do not go to church. We spend our Sundays in the country--in the fresh air, walking and resting. We take our luncheon, and my husband brings his fiddle and his fishing rod." Constance marvelled at her own boldness, and at the ardor with which she delivered her plea of justification. "I understand," said Mr. Prentiss. His tone was sober, but not impatient. The argument for a day of rest and recreation for the tired man of affairs was nothing new to him. Nor was Mr. Prentiss ignorant of its plausible value. He wished to meet it without temper, as one rational being discussing with another, notwithstanding eternal verities were concerned. "Supposing, Mrs. Stuart, that everyone were to reason in the same way, what would become of our churches?" "They would have to go out of commission," muttered Emil with delighted brusqueness. The rector saw fit to bear this brutality without offence. He ignored the commentator with his eyes, as though to indicate that his mission was solely to the wife, but he answered, "They would, and the Christian faith would perish in the process. Are you, Mrs. Stuart," he continued, "prepared to do without the offices of religion, and to substitute for them a pagan holiday?" "We pass the day very quietly and simply," said Constance. "We disturb no one and interfere with no one." "But you become pagans, utterly." "I try to think that God hears my prayers in the open air no less than in church, while I am keeping my husband company." It wounded her to oppose her rector, yet the need of a champion for her husband's cause supplied her with speech, and gave to her countenance quiet determination. Constance possessed one of those lithe, nervous personalities, so frequently to be met with in American women of every class, the signal attribute of which is bodily and mental refinement. Her hair was dark, her face thin, her eyes brown and wistful, her figure tall and elastic; her pretty countenance had the charm of temperament rather than mere flesh and blood, and its sympathetic, intelligent comeliness suggested spiritual vigor. Mr. Prentiss was not blind to these qualities. They had attracted him at the beginning of their acquaintance, and he was the more solicitous on account of them to reclaim her from error. "God hears your prayers wherever you utter them, be assured of that. But I ask you to consider whether the habit of neglecting public worship is not a failure in reverence to the Christ who listens to our supplications and without whose aid we are helpless to overcome sin." Emil had been delighted by his wife's sturdy attitude. Now that a question of doctrine was brought into the discussion, he felt that the time had come for him to intervene again. "We who worship in the presence of nature are not hampered by dogmas of that kind," he said. "Temptation is temptation, and I for one have never been able to understand why the man who gets the better of it isn't entitled to the credit of his strength and sense. My wife looks at such things very much as I do." "Not altogether, Emil. You know I miss not going to church." "I have never prevented you from going." "But you have discountenanced it, man. It is to please you, and to humor your views that your wife is sacrificing her most sacred convictions," Mr. Prentiss exclaimed with a touch of sternness. "You think church-going of the utmost importance; I do not. There's where we differ. Everyone must decide those questions for himself--or herself." The rector resented the smug assurance of the retort by a frown and a twist of his shoulders, as though he were sorry that he had condescended to bandy words with this irreverent person. "Yes, we all must," he said, addressing Constance. "'He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.'" He regretted the next instant having indulged in this clerical formula, which was foreign to his usual method. Constance flushed at the words of Scripture, then she drew herself up slightly and said: "I am very sorry, indeed, to disappoint you, Mr. Prentiss, but I can't promise to attend church regularly at present. Perhaps it is true, as my husband says, that my opinions have changed somewhat in regard to points of faith. I hope--I shall pray that after a time we may both come back to you." There was no mistaking the finality of this unequivocal but gently uttered speech, and Mr. Prentiss knew that one of the signs of a man of the world is the capacity to take a hint. Though it galled him to leave this attractive member of his flock in the clutches of one so apparently unfit to appreciate her bodily or spiritual graces, he recognized that to press the situation at this point could result only in separating her still further from the influence of the church. "You shall have my prayers, too--both of you," he said, fervently. Then he arose and resumed the demeanor of a friendly caller. But Emil, now that he had shown clearly that he had the courage of his convictions, felt the need of vindicating his character as a host. He said jauntily, "I hope there's no offence in standing up for what one believes to be true. It's one of the greatest poets, you know, who wrote There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds." "You young whipper snapper!" was Mr. Prentiss's unuttered comment, but he did not relax his lay serenity of manner save by the slight vein of sarcasm which his words contained. "No offence, certainly. But you should also bear in mind, young man, that others no less mentally qualified than yourself have pondered the problems of the universe and come to very different conclusions. A man takes large responsibilities upon himself in deciding to deprive his wife and children of the comforts of religion." "I am anxious that my children when they grow up may not be obliged, as I was, to unlearn what they were taught to believe in their youth," Emil retorted with smiling effrontery. He was pleased with his wife and with himself and he was glad to get in a final body blow on the person of this officious slummer, as he subsequently described their visitor. "I am not unfamiliar with that line of argument," said Mr. Prentiss, in the act of departure. "But I invite you to consider whether your children, when they are old enough to think for themselves, will be grateful for the substitute which you offer for doctrine. They ask for bread, and what do you give them? A stone." Emil laughed. He was content to let the parson have the last word. He stood for a moment on the door-step watching him march down the street. He felt that he had turned the tables on him completely and had thereby won a victory for clear thinking and freedom of thought. He exclaimed exultantly as he re-entered the parlor, "I guess that'll teach the old duck to stay in his own barn-yard and not come waddling down here to try to get us to believe that the world was made in seven days and Jonah was swallowed by the whale." Constance, who had fallen into troubled reverie, looked up and exclaimed with emphasis, "Mr. Prentiss is a very reasonable man about such matters, Emil. He used particularly to tell his Bible class that the language of the Old Testament is sometimes metaphorical." "Yes, I know how the clergy jump and change feet to avoid being cornered. I'm aware they explain that the seven days were not our days of twenty-four hours, but were symbolic terms for geological stretches of time. Do you call that ingenuous?" Constance winced. It happened that Mr. Prentiss had offered just this explanation of holy writ, and somehow, now that Emil held it up to scorn, the rector's commentary appeared flimsy. She sighed, then with emotion said, "Emil, I wish you would tell me what you really do believe." "Believe?" He smiled indulgently as he echoed his wife's inquiry, but his eyes snapped and his shock of hair seemed to stand up straighter. His manner expressed a mixture of amused condescension and the tartness of a dogged spirit suspicious of attack. "I believe, for one thing, that the laws of nature are never violated, and that their integrity is a grander attribute of divinity than the various sensational devices which the orthodox maintain that an all-wise God employs to attract the attention of men to Himself. I believe also that you in your secret soul entirely agree with me." Constance was silent a moment. "And yet you haven't answered my question, Emil. You haven't told me what you do believe. Why isn't religion just as real and true a part of man as any other instinct of his being? It has been a constantly growing attribute." "And the nonsense is being gradually squeezed out of it. Why should I accept the dogma of that reverend father in God that a man can do nothing by his own efforts? Isn't it a finer thought that we grow by virtue of our struggles and that the free and independent soul wins the battle of life by making the most of itself?" Emil spoke with fierce rhetoric. To his wife's ear he seemed to be pointing out besides that his own soul was fighting this battle and that he was willing to be judged by the results regardless of doctrine. Constance had long ago convinced herself that his bark was worse than his bite; that he believed more than he really admitted of the essentials of religion; that he acknowledged his responsibility to God and was devoting his days to advancing the useful work of the world, and incidentally providing for her happiness at the same time. His plea for credit to the independent soul which overcame temptation and obstacles was, at least, manly, and a sign of courage. She scarcely heeded the quotation from the "Rubaiyat," which he was murmuring as a corollary to his apostrophe to free and noble endeavor. O thou who didst with pitfall and with gin Beset the path I was to wander in, Thou wilt not with predestined evil round Enmesh and then impute my fall to sin? She had heard him quote these lines and others of like import before, and she had learned some of them by rote. She recognized their charm and cleverness and to a certain extent their plausibility; but she had not the slightest impulse to revolutionize her own faith. Her absorbing thought, for the moment, was how to be true to her husband without being false to the church. Mr. Prentiss, in spite of his appeal, had left her conscience unconvinced, and now her clear-headed, fearless Emil had suddenly given her soul the cue to expression. Her brown eyes kindled rapturously and trustfully as she said: "It's the life after all which counts, isn't it? Everything else is of secondary importance." "Of course," said Emil. "And when it comes to that," he added, "there's no one in the world who can pick a flaw in yours, you little saint." "You mustn't say things like that," Constance murmured. Nevertheless, so far as it was a manifestation of confidence from the man she loved, it was pleasant to hear. From this time her attendance at church was very infrequent. She did not cease to go altogether, but almost every Sunday was spent in expeditions in the open air. The cares resulting from the birth of two children necessarily interfered with her going regularly to service while they were infants, and as soon as they were able to walk, the Sunday outings were resumed with the little boy and girl as companions. Mr. Prentiss did not revisit the house, but on each of the two or three occasions when Constance occupied her old seat in St. Stephen's, she felt that the rector had noticed her. He had apparently left her to her devices, but his glance told her that she was not forgotten. IV It is fitting and fortunate that a young woman in a large city, who has given her happiness into the keeping of a man with his own way to make, should be ignorant of her peril, and that charmed by love she should take for granted that he will succeed. But the rest of the world has no excuse for being equally blind, since the rest of the world is aware that there is no recipe by which a girl of twenty can secure a guaranty either of domestic happiness or ability on the part of her lover to hold his own in the competition for a livelihood. It is easy for the moralist of society, writing at his desk, to utter the solemn truth that young people should not rush hastily into matrimony. Assuredly they should not. But after all, is it to be wondered at that so many of them do? Love is the law of life. The renewal of the race through the union of the sexes is an instinct which asserts itself in spite of code and thesis, and the institution of lawful wedlock is the bit by which civilization regulates it. Let us, says the modern scientist, isolate the degenerate members of society, the diseased, the vicious, and the improvident, and prevent them from having offspring. But still the priest of Rome, eager for fresh converts, but wise, too, in his knowledge of the law of sex, whispers to his flock "marry early," and adds under his breath, "lest ye sin." It is a part of religion, perhaps, for the daughters of the well-to-do, who have been screened from contact with the rough world, and who sit in judgment on several lovers in the paternal drawing-room, to weigh and ponder and to call in the brain to assist, or if needs be, silence the heart. Yet even they sometimes elope instead with the wrong man against whom they have been warned, and are unhappy--or happy--ever afterward. But when we turn from these privileged young persons--the pretty, daintily dressed young women in their Easter bonnets, who worship at our fashionable churches--and from some height look out over wide stretches of streets with every house alike, the homes of the average working population, and reflect that every house shelters the consequences of a marriage, shall we ask pitilessly, "How came ye so?" And if the answer of some be "we met and loved and married, and now we are miserable," shall we draw ourselves up and tell them that the fault is theirs, that marriages are (or should be) made in heaven, and that they ought to have discovered before they plighted their troth that John would be a rascal or Mary a slattern? Is it not the privilege and the blessing of the young to trust? Shall we blame them if, in the ignorance of youth and under the spell of the law of their beings, they mistake unworthy souls for their ideals? The firm of Stuart & Robinson, dealers in lumber, had started with a small capital, but the senior partner had confidence in his capacity to do a large business. His late employers, Toler & Company, according to his opinion, had been old fogies in their methods. To adopt his own metaphor, instead of getting up early and shaking the trees, they expected to have ripe peaches served to them on Sevrès china, or, in other words, they let great opportunities slip through their fingers. He proceeded during the first year to carry out several enterprises which he had vainly called to their attention while in their service, and he had the satisfaction of proving his wisdom and of doubling the firm's assets at the same time. Emil's plans were essentially on a large scale, and he was confessedly cramped even after this success. He explained to his wife that if only he had the necessary capital, he would be able at one fell swoop to control the lumber yards and lumber market of Benham. As it was, he must wait and probably see others appropriate ideas which he had suggested by his novel and brilliant operations. The prophecy indeed proved true, and Emil saw with a morose eye what he called his harvest gleaned by others. This vindictive attitude toward the successful was the invariable frame of mind into which he relapsed when he was not carrying everything before him, and as a result those in the trade presently began to speak of him as a crank. His quick comprehension was admitted, but his associates shook their heads when his name was mentioned, and hinted that he was a dangerous man, who would bear watching. It was almost inevitable that a lean period should follow Emil's series of clever undertakings. Toward the end of the second year, he found himself in a position where he had not the means to enlarge the scope of his operations. His working capital was locked up in sundry purchases which he had expected would show quick profits, but which hung fire. If he liquidated, it must be at a loss, and the idea of a loss was always bitter to him. During a number of months he was obliged to renounce certain plans which he had in view and to remain inactive. A falling lumber market added to his complications. Prompt to act when he was convinced of error, he sold out at last his accumulated stock at a loss, which would have been much greater had he delayed a week longer. But he was left almost in the same position as when he started; the previous profits had been cut in two. This was wormwood to his restless soul. It made him moody and cynical at home, where one child and the near advent of another foreshadowed increasing expenses. He had expected by this time to be on the high road to fortune, and to be imitating the swift progress of certain individuals in Benham, who even in the short period since he had been a citizen, had risen by their superior wits from poverty to affluence and power. But Emil's fits of depression were invariably succeeded by intervals of buoyancy. Though he still talked bitterly at home of the methods by which cold-hearted capital squeezed the small man to the wall and robbed him of his gains, he began to scheme anew, and to argue that the assets in his control were still ample for a great success if shrewdly handled. The lumber market was in the doldrums, dull and drooping. It began to look as though some of the industries of Benham had been developed too rapidly, and as though a halt, or what financiers call a healthy reaction in values, were in order. Could it be possible that all prices in Benham were inflated? The idea occurred to Emil one day, and he jumped at it eagerly. It took possession of him. He feverishly began to examine statistics, and found that Benham had experienced only one period of depression since its birth as a city at the close of the Civil War. It was time for another, and the men who were clever enough to anticipate it would reap the reward of their sagacity. What were the staples of Benham? Oil, pork, and manufactured iron. These were the industries which had given the chief impetus to the city's growth, and were its great source of wealth. Emil pondered the situation and decided to sell pork short. If a general shrinkage in values was impending, the price of pork was certain to decline. He had hitherto felt so confident of making money in his own line of business that he had never done more than cast sheep's eyes at the stock market or the markets in grain, oil, and pork futures. It had been his expectation to try ventures of this sort as soon as his capital was large enough for important transactions. It was a favorite notion of his that after he had acquired the first one hundred thousand dollars, he would be able to quadruple it in a very short time by bold dealings in stocks or commodities. He knew now that he had merely to step into a broker's office and sell pork in Chicago by wire. It was a simple thing to do and the shrewd thing, considering his own business offered no opportunity at the moment for brilliancy. To speak to his partner seemed to Emil unnecessary. He promised himself that after he had put the firm on its feet again he would deal generously with Robinson. Since their late reverses the partnership was not borrowing much money, so its credit was not exhausted. Emil obtained from his bank as large a loan as he dared to ask for, and began to sell pork short on the strength of the proceeds. It was a process which requires small capital at the outset. That is, he had simply to keep his margin good in case the pork which he sold rose in value. To begin with he sold only a few hundred barrels, and within a fortnight the price fell smartly. Not only the price of pork, but of stocks, grain, and merchandise. Emil congratulated himself. Evidently he was correct in his judgment that a period of lower speculative values was at hand. The proper thing would be to sell everything and reap a huge fortune before the dull general public awoke to the truth. His own limited resources forbade this, which was irritating. Still, he could go on selling pork short, and this he continued to do. The proceeding elated him, for the sudden and large profit was in a sense a revelation. He regretted that he had never before tried this method of demonstrating his business shrewdness. He felt that it suited him admirably. He would be no rash-headed fool; he would sell boldly, but intelligently; he would keep his eye on the general market, and not cover his shorts until the general situation changed. If a serious decline in the prices of everything were in store for Benham--and the indications of this were multiplying from week to week--the price of pork might drop out of sight, so to speak, and he win a fortune as a consequence. It was the chance of a lifetime. He reasoned that he would keep cool and make a big thing of it; that a small fellow would be content with a few thousands and run to cover, but he intended to be one of the big fellows. Why take his profit when the whole financial horizon was ominous with clouds, and money was becoming tighter every day? Emil's reasoning was perfect. The course of prices was exactly as he had predicted; that is, the price of everything except pork. The unexpected happened there, and this from a cause which no shrewd person could have foreseen. One day when, in the parlance of trade, the bottom seemed to be dropping out of all the markets, a despatch appeared in the newspapers stating that a peculiar disease had broken out among the hogs in Western Illinois. The pork market stiffened, but became flat at the advance after somebody declared the story to be a canard invented by the bulls to bolster up their holdings. Emil, adopting this explanation, and certain that this cunning stratagem to check the decline would prove unavailing, sold more pork. A week later--one Saturday preceding a Monday which was to be a holiday--there were rumors in Chicago, just before the close of the Exchange, that the disease among the hogs was no mere local manifestation; that it was spreading rapidly, and had already shown itself in Indiana and Ohio. Pork in the last fifteen minutes bounded upward and closed ominously strong. Before the market opened on the following Tuesday it was definitely known that the hogs of the country were in the grasp of an epidemic, the precise character of which, to quote the press, was not yet determined, but which, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, would render the flesh of the animals attacked by the dread disease unfit for food, and their lard unwholesome. When the market opened, the price of pork was so high that Emil's margin of protection was wiped out as thoroughly as the tide wipes out the sand dyke which a child erects upon the beach. He was unable to respond to the demand made on him for money to keep his account with his broker good, and was sold out before night at a loss--a loss which left him in debt. He went home knowing that he was bankrupt, and that his firm must fail the moment his note at the bank became due, even if the broker to whom he owed five thousand dollars over and above his margins did not press him. There was no escape from ruin and humiliation. He disclosed the truth to Constance with the repressed bitterness of a Prometheus. He explained to her with the mien of a wounded animal at bay the cruelty of the trick of destiny which had crushed him. How had he been at fault? He had been shrewd, far-seeing and prompt to act. The wisdom of his course had been demonstrated by the fall in prices. He was on the high road to fortune, and fate had stabbed him in the back. Could any intelligent man have foreseen that the hogs of the country would be stricken with disease? And more galling still, why had luck played him false by singling out the only possible combination of events which could have done him harm? "An all-wise Providence!" he ejaculated with a scornful laugh. "A man looks the ground over, uses his wits and is reaping the benefit of his intelligence when he is struck in the head with a brick from behind a hedge, and is then expected to glorify the hand which smote him. How could it have been helped? How was I to blame?" he reiterated with a fierce look at his wife. Constance could not answer the question. The details of business were a sealed book to her. The brief account of the disaster in pork, which he had just given, was confusing to her, and had left her with no conviction save pity for her husband. She was ready to take his word, and to believe that this overwhelming misfortune was the result of ill-luck which could not have been guarded against. What was uppermost in her mind was the impulse to help and comfort him. It pained her that he should inveigh against fate, though she recognized that the provocation was severe. But he needed her now more than ever. She would be brave and let him see that her love was at his command. "You mustn't mind too much, Emil," she said. "We have to start again, that's all. I can economize in lots of ways, and we shall manage somehow, I'm sure. We have the house, you know. If it's necessary--in order to set you up in business--we can mortgage that. We've always had that to fall back on." She knew as she spoke that from the standpoint of prudence the offer of the house was unwise. If that were gone, what would become of her children? Yet she felt a joy in tendering it. Why did her husband look at her with that malevolent gaze as though she had contributed to his distress? "If you had put a mortgage on the house when I first started in business, and had given me the benefit of a larger capital, then we shouldn't be where we are to-day. I wanted it at the time, but you didn't offer it." "Oh, Emil. I never dreamt that you wished it. To mortgage our home then would have been rash, surely. Besides, if I had given it to you, wouldn't it have been lost with the rest now?" "Don't you understand," he said, roughly, "that if I had not been hampered at the start by my small capital, I should never have been forced to go outside the lumber business in order to support my family? Another five thousand dollars would have made all the difference." His glowering look seemed to suggest that he had persuaded himself that she was partly to blame for what had happened. Constance was ready to make every allowance for him, but his mood offered fresh evidence of the crankiness of his disposition, a revelation to which her devotion could not altogether blind her. "I don't understand anything about the business part," she answered, putting her arm around his neck. "Oh, Emil, Emil, I'm so sorry for you! I wish to do everything I can to help you and show my love for you. This is a dreadful sorrow for you to bear--for us both to bear. But it has come to us, and we mustn't be discouraged. God will give us strength to bear it if we let him." "God?" he blurted. "You may leave God out of the question so far as I am concerned." "Oh, Emil, it grieves me to hear you talk like that." "And it grieves me that you should aggravate my trouble by cant which I thought you had outgrown." "I shall never outgrow that," she murmured, appreciating suddenly that the substitute which he offered her for spiritual resignation was a cell bounded by four stone walls. She had reached the limit of her apostacy, and she shrank irrevocably from the final step. "Of course the rich and the powerful and the fortunate," he was saying, "encourage the delusion that if a man's knocked out as I am he ought to believe it's for the best, because rubbish of that sort keeps together the social system on which they fatten. Do the poor in the tenements in Smith Street over there," he asked with a wave of his hand, "believe it's for the best that they should go hungry and in rags while Carleton Howard and his peers imitate Antony and Cleopatra? Ask the operatives in the factories across the river what they think of the justice of the millionaire's God? The time has passed when you can fool the self-respecting workingman with a basket of coals and a tract on the kingdom of heaven. They may have their heaven, if they'll give us a fair share of this earth." Emil folded his arms as one issuing an ultimatum. Constance realized that he was in no mood to be reasoned with. She had made clear that she could not subscribe to his doctrine of despair, and save in that respect she was eager to be sympathetic. She could not deny the inequalities and apparent injustice of civilization, and Emil's plea that he had been crushed by an accident which he could not have avoided not only wrung her heart, but filled it with a sense of hostility to an industrial system which permitted its deserving members to be crushed without fault of their own. But she felt instinctively that the best sort of succor which she could bring was of the practical kind. To-morrow was before them, God or no God, and they must adjust themselves to their altered circumstances, take thought and build their hopes anew. She put her arm around his neck again and kissed him silently. Then she began with quiet briskness to make preparations for the evening meal. It was the maid's afternoon out, and Constance moved as though she were glorying in the occupation. Presently she said: "Of course I'll dismiss Sophy to-morrow. I am proud to be a workingman's wife, Emil. We'll soon be on our feet again, never fear." The suggestion of the servant's dismissal deepened the gloom on Emil's face. "I've half a mind to pull up stakes and move to New York," he muttered. "And give up our home?" He frowned at the involuntary concern in her voice. "What use is a home in a place where a man is cramped and circumvented in every big thing he attempts? I ought to have moved long ago." "I am ready to live wherever you think best, Emil. And you mustn't forget, dear, that my trust and faith in you are as great as ever." Despondent as he was, his habit of buoyancy was already groping for some clue to a brighter vision, to which his wife's words of encouragement now helped him. He was sitting with his elbows resting on the table and his head clasped between his hands. "I'll make a fresh start--here," he said. "They've got me down, but, damn them, I'll show them that they can't keep me there." Presently he arose, and walking out to the kitchen reappeared with a goblet and two bottles of beer. One of these he uncorked and poured the contents ostentatiously so that the froth gathered. Raising the glass he buried his mouth in the beer and eagerly drank it off. He set down the goblet with a sigh of satisfaction. "And what's more," he said, "they can't deprive me of that." Constance watched him with a troubled look. She shrank at this time of his distress from intimating that she regarded the indulgence of this appetite as a poor sort of solace. Besides, a glass of beer was in itself nothing, and he might well take offence at her solicitude as an invasion of his reasonable comfort. Yet observation had taught her that he was becoming more and more fond of seeking a respite from care in liberal potations of this sort. She restrained her inclination to interfere, but she saw him with concern consume four bottles in the course of the evening. The serenity of temper which this produced--the almost indifferent calm following the storm--was by no means encouraging. To be sure his ugly side seemed entirely in abeyance. Indeed, he took down his fiddle and played on it seductively until he went to bed, as though there were no such things as business troubles. But somehow the very mildness of his mood, gratifying as it was to her from the momentary personal standpoint, disturbed her. Was this good nature the manly, Christian resignation of the victim of misfortune putting aside his grief until the morrow? It suggested to her rather the relaxation of a baffled soul exchanging ambition for a nepenthe of forgetfulness--a fuddled agitator's paradise--and her heart was wrung with dread. V The firm of Stuart & Robinson, lumber dealers, was hopelessly insolvent and did not attempt to resume business. The partners separated with sentiments of mutual disdain. To the junior--the dummy--the failure had come as a cruel surprise. He refused to regard Emil's conduct as reasonable or honorable, despite the assurance that the speculation in pork had been for their common benefit, and that, but for an untoward accident, the result would have been a fortune for the firm. On the other hand, Emil expressed scorn for a nature so pusillanimous that it saw only the outcome and failed utterly to appreciate the brilliancy of his undertaking. As Emil explained to his wife, the decision of the partners in regard to the future was typical of their respective dispositions; Robinson, having lost his money, was soliciting a clerkship--a return to servitude; whereas Emil intended to strike out for himself again. In what field of energy were his talents to be exercised next? This was for Emil the first and most important consideration. His new employment must be of a kind which would provide him with bread and butter until he was on his feet again, but would not deprive him of scope and independence. It must be something which would not require capital. Yet this did not mean that his talent for speculation was to be neglected, but merely to be kept in abeyance until he saw just the opportunity to use to advantage the three thousand dollars which he promptly raised by a second mortgage on his wife's house. His failure had left him more than ever confident of his ability to achieve success by bold and comprehensive methods. But in the meantime, while he was spinning the web of fresh enterprises which were to make him prosperous, he must support his family somehow. He concluded to become a newspaper reporter and writer of articles for the press. This would provide an immediate income and would not interfere unduly with other projects. Besides it would enable him to give public expression to some of his opinions, which would be an æsthetic satisfaction. He also engaged desk-room in an office shared by four men independent of one another and interchangeably petty lawyers, traders and dealers in mortgages and land. On the glass door one read "Real Estate and Mortgages--Investments--Collections--Loans--Notary Public." Below were the names of the occupants, followed by the titles of several wildcat companies, the dregs of oil and mining ventures in the neighborhood of Benham, of which one of them was the promoter and treasurer. It seemed to Emil a location where he, hampered by circumstances from jostling elbows with men of means, might use his wits profitably until he could see his way to more imposing quarters. Here he would be unobserved and yet not wholly out of touch with what was going on. On the same floor of the building, which was a hive of small concerns, there was a broker's office which had a wire to Chicago and knowing correspondents in New York. That it was described as a "bucket shop" by more prosperous banking firms prejudiced Emil in its favor; he ascribed the stigma to capitalistic envy and social ostracism. He became friendly with the proprietor, discussed with him the merits of the wares on his counter, and presently, acting on "tips" obtained from this source, captured on several occasions sums ranging from ten to fifty dollars by the purchase of ten shares of stock or an equivalent amount of grain, requiring an advance on his own part of not more than three per cent. of the purchase price--a mere bagatelle. This as a beginning was satisfactory. It eked out his journalistic income; and the skill with which he plied the process, contrasted with the folly displayed by most of the customers, flattered the faith which he had in his sound judgment. This broker's shop was the resort of scores of people of small means, trades-folk, clerks, salaried dependents and some women, keen to acquire from the fluctuations of the speculative markets a few crumbs of the huge gains garnered by the magnates of Wall Street, of which they read emulously in the newspapers. To put up one's thirty dollars, and to have one's margin of venture or profit wiped out within twenty-four hours, was the normal experience, sooner or later, of ninety per cent. of these unfortunates. The remainder were shrewder and longer lived, and to this remnant Emil indisputably belonged. He obtained a position on the _Star_, a sensational, popular one-cent paper. The _Star_ was read both by the workingmen in the manufacturing plants, of whose interests it was a zealous champion, and by a large class of business men and trades-people, who found its crisp paragraphs and exaggerated, inaccurate reports of current horrors and scandals an agreeable form of excitement. Emil's employment was to make the round of the dealers in grain, lumber, wool and other staples and report trade prices and gossip, which under the control of the financial editor he was allowed to expand into commercial prognostications or advice. To the Sunday edition he began to contribute special articles exploiting the grievances of the proletariat, which the management of the _Star_ accepted and presently invited as a weekly feature. They were written with a sardonic acerbity of touch, which afforded him an outlet for his disgruntled frame of mind and free scope for his favorite theories. He also renewed his attendance at the Socialistic Club which he had frequented before his marriage, and became one of the orators there. It occurred to him that a political office would be acceptable while he was husbanding his resources. Why not become alderman on the workingman's ticket? There was a salary of five hundred dollars attached, and as a city father he would have opportunities to know what was going on in municipal affairs, and to get an inkling of some of the big schemes projected by capitalists, for the furtherance of which his vote would be required. He would be able also--and this was an exhilarating consideration--to hold the whip-hand over the arrogant moneyed men seeking franchises for next to nothing, by which to extort millions from the guileless common people. While Emil, with recovered buoyancy, readjusted his plans to meet his circumstances and set his wits to work, his wife met the necessity of strict economy with absorbed devotion. She signed the mortgage with a pang, but without hesitancy. She appreciated the necessity of the contribution. Without ready money Emil would be powerless--must become a mere clerk or subordinate, and his ambition would be crushed. She would have preferred perhaps that he should resign himself to the situation, and without imperilling their home, support his family on a modest footing by a salary or by the journalistic work for which he had an aptitude. But she recognized that his heart was set on independent success on a large scale, and that Emil thwarted or repressed would become an irritable and despondent malcontent. His shrewdness had nearly gained him a fortune, and apparently a cruel freak of chance had been solely responsible for his discomfiture. She did not pretend to criticise the nature of his business dealings. He had explained to her that capital was indispensable to the realization of his aims. She must trust him. She did suggest that he should use the proceeds of the mortgage for the payment of his debts. The thought of doing so was bitter, and she was thankful when Emil assured her with a protesting scoff that such a proceeding would be Utopian. "What," he asked, "was the sense of insolvent laws, if, when a man failed in business, his wife was to cast her little all, her own patrimony, into the common pot for the enrichment of his creditors? Business people understood that they were taking business chances, and did not expect to gobble up the home of a wife bought with her own genuine means. If she were rich, generosity might be honesty, but in the present instance, it would be sentimental folly." This was convincing to Constance, for she felt instinctively that her children must have rights as well as the creditors. A woman's whimsical conception of business honor might well be at fault. She had made her offer, and she was glad to abide by her husband's superior knowledge. Her duty obviously was to reduce the scale of family living without interfering with Emil's reasonable comfort or wounding his self-respect. She gave herself up to her work of domestic economy with fresh zeal, doing the manual labor of the household with enthusiasm. By steady industry and thoughtful care, she was able not only to minimize expenses, but to produce presentable results from a small outlay. Her heart was in it; for was not Emil at work again and hopeful? She was proud of his newspaper articles and regarded his small gains from shrewd speculations as new proof of his capacity for financial undertakings. The end of a year found Emil rather more than holding his own pecuniarily. He had obtained commissions as a broker from the successful negotiation of a few small real-estate transactions, his ventures on a cautious scale in the stock market had been almost invariably fortunate, and his earnings as a newspaper writer had been sufficient with these accretions to cover his household expenses, pay the interest on the mortgage, and add slightly to his capital. He felt that he was on his feet again, and was correspondingly bumptious; yet he realized that his recuperation regarded as progress was a snail's pace, which must be greatly accelerated if he would attain wealth and importance. In this connection the idea of becoming an alderman kept recurring to him with increasing attraction. At present he was nobody. His name was unfamiliar and his position obscure. This irritated him, for he craved recognition and publicity. To be sure, while capital was at his disposal, he had seen fit to address his efforts solely to the accumulation of a fortune as the passport to power, but even then he had been at heart a sworn enemy of the moneyed class. And now that he had resumed his old associations, his theories had developed fresh vitality and aroused in him the desire to vindicate them by action. Since fate had condemned him to attain financial prominence slowly, why should he not secure recognition in the best way he could? As an alderman he would be a local power, and once in the arena of politics and given the opportunity to make himself felt, why might he not aspire to political prosperity? He proceeded to seek the nomination. But he found that there were other aspirants, and that he must be stirring. In Benham the district system of election was in vogue. That is, the city was divided into municipal districts, and each district chose its own alderman. In that where Emil lived the workingman's candidate, so called, was almost invariably successful against the representative of the more conservative element of the two wards concerned, and a nomination was regarded as equivalent to election. Now there were two factions of voters belonging to the dominant party in the district, one in each ward, and for three successive years the alderman had come from the ward other than that in which Emil dwelt. This was a plausible argument why the next candidate should be selected from his ward. The faction which Emil hoped to represent contained a considerable number of Germans with socialistic affiliations, and it was agreed by a conference of the rival cliques on the eve of the canvass that their turn had come to nominate a candidate. This was fortunate for Emil, as some of the members of the social debating club to which he belonged were of this body. He had already been prominent at the meetings of the club, prompt and aggressive in the expression of his opinions on his feet, and prone to linger over his beer until late at night agitating the grievances of the under dogs of industrial competition. The suggestion of his name, backed by a vote of his associates, received respectful consideration from the political managers, and he at once became a prominent candidate. The last three aldermen from the district had been of Irish extraction, and he was an American. His grandfather on his mother's side had been a German; hence his name Emil. He was an undoubted advocate of the rights of the laboring class, and a foe of capitalistic jobbing. These were signal points in his favor. But the victory would remain to the aspirant who could obtain a majority of the delegates to the aldermanic convention, and the battle would be fought out at the preliminary caucus where the delegates were chosen by the voters of the two wards. Accordingly the contest became a house-to-house canvass of the district by the respective candidates, each of whom had an organization and lieutenants. There was speech-making at halls hired for the occasion, and some treating incident to these rallies. Poster pictures of the candidates were requisite for use in saloons and on bill-boards. All this demanded expenditure. Emil realized presently that, if he wished to succeed, he could not be niggardly with his money. Men would not work for nothing, and spontaneous enthusiasm was only to be had for remuneration. He drew upon his funds, exhausting the little he had saved the previous year, and trenching slightly on the mortgage money. He hoped to win. The contest practically was between him and a German beer manufacturer, who happened also to be the president of a small bank. The third candidate was already out of the running. Emil in his capacity as tribune of the people made the most of his opponent's connection with the moneyed interests. His satire on this score offset the advantage which his rival received from his trade as a brewer, and turned the scale. On the night of the caucus, the voting booths were crowded to repletion. A stream of excited citizens struggled to the rail to deposit their ballots. There was imprecation and several resorts to fisticuffs. Not until after midnight was the result known. Emil won by a liberal margin in both wards, and his nomination was assured. He was escorted home jubilant and beery by a detachment of his followers, whose cat-calls of triumph thrilled the listening ears of Constance. She met him at the door, and when he was safely inside she threw her arms about his neck and exclaimed, "Oh, Emil. I'm so glad!" His small dark eyes were scintillating, his hair stood up from his brow like a bird's crest, the curl of his short mustache, odorous of malt, bristled awry, his speech was thick. "Didn't I tell you they couldn't keep me down? I shall get now where I belong," he exclaimed as he strode into the sitting-room and dropped into a chair with the air of a fuddled but victorious field-marshal. Constance recognized that he was exhilarated by drink. The associations of the last few weeks had awakened in her vague doubts as to the sort of influence which the career of an alderman was likely to exercise upon him. But she shrank from harboring criticism. She yearned to be happy, and her happiness was to see her husband successful and prosperous. So she put away the consciousness that his breath was tainted, his manner boastful and jarring, and gave herself up to the joy which sprang from beholding him a self-satisfied victor. Emil's self-satisfaction was short lived. It chanced that some of the wealthy citizens of Benham were interested in the establishment of an electric street-car system for the city and its suburbs, and were laying their wires to secure the co-operation of the Board of Aldermen. The project had been kept concealed, and not until the campaign for the city election was well under way were the machinations of those interested apparent. First as an underground rumor, then as a well-credited report from diverse sources, the news reached Emil that the nominee of the other party had the backing of a powerful syndicate. The true explanation of this mystery followed, and with it the statement that Emil's radical utterances had drawn upon his head the ire of the capitalists with a mission, who were giving their moral and financial support in every district to the one of the two candidates best suited to their necessities regardless of party. In place of the walk-over he had expected, Emil found himself in the midst of a contest of the fiercest description. He was furious, and his exultation was turned to gall. Why had he not discovered the street-car company projects in advance and made friends with the promoters? This was his first and secret reflection, which added rancor to his public declaration that he would bury at the polls the candidate of these plunderers. But how? Where were his funds to come from? There had been plenty of offers of ready money when it was supposed that his election was assured. But now the tone of his supporters was less confident, and ugly rumors reached him of defections among the Irish in the other ward. He was in the fight to stay. So he declared on the stump and in his home. He could not afford to be defeated. It was a case of hit or miss, win or lose. Maddened, desperate, and excited, he threw prudence to the winds and scattered dollars freely for proselytizing expenses until the morning of the election. Each side claimed the victory until the polls were closed. The result was close--a matter of one hundred and fifty ballots--but Emil proved to be the loser, and at a cost of over three thousand dollars. The fund which he had borrowed from his wife was exhausted, and he had incurred, besides, a batch of unpaid bills for refreshments, carriages, and other incidental expenses. He awoke at dawn from a nap at a table in a saloon from which the last of his followers had slipped away. Slouching into his kitchen, where his wife was kindling the fire, he tossed his hat on the table and said with a malignant sneer: "The jig's up." Constance was pale. She had been watching for him all night, and had heard from a neighbor the dismal result. Her heart was wrung with pity and distress, but she perceived that it was no time for consolatory words. She busied herself in preparing a cup of coffee, which presently she placed before him, stooping as she did so to kiss him softly on the forehead. He was sitting by the table with his legs thrust out and his hands sunk in his trousers pockets, chewing an unlighted cigar, one of those left from the supply he had bought for political hospitality. His wife's action seemed to remind him of her presence. He looked up at her viciously, showing the white of his eye like a surly dog. "What do you want?" "Your coffee, Emil." He glared at the smoking cup, then with a sweep of his arm dashed it away: "To hell with you and your messes, you--you fool!" The crash of the crockery was followed by silence. It seemed to Constance that she had been struck by a bullet, so confounding were his words. Her husband address her like that? What did it mean? "Emil," she gasped--"you are ill!" "Not ill, but tired of you." "Of me? Your wife? What have I done?" "Why didn't you consent to move to New York when I wished to go?" he snapped. "If you had, I wouldn't be in this fix, sold out by a pack of filthy Hibernian cut-throats." "I was ready to go if you wished it, Emil. We will go now--if only you do not speak to me so unkindly." "It's too late," he replied with a sneer. "What use would it be, anyway? We look at everything differently. We always have." "You do not realize what you are saying. You do not know what you are saying." "Crazy, am I? The best thing for you to do is to ask some of your church philanthropists to supply you with laundry work. You're likely to need it. The jig's up, I tell you. We haven't a dollar left." "Very well." "The mortgage money with the rest." He threw the chewed cigar on the floor and ground it with his foot. "Very well. I can bear anything except that you should speak to me so cruelly. Have I been afraid of work? Whatever has happened we mustn't forget the children, Emil. We must keep up our courage on their account at least." He scowled at the reference. "I'll look out for the children. Is there any beer in the house?" "No." Then after a moment's hesitation she added, "May I ask you something, Emil? Won't you give up beer? It is hurting your life. I am sure of it. I have felt so for some time, and you have known that I have hated your fondness for it. Give it up altogether and--and we will go to New York or anywhere you wish and make a fresh start." In her dismay at his brutality she was eager and thankful to throw the responsibility for his conduct on his propensity for drink. She felt the obligation to speak fearlessly on this score, even though she irritated him. Her gentle remonstrances had been of no avail, and she must struggle with him now against himself or lose him altogether. Emil heard her appeal with a deepening scowl. For a moment it seemed as though he were about to strike her. Then, as what he evidently considered the audacity of her expostulation worked on his mind, self-pity was mingled with his anger. "You'd deprive me of my beer, would you? The only solace I've got. Why don't you go smash my fiddle, too? That's the way with you pious women; a man gets down on his luck and you stop his comforts and drive him into the street. Very well, then, if I can't get beer in this house, little saint, there's lots of places I can. This is the last straw." Thereupon he strode out of the house, closing the kitchen door behind him with a vicious bang. VI Constance did not see her husband again for twenty-four hours. He returned at supper-time and took his place at the table without a word of apology or explanation. He was in a state of great depression, morose and uncommunicative. On previous occasions when misfortune had befallen him, he had taken his wife into his confidence, but now it seemed either that he had lost his grip on life so completely that words failed him, or that the resentment which he had expressed toward her was still dominant. When the meal was over, he went out and did not return until late. He was boozy with drink, and threw himself on his bed with the air of a man who would fain dispel consciousness by the luxury of sleep. Emil's mode of life for the next few weeks was substantially a repetition of this programme. Glum, sour, and listless he went his way in the morning; fuddled, indifferent, and sleepy he returned at night. Concerning his circumstances and plans he said nothing to Constance. She was left totally in the dark as to the extent and the effect of his reverses. He had told her that they were ruined, yet he continued to go down-town as though nothing had happened. Trusting that he would enlighten her of his own accord, at first she asked no questions. Then as he did not speak, she requested him one morning to tell her how his affairs stood, urging her solicitude and affection. He listened frowningly and put her off with the disconcerting utterance "You'll know soon enough. It's just as well to let a drowning man grasp at straws while there are any to grasp at." His half-scornful, half-desperate manner forbade further inquiry at the moment if she did not wish to widen the breach between them. Constance was in deep distress. She yearned to comfort and help him, but this wifely, loving impulse was haunted by the consciousness now forced upon her with painful clearness that she had misjudged his nature and was mated to a crank. How otherwise could she interpret his hostile attitude toward herself? To what but a cross-grained perversity of soul could she ascribe his disposition to blame her for his misfortunes? Her duty was plain, to make the best of the situation, and to ignore, so far as self-respect would permit, his laceration of her feelings, trusting to time to restore his sense of justice and renew concord between them. But what hope was there for the future? Hope for the realization of that blissful, ennobling married state to which she had looked forward as a bride and had believed in store for her? Here was the thought which tormented her and gave poignancy to the dismay and anxiety of the moment. Even if their immediate circumstances were less serious than Emil had declared, was there any reason to believe that his next experiment would be more successful? She had accepted hitherto without question his declaration that ill-luck had been responsible for all his troubles, but that consolation was hers no longer. She found herself listening to the voice of criticism to which until now she had turned a deaf ear. In a new spirit, without bitterness, but in the assertion of her right as a wife to judge the man to whom she had committed her happiness, she recalled the incidents of their married life--his theories, arguments, and point of view. He had declared her to blame for his misfortunes. Surely if she had failed in her duty it had not been toward him. She had sacrificed her opinions to his, and for his sake abnegated her most precious predilections in order to make the union of their lives sweeter and more complete. If she were guilty, was it not of treason to her own instincts and her own conscience? Emil indeed had persuaded himself not merely that fortune had betrayed him, and the hand of the prosperous world was against him, but that his wife was partly to blame for it. Looking back on his last fiasco, he conjured up the circumstance that she had not fallen in with his suggestion of an exodus to New York, and this he had promptly distorted into a grievance, which grew the more he nursed it. To the notion that she had thwarted him in everything and that their relations as husband and wife had been wholly unsympathetic was only another step. It suited him to feel that he was the injured party, for he was face to face with the responsibility of supporting his family, which must be met or avoided. The question of immediate funds was already pressing. His last reverse had discouraged and angered him, but it had not diminished his confidence that he would succeed in the right place. It had only convinced him that Benham was not the right place; that Benham was too small and provincial; too unappreciative of real ability. He was unpleasantly in debt, but the bills which he had contracted for political expenses could be disregarded for the present. He had no property with which to meet them, and if he were pressed, he had merely to go into insolvency in order to rid himself of them altogether. Nor need he worry about the mortgage for the present. It would not be due for two years, and, provided the interest were paid, they could not be molested. These redeeming features of his plight were clear to him after the first days of mental agitation, but his spirit did not reassert its wonted elasticity. Analyzing the cause, he perceived that his whole surroundings were repugnant to him, and that he shrank from recommencing life at the foot of the ladder under the conditions in which he found himself. He was determined to leave Benham, and he was determined that his family, if they came with him, should toe the mark. What this phrase meant precisely he did not formulate, but it suited his mood. "Toe the mark." He kept repeating it to himself, as though it promised relief from domestic insubordination. Yes, if his wife did not choose to adopt his theories and abet him in his undertakings, she could go her own way for all he cared. It was only on account of the children that he did not put an end to their contract of marriage to-morrow by leaving her. Except for them it were surely folly for a man and woman whose ideas were utterly at variance to continue a partnership the only fruit of which could be discord and recriminations. So he argued, and it was only the thought of his children which restrained him from precipitate action and caused him to continue to go down-town every day seeking a bare livelihood. Since the night of his defeat at the polls, Constance had not asked him for money. Presumably she had some laid by, and was living on that, but by the first of the month she must have recourse to him or starve, and then would be the time for his ultimatum. The terms of this, beyond a declaration of general discontent, were still hazy in his brain, befogged by malt liquor and inflamed by hatred of the world, but a glowing conviction that their marriage had been a failure through her fault was a satisfactory substitute for definiteness. Brooding like a spider in its web, secretive, hoping that something would turn up to put him on his feet again, yet almost reckless in his attitude, and drinking assiduously, he drifted on without aim. His evenings were spent at his workingmen's club, where he continued as an outlet to his feelings to deliver virulent philippics, which he realized as he uttered them were a sorry equivalent for personal success. While thus limp and embittered, a final mishap impelled Emil to action. It happened that the broker on the same floor as the office where he had desk-room, and with whom he was on familiar terms, let him in for a disastrous tip and put the screws on when the market went the other way. The sum involved was three hundred dollars, the total residue of Emil's capital, which he had allowed to remain untouched with this false friend in order not to be entirely without the means to speculate. The advice offered had seemed to be friendly and disinterested. When the result proved disastrous the victim promptly suspected guile. Certainly he encountered a flinty demeanor, as though the proprietor of the "bucket-shop" were cognizant of the impecuniosity of his customer and had decided to squeeze him dry and break with him. This from the man whose social status on the street he had championed seemed to Emil rank ingratitude. Yet the broker was making no more than ordinary business demands upon him. His margin was exhausted, and the transaction would be closed unless he supplied additional security. This was business-like, but not friendly, as it seemed to Emil, especially as the ingrate, who had been so confident of the value of the tip, chose now to be sphinx-like as to what the next day's price of the stock would be. All he would vouchsafe was that it would go up sooner or later. Since it was necessary to act at once, and to sell meant the loss of the remnant of his capital, Emil concluded to give himself a chance by making use of five hundred dollars which had just been paid over to him for a client in redemption of a mortgage. He argued that the stock, having fallen in price contrary to expectation, was not likely to decline further at once, and that if he protected his account, he would be able to make inquiries and form a more intelligent opinion by the end of a few days as to what he had best do. Besides, there was lurking in his mind the bitter argument, which he chose to believe sound, that the world owed every man a living, and assuredly owed it to a man like himself. Since the hand of society seemed to be against him, why should he not take advantage of the resources at his disposal and save himself? He was simply borrowing; if he were not able to return the money at once, he would do so later with interest. The consequences of this performance were disastrous. As Emil had predicted, the stock in question remained stationary for three days, but by the end of them he felt no clearer regarding which course to pursue. Estimates as to its value were contradictory; yet since a sale at the market price meant the safety of the five hundred dollars at the cost of his own financial obliteration, he remained hopeful. On the fourth day the stock broke sharply, and again on the day after. His holding was only one hundred shares--a paltry transaction from a capitalistic point of view--yet it was rashness for him. Adversity and his pressing needs had tempted him to disregard his meditated prudence and to venture on thin ice. He perceived himself ruined and a defaulter. The obliquity of his peculation was mitigated in his mind by the conviction that fortune had been signally cruel to him. As for the borrowed money, he would give his note and pay it presently when he was on his feet again. Yet he appreciated that his opportunities for making a living in Benham were at an end, and that if he remained, he might find difficulty in inducing the owner of the five hundred dollars to accept him as a creditor without demur. Clearly the simplest course was to come to terms by post. To shake the dust of Benham from his feet was his dearest wish, and the time had arrived for its fulfilment. There was still one hundred dollars belonging to his client in his hands which he had not used. This he drew to provide himself with travelling expenses, arguing that the sooner he were able to reach New York, the quicker the loan would be repaid, and slipped from the city without a word to anyone. He had decided to cut adrift from all his past associations, and an indispensable portion of his plan was to sever forever his relations with his wife. A week later he wrote this letter to her from New York: Constance: This is to let you know what has become of me. You may have guessed the truth, but it's woman's way to worry, weep, and raise a hue and cry, though she knows in her heart that she's mismated, and that it would be a godsend to her if "hubby" had really blown his brains out or were safely at the bottom of a well. I'm not dead yet, nor am I contemplating suicide at present. Though if the time ever does come when I think the game is played out, it will be one-two-three-go! without any pause between the numbers. But I'm as good as dead now, so far as you are concerned. You won't be troubled by me further. You've seen the last of me. I told you I was strapped. I'm cleaned out to the last dollar. But that doesn't phaze me except for the moment. I'm going to make a fresh start and a clean sweep at the same time. You know as well as I that our marriage has not been a glittering success. In short, we've made a mess of it. We thought we were suited to each other, and we find we're not. That's all. I don't approve of you any more than you do of me, and what's the use of making each other miserable by protracting the relation until death do us part? It's up to me to undo the Gordian-knot, and I've cut it. You'll shed some tears, I suppose, over the situation, and your friends will call me a brute. But when the shock is past and sentimental considerations have evaporated, just ask yourself if I'm not doing the sensible thing for us both. We don't look at life in the same way and never will. I'm a radical, and you're a conservative, and we were misled before marriage by the affinities of flesh to suppose that oil and water would harmonize. From the point of view of law I'm the offending party, and you'll be a free woman to sue for divorce on the ground of desertion, by the end of three years. In the meantime, you can go back to your kindergarten work or whatever you see fit. You have your health, and your philanthropic church friends will enable you to support yourself. The only hitch is the children. If you had been ready to follow me to New York when I first suggested it, we might not be separating now. I expect and am anxious to provide for them. If you will send them on to me, they shall want for nothing. But if you are bent on keeping them, as I foresee may be the case, the responsibility is yours. I should like one at least--preferably the boy. If you insist on keeping them both, I can't help myself. There's where you have the whip-hand over me. But don't delude yourself with the notion that I don't love my own flesh and blood because I'm not willing to live with their mother. There will be no use in your coming on here or trying to find me. I have made up my mind. We could never be happy together, so the fewer words said about parting the better. Send your answer regarding the children to the New York post-office. I shall expect it for a week. The money you loaned me is gone with the rest, but they can't turn you out of your house until the mortgage is due, if you pay the interest. Some day I shall pay it back to you. I wish you well, and consider I'm doing us both a service in cutting loose from you. Good-by, EMIL. It seemed to Constance when she had finished this letter as though her heart would stop. Was this reality? Could it be that her husband was abandoning her and her children in cold blood, treating the sacred ties of marriage as lightly as though they were straws? Alas! his cruel words stared her in the face, freezing her soul, which had been sick for days over his unexplained absence; sick from dread. Yes, she had guessed; but she had put the horror from her as impossible, despite his hints. Unbalanced and embittered as he was, he could not be so unkind. Now she was face to face with certainty; there was no room for hope. It was true; so cruelly inhumanly true that her brain felt dazed and numb. She gazed at his writing stony-eyed and appalled, limp with dismay and forlornness. To avoid falling she put out her hand to the table, and the contact of her own flesh served to readjust her consciousness. Seating herself she swept her fingers across her brow to rally her senses, and read the letter again slowly. Then mortification succeeded dismay, and resentment followed close on mortification. The wounded pride of the wife, the indignation of the mother protesting for her children asserted themselves, causing her to flush to the roots of her hair and her pulses to tingle. Coward! Unnatural father! What had she done to deserve this? What had they done, helpless innocents? Give them up to him? Her children, now the only joy of her life? Never. They could not both have them. Why should he who had left them in the lurch have either? She could hear their prattle in the adjoining room, poor little souls, unconscious of their misery. Then her sense of wounded pride and her anger were forgotten in the agony of a possible separation from her offspring, and in the loss of her husband's love, and her tense nerves gave way. "Oh, Emil, my husband, how could you?" she moaned, and burying her face in her hands she let sorrow have full sway. [Illustration: "Oh, Emil, my husband, how could you?" she moaned] When she had dried her eyes she was prepared to face the situation and to think more calmly. Certain points were now clear. Emil was right; since he had ceased to love her, they could never be happy together. So far as she could see, she had not been at fault, though he had persuaded himself that she was to blame. She would never have left him; but now that he had deserted her, she could dare to admit that their souls were not in accord, and that her love and respect for him had been waning in spite of herself for many months. She would not attempt to follow him, and she desired to retain both the children. Was it her duty to let Emil have one of them? Here was the only harassing point in the plans for the future which she was formulating. Would it be fair to the children to separate them? Would she be justified in keeping them both, in view of the affection which their father had professed for his own flesh and blood? As Emil had declared, he and she had made a mess of their marriage, and they were to separate. Was it fair to him to keep both the boy and the girl? Ah, but she could not bear the thought of giving up either. She felt the need of counsel. To whom could she turn? Who were her friends? She thought of Mr. Prentiss, and she remembered her husband's taunt concerning her philanthropic church friends with a sense of shrinking. The church offered itself as a refuge to all in the hour of distress, but it seemed to her as though she would rather starve than apply to Mr. Prentiss. Not that she was afraid of starving. That side of the situation had no terrors for her. She was almost glad at the idea of supporting herself and her darlings, and she had entire confidence in her ability to do so, even though she were forced to scrub floors. But she yearned for the sympathy and advice of a friend. How lonely she had suddenly become in this large, busy city! Emil had evinced little desire, especially of late, to make friends in the neighborhood, and she had been so absorbed in her home and her husband's interest that she had disregarded her social opportunities. He had been apt to speak slightingly of their acquaintances as people whom he would soon outstrip in the struggle of life. And now she was the poorest of the poor, the saddest of the sad, one of the lowly common people for whom her doctor father's heart had ever cherished fond and patient sympathy. She was one of them now herself. How different had been her dreams and her ambition. To think that she, Constance Forbes, had come to this--a wife abandoned by her husband, alone and friendless, with only the semblance of a roof to shelter her and her children. But all this was nothing if only she need not part with either of her babies. She would be able to support them, never fear, and with them to support she could be brave, even happy. But without them? No, no, Emil had forsaken her, she had lost her faith in him, he was not worthy of the sacrifice; she dared not trust him; he had no right to either. She could not, she would not let either go. When the morning came she was more firmly of the same opinion, and she composed this reply to her husband: Emil: I have your letter and my heart is filled with sorrow. I cannot compel you to live with me against your will. God knows I have tried to be a loving, dutiful, and sympathetic wife, but it seems I have failed to please you. It is true that our ideas of how to live and what is right are very different. I have been aware of that in my secret soul, but for your sake I did my best to adopt your point of view. Now I shall be free to follow my own. Since you no longer love me, I am not sorry that we are to live apart, for I can see now that I have suffered much on your account. But I do not choose to reproach you. What good would it do? Besides you are the father of my children--poor little things. I do not think that I should have written to you at all if it were not for the question what is to become of them. I am trying to do what is best for them and to be just; just to you and to myself. I have decided to keep both the children. They are babies still, and need a mother's love. A father's too, but it seems they cannot have both. Let God judge between us, Emil. They are my flesh and blood too, and it is you who are forsaking us, not we you. As you say, I have my health and we shall not starve. I am not afraid. There is nothing more to say, is there? It has all been a dreadful mistake--and we thought we should be so happy. Good-by. In spite of everything I shall always think of you kindly. CONSTANCE. Having despatched this she felt as though she would be glad to die. Life seemed so flat, and her condition so humiliating. Her love for Emil was dead; the union of their souls was broken; what was there to look forward to? Yet she knew that she must not stop to repine or to indulge in self-pity. The stern necessity of winning bread for her children confronted her and must be faced at once and resolutely. In this she must find happiness and fresh inspiration. It was her duty to close the ears and eyes of her soul to the voices and visions of the past. Hard work would save her brain from giving way, and hard work only. What should that work be? What was she to do? In the first glow of her pride, revolting at the slight which her husband had put upon her, the way had seemed easy, but viewed in the sober light of reality it bristled with difficulties. Yet now, as she pondered and realized what failure would mean, her spirit rose to meet them, and immediate needs forced sorrow to the background. Where was she to find work? Since the receipt of her husband's letter everything outside her own emotions had been a blank to her; her gaze had been solely introspective. Conscious now of the need of action and of renewing her contact with the world, she took up the newspaper, yesterday's issue of which lay unopened on the table, and began to examine the page of advertisements for employment. She must find at once something which would provide her with ready money. Only through friends and only after delay could she hope to obtain a kindergarten position; it would take time and instruction to learn typewriting; she was not sufficiently proficient in languages or music to offer herself as a teacher. She could become a domestic servant or a shopgirl. In the former case it would be necessary to board out her children, to give them to some institution, perhaps, a prospect which wrung her heart; in the latter she could be with them at night, but who would look after and guard them during the day? What did other women do whose husbands ran away and left them? The long list of people out of work was appalling, and few of the opportunities offered seemed to fit her circumstances. Someone was seeking employment as a seamstress. She might take in sewing. This perhaps was the most feasible suggestion. She was handy at plain sewing, and a little practice would doubtless render her skilful. Yes, she would try this, and in order to obtain a start would solicit work from some of the neighbors, if needs be. The neighbors? They did not know as yet of her misfortune--her disgrace, for it was a disgrace to be forsaken by her husband. It would be necessary to tell them. What should she say? Entertaining sadly this necessity of an avowal, she glanced over the rest of the newspaper, and came suddenly upon a paragraph which informed her that her misfortune was already public. Prefaced by offensive headlines, "Emil Stuart disappears from Benham! What has become of Mrs. Morgan's mortgage money?" the wretched story stood exploited to the world. Constance read and the cup of her distress and humiliation overflowed. It needed only this insinuation of dishonesty to complete her misery. Her husband an embezzler? Where should she hide her head? Nor was there comfort in the reporter's closing effort at euphemism: "One or two acquaintances of the late candidate for aldermanic honors, when apprised of his mysterious disappearance, expressed the belief that his seeming irregularities would be explained to the satisfaction of all concerned; but a gentleman, whose name we are not at liberty to disclose, hazards an opinion, based on personal observation, that Mr. Stuart has been premeditating this step for several weeks, and is a fugitive from justice. The circumstance that his wife and two children have been left behind in Benham invites the further inquiry whether he has also abandoned his family. There are rumors that Mr. Stuart's domestic relations were not altogether harmonious." Constance let the newspaper slip from her hands. Her cheeks burned with shame. This was the last straw. Her husband a defaulter, and her relations with him the subject of common newspaper gossip. As she stood spell-bound by this new phase of misfortune the door-bell rang. A visitor. Who could it be? Some sympathetic or curious neighbor who had read of her calamities. Or more probably the writer of the newspaper article coming to probe into her misery in search of fresh copy. For a moment she thought that she would not answer the call, and she waited hoping that whoever it was would go away. Again the bell rang, this time sharply. It might be something important, even a telegram from Emil to clear himself. Picking up the newspaper she concealed it hastily, then stepped into the passage and opened the door slightly. "May I come in?" asked a strong, friendly voice. "Oh yes, Mr. Prentiss; excuse me," she faltered. She had recognized at once who her visitor was, but so many bewildering things had happened that she stood for a moment irresolute, refusing to credit her own senses. As she opened wide the door, the clergyman strode in fearlessly as though he realized that the situation must be carried by storm. Entering the parlor, he put out his hand and said with manly effusion: "I have come to ask you to let me help you, Mrs. Stuart." "Sit down, please. You are very kind. I----" Her words choked her, and she stopped. "I saw by the newspaper yesterday that you were in trouble. I do not wish to pry into your affairs, but I thought that you might be glad of the counsel of a friend." His visit was precious balm to her spirit, but, despite her gratitude, the knowledge that he was heaping the traditional coals of fire on her head made her uncomfortable. She had choked from mingled relief and mortification. But now her finer instinct responded to the kindness of his words and she said with simple directness: "I should like to tell you everything, Mr. Prentiss. My husband left a week ago. He does not intend to return. I have a letter from him, and he--he does not wish to live with me any longer. He was willing to support the children, but I could not make up my mind to let them go. Our money is all gone and this house is mortgaged. If you will help me to find work so that I can support them and myself, I shall be very grateful. It was very good of you to come to see me." The children, attracted by the voice of a stranger, had run in and stood one on either side of their mother staring at him shyly with cherubic eyes. The clergyman said to himself that here was a veritable Madonna of distress--this lithe, nervous-looking woman with her slim figure and soulful face. How pretty and neat she looked in spite of her misery! How engaging were the tones in which she had set forth her calamity! He had always admired her, and it had been a disappointment to him that she had strayed. There was almost jubilation in his heart as he heard that she was free from the wretch who had pulled her down; and though he intended to temper the ardor of the priest by the tact of a man of the world, he could not entirely restrain his impulse to stigmatize her husband. "I see," he said. "You are much to be pitied. It is a cruel wrong; the act of a coward. But you must not take your trouble too much to heart, Mrs. Stuart, for the man who will leave a sweet wife and tender children from mere caprice is no real husband and father." "Mr. Stuart has had much to worry him of late. He has lost money, and been unfortunate in politics." Her impulse was to apologize for her husband even then. "I cannot understand though how he could leave us," she added. After all why should she a second time on Emil's account set her face against the truth in the presence of this true friend? Emil was a coward, and his act was a cruel wrong. But Mr. Prentiss had recovered his aplomb. "I will not distress you by talking about him; he has gone. The matter with which I am concerned is how to help you. We must find you employment at once." Constance regarded him gratefully. "That is my great requirement just now, Mr. Prentiss. I need work to keep my children from starving and to help me to forget. I am not afraid of work. I shall be glad to do anything for which I am fit." "I understand, I understand. It is the pride of my church to help just such women as you to help themselves. You need give yourself no concern as to your immediate pecuniary needs. They will be provided for. I will send the Deaconess to you at once." The directness of his bounty, the plain intimation that she was a subject for charity brought a flush to her cheeks. But she knew in an instant that it would be false pride to protest. There was no food or money in the house. "Thank you," she said simply. Mr. Prentiss divined her reluctance and appreciated the delicacy of her submission. He recognized that this woman with wistful brown eyes and nervous, intelligent face was no ordinary person--was even more deserving than he had supposed, and his thoughts were already busy with the problem of her future. He must find just the right thing for her. "I know, of course, that you wish to become self-supporting as soon as possible," he said. "Will you tell me a little more about yourself and your capabilities? You came to Benham a few months before your marriage to fit yourself to be a kindergarten teacher, if I remember aright?" During the momentary pause which preceded this inquiry her conscience had been reasserting itself. She had longed for counsel and here it was. If she had erred, there was yet time to repair her fault. "Before we talk of that, may I ask you one question, Mr. Prentiss? I wish to know if you think it was selfish of me to keep both the children. I desire to do what is right this time, whatever it cost me." She clasped her hands resolutely in her lap as though she were nerving herself for a sacrifice. "I hope you will tell me exactly what you think." The clergyman's heart warmed at this revelation of spiritual vigor. "Here is a soul worth helping," he reflected. Then, in answer to her appeal, he exclaimed with righteous emphasis: "Ask your own heart, my dear woman. Would you dare trust these babies to your husband's keeping? This is a problem of right and wrong, and demands a severing of the sheep from the goats. You may banish that doubt forever." Constance dropped her eyes to hide the tears of satisfaction which had sprung into them at his words. Her children were safe. The counsel given was the very echo of the test by which she had justified herself toward Emil. "Excuse me," she said in apology for her emotion. Then looking up she added with tremulous brightness, "I felt that I must be sure before anything else was decided. And now to answer your question as to my own capabilities: I have none. I am eager to learn, and I have had some education--my father was fond of books and had a library--but I tell you frankly that there is nothing but the simplest manual work for which I am fitted at the present time. I have thought that all over." "So far so good. Much of the trouble of this world proceeds from the inability of people to discern for what they are not fitted. Can you sew?" "I can do plain sewing satisfactorily." "We will begin with that then. It will keep you busy for the time being. Meanwhile I shall have an opportunity to consider what you had best undertake." He rose and put out his hand with spontaneous friendliness. "Good-by. God bless you. You are a brave soul, and He will not desert you or leave you comfortless." Constance quickened at the firm pressure, and her own fingers acknowledged the interest which it expressed. She looked into his eyes with frank confidence. "You have come to me at a time when I needed someone more than ever before in my life. I shall never forget it." Mr. Prentiss nodded and turned to go as though he would disclaim this expression of everlasting obligation. He felt that he was about his Master's business, and was seeking neither thanks nor praise. Yet, while he deprecated her gratitude, her entire mental attitude caused him ethical and æsthetic satisfaction. The conviction that this ward of the church was worth saving and helping gave elasticity to his step and erectness to his large figure as he strode up the street, knocking now and again some bit of orange peel or other refuse from the sidewalk with a sweep of his cane, which suggested a spirit eager to do battle in behalf of righteousness. VII Two days later the Rev. George Prentiss dined at the house of another of his parishioners, Mrs. Randolph Wilson. She was a widow of about forty-five, the sister of Carleton Howard, reputedly the wealthiest and most sagacious of Benham's financial magnates, and a generous benefactress of St. Stephen's. Her bounty had enabled the rector from time to time to carry out his cherished plans for the æsthetic adornment of the church property. The reredos, two stained-glass windows, and the baptismal font in the enlarged edifice had been provided by her; and in the matter of charity she never failed to respond by munificent subscriptions to the various causes in aid of which he appealed to his congregation. They were friends and allies; interested mutually in St. Stephen's, and interested also, as they both liked to feel, in promoting American civilization outside of church work. Her house, or palace, as it should more properly be termed, a counterpart to that of her brother's which adjoined it, stood in the van of progress, in Benham's fashionable new quarter beyond the River Drive. No pains or expense had been spared to make these mansions impressive and magnificent. Architects of repute had been employed to superintend their construction, and their decorations and furnishings had been chosen in consultation with persons whose business it was to know the whereabouts of admirable objects of art, and to tempt impecunious noble families abroad to exchange their unique treasures for dazzling round sums of American gold. Mrs. Wilson could fairly be termed the leader of social activity in Benham, if such a term be compatible with the institutions of a country where every women is supposed to be a law unto herself. Fashions, in the narrow sense of clothes, are in America set by the dressmakers, but what Mrs. Wilson wore was always a matter of moment to women who wished to be in style. She dressed elegantly, and she was able to take liberties with the dressmakers, doing daring things with colors and materials which justified themselves, yet were so individual that they were liable to make guys of those who copied her. Consequently, her wardrobe had a distinction of its own which proclaimed fashion yet defied it. Yet her clothes, striking and superb as they often were, constituted only a small part of her social effectiveness. Her gracious finished manners, and quick, tactful intelligence were the agents of a spirit perpetually eager to be occupied and to lead, and which had found a labor of love in directing what may well be called Benham's æsthetic renaissance. For Benham's evolution had been no mere growth of bricks and mortar, and no mere triumph in census figures over other centres of population. Even more remarkable and swift than its physical changes had been the transformation in the point of view of its citizens. Twenty years earlier--in 1870, when Mr. Prentiss was a young man just starting in the ministry--he had been one of a small group of earnest souls interested in awakening the public to a consciousness of the paucity of their æsthetic interests, and to the value of color as a stimulating factor in the every-day life of the community, and as such he had often deplored the aridity of Benham's point of view. In those days the city was virtually a hot-bed of republican simplicity and contempt for social refinements so far as all but a very small percentage of the inhabitants was concerned. Those who built houses larger and finer than their neighbors were few in number and were stigmatized, if not as enemies of the institutions of the country, as purse-proud and frivolous. Hotels were conducted on the theory that what was good enough for the landlord was good enough for the guest, and that malcontents could go elsewhere. In matters appertaining to art, hygiene, education or municipal management, one man's opinion was regarded as equal to any other's, provided he could get the job. Special knowledge was sneered at, and the best patriots in the public estimation were those who did not distrust the ability of the average citizen to produce masterpieces in the line of his or her employment by dint of raw genius untrammelled or unpolluted by the experience of older civilizations. Though solid business men wore solemn-looking black frock-coats and black wisp ties in business hours, to dress again in the evening was looked at askance as undemocratic. It would have been considered an invasion of the rights of the free-born citizen to forbid expectoration in the street cars. Suggestions that the vicious and unregenerate adult pauper poor should not be herded with the young, that busy physicians should cleanse a lancet before probing a wound, and that sewage should not be emptied into a river used as a source of water supply, were still sniffed at by those in charge of public affairs as aristocratic innovations unworthy the attention of a sovereign people. Architectural beauty both within and without the house was disregarded in favor of monotonous sober hues and solid effects, which were deemed to be suggestive of the seriousness of the national character. While deploring some of these civic manifestations, Mr. Prentiss had appreciated that the basis of this æsthetic sterility was ethical. When less discerning persons had attributed it solely to ignorance and self-righteous superficiality he had maintained that a puritanical, yet moral and sincere, hostility to extravagance and display was responsible for the preference for ugly architecture and homely upholstery and decoration, and that conscience was the most formidable obstacle to progress. As a priest of a church which fostered beauty and favored rational enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, he had never sympathized with this public attitude, but he had understood and, as an American, respected it. Now, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, all was changed, and Benham was in the throes of a revival; a revival which during the last ten years had revolutionized Benham's architecture and Benham's point of view. The public had become possessed by the conviction that they had outgrown their associations and that the standards hitherto revered were out of date and unworthy of a nation and a city pledged to enlighten the world, upon whom prosperity had been bestowed in large measure. The group of earnest souls who had dared to criticise seemed suddenly to have become a phalanx--numerically unimportant, still, when compared with the whole population, that seething army of industrial wage-earners--but assertive and energetic out of proportion to their numbers. The city had become a hive of reforming activities. Specialists in the arts and humanities were no longer classed as traitors, but were welcomed by a growing clientage as safeguards against bumptious individualism. Though a cheerful optimism in regard to the city's architectural merits still prevailed at large, a silent censorship was at work; substituting, in the business quarter, new mammoth structures adapted to modern industrial needs, erecting in the fashionable quarter, by the aid of American architects trained in Paris, well-built and individual-looking residences. Instead of three or four cheerless, barrack-like caravansaries with sodden cookery, there was a score of modern hotels, the proprietors of which vied with one another in their endeavors to lure patronage by costly and sumptuous innovations. There were comfortable and inviting restaurants. The slap-dash luncheon counter, with its display of pallid pie and one cadaverous chicken, was waning in the popular esteem, in favor of neat spas, at which the rush of patronage was alleviated by clean service and wholesome fare. There were eight theatres, each more spacious and splendid than its predecessor. A frowsy black coat, worn in the forenoon, had ceased to be a badge of patriotism or moral worth, and the community had become alive to the values of spruceness, color, and comfort in matters of dress. Not only this, but on the streets of Benham there were many stylish equipages with liveried grooms, and in the superb homes which the wealthy citizens had established, there were grand entertainments, where rivalry was rampant and money flowed like champagne. And last, but not least, there was Mrs. Randolph Wilson, the quintessence in her own person of all that was best in this revival in favor of the beautiful things of life, the living embodiment of this newly directed and freshly inspired energy. For well-to-do Benham and Mr. Prentiss liked to believe that the impulse behind these materialistic manifestations was conscience and aspiration, a reaching out for a greater human happiness and a wider human usefulness than had been possible under the old dispensation. This access of lavish philanthropy and study of charitable methods, this zeal of committees promoting new and more thorough methods in hygiene and education, and all the phases of this new awakening in quest of Christian beauty signified to him Benham's--and hence American--originality and fervor refined and spiritualized; Benham's enterprise and independence informed, chastened, and fortified. And yet there was another side to this whole matter which had haunted Mr. Prentiss much of late, and which was in his thoughts to-night as he sat smoking his cigar after dinner. He had dined sumptuously. Cool oysters, soup of mushrooms, fish smothered in a luscious sauce, cutlets of venison with French beans, little pyramids of _paté de foie gras_ encased in jelly, butter-ball ducks with a salad richly dressed, and a confection of fruit, cream, and pastry, which was evidently a gastronomic specialty of Mrs. Wilson's French cook. He had tasted everything; he had drunk two glasses of champagne, and been pleasantly aware that the cup of black coffee, served after dinner, was an entrancing concoction which his own kitchen did not afford; and he felt that his repast had done him good. It was for him an occasion. Obviously it was for Mrs. Wilson an every-day affair. Moreover, this rich, delicious dinner, served by noiseless servants on choice china, was in harmony with the rest of the magnificent establishment, in harmony with the artistic scheme of color, the soft lustrous draperies, the striking pictures and other masterpieces of art purchased for large sums abroad, and Mrs. Wilson's beautiful toilette and exquisite personality. Here was luxury triumphant and compelling, yet unappeased and seeking fresh opportunities for æsthetic delight; as witness a Millet, an inlaid table, and a Japanese idol in the room in which he sat, all new since he had dined there last. What a vivid contrast all this to the cheerless often squalid homes which he was accustomed to visit as a rector of Christ's church! The thought which haunted him was that one result of the city's marvellous growth and development had been the accentuation of the distinctions between rich and poor, between class and class in a community where, until lately, there had been theoretically no classes. To be sure he had Mr. Carleton Howard's assertion that there was no country in the world where the poor man was so well off. This was very likely true, but it did not affect the proposition that the rich were daily growing richer and more self-indulgent. What was to be the limit--the outcome of this renaissance of beauty and comfort, which he had welcomed? Had not the æsthetic reaction almost reached the point where, both as a priest of God and as a good American, it behooved him to cry halt against luxury and extravagance? He frowned at this last reflection for the reason that he was painfully aware that he had fulminated against this sort of thing from the pulpit for years, formerly as part of the clerical formula championing the cause of the spirit against the flesh, and latterly because the Aladdin-like growth of great fortunes all over the land, and conspicuously in his own community, had often suggested the comparison between the passage of a camel through the eye of a needle and the rich man's entrance into the kingdom of heaven as an appropriate text. He had spoken with fervor and sincerity concerning the responsibilities of those having great possessions, and sometimes with living pictures in his mind. Neither Mrs. Wilson nor her brother had ever been among those for whom these admonitions were intended. They had opened their purse-strings liberally to every meritorious cause. The goodly size of their cheques was to him a constant source both of satisfaction and astonishment--astonishment at the new possibilities open to those interested in God's kingdom. Yet, though he put from him as ungenerous and unnecessary any positive criticism of his hostess, in the teeth of her many benefactions and her personal activity in social undertakings, he could not help realizing that, in spite of his utterances, the evil which he deprecated was proceeding at a pace which suggested the course of wild-fire. And the worst of it was that he--the church--was so helpless. Great fortunes had been accumulated with a zeal which suggested the inevitable march of destiny--a law which seemed almost to mock the spirit of Christ--and, even while he was musing, the city had become a theatre of industrial contrasts, with the pomp and pride of life in the centre of the stage and poverty and distress in the ample background. There recurred to him the traditional image of the curate of his faith--the Church of England--cringing before or patronized by the titled worshippers of Mammon. This, at least, he could resent as impossible in his case--he had never hesitated to speak his mind to any of his parishioners, however important--still, the reminder was disconcerting and a challenge to his conscience. Nor was the reflection that this wave of luxury, this more and more exacting reverence for material comforts, was a part of the movement of the century, and was common to all civilized countries, a solace. He was an American, but first of all, he was a servant of the church, and the church was the beacon of civilization. Was she doing her work, if these terrible inequalities were to continue? What was to be the outcome of this zest for luxurious personal comfort? To what extent the church ought to take part in the economic regeneration of the world was one of the questions which Mr. Prentiss had always found perplexing. He was well aware that his parishioners as a body were not fond of hearing him preach on what they called secular subjects. So long as he confined himself to enumerating spiritual truths, they were not averse to his illustrating his stigmas upon sin by generalizations from current worldly abuses; but he knew that many shook their heads and declared that the cobbler should stick to his last when he ventured to discourse on political topics or the relations of labor and capital. Mr. Prentiss was not aware, however, that some of this prejudice proceeded from the circumstance that he was apt to lose his head on such occasions; but, on the other hand, much of it was genuine disinclination for advice from the pulpit on subjects which, to quote the women parishioners, were not spiritual, and, to quote the men, were none of his business. His congregation was almost entirely composed of pew owners, people with vested rights, among which appeared to be the right not to be harrowed by socialistic doctrines. They were ready to help the poor in any way which he would suggest, and they had supplied him with a mission church where he could reach the ignorant and needy more effectively, but they argued that he had better leave to the politicians all suggestions tending to disturb the existing industrial order. Mr. Prentiss sometimes sighed over these limitations, but he had become used to them, and in a measure, with advancing years, he had, in his endeavor to be a man of the world in order to remain a more useful Christian, accepted the doctrine that he had no plan to substitute for the present economic system, and that he must make the best of the existing situation. So, in practical, daily life, he exhorted the rich to give their money and themselves to the advancement of their fellow men, and the poor to shun vice and bear their privations with patience, while he held forth the promise of the church of an existence hereafter for the pure in heart where all the seeming inconsistencies of this mortal life would be explained and justified. Not being endowed with much sense of humor, Mr. Prentiss, as he waxed in years, and St. Stephen's became the fashionable church of the city, had found less and less difficulty in accommodating himself to this point of view, and in devoting all his ardor to reclaiming souls for Christ. After all, was not his mission to help men and women as he found them? First of all to minister to their souls, and in the name of Christianity to lift them from the slough of human suffering and misfortune that he might expound to them the loving mercies of the Lord? The things of the earth were not the things of the spirit, and he was more tenacious than in his youth of the prerogatives of the church as an institution controlling human consciences by standards of its own, founded on the teachings of the Prince of Peace. Nevertheless, being reasonably clear-headed and fearless, he was not without the suspicion at times that this reasoning was mystical, and in the face of facts he had every now and then his unpleasant quarters of an hour. This was one of them to-night. His hostess, when the dinner was over, had left him to a cigar and his own devices in the library. He was to join her presently and be shown her daughter's wedding presents. He had been invited to dine in order that he might see them, but Mrs. Wilson and he both knew that this was an excuse for a quiet evening together in which they might compare notes concerning their mutual interests. Reaching out to knock off the ash of his cigar into a dainty porcelain wheelbarrow, he noticed a new photograph on the mantel-piece and rose to examine it. He recognized it as one of Clarence Waldo, the New Yorker to whom Miss Lucille Wilson was betrothed. The sight of this young man's countenance did not serve to restore Mr. Prentiss's serenity. On the contrary, he stood gazing at the photograph with an expression which suggested that his soul was still perturbed. The face was that of a man of twenty-seven or eight with delicate features--thin lips, a long nose and an indefinable haughtiness of expression which was made up of weariness and disdain. He had large eyes which lacked lustre, and his sparse hair gave the effect of having been carefully brushed. The clergyman had met him only a few times, and Mr. Prentiss had never forgotten the first occasion, which was at Lucille's coming-out ball three years before. He had happened to find himself in Mr. Waldo's path when the young man was in the act of carrying everything before him with a plate of salad for his partner, and he had never forgotten the cold impertinence of the New Yorker's stare. Paul Howard, Lucille's cousin, who witnessed the encounter, said afterward that Clarence had given Mr. Prentiss the dead eye, which was a telling description of the stoniness of the fashionable New Yorker's gaze. Mr. Prentiss had never heard this diagnosis, but he had remembered the episode. He regarded it, however, merely as additional evidence of the lack of reverence on the part of the young men of the day--and the young women, too, for the matter of that--not merely for sacred things, but for everything and everybody which were in their way or did not happen to appeal to their fancy. But though he considered this absence of social politeness as one of the cardinal failings of the age, his present thoughts regarding Lucille's future husband were not concerned with it. Since the engagement had been announced four months ago he had been making inquiries, and the information which he had received was in his mind and troubled his soul as a corollary of the other problems which had just been haunting him. It was not of a character to justify him in forbidding the bans--not even in remonstrating with Mrs. Wilson, unless she were to ask his advice or provide him with an opportunity. But he deplored sincerely that this young man was to marry his friend's daughter. Was this to be the outcome, the crowning of the wealth of love and solicitude which had been lavished on this only child--a child brought up in his church? Was it for this that Lucille had been made the central figure of costly entertainments for the last three years, in the hope that she might make a brilliant match? Decidedly, it was a puzzling world, and circumstances seemed to be conspiring to cloud his horizon and disturb his digestion at a time when he ought to be enjoying himself and taking his ease. "What does he offer her?" he said to himself. "Twelve months of sporting life--American sporting life. A superb stable, a four-in-hand coach and steam yacht, polo, golf, the horse show, cards, six months every third year in Europe, their summers at Newport, their winters at Palm Beach. The fortune which she will bring him will enable them to live in the lap of luxury all the year round, and he will teach her to regard those who are not rich and who do not imitate their manner of life as beneath their notice. I know the kind--I know the kind." Soft footsteps interrupted his mental soliloquy. "No, thank you," he exclaimed in a tone which was almost militant to the waiters who approached him with a tray. Mr. Prentiss supposed that another form of stimulant was being offered him, for Madeira, liqueurs and coffee had been successively brought in and solemnly presented to him by the two men servants, one of whom seemed to him as superfluous as a plumber's helper. Then as his gaze, which had been inward, appreciated that the silver gilt tumbler contained apollinaris water, he called them back and emptied the glass. He had finished his cigar and it was time to rejoin his hostess. VIII Mr. Prentiss continued his monologue on his way to the drawing-room. He imagined himself saying to Mrs. Wilson, "You know that I believe in toleration, and that I would not set or preach an ascetic standard of life. I believe--my church believes--that it is not profitable to the human soul to mortify the flesh in every-day life or refuse to enjoy the comforts of civilization. But the set of people to which this young man belongs are cumberers of the soil and a menace to society. It is not merely a question of taste, but of Christian morals. We have nothing to do with other nations; our concern is with the social life of this nation and whether we are to foster and encourage a pleasure-loving, self-indulgent, and purposeless leisure class." Yet though his thoughts thus shaped themselves in fervent words, he was conscious that in the absence of a cue his lips must remain sealed. There was a limit imposed by society on the priestly office which he could not overstep without appearing officious, and thus weakening his influence. Were it a case of notorious dissipation or some palpable fault or blemish, it would be his duty to speak. But he had no such data at his command. Clarence Waldo was simply a fastidious idler, pretentious, and indifferent to the vital interests of life. It could not even be charged that he was marrying Lucille for her money, as he had a competency of his own. They would be able to buy all the dogs and horses in the country if they saw fit. But his own tongue was tied. To all appearances Mrs. Wilson was content. At the time she had announced her daughter's engagement to him, she had said, in response to his earnest inquiry if she were satisfied--said it with a blithe smile, as though, on the whole, the best had happened--"I should have been glad of course, if Lucille had chosen a man of conspicuous talent, a future United States Senator or successful artist or author. If she had loved her lord, I should not have objected to a title, because, after all, even to a free-born American, there is a certain compensation in becoming the mother of dukes and regenerating an ancient line. But Clarence is well connected, and the child is in love with him. So long as she is happy, that is the essential thing." Since then he had become better informed as to the young man's tendencies. But if Lucille was in love with him and her mother acquiescent, what was there to do? The church could not interfere beyond a certain point without giving offence. Mrs. Wilson was not in the drawing-room, but Mr. Prentiss caught a glimpse of her at her desk in a smaller room which led out of it. She called to him that she was answering a note and would join him presently. The clergyman seated himself and picking up from a low teak table beside him a paper-cutter fashioned on a Japanese sword hilt he compressed his fingers on the handle as an outlet to his perplexity. Had he been walking in the fields, he would have cut off the heads of the dandelions with his cane. Marriage was a sacrament, the most solemn undertaking in life, yet how impossible it was to regulate matrimony for others. He glanced around the room admiringly. Already the musical notes of his hostess's voice had served to dissipate partially the miasma of doubt which had been assailing him. This main apartment was one of a series of drawing-rooms, each furnished with an exquisite magnificence suggestive of the salons of France in the days of Louis XIV, save that there was a superabundance of artistic furnishings; hence the sight was confused by the array of costly tapestries, marbles, bronzes, china, and gilt or otherwise illuminated ornaments which almost contended for space with one another, though the rooms were of large proportions. One feature of Benham's renaissance was the ambition to outdo the past in size and gorgeousness, but Mrs. Wilson's advisers had been animated also by the desire for artistic success, and it was only in its wealth of material that their and her--for she had been the leading spirit after all--performance was open to criticism. Here in Benham, where twenty years before the horse-hair sofa was still an object of admiring regard in the homes of the well-to-do, the desert had blossomed with the rose, and a veritable palace had been established. And, as Mr. Prentiss reflected, joining his finger-tips across his waist-band, all this lavish expenditure meant the return by the rich of accumulated wealth into circulation for the benefit of those who labored for their bread, which was another of Mr. Carleton Howard's telling truths. The swift, animated, but noiseless glide of Mrs. Wilson into the room and onto a sofa, from which she flashed at him a gracious, electric look of attention with the words, "And now, my friend, I am entirely at your disposal. It was a note which had to be answered at once"--restored Mr. Prentiss's serenity. She was one of those pleasant persons in whose presence the world seems justified. When she entered a room people were apt to pay tribute by a pause in whatever they were doing, and she became the focus of attention. The effect of her graceful energy was largely responsible for this, suggesting the forceful but silent sweep of a ship. She had lost the figure and the countenance of youth, but though her abundant crinkly hair was grizzled no one ever thought of her age except to observe that she was handsomer than as a younger woman. She had never been a beauty; she was now a distinguished looking, comely, and effective matron. She was tall and rather willowy, but not thin, with a proud, resolutely carried head, an agreeable straight nose, short rather than long (her best feature) a spirited, sympathetic smile, eyes fundamentally gray, which changed as her thoughts changed, and ingratiating but elegant manners. Her face, notably the cheeks and lips, was a trifle full, suggesting dimples, and possibly to the critical a too-manifest desire to please. Her obvious pose--which, though deliberate was entirely genuine--was to be exquisite, sympathetic, and intellectual, and for the expression of this range of qualities she had serviceable allies in her musical voice, a bewitching way of showing just enough of her teeth, when she became vivacious, and her ornamental clothes, which always suited her. On this evening she wore an old-gold gown with jet and lace accompaniments, an aigrette of crimson gauze with which the plumage of her fan was in harmony, a band of magnificent pearls around her neck, and on her breast, though such ornaments were not strictly in fashion, a large brooch of fine workmanship containing a miniature of two children of tender age. Of these children one had died shortly after the miniature was painted, the other was her daughter Lucille. Her soul was dedicated to two interests, her joy and ambition as a mother, and to the cause of social human progress. Mrs. Wilson had been for fifteen years a widow, and, though her husband held a hallowed place in her heart, even she was conscious that the broad scope of her present life dated from the period when, seeking a refuge from her own grief and loneliness, she had welcomed diverse social employment. Her husband, Randolph, a hero and a colonel of the Civil War, had claimed her on his return as a bride. They were ardent lovers, and they had never ceased to be so, certainly not in theory. Some of Mrs. Wilson's knowing friends were fond of insinuating, when the humor for gossip prevailed, that he had died just in time, which was their way of intimating that she had outgrown him. But these dissectors of hearts did not perhaps sufficiently remember that her own blossoming forth into the woman she now was had been subsequent to her husband's death. Nor did they take sufficiently into account the bewildering course of events which had attended her progress. Colonel Wilson, a man of small means at the time of their marriage, had become her brother's partner. The properties in which he was interested at the time of his death had subsequently proved so valuable that she had found herself presently the possessor of a million, a sum which had quadrupled in the keeping of her brother, Carleton Howard, one of the most powerful financiers in the country. Opportunity surely had waited on her widening aspirations, enabling her finally to establish herself in this magnificent home surrounded by all the æsthetic attractions and many of the treasures of modern civilization. Probably Mrs. Wilson herself had never sought to analyze the past by the light of the present, realizing, as we all do, that life unbeknown to us has halting-places which become, as we look back, the dividing lines between what are almost separate existences. Though at her husband's death she had made no resolutions regarding the future, she had never felt the impulse to marry again, so engrossing were the concerns of motherhood and social responsibility. "You spoke at dinner of wishing my assistance in some case in which you are interested. Will you tell me about it now before we look at the presents?" Mrs. Wilson continued with smiling interest. "Ah, yes." Mr. Prentiss was glad to have this recalled to his mind. There was no chance here for doubt or perplexity. "It is rather out of the usual run of charity cases. The personality of the woman, I mean. The circumstance that her husband has run away and left her penniless, with two young children to support is, alas! only too common." "Poor thing! How can I be of service?" "The woman--her name is Mrs. Stuart--notwithstanding her disastrous marriage, seems to me distinctly superior. She came to Benham some six or seven years ago, and I knew her a little at St. Stephen's before she was a wife. Indeed, I married them, and made some inquiries at the time concerning the husband's circumstances, but learned nothing to his discredit. She has found him to be a godless, unscrupulous person with drinking habits, and recently he has deserted her on the grandiose plea that they would be happier apart. She will be happier; I am sure of that; but I have been exercised as to how to enable her to become self-supporting. She is called to higher usefulness than scrubbing or plain sewing, but though I have discerned in her capabilities and refinement, she is not at present equipped for any active employment." "Which only tends to show, my friend, that every woman"--Mrs. Wilson paused an instant--"every woman who has not independent means of her own, I mean, should be educated to be self-supporting--should have some definite bread-winning occupation which would render her independent of the man she marries in case he dies or misbehaves. I was thinking the other day that a society formed to advocate this doctrine before clubs of girls as a condition of marriage would prove efficacious." Mr. Prentiss nodded. "It is certainly the duty of Christian society to provide additional safeguards against the consequences of improvident wedlock. In this particular instance, the young woman plighted her troth while she was studying to become a kindergarten teacher. She was a country doctor's daughter, and is gentle and refined, as well as intelligent in appearance--one of those lithe, tense American personalities in which the spirit appears to burn at the expense of the body, but which, like the willow, bend but do not break under the stress of life." "She sounds interesting, and I do not see that she has been to blame. We must raise a fund for her. With how large a subscription shall I head the list?" Though Mrs. Wilson gave freely on merely charitable grounds, she gave with more enthusiasm when the objects of her bounty had not offended her sense of the social fitness of things. The clergyman put out his hand. "That wouldn't do exactly, I think. She is not too proud to let us help her for a few weeks with coal and groceries until she can earn for herself. She realizes that she must be sensible, if only for the children's sake. She has an independent simplicity of nature and clearness of perception which would stand in the way, I fear, of her accepting a donation such as you have in mind; though I should dearly love to allow you to pay off the encumbrances on their house, which, owing to her husband's rascalities have eaten up her little home--her patrimony. But I am sure she would refuse." "I see. We should think less of her if she allowed herself to be pauperized, much as I should enjoy giving her a deed of her home free and clear--the mere thought of it causes me a thrill of pleasure. But the worst of such tragedies is that we are most powerless to aid those who are most deserving." Mrs. Wilson leaned back among her cushions, and, drawing a pale pink rose from a bunch in a vase at her elbow, laid it along her cheek and inhaled its fragrance. "If she were an undiscerning, common spirit with workaday sensibilities, as so many of them are, she would not refuse, but--half the pleasure of giving would be lost. It is a privilege and the fashion to be charitable, but so much of our charity consists in filling the mouths and clothing the bodies of the wretched who will never be appreciably different or strive to be different from what they are." "The poor we have always with us," murmured the clergyman. "Always. The shiftless, dirty, unaspiring, unæsthetic poor. The dregs and lees of human endeavor. We must feed and clothe them, of course, and help them to help themselves, but sometimes I forget the pathos of it all in the ugliness and squalor. Consequently, when the chance to do real good comes, it is a pity not to be able to lift the burden completely. What, then, can I do for this young person?" "I have thought over her case for the last forty-eight hours, and have come to the conclusion that, as she has no special training, her best chance for employment is to learn short-hand and to use the typewriter. I understand that women proficient in this vocation can usually secure steady work at a fair wage. Though Mrs. Stuart would be unwilling to accept a direct gift of money, I feel confident that she would not refuse to let us put her in the position to become self-supporting--that is, defray the cost of the lessons necessary to make her a competent stenographer or office clerk. And I thought you might be glad to pay for these lessons--a matter of six months or so." Mr. Prentiss had taken up the paper-cutter again, and he passed the flat of the metal blade across his palm as though he were smoothing out his plan as well as the creases. "Gladly," she responded. "For as long as you desire. And, perhaps, when she has learned what is necessary, my brother may know of some opening for her down-town." "Very likely," answered Mr. Prentiss, with resonant acquiescence. "The same thought had occurred to me." "And, in the meantime, since you tell me that she is competent and refined, my secretary, who will have her hands full with the details of the wedding, may be able to give her occasional errands to do. You may tell her to call when her plans are adjusted and to ask for me." "Excellent. And we shall both be your debtors." Mrs. Wilson smiled graciously, showing the dimples in her cheeks. The demands made upon her for pecuniary aid were of daily, it might be said hourly, occurrence. Whoever in Benham was in search of money applied to her, and the post brought her solicitations from all sorts of people, among whom were the undeserving or importunate, as well as the needy or humanitarian. As lady bountiful, she purposed to exercise intelligent discrimination in her charities, and she accepted thanks as a tribute to that quality. "Come," she said, rising, "I will show you the presents. Only think, four hundred of them, and so many beautiful things! People have been so kind. Several of my brother's friends in New York have sent most exquisite tokens--a necklace of diamonds and pearls from Mr. Fenton the banker, a gold dessert service from his railroad ally, Mr. Kennard." She led the way from the drawing-room suite into the hall, where electricity in artistic guises illuminated the broad panellings, a splendid Terriers and three or four bronze or marble statuaries of rare merit, and up the stair-case to the next floor into what was known as the morning-room--an apartment where Mrs. Wilson conducted her affairs and did her reading and thinking. This was a combination of study and æsthetic boudoir. There were seductive sofas and quaint capacious chairs supplied with brightly colored cushions, and dainty draperies, all in silken stuffs of patterns reminiscent of the Orient. Art, in its most delicate and spiritual forms, breathed from every object of furniture or decoration; from the small pictures--some in oils, some in water-colors--which merited and often demanded the closest scrutiny; from the few vases of entrancing shape and hue, from the interesting photographs in beautiful frames, from the curious and rare memorials of travel and wise choice of what cunning fingers had wrought with infinite labor. As in the rest of the house, there was still too much wealth of material, too much scintillation and conglomeration of color, but the intent had been--and not without success--to produce a more subtle atmosphere than prevailed outside, as of an inner temple. Prominent in one angle stood Mrs. Wilson's desk, rose-wood, inlaid with poetic gilt tracery, and littered with the correspondence of a busy woman. Books and other articles of daily use lying here and there without effort at order gave to the room the air of being the intimate abode of a human soul. Opening out of this was a private music-room, which was used by Mrs. Wilson and her daughter in preference to the large music-room on the street floor intended for musical parties and dances. Here were the wedding presents, a dazzling array of gold, silver, jewels, glass, china, and ornamental knick-knacks, tastefully arranged on tables introduced for the purpose. As they entered an attendant withdrew into the hall. "We have thought it more prudent to have a watchman on guard by night and day," explained Mrs. Wilson; "for I suppose it is true, as one of those ridiculous newspaper items asserts, that these gifts represent at least one hundred thousand dollars. By the way," she continued, with a gentle sigh, "it is so difficult to know what attitude to adopt with the newspaper people. If one refuses them the house, their sensibilities are hurt and they are liable to invent falsehoods or write disagreeable paragraphs. If they are allowed to inspect everything, they publish details which make one's heart sick, and make one appear a vain fool. How is a person in my position to be courteous toward the power of the press and yet to maintain the right to privacy? Is not this superb?" she added, holding up a crest of diamonds in the form of a tiara. "My brother's present to Lucille." "Beautiful--beautiful, indeed," murmured the clergyman. The sight of all these costly things was bewildering to his mind as well as to his eyes. "Ah, the press--the press, it is a problem, indeed. We would seem to have the right to individual privacy, would we not? And yet in this age of ours, pressure is so often used upon us to thrust our wares into the shop-windows--as in my case, sermons for newspapers of the most sensational class--on the plea of a wider usefulness, a closer touch with the wilderness of souls, that it is difficult to know where the rights of the public end as to what one has. What would seem to be vanity may often be only another form of philanthropy. And yet----" "And yet," interposed Mrs. Wilson, as she singled out an enchanting fan of gold and ivory and the most exquisite lace and spread it for his inspection, "why should I pander to the vulgar curiosity of the public? It is none of their business." "In a matter of this kind I quite agree with you. If they could see all these beautiful things, there might be some sense in it; but that would be out of the question, of course." "That will be the next step; our houses thrown open to the madding crowd. Six newspapers--two from New York--applied recently for leave to see the presents. I intended to refuse firmly, but to my astonishment Lucille seemed disappointed. It never occurred to me that she would not hate the publicity. She gave a little shriek and said, 'Mamma, how dreadful!' and then added in the next breath, 'Everybody does it, and, as something is sure to be printed, might it not be better to make certain that it's correct?' A day or two later she was photographed in her tiara, and from what has transpired since I fear that the idea of publicity was not foreign to her thought. My child, Mr. Prentiss! Only think of it! One can never quite understand the point of view of the rising generation. I consulted Carleton, and he grew successively irate, contemplative, philosophical, and weak-kneed. In short, a week ago a reportorial woman, with the social appetite of a hyena and the keen-eyed industry of a ferret, passed the forenoon in the house and went away with a photograph of Lucille in the tiara. And what is worst of all, in spite of my humiliation at the whole proceeding, I am decidedly curious to see what she has written." The sound of voices in the morning-room broke in upon this confession. "Ah, here you are, Aunt Miriam! I have brought you an artistic masterpiece with a felicitous biography of the distinguished heroine. Behold and admire!" The speaker was Paul Howard, Mrs. Wilson's nephew. He advanced from the doorway with radiant, teasing face, holding out a newspaper at which he pointed delightedly. At his heels followed Lucille and Clarence Waldo, she protesting, yet betraying by her laughing confusion that her indignation was half-hearted; he stalking with self-important gravity save for a thin smile, the limit of his deliberate contributions to the gayety of nations unless under the influence of alcoholic conviviality. At men's gatherings there was a stage in the proceedings when Clarence Waldo became decorously mellow and condescended--indeed, expected to be asked--to sing one of three or four quasi-humorous ditties at his command, a function which he seemed to regard as an important social contribution and for which he practised in secret. Also, after luncheon or dinner, he was liable to lay down the law in loud tones in regard to current sporting affairs. But his habitual manner was languid and his expression cold, as though he feared to compromise himself by interest or enthusiasm. He was very tall. In the centre of his crown was a bald spot. He stooped slightly, and, except among his intimates, looked straight before him lest he might see someone whom he did not wish to know. In the rear of this family party came Carleton Howard, stepping firmly yet deliberately, as he always did, as though he walked abreast of Time, not tagging at her skirts like so many of his contemporaries--a fine figure of a man approaching sixty, with a large body, but not corpulent, a broad brow, a strong, defiant nose, iron-gray hair and a closely cut iron-gray mustache, clear, fearless, yet reflective eyes, and a mouth the pleasant tension of which indicated both determination and tact. He was smoking a cigar, and had come in from his own library to enjoy the bearding of his sister by the young people. IX Before Mrs. Wilson could ascertain what it was, Lucille made a dash at the newspaper. Paul thrust it behind his back. "Give it to me, Paul," demanded the young woman, imperiously. "I order you to give it to me," she reiterated, tapping her foot. "You are a hateful tease." [Illustration: "Give it to me, Paul," demanded the young woman imperiously] "Surely, my fair cousin, you're not going to deprive your mother of the satisfaction of gazing on this work of art, and reading this appreciative description of your personal charms? Can you not see how impatient she is to have it all to herself?" "You have certainly whetted my curiosity, Paul," said Mrs. Wilson. "I forbid you to show it to her." "Why?" "It is too ridiculous and foolish, and the picture--" Her criticism on that score instead of seeking words culminated in another spring, which Paul evaded by wheeling spryly about so that he still faced her. Paul Howard was an ornamental, attractive specimen of athletic, optimistic American youth; a fine animal of manly, well-knit proportions with no sign of physical weakness or of effeminacy in his person or his face. His countenance was open and ruddy; his eyes clear blue, his hair light brown. His lip was scrupulously clean-shaven, exposing the full, pleasant strength of his father's mouth. Indeed, in conformity with the prevailing fashion among his contemporaries, he wore neither mustache, beard, nor whiskers, as though in immaculate protest against every style of hirsute ornamentation, from the goat-like beard of Methodistical statesmanship to the spruce mustache and well-trimmed whiskers of men of the world of fifteen years earlier. He was a Harvard graduate; he had been on the foot-ball team, and a leading spirit in the social life of the college; had been around the globe since graduation, and spent nearly a year shooting big game in the Rockies and getting near to nature, as he called it, by living on a ranch. All this as preliminary to taking advantage of the golden spoon which was in his mouth at his birth. At twenty-three he had signified that he was ready to buckle down to the responsibilities of guarding and increasing the family possessions, an announcement delighting his father's heart, who had feared, perhaps, lest his only son might conclude to become merely a clubman or a poet. This was the fourth year of his novitiate, much of which had been spent in New York, where Mr. Howard, though his home was in Benham, had established a branch of his banking-house, at the head of which he intended presently to place Paul. On the young man's twenty-fifth birthday the magnate had made him a present of a million dollars so as to put him on his feet and permit him to support a wife. If this were a hint, Paul had taken it. Though absorbed in financial undertakings of magnitude (which had included the electric street-car combination hostile to the aspirations of Emil Stuart), he had wooed and wed one of the prettiest girls in Benham, and he possessed, not many blocks away, a stately establishment of his own. He was accustomed to walk hand in hand with prosperity, and this habit was reflected in the gay and slightly self-satisfied quality of his manliness. After foiling his cousin for a few moments, with a tantalizing smile, a new idea occurred to him. He held out the newspaper, saying, "Very well then, here it is. I dare you, Lucille, to destroy it. Nothing would induce you to part with it." Lucille snatched the sheet from his hand, and her ruffled hesitation indicated that to destroy it was the last thing she had intended. In another instant she tore the newspaper into strips with an air of disdain and cast them on the floor. Delighted at the success of his taunt, Paul stooped and gathering the fragments began to piece them together. "That is only a blind. She knows she can buy a dozen copies to-morrow. Listen, Aunt Miriam, to this gem which I have rescued: 'The fair bride has a complexion of cream of alabaster, with beautiful almond-shaped eyes, and hair of black lustre, which, rising from her forehead in queenly bands, seems the natural throne of the glittering diadem in the picture, one of her choicest bridal gifts.' Could anything be more exquisite and fetching?" He gave a laugh which was almost a whoop of exultation. "No matter, Lucille," said Mrs. Wilson, coming to her daughter's rescue. "It is only envy on Paul's part. The newspapers did not make half so much of his wedding." In her own heart she did not approve of the publicity, but the sense of importance which it conveyed was not without its effect even on her. Besides, the personal description, though florid in style, was to her maternal eyes not an exaggerated estimate of her daughter's charms. "The writer was evidently under the spell of her subject," said Mr. Prentiss, gallantly. Though tolerant of banter, especially at clerical gatherings, and partial to Paul Howard as one of the young men whom he desired to draw into closer union with the church, the idea of the possibilities of the newspaper as a dispenser of benefits was still in his mind, and served to minimize the vanity, if any, of his friend's daughter. "Quite naturally, Mr. Prentiss," retorted the tormenting Paul, "for the subject gave a private audience to the writer only a few days ago." Paul spoke from the desire to tease, not because he objected actively to the connivance of his cousin with the designs of the press. If the opportunity to do away with the whole practice of prying into and advertising private social matters had been presented to him, he would gladly have embraced it, and welcomed at the same time the further opportunity to tar and feather or duck the race of social reporters. But as an astute and easy-going American he recognized the prevalence of the habit, and though personally he tried to dodge with good humor the impertinent inquiries of press agents, he was not disposed to censure those who yielded to their importunities. Indeed, Paul Howard was so bubbling over with health prosperity, and a generally roseate conception of life as he saw it, that he shrank from active criticism of existing social conditions. He was a strong patriot, and it pleased him to believe that Americans were world-conquerors and world-teachers. Hence that it was the part of good Americans to join hands all round and, avoiding nice strictures, to put their shoulders to the wheel of progress. "How absurd you are, Paul," answered Lucille. "That woman badgered me with questions, and was positively pathetic into the bargain, for she confided to me that she hated the whole business, but that her bread and butter depended on it. She was certain to write something, and so rather than have everything wrong, I told her a few things." "And gave her your photograph in the tiara." "She asked for it. She saw it lying on the table. Wasn't that better than to be caricatured by some snap-shot with a camera?" The dire results of what would have ensued had she been less accommodating seemed so convincing to Lucille as she recited them that her tone changed from defence to conviction. "I know a woman," said Clarence Waldo, "who told her servants not to let any of those newspaper beggars inside the house, and what do you suppose happened? On the day of the wedding there appeared an insulting account of the affair with everything turned topsy-turvy and disparaging remarks about both families. It's an awful bore, but when people of our sort are married the public doesn't like to be kept in the dark, you know." "There! You see!" exclaimed Lucille, triumphantly. The description of this young lady which her cousin had read was fundamentally correct. Her eyes could scarcely be called almond-shaped, but their curves were more gradual than those of most American women, a feature which, in conjunction with her thin lips and thin, pointed nose, gave to her countenance an expression of fastidiousness, which was characteristic. She was an example of the so-called Gibson girl, with a tall and springy, yet slight, figure, and a race-horse air which suggested both mettle and disdain. She had been brought up on the theory of free development--a theory for which not her mother but the tendency of the day was responsible. Parents, when it comes to a choice in educational methods, are apt at heart to recognize their own personal ignorance, and those with the highest aims for their offspring are most likely to adopt the newest fashionable graft on human experience. We are perpetually on the look-out for discoveries which will enable our children to become the bright particular stars which we are not. So what more natural than that Mrs. Wilson, with her ardent bent for improving social conditions, should swallow--hook, bait, and sinker--the theory that the budding intelligence should be cajoled and humored, not thwarted and coerced? The idea thus pursued at kindergarten, that everything should be made easy and agreeable for the infant mind, had been steadily adhered to, and Lucille could fairly be said to have had her own way all her life. This own way had been at times bewildering, not to say disheartening, to her mother. Mrs. Wilson had expected and yearned for a soulful, aspiring, poetic daughter with an ambition for culture--herself, but reincarnated and much improved. Instead, Lucille had showed herself to be utterly indifferent to poetry, lukewarm in regard to culture, almost matter of fact in her mental attitude, and sedulously enamoured of athletic pursuits. She had a fancy for dogs. From fifteen to eighteen she had followed golf, tennis, and boating, hatless and with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a free and easy and rather mannerless maiden, Amazon-like in her bearing, but unlike an Amazon in that she was a jolly companion to the boys, who called her promiscuously by her Christian name, as she did them by theirs. Does such a process of familiarity dull the edge of romance? We do not yet know. Each rising generation provides new problems for the wise elders, and this was one of those which had kept Mrs. Wilson uneasy. She had looked forward to Lucille's formal introduction to society as a social corrective, and argued that, as soon as her daughter met the world face to face, there would be a modification both of Lucille's tastes and point of view. So strong is the emphasis laid by American mothers in fashionable society on what is called "the coming out" of their daughters that the concern engendered by the approach of the ordeal could fitly be described as a phase of hysteria. The true perspective of life becomes utterly and absurdly distorted by apprehension lest the dear child should not have "a good time" and by a fierce ambition that she should have a better "time" than her mates. As a consequence, competition--that absorbing passion of American character--is prone to take advantage of all the opportunities at its command, not merely to decorate the unprepossessing or provide the duck with the environment of the swan, but to make princesses out of goose girls by sheer gorgeous manifestations of the power of the almighty dollar. We all know that every woman in the world would prefer at heart to be called wicked rather than common, unless she were common--one of those extraordinary results of the tyranny of the social instinct which plays havoc with religious codes; and there is probably no country where the most socially adept are more intolerant of commonness than in democratic America--a fact which should be disconcerting to that form of socialism which yearns for a dead-level. Yet the tendency to exploit one's daughters by means of money and to exploit them even with barbaric splendor is current among our most socially sophisticated people. Mr. Carleton Howard's "coming-out" ball for his niece was the most splendid function which Benham had ever known, and for the next three years Lucille's life had been one round of social gayety, emphasized by the character of the things done in her behalf by her family, which were severally executed, if not conceived, in a spirit of emulation, though Mrs. Wilson would doubtless have resented the impeachment. Mrs. Wilson would have put the blame on the tendency of the age, arguing that American society was becoming more and more exacting in its Esthetic demands, and that one must conform to existing usage in order to lead. But an examination of the facts would reveal that whatever form of entertainment was given by her for Lucille, as, for instance, the four colored luncheons, when the food and the table ornaments were successively red, orange, blue, and heliotrope, and four sets of twelve young girls stuffed themselves through eight courses at mid-day, was carried out with a lavish accentuation of new and costly effects. It was currently recognized that at her house the cotillion favors and the prizes at games were worth having--silver ornaments, pretty fans, things of price--always a step beyond the last fashion, as though the world would not be content to stand still, but must be kept moving by more and more expensive social novelties. Though three years of this life had served to transform the mannerless Amazon into a socially correct and fastidious young woman, the result, nevertheless, was a secret disappointment to her mother, who had hoped that Lucille would develop intellectual or æsthetic tastes under the influence of these many advantages. But what can a mother whose daughter prefers athletics to art, and fox terriers to philanthropy, do but make the best of it? Lucille had a will of her own and seemed to know exactly what she wished, which included marrying Clarence Waldo. To thwart her would be useless, to quarrel with her was out of the question. The only thing was to give her as brilliant a wedding as possible and hope for the best. And after all, the best was by no means out of the question. Lucille was young and was going to New York. There was no telling what a girl of twenty-one, with large means and the best social opportunities, might not become by the time she was thirty-five. Mrs. Wilson had herself cast sheep's eyes at New York as a residence before building her new house, but she had decided to remain dominant in a small puddle. There were compensations in doing so. She flattered herself that in this age of telephones and telepathy she was able to keep in touch with the metropolis and to get her social cues accordingly. But to have a daughter there would be interesting, provided all went well. The proviso should not be overlooked; for Mrs. Wilson had not lowered her own standards. She was merely trying to extract all the maternal comfort and pride she could out of the existing situation. "But, my dear Lucille," said Paul, intending a crushing blow to his cousin's returning assurance, "if you were really so anxious to escape notoriety, you had merely to mention it to father. A word from him would have silenced every newspaper in town." "Scarcely that--scarcely that, young man," interposed Mr. Howard in a tone of friendly authority. "Very possibly, had I expressed a preference, my wishes would have been respected by one or two newspapers where I happen to have some influence. But your statement is altogether too sweeping." He spoke incisively, as though he desired to deprecate the suggestion of the power attributed to him by his more impulsive son. "The press is jealous of its privileges and must be humored as a popular institution. And, after all, what does a little publicity matter? You mustn't mind what Paul says, Lucille. There's no reason to feel abashed because the public has been given a chance to see the most charming bride of the year." "Abashed? She is tickled to death," retorted Paul. Mr. Howard put his arm around his niece's shoulder in the guise of a champion. When controversy had reached the stage where adjustment was no longer possible, he was an uncompromising antagonist. But, as a successful man content with existing conditions, he deplored friction in all the relations of life, and to use an industrial phrase, liked to see everything running smoothly. He laughed incredulously, and patting Lucille's arm exclaimed, "Nonsense!" Then, accosting the clergyman, he added, "Now that this momentous matter has been disposed of, Mr. Prentiss, will you join me in a cigar in my own library?" Mr. Prentiss excused himself. He had work to do, and knew that if he remained he would be apt to stay late. But he was interested from a theoretic stand-point in the discussion to which he had been listening. "You evidently feel as I do, Mr. Howard," he said, "that there are two sides to the question of newspaper publicity, and that as good citizens we are not always at liberty to insist on privacy." Mr. Howard answered with the suave force and clearness which gave to all his utterances the effect of deliberate conviction. "Mr. Prentiss, I accept the institutions of my country as I find them, and try to make the best of them. There are those whose only pleasure seems to be to carp at what they do not wholly admire in our civic system. The press is one of the most powerful and useful forces of modern life. As such I value and support it, though I'm keenly alive to the flagrant evils and the cruel vulgarities for which it is daily responsible. But one can't afford as an American citizen to condemn as worthless and ill-begotten the things of which the people as a whole approve. We must compromise here as in so many matters in our complex civilization, and where trifles are concerned, be complacent even against our convictions." "Indisputably," said the clergyman. "In the constant faith that our tolerance will work for improvement." "Ah, but the newspapers are worse than ever," exclaimed Mrs. Wilson, with a sigh. "One has to wade through so much for so little. I read them scrupulously, because, if I do not, I'm sure to miss something which I would like to see. That sounds inconsistent. But why doesn't somebody establish a really first-class newspaper?" "Because a newspaper must be first of all a successful business enterprise in order to be able to exist," responded her brother. "It is a question of dollars and cents. All that will come presently. And we are really improving all the time. Just think of what a large and complicated industry a modern newspaper establishment has grown to be." He spoke as though he saw and wished to bring before his hearers' eyes the towering, mammoth homes of the press in all our large cities, the enforced outcome of the ever-increasing popular demand for the world's news. "Come, Paul," he said, putting his arm through his son's, "since Mr. Prentiss will not join us in a cigar we will leave these good people to their own devices, and go back to our work." Paul, with a pocket full of documents and with the obnoxious newspaper in his hand, had reached the door of his father's house just as Lucille and her betrothed were alighting from a carriage. Lured by his goading remarks they had followed him within and into his father's library, where at a safe distance he had vouchsafed his cousin glimpses of her tiara-crowned figure and read aloud choice extracts until the spirit had moved him to pass through the dividing door between the two establishments in search of his aunt. He had left home with the idea of an hour's confabulation with his father over certain schemes in which they were jointly interested--a frequent habit of his late in the evening. Mr. Carleton Howard never went to bed before one, and was invariably to be found after eleven in his library reading or cogitating, and always prepared at that quiet time to give his keenest intelligence to the issues presented to him. Father and son passed along through the secret passageway until they found themselves in Mr. Howard's capacious library. This superb room was the result of an architect's conscientious ambition to see what could be accomplished where his client was obviously willing to obtain excellence and had imposed on him no limits either in respect to space or expense. As regards size, it bore the same relation to the ordinary library of the civilized citizen that the Auditorium in Chicago bears to every-day hotels, or the steamship _Great Eastern_ bore to other ocean carriers. Consequently it was a little vast for strict cosiness. The huge stamped leather chairs and sofas, though inviting, seemed designed for persons of elephantine figure, in order perhaps to avoid being dwarfed. But the shelves upon shelves of books which covered completely from floor to ceiling two of the walls--choice editions in fine bindings--gained dignity from the superfluous dimensions. If it be said in this connection that, to one familiar with Mr. Howard's associations, the idea of many storied office buildings might occur, the answer is that he was responsible for nothing which the room contained except its large and admirable display of etchings, which, owing to almost weekly accretions, had begun to disarrange the original æsthetic scheme of the designer. Mr. Howard had left everything else to his architect, but etchings were his hobby--one which had attracted his fancy years before by accident, and had retained its hold upon him. He was familiar now, as a man of sagacity and method, with the many bibliographical and ethnological treasures by which he was surrounded, and could exhibit them becomingly, but when the conversation turned on the etcher's art he was on firm ground and could talk as clearly and authoritatively as about his railroads. The banker chose his favorite seat, within comfortable distance of one of the fire-places, facing a beautiful polar bear-skin rug of extraordinary size. Close at hand was a large table with writing materials and such magazine literature or documents as he might wish to examine. Adjustable lights were at either elbow, and in the direct line of his vision as he ordinarily sat were two of his favorite works of art, an Albert Dürer and a Wenceslaus Hollar. He lighted another cigar and, after a few puffs, said: "That clergyman is decidedly a useful man. He has common sense and he has discretion." "He isn't at all a bad sort," responded Paul. Though guarded in form, this was intended as an encomium, just as when Paul meant that he had enjoyed himself thoroughly, he was apt to state that he had had a pretty good time. Anglo-Saxon youth is proverbially shy of enthusiasm of the lips lest it be suspected of freshness, as the current phrase is. "I wonder," he added a moment later as he stood with his back to the wood fire, straightening his sturdy shoulders against the mantel-piece, "if he really believes all the things he preaches. I'd just like to know for curiosity. I suppose he has to preach them even if he doesn't or else be fired out, and he compromises with himself for the mental reservation by the argument that if he were out of it altogether, his usefulness and occupation, like Othello's, would be gone. That's the way clergymen must have to argue nowadays, or there wouldn't be many of them left at the old stands." Though he spoke colloquially, and with an assurance which dispensed with reverence of treatment, Paul intended to express genuine interest and even sympathy. Knowing that his father's ideas on religious subjects were fundamentally liberal, perhaps he was not averse to shocking him in a mere matter of form. Mr. Howard was silent a moment, then replied: "In every walk of life it is necessary, from time to time, to sacrifice non-essentials for the sake of the essentials. As in everything else, so in religion. The world moves; opinions change. Human society cannot prosper without religion, and human society never needed its influence more than to-day. Sensible religion, of course." "All sensible men have the same religion. What is that? A sensible man never tells." Paul was quoting. He had heard his father more than once in his comments on the mysteries of life utter this Delphic observation. He laughed sweetly and fearlessly. Mr. Howard understood his son. They were good comrades. He was aware that though Paul felt free to jest at his remarks, his boy respected his intellect and would ponder what he said. "We agree about these things in the main, my dear Paul. If one were to go out on the housetops and proclaim one's scepticism concerning some of the supernatural dogmas which the mass of the people find comfort in, how would it benefit religion? The world will find out soon enough that it has been mistaken. But we can neither of us afford to forget that the security of human society is dependent on religion. One always comes back to that in the end." "It is good for the masses," said Paul, with a chuckle. "We, as the present lords of creation--captains of industry--should encourage it for the protection of our railroads, mines, and other glorious monopolies. That is one of the arguments with which the truly great salved their consciences before the French revolution." Mr. Howard frowned slightly. He knew that Paul was only half in earnest, but the reference to socialism was repellent to him, even though it was rhetorical. Why was he the possessor of twenty millions? Because he had been wiser and more long-sighted than his competitors, because he had used his clear brains to better advantage than other men year after year, planning boldly and executing thoroughly, making few mistakes and taking advantage of every opportunity. Because he had fostered his powers, and controlled his weaknesses. He was rich because, like a true American, he had conquered circumstances and moulded them for his own and the world's profit. Inequalities? Must there not always be inequalities so long as some men were strong and others weak, some courageous and others shiftless? And as for charity, God knew he was willing to do--was trying to do his part to help those who could not or would not help themselves, and to encourage all meritorious undertakings for the relief of human society. "Yes, we must humor the masses in this as in a thousand matters, and our protection is their protection. I am not disturbed by your insinuation, Paul. Ignorance and sloth and folly and false sentiment would bankrupt mankind in three generations if it were not for the modern captains of industry, as you call them." Mr. Howard spoke somewhat sternly, as one stating a proposition which was irrefutable and yet was sometimes overlooked by an ungrateful world. "Similarly," he continued, "it is one thing to be unorthodox in one's opinions and to discard as childish articles of faith to which the multitude adhere, another to deny the reality and force of religion. So, though I am a free thinker, if you will, I regard it as no inconsistency to uphold the hands of the church. On the contrary, every thoughtful man must realize that without religion of some sort the human race would become brutes again." "And your form is to present fifty or a hundred thousand to a hospital or a college whenever you happen to feel like it, which every clergyman will admit to be practical Christianity. You certainly give away barrels of money, father." "I can afford to." Mr. Howard was pleasantly but not vain-gloriously aware that he had given away a million dollars in the last three years. "In what better way can I share my profits with the public than by entrusting it to trained educators and philanthropists to spend for the common good? A great improvement, young man, on the theory that every man jack of us should be limited to the same wage, and originality, grit, and enterprise be pushed off the face of the earth." "Nevertheless it is tolerably pleasant to be your son," said Paul, smiling brightly from his post against the mantel-piece. "Yes. But you have responsibilities as my son, and pray do not imagine that I am blind to them. I have made the money." He paused a moment, for he was looking back along the vista of the years and recalling the succession of shrewd undertakings by which his property had grown from a few thousand dollars to imposing wealth. "I have made the money, and it is for you to keep and increase it--yes, increase it, remember--but to spend it freely and wisely. And if you ask me what is wisely, I can only answer that this is a problem for your generation. If you will only use the same pains in trying to solve it as I have in accumulating the money, you will succeed. You are fond, Paul, of exploiting radical propositions, of which you at heart disapprove, in order to test my self-control. Here is something, young man, to chasten your spirit and keep your imagination busy." "You see through me, father, don't you? But you'll admit that my familiarity with radical doctrines is a good sign, especially since I recognize their fallacies, for it shows that I sometimes think. Yes, it is a great responsibility, but I wouldn't exchange--not even with Gordon Perry." "With whom? Ah, yes, I remember; the attorney who was on the foot-ball team with you at Harvard. And why should you consider changing places with him?" "Because the mere question of dollars and cents interests him so little." "Ah! You have been employing him lately, I believe?" "Yes. I like to throw what I can in his way. He understands his business. We lunched together this morning. I enjoy his humor, his independence and his common sense, and at the same time his enthusiasm." "Concerning what?" "Most things except the price of railroad shares and the condition of the money market. We didn't refer to them once." Paul paused with a serio-comic sigh. Mr. Howard knocked the white ash from his cigar and responded: "One of the reasons for sending you to college was that you need not be confined in your conversation to the money market. Another that you should be free in life to do as you chose." "Don't be alarmed, father. You know well enough that nothing would induce me not to follow your lead. Give up business? I couldn't. I love the power and excitement of it. It's bred in the bone, I suppose." The banker's eyes kindled with pride in the son of his heart. "And it's because I know I'm myself that a fellow like Don Perry fascinates me," pursued Paul. "There's no nonsense in him. He objects to cranks and mere psalm-singers as much as I do. But he's absorbed in the social problems of the day--legislative questions, philanthropic questions, all the burning questions. 'And your young men shall see visions.' He is one of them. You will notice that I have not forgotten my Bible altogether, father." "We have, and to burn, reformers who see visions and proclaim them from platforms which have no underpinnings. What we need are reformers who will study and think before they speak, and not seek to destroy the existing structure of society before they have provided a serviceable substitute." "In other words, you are prepared to part with a portion of your worldly possessions, but you object to wholesale confiscation?" Having indulged in this pleasantry Paul took from the table a packet of papers which he had brought with him, as though to show that he had not forgotten business concerns. "Speaking of the existing structure of society," he continued, "Don and I got into a religious discussion. That is, I found myself holding a brief for the proposition, which I had read somewhere or other, that religion and capital are in alliance against every-day men and women, in order to preserve existing social conditions. Don't look so shocked, father. There are two sides to every question, and I was curious to see how Don would look at this." "And how did he look at it?" inquired Mr. Howard, coldly, seeing that he was expected to display interest. "He wouldn't deny that there was some truth in the proposition, but he agreed with you, father, that whatever else is true or false, the world will never be able to dispense with religion. But he says, too, that it must be sensible religion. Just what you said, isn't it? And when two such intelligent individuals come to the same conclusion, it is time for a sceptic like myself to take off his hat to the church. You heard me just now concede that the Rev. Mr. Prentiss is not at all a bad lot." "Paul, you are sometimes incorrigible. You have common sense when it comes to action, I admit, but you have a perverse fondness for harboring all the philosophical sewage of the age. I trust that your friend Perry brought you up with a round turn." "Oh, he did," said Paul, with mock meekness, as he sorted his documents. "We must get to work or else I'd tell you about it. He was very interesting. As to aggregations of capital, Don was highly conservative too. He recognizes that they will last far beyond our time. For a seeker after ultimate truth, I thought that extremely reasonable." Whereupon Paul indulged in a laugh of bubbling, melodious mirth. Mr. Howard made no comment, but threw the butt of his cigar into the fire-place with the emphasis of one expelling folly by the scruff of the neck, and composed his features for business. X Constance consented to be taught typewriting and stenography at the expense of Mrs. Randolph Wilson. She decided that to refuse an offer which would enable her presently to become self-supporting would be false pride. She acknowledged as sound, under her present circumstances, Mr. Prentiss's assertion that it was no less the duty of the unfortunate to accept bounty within proper limits than of the prosperous to give. She consented also at his instance to call upon her benefactress. Any encouragement on the part of Constance would have induced Mr. Prentiss to raise a subscription to pay off the second mortgage on the house incurred by Emil, and thus provide her with a home. But at the first hint of such a thing she shook her head decisively. A very different thought was in her mind. Emil was still alive and liable for the bills which he had incurred for the expenses of the canvass, but she felt that the six hundred dollars which he had withheld from his client as an enforced loan must be paid at once or the good name of her children would be tarnished. His appropriation of this money on the eve of his disappearance was damning in its suggestion; but she had thankfully adopted and was clinging tenaciously to the explanation proffered by one of the easy-going and good-natured co-tenants of the office occupied by her husband, that the money had been borrowed to carry out a speculation, and that Emil had meant to return it. Did not the broker's report of the purchase and sale, found among the papers in Emil's desk, support this? She realized fully that from the mere stand-point of legal responsibility his motive was immaterial. But with her knowledge of his characteristics and of the past she felt that she had the right to insist on the theory that he had been led astray by sanguine anticipations which, as usual, had been disappointed. His conduct had been weak and miserable, and exposed him to obloquy, but it was not the same as deliberate theft. As a mother, she was solicitous to treat the transaction as a loan and to repay it without delay. The world might not discriminate, but for herself and for the children the distinction was essential. Having been informed how matters stood, and that there was probably still some small value left in the house over and above the two mortgages, she thought she saw an opportunity to discharge this vital obligation. Accordingly, when she found that the clergyman was still considering means for rescuing her home, she disclosed her theory and her purpose. "My husband borrowed that money, Mr. Prentiss. He expected to be able to return it. I am sure of this. It was just like him. People think it was something worse because of what was in the newspapers. But, guilty as he was, he would not have done that. This being so, I am anxious to have the mortgages foreclosed, or whatever is necessary done, and to have what is left returned to the woman whose money he borrowed. It was six hundred dollars, and there is the interest. You told me you thought there would be over five hundred left, if the mortgagee was disposed to be reasonable." Although Mr. Prentiss may have had doubts whether Emil Stuart was entitled to the distinction drawn by his wife, he understood and admired her solicitude. "I see," he said. "I am told that the value of real estate in the neighborhood of your house has improved somewhat, and that you ought to get at least five hundred dollars. But in any event the money which your husband borrowed shall be returned. You need give yourself no further concern as to this; I will see that it is done." Constance shook her head again. "It wouldn't be the same if anyone else were to pay it," she said directly. "So it would not. You are right," he replied with equal promptness, admitting the accuracy of her perception, which had confounded his too glib generosity. "Unless you paid it, you would feel that you had no right to consider that the money had been borrowed." "Though I am certain of it." "Precisely--precisely. I understood what you desired, and it was unintelligent of me to bungle." A confession of lack of intelligence by Mr. Prentiss signified not merely deliberate self-mortification, but was offered as a tribute to the mental quality of his visitor. He had chosen a word which would have been wasted on or misinterpreted by the ordinary applicant for counsel, that he might let her perceive that he was alive to the nicety of her spiritual intuitions. They were at his house--in his comfortable, attractive library--and he understood now that the object of her call had been conscientious eagerness to discharge this debt. There was nothing for him to do but acquiesce in her requirements, and to thank God for this manifestation of grace. This quiet, simple directness, which separated the right from the wrong with unswerving precision, proceeding from the lips and eyes of this pale but interesting woman in faded garb, was fresh and invigorating testimony to the vitality of the human soul exposed to the stress of sordid, workaday realities and unassisted by the choicer blessings of civilization. Mr. Prentiss pressed her hand with a new warmth as he bade her good-by. "You must come to see me often," he said. "Not for your needs only, but for mine. It helps me to talk with you. And I shall keep my eye on you and see that you get work." As the upshot of this conversation, Constance surrendered her house to the mortgagee and received six hundred and fifty dollars for her interest in the equity. The small sum remaining after the claim of Emil's client had been satisfied was supplemented presently by the sale of that portion of the furniture unavailable in the tenement into which she moved, so that she had about a hundred dollars saved from the wreck of her former fortunes. The tenement consisted of two sunny rooms in a new apartment house for people of humble means, built by a real estate investor with progressive business instincts from plans suggested by the Home Beautifying Society of Benham, an aggregation of philanthropic spirits, of which Mrs. Wilson was one of the vice-presidents. Here light, the opportunity for cleanliness, and some modern fixtures, including a fire-escape, were obtainable at a moderate rental; and while the small suites were monotonous from their number and uniformity, their occupants could fitly regard them as a paradise compared with the old-fashioned homes for the poor supervised solely by the dull mercy of unenlightened landlords. Though this was a business enterprise, the owner had felt at liberty even to give some artistic touches to the exterior, and altogether it could be said that the investment represented a model hive of modern workingmen's homes from the point of view of Benham's, and hence American philanthropic commercial aspiration. The structure--Lincoln Chambers, it was called--was on the confines of the poorer section of the city where, owing to the spread of trade, the expansion of the homes of the people was forced further to the south. From two of her windows Constance looked out on vacant lands but half redeemed from the grasp of nature, a prospect littered with the unsightly disorder of a neighborhood in the throes of confiscation by a metropolis; but the mongrel character of the vicinity was to her more than atoned for by the fresh air and the wide expanse of horizon. Her home was on the eighth story--there were ten stories in all--and on the roof there was an arrangement of space for drying clothes which seemed to bring her much closer to the impenetrable blue of the sky. As under the influence of this communion she gave rein to introspection and fancy, her thoughts harbored for the moment chiefly thankfulness. The stress of her plight had been relieved. Discriminating kindness had enabled her to get a fresh hold on life without loss of her self-respect. What mattered it that her social lot must be obscure, and that she had become one of the undistinguishable many whose identity was lost in this towering combination of small and uniform tenements? She had still a roof over her children's heads and a legitimate prospect of being able to support them without accepting the bitter bread of charity. Yes, she had become one of the humblest of human strugglers, but her abounding interest in these two dear possessions made not only her duty plain but her opportunity inspiring and almost golden. The mortification and anguish of the past she would never be able to forget entirely, but she would make the most of this new chance for world-service and happiness. It had been necessary to sign some papers in order to convey her interest in the equity of her house, and she went for the purpose to the office of the mortgagee's lawyer. He was a young man, somewhat over thirty, with a noticeably frank face and lucid utterance and kind, intelligent eyes. As he handed her the six hundred and fifty dollars it occurred to her that she would like to employ him to satisfy Emil's obligation. She preferred not to have a personal interview with the creditor lest she be obliged to listen to recriminations against her husband, and she was loth to bother Mr. Prentiss. So she broached the matter, stating briefly that it was a debt which her husband had intended to pay before his departure. She had already discovered when the papers were signed that the attorney was aware that she had been deserted, and neither did she supply nor did he seek enlightenment beyond the bare explanation offered. Nevertheless, it was obvious to Constance, despite his professional reserve, that he was alive to the import of the transaction for which she was employing him, and that it had inspired in him more than a mere business interest. There was a gentle deference in his manner which seemed to suggest that he knew he was charged with a delicate mission and that he would fulfil it scrupulously. She liked the straightforward simplicity of his address, which was both emphasized and illuminated by the intelligent, amiable glint of his eyes which indicated independence and humor, as well as probity. As she rose to go, Constance realized that she had forgotten his name, and was on the point of opening the receipt for the money which he had given her, in order to ascertain it, when he reached out and taking some cards from one of the pigeon-holes of his desk handed them to her. "I shall write to you the result of my interview, Mrs. Stuart, and send you a written discharge. Here are a few of my business cards. I hope that none of your neighbors will need the assistance of a lawyer, but if they do, that is my profession, and I intend to do the best I can for my clients." There was a pleasant earnestness in his tone which saved his speech from the effect of mere solicitation. It seemed to Constance as though he had said not merely that he was eager to get on, but that he stood ready to help those who like herself had need to bring their small affairs to a sympathetic and upright counsellor. She had asked him previously what his charge would be for securing a release of the claim against Emil. He had hesitated for a moment and she had been apprehensive lest he might say that it would be nothing, but he had replied that it would be three dollars. She glanced at the cards and read the name--Gordon Perry, Attorney and Counsellor-at-Law, 144 Baker St. Their interview had been in an inner office--a room of moderate size, near the roof of a modern building, with a fine view, eclipsing that of her own flat, and furnished, besides a couple of chairs, with rows of law books and a few large photographs of legal celebrities. On the way out she passed through the general office, where there were more chairs, several of them occupied by visitors who had been waiting for her interview to come to an end, more shelves of books, and two or three desks, at one of which a woman type-writer was sitting at work. The click of the machine sounded melodiously in Constance's ears, and she turned her glance in that direction, in wistful anticipation of the time when she would have similar employment. On her arrival her gaze had been introspective, but now that her errand was over she felt the inclination to observe external things. As she closed the outer door she saw that the glass panel bore a painted inscription similar to that of the card--Gordon Perry, Attorney and Counsellor-at-Law. She reflected that he had been courteous and sympathetic to her, and she felt sure that he was to be trusted, notwithstanding the rude shock which Emil's perfidy had given to her faith in her own powers of discrimination. There are some dispositions which are turned to gall and forever charged with suspicion by a great shock to love and faith as sweet milk turns to vinegar at the clap of a thunder-storm. There are others whose horizon is cleared by the bitterness of the blow, and who, partly from humility, partly from an instinctive revolt against the doctrine of despair, readjust their perspectives and harbor still the god-like belief that they can know good from evil. Preliminary to beginning her lessons, Constance had still her call to make on Mrs. Wilson. The new fashionable quarter of Benham, beyond the river Nye, was scarcely more than a name to her, though, especially in the early days of her marriage, she had from time to time included this in her Sabbath saunterings with her husband, and she remembered Emil's having pointed out in terms of irony the twin mansions of Mr. Carleton Howard and his sister in process of erection. She had not felt envious, but when Emil, after inveighing against the extravagance of millionaires, had with characteristic inconsistency, as they stood gazing at the walls of these modern palaces, asserted that he intended some day to have a house of this kind, she had wondered what it would be like, and had contrasted for a moment the lives of the dwellers in this locality with her own, with a sudden appreciation of the power of material circumstances and a wistful curiosity to be translated into an experience which should include white-aproned maids, drawing-room draperies, and a private equipage as daily accessories. She had silently wondered, too, pondering without abetting her husband's caustic cue, how this contrast was to be reconciled with what she had been taught of American notions of social uniformity and the subordination of the unnecessary vanities and splendor of life to spiritual considerations. It was puzzling, and yet the manifestations of these discrepancies were apparently in good repute and becoming more obvious as the city grew in population and importance. It is the personal equation in this world which forces truths most clearly upon our attention. So it was that Constance on her way to Mrs. Wilson's was fully alive to the fact--not bitterly, but philosophically and equably--that, despite the theory of democratic social institutions which she had imbibed, actual conditions in Benham were repeating the old-world distinctions between the powerful and the lowly, the rich and the impecunious. There was no blinking the knowledge that she was living obscurely in a flat on the lookout for the bare necessaries of existence, while the woman she was going to see was a woman of wealth and importance, to whom she was beholden for the opportunity of a new start. Obviously, the American experiment had not succeeded in doing away with the distinctions between rich and poor, though patriotic school-books had given her to understand that there were none, or rather that such as existed were spiritual and in favor of people of humble means. Constance could be sardonic if she chose, but like most women she had little taste for irony. On the other hand, she had a yearning to see things clearly which her misfortunes had only served to intensify. As she entered Mrs. Wilson's house a new emotion superseded this consciousness of contrast. She had expected to be somewhat edified by the decorations and upholsteries, and had felt a mild curiosity regarding them. But she was wholly unprepared for the superb and spacious surroundings in which she found herself. She walked bewildered through the august hall behind the solemn, fastidious man-servant, who, when she had disclosed her name and errand, ushered her into the reception-room, which served as an ante-chamber to the vista of elegant connecting drawing-rooms. While she waited for Mrs. Wilson she sat gazing with surprise and admiration at the costly and elaborate furnishings and ornaments. It was not that such things were beyond the experience of her imagination at least, for, though she had never been abroad, she felt familiar, through books, with the appearance of splendid houses. She had seen pictures of them, and was not without definite impressions of grandeur. But she had not expected to behold them realized in the social life of Benham. If the discovery was, spiritually speaking, a slight shock, it was a far greater source of delight. Neat as wax herself, but confined both by poverty and early associations to sober hues, she found in the close presence of these bright, seductive, and artistic effects a sort of revelation of the power of beauty which thrilled her deliciously. Here was the culmination of the movement in æsthetic expression of which, as revealed in shop windows and on women's backs, she had for some time been vaguely aware, but in which she had been forbidden by the rigor of her life to participate. The full meaning of this as an ally to human happiness now burst upon her, and gave her a new joy, though it emphasized the lowliness of her own station. The aspect and greeting of Mrs. Wilson gave the crowning touch to her pleasure by adding the human complement to the situation. She was facing a smiling, gracious personality whose features, bearing, and gown alike were fascinating and distinguished. Constance felt no inclination to be obsequious. Her native birthright of unconscious ease stood her in good stead. At the same time she desired to appear grateful. She had come to thank the lady of the house, and it was obvious that the lady of the house was a superior individual. What a melodious voice she had, and what a pretty dress! How becoming her crinkly, grizzled hair! What an interesting expression, what a sympathetic light in her eyes! Constance noted these points with womanlike avidity during their interchange of greetings. Mrs. Wilson asked her to sit down. "I have heard all about you from Mr. Prentiss, Mrs. Stuart," she said, evidently intending by this comprehensive remark to obviate for her visitor the necessity of recurring to a painful past. "He tells me that you have shown great courage. He tells me also that you have left your house and moved into Lincoln Chambers--the new dormitory built under the supervision of our Home Beautifying Society." "Yes; it is very comfortable. We get a glimpse of the country from our windows." "I know. That is a conspicuous factor in its favor. Light and fresh air, good plumbing, pure milk, a regular, even though small, supply of ice--these are some of the invaluable aids to health and happiness for all of us, and especially for those upon whom the stress of life falls most heavily. You can command all of these where you are. You have two children, I believe?" "Yes. A boy of seven and a girl of six." "They will be a great comfort to you." "I do not know what I should have done without them." The pride of maternity encouraged by courtesy drew from Constance this simple avowal of the heart. Though she was not unconscious that Mrs. Wilson's friendliness was imbued with patronage, it was sweet to open her heart for a moment to another woman--and to a woman like this. "And you have planned to pursue type-writing as an occupation?" "Yes; I begin my lessons to-morrow, owing to you. I came to thank you for your generosity. It was----" "I understand. I am very glad that there was something I could do for you. I was interested when Mr. Prentiss spoke to me concerning your necessities and your zeal; I am even more interested now that we have met. I am told by those best informed that there is steady employment for accomplished stenographers. It may be that my own private secretary--a woman who, like yourself, had her own way to make--will be able to send for you presently. My daughter is to be married before long, and there will be errands to be run and things to be done down-town and in the house, if you would not object to making yourself generally useful." "I shall be grateful for any employment which you can give me." "I shall remember." Mrs. Wilson smiled sweetly. She had felt her way decorously, but was pleased to find an absence of false pride in her visitor, who was obviously a gentle woman, though lacking the advantages of wardrobe and social prestige--as she reflected, a sort of Burne-Jones type of severe æstheticism, with a common-sense individuality of her own, and an agreeable voice. "It will be a little discouraging at first, I dare say, until you acquire facility in your work; but I feel certain that in a short time you will be not only self-supporting but happy. A woman with two young children can really live on very little if she is provident and discerning. It is the man who eats. Have you ever studied the comparative nutritive properties of foods?" Constance shook her head. "I will send you a little pamphlet in regard to this. Many Americans eat more meat than they require; more Americans are wasteful, and ignorant of food values. Housewives of moderate means who approach this subject in a serious spirit can learn how to nourish adequately the human body at a far less cost than their unenlightened sisters. Cereals, macaroni, milk, bread and butter, cheese--they are all nutritive and easy to prepare. If I may say so, you appear to me just the woman to appreciate these modern scientific truths, and to make the most of them." It seemed to Constance that she had never heard anyone speak more alluringly. What was said interested her, and she was pleased by the flattering personal allusion at the close, but every other effect was subordinated for her at the moment to the charm of expression, or, indeed, to Mrs. Wilson's whole magnetic personality as shown in looks and words. She had never before come in personal contact with anything just like it, and it fascinated her. An admiration of this sort would have promptly generated envy and dislike in some women, but in Constance it awoke interest and ambition. Although she felt that she had stayed long enough, she was loth to go, so absorbed was she by the consummate graciousness and sympathetic fluency, by the effective gown and elegant personal details of her hostess. She rose at last, and, impelled to make some acknowledgment of her emotions, said, wistfully, yet in nowise abashed: "What a beautiful house this is! I have never seen anything like it before. It must be a great pleasure to live here." The frank artlessness of this tribute was grateful to Mrs. Wilson. "Yes, we think it beautiful. We have tried to make it so. Would you like to walk through some of the other rooms?" Constance was glad to accept this invitation. As they proceeded Mrs. Wilson let the apartments speak for themselves, adding only an occasional phrase of enlightenment. She was pleased with her visitor, and divined that words were not needful to produce the proper impression. Constance walked as in a trance, admiring unreservedly in thought the splendor, elegance, and diversity of the upholsteries and decoration, admiring also the graceful magnetic woman beside her whose every gesture and intonation seemed attuned to the exquisite surroundings. As they parted Constance said: "This has been a great pleasure to me." She added, "I had no idea that people here--in this country--had such beautiful homes, such beautiful things." There was no repugnance in the confession, but a mere statement of fact which suggested satisfaction rather than umbrage at the discovery, although the ethical doubt of the relevancy of these splendors to American ideals was a part of her sub-consciousness. Mrs. Wilson's response gave the finishing touch to this passive doubt. That lady had recognized that she was not dealing with dross but a sensitive human soul, and had refrained from didactic utterances. Yet she felt it her duty, or rather her duty and her mission combined, to take advantage of this opportunity to sow the seed of culture in this rich but unploughed soil by a deft and genuine illustration. "The spirit which has accomplished what you see here can be introduced into any home, Mrs. Stuart, and work marvels in the cause of beauty, health, and decency," she said with incisive sweetness, her head a little on one side. "Because one is poor it is not necessary to have or foster ugly, inartistic, and sordid surroundings. A little thought, a little reverence for æsthetic truth will not enable those of restricted means to live in luxury, but it will serve to keep beauty enshrined in the hearts of the humblest household--beauty and her hand-maidens, cleanliness, hygiene, and that subtle sense of the eternal fitness of things which neither neglects to use nor irreligiously mismates God's glorious colors. We as a people have been loth to recognize the value of artistic merit as an element of the highest civilization. Until recently we have been content to cultivate morality at the expense of æsthetic feeling, and have only just begun to realize that that type of virtue which disdains or is indifferent to beauty is like salt without savor. There is no reason why in its way your home--your apartment--should not be as faithful to the spirit of beauty as mine. Do you understand me? Do I make myself clear?" Her mobile face was vibrant with the ardor of proselytism. Constance looked at her eagerly. "I think I understand," she said. "But," she added, "I might not have understood unless I had seen this house--unless I had seen and talked with you." She paused an instant, for the vision of her own tenement as a thing of beauty, alluring as was the opportunity, had to run the gauntlet of her common sense. Then she asked a practical question. "If one had aptitude and experience, I can see that much might be accomplished. But how is one with neither to be sure of being right?" Conscious of these honest, thoughtful eyes--eyes, too, in which she felt that she discerned latent charming possibilities--Mrs. Wilson had an inspiration which satisfied herself fully as she thought of it later. "There is often the great difficulty--also the obstacle to those who labor in that vineyard. But in your case I am sure that you have only to search your own heart in order to find the spirit of beauty. After all, the artistic sense is fundamentally largely a matter of character." Constance went on her way with winged feet. She felt uplifted by the interview. Her starved senses had been refreshed, and her imagination imbued with a new outlook on life, which though foreign, if not inimical, to some of her past associations, she already perceived to be vital and stimulating. XI Three months later, on a rare day in early June, Miss Lucille Wilson was made Mrs. Clarence Waldo, in the presence of a fashionable company. Journalistic social tittle-tattle had engendered such lively public interest that the neighborhood of St. Stephen's was beset by a throng of sight-seers--chiefly random women--who for two hours previous to the ceremony occupied the adjacent sidewalks and every spot which would command a glimpse of the bride and guests. A force of policemen guarded the church against the incursion of the multitude. Yet perhaps the patient waiters felt rewarded for their pains, inasmuch as the heroine of the occasion, after alighting from her carriage, stood for an instant at the entrance to the canopy before proceeding, as though she were willing to give the world a brief opportunity to behold her loveliness and grandeur. For those with pocket cameras there was time enough for a snap-shot before she was lost to sight. Within the church were gay silks and nodding bonnet plumes and imposing formalities. Six maids, each wearing as a memento an exquisite locket encrusted with diamonds, and six ushers with scarf-pins of a pearl set in a circle of tiny rubies, escorted the bride to the altar, where the Rev. Mr. Prentiss and two assistant priests were in attendance. When the happy pair had been made man and wife a choir of expensive voices chanted melodiously "O Perfect Love," and the procession streamed down the aisle on its way to the wedding-breakfast. This was served by a New York caterer on little tables with all the gorgeous nicety of which he was capable. Though June is a month when most delicious things are to be had, an effort had evidently been made to procure delicacies which were not in season. The effect of a jam of guests elbowing for their food, as is usual on such occasions, would have lacerated Mrs. Wilson's sensibilities. Her house was large, so she had been able to invite her entire social acquaintance without crowding her rooms, and her instructions had been that there should be numerous deft waiters in order that each guest might come under the benign influence of personal supervision. Accordingly everyone was pleased and in good spirits unless it were the bridegroom, and the doubt in his case was suggested only by the impassiveness of his countenance at a time when it should properly have been the mirror of his heart's joy. Perhaps he had not fully recovered from the farewell dinner given him by his stag friends, as newspaper women are apt to designate a bachelor's intimates, where he had seen fit to express his emotion by drinking champagne to the point when he became musically mellow, a curious and singularly Anglo-Saxon prelude to the holy rite of matrimony. Nevertheless, he was dignified if unemotional; and his frock coat, built for the occasion, his creased trousers, and mouse-colored spats were irreproachable. When the hour came for the bride and groom to depart there were so many sight-seers about the door that the police had to keep the public at bay in order to afford the happy pair a clear passage to the carriage; and also to give the blithe young men and women ample scope for the discharge of the rice and slippers which convention prescribes shall be hurled at those who set forth on their honeymoon in the blaze of social distinction. For a moment the fun was furious, and, the contagion spreading to the spectators, a cheer partly of sympathy, partly of derision broke forth as the spirited horses, bewildered by the shower of missiles, bounded away toward the station. Two hatless, exhilarated youths chased the retreating victims down the street, one of whom skilfully threw an old shoe so that it remained on the top of the vehicle. When the young couple entered the special Pullman car reserved for them the newsboys were already offering papers containing full accounts of the wedding ceremony, including a list of the guests and of the presents with their donors, large pictures of the bride and groom, and diverse cuts reproductive of the salient features of what one of the scribes designated as the most imposing nuptials in Benham's social history. And so they were married. And sorry as she was to lose her daughter, Mrs. Wilson was thankful to have it all over, and to be able to settle down once more and unreservedly to the schemes for social regeneration which had shared with maternal affection the energies of her adult mind. To a certain extent these interests had been rivals, unconsciously and involuntarily so, but it has already been intimated that Lucille was not the kind of girl her mother had intended her to be, and lacked the sympathies which might have made Mrs. Wilson's interests virtually one. To give Lucille all which a modern parent could give and to see her happily married had been her paramount thought. This was now accomplished. The child had received every advantage which wealth could supply, and every stimulus which her own intelligence could suggest. Lucille had not chosen the husband she would have picked out for her. Still Lucille loved him, and since fate had so ordained it, and they had become husband and wife, she was determined to be pleased, and she felt in a measure relieved. The main responsibility was at an end, and she could now enjoy her daughter's married state, and was free to give almost undivided thought to her social responsibilities. Accordingly on the days which followed the wedding Mrs. Wilson shut herself up in her study, and with the aid of her private secretary proceeded to dispose of her accumulated correspondence, and to put her personal affairs to rights. June was the fag end of the social year. Many of those who had been energetic in social enterprises since the autumn were now a little jaded and on the eve of departure for the country, the Lakes, the Atlantic coast or Europe, in search of that respite from the full pressure of modern life which all who can afford it in our large cities now endeavor to procure for themselves. Nevertheless it was the best time to look the field over and to sow the seeds of new undertakings by broaching them to those whose support she desired by a short note of suggestion which could be mulled over during the summer. It was not the season to extract definite promises from allies or to enlist new recruits, but essentially that for exploiting ideas which might bear fruit later when the brains and sensibilities of Benham's best element had been rested and refreshed. Mrs. Wilson had numerous charities, clubs in furtherance of knowledge and classes promoting hygienic or æsthetic development to be pondered. For some of these--the struggling annual charities--methods like a fair or theatricals must be devised in order to raise fresh annual funds. The progressive courses of the past winter, such as the practical talks to young mothers, with live babies as object-lessons, and lectures on the relaxation of the muscles, must be superseded by others no less instructive and alluring. Then again new blood must be introduced into the various coteries which worked for the regeneration and enlightenment of the poor to make good the losses caused by matrimony or fickleness, and new schemes originated for retaining the attention of the meritorious persons to be benefited. In this last connection the idea of a course which should emphasize the importance to every woman of learning something on which she could fall back for self-support, suggested by Mrs. Stuart's plight, now recurred to her as timely. And besides these public interests there were the--perhaps more absorbing because more flattering--numerous personal demands on her sympathies and time made by other women--women largely of her own, but of every walk. Here it seemed to her was her most precious vineyard, for here the opportunity was given for soul to compass soul in an affinity which blessed both the giver and the receiver of spiritual benefits. Sometimes the need which sought her was that of the sinful woman, eager to rehabilitate herself. Sometimes that of the friendless, aspiring student seeking recognition or guidance; but oftener than any that of the blossoming maid or wife of her own class whose yearning nature, reaching out to hers as the flower to the sun and breeze, received the mysterious quickening which is the essence of the higher life, and gave to her in return a love which was like sexual passion in its ardor, but savoring only of the spirit. If she were thus able by the unconscious gifts or grace which were in her to relieve the necessities and attune the aspirations of these choice--and it seemed to her that often the neediest were the choicest--natures, was it strange that she should cherish and even cultivate this involuntary power? Mrs. Wilson's theory in regard to this personal influence was that it was the grateful product of her allegiance to, and passion for, beauty so far as she could lay claim to any merit in the matter. She accepted it as a heaven-sent and heaven-kissing gift which was to be rejoiced in and administered as a trust. Since her talent had turned out to be that of a leader to point the way by virtue of sympathetic intelligence--or, to quote her own mental simile, the electric medium which opened to eager, groping souls the realm of spirit--was not the mission the most congenial which could have been offered her, and in the direct line of her tastes and ambitions? Consequently her private correspondence with those who sought counsel and inspiration in return for adoring fealty was a labor of care as well as of love. Just the right words must be written, and the individual personal touch imparted to each message of criticism, revelation, homely advice, or mere greeting. To be true to beauty and to maintain her individuality by the free outpouring of herself from day to day in felicitous speech of tongue and pen was her glowing task. In the pursuance of it she had acquired mannerisms which were now a part of herself. Her phrases of endearment, her chirography, her note-paper, her method of signing herself, had severally a distinction or peculiarity of their own. All this was now a second nature; but at the outset she had been conscious of it, and, though never challenged, she had once written in vindication in one of her heart-to-heart missives that the mysterious forces of the universe through which God talks with man wear not the garb of conforming plainness, but have each its special exquisiteness; witness the moon-bathed summer night, the mountain peak at sunrise, the lightening glare among the forest pines, the lordly ocean in its many moods. She had a memory for birthdays and anniversaries. In the hour of bereavement her unique words of consolation were the first to arrive. She was prodigal of flowers, and her proselytes, knowing her affection for the rose and the lily, were apt to transform her study into a bower on the slightest excuse. She never wrote without flowers within her range of vision. In the evening of one of these days following her daughter's wedding, Mrs. Wilson was interrupted in her correspondence by the entrance of her maid with the bewildering news that a baby had been left on the doorsteps, and that a woman, presumably its mother, had, in the act of stealing away after ringing the bell, run into the arms of one of the servants, and was now a prisoner below stairs. The maid was agitated. Should they send for a policeman, or what was to be done? The course to adopt had not been clear to those in authority in the kitchen, and the solution had been left to the mistress whose eleemosynary tendencies had to be taken into account. An infant, a waif of destiny, left on her doorsteps at dead of night! There was only one thing to do, to see the baby, and to talk to the mother, and for this purpose Mrs. Wilson had both brought before her in the ante-room where she had received Constance Stuart. Rumor flies fast, and by this time a burly, belted policeman had arrived on the scene and stood towering in the background behind the quartette of servants, the butler, the second-man, who had apprehended the woman, a housemaid who had taken the custody of the child, and Mrs. Wilson's own maid. Mrs. Wilson surveyed the group for an instant with the air of a photographer in search of a correct setting. Then, with a smile of divination, she said, authoritatively, "Now, Mary, give the child to its mother, and when I need anyone, I will ring. You, too, Mr. Officer, please wait outside. I am sure that this woman will tell me her story more freely if we are alone. And, James, bring some tea--the regular tea-service." [Illustration: "I am sure that this woman will tell me her story"] As the servants took their departure, Mrs. Wilson looked again at the woman, whom she had already perceived to be young and good looking. She stood holding her baby securely but not tenderly, with a half-defiant, half-bewildered air, as of a cat at bay in strange surroundings. But though her mien expressed a feline dismay, Mrs. Wilson perceived that she was no desperate creature of the slums. Nor was she flauntily dressed like the courtesan of tradition. Her attire--a neat straw sailor hat, a well-fitting dark blue serge skirt and serge jacket over a white shirt, and decent boots indicated some social aptness; and her features, especially her clever and sensitive, though somewhat hard, mouth gave the challenge of intelligence. It was a smart face, one which suggested quick-wittedness and the habit of self-reliance, if not self-satisfaction, to the detriment of sentiment and delicacy. She appeared to Mrs. Wilson to be about twenty-three, and slightly shorter than Mrs. Stuart, with a sturdier, less flexible figure. Her hair was light brown, and her complexion fair, but she had roving dark eyes which gave a touch of picturesqueness to what might be called the matter-of-fact modernness of her aspect. They were curious eyes, almost Italian in their hue and calibre, yet in repose coldly scrutinizing and impassive. Mrs. Wilson appreciated with a sense of relief that here was no case of sodden ignorance and degradation; for though in such instances the remedy was more obvious, she preferred to be brought in contact with natures which drew upon her intellectual faculties. She believed herself modern in her sympathies, and in her capacity as a philanthropic worker was partial to the problems with which modern conditions and modern thought confront struggling human nature. "Won't you sit down? And perhaps you would like to lay your baby on the sofa while we talk and I make you some tea." The girl, who was prepared probably for a sterner method, yielded, after a quiver of uncertainty, to the fascination of this gracious appeal; pausing for a brief instant to examine the tiny face peering from the folds of the knit shawl in which the child was wrapped, but with a gaze scientific rather than maternal, as though she were seeking to trace a likeness or some law of heredity. Then she sat down and raised her eyes to meet her entertainer's with a glance bordering on irony, and which seemed to ask, "Well, what are you going to do about it?" Mrs. Wilson noticed that her hands, which lay in her lap, lightly crossed, with the palms down, were long and efficient-looking, and that she wore no wedding-ring. "Is it a boy or a girl?" Mrs. Wilson resumed, with disarming gentleness. "A girl." With a contraction of her mouth which began in a bitter smile and ended against her will in a gulp, she added, "I didn't intend to have it. I didn't want to have it. I suppose you've guessed I'm not a married woman." "Yes, I guessed that. I see, too, that you are in trouble, and my sole object in detaining you here to-night is to give you all the aid in my power. I'm not seeking to judge or to lecture you, but to help you." The girl regarded her with a matter-of-fact stare, then said, bluntly, "I'd have been all right now if your servant hadn't nabbed me." "You mean if you had succeeded in abandoning your child?" "Yes. I was earning my living before, and I could go on. I guess I could have got back my old place." "But-- Do you mind telling me why you wished to abandon your baby?" "That's why. I've just told you. To make a fresh start." "I see. And it was chance, I suppose, that you left it on my door-steps rather than elsewhere?" "You're Mrs. Randolph Wilson, aren't you?" "Yes." "I had read about you in the newspapers, and all about the wedding, and that you were tremendously rich. When my child was born I hoped she'd die; but, as she didn't, I made up my mind that the best thing I could do was to let you look after her. But the luck was against me a second time. I was caught again." She laughed as though her only concern was to let fate perceive that she had some sense of humor. Mrs. Wilson frowned involuntarily. Yet, though her taste was offended her curiosity was whetted. "But wasn't your--wasn't he man enough to look after you and provide for the child?" "I didn't tell him. He doesn't know. It wasn't his fault. That is"--she paused for a moment, but her expression suggested solicitude lest the naked truth should be disconcerting rather than shame--"I took the chance. Neither of us intended to be married. He travels mostly, and is here only two or three times a year. What would he do with a baby anyway?" The entrance of the butler with the tea things was opportune. It gave Mrs. Wilson time to think. Her experience of women of this class had been considerable. If not invariably penitent, they had always shown shame or humble-mindedness. Here was a new specimen, degenerate and appalling, but interesting to the imagination. While the servant set the glittering, dainty silver service on the table at his mistress's side the girl watched her and him with obvious curiosity and a mixture of disdain and fascination. Now and again her roving eyes took in the exquisite surroundings, then reverted to the face of her would-be benefactress as to a magnet. It seemed to be the triumph of a desire not to appear worse than she really was which made her speak when they were alone, and Mrs. Wilson, still in search of inspiration, was busy with the tea-caddy. "I wasn't going to let her out of my sight until I knew she was safe." She nervously compressed the back of one of her hands with the long fingers of the other in the apparent effort to justify her course, a consideration to which she was evidently not accustomed. "Wouldn't she have had a better home at the expense of the State than any I could have given her? And there was the chance you might take a fancy to her and adopt her. She's less homely than the average new-born young one. You see I thought everything over, lady. And next to its dying that seemed to me the best chance it had for happiness in a best possible world." "Ah, but you mustn't talk like that. It's hard, I know, egregiously hard. But you mustn't be bitter," said Mrs. Wilson, with mandatory kindness. The girl smiled in a superior fashion; it was almost a sneer. Her desire to justify herself had been an involuntary expression. Now vanity intervened, vanity and the pride of smouldering opinion. "I'm not bitter; I'm only telling you the plain truth. I'm ignorant, I dare say, compared to you; but I'm not so ignorant as you think. I've thought for myself some; and--and all I say is that this isn't any too good a world for a girl like me anyway, and when a girl like me goes wrong, as you call it, and has a kid, instead of crying her eyes out the sensible thing for her to do is to find someone to look after it for her." "Which only proves, my child, that such a thing ought never to happen to her." "No--not if she has luck." There was a brief pause; then with an impulsive glide Mrs. Wilson swept across the room and transferred a cup of tea to the hands of this wanderer from the fold of grace and ethics. The girl, taken off her guard, tried to rise to receive it, and looked at her with the half-fascinated expression of a bird struggling against the fowler. Sitting down beside her, Mrs. Wilson took one of her hands and said, "Do you not understand, my dear, that society must insist for its own preservation that a woman shouldn't go wrong? The whole safety of the family is based on that. That's the reason the world has to seem a little cruel to those of our sex who sin against purity. Children must know who their fathers are." She had these precepts in their modern guise at the tip of her tongue; she hastened to add, benignly, "But though the world in self-defence turns a cold shoulder on the unchaste woman, for her who seeks forgiveness and a fresh start there are helping hands and loving words which offer forbearance and counsel and friendship." "But supposing I'm not seeking forgiveness? That's the trouble, lady. If only now I were a shame-faced, contrite sinner down in the dust at the foot of the cross asking permission to lead a new life, how much simpler it would be for both of us!" Mrs. Wilson gasped. The coolness of the sacrilege disturbed her intellectual poise. The girl might have been speaking of an invitation to dinner instead of the redemption of her soul so casual was her regret. "That is where you belong; that is where you must come in order to find grace and peace," she said, in an intense whisper. "I've shocked you." "Yes, you've shocked me. But that doesn't matter. You don't realize what you're saying. The important thing is to save you from yourself, to cleanse the windows of your soul so that the blessed light of truth may enter." The girl regarded her curiously, nervously abashed at the impetuous kindness of this proselytism. "That's what I meant by saying I'd thought some. If it's church doctrine you mean, you'd only be disappointed. It may help people like you. But for the working people--well, some of us who use our wits don't think much of it." Though Mrs. Wilson looked profoundly grieved, the spiritual melancholy emanating from her willowy figure and mobile countenance was charged with resolution as well as pity. "It isn't merely church doctrine that you lack. You lack the spirit of Christian civilization. Your entire point of view is distorted. You are blind, child, utterly blind to the eternal verities." The girl's dark eyes grew luminous in response to this indictment, but a deprecating smile trembled on her lip in protest at her own susceptibility. "What is it you want me to do?" she said at last. "To begin with, I wish you to support your child as a woman should. You brought it into the world, and you owe to the helpless little thing a mother's love and care. Will you tell me your name?" "Loretta Davis." "And what has been your employment?" "They don't know. I don't want them to know. I gave them as an excuse that I was tired of the place." "I'm not asking your employer's name. What kind of work was it?" "I was assistant cashier in a drug store." "And before that?" "I answered the bell for a doctor." "I see. I don't wish to pry into your affairs; but do you belong here? Are your parents living?" "I don't mind telling. There's not much to tell. My father and mother are dead. I was born about a hundred miles from here and attended the public school. I had my living to make, so I came to Benham about two years ago. I had acquaintances, and was crazy to go into a store. But a girl who came from the same town as I was going to be married, and got me her place to look after the doctor's bell and tidy up. He was a dentist. He lost his health and had to go to Colorado for his lungs, and then I went to the drug store. That's all there is to tell, lady--that is, except one thing, which doesn't count much now." "You might as well tell me that also." "Oh, well, I'd been thinking of training to be a nurse when I got into trouble. I'd got used to doctors and medicine, and they told me I had the sort of hands for it." She exhibited her strong, flexible fingers. "If I had got rid of my baby, I was going to apply to a hospital. So you see I've got some ambition, lady. I wanted to be of some use. I'm not altogether bad." "No, no, I'm sure you're not. I understand perfectly. And the baby shan't stand in the way of your making the most of yourself. I will arrange all that." Mrs. Wilson spoke with fluent enthusiasm. She felt that she had discovered the secret of, if not the excuse for, the girl's callousness. Unwelcome maternity had interrupted the free play of her individuality at the moment when she was formulating a career, and as a modern woman herself, Mrs. Wilson understood the bitterness of the disappointment. It gave her a cue to Loretta's perversion, so that she no longer felt out of touch with her. She refrained from the obvious temptation of pointing out that a nurse's best usefulness would be to guard her tender child, and broached instead the project which swiftly suggested itself the moment she felt that she had fathomed the cause of the culprit's waywardness. "I know just the home for you; a little tenement in the Lincoln Chambers. The rooms are savory, convenient, and attractive, and on the opposite side of your entry lives an earnest, interesting spirit, a woman whose husband has deserted her, left her with two children to provide for. She will be glad to befriend you, and you will like her. I happen to know that the tenement is vacant, and it is the very place for you." Loretta had listened with sphinx-like attention. When Mrs. Wilson paused her eyes began to make another tour of her surroundings, and at the close of her remark ignored the theme of conversation. "I never was inside a multi-millionaire's house before. That's what you are, ain't it?" The query was queer, but not to be evaded. "I'm a rich woman certainly, which makes it all the easier for me to help you." If this savored of a pauperizing line, which was contrary to Mrs. Wilson's philanthropic principles, she felt that she must not at all hazards let the girl slip through her fingers. "If I'm willing that you should." "Of course. But you are, I'm sure you are. You're going to trust me and to put yourself into my hands." The confidence and charm of this fervor suddenly met with their reward. Loretta had held back from genuine scruples, such as they were. Instinctive independence and a preconceived distrust of fine ladies had kept her muscles stiff and her face set, though she felt thrilled by a strange and delicious music. No one could have guessed that it was only the habit of awkwardness which restrained her from falling on her knees in an ecstasy of self-abasement, not from an access of shame, but as a tribute to the woman whose personality had captivated her against her will. "You seem to take a heap of interest in me, don't you?" The words by themselves suggested chiefly surprise, but the sign of her surrender showed itself in her eyes. They were lit suddenly with an intensity which overspread her countenance, bathing its matter-of-fact smartness in the soft light of emotion. "I'm willing to do whatever you like," she said. XII If it be said of Gordon Perry, attorney and counsellor-at-law, that he was loth to incur the modern epithet, "crank," it was equally true that he had ideals and cherished them. He believed in living up to his convictions. At the same time his sense of humor made him aware that to dwell unduly on premeditated virtue is the prerogative of a prig, and that it is often wise in a workaday world to yield an inch if one would gain an ell. His form of yielding was apt to be genial, thoughtful consideration of the other man's point of view, a virtual admission that there were two sides to the case, instead of flying in the face of his opponent. The modern American regards this tactful moderation as essential to the despatch of business, and prides himself on its possession. It is the oil of the social industrial machine. Also it is slippery stuff. One is liable to slide yards away from one's point of view unless one plants one's feet firmly. It is so much easier to follow the trend than to resist it. The natural tendency of those not very much in earnest is to woo success by dancing attendance on the powers which are, both movements and men. So convictions become palsied, and their owners mere puppets in the whirl of human activity. For the sake of fortune, fame, or oftenest for the sake of our bread and butter, we subscribe to theories and support standards which we suspect at heart to be unsound, lest we fail to keep step with the class to which we belong. How to preserve his poise as an independent character and at the same time avoid antagonism with some of his new friends had become interesting to Gordon Perry. He had reached a point where he had only to be quiescent in order to reap presently a rich harvest. His clear-headedness, his quickness, and his common sense had been recognized, and it was in the air that he was a rising man in his profession. People of importance had taken him up. It was known that he had attended to certain matters for Paul Howard, from whom it was only one step to the source of many gigantic undertakings productive of fat fees. To the eye of shrewd observers in Benham he had only to go on as he had been going, and attend strictly to business, in order to emerge from the ranks of his brother lawyers, and become one of the small group which controlled the cream of the legal business of the city. Instead of bringing accident cases he would defend them for powerful corporations. Instead of conducting many small proceedings at an expense of vitality for which his clients could not afford and did not expect to pay adequately, he would be employed by banks and trust companies, would organize and reorganize railroads, be made the executor of large estates and the legal adviser of capitalists in financial schemes from which profits would accrue to him in the tens of thousands. It ought to be comparatively plain sailing. This was obvious to the man in question as well as to his contemporaries. He knew that his business was growing, and sundry rumors had reached him that he had been spoken of in inner circles as skilful and level-headed. To indicate the current which ran counter in Gordon Perry's thoughts to his appreciation of these possibilities it will be necessary to refer briefly to his past and to his mental perspective. He was the son of a widow. Also a soldier's son. His father, a volunteer, had survived the Civil War, and, attracted by the rising destinies of Benham, had made his home there, only to fall victim to a fever within a year of his coming. Gordon was then eleven years old. A policy of life insurance kept the wolf from the door for the afflicted widow so far as a bare subsistence was concerned. She had a small roof over her head, and was able by means of boarders and needlework to present a decent front to the world while she watched over her sole treasure, her only child. Her ambition was to give him an education, and her ambition in this respect was neither niggardly nor ignorant. He was to have the best--a college training--and to give him this it delighted her to pinch and to slave. When a woman's duty is squarely determined by responsibility for a fatherless son, it is comparatively easy for her to be true to her trust to the extent of complete devotion and unselfishness. But devotion and unselfishness do not include wisdom. Happy for him whose mother is a victim neither to superstition nor to silliness, but sees life with a clear, sane outlook. Mrs. Perry was one of those American women educated in the days of Emersonian spirituality, when society walked in the lightest marching order as regards material comforts and embellishments, who were austere and sometimes narrow in their judgments, but who set before them as the one purpose of life the development of character. She was simple, pious, brisk, and direct; setting great store on acting and speaking to the point, and abhorring compromise or evasions. In her religious faith she believed, as a Unitarian, about what liberal Episcopalians and Presbyterians believe to-day. Doctrine, however, appeared to her of minor importance compared to the pursuit of noble aims and the practice of self-control. She wished her son to care for the highest things, those of the spirit and the intellect, because she regarded them with sincerity as the passports to human progress; and, though her æsthetic aims were dwarfed, and human color and grandeur may have seemed to her to smack of degeneracy, the white light of her aspirations had a convincing beauty of its own. Under the influence of this training and this point of view, Gordon went to Harvard. There he encountered a new atmosphere. The old gods were not dead, but they seemed moribund, for there were others. The college motto, "Veritas," still spoke the watchword of faith, yet the language of his class-mates led him to perceive that what was the truth was again in controversy. The Civil War was over, but the martial spirit which had sprung into being at the call of duty and love of country was seething in the veins of a new generation eager to rival in activity the heroism of its fathers. It was no longer enough to walk in contemplation beneath the college elms and develop character by introspective struggle. Truth--the whole truth, lay not there. Was not useful, skilful action in the world of affairs the true test of human efficiency? A great continent lay open to ingenious youth trained to unearth and master its secrets. How was it to be conquered unless the spirit of energy was nourished by robust frames, unless men were practical and competent as well as soulful? Gordon listened to this new note with a receptive ear, and recognized its value. Hitherto he had thought little of his body, which, like an excellent machine, had performed its work without calling itself to his attention. Now he took part in college athletics, and realized the exhilaration which proceeds from healthful competitive exercise. Through contact with his mates, and active participation in the affairs of the college world, he experienced also the still more satisfactory glow, best described as the joy of life, which, partly physical, partly athletic, had never been a portion of his consciousness. He was drafted for the football team, and by his prowess and his pleasant, manly style acquired popularity in the college societies, that fillip to self-reliance and proper self-appreciation. If, as a consequence, he relaxed somewhat his efforts to lead his class in scholarship, which had been his sole ambition at the start, he did not forget that he was a pensioner on his mother's self-sacrifice; and though his rank at graduation was not in the first half-dozen, it was in the first twenty-five, and it could be said of him that he looked fit for the struggle of life, the possessor of a healthy mind in a well-developed body. He was sophisticated, but his soul was untarnished by dissipation, and the edge of his enthusiasm for enterprise and endeavor was not dulled. Then followed three years at the law school, where in common with nearly everyone he worked like a beaver to equip himself for his profession. There all interests--it might be said all emotions--were absorbed in contemplation of technical training. But he was still under the shadow of the Harvard elms, and the great world lay beyond, a land of mysterious promise to his eager vision. However clear-sighted and philosophical a college graduate, his first actual contact with the great world is apt to be depressing. Society seems so large and so indifferent; he is so insignificant and so helpless--he who six months ago was a hero in the eyes of his companions. Especially is this apt to be the case when one is translated from the dizzy democratic heights of college renown to a humble, humdrum social station. It was no revelation to Gordon Perry to find himself the son of a hard-working, inconspicuous boarding-house keeper, but it sobered him. He was neither ashamed of the fact nor dismayed by it. On the contrary, the sight of his mother's tired face and figure subordinated every ambition to his loving determination to conquer the world for her sake. It seemed, however, a less simple matter to conquer the world now that he was an unknown student in a law office in a large city, with no family influence or powerful friends to abet his endeavors. For the first few years his lot was so obscure that the contrasts of life arrested his attention as they had never done before, though as a subconsciousness, for he never outwardly paused in his efforts to become indispensable to the firm of lawyers in whose office he was. He beheld acquaintances in various employments, whose mental superior he believed himself to be, put in the direct line of preferment through pecuniary or social influence, and had to solace himself with the doctrine--also the American doctrine--that it was every man's privilege to make the most of his own advantages, and his duty to acknowledge the same privilege in others. Some young men are made cynical by the perception of the workings of free competition; others simply thoughtful. Gordon was among the latter. Life presented itself to him from a new perspective, and if it suddenly appeared both perplexing and distressing, it appeared none the less interesting. His personal dismay, if this passing reaction deserves so harsh a term, was transient, but it was the precursor to graver, disinterested musings. His attention once arrested by the inequalities of life turned further afield and became riveted by concern and by pity. Why in this city, established under free institutions, was it necessary that thousands should be living in poverty, ignorance, and social ineffectiveness if not degradation? It ought not to be. It must not be. How could it be averted? This outburst of his protesting spirit encountered the query of his dispassionate mind--what remedy do you suggest? It was like a douche of cold water. Instinctively he reached out for help. He knew that he was in search of truth this time, but he abhorred an _ignis fatuus_. He began to ask questions and to read. There were various answers on the lips of those whom he consulted, for the question seemed to be in the air. Many, and there were among them some whose broad shoulders, free carriage, and prosperously self-reliant air told of that joy in living and practical, world-conquering serenity typical of the successful man of the present generation, who assured him, often in a whisper, as though it were a confidence, that these inequalities must always exist. Were not men's abilities different, and would they not always be so? Was it just that one man's energy and skill should be curtailed to keep pace with another's incapacity? What would become of human individuality and brilliancy if everyone's earning and owning were to be circumscribed by metes and bounds, and we were all to become commonplace, unimaginative slaves of socialism? It was right, of course, that existing abuses in the way of long hours and insufficient pay should be rectified. That was on the cards. In many cases it had been already consummated. And what had malcontents or critics of the existing industrial system to say to the long list of splendid benefactions--free libraries, free hospitals, free parks, and free museums--given to the community by rich men--men who had been abler and more progressive than their fellows? Surely the world would be a dull place without competition. There were others who declared that the destruction of the poor was their poverty, and that the poor man was at fault. That if he would let liquor alone, have fewer children, and brush his teeth regularly, he would be happy and prosperous. They called Gordon's attention to the many schemes for the uplifting of the industrial masses which were already in operation in Benham, homes for abandoned children, evening classes where instruction and diversion were skilfully blended, model tenements, and, most modern of all, college settlements, the voluntary transplanting of individual educated lives into social Saharas. The books which he read were of two classes. Their writers were either optimistic apologists for the current ills of civilization, deploring and deprecating their existence, and suggesting the gradual elimination of social distress by education and intelligent humanity--"the giving of self unreservedly," as many put it--without serious modification of the structure of society; or they were outspoken enemies of the present industrial status, alleging that poverty and degradation were an inseparable incident of unchecked human competition, and that these evils would never be eradicated until the axe was applied to the fundamental cause. These latter critics had diverse preliminary crucial remedies at heart, such as the capitalization of land, government control of railroads, mines, and other sources of power, or the appropriation to the use of the community of a slice of abnormal profits. Most of this presentation, whether through men or from books, was not new to Gordon; but it had been hitherto unheeded by him and had the full effect of novelty. He found himself staring at a condition of affairs which he had patriotically if carelessly supposed could not exist in the land of the free and the home of the brave until he suddenly opened his eyes and beheld in full operation in his native city, of which he was becomingly proud, those grave contrasts of station common to older civilizations. These included on the one hand not only the uneducated army of workers in Benham's pork factories, oil-yards, and iron mills, but an impecunious, shiftless lower class; and on the other what was, relatively speaking, a corporal's guard of wealthy, wideawake, luxurious, ambitious masters of the situation, to whom he hoped presently to commend himself as a legal adviser. But what was the remedy? What was his remedy? In the coolness of second thoughts, after months of ferment, he had to confess that he had none--at least none at the moment. Simultaneously he had reached the further conclusion, which was both a relief and a distress, that whatever could be done must be gradual, so gradual as to be almost imperceptible when measured by the span of a single life. He recalled, with a new appreciation of the truth, the saying that the mills of God grind slowly. From the vanguard hope of a complete change in current conditions, by a series of telling blows of his own conception, he was forced back to a modest stand behind the breast-works. Modest because he began to examine with a new respect the philanthropic and economic apparatus for attack already in position, which he had at first glance been disposed to regard as too cumbersome and dilatory. Here was where his purpose not to be quixotic and visionary came to his support. He realized that it was necessary for him to wait and to study before he could hope to be of service; that he must take his position in the ranks and observe the tactics of others before attempting to assume leadership or to initiate reforms. One effect of this check to his soaring aspirations at the dictate of his common sense was to give a fresh impetus to his resolve to succeed in his profession. For a brief period the shock of his discoveries had been so stunning that he almost felt as though it were his duty and his mission to devote his life to finding a remedy for the ills of civilization. His mother's necessities stood as a bar to this. But with the ebbing of his vision he found himself no longer beset with doubts as to the legitimacy of his apprenticeship. It seemed to him clearly his duty, not only on his mother's account but his own, to throw himself into his work unreservedly with the intention of hitting the mark. He had his bread to earn, his way to make. How would it profit him or anyone that he should forsake his calling and stand musing by the wayside merely because he was distressed by the inequalities of the industrial system? Inequalities which existed all over the world and were as old as human nature. He had no comprehensive cure to suggest, so for the time being his lips were sealed and his hands tied by his own ignorance. And if conscience, borrowing from some of the books which he had read, argued that the prosperous lawyer was the agent of the rich against the poor, the strong against the weak, his answer was that the taunt was not true, and his retort by way of a counter-sally was that in no country in the world did the laboring man receive so high wages as in this. This at least was a step forward, and so he felt justified to follow precedent and to bide his time. In order to succeed a young lawyer must be ceaselessly vigilant. It is not enough to perform faithfully what he is told. There are many who will do this. The man who gets ahead is he who does more than the letter of his employment demands, who anticipates instructions and disregards time and comfort in order to follow a clue of evidence or elucidate a principle. So he becomes indispensable, and by and by the opportunity presents itself which the shiftless ascribe to luck. Gordon Perry revealed this faculty of indefatigable initiative. The firm in whose office he was a student had a large business, chiefly in the line of commercial law. The transit of the various commodities to which Benham owed her prosperity was necessarily productive of considerable litigation against the railroads as common carriers and between the shippers and consignees of wares and merchandise. Besides, there were constant suits for personal injuries to be prosecuted or defended, involving nice distinctions as to what is negligence, and bringing in their train much practice for the juniors in the investigation of testimony. From the outset Gordon worked with unsparing enthusiasm, seeking to do the work entrusted to him so thoroughly that those who tried the cases would find the situation clearly defined and everything at their fingers' ends. When it was perceived that he was not only diligent but discerning and accurate, they began to rely on him, and by the end of three years the responsibility of trying as well as of preparing the less important proceedings in the lower courts became his. Also, by showing himself solicitous regarding the affairs of the clients of the office, he was able now and again to supply information or tide matters over when the member of the firm inquired for was out; and it was not long before some of them formed the habit of consulting him directly in minor matters. When at the end of five years the senior partner, who had independent means, retired in order to go to Congress, his two associates came to the conclusion that it would be good policy, as well as just, to give Perry, as the most promising young man in the office, a small interest in the business. This promotion naturally gave him a new status with the clients, and most of those who had been in the habit of consulting him offhand, now laid their serious troubles before him. So by the time he was twenty-nine he was well started in his profession, and able to extract a promise from his mother that if he continued to prosper for another year, she would yield to his solicitations to give up her boarders and move into a brighter neighborhood. Although absorbed in his profession, Gordon's genial charm soon brought him invitations of a social nature. He became a member of a law club of men of his own age, which met once a month to compare impressions and banish dull care over a good dinner. Still eager for exercise he joined a rowing club on the river Nye, and a gymnasium. After he was admitted to the firm he had his name put up for election at one of the social clubs, The University, so called because its members were college graduates. Here he met the educated young men of the city, and though his mother had an old-fashioned prejudice against clubs, as aristocratic resorts where men gambled and drank more than was good for them, Gordon felt that he needed some place where he could play a game of whist or billiards with congenial spirits or look at magazines in a cosey library as an antidote to his sterner pursuits. Mrs. Perry was more than willing to trust her son, so she sighed and set down to the changed temper of the day the spread of Benham's club fever. For, like other progressive cities, Benham was fairly honeycombed with clubs. The American social instinct had become almost daft on the subject, and no two or three men or women could come together for any purpose without organizing. From a constitution and by-laws the road was apt to be short to rooms or a clubhouse. The University was one of half a dozen of the purely social clubs of the city, a spacious establishment, modelled on European traditions with American plumbing and other modern comforts. Gordon was prompted to join by Paul Howard, who declared that he preferred it for genuine enjoyment to the Eagle Club, the favorite resort of the very rich and fashionable--the Spread Eagle, as the malicious termed it. At The University there was secular instrumental music on Sunday afternoons, a custom copied from Boston, that former hotbed of ascetic Sabbath life, and on Saturday nights a cold supper was provided, about which stood in pleasant groups the active professional and business men of the city and those who followed the arts--musicians, painters, and literary men. "Exclusive and aristocratic all the same," said Hall Collins, contemptuously, one day when Gordon vouchsafed to him a glowing account of these Saturday nights. Hall was one of the moving spirits in the only other club of which Gordon was a member, The Citizens' Club, the somewhat ambitious title of an organization conducted by young men interested in civic and industrial reform, not unlike that to which the unhappy Emil Stuart had belonged. "Which only shows how little you understand what we are after," was the prompt answer. "There isn't a more truly democratic place in the world--only we insist that a man should win his spurs before he is entitled to consideration. A clod, while he is a clod, isn't a gentleman, and it isn't good American doctrine to regard him as one. No logic will make him so. You're talking through your hat, Hall, and you know it." Hall grinned. It was true he was not more than half in earnest, but he was more than half suspicious of Gordon. He could not make him out, which nettled him, for Hall Collins liked to have men docketed in his mind. "To Gehenna with your gentlemen!" he retorted. "What use are spurs to a man who has no boots to wear them on?" "Hear, hear!" interjected two or three bystanders whose attention was caught by the metaphor. "It strikes me, young man," pursued Collins, who had his chair tipped back, his feet on the table and was smoking a fat cigar which one of the aldermen had given him, appropriated by the wholesale at a city banquet, "that you're trying to ride two horses." He was glad to have an audience to the discussion, for he could not make up his mind that Gordon was sincere in his interest in the Citizens' Club, and he feared some ulterior motive, political or quasi-philanthropic. "Yes, that's just what I'm doing," answered Gordon. "Half of the lack of sympathy between the educated and the uneducated, between capital and labor, as you like to call it, lies in the imagination. What is there incompatible in being a member of a club like this and wearing patent-leather shoes and the latest thing in collars?" "It smacks too much of college settlements. It doesn't go to the root of things." "But it helps just as they help, unless in the ideal democracy you are aiming at there's to be no place for the refinements of life, for soft speech, gentle manners, and the arts. In the millennium are we all to be uncouth and unimaginative?" "Score one for the man with the patent-leather shoes, only he hasn't got them on," exclaimed one of the listeners. "You're beginning at the wrong end. You put the cart before the horse; that's the trouble with you. What's the use of decorating a house that's going to be struck by lightning?" With all his prejudice and homely exterior Hall Collins was at heart no demagogue or charlatan. He was dead in earnest himself and he wished others to be. He was conversant with the history of the development of trades-unions over the world. He was a student of humanitarian reforms, and gave all the time which he could spare from his occupation as a master-mason to the furtherance of what he considered legislative progress. "Struck by lightning, and then there's no house, only ruins. That's not what you desire, Hall Collins, you, I, nor anyone here. We're all seeking the same thing, and we're all groping more or less in the dark--putting the cart before the horse, may be. But you haven't any panacea for what's wrong more than I have. All we can hope to do is to make a few trifling alterations on the premises--paper a wall or enlarge a flue--before our lease expires. The chief reason I joined this club was that I might stop theorizing and wringing my hands and get down to business. We all recognize there's plenty of practical work waiting for us, so what's the use of distrusting each other's theories or motives? I've no Congressional bee in my bonnet. I'm not trying to climb to political prominence on the shoulders of the horny-handed Citizens' Club." Hall colored slightly. He had been harboring just that suspicion. "Good talk." "Come off your perch, Hall. This man Perry's all right," was the response of several listeners. The group was now a dozen. Hall took his feet from the table, stood up and put out his hand. "It isn't because the boys say so," he said. "I'm taking you on your own word, Perry, and you'll never hear me peep again. You've the right idea; it's no time for speculating, for there's lots of business to be done right here in Benham. And if I had a notion you might be masquerading--well, there have been cases where men in patent leathers and dandy collars showed up strong in working-men's clubs, and the only business they ever did was to lay and pull wires." "Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them," said Ernest Bent. "Hall was born great, but if Don Perry wants to go to the Legislature why shouldn't the Citizens' Club send him there?" "That's so," said a second. "Not until he wins those spurs he spoke of--not if he's the man I take him to be," exclaimed Collins, doughtily. "Not under any circumstances. I have no wish for office. I don't desire to be a politician." Gordon spoke eagerly. The only thought in his mind was to deprecate the suggestion. It was true that in looking over the field there had seemed to him almost a glut of philanthropists, and he had chosen the Citizens' Club as a more promising opening than charitable work. But his ambition was only to be a private in the ranks. "And yet," commented Hall, "what should we do without politicians? They are the only persons who put things through, and laws on the statute books are what we need. Look at this cigar." He exhibited the butt end, which was all that was left. "The man who gave it to me helped himself to a box, and the only thing he wouldn't help himself to is a red-hot stove, but I didn't spit in his face and I smoked his cigar, and I dare say he'll vote for some of our batch of bills because I told him a good story. It's disgusting." He threw down the butt and trod it under foot. "The cardinal sin of the sovereign people is their ignorance. Will they never learn not to send dishonest men to represent them?" "You see that Hall is both an idealist and practical," said Ernest Bent to Gordon. It was through Bent that Gordon had joined the Citizens' Club. He was his next-door neighbor, the son of an apothecary, and had, while following his trade behind the counter, read books on the science of government, and the rights and wrongs of man, with excursions to Darwin and Huxley. As the result of bandying opinions from time to time he had taken Gordon one evening to a meeting of the club, and subsequently invited him to become a member. Gordon did not need persuasion to join. It seemed to him just the opportunity he had been looking for to espouse the cause which he had at heart, by focussing his sympathies on practical measures. He recognized that the club was not only a debating body, but aimed to be a political force, and that many of its members were expert and not entirely scrupulous politicians. But, on the other hand, in spite of the jaundiced views of some of those who harangued the meetings, Gordon discerned that a half-dozen men were really in control--among them Collins and Bent--and that they were guided by a sincere and reasonably cautious ambition to procure scientific reforms. A little consideration convinced him that he was glad they were seeking to wield political influence. It gave the effect of reality, of battle. Academic discussion was a vital prelude to well-considered action, but, after all, as Hall Collins said, the only thing which really counted was law on the statute books. It suited his manhood to feel that he was about to fight for definite issues. XIII After eighteen months of prosperity the law firm into which Gordon Perry had been admitted was crippled by the death of one of the two other partners. The survivor, who was the junior of the two, and decidedly the inferior in mental calibre and energy, proposed to Gordon to continue the firm on the footing of two-thirds of the profits for himself, and appeared pompously grieved when his former student demurred to the terms. Before he could make up his mind to a more equable division Gordon had made up his to separate and to practise alone. While Gordon did not have a very high opinion of his partner's talents, he was grateful for his own recent promotion, and was aware that his associate's wise countenance and seniority combined would probably avail to control the cream of the business--that brought by managers of corporations and successful merchants, both prone to distrust youth. But the plan of setting up for himself was tempting, especially as he disliked the alternative of the lion's share going to a lawyer of mediocre ability, and when Paul Howard asked why he did not take the step in question, and intimated that he would befriend him in case he did, Gordon resolved to burn his bridges and make the plunge, or in more correct metaphor to hang out his own shingle. As he had expected, there was at first a slight lull in his fortunes; but, on the other hand, he was able to pocket the whole income, and even from the outset he was reasonably busy. Paul Howard's promise was fulfilled. All his personal and presently some of the firm matters were placed in Gordon's hands, and the two men met not infrequently as a consequence. At Harvard they had been acquaintances rather than friends. Their contact on the foot-ball team had inspired respect for each other's grit, but they were not intimate. As the possessor of a liberal allowance, Paul had belonged to a rather frivolous set, notorious in college circles through lavish expenditures, which included boxes at the theatres and suppers and flowers for the chorus girls. Though Gordon was partial to comic opera himself, he had regarded Paul as a high flyer, and Paul in his turn had pitied Gordon as a good fellow spoiled by being obliged to "grind." When they met again in their native city after a lapse of years, each was impressed by the other's improvement and found him much more interesting than he had expected. Paul had toned down. His spirits were less flamboyant; he was gay-hearted instead of noisy, and his manner had lost its condescension. On his part, Gordon had mellowed through contact with the world and was more easy-going in his address, and no longer wore the New England conscience in his nostrils. They met first by chance at a restaurant at noon, and, habit bringing them to the same resort, they lunched together from time to time, and the favorable impression was strengthened on each side. Gordon interested Paul because the former was so different from most of the men with whom he was in the habit of associating, and yet was, so to speak, a good fellow. The true creed of most of Paul's friends when reduced to terms, was substantially this, that the important thing in life is to be on top, that in America every one has a chance and the best men come to the front, that success means money, that money ensures enjoyment, and that no one is supposed to be enjoying himself or herself who does not keep feeding the dynamo of conscious existence with fresh sensations and run the human machine at full pressure. There were necessary corollaries to this, such as "the devil take the hindmost," uttered considerately but firmly; "we shall be a long time dead," murmured jocosely but shrewdly; and "the cranks may prevail and the crash come, but we shall be under the sod," spoken philosophically, with a shake of the head or a sigh; the moral of it all being that the position of the successful--that is, the rich--is delectable and intoxicating, and the rank and file are expected to comport themselves with patriotic and Christian resignation, and not interfere with the free workings of the millionairium, an ingenious American substitute for the millennium. The stock market, athletic sports, and cocktails were the tutelary saints of this section of society. They were habitually long or short of the market from one or two hundred to several thousand shares, according to their means. They followed feverishly the prevailing fads in sport, yachting, tennis, polo, rowing, golf, rackets, hunting, horse shows (as now, a few years later, "bridge," ping-pong, and the deadly automobile). And after exercise, before lunch and dinner, and on every other excuse, they imbibed a cocktail or a whiskey and soda as a fillip to the nervous system. They were dashing, manly-looking fellows, these companions of Paul, ingenious and daring in their business enterprises, or, if men of leisure, keen and brilliant at their games. They set great store by physical courage and unflinching endurance of peril and pain, and they would have responded promptly to a national demand for troops in case of war; but when anything arose on the political or social horizon which threatened to disturb prices on the stock exchange they set their teeth as one man and howled maledictions at it and its author, though it bore the sign manual of true progress. In short, life for them meant a bull market, a galaxy of competitive sports, and perpetual novelty. In turning from this comradeship and point of view to Gordon Perry, Paul did so guardedly. That is, although he was not altogether satisfied to follow the current in which he found himself, he had no intention of being drawn into the eddies by false sentiment or of rowing up-stream at the dictates of envy and demagogism. He was ready to admit that the policy of high-pressure enjoyment and acquisition might be ethically defective, but he did not propose to exchange his birthright for a mess of pottage and become pious or philanthropic on sing-song lines. As he once expressed it to Gordon, some two years after the latter had set up for himself, between the hypocrites and the fools it was a comparatively simple matter to charm an audience with a psalm tune compounded of the Rock of Ages and the Star-Spangled Banner until it passed resolutions against the rich and in favor of the poor, which not merely confounded common sense and subverted justice, but gave a sort of moral sanction to the small lies, the sand in the sugar, the dirt, the superstition and the slipshod ways which distinguished the people without brains and imagination from those with. "We might divide all round," Paul continued, "but what good would that do? I might move into a smaller house, sell my steam yacht and all my stable, except a horse and buggy, and play the Puritan, but what good would that do? People would laugh and my wife would think me crazy. I tell you what, Don, we--I mean the crowd I run with--may be a grasping, extravagant, gambling, sporting, strenuous lot, but we trot square. There's no sand in our sugar, and when there's music to be faced we don't run away, squeal or delude ourselves. But I've sworn off cocktails for good. I began yesterday. And I'm going to keep my eye on you, Don. I don't promise to follow you, but I'm interested. When you get your plans in working order let me look at them. I may be able to syndicate them for you, even though I have to shock my conservative father in the process. By the way, do you happen to need a stenographer? She's said to know her business. And this one is in your line, too." Gordon had been conscious lately that his work required another clerk. "In my line?" "Yes. A tale of woe. She's a protegée of my aunt's, and needs a helping hand. A widow with two small children. Good looking, too, I believe. Mrs. Wilson has had her taught until she can play the type-writer like a learned pig, and take down your innermost thoughts in shorthand. And now the woman insists on being thrown down hard on her own resources, like a good American. We haven't a vacancy, unless I invent one; and it occurred to me that you must have work enough for a second stenographer by this time." "I'll try her." "Thanks. One good turn deserves another. I'll tell my aunt that she ought to ask you to dine; and then if you don't give her to understand that her will is all wrong and should be drawn over again the fault will be yours." "Bankers may advertise their wares in the shop windows, but a self-respecting lawyer may only look wise. He must hold his tongue until he is consulted." "Squat in his office, eh, like a spider waiting for flies? But you ought to know my aunt all the same." "I should like to immensely," said Gordon. "She's not like the rest of the family; she belongs to a different flight. My father has brains and force. It's not easy to equal him in those. He hasn't had time though to sort his ideas and tie them up in nice white packages with crimson bows or to polish anything except his wits. But Aunt Miriam goes in for the perfect life. That's what she has in her mind's eye. You would suit her to death, Don. You ought to be pals. She's absorbed in reforms and æsthetic mission work, and she has a fine scent for national tendencies, and there's no telling but you might each get points from the other." Gordon laughed. "You flatter me, Paul." "No, I don't. You're not alike. You're both aiming at the same thing, I suppose; but your ways are different. And you can't very well both be right. You may not be pals after all. You may disagree and fight. Come to think of it, I shouldn't be in the least surprised if you did. A pitched battle between Gordon Perry and Mrs. Randolph Wilson would be worth watching." Paul chuckled mirthfully at the conception. "I'm not quite sure which of you I would back." "And now you're enigmatic, not to say absurd." "Wait until you get to know her; then you'll understand. I should only tie myself up in a bow-knot trying to explain. Her daughter's marriage gave Aunt Miriam her head. If ever there was a case of disappointment, Lucille was one. Aunt Miriam had intended her to be a model of æsthetic sweetness and light, a sort of Matthew Arnold girl with American patent electrical improvements, but she must have been changed at birth. Lucille has her good points--I'm fond of her--but it's a matter of utter indifference to her whether the world improves or not provided she has what she likes. She must have been a constant jar to her mother. Yet I never heard a whimper from Mrs. Wilson. My aunt had no particular use for Clarence Waldo; yet when the thing was settled one could never have guessed from her manner that she was not to be the mother-in-law of Lord Rosebery or of the author of the great American novel. But now that her mission as a mother is fulfilled, look out for storm centres in the upper lake region of high ideas and fresh winds in reform circles. By the way, the Waldos are in this country again, and are to pass the summer at Newport. My wife says that we are to go there too, with a new steam yacht and all the latest appliances for cutting ice. So you see, I couldn't play the Puritan and the American husband in the same act." As a result of this conversation, Constance Stuart obtained employment in Gordon Perry's office. When she presented herself he recognized her with surprise as the client whose scrupulous purpose he believed he had divined, though she had given no clue to her instructions. He realized that he was predisposed in her favor, so that she scarcely needed the letter of encomium from Mrs. Wilson, which he paused to read, chiefly because of its chirography and diction. He observed that both her face and figure were a little fuller than when he had seen her last, which was becoming, and that she was more trigly, though simply, dressed. It was clear that she had risen from the ashes of her adversity, and was determined to put her best foot forward. And what an attractive voice and fine eyes she had. As he looked at her he said to himself that she was qualified for the position as one in a thousand; the sort of woman who would understand without becoming obtrusive, who would be neither a machine nor a coquette; and though she was a novice, the endorsement was explicit on the score of her capacity. Gordon felt that she would give a new atmosphere to his office. Constance, on her part, was pleased to encounter one not wholly a stranger. Though she had acquired deftness in her work, she felt nervous at actual responsibility, and the memory of the lawyer's kind eyes and frank smile gave her assurance. As she saw him again she was sure that he would be considerate and reasonable. Mrs. Wilson had spoken of an opening in Mr. Howard's office, where she would be one of a roomful of typewriters, but she was glad now that this opportunity had been offered her instead. There would be less excitement and less contact with the hurly-burly of large events, and less chance for promotion and for better pay in case she proved proficient. But, on the other hand, she believed that she would find here a secure and agreeable haven where she could do her best with self-respecting faithfulness and support her children suitably. As she arranged her small effects in the desk provided for her, she concluded already that she was very fortunate. Just a year had passed since Constance had begun her new life in Lincoln Chambers, and the impulse of that new life may be said to have dated from her visit to Mrs. Randolph Wilson. From that interview and that house she had brought away encouragement and inspiration. The text of the value of the spirit of beauty possessed her soul with the ardor of a new faith. Suddenly and with captivating clearness it had been revealed to her that the external fitness of things is a fact and not to be ignored, and that the purely introspective, subjective vision sees only half the truth of existence. She perceived that she had been content with rectitude, and unadorned plainness; that she had been indifferent and blind to color, variety, and artistic excellence. It was as though she had been nourished on skimmed milk instead of cream, as though her diet had been a monotonous simple regimen without a luscious ingredient. To begin with, she had turned her thought to her own home, where cleanliness and order ruled, but where she had hitherto refrained from other than haphazard efforts at pleasing effects. Her idea had been to be comfortable and decent, and to let the rest take care of itself, but now the ambition was awakened to impart taste to her surroundings. To her satisfaction she found that this was not difficult to accomplish even with her modest resources, as her mentor had predicted. Her woman's intelligence and native refinement reinforced her aroused interest, and by altering the angles and position of her furniture, and by introducing a few spots of color to enliven the monotony of her rooms she was able to effect a modest transformation delightful to her own eyes. To plant flowers in boxes for her windows and to arrange the few pictures she owned to advantage was the next step. The modern design of her apartment lent itself to her efforts, as though its newness, its modern tiles and its wall-papers were in league against dull commonplaceness, and it seemed to her presently almost horrible that she had remained indifferent for so long to the necessity of external appearances, absorbed in the processes of introspection. When she and Emil had married her predominant impulse had been to be a good, loving wife to him, and to make his home inviting by her cheerfulness and tact. The new, clean house had seemed to her pretty in itself, and she had taken for granted that the sets of furniture, the carpets, and other household goods, bought hastily, could not fail to set it forth to advantage. They were substantial, fresh, and paid for, and in her happiness it had not occurred to her to bother further. To do so would have seemed to savor of undue worldliness. Now how far away appeared that time of joyful ignorance, and how foreign to her present sophistication its artless outlook. She had deemed herself cultivated then, and later, in the stress of her misfortunes, had cherished thoughtful simplicity as the essence of personal refinement, the life-buoy to which she clung amid the waste of waters. By the light of experience it was plain that she had starved herself and eschewed as effete or unimportant that which was wholesome and stimulating. The same impulse led her to take a new interest in her own personal appearance, to arrange her hair tastefully, to consider a little what colors suited her best, and in various simple ways to make the most of her own personal advantages for the first time in her life. Not in the spirit of vanity, but in acknowledgment that she had too much neglected the temple of the body. And not only in respect to beauty in the outward manifestations of everyday life did she feel that she had been blind to what existence offered, but where art touched religion. She was able to approach faith from a new point of view; to wrap her naked intellectual communion with the garment of the church properties--to yield herself to the spell of the solemn architecture, the new stained-glass windows, the artistic reredos, and the vested choir of St. Stephen's--without suspicion or doubt. Her life had lacked the impulse of art, and in finding it she believed that she had discovered the secret of a closer approach to God. She sought by zeal to make atonement to Mr. Prentiss for her past deficiencies. It did not appear to her essential to recant her errors formally; indeed, she did not do so to herself, for in respect to certain dogmas and supernatural claims of the creed she had not disowned her independence of thought. That which she wished to disown unmistakably was the coldness of her attitude toward spiritual things; she wished her rector to realize that heart was predominating over mind, and that trusting, ardent worship had taken the place of speculative lip service. A sermon by Mr. Prentiss came in the nick of time to further this attitude. It was on the essentials of the religious faith, and he defined them as the spirit of Christian brotherhood and love through man to God. Although he did not in terms disparage the importance of the dogmas and traditions of the church, the impression left on Constance was that he had passed them by as embodying the antiquated letter, but not the modern temper of Christian doctrine. To her eager imagination the doubts which had harassed her in the past concerning the truth of the miracles, and kindred scriptural deviation, from the natural order of the universe were reduced to trivial importance. Instead of stumbling-blocks to faith, they had become objects of secondary interest, to one side of the high-road along which the Christ-life was leading mankind. How better could she manifest this change of mood to Mr. Prentiss than by devotion to church work? She became a teacher in the Sunday-school in the Church of the Redeemer, the mission church connected with St. Stephen's, joined once more a Bible-class under her rector's instruction, and undertook to befriend some poor families less fortunate than herself on the parish lists. But her dearest service was to help to deck the church for the great Christian festivals, Christmas and Easter. To arrange the evergreen and mistletoe, the profusion of lilies and roses, humbly and under the guidance of those versed in such matters, but with devoted hands, gave her a chance to ventilate the new poetry of her soul. She had become enamored of the charm of flowers; she delighted in the swell of the organ and the melodious chants of the rejoicing choir. Her willing fingers quickly became skilful. At the second Easter she was even appealed to on minor points of taste by some of her fellow-workers, so that Loretta Davis, who was standing by holding smilax, nudged her as a sign of congratulation, for she had represented herself to Loretta as a complete novice in such matters. Very grateful and inspiriting to Constance was Mrs. Wilson's voluntary tribute on the same evening that she had been of notable service. Mrs. Wilson was the presiding genius and lady bountiful of these festivals, especially on Easter Day. It was she who said yearly to Mr. Prentiss, "Date plenis lilia," and, acting on that cue, gave orders to the florists to exhaust the green-houses of the neighborhood, and to spare neither expense nor pains to make St. Stephen's the most beautiful sanctuary in Benham. It was she who organized and tactfully controlled the large committee of ladies whose annual labor of love it was to dress the church. It was she who oversaw and checkmated the commonplace intentions of the professional decorators employed to fasten festoons and clusters beyond the reach of ladylike gymnastics; and it was she who originated or set the seal of approval on the artistic scheme of design adopted by the committee. Mrs. Wilson had had several triumphs as a consequence of the freedom afforded her by her daughter's marriage, but nothing had given her more satisfaction than the progress of Loretta Davis's redemption through association with Constance. She had jumped at the idea of placing the wayward girl in the opposite tenement, feeling that the experience would be a blessing to both women; that it would provide Loretta with a sympathetic fellow struggler and example, and give Mrs. Stuart the self-respecting occasion to help as well as to be helped. Still it was an experiment until tried, the success of which could not be taken for granted. That their relations had become sympathetic was due mainly to Constance. In her present mood the unfortunate girl seemed to have been sent to her as an opportunity for Christian usefulness, as a test of her own spiritual regeneration. Here was the best chance of all to show her changed heart to her rector. Her recognition from the outset that Loretta was distasteful to her, and her shrinking not only from the girl's attitude toward sin but from her smart matter-of-fact personality served merely as a spur to her own zeal. She would win her over and be won over herself; she would unearth the palpitating soul of which Mrs. Wilson had confided to her that she had caught a glimpse, and teach her to reassert and develop her womanhood. Help came unexpectedly from Loretta herself after the ice of acquaintance was broken and the two women found themselves close neighbors. Constance was attracted by the keenness of her intelligence which, though Loretta was ignorant and undisciplined, was apt to go straight to the mark on the wings of rough but pungent speech. It conciliated Constance to discover this trait, for she shrank from self-deception as a moral blemish and one more typical of women than of men. The girl's directness awoke an answering chord. A clear head removed half the difficulty of the situation, and held out the hope that wise counsel would not be lost. Loretta made no mystery of her circumstances. She told the story of her shame with matter-of-fact glibness as an every-day incident in human life, lamentable possibly on conventional grounds, but not to be judged harshly by the discerning, among whom she chose to place Constance. The thing had happened, and there was nothing to be said or done but make the best of it--which now included the baby. "She wanted me to keep it, and I said I would, and that I'd come and live here and see how I liked it. I shocked her and--well, I had never talked with anyone just like her before. She seemed set on my living here, so I thought I'd try." "She" was always Mrs. Wilson. This was Loretta's invariable way of referring to her, as if there could be no question who was meant. She talked of her constantly, with an eager yet shy interest, which promptly revealed to Constance how matters stood. Loretta had taken up her duties as a mother and subordinated her own wanton theories to please Mrs. Wilson. This was the bond which held her, not religion or the qualms of self-respect. Yet it was a bond, and Constance recognized it as one to be cherished. To hear this woman, so bold and indelicate in every-day speech, ask questions concerning her divinity with a shyness not unlike that of a bashful lover was interesting. Was not she herself under the influence of the same charm? Was not this infatuation another tribute to the power of the spirit of beauty? Thus Constance felt that she had a clue to her new companion's nature, which she did her best to utilize. So it happened that Loretta went to church because she could catch a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson from where they sat; and Loretta took a new interest in her baby from the hour when Mrs. Wilson sent her, tied up with a pretty ribbon, a little embroidered infant's jacket bought at a fair; and Loretta helped to deck St. Stephen's at Easter because of the chance that Mrs. Wilson would speak to her, as of course she did. Constance found herself a silent but zealous conniver and accomplice; and it impressed her that the object of devotion seemed instinctively aware both of it and the girl's need, for every now and then Mrs. Wilson would make the occasion by a few words, a note, a visit or a gift to lift Loretta above the level of her own devices. For just as Antæus gained strength by contact with the earth, Loretta's spirit seemed to crave the inspiration of Mrs. Wilson's gracious patronage. Though slap-dash and over-confident in her ways, Loretta was capable and quick to adopt and to perform skilfully whatever appealed to her. Her experience as a cashier in a drug store had given her a lingo and a certain familiarity concerning modern remedies, and she had a natural aptitude with her hands. Some of the maternal hygienic niceties practised by Constance appeared to amuse her at first, but as she became more interested in her baby, she outdid her neighbor in pharmaceutical experiments with powder, oil, perfume, and whatever she thought likely to make her child a savory specimen of babyhood. When the child was a year old, Mrs. Wilson made good her promise that Loretta should be instructed in nursing by securing her admission to a hospital. At the same time she engaged another of her wards, a responsible, elderly woman, to take up her abode in Loretta's tenement, and it was arranged that this custodian should also tend Constance's children during their mother's absence down-town. How to guard her children properly after their return from school had been agitating Constance, and this plan was exactly to her liking. She paid a small sum weekly from her earnings for the supervision, and it was understood that Loretta should have the same privilege after her apprenticeship was over and she had become self-supporting. So it was that Mrs. Wilson felt she had reason to be gratified by her philanthropic experiment in Lincoln Chambers. XIV The zest of existence must be largely ethical and subjective for the majority of us or we should speedily become despondent or bored. Contact with life is necessarily so commonplace for the mass of humanity, that, were we dependent on personal participation in large events and dramatic, splendid experiences for inspiration and content, few would not find themselves restless and in the mental doldrums. Fortunately for our peace of mind, most of us not only appreciate that pictorial and world-stirring, or even exciting, affairs can be the lot of only a fraction of mankind, but, by virtue of the imagination, manage to impart to our more or less humble vicissitudes the aspect of an engrossing situation. We recognize the relative insignificance of the individual drama, but its reality holds us. Its characters may be few, its scenery bare, its action trite and simple to other eyes, yet each of us, as the leading actor, finds in the development of a human soul a part which fascinates him, and lends itself to the finest shades of expression. Whether it be a king on his throne, or a cripple in his cot, the essential matter to the world is the nice interpretation. So, as the true artist in a subordinate rôle forgets for the time that he is not the leading actor, we refuse to be depressed by the unimportance of our theatricals and are absorbed by the unfolding perplexities of our own soul play. It is every American woman's privilege, according to her tastes, to dream that she may become the wife of the President of the United States, or wield a powerful influence as a poetess, humanitarian educator, or other exponent of modern feminine usefulness. In marrying Emil Stuart, Constance had renounced the latter in favor of the former possibility. She had sacrificed all hopes of personal public distinction, but there still had remained the vision of becoming famous by proxy, through her husband. If this had never appeared to her happy eyes as a bride more than an iridescent dream, the idea that she would presently be working in a lawyer's office would have seemed utterly inconsistent with her scheme of life, and a violation of her horoscope. Yet, now that she was established in this position, she found the experience not only satisfactory, as a means of subsistence, but interesting. In the first place, it stirred her to be down-town in the swift current of affairs and a part of the busy crowd which peopled the huge office-buildings and swept to and from its work with the regularity and rhythmic force of the tide. Through this daily contact she discerned, as never before, the dignity and the pathos of labor, and gained both courage and exhilaration from the thought that, though there were generals and captains, and she was in the rear rank of privates, the real strength of the army lay in the faithful performance by the individual of that portion of the world's toil entrusted to himself or herself. There was attraction, too, in her employment, though her task was but to register and reproduce with despatch the thoughts of others. The occupation tested her accuracy, patience, tact, and diligence. She must avoid blunders and be swift to comprehend. There were secrets in her keeping; affairs upon the issue of which hinged large sums of money, and often the happiness of leading citizens, who were clients of the office; close legal battles between mind and mind; domestic difficulties settled out of court; and suits for injuries, where the price of a life or of a limb were at stake. Her lips must be sealed, and she must seem unaware of the tragedies which passed beneath her observation. Yet the human element became a constant, vivid interest to her, and now and then it happened, as, for instance, when a forlorn hope brought liberal damages to the wronged or the afflicted, that she was taken into the secret by the exultant plaintiff, and was able to rejoice openly. There was, finally, her association with her employer. From this she had not expected much. She was there to execute his instructions without superfluous words or the obtrusion of her own personality. She knew, instinctively, that he would not treat her merely as a machine, but she took for granted that their relations would be formal. It pleased her that, though this was the case, there were moments, even from the first, when he let her perceive that he regarded her as a social companion. To evince a kindly interest in her personal affairs was simply human; anyone might show this; but to talk with her on the topics of the day, to call her attention to a book or an article, or, as presently happened, to invite her opinion on a question of legal ethics, was a flattering indication that he considered their point of view the same. A difference in point of view is the most insurmountable, because the most intangible, barrier to the free play of human sympathy and the social instinct. It is the last great fortress in the pathway of democracy; one which the besiegers will be able to carry only by learning the password. A free-masonry exists, from the cut of the mind to that of the hair and coat, between those who recognize each other, and not to speak the same language palsies the best intentions. Modest as her introduction to Mrs. Randolph Wilson had made her, Constance in her heart believed that she spoke the same mental language as Mr. Perry. But would he recognize it? That he did so not only increased her interest in serving him, but held out the promise of a new friend. He might so easily have passed her over, he who was so busy and had so many acquaintances. Yet it was plain that he liked to talk to her, and that he availed himself of opportunities for conversation. At the end of a year it happened that the other stenographer, her predecessor, left Mr. Perry's employment in order to marry. As a consequence, Constance became the senior clerk, and was given formal charge of the office with a slight increase in pay. [Illustration: There were moments, even from the first, when he let her perceive that he regarded her as a social companion] She would scarcely have been human had Gordon Perry's complimentary interest failed to inspire her with some degree of hero-worship. Yet, though she was presently aware that she had set him on a pedestal, she felt that she had excellent reasons for her partiality. Was he not a clear-headed, astute reasoner, as well as kind? A thorough, conscientious worker, who went to the root of whatever he undertook, and prosecuted it vigorously, as well as a gracious spirit with a sense of humor? If she did not reveal much of the last quality herself, she appreciated and enjoyed it in others, especially when it was the sort of humor which championed truth against error and could be playful or caustic, as the occasion demanded. He was simple and approachable, yet he had influential and fashionable friends. Recently he had made the acquaintance of Mrs. Randolph Wilson, and was on pleasant terms with her. Constance had recognized her handwriting, and had been apprised by Loretta of his presence at Mrs. Wilson's entertainments. Loretta had, what seemed to Constance, almost a mania for the social department of newspapers. She knew by rote the names of the society leaders, and was familiar through reportorial photography with many of their faces. Mrs. Wilson was the bright, particular star in this galaxy of interest. Loretta searched with avidity for every item of gossip which concerned her divinity, and took a hectic pleasure in retailing her information. Thus it happened that every now and then she would exclaim: "I see that your boss was at her last entertainment," the fact of which was more agreeable to Constance than the phraseology. Loretta's diction was always clear, but Constance, who wished to feel that they spoke the same language, had often to bite her lips as a reproof to her sensibilities; and, especially, when she heard her hero spoken of as her boss. It was so wide of the truth regarding him. Then there was his mother, and here again Constance had cause to feel gratified. Quite unexpectedly Mrs. Perry had called upon her, seeking her at Lincoln Chambers in the late afternoon when she was likely to be at home. While serving her five o'clock tea, Constance had observed, with interest in her personality, marked resemblances to her son. He had inherited her naturalness and mental vigor. Her cheerful directness, too, but in his case the straightforward attitude was softened by the habit of deliberation and garnished by a more tolerant gaiety. It was obvious that Mrs. Perry maintained the integrity of her convictions until they ran counter in daily life to his, and in capitulating reserved always the privilege to be of the same opinion still, which she exercised with her tongue in her cheek, thereby betraying her great pride in her son, and in her son's superior wisdom. She professed, for instance, to regard his ideas concerning the new home in which he had just installed her, and where she was keeping house for him, as extravagant. What was the use of spending so much on mere creature comforts? She did not need them. She had sat on straight-backed chairs all her days and preferred them, and she did not require a telephone to order her marketing. "When I was young," she said to Constance, "there was only one set bath-tub in a house, if any, and no modern plumbing. We carried hot water upstairs in pails, and those who drew water from the boiler poured in as much as they took. But there are so many labor-saving machines to-day, that sheer laziness is at a premium. Gordon declares that I'm all wrong, and that more people are clean and comfortable as a consequence. Then, as to the wall-papers and carpets and upholstery, well, they're pretty, I can't deny that. But, somehow, it goes against my grain to see so many bright colors. Yet when I say it looks frivolous, Gordon simply laughs. So I've promised to hold my tongue until everything is finished, and to let him have his way. He likes to have his way almost as much as I do mine, Mrs. Stuart, and the strangest part is that, though he doesn't always convince me, I have a secret feeling that he must be right." Constance was taken to see the new house in one of the outlying and more fashionable wards of the city, which, as Mrs. Perry had declared, was supplied with all the modern improvements and was being furnished with an eye to artistic taste. It became evident that the old lady, despite her misgivings, was very proud at heart of the whole establishment, but that her satisfaction centred in the library--her son's room--a cosey, spacious apartment with tall shelves for his books and various conveniences adapted to a bachelor and a student. As standing on the threshold, she exhibited it to her guest with a shy pride, which almost seemed to gasp at the effects disclosed, she murmured: "It sometimes seems to me a wicked waste of money; but I'm glad to think he's going to be so comfortable." Constance replied, "It's a delightful room. Just the place, restful to the body and stimulating to the spirit, which a busy man like Mr. Perry ought to have." "There can be nothing too good for him, if that's what you mean." "I heartily assent," said Constance, smiling. "And I agree with your son that it is sensible and right to surround oneself with pretty things if one has the means." "I guess that he must have talked it over with you," said the old lady, with a keen glance. "No." "Well, it's a wonder he hasn't, for he sets store by your opinion on lots of things. In my day, compliments weren't considered good for young people, but I don't believe from your looks that you'll work any the less well because I let you know what he thinks of you. He was saying the other day that he feared you must find thumping on that machine of yours, week in and week out, and taking down letters in double-quick time, dull work, and I told him that a woman of the right sort, with two children to support, had no time to feel dull or to think about her feelings, but was thankful for the chance of steady employment. You see I know something about that myself. You have your boy and girl to keep your thoughts busy, just as I had him." "Yes, indeed. But it is a pleasure to work for Mr. Perry. No man is a hero to his valet, and need not be, I suppose, to his stenographer. You won't think it presumptuous of me to say that he has been very considerate, and that I enjoy taking down his words because he is so intelligent and so thorough?" "There's no one who likes to hear nice things said about him so well as his mother. There's only one fault about him, so far as I know, and that may be cured any day. He's a bachelor. I would move straight out of this house to-morrow in order to see him well married." "That wouldn't be necessary, I imagine, Mrs. Perry." "Yes, it would. I should make a detestable mother-in-law. Gordon gets his clear-headedness from me, and I know my own faults. I shouldn't be jealous, but I should wish her to do things in my way, and she would wish to do them in hers, so we should clash. I wouldn't risk it. But I'd be willing to die to-morrow and never to kiss my grandchildren if only he had a good wife. I should be very particular, though." "I should think so. I hope with all my heart that he may meet a woman worthy of him." Constance was a little surprised by her own fervor. Expressed in sound it seemed to her almost familiar. Then, without knowing why, she sighed. Was it because she painfully recalled that marriage was a lottery? Mrs. Perry evidently ascribed the sigh to that source, for after regarding her a moment, she said softly, "It was easier for me than it is for you. When I lost my husband we were very happy. You are left alone. You see my son has told me your story." "I am glad that you should know." "But you are young, my dear. Young and a charming looking, lovable woman. The right man may come along. Who knows?" Constance stared at her in astonishment. "My husband is not dead," she said, a little formally. "Yes, I know. He deserted you." "But he is alive." "Gordon told me that you had not been divorced." "I have never thought of such a thing." "You know where he is?" "I have not seen him or heard from him since the day he left me nearly three years ago." "Precisely." "He is the father of my children, however." For a moment Mrs. Perry seemed to be pondering the thesis contained in her single word of deduction, and her visitor's reply. Then she bent her shrewd eyes on Constance, and said with a quiet pithiness of utterance, which reminded the latter of her employer. "I was not tempted to marry again because I loved my husband, and could not forget him. But I've never been able to convince my common sense that it is fair to asperse the woman who marries again after the law has separated her forever from the man who has done her a grievous wrong, but to think it only right and fitting for a widow to take a second husband when the first whom she has loved, and who has loved her, is in the grave. If I were a young woman on my death-bed, I expect I couldn't make up my mind to beg my husband to marry again. But I couldn't blame him if he did. It's the way of human nature, often as not. It's hateful to be lonely. And why shouldn't the girl marry again, who has been left in the lurch by a cruel man, who has been false to the vow he took to support and protect her? Only the other day a rich merchant whom my son knows, a man of over sixty, who had lived with his wife for thirty years, married again before she had been dead twelve months, and they had a solemn church wedding. It was your clergyman, Mrs. Stuart, who married them. I'd call it disgusting, except that some people said he was solitary, although he had daughters. But to make fish of one and flesh of the other, isn't just. I'm an old woman, and the longer I live the more I dote on justice." "I remember now. I know whom you mean. Loretta insisted on reading me the account of it from the newspaper. I've seen him in church. He is one of the vestrymen." "Yes, it was a society function. But I don't judge him," said Mrs. Perry, sitting up straight to emphasize her intention to be dispassionate. "Men are queer. His wife was dead, and he had the right to ask another woman to fill her place. But why, then, should anyone criticise you?" "Have you heard anyone criticise me?" Constance asked, hoping to extricate the conversation from the depths of this argument by a ripple on the surface. "Some of them would. You did yourself, you know." "It was a new idea to me. I have never thought of marrying." After a moment's silence, she added, simply: "How would you like your son to marry a divorced woman, Mrs. Perry?" Her mind had picked out, instinctively, the crucial question. The old lady gave a little gasp and start. "A divorced woman? Gordon?" Then she laughed. "The way you said 'divorced woman' had a formidable sound." The personal application was evidently a surprise to her; evidently, too, it interested her, and she wrestled with it sitting erect and bright-eyed. In another moment she had worked out the answer to her own satisfaction. "It would depend upon her--what she was like. If she were innocent--if she had been grossly wronged, and had sought the relief from her distress which the laws allow, and I liked her and he loved her, I shouldn't object. Or, put it in this way: I should prefer that Gordon did not marry a widow, but a girl with all the freshness of her life before her." "Yes, indeed," murmured Constance. "But plenty of young men fall in love with widows and marry, and no one thinks any the worse of the widows, or of them. I'd fully as lief Gordon married a divorced woman as one who had buried her husband. And if I were sure she was a fine woman, I can imagine my sentiment vanishing like moonshine, and my not minding a bit." Constance shook her head thoughtfully. "He must marry some fine, sweet girl without a past," she said with gentle positiveness. "Amen to that, my dear. And the sooner the better." One day early in September, in the summer following the date of this conversation, Paul Howard entered the office. As he passed into Gordon's private room, omitting the gay greeting which he was wont to exchange with her, Constance noticed that his expression was grave and tense, and that he looked tired. She said to herself that his summer at Newport could not have rested him. It was Paul's second season at Newport. In accordance with his half-humorous prediction, he had hired there, the previous summer, one of the most desirable villas, a spacious establishment with a superb outlook to sea. He had maintained a large steam yacht, and an elaborate stable, and had entertained lavishly. All to please his wife. At least so he regarded it, and this was in a large measure the truth. Ever since his marriage, five years back, Paul had been thinking that he would like to spend his vacation in some cool, picturesque spot, far from scenes of social display, where with his wife he could enjoy the beauties of nature unreservedly, and recuperate from the fatigues of the winter. But, though he had hankered after this in theory, and had broached the project to Mrs. Howard, somehow it had never come to pass, and he had been secretly aware for some time that it never would, unless one of them had nervous prostration and were ordered away by a physician. For when one is a millionaire and has an ambitious wife, one gets into the way of doing what other millionaires do, and becomes acclimated to the amusements proper to millionaires, until presently the necessity of having luxuries at one's fingers' ends makes any other programme seem insipid and a bore. Those who neglect to follow their own tastes cannot fail to be moulded by the tastes which they adopt. We readily habituate ourselves to our surroundings, whether it be too few baths, or too many. Paul delighted in the plumbing facilities of his establishment. He was perpetually taking baths and changing his underclothes, and the apprehension lest this orgie be interfered with had taken the edge off his desire for closer contact with the beauties of nature. He recognized the change in himself, but charged it to the account of the spirit of the age, that convenient depository of modern philosophers. So, by the end of that first summer, he had found himself content rather than otherwise with the experience and disposed to return. To begin with, his wife was enthusiastic. As she expressed it, she had had the time of her life, which was comforting. Although from Monday morning to Thursday night had been spent by him in New York (he had arranged to be absent from Benham during the summer months and take temporary charge of the New York office), the rest of the week was passed at Newport, and for the trip he had his own comfortable yacht. Besides, he took a fortnight in August, during the time of the New York Yacht Club cruise, with its opportunities to meet familiarly men of importance in the financial world. There was golf and riding and driving, his baths and cocktails. If he found the widely advertised, and rather foolish, extravagant entertainments in dog-day August, to which his wife dragged him, tedious, he could generally slip away early if she wished to stay to dance, and often he could manage to be in New York when they occurred. Besides, since to be present at them seemed to be regarded as social recognition, he was gratified to be treated as a millionaire would wish to be treated in the society of millionaires. To go, or at least to be represented by his wife, who made his excuses most charmingly he was told, showed that he had not been left out, which is the controlling reason why people go to festivities at Newport, except to those where trinkets of real value are given away in the course of the evening. Paul had fully intended to renounce cocktails. In fact, he had sworn off at Benham; but since they appeared to take the place of a grace before meat at every gathering of Newport's fashionable male contingent, he had yielded again like a good fellow to the spirit of the age just for one summer. One swallow does not make a summer, as we all know, and similarly, destiny often requires more than one summer to carry the spirit of the age to its logical conclusions. This is true of the effect of cocktails on the coats of the stomach, according to the best medical authorities. But we are not considering that here. Indeed, the working out process which Paul now found confronting him was outside of himself and concerned him chiefly as a victim. If his first summer at Newport had been propitious, taking all things, including the spirit of the age, into consideration, the second had been productive of momentous issues. It was in relation to these that Paul had come to consult Gordon Perry, his friend and legal adviser. XV Gordon Perry looked up from his desk with an air of surprise. "Why, Paul, I thought you'd shaken the dust of Benham from your feet until the last of the month." Then noticing his client's face as they joined hands, he added, "I hope nothing has gone wrong." "Everything is wrong." Paul seated himself with grave deliberation. "Are you at leisure? What I have to consult you about will take some time." "No one shall disturb us." "It isn't business." Then, after a moment's silence, "It's my wife. She has betrayed me." "Your wife betrayed you?" Gordon, as in his bewilderment he echoed the words, recalled a woman with a dainty figure, a small, sphinx-like mouth, full cheeks devoid of color, and black hair. He had never been at Paul's house, but he had been introduced to her, and he had frequently seen her and her little girl driving in her victoria, a picture of up-to-date fastidiousness. At the time of her marriage she had been called the prettiest girl in Benham. She was the daughter of a St. Louis contractor with a reputation for executive ability, who had moved to Benham in her childhood to become the president of a car-building company. Paul's friends had intimated that he had gone rather out of his way to marry her. Certainly it had been considered a brilliant match for her. "Yes. It's a pretty kettle of fish, as you'll appreciate when you hear the story; a hopeless case so far as our living together is concerned. I've come to you for advice and to talk it over, though she and I threshed out the situation four days ago. "May I smoke? Thanks. You don't here, I know; but I go from cigar to cigar to keep my nerves straight, for I'm still dazed, and I haven't slept much." "It's ghastly," murmured Gordon. "Now that I look back I suppose I ought to have realized that she never really cared for me. Perhaps the gradual, unconscious perception of that reacted on me. I fell dead in love with her looks, and would have worshipped the ground she trod on had she proved what I thought her to be. As it is, I'm humiliated, angry, disgusted, all at sea. But I can see that we should never be happy together again. Love in the true sense is over on both sides. I tell you this, Gordon, to begin with. You haven't heard anything?" "Not a word." "I thought it likely they had copied the item from the Newport into the Benham newspapers. Five nights ago I popped at a man in my house with a revolver--a long shot--just as he was escaping over the balcony outside my wife's apartment, and missed. At the moment I would have given half my fortune to kill him. I dare say, it's just as well I didn't. There would have been a bigger scandal. It was one o'clock, and someone who heard the noise--servants, I know not who--talked, and two days later there appeared in one of the newspapers an allusion to the mysterious midnight pistol shot on the Howard place. A reporter called on me; I declined to see him, but my butler, who can be trusted, had instructions to say I was shooting cats. That's all the public knows as yet. Here's a nice problem for the women's debating clubs: A man discovers his wife's lover in his place; ought he to shoot him like a rat on the spot, or accept the situation for what it is worth, just as he has to accept a death in the family, a fire, or any other visitation of Providence? Eh?" Paul gave a short laugh. "Of course the primitive man shot every time. But we can remember one husband who did shoot and who killed, and that all the exquisite people and some of the wise people shook their heads and declared he ought to have thought of his daughters. There was a world-wide scandal, and after the funeral we were told that the husband had always been a crank, in proof of which he died later in an insane asylum, while his wife has hovered on the outskirts of the smart set ever since as a sort of blessed martyr to the rigor of conventions. No, my dear fellow, the only decent thing for me to do now is to compromise myself deliberately with some common woman, so as to give my wife the chance to obtain a divorce from me. That is the duty of the gallant modern husband, according to the nicest and latest fashionable code." "You will do nothing of the kind, Paul." "Wait until you have mulled over it as I have, For the sake of my little girl her mother's reputation must be sacred." "I see. Then her misconduct is not known?" "It's a profound secret. That is, no one has seen her in the act, but it seems that all Newport except myself has taken it for granted and been whispering about it all summer. It began last summer, dolt that I was. But it's not known officially. That is, the newspapers have not got on to it." Paul made a movement of impatience and, rising, took a turn or two across the office. He stopped in front of Gordon and said: "Mind you, the temptation to kill him like a rat was not presented to me. I don't say I would have done it. I don't know what I would have done under all the circumstances--the gruesome circumstances--had we been face to face and he unarmed. He heard me and fled by the window. I was in the ante-room and stepped out on the balcony, and running round merely saw a disappearing figure. I did not know who he was, but I surmised; and on the spur of the moment I felt it was almost a hopeless shot. Who do you suppose he was?" "I have no idea, of course." "Guess." "It would be useless. I know no one at Newport except yourself, Paul." "Oh, yes, you do. Here's situation number two in the tragedy. It was my cousin Lucille's husband, Clarence Waldo." "For Heaven's sake!" Gordon ejaculated. "It can't be possible." Paul's laugh broke forth again. "Stunning, isn't it? No dramatist can improve on that. But I can. I know what you're thinking," he said, folding his arms, as he stood before Gordon with a saturnine glee, as though he were enjoying the other's consternation. "You're wondering what Mrs. Wilson will say?" Gordon shook his head. "It is terrible for her, of course. But I was thinking of your poor cousin." "Spare your pity in that quarter, man, until you know the truth. Situation number three! Lucille and her husband have fallen out, agreed to differ, ceased to love each other, never have loved each other, and are to be divorced as soon as circumstances will permit. Waldo is to marry my wife, and she--Lucille--has plighted her troth to Bradbury Nicholson, of New York, a son of the president of the Chemical Trust, of whom she is enamoured, and with whom, it seems, she has been carrying on clandestinely for months. Didn't I tell you I could improve on myself? The curtain now to red fire and the strains of Tschaikowsky!" Paul flung himself into his chair, and squared his jaw. For a moment he looked like his father. Gordon gazed at him with a brow of dismay. "How do you know this?" "From my wife. She made a clean breast of their affairs, and seemed to be rather surprised that I didn't know. It's all cut and dried. That is, it is to work out that way in the end, and soon, if I'm accommodating. And I am expected to be. After the first flare-up, which was all on my part, and did not take place until next morning, we talked in our ordinary voices, as we are talking now." Since the climax of his narration, Paul's sensational tone had ceased. He seemed simply tired, as though he had been suddenly let down. "She set me the example. You know her face. She looked whiter than ever, but was perfectly clear and explicit. She said it was evident we were not suited to each other. Although I agreed with her, I was fool enough to ask her why, and she intimated politely, but clearly, that I bored her--said we did not care for the same things. She admitted that I was not to blame for that, and that I had been very generous in money matters. Then we talked and we talked and we talked, at that time and again in the evening, until the small hours. The upshot is, we're to be divorced as soon as it can be arranged. She is to desert me, or I her. She seemed to be posted as to the law. Or, whatever way you suggest. I've given in. She appealed to my common sense, as she called it. She told me that we had made a mistake, that we both knew it, and that the sooner we recognized it, the better. That there need be no disagreeable publicity beyond the fact that we were no longer to be husband and wife. I couldn't deny that my love for her was dead. The only difficult question was the child. Neither of us wished to give her up, and each of us would like to have her all the time. "Poor little thing!" "Yes, indeed. When I thought of Helen, I told my wife at first that I was ready to preserve the outward forms of living together, in the teeth of her unfaithfulness, for the sake of our child. But she told me that I was old-fashioned. She asked whether I thought it would be worse for Helen, or whether Helen would be less happy to live as we should mutually arrange than to grow up in a wretched household, where the father and mother were utterly at variance. That was a poser. It's the devil either way. What do you think?" "It's the devil, as you say. Amen, to that! But if it's got to be--got to be," Gordon reiterated, "I'm inclined to think your wife was right in terming your protest old-fashioned. Where a marriage is utterly blasted, to retain the husk merely for the sake of the children must fail, it seems to me, in nine cases out of ten, to accomplish its purpose--to preserve what society is pleased to call the sanctity of the home." "There would not be much sanctity left in mine," Paul murmured. "However, when she saw that I was determined to have my full share of Helen, or fight, we came to terms. Helen is to spend her winters with me, her summer vacations with her mother; or some such arrangement; and, of course, I am to provide for the child." Paul paused reflectively. "I don't think it ever occurred to my wife that we do not stand on an equal footing, and that she would not be the best of moral influences for a daughter. It seems to be an answer to everything that we were not sympathetic, and that she has met somebody who is; her affinity, as they say. I had observed her intimacy with Waldo, and was aware of some cases at Newport where women had compromised themselves with other women's husbands; and, though I didn't exactly fancy Waldo's attentions, and had hinted to her twice my disapproval--to which the first time she pleaded surprise, and the second, shrugged her shoulders--I never divined the truth until I received this." He drew a letter from his pocket and handed it to Gordon. "Even then, I couldn't believe the worst." Gordon perused the contents of the envelope, a single sheet of paper on which were the words: "When the cat's away, the mice will play." "Humph! Anonymous!" he said. "She asked me what brought matters to a crisis, and I told her. She thinks it must have been sent by a maid whom she discharged. I received it at my New York office in the middle of the week, and the following Sunday night, instead of leaving Newport in my yacht, as usual, I pretended to do so, and returned late to my house on foot. The rest you know. It may be I was too much absorbed in my business. However, it's all over now, and it's best it should be over. What I wish is advice as to the necessary steps; that you should tell me what I ought to do." "As to a divorce?" "Yes. She is to follow my instructions in regard to it." "And what as to the others--the Waldos?" "No wonder you ask. I put the same question to her, and she told me that I needn't concern myself about them; that they would find a way." "There are certainly various ways if people choose to connive at divorce. There are certain States where the residence essential to give the court jurisdiction can be obtained in a pitifully short time--even as short as three months, and where an agreement to live apart is allowed, through lack of scrutiny, to pass for genuine desertion. If Mrs. Waldo and her husband have both been guilty of infidelity, neither is entitled to a decree of divorce in any court of justice. But that concerns them, not you. I was merely voicing the regret which every decent man feels that there shouldn't be a uniform law in all our States. But here one runs up against the vested rights of sovereign peoples. It's a far cry from South Carolina, where no divorce is granted for any cause whatever, to Wisconsin or Colorado, where desertion for one year is sufficient. Yet, if one had to choose between the two, there is less injustice and more regard for the welfare of society in the latter extreme, radical as it is, than in the former. Whatever happens, the world will never go back to marital chains and slavery." Turning to the book-case at his elbow, Gordon selected a law book and opened it. "I don't hanker after divorce cases, but I'm very glad you have come to me, Paul. I was simply shocked, at first; let me tell you now how heartily sorry I am for you." "Thank you, Don. I knew you would be. As to my cousin, Lucille, I cannot say, positively, that she has taken the final step--actually sinned. My wife admitted that she had no real knowledge, though she took the worst for granted. But it is certain that the marriage is at an end, that she and her husband are hopelessly alienated, and that at the first opportunity she will marry this young Nicholson. As to myself, you agree with me, don't you, that a divorce is the only possible, the only sensible, course to adopt?" Gordon paused a moment before replying. "The only possible, no; the only sensible--since you ask me as a friend as well as a client--in my opinion, yes. It's a point which every man must decide for himself, if it confronts him. Some people would say to you that you should stick to your wife, not live with her necessarily, but refuse to break the bond; that she might repent and return to you. It seems to me, though, that if my wife had been false to me and my love for her were dead, I would not allow such a sentiment--and it is only sentiment--to tie me forever to a woman who was no longer my wife, except in name. Your life is before you. Why should a vitiated contract be a bar between you and happiness? You may wish to marry again." Paul shook his head. "Naturally you don't think so, now. But why not?" "As George the Second said, '_j'aurai des maitresses_,'" Paul answered, a little bitterly. "Exactly!" exclaimed Gordon, with eagerness. "The continuance of such a bond would be a premium on immorality. That's a point which sentimentalists do not take sufficiently into account. Why is it necessary to marry again, they ask. For one thing, because a man's a man, as you and I know. It's a new question to me, Paul, because, though it's one of the questions ever on the surface, I have never had to deal with it squarely until now. The more I think of it the more sure I am that a divorce would be sensible, and more than that, sensible in the highest sense, without a jot or a tittle of deprecation. I know; you don't wish to have to apologize. All I can say is, if I were in your shoes, I would do the same. You have a right to your freedom." "I couldn't see it in any other light. Besides, my wife is bent on being free, herself. If I do not apply for a divorce, she will--and in the shortest way." "As to the method," continued Gordon, after a moment's scrutiny of the volume before him, "it is simple enough--a mere question of time. In this State where a party is guilty of a cause for divorce--as in this case, infidelity--the injured party is justified in leaving the home, and after such separation has continued for the statutory period, the injured party may obtain a divorce for desertion. Or, simpler still, your wife can desert you, and after the necessary time has elapsed, the same result would follow. The statutory period is three years." "My wife will not like that." "It is the only course, if she desires to preserve her reputation. If she prefers to have you bring a libel for divorce on the ground of infidelity, she can be free in a much shorter time. Also she could obtain her liberty somewhat sooner by changing her residence to a more accommodating jurisdiction and asking a divorce from you. Provided you offered no opposition, she might succeed, but that would be a back-handed method discreditable to you both, and an evasion of the laws of this State, which might, hereafter, be productive of unpleasant complications. It's a sad business, but you should have a clean job." "Assuredly. We could separate at once?" "Yes. But one of you must actually desert the other. An agreement to live apart does not constitute legal desertion. On the other hand, if she were to leave your house, the court would not inquire what was going on in your mind, provided you did not show by any overt sign that you wished to get rid of her. You can be glad, but you must not say so." "I understand. She need not be burdened with my presence from the outset. As for marrying Waldo, she must wait her three years." "And she may be thankful that she will be able to marry as soon as the divorce is absolute. In some States the person against whom a divorce is granted, is forbidden to marry altogether, or for a period of years as a punishment. To forbid marriage altogether, in such cases, appears to me another premium on immorality. To forbid it for a time, may sometimes prevent indecent haste on the part of the guilty, but it is a good deal like keeping after school children who have been naughty. Besides, the party forbidden to marry, as in New York, for instance, has merely to step into New Jersey and be married, and the second marriage will be held legal by the New York courts and everywhere else." Paul was silent for a few moments. "That seems to me a decent programme. My wife can go to Europe, and--and when the time is up, marry Waldo. It's easy as rolling off a log." He clapped his strong hand on the wooden arm of his chair, so that it resounded. "My father will be terribly cut up. My aunt--God knows what she will say or do. As for myself"--he paused while he lit a fresh cigar--"I shall have to go into politics." "Politics?" "Yes. I'd like to go to Congress." Paul sat back in his chair with the air of one taking a fresh brace on life. "I've always intended to, sooner or later. Had it at the back of my mind. But now--well, if I were sent to Washington, and presently got a foreign mission, my wife might feel sorry for a few minutes that I bored her. Yet I wouldn't have her back. Waldo is welcome to her. The real reason," he added, suddenly, after another pause, "is that I've been asked. One of the Republican State Committee spoke to me about it in June, just before I went to Newport. The election isn't until a year from this autumn. I told him I'd think it over. I've got to do something to counteract this disgrace, and to forget it. Well, I must be going. I'll see you again as soon as I hear from my wife." Gordon detained him. "You mustn't take too despondent a view of it. After all, it's not your fault, it's your misfortune. All your friends will recognize that; and no one will be able to understand how any woman could weary of the love of a man like you, and prefer a listless, pleasure-seeker, such as Clarence Waldo." Paul shrugged his shoulders. "It's the spirit of the age, I suppose. I'm not sorry, I tell you, but I'm piqued. We are shells upon the beach. The tide sweeps us along even though we know it is the tide, and can say of the next man, 'what a fool he is, to drift like that!' But what is a fellow to do? How is he to escape? I'm a millionaire--I'm likely to be several times that if nothing breaks. I didn't wish to go to Newport, but I went. I don't care for half the things I do, but they have to be done; that is, I do them of my own accord, when the time comes, and, though I kick, I know I should regret not doing them merely because they seem to be the proper things for people of my kind. There you are. I have a sort of double self, as you know. It isn't that I'm weak, it's--what do you call it?--the force of my environment. And a millionaire's environment has a pressure of two hundred pounds to the square inch. It's the same with the women. What with rich food, splendid apparel, perpetual self-indulgence, and the power which money gives them to gratify every whim, is it any wonder that they don't let a little thing like the marriage vow stand in the way of their individual preferences? Who is to hold them to account? The church? Some of them go to church, but in their hearts they are satisfied that this is the only world. And as to loss of social position--of which they really would be afraid--the tide is with them. There are too many sympathizers. Or at least, it is inconvenient to be obliged to hurt other people's feelings in a free country." "Rather a formidable indictment against Newport," said Gordon. "It isn't against Newport. It's against the plutocracy all over the country. Newport merely happens to be the place where very rich men with social instincts most do congregate in summer. My domestic tragedy is typical, yet sporadic. Every season has its crop, but, numerically, it is small. Infidelity is only one of the phases of the spirit--but the spirit is rampant. Money-money-money, luxury-luxury-luxury, self-self-self (individualism, they call it), and in the process everything is thrown overboard, except the American flag, and life becomes one grand hurrah, boys, with no limitations, save murder and lack of physical cleanliness. And I belong to the procession, my dear fellow. I'm disgusted with it at the moment, that's why I rail. But in six months I shall be in it again. See if I'm not." "You're simply depressed, Paul, and no wonder," said Gordon, with genial solicitude. "But we mustn't judge our plutocracy--aristocracy, or whatever you choose to call the personal representatives of the prosperity of the country--by the antics of a few, disgusting as they are. I agree that their behavior apes the frivolity and license of the old French court without its elegance, and I don't suppose that the founders of our institutions ever included a leisure class as a part of their scheme. Absorbed in ideals, they neglected to take poor human nature sufficiently into account. We have lost the buffalo, but we have acquired a leisure class, and we must make the best of it, not the worst. We can't cut their heads off; this is a free country. It would be dreadful--dreadful, wouldn't it, if our institutions, of which we are so proud, were to produce merely the same old thing over again--a leisure class of voluptuaries?" Gordon paused for a moment and his smile died away at the vision which his words evoked. "I don't intend to believe it; you don't. There are students of destiny who maintain that nations rise, reach maturity and decline by regular economic laws, but that human nature never really improves. That's fatalism. The free play of human individualism is having its last grand chance here in these United States. If our aristocracy proves no better than any other--if the rich and powerful are to sneer at morals and wallow in licentiousness, we couldn't blame society if it should try a strong dose of socialism, with its repressing, monotonous dead level, rather than accept the doctrine that the law of supply and demand is the sole ruler of the universe. But as good Americans we can't afford to judge our plutocracy, as yet, by the vices of a few people at Newport." "They sin in such a cold-blooded way," said Paul. "If they really cared, as some of the foreigners do, one could understand; but they don't." "I know. It's one of the canons of old-world traditions that adultery is almost redeemed by the possession of an artistic sense. To commit the one without possessing the other, may be no worse morally, yet it seems much more vulgar. But we mustn't take them too seriously, even though they are our countrymen and women. They are the exceptions--the excrescences. Look at your father, for instance. He belongs to them--but he is not of them. The same is true of yourself; and it is a privilege, with all its responsibilities, a privilege I envy you. Who wouldn't be a multi-millionaire if he could? What is more alluring than power?" Paul returned the pressure of his friend's hand. "You're a good fellow, Don. I suppose I'm hipped. That's not my way, as you know. Usually everything with me is rose color; I'm too good an American, if anything." He buttoned his well-fitting coat with a dignified air, as though the pride of the suggestion had stirred his pulses like a brass band. "The trouble is, that when I'm feeling well, everything goes, and the only thing which seems of importance is to come out ahead of the other fellow. So we kick over standards and degenerate. This time I've been struck with a club, and--and I don't see that it's my fault. Well, good-bye. As soon as I hear, I'll let you know." XVI There was only one shadow on Constance's present happiness, for she was happy in her independence and her work. She had demonstrated her ability to support herself and to defy the blow of fate which had deprived her of a husband's aid and protection. It was the growing perception that she might not be able to do all she desired for her children. This sprang from her own keener appreciation of the value not only of the best educational advantages, but of refined personal surroundings in the development of character. She could inculcate noble morals; she could teach her children to be truthful, brave, and simple; she could provide them with public school instruction, and she was resolved to give them, if her health remained good, the opportunity to continue their education longer than was the wont with parents whose offspring had their own way to make in life unaided. But her ambition, or rather her perception of what she desired for them, did not stop here. There were present demands which must be neglected solely because of her straitened circumstances; and she beheld ahead a long and widening vista of privileges from which, perforce, they would be debarred during the formative years for a similar reason. Henrietta's teeth were disconcertingly crooked, and should have the continuous attention of a skilful dentist, and her voice had already that nasal twang which, if unchecked, is sure to result in feminine inelegance of speech. She wished that both the children, especially the girl, might have thorough instruction in French and music, and be sent to dancing school. Little Emil was giving signs of marked talent for drawing, and the thought of how that gift could be developed, was already causing her concern. It was obvious to her that each of the next ten years had more insistent instances in store for her. She knew that she could give her children what the democratic world delights to call a solid foundation, but she was eager to equip them with stimulating mental ideals and bodily graces, to put them within reach of excellence and culture. She was too grateful to repine or to allow this shadow to oppress her spirit. Its sole effect was to stimulate her energies, to make her fertile in resources to counteract this disability, and painstaking in attention to her duties in the hope of a small increase in salary. She kept a close watch on Henrietta's voice, and put her on her own guard against its piercing quality; she organized a small dancing class from among the children in Lincoln Chambers for one evening in the week, and from her own past experience essayed their instruction in waltzing and social decorum. Also, on Sunday afternoons, she would often lure Emil and Henrietta to the new Art Museum and give them the opportunity which her own youth had lacked to discern artistic form and color, and to acquire inspiration from world-famous or exemplary paintings and sculpture. Then there suddenly came to her as treasure-trove a new fund to be drawn on for such purposes. Her employer, scanning the field of philanthropy by the light of his own professional experience, had realized that there was need in Benham of a legal aid society--that is, of an organization which would defray the charges of a firm of attorneys to whom people in utter distress, without means, and with petty but desperate grievances in which busy lawyers could not afford to interest themselves, could apply for succor. When it appeared that the clerical duties incident to the fund collected for this charity must be performed by some suitable person, it occurred to Gordon Perry--he had been seeking some such occasion--that Mrs. Stuart would make an admirable secretary and treasurer, especially as he intended that the society should pay two hundred dollars for the annual service. Constance's heart throbbed with delight at the announcement, and the first fifty dollars was devoted by her to the treatment of Henrietta's irregular front teeth. Would she be able some day to send Emil to college? Might she hope that her daughter would grow to be thoroughly a lady, not merely a smart, self-sufficient woman, but a gracious, refined, exquisite spirit like Mrs. Randolph Wilson? In her outlook for her children's future, she had become aware that she had set up two individuals for emulation: the woman whose æsthetic Christianity had enriched her life, and the man whose unaffected intelligence and vigor offered to her daily observation an example of honorable modern living. To lift her own flesh and blood above the rut of mediocre aims and attainments was now the ambition of her soul, and she was ready to strain every nerve to bring this to pass. [Illustration: Constance would find her in possession at Lincoln Chambers] Her acquaintance with Mrs. Perry had ripened into intimacy. The old lady had taken a strong fancy to her, and the liking was cordially reciprocated. This meant increasing friendliness on both sides. Not infrequently, on her return from the office, Constance would find her in possession at Lincoln Chambers with the room warm, five o'clock tea ready, Henrietta in her lap and Emil beside her, listening to absorbing reading or stories, each of which had a pungent, personal flavor, with a not too obtrusive moral. On the other hand, Constance was asked to dine every now and then in the new house, and after dinner, sometimes it happened that they went to the theatre with Mr. Perry, or on evenings when he was busy, the two women would sit cosily with their work, and conversation never flagged. Women, when sympathetically attached to each other, seem to be inexhaustible reservoirs of speech, which flow with a bubbling copiousness bewildering to masculine ears. In their case, the hands of the clock set the only limit to their mutual enjoyment. The hour of departure brought the single uncomfortable moments of the evening for Constance--that is, for the first two evenings. Her apartment was a full mile distant, but her friends' house was not more than two hundred yards from a line of electric cars which passed within a block from her own door. Until Gordon Perry, who came out of his library to say good-night, announced his intention of accompanying her home, the idea had never occurred to her that it was necessary, or that he would offer his escort. Yet such are the inconsistencies of the feminine mind that the moment he did so she became aware that, if he had not offered it, she would have felt a trifle hurt. At the same time she did not wish him to accompany her. It would be obviously a superfluous piece of politeness; there was no risk of any kind in going home in the cars alone. She told him this in a few words of clear remonstrance. But he smilingly put on his overcoat, said it was a beautiful moonlight night, and assured her that he was anxious for a walk before going to bed. The idea of his walking only made the situation worse. Constance turned to his mother for support, but Mrs. Perry cordially seconded his assertion that it would do him good, so there was no escape from acceptance. The thought of having dragged a busy man--and her employer--out of his house at night disturbed her equinamity all the way home, so that although she delighted in having him as a companion in the exhilarating autumn air, under a glorious moon, she determined to prevent its recurrence. Yet, as she approached her destination, the fear of seeming ungracious supervened, and she had almost decided to postpone her protest until the next time, when he unwittingly gave her an opportunity to speak by remarking that he hoped that this was only one of many evenings which she would spend with them during the winter. "You must know," he added, "that my mother has taken a great fancy to you, and that it will not suit her at all if you are niggardly in your visits." Constance smiled acquiescingly. "I love your mother," she said, "and it will be a pleasure to me to come as often as she wishes." At the same instant she said to herself, "Now for it!" Whereupon she began sturdily, "Only, Mr. Perry----" Why did she pause? She was at a loss to know. It was the reverse of her custom to begin a sentence and leave it dangling in this unfinished manner. She accused herself of being a goose, and, simultaneously she took a new breath to go on, only to be met by her companion's blithe sally: "Only what, Mrs. Stuart?" She could see that his eyes were laughing. Did he divine what was choking her? "Only this: if I come to your mother, you must let me go home by myself. The electric cars are a stone's throw from your house, and run close to mine, so there is not the slightest necessity for your incommoding yourself." She paused, troubled. The last turn of the sentence, though it expressed her meaning, had not the felicitous sound she desired. "I came because I knew it would give me pleasure," he answered, quickly, still with a laughing light in his eyes, under which she let her own fall quite unnecessarily, as it seemed to her. She was provoked with herself. The dialogue had acquired the aspect of social give and take, which was entirely remote from her intention. "I have enjoyed it, too." She felt that this was the least she could say. "But there is no need; besides, Mr. Perry, you are my employer, and--and--" (she was halting again, but she bit her lip and plunged forward, seeking only to make herself clear) "that does make a difference--it should make a difference. If I were--if I were not your stenographer, I should probably go home in a carriage, but I can't afford one, and--and the cars are perfectly safe and comfortable. I am used to looking after myself." Her cheeks were burning. She had said what she meant to say, but it sounded crude and almost harsh. She wondered now why it had seemed necessary to her to make such a pother. As no immediate answer came from Mr. Perry, she stole a glance at his face. It had grown almost grave, and there was a different light in his eyes--a curious expression which puzzled her. "I hope you understand," she said, "and that I do not seem ungracious." "I understand perfectly. I was admiring your sense--your sanity. Such things do make a difference--must make a difference, so long as human nature is constituted as it is; but every woman has not the hardihood to accept the limitations of her social lot. As you say, you are used to looking after yourself. I should not have been guilty of a breach of manners, had I allowed you to go home in a car as you came--put you into one, perhaps, at the street corner, if I were not occupied. That would have been the natural course under all the circumstances, although it might have been equally natural to treat another woman with more ceremony. I came with you to-night because it gave me pleasure, as I told you, and because I wished you to understand that the relations between us are not those of employer and employee, but social in every sense. You are my mother's friend and mine." Constance's nerves tingled pleasantly at the apostrophe. "You are very good. You have always been kindness itself to me. I have felt that you both were my friends." She put out her hand shyly and gratefully to bid him good-night, and at the same time to indicate the warmth in her heart. "But now that I do understand," she added, "you must be sensible, too, and realize that I do not need an escort." She was rather appalled by her own boldness. His plea had only strengthened her feeling that his politeness was superfluous. "Do you forbid it?" he asked, with an inflection of gayety. She could not help smiling. "I cannot do that, you know. But if you wish to make me feel entirely at home, you will limit yourself at most to seeing me safely on a car at your street corner." She felt that she had touched firmer ground--that she was making her claim as a friend of the family, not being forced against her will into the pose of a coquette. "A compromise!" he ejaculated. "And what a one-sided one." "Life is made up of compromises, is it not? I thought I was being very generous." There was a gentle, plaintive cadence to her words which both charmed his ear and touched his sensibilities. Was she about to strike her flag in the last ditch out of sheer weariness at his bravado? "My only wish would be to please you," he said with sudden earnestness. Constance looked at him wonderingly, a little appalled at the change in his manner and speech. What had called forth their intensity? She became conscious that the blood was rising to her cheeks again, and that she had lost her composure a second time. For an instant Gordon gazed at her eagerly, as though he enjoyed her bewilderment, then with a return of gayety, he exclaimed: "But I promise nothing--nothing." He raised his hat and Constance, who had already entered the vestibule of her apartment-house, stood irresolute before ascending the stairs as one in a trance. She was displeased with herself; for the first time in her life it had seemed to her that her tongue and her wits were not under the control of her will. Presently she reflected that she might be working too hard and was run down, which on the whole, was comforting, until she looked in her mirror and saw there the refutation of this theory in her own hue of health. No, it could not be this, for there was no blinking the fact that she had improved notably in her appearance of late, which was comforting in a different way. She was so struck by the fact that she stood for a moment surveying her face and figure with contemplative surprise. But why had Mr. Perry been so queer? She asked herself that question more than once before she fell asleep, and in the morning ascribed it to her own social inaptness. The next occasion when she spent the evening with Mrs. Perry was a fortnight later. When she was ready to go home Gordon put on his overcoat without a word and confronted her tantalizingly. She was conscious of a little disappointment, for, in spite of his declaration of independence, she had believed that he would not persist, but as he opened the front door she heard the welcome words: "To-night I am going to comply with your wish by putting you on a car at the next corner." "Thank you, very much." She forebore to add what was in her mind, that it was the only sensible way. But her little triumph gave elasticity to her steps. For the first few moments the night seemed to set a seal upon his lips as he walked beside her, so that his response had the effect of being pondered. "My desire is to please you. But I shall reserve the right of pleasing myself now and then as I did the other day." "It pleased me, too," Constance said, amiably. "What I feared was that it might become a custom--an unnecessary burden." Gordon signalled an approaching car. "A burden? Mrs. Stuart, the burden of walking home by moonlight with the wrong woman is one which men generally manage to shift." Constance laughed. "Perhaps I should have thought of that. But now you will be protected at all events." From her seat in the electric car she beheld him standing at the street corner until his figure was lost in the shadows of the night. She felt complacent. She had gained her point, and since it was on terms need she feel otherwise than happy at the prospect of having him sometimes as a companion on her journeys home? The more she could see of him rightfully, without encroaching on his time, surely the better for her. The discretion rested with him, not with her; she was simply the fortunate beneficiary. So it came to pass that once in three or four times Gordon would exercise his privilege; and as another year slipped away and the spring brought milder nights and more inviting sidewalks, the occasions became more frequent, so that before either seemed to be aware of it, the custom of riding was more honored in the breach than the observance, and this without further discussion. They would simply start as though she were to take an electric car, and before reaching the corner he would casually interrupt their discourse to say, "It is a fine night; shall we walk?" to which Constance would reply, "If you like." After a while even this formula was dispensed with, and she was ready to take for granted that they both preferred the exercise. One day he asked permission to accompany her and her children on one of their Sunday afternoon strolls into the country, a proposal which startled her, but which she had no obvious excuse for refusing. On their return home from the excursion Henrietta and little Emil were so enthusiastic over this addition to the party that she felt reluctant on their account to prevent its repetition. So the experience was renewed every now and then, and, since he seemed to enjoy it, she accepted it as one of the pleasures which Providence had thrown in her way. Intimacy naturally resulted from this increasing association. It was a constant comfort to Constance that Mr. Perry was such a natural person; that he obviously liked her for herself, but did not affect to ignore or gloss over the fact that her life was circumscribed and straitened by her necessities; that, while assuming that she was interested in and able to appreciate the finer aspirations and concerns of existence, he let her perceive that he understood her predicament. Consequently she felt at liberty and encouraged to speak to him from time to time on the subject nearest her heart--the advancement of her children--and to ask advice in relation thereto. On one of their evenings--a moonlight night, which rivalled in beauty that when he had first accompanied her--she had been consulting him as to the conditions of a free art school recently started in the new Art Museum, having little Emil in mind. After a short silence she suddenly said, "I admire your mother greatly, as you know. But sometimes I am doubtful whether she does not discourage me even more than she gives me hope; her example, I mean. She brought you up. She was almost as friendless as I. I dare say she did not have so many friends. Yet--yet you are you. She managed to give you everything." "God bless her, yes, brave heart that she is." "But----" He cut her pensive conjunctive short. "I can guess what you are going to say. Excuse me; go on." "I cannot give my children everything. But everything, then, would not be everything now." "I divined your thought." The sympathy radiating from his sturdy tone brought a pleasant light to her eyes. "Yet you are you," she reasserted. He laughed. "Logician and flatterer! But you are right. My mother would have had a far harder struggle had she begun to-day. She might not have been able to give me everything, for everything then was not everything now, as you have said." "Yet you have everything," she persisted, doughtily. "Even if that were true, it would not signify. You are facing a condition, not a theory. Flour and sugar and standard oil may be cheaper to-day, but the demands of civilization on the individual are so much greater--of civilization everywhere, but especially in this country, where the growth of prosperity has been so prodigious and the stress of competition has become so fierce." "Oh, yes; oh, yes. You understand," she said, eagerly. "There are so many things which I should like to give my children which I cannot--which I know are beyond my reach, but which would be of infinite service to them in the struggle to make the most of life. You spoke to me once of the limitation of my social lot. That is nothing. What is hard for a mother to bear is the consciousness that her children will fall short of what she would wish them to become because she has not the power to secure for them the best. Yet it must be borne, and borne bravely." "Yes, it is lamentably hard. The chief blot on the triumph of individualism--on the American principle of the development of self--is that the choicest privileges of civilization should hang beyond the reach of those who are handicapped merely because they are handicapped. The destruction of the poor is their poverty, as my old school-master used to state, though I didn't know then what he meant. And it must be borne, as you say. Even here, where everything is possible to the individual, renunciation still stares the majority in the face as the inexorable virtue." "Surely," she answered, with simple pathos. "Thank you for understanding me. I knew you would. If I struggle, it is because I am so ambitious for my children to rise. I would not have them remain mere hewers of wood and drawers of water--one of the majority you speak of--as I have been." He turned his face toward her. "You are far more than that, you are a sweet woman. You must not underestimate character in your recognition of the power of things. You can give your children that, and it is no cant to say that character remains everlastingly the backbone of human progress." "Things!" she echoed, ignoring apparently both the tribute and the consolation proffered. "That is the word." She hugged her thought in silence for a moment as though fascinated. "When I was a girl there were no things to speak of; now--" she paused and sighed; evidently the vision which her spirit entertained disconcerted her powers of speech. "It is not that I wish my children to be rich--merely rich, Mr. Perry. You know that. It is that I wish them to be able to appreciate, to feel, to enjoy what is best in life. You spoke of the power of character just now. There is Mrs. Randolph Wilson. She has all the virtues of plain character and so much more besides. Compare her with a woman like me." "Mrs. Randolph Wilson!" His tone revealed his surprise at the antithesis. "I see. I see," he repeated, interested by the completeness of the contrast. "I owe so much to her," Constance murmured. "Before I knew her my outlook was so narrow and colorless. She has taught me to enrich my life, poor as it still is." "She is a fine woman. And yet, in my opinion, you need not fear comparison with Mrs. Wilson." "Oh, Mr. Perry!" She stopped short for an instant in recoil. The protesting astonishment of her exclamation showed him not only that he had violated a temple by his words, but that, as a consequence, she believed him insincere, which in her eyes would be a more grievous fault. "It is quite true," he said with decision. "You are very different; but it is quite true. Your outlook was narrow, perhaps, but it was clear and straight." "Oh, no. You do not know her, then, nor me. I tried to see clearly according to my lights, but that is just it--my lights were defective, and I saw only half the truth until she revealed it to me." "Mrs. Wilson has had great opportunities." "Yes, indeed. And she has taken advantage of them. Great opportunities!" she repeated with an exultant sigh. "They are what I had in mind a few minutes ago; not for myself, you know, but for my children. I envy--yes, I envy opportunities for them." Her voice had a quiver as though she were daring a confession to the sphinx-like stars. She had changed the emphasis of the dialogue, but Gordon pursued his tenor. "Her daughter has had every opportunity, yet her mother can scarcely regard her with pride." "I barely know Mrs. Waldo. It was just before her wedding that her mother was so kind to to me. I saw her once or twice at the house, but only for a moment." "At least she has made a mess of her marriage." Constance started. "It is true, then, what was in the newspapers?" "It is true that she and her husband have agreed to separate. It is an open secret that she has gone to Sioux Falls in order to obtain a divorce on a colorless ground in the shortest possible time. They will both be free in less than a year." "How terrible! Loretta Davis read me a paragraph last week to the effect that Mr. and Mrs. Waldo were not happy. I set it down as baseless gossip. It seemed to me impossible that Mrs. Wilson's daughter--Ah, I am so sorry for Mrs. Wilson." "She was in the office last week." "I remember." "She came to consult me; to see if anything could be done. She has reasoned with her daughter--used every argument in her arsenal--but without avail. Mrs. Waldo's one idea is to be free. And yet she has had every opportunity." "But that proves nothing, Mr. Perry, surely." They had reached the threshold of Lincoln Chambers. There was the courage of conviction in the frank gaze she bent on him. "Only that the power to have everything may numb the spirit and make individual self-will the sole arbiter of conduct." "Agreed. But there can be no doubt that civilization offers us more to-day than it ever did if we can only be put within reach of it. The thought sometimes haunts me that I may die and Henrietta grow up to be like--like Loretta Davis; never know what life may mean, because she has not had the chance." He looked at her admiringly. "I am more than half teasing you," he said. "While it is true that the general standard of living is higher than ever before, it remains true as ever that only the attuned spirit can grasp and utilize the best. To argue otherwise would be cant." "So it seems to me," she said, with her air of direct simplicity. "As for this tragedy--for it is a tragedy almost Sophoclean in its scope, as you will presently learn, my lips are sealed for the moment beyond what I have told you. But you are right in your enthusiasm for Mrs. Wilson. She is in touch with the temper of the world's progress--according to her lights." She smiled faintly. "I still wish I were more like her." Gordon seemed for a moment to be pondering this assertion, then fixing her with his eyes, said: "I believe you have never heard anything from your husband since he deserted you?" "Nothing." "You do not know his whereabouts, nor whether he is alive or dead?" She shook her head. "More than three years have elapsed. So you are entitled to a divorce in this State, if you see fit to claim it." Constance had listened in astonishment. His tone was so respectful that she could not take offence. He seemed to be merely informing her as to her rights; and though the topic had never been broached up to this time between them, was he not her intimate friend? Nevertheless she felt agitated. "It has never occurred to me that a divorce would be desirable," she answered with as much formality as her dislike of artifice allowed her to adopt. Then, yielding to curiosity or the inclination to break another lance with him, she added: "Of what benefit would it be to me to seek a divorce?" "Merely that the bond is already broken; what remains is a husk." "My husband may return." The response struck her as futile; still it had risen to her lips as a convenient possibility. "That is true. But if he did return after what has happened, I should think--I have no right to invade your privacy--" He stopped short, evidently appalled by the sound of his own presumption. There was a brief silence. It would have been easy for Constance to leave his inquiry where he had left it, but her love for the truth caused her first to face the issue thus presented, and having solved it by one full glance, to bear testimony to what was in her heart. Why she felt this frankness necessary, she did not know, unless it were that he was such a friend she did not wish him to think he had offended. The interval was only momentary, but she appeared to herself to have been standing speechless in the presence of the ashes of her past for an awkward period before she said: "My husband said when he went away that we could never be happy together. I do not wish him to return." She realized she was telling him her love was dead. It was the truth; why should he not know? She heard him draw a deep breath. Suddenly remembering the argument which had provoked his question, her mind flew to it for refuge and sheltered itself behind it as a bulwark. "But that is no reason why I should seek a divorce. A divorce could not alter the situation." He hesitated a moment as though he were about to continue the discussion, then evidently thought better of it. "I simply wished you to know your rights. Good-night." XVII As she reached the landing upon which her own apartment opened, Constance noticed that there was a light in Loretta Davis's room. Loretta was now a full-fledged nurse. That is, she had completed her course at the hospital, and was taking cases of her own. She had already obtained two or three through the patronage of Mrs. Wilson, but she happened to be out of work at the moment. It occurred to Constance that she would impart her information to her neighbor. Loretta was deeply interested in everything which concerned their benefactress. Loretta had seen what was in the newspapers, and, since it was true, why should not she know? This was a plausible excuse for gratifying that strong desire to share her knowledge which assails every woman who has something to tell. Had it been a real secret, Constance would have been adamant. As it was, she did not appreciate until too late that this was just the sort of subject which she and Loretta could not discuss sympathetically. She was sorry for her; she did her best to befriend and encourage her, and tried to like her; but though they got on pleasantly, their point of view was apt to be radically different. Loretta opened the door. "Oh, it's you, Constance. I'd made up my mind that someone had sent for me." "I'm sorry to disappoint you, Loretta. But I've something to tell you--something you'll be distressed to hear. What you read in the newspaper about Mrs. Wilson's daughter--the Waldos--is true." Then she repeated briefly what she knew, omitting reference to Mrs. Wilson's visit to the office. Loretta listened with parted lips and an expression in her usually matter-of-fact face curiously compounded of solicitude and knowingness, as though commiseration and the glamor of the scandal were contending forces. "I knew it was true; the newspapers wouldn't have printed it unless there'd been something in it. My! but she'll feel bad, won't she?" "It will wound her terribly." "How did your boss find out?" Constance winced. Somehow the epithet jarred worse than usual, and she felt that she could not stand it. The experiences of the evening were on her nerves, though sympathy for Mrs. Wilson had thrust her personal emotions to the back of her mind for more leisurely inspection. "You mustn't call him that, Loretta. It doesn't express him at all." Loretta looked surprised and laughed. "What's the matter? He is your boss, isn't he?" she asserted. "Oh, well--your employer, Mr. Gordon Perry, Esq., counsellor-at-law, if that'll suit you. My! but you're getting red." Constance was annoyed with herself for having protested. Indeed, she was biting her tongue for having brought on the interview. Now that she had told the facts she shrank from further discussion. Yet it was patent that Loretta had every intention of discussing the episode with her. "There's no doubt about the truth of the matter, unfortunately," she said, by way of answer to the original question. Loretta's large eyes began to rove. Then they suddenly fixed Constance with the gleam of a transporting idea. "I'm going to see her, right off--to-morrow, I mean," she added, noting the swift, barometric sign of disapproval which her words evoked, though it was no more than a contraction of the eyelids. But, suspicious as she was, she assumed that the only criticism had been that she was going forthwith. From the moment Gordon Perry had spoken, Constance had been yearning to hasten to Mrs. Wilson's side and offer the sympathy which she felt. This had been her first impulse too, but a moment's reflection had proved to her that to do so was out of the question; that it would be an intrusion--a violation of that subtle code of nicety which governed her benefactress's life. Mrs. Wilson was the last woman to betray to the every-day world that she was sorely wounded. Was not endurance of suffering without plaint and with an unruffled countenance one of the tenets of her friend's æsthetic creed? So what right had a person like herself to invade her privacy? No, she must remain dumb until Mrs. Wilson gave her the opportunity to speak or publicity offered an excuse for flowers or some token of affection. Thus she had reasoned, and hence her involuntary challenge to Loretta's confident announcement. "She'll expect me to be sorry for her, and I am," pursued Loretta, complacent over her project. "I'll ask her all about it. Won't it make a stir in the newspapers! There'll be a new picture of her, sure." Thus reminded, she opened a table drawer and produced a large scrap-book, which she exhibited to Constance with an air of satisfaction. It was made up of newspaper illustrations and clippings relative to the object of adoration--pictures of Mrs. Wilson in a variety of poses, of her house, of her equipages, and of everything which the reportorial artist had been able to reproduce; also scores of allusions to her in print culled from the social columns. It was a current, but a thorough collection, for Loretta had purchased back issues in order to possess the newspaper features of the wedding ceremonies. It was to these she now turned, staying her hand at a page where the bride and her mother looked forth, ranged side by side in festal attire. Loretta surveyed them contemplatively. "I never laid eyes on the daughter. They're not much alike, are they? Perhaps she'll be at home when I go. I'd give anything to see her." The scrap-book was not new to Constance, but it had been considerably amplified since she had seen it last. She had never been able to understand why Loretta had undertaken or prized it. Nevertheless, it was a symptom of hero-worship in line with collections of the photographs of adored actors by matinee girls, and was not to be despised too heartily if she wished to remain sympathetic. But just now Constance's mind was otherwise busy. She, too, adored Mrs. Wilson, and she painfully depicted to herself the annoyance which this visit with its threatened frankness would cause her divinity. "Don't you think, Loretta, that it would be better to wait a little before you call?" she said, in gentle appeal. "Better? Why better?" "More appropriate. Mrs. Wilson will not feel like discussing the matter just yet. If her daughter is with her, so much the more reason. She must be very unhappy, and, if either of us were to visit her now to offer sympathy, I'm sure she would regard it as an intrusion." Loretta bridled. "If I were unhappy, she'd come to see me. If my baby were to die, wouldn't she come gliding down here to make me feel resigned? Two can play at that game. She's been nice to me; why shouldn't I let her know that I'm sorry for her? Besides," she added, with a shrug of her shoulders and a bold look, "I'd like to see how she'd behave--how she'd take it. I want to see the house again, too." Appalled as Constance was, she said to herself that she must not let the shock of this lack of taste palsy her own effectiveness. To upbraid Loretta would only confirm her in her intention. "Let us hope that there will be no publicity; that the matter will be kept very quiet. If Mrs. Wilson is desirous of concealing it, surely she would not be pleased to know that we had heard of it. I told you because I know how fond you are of her, and that her secret would be safe in your hands." "Publicity? Of course there'll be publicity." The suggestion of concealment was obviously distasteful to her. "Why, I read it to you in the newspaper. The reporters are certain to get wind of it in a few days, see if they don't. And when they do, look out for head-lines and half-page illustrations. The public have a right to know what's going on, haven't they?" she asked in the assertive tone of one vindicating a vested privilege. "Not things of this kind--private concerns, surely." Constance sighed, realizing that it was only too probable that the newspapers, alert as bloodhounds for the trail of a new social scandal, would come upon this shortly and blazon it to the world. "Private concerns! Suppose a multi-millionaire's daughter tires of her husband and runs away to South Dakota to get a divorce as quick as the law allows, do you call that a private concern? I guess not, Constance. The public--meaning such as you and me--naturally take an interest, and object to its being hushed up. The multi-millionaires have the money; we have the newspapers. We don't get any too much that's interesting in our lives." "We don't know any of the facts; we mustn't prejudge Mrs. Waldo until we hear what they are," said Constance, ignoring the philosophy of this tirade in her dismay at the assumption. "That's why I'm going to see her. I want to find out the facts," said Loretta, triumphantly. "I was only supposing. Like as not her daughter has been ill-treated, and is running away because she has to. If so, there's not much to worry about. She'll get her divorce, and be able to marry again as soon as she has the chance." "But even so, Loretta, her mother must necessarily regard it as a family misfortune, which she would not like to talk about. As to marrying again, that would only make the matter worse for Mrs. Wilson." "Worse? Why worse?" "It would distress her, I'm certain. It would be contrary to her ideas of the eternal fitness of things." Constance recognized her own sententiousness, which was due to the perception that she had allowed herself to speak by the card without sufficient authority. She had never discussed the subject or anything analogous to it with Mrs. Wilson, and to put arguments in her mouth would be surely a liberty. Yet her heart told her that the conclusion which she had uttered, both in its substance and phraseology, stated correctly Mrs. Wilson's position. What suddenly interested her was the wonder whether it expressed her own convictions. Loretta lost no time in bringing this to an issue. "Supposing Mrs. Waldo has been miserable and without fault, do you mean to tell me she'd object to her daughter marrying the right man if he came along? Why, wouldn't you be glad, after all you've been through, if the right person came along--some decent man with a little money who could look after your children?" "I?" To the ears of Constance the sound of her own voice resembled a wail. Why should Loretta be so unfeeling as to make her personal experiences the test of such a text? "Yes, you." Constance gathered her forces for a display of proper dignity. She wished to be kind still, but conclusive. "Mine is not a case at all in point. I am not divorced from my husband." Loretta plainly regarded this argument as flimsy, for she snapped her fingers. "Pooh!" she said. "You could get a divorce any day you like." She stared at Constance a moment, then rose from her chair, planted her palms on the table and bent forward by way of emphasis with an air both determined and a little diabolical. "Supposing your--your employer, Gordon Perry, Esq., counsellor-at-law, was to make you an offer of his hand and heart to-morrow, do you mean to tell me, Constance Stuart, that you wouldn't snap him up in a jiffy?" "It isn't a supposable case," replied poor Constance. One can slam a door in an intruder's face; there is no such buffer for impertinent speeches. "But supposing costs nothing. Of course it's supposable, why not? You're the sort of woman who's twice as good looking now that you've filled out as you were at nineteen. You know well enough you're growing handsomer and more fetching every day. Only a blind man couldn't see that." "That would have nothing to do with it even if it were true." "You may bet a man like that wouldn't marry you if you were plain. But just supposing? I do believe you're getting red again." The victim, conscious of the fact, sought relief in merriment. She jumped at the impulse to treat this indelicate effrontery jocosely as the only possible attitude. "It's because you're so absurd, Loretta. But since you seem to wish an answer to your ridiculous question----" The sharp note of the electric bell broke in upon the slight pause which she made to weigh her words. "Someone for me!" cried Loretta, and she ran to the tube. But she looked over her shoulder to say "Continued in our next! The offer is good for a week." Constance felt the inclination to throw the scrapbook at her head. The next moment she was vexed with herself for allowing her equanimity to be disturbed, and began to rehabilitate the interrupted sentence. What had she been going to say? It dawned upon her that, curiously enough, she had not formulated the conclusion. Meantime Loretta was going through the functions of whistling down the tube and receiving the message. The surprising import of her next words roused Constance from a brown study. "Talk of the devil! It's a messenger from Mr. Perry's. Somebody's ill and I'm wanted. The boy's coming up." Somebody ill! It must be Mrs. Perry. The few moments of suspense which elapsed before the district messenger-boy arrived seemed interminable to Constance. Loretta had opened the door and the tramp of his ascent sounded leisurely. When he appeared he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket and produced a letter. "It's for Mrs. Stuart," he said, guardedly. "I'm Mrs. Stuart," said Constance. "I was told to ring at your bell first, and if you was asleep or didn't answer the tube to try the other lady." Constance read the brief contents of the note with perturbation. It was from Mr. Perry, informing her that on his return home he had found his mother stricken with paralysis, that the doctor was in attendance, and that a trained nurse was necessary. He had thought of Loretta; would Constance send her if disengaged? "Oh, Loretta, dear Mrs. Perry is seriously ill--a stroke of paralysis. Mr. Perry asks you to come to her at once." "I'll be ready to start in a few minutes," answered Loretta, briskly. "We will both go," added Constance, as though to herself. "There may be something I can do." She turned to the messenger: "Return as quickly as you can, and tell the gentleman that we--wait a moment." She tore the sheet of note-paper apart and seating herself at the table wrote hastily on the blank half in pencil: "Loretta will come at once, and I shall accompany her. My heart grieves for you, my dear friend." She folded it and bent down one corner. "Give him this," she said, "and please make haste." At this time in Benham the doctrine that sewage must be diverted from the sources of water supply used for drinking purposes was firmly established, and the doctrine that not every woman able to read and write is qualified to teach school was being gradually, if grudgingly, admitted to be not altogether un-American. So swift had been the change of attitude toward special knowledge that there had even been a revolution in regard to the theory advocated by the original board of trustees of the Silas S. Parsons Free Hospital that every woman is a born nurse, and is competent, after a fortnight's training at the utmost, to take charge of the sickest patients. Those familiar with affairs in Benham will recall that the original ruling spirit of that institution was Mrs. Selma Lyons, wife of United States Senator Lyons. She disapproved of special training and was a strong champion of the principle that an American woman with aspirations is more likely to be fettered than helped by conventional standards, and that individuality should be given free play in order to attain brilliant results. Yet though this principle was reverenced at first in the employment of nurses for the hospital, progress, that stern derider even of the American woman, gradually set it at naught during the period when Mrs. Lyons was resident in Washington and unable to give that close personal attention to the affairs of the institution which she desired. It so happened that after her husband's defeat at the end of his first term through the hostility of Horace Elton, one of the financial magnates of that section of the country, who harbored a grudge against him for alleged duplicity when Governor, the President of the United States threw a sop to the defeated candidate in the form of the Spanish mission. Selma, who was still engaged in the effort to chastise her enemies and to reëstablish what she regarded as true American social principles, was sorry to leave Washington, but she found some consolation in the thought of introducing American ethical standards at a foreign court, especially of dealing a death-blow to bull-fights by her personal influence. She was obliged, however, to relax considerably her vigilance in regard to the hospital; even, to consent to an enlargement of the board of trustees. This in its new form presently adopted what the members regarded as modern methods. Mrs. Wilson had been one of the recent additions to the body. Yet, under her regimen, though every applicant for a nurse's diploma was obliged to serve a rigorous apprenticeship of two years at the hospital, the idea of scrutinizing the antecedents and previous education of the young women offering themselves was still novel. Selma would have regarded an inquiry of this kind as aristocratic and hostile to the free development of the individual. Now--but a few years later--such a system of scrutiny is in vogue in Benham; but at the date of Loretta Davis's admittance to the Silas S. Parsons Free Hospital, though it doubtless occurred to Mrs. Wilson that her candidate was not ideal, she had not demurred. On the contrary, she had welcomed the opportunity of giving the girl a chance to redeem herself in this field of usefulness. Similarly, though Constance might not have picked out her neighbor for this particular service, she felt only thankfulness that Loretta was disengaged, and that they were able to betake themselves at once to Mrs. Perry's bedside. The old dame employed to look after the baby in Loretta's absence was still available. Constance waked her, and requested her to keep an eye on her own children in case she were away all night. After their arrival at their destination, however, it was soon clear to Constance that there was nothing she could do. Mrs. Perry had not regained consciousness, and the physician in attendance was non-committal as to the outcome. So Gordon informed them; briefly, and Constance was left in the library to her own reflections while he showed Loretta to her post. She was not sorry that she had come; but much as she wished to remain, plainly she would be in the way. Loretta was trained, and was the proper person to be in the sick-room. Yet she would not go until Mr. Perry returned. He might have instructions for the morrow concerning the changes in his plans consequent upon his mother's illness. Besides, she wished to express more specifically her desire to be of any possible service. Gordon returned before long. He put out his hand as though they had not met already. "I thank you heartily for your message of sympathy," he said. "There is no change?" "None. It is the beginning of the end." "Yet----" "Oh, yes, she may recover, thanks to the tireless methods of modern science; but what would the only possible recovery mean to a woman like her? Merely durance vile. No--one's natural impulse, of course, is to hold on to one we love--to delay the parting at any price. The doctors must have their way. But when I allow myself to think, I know it would be best for her not to wake again. She would prefer it. You know that." "Yes, she would prefer it," Constance murmured. "I must not keep you from her," she added. "Please stay a little. I can do nothing. It hurts me to see her so unlike herself, though the doctor says she is not suffering." He glanced at the clock apprehensively. "It is getting late, I know; but you must not go quite yet. I will telephone for a carriage presently. I must give you directions as to what to do at the office to-morrow in case I should not be there." Then, as though he divined what was in her thoughts, he said, "I was glad when I knew you were coming. I said to myself, 'if my mother should recover consciousness, the sight of Constance at her bedside would do her more good than any medicine.'" He had never before employed her Christian name in her presence. The use of it now seemed to her to put a seal upon the bond of their friendship. He was become, indeed, a wise older brother whom it delighted her to serve. "But you will come to-morrow?" he said. "If I may. I should like to be near her. I hate to feel helpless where she is concerned." "We are both helpless. What a mother she has been to me! I owe everything to her. Truth has been her divinity, truth--truth--and she has had the courage to live up to what she believed." He paused. Evidently his spirit quailed before the impending future. "And now she is slipping away from me. The common destiny. But she is my mother. I wonder where she is going--what is to become of all that energy and clear-headedness. Modern science tells us that force never perishes. It is as difficult to imagine my mother's individuality at an end as it is to convince one's self in the presence of death that the grave is not master." He sighed and turned to hide a tear. "I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air, I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care." The lines rose to Constance's lips and she repeated them. They were not symbolic of her church; rather they were a text from the universal hope of mankind. She felt instinctively that any more orthodox definition would have jarred upon him. "Thank you," he said, softly. "It is so easy in this age of conscientious investigation to reject everything which will not bear the test of human reason. Death is no greater a mystery than birth. We know not whence we came, nor whither we go. But when the world ceases to believe that there is some answer to it all worthy of our aspirations, it will be time for this planet to become a frozen pole again. You women are apt to bear that in mind more faithfully than we," he added, lifting his eyes to hers. "Come," he said, "we must not forget to-morrow; you have work to do. I must not be selfish." A few minutes later he put her in a carriage. In the morning Constance, imbued with his speech, half hoped that she might hear that Mrs. Perry was dead. But Gordon appeared at the office about ten o'clock, announcing that the night had brought a change for the better. His mother had smiled at him recognizingly, and faintly pressed his hand. Though she was unable to speak, the doctor had encouraged him to believe that she would do so. Constance perceived that he was in better spirits, showing that, despite his words, he was rejoicing that the parting had been delayed. The improvement in Mrs. Perry's condition continued for nearly three weeks. One side of her body was completely paralyzed, but she regained presently the power to utter a few occasional words, though her enunciation was difficult to understand. At the end of the fourth day from her seizure she was permitted to see Constance for a few minutes. Soon after daily visits increasing gradually in length were sanctioned, and Constance, after her duties at the office were over, was enabled to spend an hour or more at the bedside of her friend before returning to her own home. This was an agreeable arrangement to Loretta, for it gave that young woman a breathing spell--the opportunity to take the fresh air or to do whatever she pleased. Mrs. Perry evidently delighted in Constance's attendance. She listened to reading with satisfaction for a time, but later it seemed to suit her better to lie quietly, her unmaimed hand resting in or near one of Constance's, while the latter now and then broke the twilight silence by recounting the news of the day. "I like the sound of your voice, my dear," she said to Constance. "It is refreshing and musical as a brook." Occasionally Gordon joined them, but he would never permit Constance to relinquish her seat beside the bed in his favor. "My turn comes later," he said. "I tuck my mother up for the night." Mrs. Perry seemed to enjoy especially the days when they were there together. She would turn her eyes from one to the other as though she delighted in them equally. But only once did she make any reference to what may have been in her thoughts concerning their joint presence. It was in the third week of her illness, and what she said was spoken low to Constance, though evidently intended to be audible to them both. "You must take good care of him, dear, when I am gone." It was one of her best days as regards articulation, so there was no room for misunderstanding. The words were harmless enough and Constance took them in the only sense in which they were applicable. "I shall stay with him as long as he will keep me, you may rely on that, Mrs. Perry," she responded, brightly. A pleasant smile came over the old lady's face and she looked in the direction of her son. Her mouth twitched. "Do you hear what she says, Gordon?" There was a humorous twinkle in her voice, which doubtless was not lost on him. His back was to the light, so that he had the advantage of shadow to cover his mental processes. "I regard it as impossible that Constance and I should ever drift apart," he said. His sphinx-like reply seemed to be reassuring to the invalid. She lay like one serenely satisfied, and did not pursue the subject further. As for Constance, she noticed the use by Mr. Perry of her Christian name again, but it seemed to her only fitting and friendly. She did not need his assurance to feel that they were not likely to drift apart, but it was delightful to hear it from his lips. When Mrs. Perry's seeming convalescence had reached a stage at which the doctor was on the point of sending her out to drive, a second attack of her malady occurred and brought the end. She became unconscious at once, and passed away within a few hours. On the afternoon after the funeral Constance returned to the house with Loretta in order that the latter might collect and bring away her belongings. Gordon was closeted in his library alone with his sorrow, and the two women moving noiselessly through the silent house made but a brief stay. While they were on their way to Lincoln Chambers a newsboy entered the street-car crying the evening papers. Loretta having bought one made an ejaculation. Absorbed in what she had discovered, she paid no heed at first to Constance's glance of interrogation, but read with an avidity which seemed breathless. Then she thrust the sheet under her companion's eyes, and pointing to a column bristling with large headlines, exclaimed: "Here it is at last; a full account of the divorce proceedings with their pictures, and a picture of her. It's a worse affair than anyone imagined. It says Paul Howard and his wife are mixed up in it, and there's something about a pistol going off at Newport. I haven't read it all yet. But look--look!" Loretta's demeanor suggested not merely excitement, but a sort of saturnine glee, so that Constance turned from the printed page toward her as though seeking to fathom its cause, then back to the newspaper, the capitals of which told their sensational story with flaring offensiveness. "I won't read it now, Loretta. I'll wait until we get home. What a cruel shame it is that the press has got hold of it." Loretta gave a questioning jerk to her shoulders. "I don't know about that. I knew she wouldn't be able to hush it up. How could she expect to? Besides--" She did not finish her sentence. Instead, she wagged her head, as one in possession of a secret and grinned knowingly. "I'll tell you something, some day. But not now--not now." Then she reassumed control of the newspaper, saying, "Well, if you don't care to read it, I do. There are three columns." She uttered the last words as though she were announcing treasure-trove. But the ellipsis had left no doubt as to her attitude, which led Constance to remark on the spur of the moment, "Neither of us would like to have our misfortunes paraded before the world. I know what it means; how it cuts and stings." Loretta looked up admiringly. "When your husband ran away?" "Yes." "And your picture appeared?" "No, not that, thank heavens!" Loretta laughed indulgently. "You're queer, Constance. You're so scared of publicity. I shouldn't mind a bit having my picture in the papers. What's more, I don't believe she does. This divorce had to come out, sooner or later. I shouldn't wonder in the least," she added, boldly, "if she lets the reporters know when she has a new photograph taken. By the way, I went to see her." Constance knew at once what she meant, and the dismay and curiosity inspired by the announcement rose paramount to her other feelings of protest. "When?" "It surprises you, doesn't it? I went on two of those afternoons when you sat with Mrs. Perry. And I saw her, too. The first time the butler said she was engaged. He tried to shunt me off the same way again, but I was too smart for him. 'Tell her Loretta Davis is very anxious to talk with her on business,' I said, and the message came back that she'd be down presently. Between my baby and my nurse's work it wasn't hard to find the business, and then I told her plump I was sorry to hear about her daughter. At that she colored up--you ought to have seen her, and looked as though she had swallowed a steel rod. Said she, 'I appreciate your desire to be sympathetic, Loretta, but that is a subject I cannot discuss with anyone, please.'" Loretta spoke mincingly, evidently aiming to reproduce Mrs. Wilson's exquisiteness of manner and speech. "Said I 'I thought it might make you feel better to talk it over with someone. It would me, I know.' But it wasn't any use. She wouldn't, and she sort of froze me; and pretty soon we both got up, I to go, and she to have me go. However, now it's all out, and everyone will be talking about it." "But not with her. I warned you that she wouldn't like it." "Yes, you warned me. And I don't mind saying I think she needn't have been so stiff, seeing I told her everything when I was in trouble. Anyhow, I saw the house again and her, and now there's a new picture of her in the paper, and the thing is going to make a big sensation, if what's printed here is true, and I guess it is." She nodded her head with a repetition of her air of mystery. "There are the facts you said we ought to wait for." "But you seem almost glad," Constance could not refrain from remarking. "You stated you went to see Mrs. Wilson because you were sorry for her." "So I did; so I am. I'm dreadfully sorry for her. I'd do anything to help her, but I can't; and she won't let me show my sympathy. But since the thing has happened, I'm glad it's exciting." Constance looked puzzled. "I don't think I understand." "I enjoy sensations, and big head-lines. They tone me up. You're different, I guess." A sudden thought seemed to occur to her, for she regarded Constance for a moment as a doctor might look at a patient, then she thrust her hand into the pocket of her jacket and produced a small bottle which contained white tablets. "When I feel low in my mind--done up--I take one of these." "What are they?" "Something a friend of mine at the hospital recommended. They do the work." While delivering this not altogether candid response, Loretta unscrewed the stopper and emptying a tablet on to her palm swallowed it, then offered the bottle to her companion. "Have one?" Constance shook her head. "Well, the next time you feel fagged, ask me for one." An instant later she sprang to her feet, exclaiming, "Why, here we are! We ought to get out." It was even so. The interest of their conversation had been such that they had neglected to notice the flight of time or to observe where they were. As the car was virtually at the point where they wished it to stop, Loretta hurried toward the door, signalling to the conductor as she did so; but she failed to catch his eye, for he happened to be absorbed by an organ-grinder on the other side of the car from that on which they were to get off. The car was moving slowly, and, though she had her hand-bag, it was a simple matter to spring to the ground without further ado. She did so successfully, landing a few feet beyond the crossing. Constance, who was following close behind, heard the voice of the conductor, "Wait, lady, until the car stops," and the jingle of the bell, but she disdained to heed it. She jumped lightly, but somehow the heel of her boot caught on the edge of the platform or she slipped. At all events her impetus was thwarted, and instead of landing on her feet, she pitched forward, striking her forehead on the pavement. XVIII When Constance came to herself she was in her own bed. It appeared that she had been carried insensible into a drug store, and thence to Lincoln Chambers, which were close at hand. A doctor presently restored her to consciousness, but he gave imperative instructions that she was to be kept absolutely quiet or he would not answer for the consequences of the nervous shock. It was the second day before her countenance expressed recognition of Mrs. Harrity, the pensioner who looked after the children, and who sat sewing at her bedside. Even then her senses shrank from every effort, and having learned by a question or two that she had fallen, and that the children were well, she lapsed into a comatose state. When she emerged from this she was very weak, but her mind was clear. She could not bear the light, however. Her eyes burned with a stinging pain whenever they encountered it, and she was forced to submit to the physician's orders that she remain in a dark room for a week. Her first inquiry after her mind was able to focus itself was whether word had been sent to the office. She was told that Loretta had done this by telephone; that Mr. Perry had called promptly, and that the roses on the table were from him. Mrs. Harrity seemed proud of the visit and the gift. "He told me to say you weren't to worry, and to take all the time you need to get well. He's a pleasant-spoken gentleman, Mrs. Stuart, and wanted to know everything the doctor had said." Mrs. Harrity was proud also of the fact that Loretta had been summoned to attend a new patient. She was proudest of all of a piece of intelligence, or rather prophecy, which Loretta had let fall the day after the accident, which she hastened to impart to Constance the first moment the latter appeared able to take it in. "She says as how you ought to get big damages from the railroad." "But I'm not much hurt, am I?" asked Constance. The dame perceived that she had not lived up to the doctor's orders. Yet now she could conscientiously relieve her patient's natural solicitude. "Mercy, no. You've broken nothing. You're only shook up. And it hasn't hurt your good looks a mite. But," she added, still conscientious, "the doctor says it's your nerves, and nerves are most as good as bones before a jury, especially if one has a smart lawyer handy as you have." Constance sat up in bed. Instead of being a comfort, as was intended, the broad hint distressed her. "I don't wish any damages. It was my own fault. I jumped before the car stopped. It was very silly. I only want to get well." The dread of a tedious convalescence was already haunting her reviving faculties. Her absence from the office would be very inconvenient to Mr. Perry, and confinement at home for more than a few days would prove a disastrous inroad on her resources. She must hasten to recover. Meantime Mrs. Harrity was looking blank at the reception accorded to what she had supposed would be a nerve tonic to the sufferer. She replied stanchly: "She says different. She's ready to go on the stand and swear against the company. You're all right, darling. Smell them flowers, and lie down like a good girl. The doctor says you must keep still and not talk." So saying, she pushed a little nearer the vase of roses, one of which Constance had reached with her outstretched hand in the dark. Constance's impulse had been to detach it from its fellows so as to enjoy its fragrance at close range. But the larger opportunity afforded her, or else the jogging of her purpose, changed her mind. She bent forward and burying her face in the cool rose leaves inhaled their rich perfume. "It was very kind of him to send them," she murmured, as though in monologue. Then appreciating for the first time her weakness she sank back upon her pillow. She said to herself that he was such a friend that he would make the best of her absence for a week and by the end of that time she would be herself again. But what a fool she had been to jump; to take such a risk, she a grown woman with children! She ought to have known better; she was getting middle-aged, and she must be more staid. Still it was some consolation to know she had not broken her nose. A note received from Mr. Perry twenty-four hours later and read to her by her little daughter reassured her as to his indulgence in respect to her absence. All her interest now became centred on a rapid recovery, and she made sundry attempts to bring the doctor to book as to the date when she would be able to resume work again, which he smilingly evaded. She was conscious, however, of increasing bodily vigor, which was comforting. The inability of her eyes to endure the light was her chief discomfort, a condition which her physician appeared to her to ignore, until he arrived one morning with a brother practitioner, who proved to be an oculist, and who had brought with him some of the apparatus of his specialty for the purpose of a diagnosis. Constance could not bear the sphinx-like urbanities which followed the examination. She felt possessed by a desire to have the exact condition of affairs revealed to her. She lifted her head, and addressing her own doctor, said: "I should like to know the truth, please. Do not conceal anything. It will be much worse for me to find out later that something has been kept back." The family physician looked at the specialist as much as to say that he proposed to throw the burden on him, but he answered, "So far as your general physical condition is concerned, you are practically well, Mrs. Stuart. All the brain symptoms have disappeared, and there are no lesions of any kind. It is now simply a question of nerves--and your eyes. Dr. Dale can speak more authoritatively about the latter." Dr. Dale, the oculist, a man in the prime of life, with precise methods and a closely cut Van Dyke beard, hesitated briefly, as though he were analyzing his patient, then said with courteous incisiveness--"It is a question of nerves, as Dr. Baldwin has explained. The nerves affected in your case are those of the eyes. Since you have expressed a wish to know the exact state of affairs, I take you at your word, Mrs. Stuart. I agree with you that it is more satisfactory to know the truth, and I am glad to be able to assure you that by the end of six months, if you give your eyes entire rest, their weakness will be cured, and you will be able to use them as freely as before." He had rather the air of conferring a benefit than of pronouncing a sentence, and Constance received his statement in that spirit. "Thank you," she said. "I will be as careful as I can." "The condition of your cure," the specialist continued with polite relentlessness, "is that you abstain from using them altogether." Constance experienced a thrill of concern. "Which means?" "It means, Mrs. Stuart, that you must not sew, read, write, or undertake any form of application where the eyes are a factor." She could not believe her ears. "I am a clerk in a law-office. My employment is stenography and type-writing," she said, tentatively. He nodded. Evidently he had been informed. "It will be impossible for you to continue it." "But I must. I must do my work. My children are dependent on it." Her tone suggested that there could be no answer to such a plea. "You cannot. If you do, you will become blind. I am very sorry for you." The truth was out. She lay dumfounded. "Blind? Blind?" she echoed. "But there is not the least danger of your becoming blind if you obey my instructions. You will be entirely cured, as I have said." There was a painful silence. Her sentence was too appalling to grasp. There must be some escape from it. "Six months? Half a year?" "Knowing your necessities, I have given you the shortest period that I dared consistent with perfect recovery. You will have to wear colored glasses at first," he continued, seeking a business-like basis, "and accustom yourself to do without them by degrees. I will bring them to-morrow." She leaned back on her pillow bewildered. The trickling of a tear into her mouth reminded her that she could not afford to cry, though but for the presence of the doctors she knew that she would have burst into sobs. Her plight demanded thought, not sorrow. But what could she do? What, indeed? Yet, even as she asked herself the dreadful question, she began to nerve herself not only against breaking down at the moment, but against the threat of the future. She would keep a stiff upper lip in the teeth of all the odds, and be able to manage somehow. As thus she reasoned, swallowing the salt of her single moment of weakness, she heard Dr. Baldwin saying: "You have had a very fortunate escape, all things considered. It might have been much worse. You might have disfigured yourself permanently, which for you," he added with a gallant bow, "would have been a serious matter, indeed. As it is, you will be able to do everything as formerly in another week, except use your eyes. Your friends will look after you, Mrs. Stuart, and six months will pass much more quickly than you expect." "I don't suppose they'll let me starve," she found herself saying, though the notion of a return to alms almost strangled her effort at buoyancy, so that the sprightliness of her tone competed with the water in her eyes, as the sun struggles with the rain-pour just before it clears up. But she remembered that the room was dark, and that they could not see her tears. "Wasn't I a fool to jump off that car?" "You were unlucky, that's all. You mustn't be too hard on yourself. It is the privilege of the young to jump, and you will jump again." It was Dr. Dale who spoke. His enunciation imparted a cleansing value to his note of sympathy, just as it had ruthlessly epitomized her tragedy a few minutes before. "But I am not young; that is the folly of it," she protested. The oculist smiled. "Excuse me if I differ with you," said he. "You have the best years of your life before you." They left her under the spell of this assertion, which lingered in her mind on account of its absurdity, until in sheer self-defence she said to herself under her breath that she was only thirty-one. The best years of her life! And yet he knew that she was to be deprived during half of one of them of the joy of seeing and the source of her livelihood. What could he mean? In taking his departure, Dr. Baldwin, by way of showing his friendliness, had volunteered to write to her employer. "I know Mr. Perry," he said, "and I will explain to him the situation. Perhaps he will be able to keep your place for you." Constance had interposed no objection. It would obviate the necessity of an elaborate explanation on her part, and would, moreover, be a guaranty of her later usefulness. The future would take care of itself; it was the present which stared her in the face and demanded an immediate answer. One solution of her quandary was offered to her a few days later. Dr. Baldwin had given her permission to get up and resume her ordinary household duties as soon as her glasses arrived, which proved to be the next morning, as the oculist had promised. Consequently, she dressed herself and sat with her children in the parlor that afternoon, and on the following day rose, bent on facing the new problem of existence with a clear brain and resigned spirit. If Mr. Perry would save her place for her, so much the better. But obviously there was nothing for her to do in the office until she was cured. She must, either through her own energies or the advice of others, discover some employment compatible with her infirmity. She might have to accept help at first, for the money she had on hand would be needed to pay the bills of the two physicians, which would necessarily be considerable; but with the aid of her friends she would surely be able to find some handiwork which would yield her enough to keep her treasures well fed and decently clothed. Humiliating as it would be to have recourse to others, it was clearly her duty to inform her friends of her predicament, and invite their counsel. They would only thank her, she knew, and she certainly was fortunate in having three persons, to whom she felt at liberty to apply, so pleasantly interested in her welfare as her employer, Mrs. Wilson, and the Reverend George Prentiss. Mr. Perry was to be made aware of what had befallen her, without further action on her part; but she would write to the two others, and soon, for the thought was harassing her that her employer, in a spirit of benevolence, might try to invent duties for her at the office, and give her some sinecure in order that she might retain her salary. This would be galling to her self-respect, and was not to be entertained for a moment. As the possibility of it grew upon her she became quite agitated; so much so that in the hope of heading off any such attempt by him, she dictated to her daughter, that afternoon, letters to Mrs. Wilson and the clergyman, informing them briefly what had occurred. Just after the little girl had returned from putting these in the letter-box, and Constance was musing over a cup of tea, a messenger with a note arrived. It was from Gordon Perry, and read by Henrietta it ran as follows: Might he not call that evening? He had the doctor's permission to do so; and she was to send a simple "Yes" or "No" by the bearer. Now for it, she thought; he was coming to overwhelm her with his cunning schemes for continuing her salary. Her first impulse was to protect herself by delay; to ask him to wait a day or two until she felt stronger. But this would be a subterfuge, and, excepting that she dreaded his philanthropy, she yearned to see him. He would put her in touch with the world again, from which she had been shut off too long. "No" trembled on her lips, but the fear of hurting his feelings occurred to her in the nick of time as a counterbalance to her dread of being pauperized by him, and her natural inclinations found utterance. "Tell Mr. Perry, yes," she answered, and her spirits rose from that moment, though she resolved to be as firm as a rock on the threatened issue. She ascribed his coming in the evening rather than the afternoon to his being busy at the office, and as she put the children to bed she reflected that it would be pleasant to have an uninterrupted visit. She made her toilette as best she could with Mrs. Harrity's aid, and she inwardly rejoiced again that she had not broken her nose. Gordon arrived about half-past eight. The cheer which his manner expressed did not detract from its sympathy. It seemed to say that he recognized and deplored her misfortune, but took for granted her preference to face it smilingly, and not to waste time in superfluous lamentation. At the same time, she could not but notice his eager solicitude and the ardor of his bearing, which was slightly disconcerting. Yet he made her tell him the details of the accident, listening with the ear of a lawyer. At the close his brow clouded slightly as though her story failed to coincide with his prepossessions. "You see I haven't any case, have I?" she said, divining what was passing in his mind. She cherished a half hope that his cleverness might still extract a just cause of action from her delinquency. "Not on your evidence." "So I supposed. Those are the real facts. I jumped before the car stopped, though the conductor warned me, and I heard the bell." "That settles it; contributory negligence. But the trained nurse who was with you tells a different story." "Loretta has been to see you?" "Yes. She came ostensibly for her pay night before last. But she seemed very anxious to testify in court in your favor. She says the conductor wasn't looking at first, and that he pushed you off the car just as you were jumping." Constance shook her head. "She is entirely mistaken as to the last part." "There is nothing to be said. It struck me that Miss Davis, unlike most women, enjoyed the prospect of being a witness. It was a great event to her, and she would be able to do you a good turn." He sat for a moment pondering this diagnosis, then with a start, as though he had been surprised in a trivial occupation, exclaimed: "But what does it matter whether you can get paltry damages or not? I did not come here to consider that. I came to talk with you about your future." He spoke the last words with a tender cadence which was partly lost on Constance, for she sprang to the conclusion that the moment for her to display firmness had arrived, and that he was about to broach a scheme for retaining her in his employment. "I must find some other occupation for the next six months, of course. I am forbidden to use my eyes for any purpose. I have written to Mrs. Wilson and my rector, thinking they may know of some opening or vacancy where I could work with my hands or do errands until my eyes are well." Then noticing the curious smile with which he received this rather impetuous announcement, and apprehensive lest he might be hurt by her avowed reliance on others, she added: "And you, too, must be on the lookout for me. You may hear of something which would suit me." "As for that, do you suppose that because your service to me is interrupted I would not stand in the breach? That I would not insist on continuing your salary until you were able to return to your post?" "I knew it would be just like you to wish to," she said, quickly, "but I could not possibly allow it. That's why I wrote to Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Prentiss," she added, not averse to having him know the real reason now that it could serve her as a shield. Her naïve admission was evidently an agreeable piece of intelligence. "I took for granted that your salary would continue. That was a matter I did not have in mind in the least." "It can't, I assure you." He appeared entertained by her adamantine air. "Why not?" "It isn't an absence of a week or two," she said, trying to show herself reasonable. "It will be six months before I am able to work again." "A whole six months?" She met the mockery in his tone with quiet determination. "I could not allow anyone to support me for that period. Do you not see that I must find something to do in order to remain happy?" "Happy? You do not consider my side. Do you not see that a haggling calendar account of weeks and months is not applicable to such service as you render me? How would the satisfaction of saving the modest sum I pay you compare with that I should derive from enabling you to get well as rapidly as possible, untormented by painful necessities?" There was a strange gleam in his eyes. She looked at him wonderingly. His rhetoric troubled her, and by dint of it he had managed to make her scruples seem ungenerous. But she was unconvinced. "You would be obliged to pay someone else," she replied with cruel practicality. "Enough of this," he said, impetuously. "It is absurd. I have something very different at heart. When I spoke of your future just now, Constance, it was to tell you that I have come here, to-night, to ask you to be my wife--to say to you that I love you devotedly and cannot live without you. This is my errand. It is not friendship I offer, it is not pity, it is not esteem for your gentle, strong soul, it is passionate human love." He paused and there was profound silence in the darkened room where they could scarcely see each other's faces. Constance trembled like a leaf. In a moment the whole card-board house of sisterly affection fell about her ears, and she knew the truth. These were the sweetest words she had ever listened to, though they stabbed her like a knife. "Oh!" she whispered, "Oh!" "Is it such a surprise, Constance?" he murmured, ascribing her accents of dismay to that source. "You must have known you were very dear to me." The dimness gave her time to consider how she should deal with this startling certainty, the music of which was dancing in her brain. The meaning of his devotion was now so clear. Yet she had never guessed either his purpose or the secret of her own disconcerting heart-beats. "I knew you were fond of me, but it never occurred to me that you could think of me as a wife." "Why not? You are beautiful and charming as well as sweet and wise, and I adore you." "I liked to feel that we should go on being dear friends for the rest of our lives," she answered, tingling with the thrill which this avowal caused her. From the tremor of her speech he was emboldened to regard the sigh which followed this simple voicing of the exact truth as an ellipsis hiding a precious secret. "Then you love me, Constance?" Whatever happened, why should he not know? Why should she deny herself that ecstasy? "Oh, yes, Gordon, I love you dearly." "And you will be my wife?" "How can I, Gordon? You know I must not." There was gentle pleading in her tone and a tinge of renunciating sadness. "I mean presently. As soon as you obtain a divorce?" The ugly word brought back reality. "Oh, no, we must put it from us. It is a delightful vision, but we must dismiss it forever." "Why?" he asked, with the resonance of vigorous manhood. "Because it would be an offence." "Against what?" "The eternal fitness of things." This phrase of Mrs. Wilson's rose to her lips again as a shibboleth. "I have made my mistake," she murmured. "I must suffer the penalty of it." "Never!" he ejaculated. "It would be monstrous--monstrous." There was a momentary silence. While he gazed at her ardently he was seeking command of himself so as to plead his cause with discriminating lucidity. To her darkened sight imagination pictured a swift river of fire flowing between them, across which they could touch their finger-tips, but no more. "Do not think," he said, "that I have not considered this question from your side. It has been in my thoughts night and day for months. The idea of divorce is repugnant to you--though you have ceased to love the husband who deeply wronged you. You shrink even more from marrying again because your children's father is still alive. If he were dead, the bar would be removed, and you would not hesitate. I appeal to your common sense, Constance. What sound reason is there why you should sacrifice your happiness--the happiness of us both?" "It is not a question of common sense--is it?" It was a faltering query which followed the assertion. "The question is, what is right?" "Amen to that!" he cried. "Yes, right, right. And who says it is not right?" She had been so sure she would never marry again that she had never sought exact knowledge of her church's attitude in this regard, and yet now she had her fears. She knew that no Roman Catholic could marry again during the life of a divorced husband or wife, except by special dispensation, and she was aware of the increasing reluctance of the officials of her own church in this country to give the sanction of the marriage service to the remarriage of divorced persons; but she had never examined the church canon on the subject, for she had flattered herself that she would never need to. Discussions of the topic which she had listened to or read had played like lightnings around her oblivious head, but had served merely to intensify her repugnance to the blatant divorces and double-quick marriages, which she had seen heralded from time to time in the daily press, and which had recently been brought home to her with peculiar force by the events in Mrs. Wilson's family circle. Now the flare of the lightning was in her own eyes, and her brain was numb with the emotion of the personal shock. "Would Mr. Prentiss marry me to you?" she asked, seeking as usual the vital issue. "Your clergyman?" His query was merely to gain time. But he loved directness, too. "Suppose that he would not, there are plenty of clergymen who would." "But he is my clergyman." Gordon moved his chair nearer, and bending forward, took her hand in both of his. "Dearest, this question is for you and me to settle, not for any outsider. It must bear the test of right and wrong, as you say, but I ask you to look at it as an intelligent human being, as the sane, noble-hearted American woman you are. The State--the considered law of the community in which we live--gives you the right to a divorce and freedom to marry again. Who stands in the way? Your clergyman--the representative of your church. The church erects a standard of conduct of its own and asks you to sacrifice your life to it. It is the church against the State--against the people. It is superstition and privilege against common sense and justice. I should like to prove to you by arguments how truly this is so." "But I would rather not listen to your arguments now," she interposed. "I am on your side already. My heart is, and--I think my common sense." His pulses gave a bound. "Then nothing can keep us apart!" he cried, pressing his lips upon her hands and kissing them again and again. "You are mine, we belong to one another. Why should a young and beautiful woman starve her being on such a plea, and reject such happiness as this?" She drew her hands gently away, and herself beyond his reach. "Ah, you mustn't. If my church objects, it must have a reason, and I must hear that reason, Gordon. I must consult with Mr. Prentiss--with him and others. He is not an outsider. He was my friend and helper in the bitterest hours of my life." "He will do his best to take you from me." She shivered. "How do you know?" "He cannot help himself. The canon of the Episcopal Church forbids a clergyman to marry one who has been divorced for any cause except adultery. The Catholic Church goes one step further and forbids altogether the remarriage of divorced persons. It does not recognize divorce. A large number of the clergy of your church are fiercely agitating the adoption of a similar absolute restriction. The two churches--and their attitude has stirred up other denominations--are seeking to fasten upon the American conscience an ideal inconsistent with the free development of human society." She caught at the phrase. "Yet it is an ideal." Gordon took a long breath. In the ardor of his mental independence he seemed to be seeking some fit word to epitomize his deduction. "It is a fetish!" he said, earnestly. "It represents the past--privilege--superstition--injustice, as I have already told you." "Oh, no," she murmured, "it cannot be simply that. You forget that I am a woman. You do not realize what the church means to me." "I remember that you are an American woman." The remark evidently impressed her. She pondered it briefly before she said, "I am, and I know how much that ought to mean. I wish to be worthy of it." She appeared troubled; then putting her hand to her head she rose, seeking instinctively an end of the interview. "I must think it over. You must not talk to me any more to-night. I did not realize how weak I am." Suddenly she exclaimed, "Ah, Gordon, you do not understand all! I forsook the church once in the pride of my heart. I wandered among false gods, and it took me back without a word of rebuke for my independence. I must do what is right this time--what is really right--at any cost." As she stood in the shadow, erect and piteous, but with the aspect of spiritual aspiration in her voice and figure, stalwart as he was in his sense of righteousness, he thought of Marguerite in the prison scene when Faust implores her to fly with him. "Forgive me," he said, "for having tired and harassed you. It was my love for you that led me on." He spoke with tenderness, and under the spell of his mood dropped on one knee beside her and looked up in her face. "You may tell me about that before you go," she whispered, like one spellbound. "It is not much to tell--except that it means everything to me. It has grown from a tiny seed, little by little, until it has become the harvest and the glory of my manhood. Ah, Constance, we love each other. How much that means. It sets the seal of beauty on this commonplace world. It will transfigure life for both of us." She started. "The seal of beauty?" she murmured, as to herself. "If I were but sure of that! What I fear is lest I mar the beauty of the world, and so sin." "It was my mother's hope that we should marry," he said, reverting to concrete ground. "I think so," she answered, faintly, pressing his hand. "And her idea was to do right." "I know." She sighed, then whispered, "You must go now." Rising from his posture beside her he prepared to obey. They stood for an instant, irresolute, then, as by a common impulse, his arms opened and she suffered herself to be clasped in his strong embrace. It seemed to him as he felt her head upon his breast and her nervous, wistful face looked up into his that his happiness was assured. But she was thinking that come what might--and she was conscious of a dreadful uncertainty in her heart--she would not deny herself this single draught of the cup of happiness. It was a precious, sentient joy to be thought beautiful, and to feel that she was desired for herself alone by this hero of her ripe womanhood. So she let herself go as one who snatches at escaping joy, and their lips met in the full rapture of a lover's kiss. XIX The news of the tragedy in her daughter's life--of the double domestic tragedy, which included her nephew--came to Mrs. Wilson as an appalling surprise. She had gathered from the tenor of Lucille's letters that her daughter was not entirely happy; but her appreciation of this was derived rather from what she read between the lines than from actual admissions. It had never entered her head that there was danger of a rupture between Lucille and her husband until the dreadful truth was disclosed to her by her brother. From him she learned that Paul and his wife had separated and were to be divorced because of the relations between Paul's wife and Clarence Waldo. Carleton Howard added that his son had not the heart to tell her himself before his departure for New York, and had delegated him to break the intelligence. When the first wholesale mutual commiserations had been exchanged between the brother and sister, Mrs. Wilson realized that she was practically in the dark regarding Lucille. Paul's calamity was so completely the controlling thought in her brother's mind that, though he occasionally deplored the plight in which his niece appeared to be left, he was evidently bent on working his way through the labyrinth of his personal dismay until he could find a clue which would lead his mind to daylight. After various ebullitions of anger and disgust, he found this at last in the assertion that it was best for Paul to be rid of such a wife; that he had never really fancied his daughter-in-law, and that the only course was to obliterate her from their memory. She had disgraced the family, and her name was never to be mentioned again in his presence. This was an eminently masculine method of disposing of the matter. After Mr. Howard had accepted it as a solution, he was able to compose himself in his chair and to smoke. For the past two days, ever since Paul had talked to him, he had been walking up and down his library, champing an unlighted cigar, with the measured stalk of a grim lion. Now his brow lifted appreciably. But his sister's eyes fell before his aspect of dignified relief. His solution was of no avail to her. It could not answer the distressing questions which were haunting her. Why had not Lucille written? What did the silence mean? She resolved that if she did not hear something in the morning she would take the first train East, for might not the child be sobbing her heart out, too mortified even to confide in her mother? Thus speculating, Mrs. Wilson looked up to inquire once again whether Paul had not said something more definite regarding his cousin. She had asked this twice already, and on each occasion Mr. Howard had suspended his cogitations in order to ransack his memory, but only in vain; which was not strange, for Paul had taken pains in his conversation with his father to avoid unnecessary allusion to Lucille, letting her appear, like himself, an innocent victim of the family disaster. Mr. Howard was now equally unsuccessful in his recollection. Yet while he was speaking, the tension of Mrs. Wilson's mind was relieved by the receipt of a telegram. Lucille was on her way from Newport, and would reach Benham the following evening. Mrs. Wilson met her at the station. The mother and daughter embraced with emotion, thus betraying what was uppermost in the thought of each. But Lucille promptly recovered her composure, chatting briskly in the carriage as though she were bent on avoiding for the time being the crucial topic. On reaching the house she evinced a lively interest in the supper which had been prepared for her, eating with appetite and leading the conversation to matters of secondary import. Mrs. Wilson, though burning to ask and to hear everything, held her peace and bridled her impatience. It seemed to her that Lucille was looking well, and had gained in social dignity, which might partly be accounted for by the fact that she was a matron and a mother, partly by a slight access of flesh; but the impression produced on Mrs. Wilson's mind was that she appeared less spiritually heedless than formerly--a consummation devoutly to be desired in this hour of stress. As she watched her at table she noted with a mother's pride the tastefulness of her attire, and the sophistication of her speech. For the first time--much as she had longed for it in the past--the hope took root in her heart that their tastes might yet some day coincide, and each find in allegiance to the fit development of the human race the true zest of life. Yet how could Lucille be so calm? How could she appear so unconcerned? Lucille's mask, such as it was, was not lifted until she had been shown to her room. "I will come to you presently, mamma," she said, and Mrs. Wilson understood what was meant. When she came--it was to her mother's boudoir and study--she had loosened her hair, and was wrapped in a dainty pink and white wrapper. She established herself comfortably on a lounge, and crossed her hands on her breast. Mrs. Wilson was sitting at her desk obliquely in the line of vision, so she had merely to turn her head on her supported elbow in order to command her daughter's expression. So they sat for a moment, until Lucille said: "Well, mamma, I suppose Paul has told you everything. Clarence and I have separated for good, and I am on the way to South Dakota." There was a profound silence. In spite of the introduction the import of the last words was lost on Mrs. Wilson. She was simply puzzled. "South Dakota?" she queried. "Paul told me nothing. Your uncle----" "You know surely what has happened?" It was Lucille's turn to look surprised. "I know, my child, that your husband has been false to you with your cousin Paul's wife." "And both Paul and I are to obtain a divorce." Mrs. Wilson winced. "Your uncle intimated as much in the case of Paul. I had hoped you might not think it obligatory to break absolutely with your husband. Or, rather, Lucille, my mind was so full of distress for you that I did not look beyond the dreadful present. You do not know how my heart bleeds for you, dear." As she spoke, Mrs. Wilson left her seat, and kneeling beside the lounge, put her arms around her daughter's neck. Lucille, grateful for the sympathy, raised herself to receive and return the embrace, but her speech was calm. "It is a mortification, of course; it would be to any woman. If he had been faithful to me, I would never have left him. But we were mismated from the first. We found out six months after our marriage that we bored each other; and then we drifted apart. So there would be no use trying to patch it up. We should only lead a dog and cat life. Besides---" she paused an instant, then interjected, "I hoped Paul had broken this to you, mamma--I want to be free because I am going to marry again." Mrs. Wilson sprang back as though she had been buffeted. "Marry again?" she gasped. Lucille spoke softly but with firmness. "I am going to marry Mr. Bradbury Nicholson of New York." She added a few words as to his identity, then with an emphasis intended to express the ardor of a soul which has come to its own at last, exclaimed: "I'm deeply in love with him, mamma; and I never was with Clarence. I thought I was, but I wasn't. This time it's the real thing." Mrs. Wilson rose and returning to her desk rested her head again upon her supported elbow. She was stunned. The shock of the announcement was such that she did not attempt to speak. But Lucille, having begun, was evidently bent on making a clean breast of her affairs. "So I am on my way to Sioux Falls to obtain a divorce." "Why do you go there?" "Because it is one of the quickest places. Residence is necessary to enable me to sue, and residence can be acquired by living there ninety days. Then, too, the courts don't insist on very strict proof, so I can obtain a divorce for neglect or cruelty, and avoid the unpleasantness of alleging anything worse. I thought of Connecticut, where the law allows a divorce for any such misconduct as permanently destroys one's happiness and defeats the marriage relation, but my lawyer said it would be simpler and quicker to go to South Dakota. Clarence knows all about it, and is only too glad, and he has agreed to give up all claim on baby." The reference to her grandchild plunged a fresh dagger into Mrs. Wilson's heart. "Where is your baby?" she asked, sternly. She had already in the carriage inquired for its welfare, taking for granted that its mother had been unwilling to bring it on what had appeared to be a flying journey. "At Newport. Two of my maids and baby are to join me here. I don't wish to start for a week, if you will keep me, and, as there was packing still to be done, and the Newport air is fresher so early in the autumn, I told them to follow. You may keep baby here until I send for her, if it would make you feel any happier, mamma." Mrs. Wilson made no response to this self-sacrificing offer. She was asking herself whether it were not her duty as an outraged parent to rise in her agony and, pointing to the door, bid Lucille choose between her lover and herself. But would not this be old-fashioned? Could she endure to quarrel with her own and only flesh and blood? Overwhelmed as she was by her daughter's absolute indifference to considerations which she reverenced as the laws of her being, Mrs. Wilson prided herself on being equally a leader of spiritual progress, a woman of the world, and an American. She recognized that it behooved her to display no less acumen and tact in dealing with her personal problem than in confronting the quandaries of others. She knew instinctively that violent opposition would simply alienate Lucille and confirm her in her purpose. It was obvious that their point of view was as divergent as the poles. How could Lucille take the affair so philosophically? How could she calmly regard the neglect and sin of her husband merely as the logical sequence of the discovery that they were mismated, and find a sufficient explanation for everything in the announcement that they had bored each other? Yet Mrs. Wilson appreciated in those moments of horror that it would be worse than futile to give bitter utterance to her emotions. By so doing she would alienate her daughter and fail to alter the situation. Though protesting with the full vigor of her being, she must be reasonable or she could accomplish nothing. So she put a curb upon her lips. There were so many things she wished to say that for a spell she could not formulate her thoughts. She was reminded that she appeared tongue-tied by hearing Lucille remark: "I was afraid that you would be distressed, mamma. That's why I didn't write or consult you. You don't approve of divorce, I know. It's opposed to your ideas of things. But I've thought over everything thoroughly, and it's the only possible course for me." This complacency was disconcerting as a stone wall, and made still plainer to Mrs. Wilson that the offender indulgently regretted the necessity of explaining and vindicating such common-sense principles. "It is true, Lucille, that I disapprove of divorce on æsthetic if not religious grounds. It is an unsavory institution." She paused a moment to give complete effect to the phrase. "It seems to me to diminish spiritual self-respect, and to impair that feminine delicacy which is an essential ornament of civilization. At the same time, if you had told me that, on account of your husband's sin, you had decided not merely to leave him, but to dissolve the bond, I should have demurred, perhaps, but I should have acquiesced. I should have counselled you to live apart without divorce, as I regard marriage as a sacrament of the Christian church, but I should have accepted your decision to the contrary without a serious pang. But you have just told me, my child, that you are seeking a divorce from your husband because you are mismated, in order to become as quickly as possible the wife of another man, whom you profess to love. I cannot prevent you from doing this if you insist, but as your mother, I cannot let you commit what seems to me, from the most lenient standpoint, a gross indelicacy, without seeking to dissuade you." In conjunction with her ambition to reason in a triple capacity, Mrs. Wilson was well aware that the world demands promptness of decision no less than wisdom from its busy leaders; that the public relies on the past equipment of the lawyer or the physician for correct advice on the spur of the moment. It was her custom to face confidently the problems of life which others invited her to solve, as a surgeon confronts the operating table, ready to do her best on the spot. She knew that the consciousness of being rushed is part of the penalty of success, and that half the effectiveness of a busy person consists in the ability to think and act quickly. So now, face to face with her own dire problem, her mind centred on the fit solution of her daughter's tragedy, she relied on the same method, yearning to apply the knife, tie up the ligaments and cauterize the heart-sorrow in summary fashion by virtue of her past equipment. So she spoke with conviction, yet aware that the problem presented had been hitherto for her mainly academic, and now for the first time loomed up on the horizon of life as an immediate practical issue. Pursuing her theme Mrs. Wilson singled out for urgent protest the one point which stood out like an excrescence on the surface of the sorry story, and put all else in the background--the projected hasty marriage. Its precipitancy offended her most cherished sensibilities. With all the sentiment and mental suppleness at her command she endeavored to point out the vulgarity of the proceeding. How was it to be reconciled with true womanly refinement? Was the holy state of matrimony to be shuffled off and on as though it were a misfit glove? She appealed to the claims of good taste and family pride. But, though Lucille listened decorously, it was obvious that the effect of the scandal of mutual prompt remarriages had no terrors for her. Or, rather, when her mother paused, she disputed it, claiming that the affair would be a seven days' wonder; that the world would speedily forget, or, at least, forgive, if the new ventures proved successful; that precipitancy in such cases was not novel, and that the people whose social approbation she desired would consider her sensible for putting an end to an intolerable relation and claiming her happiness at the earliest possible date. From a wholesale plea of what she referred to as spiritual decency directed against unseemly haste, Mrs. Wilson, sick at heart, began to particularize, and at the same time enlarged her attitude so as to disclose her innate feeling against divorce in general. She spoke of the plight of the children concerned, and in alluding to her grandchild, her tone was piteous. The thought seemed to give her courage, so that when Lucille, who evidently had a pat response to this contention ready, sought to interrupt, Mrs. Wilson raised a warning hand to signify that she must insist on being heard to the end. She dwelt upon the value of the home to human society, and in this appeal she gave free utterance to her religious convictions, defending the sacredness of the marriage tie from the point of view of Christian orthodoxy. She spoke with emotion and at some length, though she had never thought the matter out hitherto as a personal issue, she found that she had in reserve a whole set of argumentative principles to back her æsthetic eloquence. She urged upon her daughter that if neither good taste, family pride, nor maternal solicitude would restrain her, she heed the teachings of the church, which had prescribed the law of strict domestic ties as essential to the righteous development of human civilization, and which regarded the family as the corner-stone of social order and social beauty. Was her only child prepared to fly so flagrantly in the face of this teaching? Would she refuse to reverence this standard? As she evolved this final plea, Mrs. Wilson felt herself on firmer ground. It seemed to her that she had welded all her protesting instincts into a comprehensive claim which could not be resisted, for, though emphasizing the obligations of the soul, she had tried to be both broad and modern. She had not quoted the language of Scripture--the words of Christ imposing close limitations, if not an absolute bar on divorce. She felt that there was more chance in influencing Lucille through an intellectual appeal to her sense of social wisdom based on present conditions, though to the speaker's own mind the modern argument was simply a vindication of the precious inspired truth. But she dismissed the thought that her daughter was regarding her as old-fashioned, and she spoke from the depths of her being, so that when she ceased, there were tears upon her cheeks. Lucille had listened indulgently with downcast eyes. She was unmoved; nevertheless, with nervous inappropriateness, she turned slowly round and round the wedding-ring on her finger as she revolved her mother's appeal. When the end came she remained respectfully silent for a moment, but there was matter-of-fact definiteness in her reply. "You know, mamma, that you and I never did agree on things like that. I don't recognize the right of the church to interfere, so I put religion put of the question. As to injury to civilization, it seems to me of no advantage to society, and preposterous besides, that two persons utterly mismated, like Clarence and me, should continue wretched all our lives when the law of the land will set us free. What good would it do if I remained single?" "Live apart, if you like; but to marry again--and so quickly, Lucille, is an offence both against the flesh and the spirit," said Mrs. Wilson, tensely. "Good? It would help to maintain the integrity of the home upon which progressive civilization rests." Lucille pursed her lips. "I shall have a home when I marry again. A far happier home than before; and baby will be far happier than if she grew up in a discordant household where there was no love and mutual indifference. Besides, supposing I didn't marry again--supposing Paul's wife did not marry again, what would happen? We should lead immoral lives, as people similarly situated do in the Latin countries, where the church forbids the marriage of divorced persons. It ought to satisfy you, mamma, that there is not a word of truth in the story of too intimate relations between me and Mr. Nicholson circulated at Newport. I told him I should keep him at arm's length until I was divorced and at liberty to marry him. I let him kiss me once, and that was all. What would a woman in Paris or London have done? The church there doesn't seem to mind what goes on behind the scenes, provided the mass of the people is kept in ignorance." Mrs. Wilson had colored at the reference to calumniating rumors. It was clear, now, why Paul had preferred to speak by proxy. Could it be her own daughter who was claiming credit for such forbearance? Her first impulse was to inquire what conduct had given rise to the more serious imputation, but she shrank from the question. It was Lucille who spoke first. "I assure you, I expect to have a very charming home, and, if I have more children, to bring them up well. In a year or two the hateful past will seem only a nightmare. Why should you or the church seek to deprive me of happiness? In my individual case our--your church would marry me because my husband had been unfaithful, provided I procured a divorce on that ground--which I do not intend to do. But I am defending myself on general principles. As your daughter you would wish me to have the courage of my convictions." Mrs. Wilson sighed. This appeal to her independence was discouragingly genuine. "Then, where do you draw the line?" she asked, repeating a formula. "As to divorce?" Lucille shrugged her shoulders. "The courts decide that, I suppose. I asked what the law was, and the lawyer told me." Mrs. Wilson groaned. "The courts! And, accordingly, you apply to the court which will grant you a divorce most speedily." "And with the least possible unpleasant procedure. Certainly, I wish to be married as soon as possible." "The law must be changed." Mrs. Wilson clasped her hands energetically. "Very likely, mamma. Now we are on sensible ground. But if the law were made more strict the church would still object. So it wouldn't make much difference from your point of view." There was a touch of complacent paganism in the tone of this last remark which fused Mrs. Wilson's poignant emotions to a fever point. "It crucifies renunciation. It is individualism run mad. Child, child!" she exclaimed, "do not be too sure that easy-going rationalism is the answer to all the problems of the universe. The time will yet come when you will recognize what ideals mean--when your eyes will be opened to the unseen things of the spirit. Before you take this step I beg of you to talk with Mr. Prentiss." Lucille shook her head, but her reply was unexpectedly humble. She avoided an opinion regarding the prophecy, but her words disclosed that she wished her mother to perceive that her soul had its own troubles, and was not altogether self-congratulatory in its processes. "Of course I would give anything if Clarence and I had not fallen out, and our marriage proved a failure. I can see that such an experience takes the freshness from any woman's life. It would be of no use, however, for me to see Mr. Prentiss. We should differ fundamentally. I do not regard marriage as a sacrament, he does. You see I have considered the question from all sides, mamma." "You regard it as a contract, I suppose," said Mrs. Wilson, pensively. "Yes; the most solemn, the most important of contracts, if you like, but a contract." Lucille was trying to be reasonable, but her sense of humor suddenly getting the better of her filial discretion, she added: "Why, of course, it is simply a contract. Everyone except clergymen regards it so nowadays. If Clarence had died, I could marry again; why shouldn't I be just as free, when he has been untrue to me, to regard our marriage at an end--and----" Mrs. Wilson put up her hand. "I am familiar with the argument. For adultery, perhaps, yes; but for everything else, no. And the Roman Church forbids it absolutely." She reflected a moment, then, as one who has worked out vindication for an ancient principle by the light of modern ideas, she added, impressively, "It may well be, that from the standpoint of the welfare of the home--the protection of human society against rampant selfish individualism--the oldest church of all was wise, and is wise, in insisting on adherence to the letter of the words of Christ as best adapted to the safety of civilization. And that, too," she continued, significantly, "even though the souls affected sin in secret, because they cannot override the law. I do not say," she added, noticing the surprise in her daughter's face, "that this winking of the church is defensible; but I submit that the consequences can be no worse than those resulting from the flood-tide of easy divorce, the fruit of unbridled caprice." "And what do you say to the attitude of the Church of England, of which our Episcopal Church is an offshoot. An English woman in Newport told me the other day that a wife cannot obtain a divorce from her husband unless infidelity be coupled with cruel and abusive treatment, though the contrary is true in case of a man. A husband can have his affairs, provided he does not make them public or beat his wife, but she must toe the mark. And in England the law of the church is the law of the land." Mrs. Wilson pondered a moment. "Our Episcopal Church sanctions no such distinction. But, after all, woman is not quite the same as man. Her standard is different; she still expects to be held to a subtler sense of beauty and duty in matters which involve the perpetuation of the race. The English rule seems old-fashioned to us, for we insist on equal purity for the husband and the wife as essential to domestic unity. Yet the framers of that law were wise in their day; wise, surely, if the doctrine of loose marital bonds is to imperil the permanence of the institution we call the family." "But I fail to see the advantage to human society of any family the two chief members of which are at daggers drawn, and mutually unhappy." Mrs. Wilson recognized that the gulf of contradiction which yawned between them was bottomless, and not to be bridged. We learn with reluctance that each generation is a law unto itself. Yet she said, as a swan song, "The Episcopal Church and also the Roman Catholic Church stand for, and reverence, the ideals of beauty, of imagination, of aspiration. They abhor spiritual commonness. They forget not the words of the proverb: 'Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.' Divorce is a device of mediocrity and dwarfed vision. It is a perquisite of commonness." The phrase made Lucille start, and she sat troubled for a moment. To be adjudged common was the most disconcerting indictment which could have been framed. But reflection was reassuring. She answered presently. "I'm sure it won't make any difference in my case; everybody I care about will call on me just the same." Meanwhile, under the shock to her convictions, Mrs. Wilson had bowed her face on her hands on her desk, and hot tears moistened her palms. Lucille watched her nervously, then rose and went to her, and put her arm about her. "You mustn't feel so badly, mamma. It will come out all right: I know it will. I am certain to be happy--and though you may not think it, I am much more serious than I used to be. Of course, I wouldn't belong to any other church than the Episcopal; all the nicest people one knows are Episcopalians now. As you say, that and the Roman Catholic are the only ones which appeal to the imagination." Mrs. Wilson's tears flowed faster at this demonstration of sympathy. She accepted and was soothed by the caresses, but she was ashamed of and stunned by her defeat, and could not reconcile herself to it. She would make one effort more. "Since you will not permit Mr. Prentiss to remonstrate with you," she said, "you will, at least, talk with your uncle?" Lucille reflected. She had not forgotten the diamond tiara with which her uncle had presented her as a wedding present, the crowning act of many splendid donations, though to have only one tiara had already become a sign of relative impecuniosity in the social circle in which she aspired to move. The wife of a genuine multi-millionaire was expected to have as many tiaras as she had evening dresses. Lucille was fond of her uncle, and she still wished to appear what she considered reasonable. "He could not alter my determination, mamma. But if Uncle Carleton wishes to talk with me, I shall feel bound to listen," she responded. Mrs. Wilson felt encouraged by the first effect on her brother of the announcement of Lucille's plans. From Paul's report, Mr. Howard had assumed that his niece, like his son, was simply a victim of the distressing double-tragedy, and the news of Lucille's projected hasty divorce with a view to immediate remarriage offended his sense of propriety and evoked at once a fiat no less explicit than his earlier declaration that the sooner Paul's nuptial knot was cut, and the wretched business terminated, the better. His present words--that such indecorous proceedings were not to be tolerated for a moment--were uttered with the deliberate emphasis which marked his important verdicts--his railroad manner, some people called it--and conveyed the impression of a reserve force not to be resisted with impunity. The interview between him and Lucille took place in the evening, and lasted nearly an hour. Mrs. Wilson was not present. At its close she heard her daughter re-enter the house through the private passageway and go up-stairs. Shortly after, her brother joined her. He sat for a few moments without speaking, as though reviewing what had occurred, then said, with the plausible air of one claiming the right to revise a judgment in the light of having heard the other side of the issue: "Apparently we have to decide whether we prefer that Lucille should marry young Nicholson as soon as the law allows, or that she should continue to receive his marked attentions, which have already inspired compromising rumors, happily baseless. It seems that the object of her infatuation--a circumstance which she did not state to you--is anxious--in fact, hopes, to obtain one of the minor diplomatic appointments. His father, as you know, is president of the Chemical Trust and intimate with some of the influential Senators. Should I intervene in his behalf with the authorities at Washington, the probabilities of his obtaining the position, already excellent, will be improved, provided, of course, there is no scandal. If we could shut Lucille up--confine her by summary process for six months, until she had time to reflect--she might change her attitude. At any rate, we should avoid the precipitancy which is the most objectionable feature of the affair. But the girl is a free agent. We cannot prevent her from going to South Dakota if she insists, and she does insist. She refuses to wait the three years requisite to obtain a divorce for desertion here; and were she to allege what the newspapers are pleased to call the statutory offence, the proof required by our court would be exceedingly painful. She prefers a more accommodating jurisdiction, where fewer questions are asked, and the tie is promptly dissolved. So on the whole----" He paused to choose his phraseology, and his sister, guessing its substance, interposed: "Then you sided with her?" "On the contrary, I opposed her strenuously. I expressed my disapproval in positive terms. But it became evident to me that she is in love with this young man and determined to marry him, and from every point of view I prefer the sanction of the law to clandestine illicit relations. Would you prefer to have her abstain from a divorce and live abroad with Bradbury Nicholson? That is what she intimated would happen if she followed our wishes." Mrs. Wilson groaned. "And to think that this is the reasoning of my daughter!" "I will do her the justice to say," continued Mr. Howard, joining the points of his fingers, "that she talked quietly and with some discrimination. It troubles her greatly that you are distressed. I disapprove of her conduct, but I was pleased on the whole with her mental powers." "Yes. She is cleverer than I supposed," murmured Mrs. Wilson. "So you gave in?" "Not at all. We agreed to differ. I presume you did not wish me to quarrel with her?" "Oh, no. We must never do that." "Exactly. In the course of our discussion she asked me if I thought she ought to remain a widow all her days, and, as a reasonable human being, I was obliged to admit that there was much to be said on her side." "A widow! She is not a widow." "She chose the word, not I. She tells me that you have already discussed with her the religious--the sentimental side of the question." "And failed utterly." There was a silence, which was broken by the banker. "I advise you, Miriam, to make the best of a painful situation. There are only two courses open: to disown her, or to let her follow her own course, and put the best front on it we can. After all, she is only doing what thousands of other women in this country----" "Ah, yes!" cried Mrs. Wilson. "And with that argument what becomes of noble standards--of fine ideals of life? I almost wish I had the moral courage to show myself the Spartan mother, and to disown her." "Oh, no, you don't. You would only make yourself miserable." Having discovered that he had been checkmated, it was a business maxim with Mr. Howard to accept the inevitable and clear the board of vain regrets. He set himself to counteract these hysterical manifestations of his sister. "Besides, it would do no good in this case to cut off the revenue, for Nicholson has plenty for them both. To disinherit one's children is an antiquated method of self-torture." "I had no reference to money," answered Mrs. Wilson with a gesture to express disdain for the consideration. "I was thinking of my love as a mother." "You cannot help loving her, whatever happens," answered her brother significantly. Mrs. Wilson acknowledged the force of this comment by a piteous stare. She forsook the personal for the philosophic attitude. "But if this loose view of the marriage tie is to obtain, where is it to end? How long will it be before we imitate the degeneracy of Rome? We are imitating it already." "I made a similar remark to Lucille. I reminded her that the ease and frequency of divorce were among the causes of the decline of Rome. Her reply was that we are Americans, not Romans. Of course, there is something in what she says. Our point of view is very different from theirs." Mr. Howard felt of his strong chin meditatively. "But where is it to end?" repeated Mrs. Wilson in a tragic tone. He shook his head. "It is an abuse, I admit; especially as administered in some of our States. Presently, when we get time, we Americans will take the question up and go into it thoroughly." The hopeless incongruity of this reply from Mrs. Wilson's point of view put the finishing touch to their conversation. It was obvious to her that she could not expect true sympathy or comprehension from her brother. It was clear that he was satisfied with opportunist methods, and that the precise truth had no immediate charms for him. Rebuffed in respect to the support of both her champions, Mrs. Wilson felt strangely powerless; almost limp. She made no further appeal to her daughter; the discussion was not resumed, but when the baby arrived, she reminded Lucille of the proposal that she keep possession of her grandchild during its mother's sojourn in South Dakota, and accepted it. This was some comfort, and Mrs. Wilson remained in a trance, as it were, seeking neither sympathy nor outside suggestion until after the evil day of Mrs. Waldo's departure. Not until then did she send for Mr. Prentiss. That the rector could do nothing to thwart the programme outlined by Lucille was clear, and she had dreaded the possibility of his advising an attitude on her part which would induce complete estrangement from her daughter. When he came she was relieved that he made no such suggestion. He seemed, like herself, overwhelmed with dismay, and, after he had heard her story, equally conscious of helplessness in the premises. Indeed it resulted that Mr. Prentiss, having realized that he could be of no avail in the particular emergency, turned from the shocking present to the future. Lucille was beyond the pale of influence (though he declared his intention of writing to her), but this painful example would be a fresh spur to the church to take strong ground against the deadly peril to Christian civilization involved in playing fast and loose with the marriage tie. Mr. Prentiss glowed with the thought of what he could and would put into a sermon. Consciousness of the abuse had for some time been smouldering in his mind, and he reflected that it was time for him to imitate the example of other leaders of his sect by undertaking a crusade against indiscriminate divorce. Appalled as he was by the behavior of his friend's daughter, he reverted--but not aloud--to his previous opinion that it had been a godless marriage. Hence there was less occasion for surprise, and the instance in question lost some of its pathos as a consequence. But it provided him with a terrible incentive for saving others from the pitfall which had engulfed this self-sufficient and worldly minded young woman. His zeal communicated itself to Mrs. Wilson--for he did not fail in due manifestation of personal sympathy--and when he left her at the end of a visit of two hours her favorite impulse toward social reform was already acting as a palliative to her anguish and disappointment as a mother. A few days later her brother informed her that Paul's wife had refused to wait the three years necessary to entitle the one or other of them to institute dignified divorce proceedings, on the ground of desertion, in the State where her husband had his domicile, and that she had gone to Nebraska to pursue her own remedy. Mr. Howard, though obviously disgusted, finally dismissed the matter with a sweep of his hand, and the utterance, "I guess, on the whole, the sooner he is rid of her the better." But this apothegm, which for a second time did him service, only increased his sister's dejection. The disgrace of the family seemed to stare her in the face more potently than ever. Following within a few weeks of this information came the disclosures in the newspapers of the double divorce with their sensational innuendoes as to what had occurred at Newport. For three days she kept the house, too sick at heart to attempt to simulate in public the veneer of an unruffled countenance. Then she visited Gordon Perry's office, and consulted him as to the feasibility of putting some legal obstacle in the way of her daughter's procedure; but learned from him, as she had feared, that she was powerless. When she resumed her ordinary avocations she feared lest the shame she felt should mantle her cheek and impair the varnish of well-bred serenity. It was while she was in this frame of mind that she was accosted by Loretta, and the effect of the bald remarks was as though someone had invaded her bosom with a rude cold hand. They froze her to the marrow, and while, on second thought, she ascribed the liberty to ignorance, she felt disappointed at the evolution of her ward. Such lack of delicacy, such inability to appreciate the vested rights of the soul argued ill for Loretta's progress in refinement. There was no second invasion of Mrs. Wilson's privacy. It seemed to her, as the days passed, that she had been through a crushing illness, and she felt the mental lassitude of slow convalescence. The receipt of Mrs. Stuart's brief letter informing her that she had been injured and was in need of counsel was a sudden reminder that she had allowed her personal sorrow to render her selfishly heedless of all else. It served as the needed tonic to her system. She swept away the cobwebs of depression from her brain, and with a firm purpose to resume her place in the world despatched forthwith a sympathetic note and two bunches of choice grapes to the invalid, and on the following morning gave orders to her coachman to drive her to Lincoln Chambers. XX The sight of Constance's colored glasses stirred Mrs. Wilson's sensibilities, already on edge. "You poor child!" she exclaimed, advancing with emotional eagerness, as the culmination of which she drew the young woman toward her and kissed her. This was a touch of bounty beyond Mrs. Wilson's ordinary reserve, but in bestowing it she was conscious that the recipient had deserved it, and consequently she was pleased at having yielded to the impulse. Besides having noticed with satisfaction the gradual change in Constance's appearance--both her increasing comeliness and tasteful adaptiveness in respect to dress--it distressed her that her ward's charm should be marred by so unæsthetic an accompaniment. "What does this mean? What grisly thing has happened?" Constance was touched by the embrace. She had passed a sleepless night confronting her exciting problem. Already this morning she had listened to the passages in those chapters of the first three gospels, Matthew xix, Mark x and Luke xvi, in which are set forth Christ's doctrine concerning divorce and remarriage. As soon as the children had gone to school, she had taken her concordance of the Bible from the shelf, and heedless of Mrs. Harrity's wonder, had pressed the old woman into service to find and read to her the texts in question. Constance had not considered these for years, and had only a general remembrance of their phraseology, but in the watches of the night her thoughts had turned to them as traditional spiritual sign-posts with which she must familiarize herself forthwith. Just before Mrs. Wilson's entrance she had taken up her broom, hoping that, while she performed her necessary housework, she might thresh out the truth from her bundle of doubts. What if the truth meant the sacrifice of bright, alluring prospects for her children, and of her own new, great happiness? Could it then be the truth? More than ever did she feel the need of counsel and sympathy. At the appearance of her benefactress her pulses bounded, and the appeal in her glad greeting doubtless gave a cue to the visitor's initiative. The gracious kiss on her cheek, so unexpected and so grateful, added the finishing touch to her overstrained nerves, and she burst into tears. Mrs. Wilson folded her in her arms and encouraged her to sob. Such philanthropy seemed to bless the giver no less than the receiver. She had arrived in the nick of time to be of service. "There, there," she said, "you are suffering; you should be in bed. You must tell me presently everything, and I will send my own doctor to prescribe for you." So, presuming the cause of this distress, she stroked the back of Constance's hair and held her soothingly. For some moments Constance made no attempt to check her convulsive mood, but with her head bowed on the friendly shoulder wept hysterically. When the reaction came she drew back dismayed at having lost her self-control, and as she wiped away her tears and hastily regained her ordinary dignity of spirit, exclaimed, "It isn't that. I have been in bed--I had a fall in the street; but I am quite strong again except for my eyes. I am forbidden to use them for six months. But otherwise I am as well as ever. And I have had a competent doctor." "Not use your eyes for six months?" There was incredulity no less than horror in Mrs. Wilson's tone. Constance was herself again by this time. She made her visitor sit down, and she succinctly described the circumstances of the accident and the specialist's examination, so that the authenticity of his verdict and the reality of her predicament were patent. Mrs. Wilson rose gladly and promptly to what seemed to her the occasion. "You poor child. It is cruel--disastrous. But give yourself no concern. I shall claim my prerogative as a warm friend to see that you and yours do not suffer until the time when you are able to resume your regular work. Your employer, Mr. Perry, what has he said to this? His necessities oblige him to let you go, I dare say." "On the contrary, he has been kindness itself. He wished me to remain; he would have invented occupation for me. Then I wrote to you and Mr. Prentiss. It occurred to me that you might think of something genuine which I could do for a living until I could use my eyes." Constance paused. Her heart was in her mouth again at the approach of the impending revelation. "Leave it all to me. There will not be the slightest difficulty. I will find just the thing." Then, suspecting that Constance's troubled look was due to suspicion of this blithe generality, Mrs. Wilson bent forward and added beseechingly, "You will let me help you this time, won't you?" "Indeed I will--if--if you wish," answered Constance with a sweet smile. So at this heart-to-heart appeal she stripped herself of her pride as of a superfluous garment and cast it from her. Then she said, "You don't understand. Everything has changed since I wrote to you yesterday afternoon. I need your help, your advice, Mrs. Wilson, more than I ever needed it before. You do not know how thankful I was when I saw you at the door. I have been trying to bring myself to the point ever since. I think I can talk composedly now. Last evening my employer, Mr. Gordon Perry, asked me to become his wife." The instinctive thrill which the disclosure of unsuspected romance inspires in every woman seized Mrs. Wilson, and with it swift realization of what a piece of good fortune from every point of view had befallen her deserving ward. Constance's tears and need for counsel suggested but one thing, a situation old as the hills, but like them always interesting. Jumping at this hypothesis, Mrs. Wilson, eager to show that she had comprehended in a flash, responded, "And you do not love him?" "That is the pity of it; I love him with all my heart." Then Mrs. Wilson remembered. She had been so accustomed to think of Constance as alone in the world, that in the first glow of interest she had overlooked the crucial fact in the case. The recollection of it was disconcerting in a double sense, for she suddenly found herself confronting the same dire problem from the haunting consideration of which she had just emerged. But though her first resulting emotion was similar to that which one feels at re-encountering an obnoxious acquaintance, from whom one has escaped, that which followed was a sense of contrast between the two points of view presented by the separate situations, which culminated in the animating thought that here at last was a soul alive to its own responsibilities. Meanwhile she heard Constance say by way of interpretation: "My husband is still living so far as I know, and I have never been divorced from him." Mrs. Wilson put up her hand. "I know, I know, my dear. Pardon the momentary lapse. I am entirely aware of your circumstances. And there is no need, Constance, to explain anything. Believe me, I appreciate all; I understand the meaning of your agitation, I recognize the luminous reality of the issue with which you have been brought face to face." Constance drew a deep breath. It was a relief to her to be spared preliminaries and to pass directly to the vital question. "It would mean so much for my children." To Mrs. Wilson's ear the simple words were imbued with a plaintive but courageous sadness, suggesting that the speaker was already conscious that this plea for her own flesh and blood, although the most convincing she could utter, fell short of justification. "It would." Constance ignored if she observed the laconic intensity of the acquiescence. She was bent on setting forth the argument with more color, so she continued: "If I become Mr. Perry's wife, my children's future is assured. My son will be able to acquire a thorough education in art; my daughter, instead of being obliged to earn her living before she is mature, will have leisure to cultivate refinement. They would become members of a different social class. I need not explain to you, Mrs. Wilson, for it is from you that I have learned the value and the power of beauty. I covet for them the chance to gain appreciation of what is inspiring and beautiful in life, so that they need not be handicapped by ignorance as I have been." No other appeal so well adapted to engage her listener's sympathies could have been devised by a practical schemer. And the obvious ingenuousness of the almost naïve statement increased the force of it, for like the woman herself the plea stood out in simple relief impressive through its very lack of circumlocution and sophistry. Except for the church's ban a new marriage seemed the most desirable--the most natural thing for this sympathetic woman in the heyday of feminine maturity and usefulness. Mrs. Wilson felt the blood rush to her face as the currents of religious and æsthetic interest collided. Her brain was staggered for a moment. "Oh, yes. I am sure you do," she murmured. "But----" Her utterance was largely mechanical and the pause betrayed the temporary equilibrium of contending forces. But Constance received the qualifying conjunction as a warning note. "There is a 'but,' an unequivocal 'but.' That is why I wish to consult you. I need your help. There is something more to add, though, first. Marriage with Gordon Perry would freshen, sweeten my life, and make a new woman of me. He is the finest man I have ever known." She spoke the last sentence with heightened emphasis, plainly glorying in the avowal. "The simple question is, must I--is it my duty, to renounce all this? I ask you to tell me the truth." "The truth?" Mrs. Wilson echoed the words still in a maze. Yet the clew was already in her grasp, and she delayed following it only because the greatness of the responsibility, precious as it was to her, kept her senses vibrant. At length she said with emotion: "This is a strange coincidence, Constance. I have been face to face with this same issue for the past fortnight. My daughter has begun divorce proceedings against her husband in order to marry again. They simply were tired of each other; that is the true, flippant reason they are separating. Each is to marry someone else. Her light view of the marriage relation has almost broken my heart. And what is to blame? The low standard of society in respect to the sacredness of the marriage tie. I endeavored with all my soul to dissuade her, but in vain. I come from her to you. The circumstances of your two lives are very different, but is not the principle involved the same? My dear, if Lucille--my daughter--could have seen the question as you see it, I should have been a happy mother. You ask my opinion. I recognize the solemnity of the trust. A blissful future is before you if you marry, welfare for your children and yourself. But in the other scale of the balance are the eternal verities, the duty one owes to society, the fealty one owes to Christ. You spoke of beauty. The most beautiful life of all is that which embraces renunciation for a great cause, even at the cost of the most alluring human joys and privileges." Gaining in fluency as she proceeded, because more and more enamoured of the cruel necessity of the sacrifice, Mrs. Wilson poured into these concluding words all the intensity of her nature. She would gladly have fallen on her knees and joined in ecstatic prayer with the victim had the demeanor of the latter given her the chance. Her heart was full of admiration and of pity for Constance and also of solicitude for the triumph of a human soul in behalf of an ideality which was at the same time the highest social wisdom. If for a moment her modern mind had revolted at the sternness of the sacrifice demanded, she was now spellbound by the shibboleth which meditation on her late experience had reaffirmed on her lips as a rallying cry, the safety of the home. "You cannot be ignorant," she exclaimed in another burst of expression, "that the stability of the family--the greatest safeguard of civilization--is threatened. What is the happiness of the individual compared with the welfare of all? In this day of easy divorces and quick remarriages is it not your duty to heed the teaching of the Christian Church, which stands as the champion of the sacrament of marriage?" Constance's mien during the delivery of this exhortation suggested that of a prisoner of war listening to sentence of death, one who yearned to live, but who was trying already to derive comfort from the consequent glory; yet a prisoner, too, who clung to life and who was not prepared to accept his doom, however splendid, without exhausting every possibility of escape. Though her face reflected spiritual appreciation of the great opportunity for service held out to her, and her nostrils quivered, her almost dauntless and obviously critical brow offered no encouragement to Mrs. Wilson's hope of a tumultuous quick surrender. She listened, weighing impartially the value of every word. But suddenly at the final sentences she quivered, as though they had pierced the armor of her suspended judgment, and inflicted a mortal wound. "Would the church demand it absolutely?" she asked after a moment. "Our church forbids remarriage except in case of divorce for adultery granted to the innocent party. The language of Christ in the gospel of Matthew seems to sanction this exception, contrary to His teaching as expressed in the other gospels. But there are many who maintain with the Roman Catholic Church that the marriage tie can be dissolved only by death." "I know. I had them read to me this morning." Though Mrs. Wilson regarded herself as a liberal constructionist of scriptural texts, and as in sympathy with the priests of her faith who glossed over or ignored biblical language justifying out-worn philosophy, she was glad now of the support of the letter of the Christian law for the great social principal involved. Divining by intuition what was working in the struggler's mind, and ever on the watch to satisfy her own standard as regards modern progressiveness of vision, she ventured this: "Though the words of Christ seem far away--though His world was very different from ours, as perhaps you were thinking, the human needs of to-day are a grand and unanswerable vindication of His teachings and of the church's canon." Constance looked up wonderingly. Was she dealing with a seer? "I was thinking that very thing, that the Saviour's words seem so far away, perhaps He did not anticipate such a case as mine." "He invites you to suffer for His sake even as He did for yours." Mrs. Wilson had heard the doctrine of the atonement criticised as outworn, and she was by no means sure in her heart that it would survive the processes of religious evolution; yet she felt no scruples in proffering this cup of inspiration to a thirsty and not altogether sophisticated spirit. Constance's lip trembled. "I neglected once to heed the voice of the church. I strayed away from Christ. When I was in trouble the church sought me out, helped me and took me back." "I remember. Mr. Prentiss has told me." "Would Mr. Prentiss consent to marry me?" "He could not perform the service; he is forbidden. You could be married only by some clergyman of another sect, if one would consent, or before a justice of the peace." It was evident from her tone that Mrs. Wilson classed the civil ceremony with the ugly things of life. "I see," said Constance. "I feared that he would not--that he could not." She sat for some moments with her hands clasped before her staring at destiny. Then spurred by one of the voices of protest she cried like one deploring an inevitable deed, "Gordon will not understand. He will deem that I am flying in the face of reason and sacrificing our and the children's happiness to a delusion. He is a sane and conscientious man. He strives to do what is right. Is it common sense that I must give him up?" she asked almost fiercely. Mrs. Wilson recognized the cry as the fluttering of a spirit resolved to conquer temptation. "To satisfy common sense would not satisfy you, Constance," she answered with gentle fervor. "What you desire would be selfish; what the church invites you to do for the sake of the world, of the family, would be spiritual." "I wish to do what is right this time at any cost." As Constance spoke there was a knock, and a moment later the rector of St. Stephen's appeared in the doorway, a large, impressive figure. For an instant he stood looking to right and left, taking in the surroundings while the two women rose to greet him, and Mrs. Wilson uttered an eager aside to Constance: "Here is someone who will tell you what is right." Perhaps she did not intend to smother the remark. At all events it was overheard by Mr. Prentiss, and it suggested to him an appropriate greeting. "I know of few better qualified to decide for herself what is right than Mrs. Stuart," he exclaimed with sonorous geniality, advancing. "I received your letter, and here I am. I am glad to see that another friend has been even more prompt," he added, shaking hands with Mrs. Wilson. "Yes, I wrote to you both that I had been ill because I felt sure that you would be willing to advise with me as to my future," said Constance. She endeavored to take the clergyman's silk hat, but he urbanely waved her back, and, depositing it on the table, threw open his long coat, and squaring himself in the chair offered him glanced around the somewhat darkened room. "Well," he said, with cheery solicitude, "you must tell me your story." "Let me explain, my dear," interposed Mrs. Wilson, and thereupon she glided from her chair, and seating herself on the sofa beside Constance, proceeded to enlighten him. "Our young friend has had a painful accident," she began, and in half a dozen graphic sentences she informed Mr. Prentiss of the details of the catastrophe and the scope of the injury. Meanwhile she possessed herself of Constance's hand, and from time to time patted it softly during the narration, in the course of which the rector on his part expressed appropriate concern for the victim. "When Mrs. Stuart wrote," she continued, "it was in order to consult us as to how she might best earn her livelihood until such time as her eyesight is restored. This was a pressing and delicate consideration for the reason that she suspected her employer of a design to invent occupation for her relief, which under all the circumstances was distasteful to her pride. The particular matter of providing her with suitable means of support I have taken upon myself, and the question is no longer perplexing her. It has been put in the shade by another and far more momentous problem, the solution of which we have been discussing for the last half hour. You come just in time to give her the benefit of your abundant insight and experience. Since she wrote to you an unexpected and appealing event has come to pass. Mrs. Stuart has received an offer of marriage from Mr. Perry, her employer, who of course is aware that she still has a husband living from whom she has never been divorced." Mrs. Wilson designedly threw this searchlight upon the past history of her ward in order to save her rector from the possibility of finding himself in the same slough into which she had slipped as a result of inadvertence, and also to place the precise situation before him in one vivid flash. Presumably what he had heard was a stirring surprise to Mr. Prentiss, but versed in receiving confessions he gave no sign of perturbation beyond compressing his lips and settling himself further back in his chair like one seeking to get his grip on an interesting theme. When Mrs. Wilson in bright-eyed consciousness of having sprung a sensation waited to enjoy its effect, he nodded, as much as to inform her that he had grasped the facts and that she might proceed. She fondled Constance's hand for a little before doing so. She wished to come to the point directly, yet exhaustively; to avoid non-essentials, yet to present the theme with picturesqueness. "This little woman's heart is deeply engaged," she resumed. "She loves dearly the man who has offered himself to her. His wish to make her his wife is not only a precious compliment, but it holds forth interesting opportunities for happiness and advancement for her and for her two children. He is, as you know, a man of high standing in the community with prospects of distinction. From the point of view of worldly blessedness the offer is exceptionally alluring. Moreover she would be a wife of whom he could be justly proud. You see what I mean. I have given you, I think, all the vital data which bear on the case." As she paused she noticed that Constance stirred beside her. It had not been her intention to proceed further, but she made this clear by saying, "I leave the rest for you, my dear." The next moment the rector responded with grave, solicitous emphasis. "I believe that I recognize precisely the circumstances with all the inseparable perplexities and pathos." By an involuntary restless movement Constance had indeed revealed her dread that Mrs. Wilson was about to state the arguments as well as the point at issue, and her spirit had risen in protest. For sitting there intent on every word she had had time to realize that a crucial moment in her life had arrived, and that no one else however clever could fitly express what was working in her mind in defence of her lover's cause. When now the desired chance to speak was afforded her there was no hesitation; the necessary burning question was on her lips--the one question which demanded an unequivocal answer. "Mrs. Wilson has stated all the facts. I ask you, Mr. Prentiss, to tell me truly if it is possible for me to marry Mr. Perry without doing wrong, without doing what you--the church--would not have me do. I am ready to renounce this great happiness if it would not be right in the highest sense for me to become his wife." It was the rector's turn to stir uneasily. His soul was rampant over the horrors of the divorce evil, but his humanity was momentarily touched by the rigor of this particular case. He, too, had had time to think, and his opinion was already formed. It had indeed arisen spontaneously from the depths of his inner consciousness as the only possible answer. Yet as a wrestler with modern social problems he was disturbed to perceive that this sacrifice on this petitioner's part would have the surface effect of a hardship which, however salutary as a tenet of Christian doctrine, was not altogether satisfactory from the practical standpoint. Consequently his reply was a trifle militant. Have you as a woman considered whether remarriage while your husband is alive would be consistent with the highest feminine purity? It was a specious attack, but for a moment Constance did not comprehend. Then when it came over her that he was imposing chastity upon her, and expressing surprise at her restlessness, she lowered her eyes instinctively. That phase of the case had occurred to her many times already. Was it an impurity that she, with a husband living, should love another man? Was the implied reproach sound? Her feminine self-respect was dearer to her than life. Yet she had not discussed the point with Mrs. Wilson, as exploration with the plummet of conscience of the recesses of her womanly self had left her without a qualm. She had even faced the repugnant possibility that, as the wife of Gordon, she might hereafter be brought in contact with Emil, and decided that it could not become a controlling bugbear. Yet now when she raised her eyes again she looked first at her mentor. That lady had hers turned toward the ceiling in rapt meditation, but becoming conscious of Constance's glance, she lowered them to meet it, and Constance gathered from their troubled appeal that she agreed with the clergyman that remarriage for her would be incompatible with the highest personal delicacy and a breach of the law of beauty. This was almost a shock, and increased her trouble. Her reason was still unconvinced that the objection was other than an affectation, but the joint disapproval was a challenge to her confidence. Still she answered with the courage of her convictions: "I should like to marry because I am in love. If my husband were dead, it would not seem inappropriate that I should wed another." [Illustration: "I should like to marry because I am in love."] "You are well provided for; you have employment and are earning a decent livelihood. You have friends who will see that your children do not lack opportunities for advancement. Is not that enough?" He paused and quoted rhetorically: "Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh." Constance broke the silence by completing the passage with reverence, "What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder." "Precisely," murmured the rector. Constance slipped her hand from Mrs. Wilson's and rose to her feet. Why, she scarcely knew. She felt the impulse to stand before her judges, even as a petitioner at a court of final resort. Though her heart was hungry for permission to enter the land of promise, she already guessed what the verdict would be. If her rector's hint that the project ought to have jarred upon her finer feminine instincts had left her unconvicted before the tribunal of her own wits, it had set her thinking. It had brought before her a retrospective vision of the long fealty of her sex to the voice of carnal purity, and its twin sister, woman's long fealty to the church. She must be true to her birthright as a woman; she must obey the higher law whatever the cost. No happiness could be comparable to that which obedience would bring. Yet another thought held her, and a little doggedly. Whatever her penitence for past error, she had never abdicated her heritage as an American woman--her right to the exercise of free judgment where the interests of her soul were concerned. Her intelligence must be satisfied before she yielded. Yet even as she rallied her energies for a second bout, it seemed to her that the memory of her late forgiveness by the church stood in the guise of an angel at the rector's side with grieving eyes, and the charge of ingratitude on its lips. But Constance said sturdily and carefully: "I have reread the Bible texts, Mr. Prentiss, and Mrs. Wilson has explained to me that as a priest of the Episcopal Church you could not marry me. I understand that. What I wish you to tell me is whether it would be a sin, a real sin, were I to be married elsewhere. The law allows it, only the church forbids. Has the church no discretion, could no exception be made in a case like mine? In this age of the world it would seem as though justice and the demands which religion makes on the conscience ought to tally. You know the circumstances of my first marriage. Because I made a dreadful mistake, is it my highest duty to renounce this happiness as a forbidden thing? It is for you to tell me. I must trust in you; I cannot decide for myself. My reason whispers to me that it would not be wrong for me to consent, but I am prepared to put this seeming blessing from me if by accepting it I should be guilty of a genuine weakness, should be helping to push society down instead of helping to maintain the standards of the world." Mr. Prentiss beamed upon her with pitying, gracious approval. Now that he had recovered from his momentary access of temper he beheld in a clear light the reality of the sacrifice, her touching sincerity and his own opportunity. From the standpoint of righteousness there was no room in his mind for doubt or evasion; yet he felt that it behooved him to meet this spiritual conflict with all the tenderness of his priestly office. He had learned to admire this lithe, dark-haired woman, nor was her greater physical attraction lost on him. He realized as she stood before him that under the new dispensation she had waxed in charm and social effectiveness; and once more she was showing herself worthy of his enthusiasm. His ear had noticed the felicity of her last thought, and he was musing on the sophisticated scope of it when Mrs. Wilson's dulcet voice broke the silence. "I have made clear to Mrs. Stuart, Mr. Prentiss, that the advanced thought of the church finds in the words of Christ not merely an inspired utterance concerning divorce, but the rallying cry in behalf of a profound, practical, social reform." The rector bent on his ally a discerning glance of satisfaction. He perceived gratefully that she had made the most of her opportunities to till the soil from which he looked for a rich harvest. "My dear friend," he said to Constance, "you have put upon me a great responsibility from which I must not shrink. But however uncompromising my duty as a servant of Christ may cause me to appear, believe me that my understanding is not blind to the human distress under which you labor. You are asked to renounce what is for woman the greatest of temporal joys, the love of a deserving man." He paused a moment to mark the fervor of his sympathy. "Were I willing to palter with the truth, and did I deem you to be common clay unable to appreciate and live up to it, I might say to you 'go and be married elsewhere. It will be an offence; it will not have the sanction of the church; but others have done the same, and you will have the protection of the secular law.' Although the Roman Catholic priest has but one answer under all circumstances however pitiful, 'who, having a husband or wife living, marries again, cannot remain a member of the church,' it might seem permissible to some of my cloth not to condemn remarriage in the case of a dense soul as a grievous sin. But such palliation would sear my lips were I to utter it for your relief. You have asked me what is the vital truth--your highest Christian duty. There can be but one answer. To respect the marriage bond and, keeping yourself unspotted from the world, hold to one husband for your mortal life so long as you both do live. To yield would not be a crime as the ignorant know crime, but it would be a sapping carnal weakness, inconsistent with the spiritual wisdom which has hitherto led you. It would indeed help to lower the standards of human society. I may not equivocate, my dear friend. This is the ideal of the Christian Church in respect to marriage and divorce. Invoke the human law for your protection against your husband if you will, but he is still your husband in the eyes of God, and if you wed another you commit adultery." Constance, seeming like a breathing statue, save for her odd disfigurement, her arms before her at full length, her hands folded one upon the other, heard her sentence and love's banishment. Already she felt the thrill of a solemn impulse to bear this cross laid upon her, not as a cross but as a fresh opportunity for service, yet she said: "Then the law of the church and the law of the State stand opposed to each other!" She spoke in soliloquy as it were, phrasing an existing condition for the explanation of which her intelligence still lacked the key. Mr. Prentiss drew himself up. "Yes, they stand opposed, as in so many other instances. The law of the State is for the weak; the law of the church--of Christ--is for the strong. Verily the church has been magnanimous and forbearing. It has resigned to the State little by little control of the social machinery. But here, where the foundations of society are at stake, it behooves her to stand firm. The law of spirit is at war with the law of flesh. Monogamy is the corner-stone of Christian civilization." "And hence it is that marriage is a sacrament; that the marriage bond bears the seal of heaven," added Mrs. Wilson ardently, as the rector, contented with his metaphor, stopped short in his righteous foray. "If my marriage was made in heaven, we were ill-mated," retorted Constance. The thought seemed so repugnant to her that she revolted at it. But Mr. Prentiss, like a true physician of the soul, was equal to the emergency. "The choice was yours, and you made a dreadful mistake. Have you yourself not said so? Shall you not pay the penalty, my daughter? You thought you knew him whom you married." "Oh, yes, indeed; but I was very young." "May they not all say the same? And yet," pursued the rector, in a tone of proselytizing triumph, "the demon of divorce lurks at our firesides and, stalking through every walk of life, makes light of the holy tie as though it were of straw, mocking the solemn associations of the family, and taking from the innocent child the refining and safe-guarding influence of a stable, unsullied home. Yet the State stands by and winks at--aye, connives at and promotes the foul programme, rehabilitating shallowness and vice through the respectable red seal of the law. Yes, there are two standards. As a modern priest I am aware of the sophistry of the criticism, for who, if the church does not, will stand as the protector of the home? And if it sometimes happens, as it must happen," he concluded in an exalted whisper, "that the apparent earthly happiness of one must be sacrificed for the good of the many, I know that you are not the woman to falter." "Oh, no--oh, no," answered Constance, shaking her head. "It is a terrible condition of affairs, is it not? I see; I understand." She resumed her seat on the sofa and covered her face with her hands. For a few moments there was silence. Mrs. Wilson restrained a melting impulse to put her arm around her ward's shoulder in pitying encouragement. She felt that it was wiser to wait. "Terrible," repeated Constance, as though she had been dwelling on the thought, and she looked up. Her manner was calm and sweetly determined. "Thank you, Mr. Prentiss--thank you both so much. There is only one thing to do--one thing I wish to do, now that my duty has been made entirely plain. I shall tell Mr. Perry that though I love him I cannot marry him." "There is no reason that you should come to a decision on the spot," said Mr. Prentiss, reluctant to take undue advantage of an emotional frame of mind. "Take time to consider the matter." But Constance shook her head. "That would not help me. I have thought it out already. I could not consent to sin, and you have explained, to me that it would be a sin." "A sin surely; a carnal sin for you, Mrs. Stuart," said the clergyman with doughty firmness. Constance gave a little nervous laugh--or was it the echo of a shiver? "I had a conviction that it could never be. It was a pleasant dream." The pathos of the simple utterance reawoke Mrs. Wilson's strained sensibilities. She bent and kissed Constance on the forehead. Then turning to her rector she murmured with reverent ecstasy: "Will you not pray with us, Mr. Prentiss?" It was a grateful, benignant suggestion to the sufferer; the tonic which her yearning, baffled spirit needed. Divining as by telepathy that the moment had arrived for just this spiritual communion, the clergyman set the example to the two women by falling on his knees, and presently his voice was raised in fervent prayer. It was the prayer of praise and victory, not of consolation and distress. He thanked God--as he could do with an overflowing heart--for this triumph of intelligent spiritual discernment over the lures of easygoing and numbing materialism. The outcome of the occasion was indeed for him an oasis, one of those green, fruitful passages in the more or less general dryness of heart-to-heart contact with his parishioners, the occurrence of which made him surer both of his own professional capacity and of the eternal truths of his religion. His invocation of his God was alike a pæan of thanksgiving and an acknowledgment of rekindled faith. As for Constance, his words were so many cups of water to a thirsty soul. Scorched by his exaltation, the cloud mists of doubt no longer perplexed her, and she beheld with radiant eyes her cross, her privilege to renounce what reason and human passion urged, for the sake of an ideal--the higher, vital needs of the human race. When Mr. Prentiss had finished Mrs. Wilson did not for a moment trust herself to speak. Her eyes were full of tears. She had knelt as close to Constance as she felt to be harmonious. It was a glorious hour also for her. The steadfastness of this woman of the people was not only a subtle personal tribute, but it had refreshed the tired arteries of her being. When her daughter had left her house, secure and cold in the pride of a revolting scheme of life, it had almost seemed that God mocked her. But now the glories of His grace were manifest. "Constance," she said, "I will call for you to-morrow, to sit in my pew. It is Sunday, you know." XXI In saying to Constance that he had pondered the question of their marriage from her standpoint, Gordon Perry felt that he had given indeed the fullest weight to every legitimate scruple, and believed that, provided he was beloved, there was no substance in any one of them. He knew that Constance had shrunk from a divorce. What more natural so long as she was undisturbed by her deserting husband? But now that the element of a new, strong affection was introduced the necessary legal proceedings seemed a paltry bar to her happiness. He had expected that she would demur to the step at first, but he had felt confident that her acute sense would shortly convince her that she was divorced to all intents and purposes already, and that the mere formal abdication of the fact, however unpleasant sentimentally was not a valid obstacle. He had also appreciated that this repugnance to a legal dissolution of the marriage tie for the purpose of becoming a second time a wife would be accompanied by an instinctive feminine aversion to giving her person to another man while it was still possible to encounter the original husband in the flesh. He did not pride himself on his knowledge of women, but the attitude suggested itself to him as possible, even probable, in the case of one whose sensibilities were so delicate as hers, for the reason that there lingered in his mind the remembrance of shrinking words both in books and in real life by other women when the same topic had been broached in the past. Consequently it was a relief to him that Constance did not openly manifest this form of repugnance, and he radiantly jumped to the conclusion that her love for him was so reciprocal and mastering that false delicacy had been shrivelled up as in a furnace. Was not such a process in keeping with her sterling sanity and intelligence? For a moment he had jubilantly assumed that all was won, since, after conscientious if somewhat scornful analysis of the Church's claim, he had already decided that the pure religious objection would never in the end avail to keep them apart. Nor did the foreboding definiteness of her opposition discourage him appreciably. It merely cast a damper on his hopes for an immediate surrender, and indicated to him that he had been premature in supposing that she had been able to purge herself of superstitions and conventional prejudices forthwith. It could simply be a question of time when so human and discerning a bride would come to his arms without a qualm. Nevertheless he felt that he must convince her. Now that he was sure she loved him, the possibility of losing her was not even to be entertained; but he wished her to succumb as the result of agreement, and not in spite of herself, both because he realized that she would not be happy otherwise, and because the doctrine which she had invoked as a binding obligation jarred not only with his desires, but with his deepest opinions. Therefore, at the conclusion of their interview, he took up straightway the cudgels of thought in defence of his convictions against what seemed to him the essential injustice and unreasonableness of the Church's claim. This necessarily involved fresh consideration of that claim itself. That night before he went to bed he rehearsed the arguments by which he purposed to appeal to her. Did she not appreciate that they were influenced by no base motives? That neither lust nor undue haste, nor covetous trifling with the feelings of others tarnished their mutual passion. Theirs was no case of putting off the old bonds of matrimony in order to be on with the new, but one where love had been starved to death, and been born again by gradual and chaste processes in a lonely, forsaken heart. What could be wrong in such a union? And were not their own consciences and their own intelligences the only fit judges of the eternal merits? Gordon Perry's attitude toward religion--toward churches and toward churchmen--was abstractly respectful and friendly. He had been brought up by his mother in her faith, and the period of stress through which most young men pass in early life had been productive of a frame of mind which was reverent as well as critical. Not a small portion of mankind in Benham accepted their religious doctrine on trust, as they did their drinking water. Either they were too busy to question what seemed authority, or that particular compartment of the brain where absorbing interest in the unseen germinates was empty. Some of the most pious never reasoned, and their docile worship constituted the cement in the walls of dogma. Again, there was a class--a growing class in Benham as elsewhere--composed of well-equipped, active-minded men who were polite to Religion if they met her in the street, and would even go to church now and again to oblige a wife or preserve outward appearances, for they were still of the opinion that religion is good for the masses. But in their secret souls what did they believe? Gordon belonged to still another class. Religious truth had an absorbing interest for him, but what was religious truth? Different sects--and they were manifold in Benham--told him different things, and each sect proclaimed its doctrine insistently as vital, if not to salvation, to the highest spiritual development. Like many a young man before him, he argued that all could not be right, and as a result he presently found himself a member of that secret society of able-bodied, able-minded male citizens--the largest class of all--who reasoned about religious doctrine somewhat in this way: That they were hopefully looking forward to the time when the controversial differences which divided the sects into rival camps should disappear; and that until then they and their successors, whose number was sure to be legion, would turn deaf ears to the clashing of the divines, and attend church in order to gain strength and inspiration to play their parts well in complex modern human society, ignoring all else but the spirit of Christian love. If it be said that they and Gordon were not strong on dogma, denied that the laws of the universe had ever been suspended to produce fear or admiration in man, because to believe the contrary seemed to be an insult to God, and looked askance at certain other extraordinary phenomena to which the orthodox cling, it should also be stated that they and he were heartily in sympathy with every effort of all the clergy to improve human nature along intelligent lines, to help the poor to help themselves, to prevent the rich from misappropriating the earth and to foster truth, courage, unselfishness and refinement in the name of religion. Therefore it happened that Gordon was apt to take with a grain of salt what he heard in the pulpit; and now and then he would play golf on Sunday if he were in need of fresh air for his soul; but although he was slightly impatient of clerical sophistries up town, down town he lent a ready hand in the active reforms of the city, in the furtherance of which he had learned to know well, and to admire as good fellows, half a dozen energetic, enthusiastic clergymen. Was not religion one of the great forces of the world? Because one could not believe everything, and revolted at mystical or puerile superstitions, were the highest cravings of one's nature to be allowed to atrophy? So, just as in his social perplexities, he had sought refuge in practical service from the conflict of theories, and on more than one occasion he had been agreeably surprised by the confidential admission of the divines with whom he was co-operating that their and his views were not essentially far apart. Gordon was glad on their account to hear so, and was only the more convinced as a consequence that it was difficult to reconcile most of the strict tenets of theology with the modern ideas of wide-awake, enlightened laymen concerning the workings of the universe or the best social development of the creature man. Gordon made no attempt to see Constance on the day following his proposal. Impatient as he was to renew his suit, he concluded to let her muse for twenty-four hours on the situation. It occurred to him that he would ask leave to accompany her to church on Sunday morning, but reflecting that it would not be fair to disturb her meditations, he decided instead to attend the service at St. Stephen's and walk home with her after it. Whatever the New Testament language on the subject, would she be able to convince herself that the sundering of such love as theirs would be in keeping with the true spirit of Christianity? It seemed to him that there could be but one answer to this proposition, and as he walked along in the beautiful bracing atmosphere of the autumn day his step was buoyant, for he believed that his happiness would be sealed within a few short hours. Ecstasy ruled his thoughts. Was not the woman of his heart an entrancing prize? Fortune and station she had none, but far more important for him, she was lovable and she was lovely; she was intelligent and she was good. He had attended service at St. Stephen's once or twice before, and had a bowing acquaintance with Mr. Prentiss; but he knew well and entertained a cordial liking for the latter's assistant, the rector of the Church of the Redeemer, the mission church in the squalid section of the city supported by the larger establishment. St. Stephen's, as the fashionable Episcopalian church of the community, was apt to draw a large congregation, especially when the pew owners were not confronted by wet skies or sidewalks. This brilliant Sunday at the beginning of the social season had drawn most of the regular congregation and also a large contingent of strangers--chiefly women--some of them visitors in Benham, but the majority students and other temporary residents who found the æsthetic music and devotional ritual of St. Stephen's stimulating. Gordon, who was a little late, obtained a seat in the gallery. It had occurred to him that he would be more likely to catch sight of his ladylove from this eminence than if he remained below. His eyes sought at once the so-called free benches where she was accustomed to sit, but she was not in her usual place. After repeated scrutiny of the rows of faces had convinced him of this, he concluded dejectedly that she had not come. Perhaps she had stayed at home hoping he would call. Or had she been loth to display her glasses in public before she had become accustomed to the disfigurement? His glance wandered over the rich flower garden of autumn bonnets, but to no purpose. While in perplexity he reviewed the probable causes of her absence he became aware that the music of the processional had ceased and that Mr. Prentiss was speaking. Ten minutes later, when the congregation rose to take part in the selection from the Psalms, his glance fell on Mrs. Randolph Wilson in one of the front pews. Her profile was almost in a line with his vision. While he looked his heart gave a bound, for he suddenly recognized that the young woman next to her in the gay, attractive bonnet was she for the sight of whom his soul was yearning. After leaving Constance on the day of their eventful interview, Mrs. Wilson had conceived the plan of presenting her with a new bonnet and jacket. These she brought with her to Lincoln Chambers a little before church time, and placed with her own hands on the surprised recipient. Pleased at the æsthetic progress of her ward, she seized this opportunity to promote it, and also to cater to her own generous instincts at a time when to indulge them was not likely to cause offence. Though astonished, Constance accepted without demur these welcome additions to her toilet, and the donor had the satisfaction of beholding how admirably they became her. Besides, Mrs. Wilson had on the tip of her tongue and was eager to communicate the plan which she had been working out since they separated, and which she imparted to Constance as soon as they were in her brougham on the way to church. "I have been carefully considering your affairs, my dear, and, in the first place, you are to do nothing for the next six months but get well. I shall insist upon looking after you. You promised me, remember." She paused as though she half expected to encounter opposition to this project, and, though her ward revealed no insubordination, she added the argument which she held in reserve: "For, having deprived you by its counsel of the means of support, it is the Church's duty, and my privilege as a disciple of the Church's cause, to watch over you until you are able to provide for yourself. At the end of the six months, when your eyes are strong again, I wish you to become my private secretary." On the way from her house she had pictured to herself the astonishment and delight which such an unexpected and splendid proposition must necessarily inspire, and she could not refrain from stealing a sidelong glance at Constance in order to observe the effect it would have on her. "Your private secretary?" Mrs. Wilson felt rewarded by the incredulous bewilderment conveyed by the interrogatory, and hastened to explain her benefaction. "It seems almost the interposition of Providence in your behalf," she added. "Last evening--and I was thinking of your noble resolution at the time--my secretary came in to inform me that she was engaged to be married, and to ask me to be on the lookout for someone else. 'The very place for Constance Stuart,' I said to myself at once. 'What could suit her better? And what an admirable arrangement it will be for me!' For, after refusing Mr. Perry's offer, I take for granted that, even when your eyesight is restored, the continuance of your present business relations would be out of the question." "Oh, yes; entirely so," answered Constance with rueful promptness. "I could not continue in his employment; we should both be unhappy." She was making a confession of what she had been saying to herself all the morning. "Exactly." Mrs. Wilson beamed over the success of her divination. "Then we will consider it settled. And I wish to tell you besides that I shall take it upon myself to see that your boy's artistic gift is given full opportunity for expression, and your daughter thoroughly educated. Your salary, I mean, will be sufficient to enable you to give them proper advantages, for I can see that you will be very useful to me." She was determined to make plain that virtue in this case was to be its own reward, and that the material losses in the wake of renunciation were rapidly being eliminated. At the same time she wished to conceal a too obviously eleemosynary intent. "I don't see how anything could be nicer for me. And if you think that I should suit--that I could perform the duties properly--I shall be thankful for the position," answered poor Constance. She had passed another sleepless night. Fixed as was her conviction that separation from her lover was inevitable, she felt deeply sorry for him if not for herself, and dreaded the impending final interview between them. Despite her spiritual exaltation the consciousness that she was letting slip a great chance for her children still haunted her, in that the future by comparison seemed vague and forbidding. For it had been clear to her from the moment of her decision that under no consideration could she remain in Gordon's office. Therefore, though doubtless her friends would help her, the struggle for a livelihood must be begun again. Mrs. Wilson's amazing, timely offer lifted a great weight from her heart; by it the question of her future employment was disposed of, and disposed of in a way more congenial to her than any she could have imagined possible. It did indeed seem providential that the vacancy should have occurred at this time, and she realized that the certainty that her children would be protected would nerve her for the necessary ordeal of parting, for now there was only selfishness in her desire for marriage. She longed for it to be over with that she might put away once and forever this great temptation. The thought that Gordon would probably come for his answer that afternoon was uppermost in her mind during the service; but she was in a mood to respond to the beautiful music, and before Mr. Prentiss gave out the text of the sermon she was already thrilling with the joy of her sacrifice on the altar of faith. She prayed that she might be granted strength to renounce this seeming blessing ungrudgingly and to close her ears to the whispers of regret, and as she joined in the jubilant anthem of rejoicing for a risen Lord it seemed to her that the angel of peace brushed her forehead with the wings of heaven's love. The text was "Except a man be born again he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." It was a sermon of immortality and hope, and a sermon of the triumph of the spirit over the flesh for the sake of a Christ who had set the great example and conquered self through suffering. It was one of Mr. Prentiss's most happy efforts from the standpoint of orthodoxy, graphic, eloquent, and practical. He set no narrow limits of a creed as the arbiter of truth, but declared that the opportunity to choose between the path of righteousness and the path of self-sufficiency or self-indulgence was offered to every one in the great struggle of modern life; that he who would follow the blessed Lord and Master must shun as evil that which was injurious to the highest interests of human society and thus hateful to God. As she listened Constance could not doubt that he had her in mind. It seemed to her that more than once his glance rested on her encouragingly and fondly. Her brain was transported with ecstasy and zeal. Her opportunity was at hand, and she would serve Christ and mankind faithfully. Leaving the church under the spell of the sermon, she became suddenly aware that her lover was beside her and was suggesting that he escort her home. At sight of him her chaperone, scenting danger, led the way sedulously toward the brougham, but in the interval Constance decided to take him at his word. Would it not be the simplest course to explain to him quietly on the street that what he asked her was impossible, and thus avoid the pain of a more intimate parting? Therefore she made her excuses to Mrs. Wilson, pleading the radiance of the day and her need of fresh air. She felt so sure of herself that, though she noticed her friend seemed disappointed, it did not occur to her that it was from concern as to the result of the interview until she heard a whispered "Be firm." Constance turned a resolute face toward her, and by a close pressure of the hand gave the desired assurance, then as the stylish equipage rolled away from the church door, she stepped to Gordon's side, sadly conscious that this was to be their last walk together. Three days later, in the evening, Gordon Perry rang at the house of the Rev. George Prentiss, the comfortable looking and architecturally pleasing rectory in the neighborhood of St. Stephen's. A trim maid ushered him into an ante-room where all parochial visitors were first shown, and asked for his name. There was a nondescript elderly woman in black ahead of him. In his capacity as rector of a large parish, Mr. Prentiss followed the modern methods of other busy professional men. An electric bell at his desk notified the servant that the interview with the last comer was at an end and that the next in order was to be introduced. Gordon had not long to wait. His remaining predecessor's stay was brief. The rector's heartiness was almost apologetic as he strode a pace or two forward to greet his visitor. "Mr. Perry, I am very glad to see you. I am sorry that you should have been kept waiting. But the clergy cannot afford to be unbusiness-like, can they? We intend to live down that taunt. So my rule is 'first come, first served.'" "The only proper rule, I am sure." It was a spacious, well-filled room, the manifest workshop of an industrious man, but furnished with an eye to æsthetic appropriateness as well as utility. Red leather chairs and lounges of goodly proportions, two symmetrical, carved tables covered with documents, books, and pamphlets, warm curtains, an open wood fire, a globe, sundry busts and framed photographs of celebrities, mainly clerical, including a large one of Phillips Brooks and another of Abraham Lincoln, were its distinguishing characteristics. Mr. Prentiss stepped to one of the tables and opening an oblong Japanese box drew out a handful of cigars. "Will you smoke, Mr. Perry?" he asked, cheerily. Gordon took one, and the clergyman, who reserved his use of tobacco for occasions when by so doing he might hope to make clearer that he was human, did the same. As soon as they were lit, Mr. Prentiss with a sweep of his hand indicated two easy chairs on either side of the fire, but after his guest was seated he himself stood with his back to the mantel-piece, his hands behind him, the commanding affable figure of a good fellow. Still he chose to show at the same time what was in his heart at the moment coincident with his manifestations of secular hospitality. "That woman who just went out has recently buried her only son, the joy and prop of her old age. She came to thank me for a trifling donation I had sent her. Her courage and her trust were beautiful to witness. These humble lives often furnish the most eloquent testimonials of the eternal realities." He spoke with the enthusiasm of his calling, as a doctor or a lawyer might have set before an acquaintance an interesting case. He liked to feel that he was on the same footing with the world of men as they, with respect to privileges no less than responsibilities. For an instant he seemed to muse on the experience, then briskly recurring to the immediate situation said: "But what can I do for you, Mr. Perry? My assistant, Mr. Starkworth, tells me that you take an active personal interest in the social problems of our community." This bland presumption of ignorance as to the cause of his visit made Gordon smile. He could not but suspect that it was artificial. Yet the inquiry was by no means hypocritical; for though Mr. Prentiss was fully conscious of his caller's identity, and had given him a correspondingly genial reception, he regarded the episode of the proposed marriage as so completely closed by Constance's decision that he did not choose to believe that Gordon had come for the unseemly purpose of reviving it. It seemed to him far more probable that his advice or assistance was sought in some humanitarian or civic cause. "Yes," said Gordon slowly, enjoying the development of the opening which occurred to him, "Mr. Starkworth and I have co-operated from time to time, with mutual liking, I think. It is in regard to a social problem that I have come to consult you this evening." "Ah," said the rector, relieved in spite of his belief, and thereupon he settled himself in the other capacious easy chair and turned a cordially attentive countenance to his guest. "You may feel assured of my interest in anything of that kind." "It concerns my own marriage," said Gordon. The challenge was so unmistakable, like a gauntlet thrown at his feet, that Mr. Prentiss was for an instant disconcerted, then irritated. But the pleasant manner of his opponent negatived the aroused suspicion that effrontery lurked behind this slightly sardonic introduction, and he met the attack with a grave but supple dignity. "Indeed," he said. "I shall be very glad to hear what you have to say, Mr. Perry." XXII Gordon drew deeply several times at his cigar, then laid it on the bronze tray for ashes within reach, as though he felt that it might profane his thought. "I come to you to-night, Mr. Prentiss, as man to man, knowing that you wish truth and justice to prevail, and asking you to believe that I desire the same. We are both of us men of affairs in the modern sense." The rector bowed. "Then you as the rector of one of the most influential churches in the city will doubtless agree that religion must be sane and reasonable in its demands to-day or it will lose more followers among the educated--and education is constantly spreading--than it gains from the ignorant and superstitious?" "Assuredly." "I, on my side, as a layman--whatever our differences of precise faith and dogma--am glad to bear witness that the present social world could do without true religion less than ever before." The summary pleased Mr. Prentiss. It was reasonable and progressive. "We are entirely in accord there," he answered heartily. "As I supposed. Then it obviates the necessity of feeling my way. With some clergymen I should not venture to take anything unorthodox for granted, but I believed that we should readily find a common ground of agreement." The assertion was regarded by Mr. Prentiss as a compliment. Nevertheless he perceived that it behooved him to mark the limits of his liberality. "The essence of Christianity has nothing to fear either from the higher criticism or the modern world's lack of interest in moribund dogma. May I not say with Paul 'but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before'?" "And from that point of view may I ask why you have felt constrained to separate Mrs. Stuart and me?" There was a brief pause. The rector had not the remotest intention of shirking responsibility, but he wished the precise truth to appear. "It was Mrs. Stuart's own decision." "I asked her in good faith, after an attachment of several years, to become my wife. She loves me fondly, as I do her. She would have married me had you not convinced her that to do so would be a sin." "I told Mrs. Stuart that from the standpoint of her highest duty as a Christian woman, it would be a sin. Not unpardonable sin, if finite intelligence may venture to distinguish the grades of human error, but conduct incompatible with the highest spirituality--and modern spirituality, Mr. Perry." There was a doughty ring to the rector's tone, betokening that he was not averse to crossing swords with his visitor. "Why would it be a sin?" Mr. Prentiss knocked the ash from his cigar and held up the glowing tip. "Do you not know?" he asked, fixing his gaze squarely on his antagonist, so that he seemed to attack instead of defend. "Because she has a husband living--a brute of a husband who, after dragging her down, deserted her shamefully; a husband whom she has ceased to love and from whom the law of this community would grant her a divorce." "Proceed." "Because the Church has seen fit to stigmatize as evil that which the State sanctions in a matter vitally affecting the earthly happiness of the human sexes." Waiting briefly to make sure that the indictment was complete, Mr. Prentiss rejoined dryly: "You state the case accurately. My answer is that the Church is merely inculcating the precepts of the Saviour of mankind." Gordon drew a deep breath. He rejoiced in his opportunity. "Mr. Prentiss," he said, "you referred just now to the world's lack of interest in moribund dogma; we agreed that the demands of religion to-day must be sane and reasonable. I speak with entire reverence, but I ask whether you honestly believe that the few casual sentences which Christ is reported to have uttered thousands of years ago in Palestine in regard to man's putting away his wife should control complicated modern human society--the Christian civilization of to-day--so as to preclude a pure woman like Mrs. Stuart, under the existing circumstances, from obtaining happiness for herself and her children by becoming my wife? I ask you as an intelligent human being and a just man if this is your opinion?" There was no hesitation on the rector's part; on the contrary, firm alacrity. "It is." "And yet you know that a large portion of the civilized world ignores the doctrine," answered Gordon, curbing his disappointment. He had not expected to encounter this stone wall. "I do, to its shame and detriment. The Church is not responsible for that." "Then your argument rests on the letter of Christ's words?" "It does and it does not." There was triumph in the rector's voice as he laid emphasis on the qualifying negation. He had hoped to lead his censor to this very point. "Nor does the spiritual objection of the woman who has refused to marry you rest solely on that ground. She is an intelligent person, Mr. Perry. She perceives, as I perceive, that what you ask her to consent to do would be evil for the human race as well as contrary to the teachings of our Lord. There is nothing moribund in that attitude. It is vital, timely righteousness. Mrs. Stuart must have set this double reason before you." Gordon remembered that she had. In his agitation during their final interview, believing that she was laboring under a neurotic delusion, he had given little heed to her argument. Now, as a lawyer, he perceived the ingenuity of the plea, though he still regarded her as the victim of clerical sophistry. Yet he made no immediate response, and Mr. Prentiss took advantage of the opportunity to elucidate the situation. "Mr. Perry, you are led away by the special merits of your own case. I acknowledge the hardship; I grant the pathos of the circumstances. They present the strongest instance which could be cited in justification of remarriage by a divorced person. But there must be more or less innocent victims on the altar of every great principle. The Lord has demanded this service of His handmaid, and, though her heart is wrung, she rejoices in it." "I see," said Gordon, "and that presents the real issue. Why should the Church usurp the functions of the State? Why in this age of the world should it decide what is best for the human race in a temporal matter, and substitute an arbitrary and inflexible ethical standard of its own for the judgment of organized society?" Mr. Prentiss's nostrils dilated from the intensity of his kindled zeal. "Why? For two reasons. First, because the Church declines to regard as a temporal matter an abuse which threatens the existence of the family, the corner-stone of Christian civilization; and second, because the State has flagrantly neglected its duty, allowing divorce to run riot through the nation without uniform system or decent limitations. Is the Church to remain tongue-tied when the stability of the holy bond of matrimony has become dependent on the mere whims of either party?" "I see the force of your position. I will answer you categorically. As to the first reason, it seems to me untenable. As to the second, you accused me just now of seeing only my side. Let me retaliate, and at the same time suggest that, though you may seem to have a strong case, you do not know the real facts." Gordon, having reached a more dispassionate stage of the argument, remembered his cigar, which he proceeded to relight. But the rector, not accustomed to such colloquial dissent, threw his own in the fireplace and crossed his arms. "Regarding your first plea in behalf of the Church's interference that the Church does not look on marriage as a temporal concern, let me remind you," continued Gordon, "that marriage is the only matter in the realm of human social affairs where the Church undertakes to nullify by positive ordinance the law of the State--where there is divided authority. In all other social affairs the law of the State is paramount. The Church forbids abstract vices--malice, uncharitableness, lust, selfishness, intemperance, but it does not attempt to define these in terms of human conduct, or to substitute canons for the secular statute book." "The Church regards marriage as a sacrament." "The Roman Catholic and the Episcopal. If I may say so, the attitude of both these churches is a foreign influence." The clergyman drew himself up. "Foreign?" "Yes, foreign to native American ideas, and I might add foreign to the claims of the first followers of Christianity, for the early Christian Church did not assert the right to perform the marriage ceremony, or to regulate marriage. Its protectorate dates from a later period. But what I had in mind was that it is antagonistic to the spirit both of our forefathers and their descendants. In the early days of New England the service of marriage was performed not by the minister, but by the magistrate, and marriages by clergymen were forbidden. It was the authority of the State, the commonwealth, the considered judgment of the community which was recognized." Mr. Prentiss nodded. "You are a Unitarian, I judge." "I was brought up in the Unitarian faith. Like most American men, I believe in the power of the individual to work out his own salvation." "But what message have you for a world of sinners?" asked the rector, trenchantly. "I appreciate the force of your criticism. I am conscious that the weakness of Unitarianism--of individual liberty of conscience--is its coldness, that it does not constantly hold out to the degenerate soul the lure of a new spiritual birth. It is for this reason largely that your Church and the Catholic Church have gained fresh converts in this country and this city. Moreover, those churches have promoted among us picturesqueness, color, and sentiment. But, on the other hand, their spirit is autocratic if not aristocratic, and in their love for the pomp of the ages, in their fealty to the so-called vested rights of civilization, they have little sympathy with the rational, every-day reasoning of republican democracy." Mr. Prentiss pursed his lips. There was no offence in the speaker's manner or tone which would justify a rebuke; on the contrary, they both suggested that he was trying to speak dispassionately. But the conclusions stirred the rector's blood, and he tightened his folded arms. "You seem to forget that the spirit of Christian philanthropy, of the loving brotherhood of man, is the controlling emotional force in the Episcopal--yes, in the Roman Church to-day. You yourself are familiar, for example, with the work of my Mr. Starkworth in the Church of the Redeemer." "Yes. But neither Church has compassion on the misery of common humanity when to relieve it would conflict with the hard and fast letter of church law. That is where--and notably in this matter of recognizing divorce--the other Protestant churches, the Presbyterian, the Methodist and the Baptist, have been more tolerant. They have refused to insist that it is for the benefit of mankind that, under all circumstances, men and women unhappily married should remain in durance vile without the possibility of escape, or, having escaped, should be condemned by precept to celibacy for the rest of their lives. And these are sects whose creed is based on the essential sinfulness of human nature." The rector glowered at Gordon for a moment from under his brows. "Then where will you draw the line?" This was Mr. Prentiss's trump card. It expressed his utter weariness with what he regarded as the foul system of conflicting and irresponsible legislation, unceasingly and scandalously availed of. "That brings us to your second proposition!" exclaimed Gordon. "As to whether the State is faithless to its duty. Have you a copy of the public laws, Mr. Prentiss?" "Assuredly." The rector strode across the room and taking down two large volumes from the book-shelf presented them to his visitor. It gratified him to demonstrate by this practical test the broadness of his humanity. "Do you happen to know the causes for which divorce is granted in this State?" Mr. Prentiss hesitated. Evidently he had no exact information on the subject, which at this juncture was disconcerting. "For far too many causes; I am sure of that," he replied, stoutly. "I will read them to you. 'Impotence; adultery; desertion for three years; sentence for felony for two years; confirmed habits of intoxication; extreme cruelty; grossly and wantonly refusing to support wife.'" The rector listened alertly, hoping to be able to pounce on some conspicuously insufficient provision. Since this did not appear he made a sweeping assertion. "They are all inadequate in my opinion except unfaithfulness to the marriage vow, and I often doubt the wisdom of making an exception there. I am by no means sure that the Roman Church is not right in its refusal to admit the validity of divorce for any cause whatever." "But what has been the course of history since the Roman Church promulgated its canon at the Council of Trent more than three hundred years ago? The cause of common sense and justice as represented by the State has, in spite of the fierce opposition of the clergy, won victory after victory, until the institution of marriage has been placed under the control of the secular law on most of the Continent of Europe, and the right to divorce and the right to remarry widely recognized--for instance in France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark. In France it's a criminal offence for a priest to perform the religious ceremony of marriage until after the civil ceremony." "Yes, and it was France which during the days of the revolution permitted divorce at the mere option of either party. And there are signs that we are rapidly imitating that same barbaric laxity in the United States, and in this community." "And if it were, would it be so much more barbarous a condition than the conservatism of the English law of Church and State, which grants divorce to the man whose wife has been guilty of adultery, but withholds it from a woman unless her husband has been guilty of cruel and abusive treatment into the bargain?" The rector was touched on another sensitive point. He put out the palm of his hand. "I fail to see the relevancy of your comparison, Mr. Perry. However, the American Episcopal Church is not responsible for the flaws in the details of the English establishment. The two are harmonious and their aims are identical, but we do not follow blindly." "Yet the American Episcopal Church follows its English parent and the Roman Catholic in maintaining that the woman whose husband is an inveterate drunkard, is convicted of murder or embezzlement, kicks and beats her shamefully, or deserts her utterly in cold blood, is guilty of a crime against heaven and against society if she breaks the bond and marries again. Progressive democracy in the person of the State is more lenient, more merciful. It refuses to believe that one relentless, arbitrary rule is adapted to the exigencies of human society. It insists that each case should be judged on its merits, and both relief afforded and fresh happiness permitted when justice so demands. Think of the many poor creatures in the lower ranks condemned by your inexorable doctrine to miserable, lonely lives, who might otherwise be happy!" Mr. Prentiss's brow contracted as though he were a little troubled by the appeal to his sympathy with the toiling mass. "One wearies of this ever-lasting demand for happiness in this life," he murmured. "Was Christ happy? They are free to disregard the authority of the Church if they see fit," he added. "I for one should not feel justified in refusing the communion to a divorced woman who had remarried." "But the Catholic Church would and does uniformly; and the high church party in your own church would disapprove of your leniency. The vital point is that both churches and you yourself brand those who disobey as spiritually impure, or at least inferior, a stigma which appalls the best women. And so they are held as in a cruel vice, so you have held her who was to be my wife." The reversion to the personal equation reminded the rector that this was no academic discussion. "You have not answered my question yet. Where will you draw the line? Granting for the moment--which I by no means agree to--that gross habits of intoxication, felony, or absolute desertion are valid grounds for breaking the nuptial bond, let me cite the law to you in turn, Mr. Perry." Thereupon Mr. Prentiss stepped to the shelves again, and running through the pages of a book, discovered presently the data of which he was in search. "What do you think of these reasons?" he asked in a scorching tone. "American grounds of divorce: 'When it shall be made to appear, to the satisfaction and conviction of the court, that the parties cannot live in peace and union together, and that their welfare requires a separation,' Utah; 'Voluntarily living separate for one year,' Wisconsin; 'For any cause that permanently destroys the happiness of the petitioner and defeats the purposes of the marriage relation,' Connecticut; 'For any cause in the discretion of the court,' Kentucky; 'Whenever the judge who hears the cause decrees the case to be within the reason of the law, within the general mischief the law intended to remedy, or within what it may be presumed would have been provided against by the legislature establishing the foregoing cause of divorce, had it foreseen the specific case and found language to meet it without including cases not within the same reason, he shall grant the divorce,' Arizona; and in a host of States, 'One year's absence without reasonable cause.'" "I told you that you seemed to have a good case," said Gordon, smiling. "But I do not think that you understand the facts, understand the real nature of the abuse, for I heartily agree that an abuse exists even from the standpoint of those who maintain that divorce should be granted on the slenderest grounds. As to the extracts which you have just read, I judge that the book is not a recent publication." "I have reason to believe that it is authoritative." "Undoubtedly it was so at the time. But several of the provisions in question have been repealed and are no longer law." "Ah," said the rector. "But you cannot deny that it is still the law that a man and woman may be married in one jurisdiction and adjudged guilty of adultery or bigamy in another; that the marriage tie is broken daily on the most frivolous grounds and with the most indecent haste; and that there is wide and revolting discrepancy between the statutes of the several United States." Gordon nodded. "I cannot deny the substantial accuracy of the indictment." "Well, sir, how do you justify it? Is not civil society neglecting its duty?" "I do not justify the defects in some of the legal machinery, and to this extent I agree that society is derelict. But what I wish to make clear is that nearly all the legal grounds for divorce in the several states are just and reasonable--substantially the same as in this State--and that the abuses against which they afford relief are such as render the relation of husband and wife intolerable. There are a few vague and lax exceptions such as you have cited, but they are fast disappearing. The real and the salient evil lies in the looseness of administration sanctioned in some jurisdictions, by means of which collusive divorces are obtained by pretended residents, and close scrutiny of the facts is avoided by the courts. To permit legal domicile to be acquired by a residence of three months, as in Dakota, is a flagrant invitation to fraud; but that and kindred abuses are defects in the police power, and have only a collateral bearing on the main issue between us, which is whether democracy can ever be induced to reconsider its decision that it is for the best interests of human nature that the innocent wife or husband, to whom a cruel wrong has been done, should be free to break the bond and marry again. There is the real question, Mr. Prentiss. You as a churchman--a foreign churchman I still claim--demand that the woman whose life has been blighted by a husband's brutality, sentenced for heinous crime, abandonment, or degrading abuse of liquor should remain his wife to the end, though he has killed every spark of love in her soul. The Church will never be able to convince the American people or modern democracy that this is spiritual or just." "And yet a man who has been prohibited by the courts of New York from marrying again has merely to step into New Jersey and his marriage there will be recognized and upheld by the courts of New York. But that you will probably describe as another instance of defect in the police power. The line which you draw is evidently that which any particular body of people--sovereign states I believe they call them--sees fit to establish. The logical outcome of such a theory can only be social chaos. The sanctity of the home is fundamentally imperilled thereby." "And yet," said Gordon, "the family life of the American people compares favorably with that of any nation in affection, morality, and happiness. More than three-fourths of the applicants for divorce in the United States are women. They have thrown off the yoke of docile suffering which the convention of the centuries has fastened upon them." "Some of them," interposed the rector with spirited incisiveness. "The shallow, the self-indulgent, the indelicate, the earthly minded. There are many who are still true to the behests of the spirit," he added significantly. It was doubtless an agreeable reflection to him that the one woman in the world for his antagonist was among the faithful. "On the contrary, I believe that their number is made up largely of the intelligent, the earnest, and the vitally endowed. Democracy maintains that it is no worse for children to be educated where love or legal freedom exists than where there is thinly concealed hate, contempt, or indifference." It was obvious that neither had been or would be convinced by the other's argument. Probably each had been well aware of this from the first. Gordon had come warm with what he regarded as the unwarranted injustice of the clergyman's successful interference, unable to credit the belief that it would not be withdrawn when the case was coolly laid before him. On his part Mr. Prentiss had listened indulgently, certain of the deep-rooted quality of his convictions, but willing to hear the opposite side stated by a trained antagonist. He had been glad of an opportunity to elucidate the Church's attitude, and had not been without hopes of making cogent to this censor of different faith the civilizing righteousness of the ecclesiastical stand, or at any rate--which would be in the line of progress--the demoralizing insufficiency of the current secular reasons for divorce. Apparently he had failed in both, and moreover had encountered a disposition toward obnoxious radicalism which was disturbing. "Then I am to presume that you, and so far as you are at liberty to speak for them, the American people" (Mr. Prentiss could be subtly biting when the occasion demanded), "sanction practically indiscriminate divorce?" Gordon disregarded the sarcastic note. The bare question itself was sufficiently interesting. "It is true, as you suggested just now, that the American people have gone further in that direction than any other except the French. In France, after the latitude of optional divorce palled, divorce was abolished and was never authorized again, as you may remember, until very recently--1884. In the exuberance of our enthusiasm for personal liberty the legislators in some of our states--especially those of the most recent origin, have shown an inclination to pass laws which justify your conclusion. But there is at present a reaction. The people have become disgusted with the licentious shuffling on and off of the marriage tie by the profligate element of the fashionable rich through temporary residence and collusive proceedings in other states. You and I have a recent flagrant instance in this city in mind. Every good citizen abhors such behavior, Mr. Prentiss. But the public conscience has become aroused, and steps are being taken to reform what I termed the defects in the police power, partly by amendment of the loose provisions by some of the offending states, and partly by provisions in other states, challenging the jurisdictional validity of foreign divorces granted to their own citizens on paltry grounds. It is a misfortune that a national divorce law is only among the remote possibilities. And yet, can there be any doubt that any uniform law which the American people would consent to adopt would necessarily include every one of the grounds already law in this State, and which the Church labels as inadequate?" Mr. Prentiss twisted in his chair. "If the Church were satisfied that the State was sincere, a reasonable compromise might not be impossible. Some of our thoughtful clergy have been feeling their way toward this." Gordon shook his head. "But even your Church would yield so little; and the Roman Catholic nothing at all. Would you consent to divorce for gross drunkenness or conviction for felony?" "If so, what becomes of the spiritual obligation that one takes the other for better or for worse? Shall a woman desert her husband in misery? Is long-suffering devotion to become antiquated?" "As an obligation, yes. If she loves him still, she will cling to him. But if their natures are totally at variance, if she has been cruelly wronged and disappointed by his conduct, she should have the right to leave him and to wed again. The world of men and women has ceased to believe that individual happiness should be sacrificed until death to the cruel or degenerate vices of another." "The doctrine of selfish individualism," murmured the rector. "Mrs. Stuart informed me that you made that cry the basis of your objection. I agree with you that individualism has in many directions been given too free scope, and that modern social science is right in demanding that it should be curbed for the common good. But only when it is for the common good, Mr. Prentiss. Divorce and remarriage are in many instances necessary for the welfare of humanity, for the protection and relief of the suffering and virtuous and the joyous refreshment of maimed, tired lives." "And how liable they are to become tired with such easy avenues of escape!" Mr. Prentiss hastened to exclaim. "So long as remarriage is stigmatized as a lapse from spiritual grace, young couples will be patient and long-suffering. The truest love is often the fruit of mutual forbearance during the early years of wedlock. It is only one step from what you demand to divorce for general incompatibility. I have yet to hear you disclaim belief that this would be for the common good, Mr. Perry." Mr. Prentiss rolled out the phrase "general incompatibility" with fierce gusto, as though he were scornfully revelling in its felicity as an epitome of his opponent's theory carried to its logical conclusion. He had been sparring for wind, waiting for an opening as it were, and feeling that he had found it, he forced the fighting. "It is difficult to forecast what is to be the future evolution of the divorce problem," answered Gordon, reflectively. "On one side is the security of the home, as you have indicated, on the other the claims of justice and happiness. Just now respectable society stands a little aghast--and no wonder--at the scandalous lack of reverence for the marriage tie shown by our new plutocracy----" "Godless people!" interjected the rector. "And will doubtless mend its fences for the time being so as to refuse divorce except for genuine tangible wrongs, such as those we have discussed. But if you ask me whether I believe that in the end general incompatibility--meaning thereby total lack of sympathy between husband and wife--will be recognized by human society as a valid and beneficial ground, my answer is that the social drift is that way. It will depend on the attitude of the women. They constitute by far the majority of the applicants for divorce, as you know. If they become convinced that it will not be for the welfare and happiness of themselves and their children to remain tied to men utterly uncongenial, the State probably will give them their liberty. But one thing is certain," he added, "the Church will never be able to fasten again upon the world its arbitrary standard." Gordon rose as he finished. He felt that the interview was at an end, a drawn battle so far as change of opinion was concerned. But he had chosen to complete his bird's-eye glimpse of the possible future with a definite and pointed prediction. Mr. Prentiss had listened with astonishment to the speculative suggestion. He had expected a disavowal of the license embodied in his taunt, and a floundering attempt at limitation which he hoped would involve his adversary in an intellectual quicksand. Up to this point he had fancied Gordon, though he had disagreed with him. But now, as he also rose, he manifested a shade of haughtiness, as though he were dismissing someone who had come perilously near landing himself outside the pale of the respect which one man owes another of the same class. Ignoring the assertion as to the decay of the Church's power, he said: "Such an evolution as you predict, sir, would undermine the structure of human society." "It would be more or less revolutionary, certainly," answered Gordon, blandly. The possibility seemed not to have proper terrors for him, which was puzzling to the clergyman, who was loth to regard this well-appearing young man as a sympathizer with radical social doctrines. He stared at Gordon a moment. "So long as women are as pure and spiritual minded as Mrs. Stuart the laxity which you seem to invite will be out of the question." Here was an unequivocal reminder to Gordon of the real fruitlessness of his interview. It was in effect a challenge; and he accepted it as such. "She will yet become my wife." Mr. Prentiss shook his head. "I have known her longer than you," he asserted proudly. For a moment there was silence. Issue had been joined in these two sentences, and further speech was superfluous. It was Gordon who relieved the tension, which seemed almost hostile, by putting out his hand. "Mr. Prentiss," he said, "we disagree utterly, but that is no reason surely why we should not part with amicable respect for each other's differences of opinion? I know you are actuated solely by the desire to accomplish what you believe to be right." The manly appeal was instantly reciprocated. The clergyman grasped the outstretched hand and shook it firmly. To agree to disagree gracefully was in keeping with his theories as to the proper attitude of men of affairs. "Mr. Perry," he said, "I am glad to have made your acquaintance. Believe me, I grieve that the church in my person must stand between you and happiness. If any matter at any time arises where you think I could be of public service, do not hesitate to consult me. I am well aware that we both are laborers in the same vineyard." Considering that their theological views were nearly as divergent as the poles, and that they were battling for a woman's soul, this was eminently conciliatory and rational on either side. XXIII The parting with Gordon had been exceedingly painful for Constance, but she had not wavered. The circumstance that they were in the street had been a serviceable protection, for it forced upon the interview a restraint which must have been lacking had they been indoors. She was enabled to keep her lover at bay, and to meet his protestations of devotion and dismay with the answer that she had made up her mind. At the outset she had explained to him in a few words that she had become convinced that marriage would be inconsistent with her highest spiritual duty and hence must be renounced. Her responses to his arguments and impetuous questions were brief and substantially a repetition of her plea that it was incumbent on them for the good of civilization to stifle their love. He did most of the talking, she listened, and under the influence of her resolution rebuffed him gently from time to time, trying to make plain to him that separation was inevitable. When they had reached Lincoln Chambers she felt it advisable for both their sakes that he should not enter, but that they should part with as little excitement as possible. Of what avail an emotional scene such as would be sure to take place were she to let him in? So she had bidden him good-by then and there, informing him that she was to become Mrs. Wilson's secretary. She had permitted herself finally one last hand clasp and the luxury of saying, "May God bless you, Gordon. You have been the truest friend a woman ever had. I wish you might be more. Good-by." Then she had fled, leaving him standing aghast and still refusing to believe that she could be in earnest. After she was alone she was free to weep, and weep she did, divining, perhaps, that the surest way to drown her grief was to let sorrow have sway for the moment. When she faced life on the morrow, quiet and resolute, she could not help thinking of the Catholic Sisters of Charity whom she was in the habit of seeing on the street, whose faces so constantly suggested that they had dispensed with earthly happiness. But her elastic nature demanded that she should seek earthly happiness still, and she found herself protesting against the thought that her renunciation might sadden the remainder of her life. Was not her sacrifice for the welfare of society? If so, it behooved her to behold in it a real blessing over which she should rejoice. If it were not a cause for congratulation, a real escape from evil, she was simply worshipping a fetich as Gordon had declared. It was no case of preference for spiritual over mundane things, but of a choice of what was best for her as a human being. Hence she ought to find fresh zest in life itself, not wait for future rewards. So she sought to deaden her senses to every thought or memory of Gordon, and to take up her new life as a quickening privilege. The first thing to do was to regain the complete use of her eyes, and for this patient idleness during several months would be necessary. Therefore, without demur, she lived up to her promise to Mrs. Wilson by accepting the funds necessary for her support until such time as she should be able to assume the full duties of her position. Mrs. Wilson made this easier for her by sending her to investigate diverse philanthropic and sociological appeals and employing her on a variety of errands. The present secretary had agreed to remain until Constance could take her place, and was glad to delegate such duties as the latter could perform. Accordingly Constance reported daily for instructions and had the run of the office appropriated to the secretary's use, a pretty room furnished with a convenient but artistic desk, a typewriter and all the paraphernalia for the despatch of a large correspondence. She longed for the day to arrive when this room would be hers, and she could devote herself unreservedly to the furtherance of Mrs. Wilson's wide interests. One evening, some fortnight after the parting between Constance and Gordon, Loretta came bouncing into Constance's apartment. She had been employed in one place as a nurse during that period, but had completed her engagement the day before. She appeared to be in good spirits, and Constance noticed that she had on a new hat and jacket more gaudy than was her custom, as though she had spent her earnings promptly and freely. Moreover she looked knowing. The cause of this last manifestation was disclosed when, after a few preliminary greetings, she exclaimed: "And so you've left Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law!" "Yes. It wouldn't have been fair to Mr. Perry to ask him to wait. Besides, Mrs. Wilson has invited me to become her private secretary. Miss Perkins is going to be married." Loretta cocked her head on one side and winked an eye. She appeared amused by this plausible explanation, which apparently was not news to her. "I guess somebody else is going to be married too." Constance felt uncomfortable; she scented mischief. But there was nothing to do but look innocent. "A little bird told me to-day that you had only to nod your head to become Mrs. Gordon Perry, Esq." Enjoying the look of confusion which this bold sally evoked, Loretta approached Constance and peered mockingly into her face. "It's so, isn't it? You're engaged and you can't deny it. I knew it!" "Nothing of the kind, Loretta," she managed to articulate with decision. The little bird was evidently Mrs. Harrity. But the charwoman's gossip could only have been conjecture, and of course her inquisitor knew nothing definite. "Well, it's your own fault if it isn't. From what I hear he's just crazy to get you." Loretta paused a moment; she was ferreting for information. She seized Constance by the shoulders and fixed her again with her shrewd gaze. "You can't fool me, Constance Stuart. There's something in the wind. I shan't rest until I find out." Constance noticed that her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes unnaturally bright. Could she have been drinking? Surely not, or her breath would have betrayed her. Doubtless it was only the excitement of deviltry awakened by feminine curiosity. Then it occurred to Constance to tell her. Was it not best to tell her? Loretta would make her life miserable, so she had intimated, if she concealed the truth. And then again, as she was sacrificing her love for a principle, why conceal from this other struggler the vital conclusion she had reached? It might help, or at least stimulate Loretta. She shrank from disclosing her precious secret, but now that she was interrogated, was it not the simplest, the most straightforward course to confess what had happened and explain her reason? "Sit down, Loretta, and I will tell you." The girl obeyed, surveying her with an exultant mien. Constance hesitated a moment. It was not easy to begin. "Mr. Perry and I have talked things over. Yes, Loretta, he did ask me to marry him." Loretta uttered what resembled a whoop of triumph, partly to celebrate her own perspicacity, partly by way of congratulation. "I felt sure of it. I knew he loved you by the way he was carrying on." "And I loved him, but I'm not going to marry him. We are to see no more of each other for the present. It would be wrong for me to become his wife." Loretta stared as though she could not believe her ears. "Wrong? Who says so? You don't mean to tell me you've refused him?" "Yes," said Constance a little sadly, for the genuineness of the surprise expressed recalled her own perplexity in discerning an adequate reason for the sacrifice. Loretta gasped. "Well, you are a fool, and no mistake! Refuse a man like that who's crazy to marry you and whom you love! Wrong? What's wrong about it?" [Illustration: "Refuse a man like that who's crazy to marry you!"] "It's contrary to the law of my church, which forbids a woman who has a husband living from marrying again." "But he's as good as dead so far as you're concerned," interjected Loretta. Without heeding this pertinent remark Constance proceeded to state the so-called spiritual objections with succinct fervor. She felt the desire to reiterate aloud their complete potency. Loretta listened closely, but with obvious bewilderment and disdain. Even now she seemed unable to credit her companion's announcement as genuine. "If your clergyman won't marry you, get a justice of the peace. That's just as good." Constance shook her head. "From my point of view remarriage would be sinful--impure." Loretta leaned back on the lounge where she was sitting and clasped her hands behind her head. She appeared to be at a loss to find words to express her feelings. "And you mean to tell me that you've let that man go--the man you love and who'd give you a fine home and be a fond husband to you--for such a reason as that?" "Yes," answered Constance, stanchly. "Then all I can say is you didn't deserve such luck. He's too good for you." Loretta's conviction went so deep that she had become grave, and, so to speak, dignified in her language. "He's too good for any woman I know," Constance felt impelled to assert. "But for both our sakes, all the same, it was my duty not to marry him. Mr. Perry knows my reasons and--and respects them." Constance had wondered many times what her lover's present emotions were, but she chose to take no less than this for granted. "If he loves you as much as I guess he does, he must just hate you, Constance Stuart. My! Think of throwing up a chance like that." Then suddenly a thought occurred to Loretta, and leaning forward she asked tensely, "Does _she_ know?" The suggestion of resentment on Gordon's part had been to Constance like a dash of scalding water. The question just put served as a restorative. "Mrs. Wilson? It was she who advised me to let him go. She agrees with me entirely." Loretta looked astonished and disappointed; then she frowned. "Just because you've been married once? Not if you got a divorce?" "Never, so long as my husband is alive and we are liable to meet in the flesh." Constance realized that her phraseology had a clerical sound; still she felt that she had a right to the entire arsenal of the church. "And she believes that too, does she? Believes that it would be wicked for a good looking, hard-working girl, whose husband had left her in the lurch, and may be dead for all she knows or cares, to get a divorce and marry again? And that's the Church? My! but it's the crankiest thing I ever heard. That's the sort of thing which sets the common folk who use their wits against religion. There's no sense in it. She's a widow; would she refuse to marry again if the right man came along?" "That's different," said Constance, perceiving that an answer was expected. "And what's the difference? It's all right to be spliced to another man in three months after the breath is out of the first one's body, as some of them do, but impure to marry again so long as the husband who has dragged you round by the hair of your head is liable to drop in. If it comes to that, and marriages are made in heaven, as the clergy say, what do the dead husbands and wives think about second marriages anyway? I'd be real jealous if I were dead." "The Church has thought it all out and come to the conclusion that it is the best rule for human society." Constance spoke with hurried emphasis, hoping to terminate the discussion. She did not desire to argue the matter with Loretta; at the same time she recognized the familiar pertinency of the allusions to dead husbands and wives. Loretta detected Constance's nervous agitation. "I hate to think it of her," she cried with sudden illumination, "but I believe she has badgered you into it!" "Nothing of the kind, Loretta. It's my own free choice. Mrs. Wilson simply made clear to me the Church's side." Loretta sneered. "It's downright cruel, that's what I call it. The Church's side! The Church doesn't recognize divorce, but there's always been ways for the rich--the folk with pull, kings and such--to get the marriages they were tired of pronounced void from the beginning. It was only necessary to show that they had been god-parents to the same child, or were twenty-fifth cousins by affinity, as it's called, or some such tomfoolery. It didn't take Napoleon long when he wished to get rid of Josephine to induce the Catholic Church to declare that they never had been married, though it was a good church wedding before a cardinal. Pshaw! The Church has fooled the people long enough. What we want is justice and common sense." That same cry for justice, that same appeal to common sense; and from what very different lips! Yet though Constance shrank from the coarseness of the exposition, somehow the naked saliency of the argument was more persuasive than Gordon's subtler plea. Her instinctive compassion for the masses asserted itself. The fact that Loretta should have touched at once the crucial point which Gordon's trained intelligence had emphasized struck her forcibly. And after all, what was she herself but one of the common people? But she said: "The scandal in Mrs. Wilson's own family has been the greatest grief and mortification to her." Loretta bridled. "Yes, and when Mrs. Waldo gets her divorce in South Dakota and comes back married again, won't everybody she cares about receive her just the same? In six months she'll be staying in Benham and her mother'll be inviting all the other multi-millionaires to meet her at a big blow-out; see if she don't." She paused, and her eyes took on a crafty look. "What do you suppose she'd say if I were to go back to my man?" Constance sat bolt upright from apprehension. Loretta's air of mystery, which was accentuated by a whispering tone, conveyed to her the true import of the intimation. Yet she would not seem to understand. "What do you mean, Loretta?" "My man; the father of my child. He was in town the other day. He has found out where I am and has been plaguing me to go back to him." "Did he ask you to marry him?" asked Constance, seeking that solution. "That's not what he meant. But I've thought of that too--on baby's account. I guess he would if I were set on it. But we're both doing well single, and--" She stopped and laughed sarcastically--"and supposing we didn't like each other and got divorced, I could never marry anyone else." "No matter about that now, Loretta. Do you love him still?" "It's love that makes the world go round. There isn't much else worth living for, I guess." She pursed her lips after this enigmatical answer, then suddenly relaxed them in an impetuous outburst. "One thing's sure, Constance Stuart, you don't know what love is or you'd never have sent away Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law." "Don't, Loretta," said Constance, imploringly. "It's true." "I love him with all my heart. You don't understand." "Pish! If you'd loved him as a woman loves a man when she does love him, you'd have been married before this. Why, there's times when I feel like going right back to my man, and I'm not what you'd call more than moderately fond of him. If it hadn't been that I didn't want to disappoint her--and you--I'd have done it before this. Now the next time he comes back, I shouldn't wonder if I did." She leaned back again on the sofa with her hands behind her head nodding doggedly, and nursing her intention. Constance, appalled, went over and sat down beside her. "Oh, but you mustn't, you mustn't! Go to-morrow to see Mrs. Wilson and talk with her. She will give you strength and convince you that unless you marry him such a course would be suicide, a cruel wrong to yourself, dear--you who have done so well." "I've kept straight chiefly to suit her; but I don't like what she has done to you." "Please leave me and my affairs out of the question, Loretta. They have nothing to do with your preserving your own self-respect." "I don't know about that. If she's just like the rest; if that's a sample of the religion and the beauty she prides herself on, I've been fooled, you've been fooled. What's the use of being respectable if, when true love does come, a poor, deserted woman is robbed of it for such a reason as that?" It surprised Constance that Loretta should take sides so strongly, and she perceived that the girl must have a tenderer feeling for her than she had supposed. This made her all the more anxious to protect her. "I value your sympathy very much, dear, but it won't help me--it'll only make me dreadfully unhappy if you do wrong." Loretta looked at her keenly. Then she took out a small phial, similar to that which Constance had observed on another occasion, and swallowed a pellet ostentatiously. "If you are troubled with the blues these are the things to take. They brace one splendid." "What are they, Loretta?" "If you promise to take some right along, I'll tell you." But she evidently was not eager to disclose her secret, for she promptly replaced the phial in her pocket and said, "I'll make a bargain with you, Constance. If you'll marry Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law, I'll keep straight." Constance flushed. "But I can't, dear. It's all settled." "He will come back if you only whistle. You know that." Constance let her eyes fall. She feared that it was too true. But she could not afford to be pensive. She must be both resolute and resourceful, for the future of this erring sister seemed to be hanging in the balance. "I can never marry Mr. Perry, Loretta. But----" "I thought better things of you, Constance. Oh! well then I'll go back to my man." "If you should do such a thing it would break Mrs. Wilson's heart." This seemed to Constance in her perplexity the most hopeful appeal, and she was right, for Loretta was obviously impressed by the remark. "Would it?" she asked. She looked down at her large hands and let them rise and fall in her lap like one nervously touched by sentiment. "I do not know of anything which would distress her more," continued Constance. After a moment Loretta said, "He's away now. He won't be on this route again for another four months. So there isn't any danger just yet." She shrugged her shoulders. Then she rose, adding, "I guess I'll go to bed," which was plainly an intimation that this was to be the limit of her present concession. Constance was relieved, not only that immediate danger was averted, but that the tie which bound Loretta to Mrs. Wilson, however temporarily strained, was still strong and compelling. She rejoiced to think that they were warned, so that they could now keep a closer watch and leave nothing undone to save her from further degeneration. She dismissed the subject by making some inquiries in regard to Loretta's last case. The girl's responses were to the point and brisk, but she did not resume her seat, and evidently had no intention of remaining. Presently she got as far as the door, where she stood discussing for a few moments with her hand on the knob. When at last she opened it and was in the act of departing, she turned her head and uttered this parting shot, which indicated what was still uppermost in her thoughts: "I guess that you never really loved Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law, or you couldn't have done it." This taunt lingered in Constance's mind, though she denied the impeachment to herself. Was it not indeed true, as Loretta said, that it is love which makes the world go round? Only for the sake of righteousness was she justified as a healthy, breathing woman in stifling this instinct. If Loretta in the future were to marry some one other than the father of her child both the Church and Mrs. Wilson would rejoice because the mere ceremony of marriage had been lacking in the first relation; yet she herself was forbidden to marry the man she loved because she was tied to a faithless husband by the mere husk of marriage. She saw Loretta but two or three times before her convalescence was complete and she had assumed her duties as Mrs. Wilson's secretary, for Loretta was sent for again shortly, and was only at home in the interval between her engagements. But Constance gave Mrs. Wilson forthwith an inkling of Loretta's state of mind, though she tried to believe that the girl's wanton threat was a mere passing ebullition due to resentment of her reason for refusing Gordon. Nevertheless she did not altogether like the expression of her eyes; it suggested excitement, and predominance of that boldness which, though typical, had been much in abeyance during the period of her regeneration. She remembered, too, the bottle of pellets, which indicated that she was taking some drug. So, though she could not believe that she was seriously considering such an abhorrent proceeding, she felt it her duty to put Mrs. Wilson on her guard. They both agreed, however, that the culprit must be handled gingerly and not too much made of the occurrence. Accordingly Mrs. Wilson straightway wrote to Loretta, but her letter was a missive of interest and encouragement, not of reproach or alarm. She deplored in it that she had lately seen but little of her ward, owing to the latter's popularity as a nurse, and urged her to call on her at the first opportunity. She sent her also one or two pretty toilet articles for herself and some new frocks for her baby. Constance said nothing, however, to Mrs. Wilson as to Loretta's attitude toward the church regarding remarriage after divorce, for she could not bear to renew the subject with her patroness. It was settled forever, and her spirit craved peace. XXIV It was a great relief to Constance when at last she was once more self-supporting. Her eyes appeared to be as strong as ever, and she found her new work congenial and absorbing. She was not merely Mrs. Wilson's stenographer, but her factotum, expected to exercise a general superintendence over her employer's philanthropic and social concerns, to attend to details, and, through tactful personal interviews, to act as a domestic buffer. The change from the practical severity of a law office, with its dusty shelves of volumes uniformly bound in sheep, its plain furniture and heterogeneous clientage, to her present surroundings was both stimulating and startling. Stimulating because it catered to her yearning for contact with æsthetic influences to have the run of this superb house and to be brought into daily familiar association with all sorts of lavish expenditure in aid of beautiful effects and beneficent purposes. Startling because the true quality of the luxury aimed at was unknown to her until she became a constant eye-witness. In both Mrs. Wilson's and her brother Carleton Howard's establishments a major-domo presided over the purely domestic relations, engaging the numerous servants, and endeavoring to maintain such a competent staff below stairs as to ensure delicious, superabundant food and neat, noiseless service which should emulate as far as possible the automatic impersonality of male and female graven images. All the appointments of the house were captivating; the pantry closets bristled with beautiful cut glass and delicate, superbly decorated china; flowers in great profusion and variety were brought three times a week from Carleton Howard's private nurseries to be tastefully arranged by a maid whose special duty it was to attend to this and to see that those not needed for the decoration of the house should be sent to the destinations indicated by Mrs. Wilson through her secretary--hospitals, friends in affliction or with birthdays, and the like. The spacious bathrooms were lined with artistic tiles; electric lights had been adjusted in the chambers so as to provide perfect facilities for reading in bed; once a week an attendant called to wind all the clocks in the house. Mrs. Wilson's personal appetite was not keen, yet exacting. Her breakfast was served in her own room, and, unless she had company, her other meals were apt to be slight in substance, but were invariably of a delicate, distinguished character as regards appearance if not ingredients. Her steward had instructions that the dinner table should be garnished with flowers and the most luscious specimens of the fruits of the season, though she were alone. When she had guests these effects were amplified, and her mind was constantly on the alert to provide novelty for her entertainments. During the first season of Constance's employment, music between the courses--a harpist, a quartette of violinists, an orchestra--happened to be the favorite special feature of her dinner parties. That first winter Mrs. Wilson had the influenza and went to Florida for a month for recuperation, carrying her secretary with her. The journey was made in Mr. Howard's private car, and the suite which they occupied at the elaborate modern hotel where they stopped was the most select to be obtained. The spectacle at this winter resort for restless multi-millionaires was another bewildering experience for Constance. The display of toilets and diamonds at night in the vast ornate dining-room was dazzling and almost grotesque in its competitive features. Mrs. Wilson preserved her distinction by a rich simplicity of costume. She had left her most striking gowns at home, and she let Constance perceive that her sensibilities took umbrage at this public cockatoo emulation of wealth. She was even conspicuously simple in regard to her food, as though she wished to shun unmistakably being confounded with the conglomeration of socially aspiring patrons, whose antics jarred on her conceptions of beauty. But Constance could not avoid the reflection that profuse, if not prodigal, expenditure was typical of her companion no less than of them, and that the distinction was simply one of taste. What impressed her was that so many people in the land had merely to sign a check to command what they desired, and that the mania for novel and special comforts, and unique or gorgeous possessions was in the air. On their way home Mrs. Wilson spent a few days in New York shopping, having directed Constance to communicate in advance with several dealers whose business it was to dispose of artistic masterpieces. She bought two pictures at a cost of twenty-five thousand dollars apiece, an antique collar of pearls, and several minor treasures. At the same time she took advantage of the occasion to grant an interview to two persons, a man and a woman, who had solicited her aid in behalf of separate educational charities. To each of these enterprises, after proper consideration, she sent her subscription for five thousand dollars. Undoubtedly the chief purpose of Mrs. Wilson's stay in New York was to see her daughter. After a three months' residence in South Dakota, Lucille had obtained a divorce on the ground of cruelty, and had promptly married her admirer, Bradbury Nicholson, son of the president of the Chemical Trust. Mrs. Wilson had declined to attend the wedding, which took place in Sioux City three days after the final decree had been entered--a very quiet affair. Lucille had notified her mother that it was to occur, but was not surprised that she did not take the journey. She and her husband had spent four months in Europe to let people get accustomed to the idea that she was no longer Mrs. Clarence Waldo, and recently they had taken up their residence in New York. Her new husband had three millions of his own, and, as Lucille complacently expressed the situation to her mother, society had received them exactly as if nothing had happened. "I told you how it would be, Mamma," she said. "Everybody understands that Clarence and I were mismated. I am radiantly happy, and, as for your granddaughter, she could not be fonder of Bradbury if he were her own father. He has bought a thousand dollar pony for her. All the Nicholson connection and my old friends have been giving us dinners, which shows that we can't be disapproved of very strongly." Lucille certainly looked in the best spirits when she came to see her mother. She was exquisitely dressed, and her equipage, which stood at the door during her visit, was in the height of fastidious fashion. So far as externals were concerned, it was manifest that she was making good her promise to be more conservative and decorous. Mrs. Wilson saw fit to mark her abhorrence of her daughter's course by going to a hotel instead of to Lucille's large house on Fifth Avenue. She was not willing to stay under her new son-in-law's roof, but how could she avoid making his acquaintance and dining with him? A definite breach with her only child was out of the question, as she had previously realized; besides her grand-daughter demanded now more than ever her oversight and affection. Consequently on the second day she dined at the new establishment, and consented later to attend a dinner party which was given in her honor, though Lucille kept that compliment from her mother's knowledge until the evening arrived. She had taken pains to secure the most socially distinguished and interesting people of her acquaintance, and the affair was alluded to in the newspapers as one of the most brilliant festivities of the winter. A leopard cannot altogether change its spots, and Lucille's ruling passion was still horses, but she desired to show her mother that she had genuinely improved; so it happened that after the guests had returned to the drawing-room an organ-grinder accompanied by a pleasing black-eyed young woman, both in fresh, picturesque Italian attire, were ushered in. They proved to be no less than two high-priced artists from the grand opera, who, after a few preliminary capers to keep up the illusion, sang thrilling duets and solos. When they had finished came an additional surprise in that the organ was shown to be partially hollow and to contain a collection of enamelled bonbonières which were passed on trays by the servants among the delighted guests. After the company had gone mother and daughter had an intimate talk, in the course of which Lucille, though making no apologies, volunteered the statement that she in common with half a dozen other women of her acquaintance had decided to go into retirement in one of the church sisterhoods during the period of Lent. She explained that the sisters of her new husband, who had high church sympathies, were preparing to do the same and that the project appealed to her. Mrs. Wilson was electrified. It was on her lips to ask Lucille how she could reconcile this new departure with her hasty second marriage, but she shrank from seeming to discourage what might be an awakening of faith or even of æsthetic vitality in her daughter's heart. Still, though she rejoiced in Lucille's apparent happiness and prosperity, she felt stunned at the failure of Providence to vindicate its own just workings. Much as she desired in the abstract that her daughter should be blessed, how was it that so flagrant a violation of the eternal proprieties could result not merely in worldly advancement, but an attractive home? For there was no denying that Bradbury Nicholson was a far more engaging man than his predecessor, and that he and Lucille were at present highly sympathetic in their relations. Would the harmony last? It ought not to, according to spiritual reasoning. And yet on the surface the dire experiment had proved a success and there were indications that permanent domestic joys and stability were likely to be the outcome of what she considered disgrace. Mrs. Wilson did not condescend to refer to her daughter's immediate past, but when she found that Lucille was brimming over with fresh tidings concerning the other offenders, Clarence Waldo and Paul's wife, she suffered her to unbosom herself. This news was consoling to her from the standpoint of ethical justice. As she already was aware, Mrs. Paul Howard, obdurate in her impatience of delay, had obtained a divorce on the ground of cruelty in Nebraska after six months, the statutory period necessary to acquire residence, and had then married Clarence Waldo. Now rumor reported that the newly wedded couple, who had been spending the present winter in Southern California for the benefit of the second Mrs. Waldo's bronchial tubes, had not hit it off well together, to quote Lucille, and were likely to try again. For according to the stories of people just from Los Angeles she was permitting a Congressman from California, the owner of large silver mines, to dance constant attendance on her, and her husband, quite out of conceit of her to all appearances, was solacing himself with a pretty widow from Connecticut. "Of course," added Lucille, contemplatively, "if they really intend to obtain a divorce in order to marry again, it will be convenient for them that they happen to be in California, as that is another of the states where one can acquire a legal residence in six months." Mrs. Wilson's disgust was tempered by a fierce sense of triumph. She was glad to know the facts, but she did not wish to talk about them, especially as she was far from clear in her mind that there was any logical distinction to be drawn between the conduct of these voluptuaries and that of her own child. She tossed her head as much as to say that she desired to drop the unsavory topic. But Lucille was so far blind to any similarity between the cases, or else so far content with the contrast in results between the two remarriages, that she continued in the same vein, which was pensive rather than critical. "I am thankful that Paul insisted on keeping Helen as a condition of not opposing his wife's Nebraska libel, for it would have been rather trying for the poor child to get used to three fathers in less than three years." Mrs. Wilson felt like choking. The unpleasant picture intensified her repulsion; yet she knew that speech would be no relief for she would not find Lucille properly sympathetic. Just at that moment her granddaughter came prancing into the room, and ran to her. Mrs. Wilson clasped her to her breast as a mute outlet for her emotions, for she could not help remembering that this child also had two fathers, and what was the difference but one of degree? Yet here was its mother smiling in her face, seemingly without qualms and perfectly happy. How was this peace of mind to be reconciled with the eternal fitness of things? Meanwhile Lucille was saying, "Tell me about Paul, Mamma. How does he take it? What is he doing?" Mrs. Wilson sighed. "He was terribly cut up, of course," she answered, gravely. "He feels keenly the family disgrace." She paused intentionally to let the words sink in. "Fortunately for him, he has been invited to run for Congress--that is, if he can get the nomination. It seems there are several candidates, but your uncle tells me Paul has the party organization behind him. The caucuses for delegates do not meet until the early autumn, and in the meantime he hopes to make sufficient friends in the district, which includes some of the small outlying country towns as well as certain wards in Benham." "It would be nice to have Paul at Washington, for he might be able to get the duties taken off so that our trunks wouldn't be examined when we come from Europe. I suppose it will cost him a lot of money to be elected." "I have not heard so," said her mother, stiffly. Though Mrs. Wilson's statement was true, certain allusions in her presence by Paul and his father had aroused the suspicion in her mind that elaborate plans to secure the necessary number of delegates were already being laid. The use of money to carry elections was a public evil which she heartily deplored, and which she was loth to believe would be tolerated in her own family. "He can afford it anyway," continued Lucille, disregarding the disclaimer. Mrs. Wilson changed the subject. "He was also much absorbed when I left in his new automobile." Lucille clapped her hands. "A red devil?" "That name describes its appearance admirably. It is the first one of the kind in Benham, and naturally has excited much attention." "Bradbury has promised me one for a birthday present." "I have not ridden with Paul yet," said Mrs. Wilson a little wearily, for the enthusiasm elicited appeared to her disproportionate to the theme. "He has invited me once or twice, but somehow the spirit has failed me." Lucille gasped. "It's the greatest fun on earth, Mamma. They annihilate time and distance, and you feel with the rush and the wind in your face as though you were queen of the earth. If mine runs well we intend to tour through the continent this summer. Fancy speeding from one capital of Europe to another in a few hours!" She paused, then after a moment's reverie continued, as though stating a really interesting sociological conclusion, "I think it possible, Mamma, that if automobiles had been invented earlier, Clarence and I might not have bored each other. Which wouldn't have suited me at all," she added, "for Bradbury is a thousand times nicer." Mrs. Wilson was painfully conscious that Bradbury was infinitely nicer, which increased the difficulties in the way of replying to this incongruous observation. She decided to ignore it as essentially flippant, and she rose to go. It was the nearest approach to a review of the past which either had made during her stay in New York. She hoped that Constance would not appreciate how completely Lucille had rehabilitated herself in a worldly sense, and she tried to counteract the effect of the evidence by letting fall a remark now and again to show that the memory of her daughter's conduct was still a thorn in her side. As a mother she could not but be thankful that her daughter was far happier as Mrs. Bradbury Nicholson than she had been as Mrs. Clarence Waldo. At the same time her being so was a blow to the theory that the exchange of one husband for another ought to end and ordinarily does end in misery; or, in other words, that divorced people who marry again should be and are apt to be unhappy. To be sure, it was early to judge, and the happiness might not last; and at best it should be regarded as a sporadic case of contradiction, a merciful exception to the general rule; but she was glad when the day arrived for removing Constance from the sphere of this influence, fearing perhaps some pointed question from her secretary which would invite her to explain how it was that a person who had deserved so little to be happy as Lucille should have found divorce and remarriage a blessing, if the whole proceeding in deserving cases was fundamentally opposed to the social well-being of civilization. As an antidote, Mrs. Wilson took pains to enlighten her as to the rumored depravity of Clarence Waldo and the late Mrs. Howard. But Constance asked aloud no such question. Yet necessarily she perceived that Lucille was in the best of spirits, and apparently had suffered no loss of position by her conduct. Constance did not need, however, any reminder from Mrs. Wilson that the late Mrs. Waldo was not a person of the finest sensibilities; moreover she considered the point as definitely settled for herself. Nevertheless as a spectator, if no more, she noted the circumstance that Lucille was already a different woman in consequence of her second marriage, and she detected her reason challenging her conscience with the inquiry which Mrs. Wilson had dreaded, how it appeared that the world would have been better off if Lucille had simply left the husband who had been faithless to her, and remained single instead of marrying. Constance was merely collecting evidence, as it were. All was over between her and Gordon, but as an intelligent, sentient human being she had no intention of playing the ostrich, but insisted on maintaining an open mind. It was now nearly a year since she had conversed with Gordon. Her sentence had been perpetual banishment from his presence since the fateful Sunday when they had parted. He had written to her that he could not bear to resume the old relation, for now that they knew they had been lovers in disguise, it could not be the old relation. He had declared that the best thing for them both was never to meet, and she had been forced to accept his decision, for he had not been to see her since. Yet he had mitigated the rigor of her punishment, for she chose to regard it as such, by occasional letters, written at irregular intervals, letters which let her know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the love he cherished for her was strong and deep as ever. He sent her beautiful flowers on Christmas and her birthday, and in writing to her he told her briefly whatever of special interest he had been doing. Precious as these communications were to Constance, she was of several minds as to whether to answer them. Her impulse always was to reply at once, if only that she might draw forth another letter; but sometimes her scruples forced her not to let him see how much she cared and to feign indifference by silence. She knew, as Loretta said, that she had only to whistle and he would come to her, and she felt that it would be cruel to give him the smallest encouragement to believe that she could ever alter her decision. This being so, she argued that he ought to marry; he must forget her and chose someone else. She tried to believe that she would rejoice to hear that he was engaged to another woman, but when her thoughts got running in this channel she was apt to break down and realize that she had been trying to deceive herself. In such moments of revulsion she now and then would throw her scruples to the winds and write him about herself and her doings. On two occasions she had suddenly decided that it was necessary for her to see him again; see him without his seeing her. Consequently she had frequented a spot down-town where she knew he would pass, and each time had been rewarded by a close and unobserved glimpse of his dear features. These glimpses, the letters, and the flowers were the bright shining milestones along the itinerary of her much occupied life. Busy and interested as she was in her employment, it sometimes seemed to her that she walked in a trance in the intervals between some word or sign from him. [Illustration: The flowers were the bright, shining milestone.] Delighted as she had been to travel, to see such a diverse panorama of national life as her trip to Florida and New York afforded, she was glad to find herself again at home. She had not heard from Gordon during her absence, and she was eager to see the Benham newspapers again in order to ascertain what he had been doing in his new capacity as a legislator. He had written to her the preceding autumn that he had decided to allow the use of his name as a candidate for the State Assembly, and subsequently he had been elected. Before her departure in the early days of the session, she had kept her eyes and ears on the alert for public mention of him, but had been informed that this was the period for committee conferences and that the opportunity for debate would come after the bills had been framed and were before the house. Constance knew that Gordon had the strong support of the Citizens' Club in his canvass, that Hall Collins, Ernest Bent and others affiliated with that organization had conducted rallies in his behalf, and that he was expected to favor progressive legislation. There were certain philanthropic measures in which Mrs. Wilson was interested also before the Assembly, and Constance had twice already prepared letters from her employer to Gordon in reference to these, which was another slight opportunity for keeping in touch with him. Shortly after Mrs. Wilson's return from her vacation it happened that Paul invited her again to ride in his automobile. Recalling Lucille's enthusiasm, and having been partial all her life to new æsthetic sensations, she concluded to test the exhilaration described by those who doted on these machines. The afternoon chosen was one of those days in the early spring when sky and wind combine to simulate the balminess of summer. It was a satisfaction for Paul to have his aunt beside him both because he admired her and because, seeing that he regarded her as what he called a true sport at bottom, he felt confident that she had only to experience the sensation of speed to become an enthusiast like himself. Therefore, he let his red devil show what it could do, in the hope of carrying her by storm. Equipped with suitable wraps and a pair of goggles, Mrs. Wilson found the process of whirling through the country at a breakneck pace, by the mere compression of a lever, a weird and rather magnetic ordeal. These were the adjectives which she employed to express her gratification to her nephew. She was glad to have tried it, but in her secret soul she had grave doubts if it were the sort of thing she liked. Nevertheless she did her best to appear delighted, for she had in mind to drop a few words of warning in Paul's ear to the effect that it was incumbent on men of his class in the community to preserve their self-respect in the matter of electioneering as an example to the country at large. In the intervals when Paul moderated the speed she endeavored to convey to him clearly but not too concretely the substance of her solicitude. She let him realize that she had him and his campaign in mind, but that she did not intend to meddle beyond the limit of emphasizing a principle unless he were to ask her advice. Paul listened to what she had to say with evident interest, and without interruption. He even let his machine crawl along so as to get the complete benefit of her exposition. When she had set forth her views she turned toward him and said in conclusion, by way of showing that she made no charges but simply desired to put him on his guard: "Very likely you have thought this all out for yourself and intend to see that every dollar you may use is expended legitimately." Paul let the automobile come to a halt, and removing his goggles proceeded to wipe off the dust and moisture. "Aunt Miriam, every word which you've said is gospel truth; but--and it is a large but--if I were to follow your advice to the letter there would not be the slightest possibility of my securing the nomination. I've thought it all out, as you say, and I'd give gladly to charity twice the sum I shall be compelled to spend, if I could only confine my outlay to legitimate expenses, stationery, printing and the hiring of a few halls. I've no objection to explaining to you why I can't, provided I wish to keep in the running. There are three men including myself in this district," he continued, starting the lever, "who are bidding for the nomination. Each of us has a machine, a machine the function of which is to create enthusiasm. Ninety per cent. of the candidates for public office do not inspire enthusiasm; they have to manufacture it. And there are all sorts of ways of doing so; by paying club assessments and equipping torch-light paraders with uniforms; by invading the homes of horny-handed proletarians and sending tennis or ping-pong sets to their progeny; or by the solider, subtler method of large direct cash payments, which can never be detected, to a certain number of local vampires as expenses for influence, and whose _quid pro quo_ is the delivery of the goods at the polls. I have engaged a smooth and highly recommended patriot at a high salary to conduct my canvass. He has told me there will be large expenses. When he asks for money I draw a check and ask no questions--a rank coward's way I admit. I know nothing as to what he does with the money, and so I salve my conscience after a fashion." Paul shrugged his shoulders and applied a little more power to the automobile, while he chanted: "Some naturalists observe the flea Has smaller fleas on him to prey, And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed _ad infinitum_. "Which means, my dear aunt," he continued, "that when a rich man runs for office a certain proportion of the free-born consider that they are entitled to direct or indirect pickings in return for a vote." Mrs. Wilson sighed. "But is not the price too high for a free-born citizen to pay? Why exchange private life and the herbs of personal respect for publicity and a stalled ox which is tainted?" "I've thought occasionally of getting out, but father would be disappointed. I wish to go to Congress myself and the party wishes me to go. And what would be the result if I retired? One of the other two would win, and I don't throw any large bouquet at myself in stating that I shall make a much more useful and disinterested Congressman than either of them." Mrs. Wilson shook her head, but at the same time she appreciated the difficulties of the situation. For she herself desired to see her nephew go to Washington. It was one thing to tell him to take a brave stand and refuse to swerve from the path of highest political probity, another to advise him in the midst of the canvass to dismiss his manager and thus invite certain defeat. It sometimes seemed to her that the ways of the world of men were past understanding. She wondered whether, if human affairs were in the hands of women, the rivalry of politics and the competition of commercialism would tolerate the same army of highwaymen who held up would-be decent citizens as successfully and appallingly as Dick Turpin and Claude Duval. She liked to believe that complete purity would reign, and yet the memory of what some women to her knowledge were capable of in the bitterness of club politics served as a caveat to that deduction. Discouraging as Paul's observations were, as bearing on the ethical progress of human nature, and deeply as she deplored the fact that he appeared to be winking at bribery, she recognized that she had shot her bolt, for she was not sufficiently conversant with the different grades of electioneering impropriety to be willing to take on herself the responsibility of imploring him to retire, even if he would consent to do so. But the confession had robbed the day of much of its beauty for her. She glanced at the little clock in the dashboard, and remembering that she desired to leave a message for her secretary, to whom she had given an afternoon off, she asked Paul if he would return home by way of Lincoln Chambers. It happened that in turning something went wrong, so that the automobile came to a stop. Paul was obliged to potter over the mechanism a quarter of an hour before he was able to get the better of the infirmity. Somewhat nettled, and eager to make up for lost time and to demonstrate to his companion that in spite of this mishap a red devil was the peer of all vehicles, he forced the pace toward Benham. By the time he was within the city limits his blood was coursing in his veins as the result of the impetus, and he felt on his mettle to amaze the onlookers as he sped swiftly and dexterously through the streets. Gliding from avenue to avenue without misadventure he applied a little extra power as they flew down that street around one corner of which stood Lincoln Chambers, in order to make an impressive finish. In turning he described an accurate but short circle, so that the automobile careened slightly, causing Mrs. Wilson to utter an involuntary murmur. Paul, amused at her nervousness, suffered his attention to be diverted for an instant; the next he realized that a young child, darting from the sidewalk, was in the direct path of the rapidly moving machine. He strained every nerve to prevent a collision, shutting off the power and endeavoring to deflect the vehicle's course so that it might strike the curbstone to their own peril rather than the child's; but the catastrophe was complete almost before he realized that it was inevitable. There was a sickening bump, accompanied by the screams of women; the red devil had overwhelmed and crushed the little victim, and stood panting and shaking like a rudely curbed dragon. Paul jumped from his seat and lifted the child from the gutter into which it had been hurled and where it lay ominously still with its head against the curbstone. He found himself face to face with two women, in one of whom he recognized his aunt's secretary. The other with an assertive agony which made plain her right to interfere, sought to take the child from him--a flaxen-haired girl of about four--exclaiming: "Oh, what have you done? You've killed her. You've killed her." Meanwhile Mrs. Wilson, utterly shocked, sought to keep her head as the only possible amelioration of the horror. She whispered in Paul's ear: "There's a drug store opposite. We'll take her there first and send for a doctor." At the same time she put her arm around the mother's shoulder, and said, "Let him carry her, Loretta, dear. It is best so." Loretta Davis desisted, though she stared wildly in her patron's face. "The blood--the blood," she cried, pointing to the tell-tale streaks on the child's head. "I'm sure she's dead." Acting on his aunt's suggestion, Paul bounded across the way with the limp form clasped in his arms. While those immediately concerned endeavored with the aid of the apothecary to ascertain that the injuries were not grave, a curious crowd began to gather in the store. By the time that the trial of the ordinary restoratives had made clear that the child was already beyond the aid of medicine, though Mrs. Wilson and Constance wrung their hands and counted the seconds in hope that the physician telephoned for would arrive, a reporter, a policeman, and a doctor appeared on the scene. The physician, who happened to be passing, was Dr. Dale, the oculist with the closely cut beard and incisive manner who had attended Constance. A moment's inspection sufficed him for a verdict. "There is nothing to be done," he said. At the fell words a wave of anguish passed through the group. Paul allowed Mrs. Wilson to take the baby from him; and, overwhelmed beyond the point of control, he bowed his head in his hands, and burst into tears. His aunt reverently clasped the stiffening form to her bosom regardless of the oozing blood which mottled her cloak. "We must get Loretta home as quickly as possible," she whispered to Constance, and she started to lead the way so as to save the situation from further publicity. But now that the doctor's usefulness was at an end, the two other representatives of social authority advanced their claims for recognition. The police officer, having relegated the gaping spectators to a respectful distance, began to inquire into the circumstances of the accident, in which he was ably surpassed by the agent of the press, who, note-book in hand, had already been collecting material from the bystanders and composing a sketch of the surroundings before interviewing the principals. Paul gave his name and address, and made no attempt to disguise his responsibility for the tragedy. Mrs. Wilson, finding her way barred by the two functionaries, grudgingly gave similar information in the hope that they would be allowed to escape. As she bore the victim in her arms, this would have been the result had not Loretta, who was following close behind under the supervision of Constance, and who up to this point had seemed dazed by the proceedings, suddenly realized what was taking place. She clutched Constance's arm. "Will it be in the newspapers?" she inquired with feverish interest. The reporter overheard her inquiry. "You are the mother of the little girl, madam?" he asked, addressing her, pencil in hand. "Yes. She is my only child." "Your name is?" "Loretta Davis." "And the child's?" "Tottie. She would have been five in a few weeks." The reporter perceived that he had found a responsive subject. "I lost a little girl of just that age two years ago," he volunteered sympathetically. "Is there a photograph of Tottie which you could let me have for the press? The public would like to see what she looked like." Loretta's eyes sparkled. She thrust her hand in her pocket and drew forth a photographer's envelope. "Isn't it lucky," she cried, "I got these proofs only yesterday, and they're the living image of my baby." As she hastily removed the package from her pocket, together with her handkerchief, Loretta let a small bottle slip to the floor. Constance, who was spellbound with dismay at the turn of affairs, stooped mechanically to pick it up. She recognized the pellets lauded by Loretta. In doing so her head nearly bumped against that of Dr. Dale, who was intent on a similar purpose. He got possession of the bottle, and instinctively he glanced at the label before transferring it to Constance. She observed that he shrugged his shoulders. As she put out her hand to take it from him, she said in a low, resolute tone: "Will you tell me what those are?" Then as the physician regarded her searchingly, she added, "I have a special reason for asking. I wish to befriend her." "Cocaine tablets," answered Dr. Dale. "The woman has the appearance of a drug habitué." XXV In parting with the Rev. Mr. Prentiss without personal rancor and yet with an open avowal of his conviction that Constance would marry him in the end, Gordon Perry both made an admission and issued a challenge. His admission on the surface was simply that he recognized the rector's sincerity. In his own consciousness it went further; he recognized the validity of the conflict between them to an extent which he had up to this time failed to perceive, or at least to acknowledge. The effect of this was to intensify the ardor of his convictions, but at the same time to cause him as a lawyer to respect his opponent's position, though he believed it to be utterly false. The interview had been absorbing to him sociologically, for it had crystallized in his own mind as concrete realities certain drifts or tendencies of which he had been aware, but which he had hitherto never formulated in words. Now that the occasion was come for doing so, the indictment--for it was that--had risen spontaneously to his lips. It was clear to him, as he had informed Mr. Prentiss, that there was a direct strife in American social evolution between those who sought eternal truth through the free processes of the human spirit and those who accepted it distilled through an hierarchy. Just as in his sociological perplexities Gordon, yearning to be a sane spirit, had abstained from radicalism and had sought relief in concrete practical activities, he had watched the theological firmament and had felt his way. If he realized that the Christian organizations which saw in the human soul a dignity which rejected mediation were merely holding their own as formal bodies, he comforted himself with the knowledge that the thousands of men and women who rarely entered the churches--among them many of the most thoughtful and busiest workers in the land--were to a unit sympathizers with the creed of soul-freedom and soul-development. Not merely this; he knew that among orthodox worshippers the secret belief of the majority of the educated already rejected as superfluous or antiquated most of the old dogmas. But with his reverence for religion as an institution, Gordon had no ambition to outstrip his generation; simply to be in the van of it. There was no attraction for him in iconoclasm; he craved illumination, yet not at the expense of rationalism. Now suddenly the practical issue of the Church's interference with the State, of the Church's imposition on mankind of a cruel, inflexible ideal, labelled as superior purity, had become both an immediate and a personal concern. His soul felt seared as by an iron; all his instincts of sympathy with common humanity, the helpless victims of an arbitrary aim to preserve the family at the expense of the blameless individual, were aroused and intensified. Viewed as a general issue, Gordon felt no question as to the outcome. Was it not already decided? The Church had never ceased to deplore as usurpation society's constantly louder claim the world over of the right to regulate marriage, but without avail. It was only abuse by the State which had produced a reaction and given sacerdotalism another chance. But the particular, the personal issue, was a very different matter. For him it meant everything, and his whole being revolted at the possibility of losing the great joy of life through such a misapprehension of spiritual duty on the part of her who, so far as he was concerned, was the one woman in existence. Yet during the next weeks following the interview with the clergyman he experienced a sense of flatness which was almost despondency, for he realized that he had exhausted his resources. Mr. Prentiss had refused to aid him; on the contrary, had virtually defied him by expressing a triumphant conviction that Constance's decision was final. Could it be that she, whose lucidity of mind he had been wont to admire, would refuse to understand that the barrier which seemed to separate them was but an illusion? Surely it was not for the good of the world that true love--its most vital force--should be starved because the marriage tie was played fast and loose with by others. And yet he appreciated apprehensively the subtlety of this plea for the world's good; how modern it was, and how attractive to woman when made the motive for the exercise of renunciation. Truly, the priest had argued shrewdly, yet Gordon refused to admit that Constance could be deceived for long. That seemed too incompatible with her previous outlook and their delightful comradeship which had held love in disguise. He concluded forthwith that his best hope lay in terminating that comradeship. To resume it would make them brother and sister, a relation tantalizing to him, and which might be better than nothing to her, and thus strengthen her resolve. Accordingly, with Spartan courage, he never visited her. But he chose by his letters and his gifts to let her know unequivocally that he was waiting for her to relent--would wait until the end of time. He wrote to her that her dear image was the constant inspiration of his thoughts, and that he sighed for the sound of her voice. While thus he chafed within, and yet endeavored to pursue his work as earnestly as though he had been able to forget, he received and accepted an invitation from the Citizens' Club to become a candidate for the State Assembly. He saw in this both relief and an incentive; public service would tend to divert and refresh his thoughts, and opportunity would be afforded him to promote legislation. It would suit him to become a member of the free parliament of men where, whatever its abuses and shortcomings, the needs of ordinary humanity were threshed out, and where true, practical reforms were piece by piece won from the vested traditions of the past. At the same time he declared to the members of the committee which waited on him that in accepting their nomination he was not to be understood as offering himself to the voters as a denunciatory radical or as advocating all the so-called grievances aired at the Citizens' Club. His words were, "I agree to support every measure which I believe would be an immediate benefit to the community from the standpoint of justice and public usefulness. If you are content with that guarded generalization, I shall be proud to serve you; but if you insist on my playing the demagogue or wearing the livery of the enemies of constituted society, I must decline the nomination." "That's all right," asserted Hall Collins, who was the spokesman. "What we want this trip are two or three new pieces of timber in the ship of state, repairs we'll call them if you like it so, and we've chosen you as carpenter for the job. Side with us when you can, and when you can't we'll know you're honest." This voiced the sentiment of the Citizens' Club, and it was no disparagement to the sincerity of its action that those who directed the club's affairs cherished hopes that the nominee, through his standing, would gain support from other quarters than the radical element and thus be more likely to win. Their hopes were justified. Gordon had a comfortable majority in his district, though it was understood that he had affiliations with so-called socialists and labor reformers. During the first year of his service as a legislator he made no effort to fix public attention on himself by forensic readiness. He was studying the methods of procedure and familiarizing himself with the personnel of the assembly. But though his name did not appear conspicuously in the press notices--which was a disappointment to a certain lady constantly on the watch for it--this did not mean that he failed to attract the attention of his associates. On the contrary, his thoroughness, patience, and fairness were soon recognized, and when he rose to speak--which he did more frequently in the later weeks of the session in relation to bills of importance where the vote was likely to be close--the members paid attention as though they were glad to know his reasons. It was perceived that he inclined to the party of progress rather than to the conservatives, but that he did not hesitate to turn a cold shoulder towards or to rebuke mere blatherskite or visionary measures. A modern legislature has to deal with questions which vitally affect the development of the body politic; the relations of powerful corporations to the public and it to them; the demands of toiling bread-winners for shorter hours of labor and hygienic safeguards, and the newly fermented strife between the right to hold and the obligation to share the fruits of the earth and the profits of superior ability and industry. These were problems which particularly interested Gordon, and, as one by one they arose for action, he sought to solve each on its merits without prejudice and with an eye to justice. It was understood that he would be a candidate for the next assembly, and in making their forecast the sophisticated referred to him as a coming leader, one of the men who would control the balance of power by force of his intelligence and independence. The Citizens' Club was content with the part which he had played. Several measures in which it was interested had become law through his advocacy; others, though defeated, had gained ground; two notable bills conferring valuable franchises for next to nothing upon plausible capitalists had been exposed and given their quietus in spite of a persistent lobby; and the candidate had promised during the next session to press the bill for a progressive legacy tax, an amendment to the existing legacy tax law, which would increase the sum levied in progressive ratio with the size of every estate transferred by death. This was a reform which Hall Collins and his intimates had at heart, and they had won Gordon to their side as an enthusiastic supporter of its essential reasonableness. The bill had been killed in committee for the past two years; yet the present year the adverse report had been challenged in the house and had been sustained by a comparatively small majority after strenuous and excited appeals to what was termed the sober, conservative sense of the American people. Gordon's speech in behalf of the measure was listened to with a silence which suggested a desire for enlightenment. After the debate was over there had been prophecies that another year it would stand a good chance of passing. It was toward the close of Gordon's first session in the assembly that the harrowing death of Loretta's child occurred, and, owing to the prominence of the parties concerned in the homicide, which was the first automobile accident in Benham, became town talk. The newspaper artists illustrated the tragedy with drawings of the red devil in the act of striking the victim, portraits of everybody concerned, from Tottie to the apothecary into whose shop she had been carried, and camera cuts of the obsequies. There were appropriate editorials on the iniquity of allowing furious engines to be propelled at a rapid rate through the streets; and sensational conflicting rumors were rife in the news columns as to the amount by which the repentant multi-millionaire had sought to idemnify the mother for his carelessness. Conjecture fixed it at various sums from one thousand to fifty thousand dollars, and one imaginative scribe conjured up the information that Tottie was to be replaced as far as possible by the most beautiful baby which the Howard family could procure by search or advertisement. In his genuine distress for the irreparable evil he had wrought Paul Howard had gone straightway to Loretta to pour out his contrition and to express a willingness to make such amends as were possible for the catastrophe. He saw her twice; the first time on the day following the accident, when she appeared excited but dazed; the second on the morning after the funeral. Then her condition of mind bordered closely on exaltation as the result of being the temporary focus of public attention. She was surrounded by newspapers, and she insisted on calling Paul's notice to all the reportorial features. With special pride she made him note a cut which showed that the coffin had been piled high with the most exquisite flowers--a joint contribution from Mrs. Wilson and himself. Loretta's own apartment was also a bower of roses from the same sympathizing source, and the young woman was in her best dress-festal mourning--as though she were expecting visitors. Paul found some difficulty in broaching the question of indemnity. He was in the mood to draw his check for any sum in reason which the bereaved mother should declare to be satisfactory compensation for her loss even though it were excessive, so that he might adjust the matter then and there. He had every intention of being generous; moreover he knew that all this publicity concerning the accident was injuring his canvass for the Congressional nomination, and he hoped to create a reaction in his favor by behaving handsomely. But Loretta, though she obviously understood what he was driving at, evaded the topic, and when, in order to clinch matters, he told her in plain terms that he wished to make her a present and asked her to name the sum, she looked knowing and suspicious, as much as to say that she knew her rights and had no intention of committing herself. Paul, who mistook her contrariness for diffidence, was on the point of naming an amount which would have made her open her eyes when she suddenly said with a leer intended to convey the impression of shrewdness: "I'm going to talk with my lawyer first. People say it was all your fault, and that I ought to get a fortune. I've witnesses for my side." Paul was taken aback. "It was all my fault. I've told you already that I was entirely to blame. And I'm anxious for you to tell me how much I ought to pay as damages. So there won't be any need of a lawyer on either side." Loretta argued to herself that she was not to be caught by any such smooth words. She tossed her head. "I don't know about that. I'm going to get one of the smartest attorneys in Benham to attend to my case." She waited a moment, then added triumphantly, believing that her announcement would carry dismay to her crafty visitor, "It's Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law." "Gordon Perry?" Loretta construed his inflection of astonishment as consternation. "Yes," she said, "I'm going to consult him this afternoon." It was on Paul's lips to inform her that Gordon was his lawyer too, but her uncompromising attitude had produced its natural effect, and he felt at liberty to practise a little craft in his turn. If he were to disclose the truth, she would be likely to consult someone else; whereas Gordon and he could come to terms speedily. So he merely responded that he knew Mr. Perry to be an excellent attorney, and that he would be content to abide by his decision. The final settlement required some diplomacy on Gordon's part on account of the difference in point of view between the contracting parties. Loretta had definitely fixed on ten thousand dollars as the Mecca of her hopes, than which, as she declared to Gordon at their first interview, she would not accept a cent less; whereas Paul was disposed to make her comfortable for life by a donation of twenty-five thousand. He naturally had discussed the subject with his aunt, and this was the sum which had been agreed on between them as fitting. Mrs. Wilson was overwhelmed by the disaster; it haunted her thoughts; and, though she remembered Loretta's original indifference regarding the child, it seemed to her that the only possible expiation would be a princely benefaction, such as would thrill the bereaved recipient. But when she in her turn mentioned the matter to Constance, the latter, who had been mulling over the insinuation uttered by Dr. Dale, informed her what he had said. The effect of this intelligence was to strengthen the purpose which Mrs. Wilson and Paul had already formed to have the gift tied up so that Loretta could use only the income, and thus be protected indefinitely against designing companions and herself. But when Gordon, who had abstained from revealing the extent of Paul's intended liberality, suggested this arrangement, he encountered sour opposition from his client. It was manifest that Loretta had set her heart on being complete mistress of the ten thousand dollars, and that any curtailment of her power to exhibit it and spend it as she saw fit would be a bitter disappointment. Either she did not understand, or declined to understand what was meant by a trust, and plainly she regarded the proposition as a subterfuge on the part of the donor to keep his clutch on the money. Gordon endeavored to reason with her and to show her the disinterested wisdom of the plan, but she shook her head no less resolutely after he had finished. When her repugnance was stated to Paul, he bade Gordon pay her the ten thousand dollars in cash and say nothing about the remainder. He added good-naturedly: "I suppose it's natural enough that she should like to finger the money. Let her blow it in as she chooses, and when it's gone I'll settle an annuity on her." Loretta came to Constance on the following day with glittering eyes and exhibited her treasure-trove--a bank book and a roll of bills. "It's all there," she said. "My lawyer went with me and he saw me hand it all over except this hundred dollars to the man in the cage. My lawyer made me count it first. He's smart--Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law. I'm rich now." "But you will go on nursing just the same, won't you, Loretta? It's your profession, you know." Loretta looked non-committal. "Perhaps. But I'm going to take a rest first and--and buy a few things." She spread out proudly the new crisp bank bills like a pack of cards. "I've never been able to buy anything before." Solicitous as she felt regarding the future, Constance had not the heart to repress sympathy with this radiant mood. Blood money as it was, it would, nevertheless, mean many pleasures and comforts to the pensioner. It was no time for advice or for extracting promises of good behavior. So in a few words she showed the approach to envy which was expected of her. By way of recompense, or because she had been waiting for congratulations to be paid first, Loretta presently paused, looked knowing, and giving Constance a nudge whispered oracularly, as one whose views were now entitled to respectful consideration, "I sounded him about you, Constance, and it's all right. I could see it is, though I guess he didn't like much my speaking. And what do you suppose I told him? That he mustn't get discouraged, for one had only to look at you to know that you were perfectly miserable without him." "How dare you tell him such a thing? What right had you to meddle?" cried Constance, beside herself with anger and humiliation. She clenched her hands; she wished that she might throw herself upon this arch, complacent busybody and box her ears. "This is too much! Besides, it is not true--it is not true." "True? Of course it's true. And why should you mind its being true if you love him? I was trying to help you, Constance, so there's no use in getting mad." Obviously Loretta on her side was surprised at the reception accorded her good offices, and at a loss to explain such an abnormal outburst on the part of her habitually gentle comrade. Perception of this swiftly checked the current of Constance's wrath, but, as her equanimity returned, the eyes of her mind became pitilessly fixed on herself. Perfectly miserable! Was not that indeed the real truth? And true not only of her but of him? Of him, who had told her that she was sacrificing the joy of both their lives to a fetich. Loretta's rude probing had made one thing clear--that it was futile to try longer to persuade herself that she was happy. Yet her reply was, "I take you at your word, Loretta, that you meant no harm. Please remember, however, hereafter that my relations with Mr. Perry are a subject not to be spoken of to either of us, if you do not wish to be unkind." Loretta stared, and laughed as though she suspected that this appeal was designed to put her off the scent. But she was too much absorbed in her own altered status to care to bandy words on the matter. Two days later she disappeared from Lincoln Chambers. But the fact of her absence awakened no concern in the mind of Constance for several weeks inasmuch as she had gathered from Mrs. Harrity that Loretta had gone to another patient. But presently it transpired that she had taken all her belongings with her, and had made the charwoman promise to make no mention of that mysterious fact for the time being. Mrs. Harrity could throw no further light on the lodger's exodus, but admitted that under the spell of one of the crisp new bills she had asked no questions and subsequently held her tongue. Constance immediately imparted her fears to Mrs. Wilson, who instituted promptly a search through the police authorities. Investigation disclosed that a woman answering to the description of Loretta had been seen at some of the restaurants and entertainment resorts of flashy character in the company of a man with whom there was reason to believe she had left town. It was found also on inquiry at the bank where here funds had been placed that the entire deposit had been withdrawn some three weeks subsequent to the date when the account was opened. Confronted with this disagreeable intelligence Mrs. Wilson felt aghast. It occasioned her grievous personal distress that her ward should have fallen so signally from grace at the very moment when the spirit of righteousness should have triumphed, and she was displeased to think that her philanthropic acumen had been at fault. But the elasticity of her spirit presently prevailed, and it was with an exculpating sense of recovery and of illumination which was almost breathless that she said to Constance: "I fear that we must face the fact that she is a degenerate; one of those unhappy beings whom the helping hands of society are powerless to uplift because of their inherent preference for evil." Upon her lips the word "degenerate" had the sound of the ring of fate and of modern scientific sophistication withal. XXVI A year later, in the early days of spring and the closing weeks of the next State Assembly, Carlton Howard and his son Paul sat conversing in Mrs. Wilson's study. They had been dining with her, and on rising from the table she had invited them to keep her company in her private apartment while she busied herself with matters incident to the entertainment she was to give in a little more than a week to the members of the American Society for the Discussion of Social Problems, as the crowning festivity to its four days' meeting in Benham. Mrs. Wilson was elated over the opportunity to mingle the thoughtful people of the country--some of whom, as seen at annual meetings of the society elsewhere, appeared to her to have cultivated intellectual aptness at the expense of the graces of life--and Benham's fashionable coterie. She reasoned that the experience would be stimulating for both, and with her secretary at her elbow she was absorbed in planning various features to give distinction to the event. Her hospitality, from one point of view, would not be the first of its kind in the annals of the society, for at each of the last two meetings--the one in Chicago, the other in St. Louis--there had been an attempt to entertain the members more lavishly than hitherto. So in a sense she felt herself on her mettle to set before her visitors the best which Benham afforded, and so effectively as to eclipse the past and at the same time bring a little nearer that appropriate blending between beauty and wisdom to which she looked forward as an ultimate social aim. She had been of many minds as to what form her entertainment should take, and had finally settled on this programme: Dinner was to be served at her house to the seventy-five visiting and resident members and a sprinkling of Benham's most socially gifted spirits, at little tables holding six or eight. A reception was to follow, to which the rest of her acquaintance was invited to meet the investigators of social problems. At this there was to be a vaudeville performance by artists from New York, after which, before supper, six of Benham's prettiest and most fashionable girls were to pass around, as keepsakes for the visitors, silver ornaments reminiscent of Benham in their shape or design. Mrs. Wilson was not wholly satisfied with this programme; she was conscious that it lacked complete novelty and was not æsthetically so convincing as some of her previous efforts; but considering the numbers to be fed--and she was determined that these thoughtful pilgrims should taste delicious food faultlessly served for once in their lives--she could think of no more subtle form of hospitality which would give them the opportunity to realize the artistic significance of her establishment. There were so many things to be attended to, a portion of which occurred to her on the spur of the moment, that Mrs. Wilson had requested her secretary to make long working hours, and occasionally, as on this day, to protract them through the evening. Constance was at her desk in the room appropriated to her use, which led out of Mrs. Wilson's study. The door was open, and where she sat it was easy to distinguish the conversation which went on there. When Mrs. Wilson needed her she touched a silver bell far more melodious in its tone that the squeak of electric communication. Constance had already exchanged greetings with her employer's brother and nephew, whose random dialogue, broken by the digestive pauses which are apt to occur after a good dinner, provided a cosey stimulus to Mrs. Wilson's musings. Mrs. Wilson enjoyed the feeling that she was in the bosom of her family, and that, at the same time, absorbed in her cogitations, she need give no more than a careless ear to the talk of railroad earnings and other purely masculine concerns. She was pleased too by the knowledge that Lucille was coming in a few days to pay her a visit, bringing her granddaughter and the new Nicholson baby, a boy. Her new son-in-law also was coming, and she could not help feeling elated at the prospect of letting Benham see that the marriage which ought to have been a failure had turned out surprisingly well, and that her daughter was a reputable and somewhat elegant figure in society--not exactly the woman she had meant her to be, but immeasurably superior to what she had at one time feared. She was aware in her heart that logically, according to her standards, Lucille was not a person to be made much of socially, and yet she intended her and her husband to be a feature of her entertainment, and she felt sure that her acquaintance would regard them as such. Though the inconsistency troubled her, inducing, if she stopped to think, spiritual qualms, maternal instinct jealously stifled reflection, and, furthermore, pursuing its natural bent, was rejoicing in the opportunity. Once, when interrogated sharply by conscience, in the watches of the night, she had satisfied her intelligence by answering back that her behavior was ostrich-like but human. Since the rest of her world failed to turn a cold shoulder on Lucille, was it for her to withhold the welcome befitting an only child? Paul Howard was now a Congressman-elect. His canvass for the nomination the previous autumn had been successful, and the rumors in circulation as to the sum which he had paid over to his manager to accomplish this result by methods more or less savoring of bribery, were still rife. These had reached Paul's ears, and he was unable to deny that the most sensational figures were far in excess of the actual truth. Concerning the rest of the indictment, he could say literally that he knew nothing definite. He had drawn checks and asked no questions. But in his secret soul he had no doubts as to its substantial accuracy, and after the first flush of victory was over the edge of his self-satisfaction had been dulled by regret at the moral price which he had been obliged to pay in order to become a Congressman. Yet he had comforted himself with the thought that otherwise he could not have won the nomination, and that he intended to become an exemplary and useful member. So by this time he had ceased to dwell on the irretrievable and was enjoying the consciousness that he was to go to Washington, where he hoped to make his mark. Who could tell? With his means and popularity he might eventually become a United States Senator, or secure some desirable diplomatic appointment. Paul had been spending a few days in New York, and personal business matters formed at first the topic of conversation between the two men. When presently the younger inquired if anything of general interest had happened in Benham during his absence, his father frowned and said: "That man Perry is pressing his socialistic legacy tax bill." Paul looked interested. He understood the allusion, for shortly previous to his departure for New York, in consequence of his father's animadversions, he had taken occasion to see Gordon and to discuss the question with him. "I object to the principle; it's an entering wedge," continued Mr. Howard. "When you say that because I leave a larger estate than you, my estate shall pay a larger proportionate tax than yours, you confiscate property. It is only another step to make the ratio of increase such that after a certain sum all will be appropriated by the state. It would be a blow at individual enterprise, and so at the stability of the family. If you deprive men of the right to accumulate and to leave to their children the full fruits of their industry and brains, you take away the great incentive to surmount obstacles and to excel." The banker in broaching the subject had uttered Gordon's name with denunciatory clearness, so that Constance heard it distinctly. Her spirit rose in protest at the condemning tone, and she paused in her occupation to listen. As Mr. Howard proceeded she recognized the character of his grievance. In the last letter Gordon had written her, now more than a month previous, he had mentioned the fact that he was interested in the success of what he termed the progressive legacy tax bill, and she had closely followed its course in the legislature. She knew that the committee to which it was referred had reported in its favor by a majority of one; she had also gathered, from what she read in the newspapers, that it was regarded as the most important public measure of the session, and was to be hotly debated. While she sought to smother her personal feelings, so that she might give due consideration to Mr. Howard's argument, he paused, and Paul's voice retorted: "I mentioned the one hundred per cent. argument to Gordon Perry, and he smiled at it. He said that so unreasonable and oppressive an extreme was out of the question, and a mere bogy." "Will he guarantee it?" demanded the banker sternly. "He cannot; he can answer only for the legislative body of which he is a member. If the present bill passes, why may not an Assembly twenty-five years hence declare that the public good--meaning the necessary tax levy for the expenses of an extravagant socialistic republic--demands that all which any man dies possessed of in excess of half a million dollars should, by the operation of a sliding scale of percentage, be confiscated by the State?" "But on the other hand is it really unjust to tax the estate of one, who dies possessed of a fortune larger than is sufficient to satisfy every craving of his heirs, considerably more in proportion than that of the citizen of moderate means whose children need every dollar? That is what Don Perry would answer. Moreover, this bill is tolerably easy on the children of the rich, is rather more severe on brothers and sisters than on lineal descendants, and so on through the family tree. The people who inherit millions from a cousin are scarcely to be pitied if the State steps in and takes a respectable slice." "To hear you talk one would imagine you were a supporter of the measure," said his father haughtily, recognizing Paul's proclivity to take the opposite side of an argument, but evidently regarding the subject as too serious for economic philandering. Paul laughed. "I suppose I should vote against it on general principles--meaning that it's best to hold on to what one has as long as possible. But it's one of the sanest attempts to get at the surplus accumulations of the prosperous for the benefit of everybody else which has thus far been devised. Indeed, we're not pioneers in this--in fact, rather behind the times as a democratic nation. It has been introduced already with success, for instance, in the republic of Switzerland, and in Australia and New Zealand." Mr. Howard made a gesture of impatience. "Very likely. The two last-named countries are the hot-bed of socialistic experiments. Will you tell me," he added, with slow emphasis, "what society is to gain by disintegrating large fortunes acquired by energy and thrift? I myself have given away three million dollars for hospitals, libraries, and educational endowments in the last ten years. Will the State make a better use of the surplus, as you call it?" "The trouble is, father, that some multi-millionaires are less generous than you. Evidently the State is of the opinion that the returns would foot up larger under a compulsory law than under the present voluntary system." "Up to this time personal individuality has been the distinguishing trait of the American people. I believe that the nation has too much sense to sacrifice the rights of the individual to----" He paused, seeking the fit phrase to express his meaning, and was glibly anticipated by Paul. "To the envious demands of the mob. That is one way of putting it. Gordon Perry's statement would be that society has reached the point where the so-called vested rights of the individual must now and again be sacrificed on the altar of the common good, and that a moderate bill like this is the modern scientific method of rehabilitating the meaning of the word justice." Unable to see the disputants, but listening with all her ears, Constance recognized the argument. The common good! Here was the same issue between the individual on one side and the community on the other; and this time Gordon was the champion of the State against the individual. Clearly he acknowledged the obligation--the soundness of the principle provided that the sacrifice would redound to the benefit of civilization. Yet the same mind which demanded a progressive legacy tax bill in the name of human justice rejected an inflexible mandate against remarriage as a cruel infringement on the rights of two souls as against the world. There could be only one explanation of the inconsistency; namely, that he believed profoundly that such a mandate was not for the common good. She knew this already, yet somehow its presentation in this parallel form struck her imagination. While thus she mused Constance heard Mr. Howard say in response to Paul's last sally: "I request that you will not entrust to that young man any more of the firm's business. I prefer an attorney with less speculative ambitions." Paul laughed again. "As you will, father. Gordon Perry has all the practice he can attend to without ours. He is hopelessly on his feet so far as our disapproval--or even a boycott--is concerned." "And his bill will not pass," said the banker, with the concise assurance of one who knows whereof he is speaking, and is conscious of reserve power. "I have sent for the chairman of our State Committee." "If the party is against it, you know I am a good party man, father." "It isn't a question of party. It goes deeper than that; it's fundamental. I've arranged for a conference----" At this point Mr. Howard saw fit to lower his voice. It was evident to Constance that he was imparting secrets, and revealing the machinations by which he expected to defeat or side-track the obnoxious measure. If only she could hear and warn Gordon! But what they said was no longer audible. The men's talk had dropped to an inarticulate murmur, which continued for a few moments, and then was interrupted by Mrs. Wilson's dulcet tones. The change of key had attracted her attention, which already in subconsciousness had followed the thread of the dialogue, though her deliberate thoughts were far away. "I have been listening to you two people," she said aloud, "and it is an interesting theme. I agree with you, my dear Paul, academically; as an eventual sociological development the surplus should be appropriated for the public good. But I wonder if we are quite ready for it yet. In other words, can the community--the State--the mass be trusted to administer the revenues thus acquired so as to produce more wholesome and beneficent results for the general weal than are now being fostered by the wealthy and enlightened humanitarian few under the existing laws? In the present stage of our civilization might not the standards of efficiency be lowered by such a policy, and the true development of art and beauty be arrested? There is my doubt." Her brother's response had the ring of an epigram. "To the end of time, Miriam, human affairs must be managed by the capable few, or the many will suffer. If you deprive able men of the power of accumulation, the price of bread will soon be dearer." "And what the many hope for sooner or later is free champagne," remarked Paul. Neither of his elders replied to this quizzical utterance, and there was a brief silence. Then Mrs. Wilson stepped to the doorway of the anteroom and told Constance that she did not require her services further that evening. She had suddenly remembered the former intimacy between her secretary and the protagonist of the bill. For the next week Constance diligently studied the newspapers for information in regard to the mooted measure. The entire community seemed suddenly aroused to the significance of the issue, and the daily press teemed with reading matter in relation thereto. The debate on the occasion of the second reading of the bill was the most protracted and earnest of the session. As Mr. Howard had intimated, it was not strictly a party measure; that is, it found advocates and opponents among the members of each of the two great political parties; only the so-called socialistic contingent gave it undivided support. But developments soon revealed that nearly all the conservative, eminently respectable members of the party to which Mr. Carleton Howard belonged were lining up in opposition to the bill on one plea or another. It was denounced by some as dangerous, by others, as unconstitutional; numerous amendments were offered in order to kill it by exaggerating its radical features or to render it innocuous. Constance imagined that she could discern the master hand of the banker in the fluctuations of sentiment, in some of the editorials, and in the solemn resolutions of certain commercial bodies. It was at the third reading of the bill that Gordon made his great speech--great from the point of view of the friends of the measure, because it set forth without undue excitement and superfluous oratory the essential soundness and justice of their cause. A packed house listened in absorbed silence to the forceful, concise presentation. On the morrow the rival merits of the controversy were still more eagerly bruited throughout the State. Constance could restrain herself no longer. Her lover was being stigmatized by the lips of many as an enemy of established society, yet she must not go to him and show her admiration and her faith. But she would write--just a line to let him know that she understood what he was attempting, and that she was on his side in the struggle for the common good against individualism and the pride of wealth. By way of answer there came next day merely a bunch of forget-me-nots addressed to her in his handwriting. She pressed the dainty yet humble flowers to her lips, then placed them in her breast. They seemed to express better than the pomp of roses his steadfast allegiance to her and to humanity. The days of the debate were those just preceding the coming of the pilgrims belonging to the Society for the Discussion of Social Problems. Constance's most formal duties in connection therewith had already been performed, but Mrs. Wilson kept her constantly at hand lest new ideas should occur to her or emergencies arise. Besides there were numerous minor details relating to the august entertainment on the final evening which demanded supervision. Constance was very busy, but in her heart the query was ever rising, Will he win? She had learned that the bill had been put over for three days, and that the vote on its passage was to be taken on the date of Mrs. Wilson's festivity, probably in the late afternoon, as there was certain to be further discussion before the roll was called. The four days' exercises of the Society consisted of the reading of papers on current national problems, one series in the morning, another in the evening, with opportunities for general comment. The afternoons were devoted to recreation and the visiting of points of local interest, such as the oil yards, pork factories, and other commercial plants across the Nye to which Benham owed its growth and vitality; to Wetmore College, the Institution of learning for the higher education of women; and to the new public library and Silas S. Parsons free hospital. Mrs. Wilson was an absorbed and prominent figure at all the meetings. She had no paper of her own to read, but on two occasions she made a few remarks on the topic before the Society when the moment for discussion arrived. On the third day, moreover, at the end of the paper on "The Development of Art in the United States," the president rose and made the announcement of a gift of five hundred thousand dollars from Mrs. Randolph Wilson and her brother for the erection of a Free Art Museum for Benham on the land already bonded by the city. Constance had the satisfaction of hearing the applause which greeted the declaration of this splendid endowment. Mrs. Wilson had made it possible for her to attend several of the meetings as educational opportunities, but she had received no inkling of this interesting secret. Late in the afternoon of the next day, that fixed for the entertainment and for the ballot on Gordon's bill, Constance was informed by the butler that there was a woman below who desired to see her. The man's manner prompted her to make some inquiry, and she learned that the visitor was Loretta Davis; that she had asked first for Mrs. Wilson, and on being told that she was out had asked for herself. The servant volunteered the further information that she appeared to be in a disorderly condition, and that, but for his mistress's special interest in her, he would not have admitted her to the house. Constance went downstairs excited that the wanderer had returned, yet reflecting that she had chosen a most untimely date for her reappearance. She said to herself that she would take a cab, bundle Loretta off to Lincoln Chambers, and conceal the fact of her presence in Benham from Mrs. Wilson until the following day. As she entered the small reception-room, she was shocked by Loretta's appearance. She looked as though she had lived ten years in one. Her cheeks were sunken, her eyes unnaturally bright, and her face wore the aspect of degenerate dissipation. She was more conspicuously dressed than her circumstances warranted, and her clothes appeared crumpled. But her air was jaunty, and she met Constance's solicitous greeting with an appalling gaiety. "Well, I'm back again. I hear you've been hunting for me. I suppose you'll want to know all about it, so I might as well tell you my money's gone. Some of it I lent to my friend--him I went back to--and the rest is spent. We've been in Chicago and New York, and--and I've had the time of my life." She evidently hoped to shock Constance by this bravado; but distressed as the latter was by the painful levity, she took for granted that Loretta was not herself, and that though her speech was fluent she was under the influence of some stimulant, presumably the drug which Dr. Dale had specified. While she was wondering how to deal with the situation and what could be the object of Loretta's visit, the latter supplied the solution to her second quandary. "I've seen all about the big party she's giving to-night. That's why I've come." She paused a moment, then continued in a cunning whisper, as though she were afraid of unfriendly ears: "I want to get a chance to see it--the folk, I mean, and the smart dresses. Lord sake," she added, noticing doubtless the consternation in her hearer's face, "I do believe you thought I was asking to come as one of the four hundred myself. Thanks, but I've left my new ball dress at home. They can tuck me in somewhere behind a curtain; I'd be quiet; or I'd dress as a maid. Manage it for me, Constance, like a decent woman." Her voice cracked a little, and her eyes filled with tears, suggesting a tipsy person. Then suddenly her manner changed; she squared her shoulders and said malevolently, "I'm going to see it anyway. It's a small thing to ask of her who helped to kill my only child." It was a small thing to ask certainly, absurd as the request seemed. Constance reflected that, inopportune as the application was, the decision, as Loretta had intimated, did not rest with her. "I will ask Mrs. Wilson, Loretta," she said, to gain time to think. "She will be home before long." At that moment the lady named entered the room. The butler had told her who her visitor was, and she had not avoided the interview. She had just come from an afternoon tea given in honor of the visiting pilgrims, and was attired in her most elegant costume. Loretta's eyes, as they took in the exquisite details of her appearance, dilated with the interest of fascination, yet their gleam was envious rather than friendly. Beholding the two women face to face, Constance, struck by the contrast, realized that they represented the two poles of the social system; that the one embodied aspiration, the graces of Christian civilization and glittering success, the other self-indulgence, moral decay, and hideous failure. Such were the prizes of deference to, and the penalties of revolt against, the mandates of society! Yet even as she thus reasoned her heart was wrung with intense pity, and it was she who offered herself as a spokesman and laid Loretta's petition before Mrs. Wilson. That lady's face was a study during the brief recital. Bewilderment, horrified repugnance, toleration, and finally hesitating acquiescence succeeded one another as she listened to the strange request and to her secretary's willingness to take charge of her discreditable ward if the permission to remain were granted. Obnoxious as the idea of having such a person in the house at this time of all others appeared to her at first blush, Mrs. Wilson's philanthropic instincts speedily responded to the demand upon them in spite of its obvious and vulgar sensationalism. She, like Constance, found herself asking why she need refuse such a small favor to this unfortunate creature merely because the supplication was so distasteful to her. If Constance were ready to see that she did not make a spectacle of herself, and would keep an eye on her, why, after all, should she not remain? Might not the sight of the brilliant, refined spectacle even serve to reinspire her with respect for the decencies of life? Mrs. Wilson's imagination snatched at the hope. Consent could not possibly do harm to anyone, and it might be a means of reclaiming this erring creature. Constance perceived how her employer's mind was working, and she made the course of acquiescence smooth by saying: "We will sit together, Mrs. Wilson, where we can see and no one can see us. And in return for your consideration," she added meaningly, "Loretta agrees to conduct herself as a lady--in such a manner as not to offend anyone by her behavior so long as she is in this house." "Very well," said Mrs. Wilson. "I am very glad to give my permission. You know what Constance means, Loretta?" Loretta nodded feverishly. "I shall be all right," she said. She understood that they referred to her habits, and she was willing enough to guarantee good behavior, for she knew that she had the assurance of it in her own pocket--a small hypodermic syringe, the use of which would steady her nerves for the time being. It was with an exultant intention of enjoying herself to the uttermost, and of fooling her hostess to the top of her bent, that after Constance had shown her to a room that she might put herself to rights, Loretta jabbed herself with the needle again and again in pursuit of forbidden transport. An hour later when Loretta was asleep under the eye of a maid, Constance found time to consider how she could ascertain the result of the ballot, the haunting suspense as to which had kept her heart in her mouth all day. She lay in wait for the evening newspaper, but she ransacked its columns in vain, as she had feared would be the case. Evidently the vote had been taken too late for publication. While she stood in the hall trying to muster courage to call up one of the newspaper offices on the telephone and ask the question--which would assuredly be a piece of impertinence on the part of an unimportant person like herself--she heard the ring of the front door bell. When the butler answered it the commanding figure of Mr. Carleton Howard appeared in the vestibule and from the shadow of the staircase she heard him say with jubilant distinctness, "You will tell Mrs. Wilson, James, that the progressive legacy tax bill was killed this afternoon by a majority of three votes. Reconsideration was asked for and refused; consequently the measure is dead for this session." Constance experienced that sinking feeling which a great and sudden disappointment is apt to bring. She had taken for granted that Gordon would win; that he would get the better of his opponents in the end, despite their endeavors, and gain a glorious victory for humanity and himself. Instead he had been crushed by his enemies, and was tasting the bitterness of defeat. He would bear it bravely, she did not question that, but how depressing to see the cause in behalf of which all his energies had been enlisted defeated by the narrowest margin on the very verge of success. She remained for some moments as though rooted to the spot. As poor Loretta had once said, it is love which makes the world go round, and the world had suddenly stopped for her. She ascended the stairs like one in a trance and closed the door of her room. What would her sympathy profit him? How would it help him to know that her heart bled for him? Such condolence would be only tantalization. What he desired was herself--to possess and cherish in the soul and in the flesh--as the partner of his joys and sorrows, his helpmate and his companion. From where she sat she could behold herself in her mirror the comely embodiment of a woman in her prime, alive with energy and health. He sighed to hold her in his arms, and she would fain kiss away the disappointment of his defeat. Anything short of this would be mockery for him--yes, for her. They were natural mates, for they loved each other with the enthusiasm of mature sympathy. Yet they must go their ways apart, because the Church forbade in the name of Christ for the so-called common good. How could it be for the common good to resist nature, when she knew in her heart that in obeying the law of her being she would feel no sense of shame or blame? On the one side was the fiat of the Church, and on the other the sanction of the people--of human society struggling for light and liberty against superstition and authority. That was Gordon's claim; yet he was no demagogue, no irreverent materialist. What would her own father have said--the country doctor whose sympathy with humanity was so profound? She felt sure that he would have swept aside the Church's argument in such a case as this as untenable. What was it held her back? The taunt that in obeying the law of her being she would be letting go her hold on the highest spiritual life, that most precious ambition of her soul, and forsaking the Christ whose followers had comforted her and lifted her up. As thus she mused she heard Loretta stirring. She had arranged as a precaution that they should occupy chambers which opened into each other, and it behooved her now to pay attention to her--to see that she was suitably attired and to supervise her movements. When they were dressed she exhibited to her the large dining-room set with little tables, and afforded her a peep at the guests as they swept in. Later Loretta and she looked down from a small balcony filled with plants on the splendid company assembling in the music-room. Her charge was completely absorbed by the pageant, asking at first eager questions, which Constance answered with mechanical scrupulousness, for to her in spite of the brilliant scene the world seemed far away, and she still dwelt as in a trance. As soon as Loretta recognized Lucille, who in the most stunning of Parisian gowns was assisting her mother to receive, she became nervously agitated, and after surveying her for a few moments she nudged her companion and said, "What did I tell you? Hasn't her marriage turned out all right, and isn't everybody at her feet? You might be down there with the rest of them to-night, if you'd only taken my advice." The words brought Constance back to her immediate surroundings, but as she became aware that Loretta was thrusting in her face the fact of Lucille's triumphant presence, she realized that it had already been a significant item in her nebulous consciousness. But she laid her hand gently on the offender's arm and said, "Sh! No matter about that now. Remember your promise." Loretta grunted. She paid heed to the extent of changing her tone to a whisper, but murmured by way of having the last word, "It's unjust that you shouldn't be there; it's unjust." Then she became silent; but every little while during the evening she repeated under her breath the same phrase, as though it were a formula. Constance remembered subsequently that as the evening advanced Loretta ceased to ask questions and grew strangely silent, seeming to follow with her eyes every movement of Mrs. Wilson, who in a costume of maroon-colored velvet set off by superb jewels and a tiara of large diamonds, swept with easy grace hither and thither in her endeavor as hostess to make the blending between the pilgrims and Benham's social leaders an agreeable experience for all. It was in truth a notable entertainment; the guests appeared pleased and appreciative; there were no hitches; the music evoked enthusiasm, the supper was delicious, and the closing distribution of trinkets by Benham's fairest daughters came as a delightful surprise to the departing seekers after truth. But all save the consciousness that she was facing a gay scene and was fulfilling her responsibilities was lost on Constance. She did not know until the next day that the entertainment had been a great success, for, oblivious to the music, the lights, and the brilliantly dressed assembly, her soul was wrestling once more with the problem which she had supposed solved forever. It was nearly one o'clock when the murmur of voices died away, and she conducted Loretta to their mutual apartment. She was glad that her charge showed no disposition to talk over the events of the evening, but on the contrary undressed in silence, busy with her own reflections. Having seen her safely in bed, Constance straightway sat down at her desk and wrote. It was a short, hasty note, for she was bent on posting it that night before the lights in the house were extinguished. Throwing a cloak about her, she glided downstairs, and, with a word of warning to the butler that he might not lock her out, sought the letter-box which was less than a hundred yards distant. She had not chosen to trust her epistle to any other hands. As she lifted the iron shutter she paused for a moment, then with a joyful little sigh she dropped it in and let go. Fifteen minutes later, like a happy, tired child, and wondering what the morrow would bring, she escaped from reality into the waiting arms of sleep. But Mrs. Randolph Wilson was in no haste to go to bed. She was in a complacent mood. Everything had gone off as she intended, and it suited her to dwell in retrospect on the incidents of the festivity, and to muse fancy free. Lucille had kissed her good-night and had retired. She had let her maid loosen her dress and had dismissed her for the night. She was inclined to dally; she liked the silence and the sense of calm after the activities of the day. Seated at her toilet table and looking into her mirror with her cheeks resting upon her hands, she gazed introspectively at herself and destiny. Her tiara of diamonds still crested her forehead. Somehow it pleased her to leave it undisturbed until she was ready to let down her hair. She was conscious that she had reached the age when she preferred to see herself at her best rather than in the garb of nature's disorder. It had been one of the eventful evenings of her life; she felt that by her efforts mind and matter had been drawn closer together without detriment to either. And everybody had been extremely civil to Lucille, at which she could not help rejoicing. Certainly, too, Lucille was acquiring more social charm and was more anxious to please people of cultivation. Then, too, her brother had appeared in his most engaging mood as a consequence of the defeat of the legacy tax bill. No reason for doubting her conclusion that the passage of the measure would have been premature under existing conditions had occurred to her; so it seemed that society had been saved from a mistake. Altogether the immediate present was marred by no unpleasant memory but one. As to that, she felt that she had acted indulgently, and that on the morrow she would make a last effort to rescue the unhappy degenerate. As she surveyed herself in the glass she appreciated that she was well preserved and that her grizzled hair was becoming, but that the romance of life was over. She would never marry again; she was unequivocally middle-aged. Ideas were what she had left; but for this great interest she had many years of strength and activity ahead of her. Ideas! How absorbing they were, and yet how little the most disinterested individual could accomplish! Truth looked so near, and yet ever seemed to recede as one approached it. Men and women came and went, generations lived and died, but progress, like the march of the glaciers, was to be measured by the centuries. The inequalities of life--how hideous were they still; how far from rectification, in spite of priests and charity! What was the key to the riddle? Where was the open sesame to the social truth which should be universal beauty? She was seeking it with all her soul, but she would never find it. Deep in the womb of time it lay, a magnet, yet inscrutable. Who would unearth it? Would it baffle mankind forever? or would centuries hence some searcher--perhaps a woman like herself--discern and reveal it? Pensive with her speculation, she turned her eyes, wistful with their yearning to pierce the mysteries of time, full upon the mirror, and started. An apparition, a woman's face, cunning, resentful, demon-like, was there beside her own; a woman's figure crouching, stealthy, about to spring was stealing toward her. Was it a vision, an uncanny creature of the brain? Instinctively she turned, and as she did so a large pair of hands gleamed in her face and reached for her neck. Springing up with a cry of horror, she recoiled from the threatening fingers, but in another instant she was bent backward so that her head pressed against the glass and she felt a powerful clutch upon her throat which took away the power to scream, and made her eyes feel as though they were bursting from their sockets. A voice, exultant, cruel, yet like a revivalist's chant, rang in her ears. "I've come for you. We'll go together, down to eternity. There you will scrub dirty marble floors for ever and ever." In the face in the mirror Mrs. Wilson had recognized Loretta, and she divined, as the wild figure threw itself upon her and the strong hands gripped her windpipe, that she was contending with a mad-woman. The import of the strange, accusing words was unmistakable; it was a struggle for life. Powerless to give the alarm save by inarticulate gasps, she realized that only her own strength could avail her, and that this must fail owing to the superior hold which her assailant had established. She strove with all her might to wrench herself free, but in vain. The long hands squeezed like a vise, and she was choking. She felt her senses swim, and that she was about to faint. Then with a rush a third figure intervened; someone else's hands were battling on her side, and in an instant she was free. Awaking suddenly, as one who is sleeping on guard often will, Constance had felt an instinct that something was wrong. The turning on of the electric light revealed that Loretta's bed was empty. Where had she gone? It seemed improbable that she had sought to escape from the house at that hour. Puzzled, she stepped into the hall and half-way down the staircase. There as she paused the light shining from under Mrs. Wilson's apartment on the landing below caught her eye. The next moment she heard a muffled scream. It had required all her strength and weight to tear Loretta from her victim. Having succeeded in separating them, Constance hastily put herself on the defensive, expecting a fresh attack; but Loretta, panting from her exertions, stood facing them for a moment, then burst into a strident, gleeful laugh. "You've saved her," she cried. "I'm crazy--stark crazy, I guess. What was it I said? I was going to take her where she'd have to scrub dirty marble floors forever and ever. I'd like to save her soul, she tried so hard to save mine. But it was time thrown away from the start. I was born bad--a moral pervert, as the doctors call it. Christianity was wasted on me." She shook her head, and looked from one to the other. They, horrified but spellbound, waited, uncertain what course to pursue. Mrs. Wilson, now that she had partially recovered her poise, felt the impulse to elucidate this horrifying mystery. But though she wished to speak, the proper language did not suggest itself. How could one discuss causes with a mad woman? She raised her hands to put in place the tiara which had been crushed down on her brow. "Look at her," cried Loretta, commandingly, addressing Constance and pointing. "Isn't she beautiful? She's civilization." She made a low obeisance. "I was in love with her once; I love her still. You saved her." She frowned and passed her hand across her forehead as though to clear her brain. Then she laughed again; she had recovered her clew. "You were the sort she could help, Constance Stuart; you were good. But how has she--her church--paid you back? Cheated you with a gold brick. Ha! Made you believe that it was your Christian duty to let Gordon Perry, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law, go. That's the way the aristocrats still try to fool the common people. But isn't she beautiful? My compliments to both of you." She swept a low courtesy in exaggeration of those she had witnessed a few hours earlier. "It is pitiful--pitiful and perplexing," murmured Mrs. Wilson in agonized dismay. For a moment Loretta stood irresolute, then of a sudden she began to shiver like one seized with an ague. She regarded them distractedly with staring eyes, and throwing up her hands, fell forward on her face in convulsive delirium. Constance rushed to her side; the two women raised her and laid her on the bed. Mrs. Wilson's maid was aroused, and a physician communicated with by telephone. He came within an hour and prescribed the necessary treatment. He said that the patient's system was saturated with cocaine, but intimated that she would probably recover from this attack. After the doctor had gone and Loretta had been removed to her own room, Mrs. Wilson and Constance watched by the side of the sufferer, whose low moaning was the sole disturber of the stillness of the breaking dawn. Each was lost in her own secret thoughts. The cruel finger-marks on Mrs. Wilson's neck burned painfully, but the words of her mad critic had seared her soul. For the moment social truth seemed sadly remote. She reflected mournfully but humbly that ever and anon proud man and his systems are held up to derision by the silent forces of nature. When the darkness had faded so that they could discern each other's faces, she arose, and sitting down beside Constance on the sofa drew her toward her and kissed her. Was it in acknowledgment that she had saved her life, or as a symbol of a broader faith? "Kiss me too, Constance," she whispered. The embrace was fondly returned, and at this loosening of the tension of their strained spirits they wept gently in each other's arms. Then Mrs. Wilson added, "Come, let us go where we can talk. We could do nothing at present which my maid cannot do." She led the way to her boudoir. The idea of seeking sleep had never occurred to either of them. Although Mrs. Wilson had felt the need of speech, it was some minutes after they had established themselves before she broke the silence. When she did so she spoke suddenly and with emotion, like one beset by a repugnant conviction yet loath to acknowledge it. "Can I have deserved this, Constance?" The vivid protest in her companion's face made clear that Constance did not penetrate her subtler meaning, and she hastened to answer her own question. "Not to be strangled by a violent lunatic," she said, raising a hand involuntarily to her neck. "But her words were a judgment--a lacerating judgment. How I should loathe it--to scrub dirty marble floors forever and ever. It is just that--the dirt, the disorder, the common reek, which I shrink from and shun in spite of myself. How did she ever find out? I love too much the lusciousness of life. 'It is the little rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly silence all.' Do you not see, Constance?" Leaning forward with clasped hands and speaking with melodious pathos while the morning light rested on her tired but interesting face, her confession had the effect of a monologue save for its final question. And Constance, listening understood. In truth, this cry of the soul at bay came as a quickener to her own surging emotions, and she realized that the walls of the temple of beauty had fallen like those of Jericho at the trumpets of Israel. Yet though she understood and saw starkly revealed the limit of the gospel of the splendor of things, with all the purging of perplexities which that meant for her, the claims of gratitude and of unabated admiration no less than pity caused her to shrink from immediate acquiescence in her patron's self-censure. And as she hesitated for the proper antidote, Mrs. Wilson pursued her confession relentlessly--pursued it, however, as one who recites the weakness of a cause to which she is hopelessly committed. "One is spurred to refine and refine and refine,--does not even religion--my religion--so teach us?--the spirit ostensibly, and, in order to reach the spirit, the body; and in this age of things and of great possessions one reaches greedily after the quintessence of comfort until--until one needs some shock like this to perceive that one might become--perhaps is, an intellectual sybarite. Nay, more; though we crave almost by instinct individual lustre and personal safety, reaching out for luxury that we may grow superfine, must not we--we American women with ideals--mistrust the social beauty of a universe which still produces the masses and all the horrors of life? Can it fundamentally avail that a few should be exquisite and have radiant thoughts, if the rest are condemned to a coarse, unlovely heritage?" Not only did gratitude reassert itself as Constance listened to this speculative plaint, but protesting common sense as well, which recognized the morbidness of the thought without ignoring its cogency. "Ah, you exaggerate; you are unjust to yourself," she exclaimed fervidly. "You must not overlook what your influence and example have been to me and many others. I owe you so much! more than I can ever repay. It was you who opened the garden of life to me." Mrs. Wilson started at the tense, spontaneous apostrophe, and the color mounted to her cheeks. Never had so grateful a tribute been laid at her feet as this in the hour of tribulation. And as she gazed she felt that she had a right to be proud of the noble-looking, the sophisticated woman who held out to her these refreshing laurels. "And it is not that I do not comprehend--that I do not share your qualms," Constance continued, ignoring the gracious look that she might express herself completely in this crucial hour. The time had come to utter her own secret, which she felt to be the most eloquent of revolts against the mystic superfineness she had just heard deprecated. "Within the last twelve hours the scales have fallen from my eyes also, and what seemed to me truth is no longer truth. There is something I wish to tell you, Mrs. Wilson. Yesterday afternoon I heard that the legacy tax bill had been defeated; last night before I went to bed I posted a letter to Gordon Perry informing him that I would be his wife. I have asked him to come to see me at Lincoln Chambers this morning." Mrs. Wilson's lip trembled. Genuine as was her probing of self, this flank attack from one who just now had brought balm to her wounds and cheer to her soul was a fresh and vivid shock. To feel that this other ward, whom she had deemed so safe, was about to slip from her fingers was more than she could bear. Then instinctively Constance went to her and put her arm around her. "I am sorry to hurt you," she said tenderly, "but this is a time to speak plainly. I love him, and I feel that I have been trifling with love. I am sure at last of this: that it is better for the world that two people like him and me should be happy than live apart out of deference to a bond which is a mere husk. I prefer to be natural and free rather than exquisite and artificial. As Gordon said, the ban of the Church when the law gives one freedom is nothing but a fetich. I cannot follow the Church in this. To do so would be to starve my soul for the sake of a false ideal--a false beauty cultivated for the few alone, as you have intimated, at the expense of the great heart of humanity. I can no longer be a party to such an injustice; I must not sacrifice to it the man I love." There was a brief silence. Mrs. Wilson, as her question presently showed, was trying to piece together cause and effect. "You wrote to him last night, Constance? Then this--horror had nothing to do with your decision?" "Nothing; I had been on the verge of it for some time: I can see that now. And when the news of his defeat came, I felt that I must go to him if he would let me." "He will let you, Constance." "I think so," she answered with a happy thrill. Mrs. Wilson looked up at her, and observing the serenity of her countenance, knew that the issue was settled beyond peradventure. Yet she was in the mood to be generous as well as humble; moreover, her inquiring mind had not failed to notice the plea for humanity and to feel its force. She sighed gently, then patted the hand that held hers, and said: "Perhaps, dear, you are right. At all events, go now and get some sleep. You must look your own sweet self when he comes to you." A few hours later Constance, refreshed by slumber, was on her way to Lincoln Chambers. She walked as though on wings, for she knew in her heart that her lover would not fail her. Arriving a little before the appointed time, she dismissed the children to school, and, smiling at fate, waited for what was to be. At the stroke of the trysting hour she heard his knock. She bade him enter, and as their eyes met he folded her in his arms. "Gordon!" "Constance!" "I have surrendered." She looked up into his face, bewitching in her happiness. [Illustration: "I have surrendered."] "Thank God for that!" "But I come to you conscience free, Gordon," she said, drawing back her radiant face so that he must hear her avowal before his title was complete. "I would not have you think that I have compromised or juggled with myself. If I believed that I should be a whit less pure and spiritual a woman by becoming your wife, I would never have sent for you, dearly as I love you." "And I would not have had you, darling. The love which is conscious of a stain is a menace to the world." THE END * * * * * BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Undercurrent. Unleavened Bread. Search-Light Letters. The Art of Living. The Bachelor's Christmas, and Other Stories. With 21 full-page illustrations. Reflections of a Married Man. The Opinions of a Philosopher. Illustrated. Face to Face. 
4915	----	Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines. THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS THE HEART OF RACHAEL VOLUME VI TO MY TERESA BOOK I THE HEART OF RACHAEL CHAPTER I The day had opened so brightly, in such a welcome wave of April sunshine, that by mid-afternoon there were two hundred players scattered over the links of the Long Island Country Club at Belvedere Bay; the men in thick plaid stockings and loose striped sweaters, the women's scarlet coats and white skirts making splashes of vivid color against the fresh green of grass and the thick powdering of dandelions. It was Saturday, and a half-holiday; it was that one day of all the year when the seasons change places, when winter is visibly worsted, and summer, with warmth and relaxation, bathing and tennis and motor trips in the moonlight, becomes again a reality. There was a real warmth in the sunshine to-day, there was a fragrance of lilac and early roses in the idle breezes. "Hot!" shouted the players exultantly, as they passed each other in the green valleys and over the sunny mounds. "You bet it's hot!" agreed stout and glowing gentlemen, wiping wet foreheads before reaching for a particular club, and panting as they gazed about at the unbroken turf, melting a few miles away into the new green of maple and elm trees, and topped, where the slope rose, by the white columns and brick walls of the clubhouse. Motor cars swept incessantly back and forth on the smooth roadway; a few riders, their horses wheeling and dancing, went down the bridle path, and there was a sprinkling of young men and women and some shouting and clapping on the tennis-courts. But golf was the order of the day. At the first tee at least two scores of impatient players waited their turn to drive off, and at the last green a group of twenty or thirty men and women, mostly women, were interestedly watching the putting. Mrs. Archibald Buckney, a large, generously made woman of perhaps fifty, who stood a little apart from the group, with two young women and a mild-looking blond young man, suddenly interrupted a general discussion of scores and play with a personality. "Is Clarence Breckenridge playing to-day, I wonder? Anybody seen him?" "Must be," said the more definite of the two rather indefinite girls, with an assumption of bright interest. Leila Buckney, a few weeks ago, had announced her engagement to the mild-looking blond young man, Parker Hoyt, and she was just now attempting to hold him by a charm she suspected she did not possess for him, and at the same time to give her mother and sister the impression that Parker was so deeply in her toils that she need make no further effort to enslave him. She had really nothing in common with Parker; their conversation was composed entirely of personalities about their various friends, and Leila felt it a great burden, and dreaded the hours she must perforce spend alone with her future husband. It would be much better when they were married, of course, but they could not even begin to talk wedding plans yet, because Parker lived in nervous terror of his aunt's disapproval, and Mrs. Watts Frothingham was just now in Europe, and had not yet seen fit to answer her nephew's dignified notification of his new plans, or the dutiful and gracious note with which Miss Leila had accompanied it. The truth, though Leila did not know it, was that Mrs. Frothingham had a pretty social secretary named Margaret Clay, a strange, attractive little person, eighteen years old, whose mother had been the old lady's companion for many years. And to Magsie, as they all called her, young Mr. Hoyt had paid some decided attention not many months before. Mrs. Frothingham had seen fit to disapprove these advances then, but she was an extraordinarily erratic and cross-grained old lady, and her silence now had forced her nephew uncomfortably to suspect that she might have changed her mind. "Darn it!" said the engaging youth to himself "It's none of her business, anyway, what I do!" But it made him acutely uneasy none the less. He was the possessor of a good income, as he stood there, this mild little blond; it came to him steadily and regularly, with no effort at all on his part, but, with his aunt's million--it must be at least that--he felt that he would have been much happier. There it was, safe in the family, and she was seventy-six, and without a direct heir. It would be too bad to miss it now! He thought of it a great deal, was thinking of it this moment, in fact, and Leila suspected that he was. But Mrs. Buckney, aside from a half-formed wish that young persons were more demonstrative in these days, and that the wedding might be soon, had not a care in the world, and, after a moment's unresponsive silence, returned blithely to her query about Clarence Breckenridge. "I haven't seen him," responded one of her daughters presently. "Funny, too! Last year he didn't miss a day." "Of course he'll get the cup as usual, this year," Mrs. Buckney said brightly. "But I don't suppose young people with their heads full of wedding plans will care much about the golf!" she added courageously. To this Miss Leila answered only with a weary shrug. "Been drinking lately," Mr. Hoyt volunteered. "You say he has?" Mrs. Buckney took him up promptly. "Is that so? I knew he did all the time, of course, but I hadn't heard lately. Well--! Pretty hard on Mrs. Breckenridge, isn't it?" "Pretty hard on his daughter," Miss Leila drawled. "He has all kinds of money, hasn't he, Park?" "Scads," said Mr. Hoyt succinctly. Conversation languished. Miss Leila presently said decidedly that unless her mother stood still, the sun, which was indeed sinking low in the western sky, got in everyone's eyes. Miss Edith said that she was dying for tea; Mr. Hoyt's watch was consulted. Four o'clock; it was a little too early for tea. At about five o'clock the sunlight was softened by a steadily rising bank of fog, which drifted in from the east; a mist almost like a light rain beat upon the faces of the last golfers. There were no riders on the bridle path now, and the long line of motor cars parked by the clubhouse doors began to move and shift and lessen. People with dinner engagements melted mysteriously away, lights bloomed suddenly in the dining-room, shades were drawn and awnings furled. But in the club's great central apartment--which was reception-room, lounging-room, and tea-room, and which, opened to the immense porches, was used for dances in summer, and closed and holly-trimmed, was the scene of many a winter dance as well--a dozen good friends and neighbors lingered for tea. The women, sunk in deep chairs about the blazing logs in the immense fireplace, gossiped in low tones together, punctuating their talk with an occasional burst of soft laughter. The men watched teacups, adding an occasional comment to the talk, but listening in silence for the most part, their amused eyes on the women's interested faces. Here was a representative group, ranging in age from old Peter Pomeroy, who had been one of the club's founders twelve years ago, and at sixty was one of its prominent members to-day, to lovely Vivian Sartoris, a demure, baby-faced little blonde of eighteen, who might be confidently expected to make a brilliant match in a year or two. Peter, slim, hard, gray-haired and leaden-skinned, well-groomed and irreproachably dressed, was discussing a cotillion with Mrs. Sartoris, a stout, florid little woman who was only twice her daughter's age. Mrs. Sartoris really did look young to be the mother of a popular debutante; she rode and played golf and tennis as briskly as ever; it was her pose to bring up the subject of age at all times, and to threaten Vivian with terrible penalties if she dared marry before her mother was forty at least. Old Peter Pomeroy, who had a shrewd and disillusioned gray eye, thought, as everyone else thought, that Mrs. Sartoris was an empty-headed little fool, but he rarely talked to a woman who was anything else, and no woman ever thought him anything but markedly courteous and gallant. He was old now, rich, unmarried, quite alone in the world. For forty years he had kept all the women of his acquaintance speculating as to his plans; marriageable women especially--perhaps fifty of them--had been able in all maidenliness to indicate to him that they might easily be persuaded to share the Pomeroy name and fortune. But Peter went on kissing their hands, and thrilling them with an intimate casual word now and then, and did no more. Perhaps he smiled about it sometimes, in the privacy of his own apartments--apartments which were variously located in a great city hotel, an Adirondacks camp, a luxurious club, his own yacht, and the beautiful home he had built for himself within a mile of the spot where he was now having his tea. Sometimes it seemed amusing to him that so many traps were laid for him. He could appraise women quickly, and now and then he teased a woman of his acquaintance with a delightfully worded description of his ideal of a wife. If the woman thereafter carelessly indicated the possession of the desired qualities in herself, Peter saw that, too, but she never knew it, and never saw him laughing at her. She went on for a month or two dressing brilliantly for his carefully chaperoned little dinners, listening absorbed to his dissertations upon Japanese prints or draperies from Peshawar, until Peter grew tired and drew off, when she must put a brave face upon it and do her share to show that she realized that the little game was over. He had not been entirely without feminine companionship, however, during the half-century of his life as a man. Everybody knew something--and suspected a great deal more--of various friendships of his. Even the girls knew that Peter Pomeroy was not over-cautious in the management of his affairs, but they did not like him the less, nor did their mothers find him less eligible, in a matrimonial sense. Sometimes he met the older women's hints quite seriously, with brief allusions to some "little girl" who was always as sweet and deserving and virtuous as his own fatherly interference in her affairs was disinterested and kind. "I did what I could for her--risking what might or might not be said," Mr. Pomeroy might add, with a hero's modest smile and shrug. And if nobody ever believed him, at least nobody ever challenged him. Vivian Sartoris, girlishly perched on the great square leather fender that framed the fireplace, was merely a modern, a very modern, little girl, demurely dressed in the smartest of white taffeta ruffles, with her small feet in white silk stockings and shoes, a daring little black-and-white hat mashed down upon her soft, loose hair, and, slung about her shoulders, a woolly coat of clearest lemon yellow. Vivian gave the impression of a soft little watchful cat, unfriendly, alert, selfish. Her manner was studiedly rowdyish, her speech marred by slang; she loved only a few persons in the world besides herself. One of these few persons, however, was Clarence Breckenridge's daughter, Carol, affectionately known to all these persons as "Billy," and it was in Miss Breckenridge's defence that Vivian was speaking now. A general yet desultory discussion of the three Breckenridges had been going on for some moments. And some particular criticism of the man of the family had pierced Miss Sartoris' habitual attitude of bored silence. "That's all true about him," she said, idly spreading a sturdy little hand to the blaze. "I have no use for Clarence Breckenridge, and I think Mrs. Breckenridge is absolutely the most cold-blooded woman I ever met! She always makes me feel as if she were waiting to see me make a fool of myself, so that she could smile that smooth superior smile at me. But Carol's different--she's square, she is; she's just top-hole--if you know what I mean--she's the finest ever," finished Miss Sartoris, with a carefully calculated boyishness, "and what I mean to say is, she's never had a fair deal!" There was a little murmur of assent and admiration at this, and only one voice disputed it. "You're not called upon to defend Billy Breckenridge, Vivian," said Elinor Vanderwall, in her cool, amused voice. "Nobody's blaming Billy, and Rachael Breckenridge can stand on her own feet. But what we're saying is that Clarence, in spite of what they do to protect him, will get himself dropped by decent people if he goes on as he IS going on! He was tennis champion four or five years ago; he played against an Englishman named Waters, who was about half his age; it was the most remarkable thing I ever saw--" "Wonderful match!" said Peter Pomeroy, as she paused. "Wonderful--I should say so!" Miss Vanderwall sighed admiringly at the memory. "Do you remember that one set went to nineteen--twenty-one? Each man won on his own service--'most remarkable match I ever saw! But Clarence Breckenridge couldn't hold a racket now, and his game of bridge is getting to be absolutely rotten. Crime, I call it!" Vivian Sartoris offered no further remark. Indeed she had drifted into a low-toned conversation with a young man on the fender. Elinor Vanderwall was neither pretty nor rich, and she was unmarried at thirty-four, her social importance being further lessened by the fact that she had five sisters, all unmarried, too, except Anna, the oldest, whose son was in college. Anna was Mrs. Prince; her wedding was only a long-ago memory now. Georgiana, who came next, was a calm, plain woman of thirty-seven, interested in church work and organized charities. Alice was musical and delicate. Elinor was worldly, decisive, the social favorite among the sisters. Jeanette was boyish and brisk, a splendid sportswoman, and Phyllis, at twenty-six, was still babyish and appealing, tiny in build, and full of feminine charms. All five were good dancers, good tennis and golf players, good horsewomen, and good managers. All five dressed well, talked well, and played excellent bridge. The fact of their not marrying was an eternal mystery to their friends, to their wiry, nervous little father, and their large, fat, serene mother; perhaps to themselves as well. They met life, as they saw it, with great cleverness, making it a rule to do little entertaining at home, where the preponderance of women was most notable, and refusing to accept invitations except singly. The Vanderwall girls were rarely seen together; each had her pose and kept to it, each helped the others to maintain theirs in turn. Alice's music, Georgiana's altruistic duties, these were matters of sacred family tradition, and if outsiders sometimes speculated as to the sisters' sincerity, at least no Vanderwall ever betrayed another. And despite their obvious handicaps, the five girls were regarded as social authorities, and their names were prominently displayed in newspaper accounts of all smart affairs. While making a fine art of feminine friendships, they yet diffused a general impression of being involved in endless affairs of the heart. They were much in demand to fill in bridge tables, to serve on club directorates, to amuse week-end parties, to be present at house weddings, and to remain with the family for the first blank day or two after the bride and groom were gone. "Queer fellow, Breckenridge," said George Pomeroy, old Peter's nephew, a red-faced, florid, simple man of forty. "Well, he never should have married as he did, it's all in a mess," a woman's voice said lazily. "Rachael's extraordinary of course--there's no one quite like her. But she wasn't the woman for him. Clarence wanted the little, clinging, adoring kind, who would put cracked ice on his forehead, and wish those bad saloonkeepers would stop drugging her dear big boy. Rachael looks right through him; she doesn't fight, she doesn't care enough to fight. She's just supremely bored by his weakness and stupidity. He isn't big enough for her, either in goodness or badness. I never knew what she married him for, and I don't believe anyone else ever did!" "I did, for one," said Miss Vanderwall, flicking the ashes from her cigarette with a well-groomed fingertip. "Clarence Breckenridge never was in love but once in his life--no, I don't mean with Paula. I mean with Billy." And as a general nodding of heads confirmed this theory, the speaker went on decidedly: "Since that child was born she's been all the world to him. When he and Paula were divorced--she was the offender--he fretted himself sick for fear he'd done that precious five-year-old an injury. She didn't get on with her grandmother, she drove governesses insane, for two or three years there was simply no end of trouble. Finally he took her abroad, for the excellent reason that she wanted to go. In Paris they ran into Rachael Fairfax and her mother--let's see, that was seven years ago. Rachael was only about twenty-one or two then. But she'd been out since she was sixteen. She had the bel air, she was beautiful--not as pretty as she is now, perhaps--and of course her father was dead, and Rachael was absolutely on the make. She took both Clarence and Billy in hand. I understand the child was wearing jewelry and staying up until all hours every night. Rachael mothered her, and of course the child came to admire her. The funny thing is that Rachael and Billy hit it off very well to this day. "She and Clarence were married quietly, and came home. And I don't think it was weeks, it was DAYS--and not many days--later, that Rachael realized what a fool she'd been. Clarence had eyes for no one but the girl, and of course she was a fascinating little creature, and she's more fascinating every year." "She's not as attractive as Rachael at that," said Peter Pomeroy. "I know, my dear Peter," Miss Vanderwall assented quickly. "But Billy's impulsive, and affectionate, at least, and Rachael is neither. Anyway, Billy's at the age now when she can't think of anything but herself. Her frocks, her parties, her friends--that's all Clarence cares about!" "Selfish ass!" said a man's voice in the firelight. "I KNOW Clarence takes Carol and her friends off on week-end trips," some woman said, "and leaves Rachael at home. If Rachael wants the car, she has to ask them their plans. If she accepts a dinner invitation, why, Clarence may drop out the last moment because Carol's going to dine alone at home and wants her Daddy." "Rachael's terribly decent about it," said the deep voice of old Mrs. Torrence, who was chaperoning a grandson, glad of any excuse to be at the club. "Upon my word I wouldn't be! She will breakfast upstairs many a morning because Clarence likes Carol to pour his coffee. And when that feller comes home tipsy--" "Five nights a week!" supplemented Peter Pomeroy. "Five nights a week," the old lady agreed, nodding, "she makes him comfortable, quiets the house, and telephones around generally that Clarence has come home with a splitting headache, and they can't come--to dinner, or cards, or whatever it may be. But of course I don't claim that she loves him, nor pretends to. I can imagine the scornful look with which she goes about it." "Well, why does she stand it?" said Mrs. Barker Emory, a handsome but somewhat hard-faced woman, with a manner curiously compounded of eagerness and uncertainty. "Y'know, that's what I've been wondering," an Englishman added interestedly. "Why, what else would she do?" Miss Vanderwall asked briskly. "Rachael's a perfectly adorable and brilliant and delightful creature," summarized Peter Pomeroy, "but she's not got a penny nor a relative in the world that I've ever heard of! She's got no grounds for divorcing Clarence, and if she simply wanted to get out, why, now that she's brought Billy up, introduced her generally, whipped the girl into some sort of shape and got her the right sort of friends, I suppose she might get out and welcome!" "No, Billy honestly likes her," objected Vivian Sartoris. "She doesn't care for her enough to see that there's fair play," Elinor Vanderwall said quickly. "Why doesn't she take a leaf from Paula's book," somebody suggested, "and marry again? She could go out West and get a divorce on any grounds she might choose to name." "Well, Rachael's a cold woman, and a hard woman--in a way," Miss Vanderwall said musingly, after a pause, when the troubles of the Breckenridges kept the group silent for a moment. "But she's a good sport. She gets a home, and clothes, and the club, and a car and all the rest out of it, and she knows Billy and Clarence do need her, in a way, to run things, and to keep up the social end. More than that, Clarence can't keep up this pace long--he's going to pieces fast--and Billy may marry any day--" "I understand Joe Pickering's a little bit touched in that quarter," said Mrs. Torrence. "Yes--well, Clarence will never stand for THAT," somebody said. Little Miss Sartoris neglected the Torrence grandson long enough to say decidedly: "She wouldn't LOOK at Joe Pickering! Joe drinks, and Billy's had enough of that with her father. Besides, he has no money of his own! He's impossible!" "Where's the mother all this time?" asked the Englishman. "I mean to say, she's living, isn't she, and all that?" "Very much alive," Miss Vanderwall said. "Married to an Italian count--Countess Luca d' Asafo. His people have cut him off; they're Catholics. She has two little girls; there's an uncle who's obliged to leave property to a son, and it serves Paula quite right, I think. Where they live, or what on, I haven't the remotest idea. I saw her in a car on Fifth Avenue, not so long ago, with two heavy little black-haired girls; she looked sixty." "Her sister, you know, was thick with my niece, Barbara Olliphant," said Peter Pomeroy. "And funny thing!--when Barbara was married..." It was a long story, and fortunately moved away from the previous topic; so that when it was presently interrupted by the arrival of two women, everybody in the group had cause to feel gratitude for a merciful deliverance. The two women were Rachael and Carol Breckenridge, who came in a little breathless, the throbbing engine of their motor car still sounding faintly from the direction of the club doorway. Carol, a slender, black-eyed, dusky-skinned girl of seventeen, took her place beside Miss Sartoris on the fender, granting a brief unsmiling nod to one or two friends, and eying the group between the loose locks of her smoky, cropped black hair with the inscrutable, almost brooding, expression that was her favorite affectation. Her lithe, loosely built little body was as flat as a boy's, she clasped her crossed knees with slender, satin-smooth little brown hands, exposing by her attitude a frill of embroidered petticoat, a transparent stretch of ash-gray silk stocking, and smart ash-gray buckskin slippers with silver buckles. She was an effective little figure in the mingled twilight and firelight, but it was toward her beautiful stepmother that everybody looked as Rachael Breckenridge seated herself on the arm of old Mrs. Torrence's chair and sent a careless greeting about the circle. "Hello, everybody!" she said, in a voice of extraordinary richness and sweetness, "Peter, Dolly, Vivian--HELLO, Elinor! How do you do, Mrs. Emory?" There was an aside when the newcomer said imperatively to a club attendant, "We'll have some light here, please!" Then she resumed easily: "I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Emory, I interrupted you--" "I only said that you were a little late for tea," said Mrs. Emory, sweetly, wishing with a sort of futile rage that she could learn to say almost nothing when this other woman, with her insulting bright air of making one feel inferior, was about. The Emorys had lived in Belvedere Hills for two years, coming from Denver with much money and irrefutable credentials. They had been members of the club perhaps half that time, members in good standing. But Mrs. Emory would have paid a large sum to have Rachael Breckenridge call her "Belle," and Rachael Breckenridge knew it. The lights, duly poured in a soft flood from all sides of the room, revealed in Mrs. Breckenridge one of those beauties that an older generation of diarists and letter writers frankly spelled with a capital letter as distinguishing her charms from those of a thousand of lesser degree. When such beauty is unaccompanied by intellect it is a royal dower, and its possessor may serenely command half a century of unquestioning adoration from the sons of men, and all the good things of life as well. But when there is a soul behind the matchless eyes, and a keen wit animates the lovely mouth, and when the indication of the white forehead is not belied, it is a nice question whether great beauty be a gift of benign or malicious fairies. Not a woman in this room or in any room she entered could look at Rachael Breckenridge without a pang; her supremacy was beyond all argument or dispute. And yet there was neither complacency nor content in the lovely face; it wore its usual expression of arrogant amusement at a somewhat tiresome world. Both in the instant impression it made, and under closest analysis, Rachael Breckenridge's beauty stood all tests. Her colorless skin was as pure as ivory, her dark-blue eyes, surrounded by that faint sooty color that only Irish eyes know, were set far apart and evenly arched by perfect brows. Her white forehead was low and broad, the lustreless black hair was swept back from it with almost startling simplicity, the line of her mouth was long, her lips a living red. Her figure, as she sat balancing carelessly on a chair-arm, showed the exquisite curves of a woman slow to develop, who is approaching the height of her beauty, and from the tip of her white shoe to the poppies on her soft straw hat there was that distinction in her clothing that betrayed her to be one of the few who may be always individual yet always in the fashion. She was a woman, quick, dynamic, impatient, who vitalized the very atmosphere in which she moved, challenging life by endless tests and measures, scornful of admiration, and ambitious, even in this recognized ambition of finding herself beautiful, prominent, and a rich man's wife, for something further and greater, she knew not what. She was an important figure in this world of hers; her word was authority, her decree law. Never was censure so quick as hers, never criticism so biting, or satire so witty. No human emotion was too sacred to form a target for her glancing arrows, nor was any affection deep enough to arouse in her anything but doubt and scorn. "I don't want any tea, thank you, Peter," she said now, in the astonishingly rich voice that seemed to fill the words with new meaning. "And I won't allow the Infant to have any--no, Billy, you shall not. You've got a complexion, child; respect it. Besides, you've just had some. Besides, we're here for only two seconds--it's six o'clock. We're looking for Clarence--we seek a husband fond, a parent dear--" "Clarence hasn't showed up here at all to-day," said Peter Pomeroy, stretching back comfortably in his chair, appreciative eyes upon Clarence's wife. "Shame, too, for we had some good golf. Course is in splendid condition. George beat me three up and two to play, but I don't bear any malice. Here I am signing for his highball." "Well, then, we'll go on home," Mrs. Breckenridge said, without, however, changing her relaxed position. "Clarence is probably there; we've been playing cards at the Parmalees', or at least I have. Billy and Katrina were playing tennis with Kent and--who's the red-headed child you were enslaving this afternoon, Bill?" "Porter Pinckard," Miss Breckenridge answered, indifferently, before entering into a confidential exchange of brevities with Miss Sartoris. "I'll call him out, and run him through the liver," said Peter Pomeroy, "the miserable catiff! I'll brook no rivals, Billy." Billy merely smiled lazily at this; her eyes were far more eloquent than her tongue, as she was well aware. "Let her alone, Fascination Fledgerby!" said Mrs. Breckenridge briskly. "Why can't we take you home with us, Elinor? We go your way." "You may," said Miss Vanderwall, rising. "You're dining at the Chases', aren't you, Billy? So am I. But I was going to change here. Where are you dining, Rachael?" "Change at my house," Mrs. Breckenridge suggested, or rather commanded. "I'm dining in my room, I think. I'm all in." But the clear and candid eyes deceived no one. Clarence was misbehaving again, everybody decided, and poor Rachael could not bespeak five minutes of her own time until this particular period of intemperance was over. Miss Vanderwall, settling herself in the beautiful Breckenridge car five minutes later, faced the situation boldly. "Where's Clarence, Rachael?" "I haven't the remotest idea, my dear woman," said Mrs. Breckenridge frankly, yet with a warning glance at the back of her stepdaughter's head. Billy was at the wheel. "He didn't dine at home last night--" "But we knew where he was," Billy said quickly, half turning. "We knew where he was," agreed the older woman. "Watch where you're going, Bill! He told Alfred that he was dining in town, with a friend, talking business." "I thought it was the night of Berry Stokes' dinner," suggested Miss Vanderwall. "He wasn't there--I asked him not to go," said Billy. "Oh--" Miss Vanderwall began and then abruptly stopped. "Oh!" said she mildly, in polite acquiescence. They were sweeping through the April roadsides so swiftly that it was only a moment later when Rachael, reaching for the door, remarked cheerfully, "Here we are!" The car had entered a white stone gateway, and was approaching a certain charming country mansion, one that was not conspicuous among a thousand others strewn over the neighboring hills and valleys, but a beautiful home nevertheless. Vines climbed the brick chimneys, and budding hydrangeas, in pots, topped the white balustrades of the porch. A hundred little details of perfect furnishing would have been taken for granted by the casual onlooker, yet without its lawns, its awnings, its window boxes and snowy curtaining, its glimpse of screened veranda and wicker chairs, its trim assembly of garage, stable, and servants' cottages, its porte-cochere, sleeping porches, and tennis court, it would have seemed incomplete and uncomfortable to its owners. Rachael Breckenridge neither liked it nor disliked it. It had been her home for the seven years of her married life, except for the month or two she spent every winter in a New York hotel. She had never had any great happiness in it, to be sure, but then her life had been singularly lacking in moments of real happiness, and she had valued other elements, and desired other elements more. She had not expected to be happy in this house, she had expected to be rich and envied, and secure, and she was all of these things. That they were not worth attaining, no one knew better than Rachael now. The house was of course a great care to her, the more so because Billy was in it so little, and was so frankly eager for the time when she should leave it and go to a house of her own, and because Clarence was absolutely indifferent to it in his better moods, and pleased with nothing when he was in the grip of his besetting sin. The Breckenridges did little formal entertaining, but the man of the house liked to bring men down from town for week-end visits, and Billy brought her young friends in and out with youthful indifference to domestic regulations, so that on Rachael, as housekeeper, there fell no light burden. She carried it gracefully, knitting her handsome brows as the seasons brought about their endless problems, discussing bulbs with old Rafael in the garden when the snow melted, discussing paper and paint in the first glory of May, superintending the making of iced drinks on the hot summer afternoons, and in October filling her woodroom duly with the great logs that would blaze neglected in the drawing-room fireplace all winter long. The house was not large, as such houses go; too much room was wasted by a very modern architect in linen closets and coat closets, bathrooms and hall space, dressing-rooms, passages, and nooks and corners generally. Yet Rachael's guest-rooms were models in their way, and when she gave a luncheon the women who came were always ready to exclaim in despairing admiration over the beauty of the gardens, the flower-filled, airy rooms, the table appointments, and the hostess herself. But when they said that she was "wonderful"--and it was the inevitable word for Rachael Breckenridge-the general meaning went deeper than this. She was wonderful in her pride, the dignity and the silence of her attitude toward her husband; she had been a wonderful mother to Clarence's daughter; not a loving mother, perhaps--she was not loving to anyone--but a miracle of determination and clearness of vision. Who else, her friends wondered, could have cleared the social horizon for Paula Breckenridge's daughter so effectively? With what brisk resoluteness the new mother had cut short the aimless European wanderings, cropped the child's artificially curled hair, given away the unsuitable silk stockings and the ridiculous frocks and hats. Billy, shorn and bewildered, had been brought home; had entered Miss Proctor's select school, entered Miss Roger's select dancing class, entered Professor Darling's expensive riding classes. Billy, in dark-blue Peter Thompsons, in black stockings and laced boots, had been dropped in among other little girls in Peter Thompsons and laced boots, little girls with the approved names of Whittaker and Bowditch, Moran and Merridew and Parmalee. Billy had never doubted her stepmother's judgment; like all of the new Mrs. Breckenridge's friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed with that lady's amazing efficiency. She had been a spoiled and discontented little rowdy. She became an entirely self-satisfied little gentlewoman. Clarence, jealously watching her progress, knew that Rachael was doing for his daughter far more than he could ever do himself. But Rachael, if she had expected reward, reaped none. Her husband was a supremely selfish man, and his daughter inherited his sublime ability to protect his own pleasure at any cost. Carol admired her step-mother, but she was an indolent and luxury-loving little soul, and even as early as her twelfth or fourteenth year she had been deeply flattered by the evidences of her own power over her father. Into her youthful training no reverence for parents--real or adopted--had been infused; she called her father "Clancy," as some of his intimate friends called him, and he delighted to take her orders and bow to her pretty tyranny. Before she was sixteen he began to take her about with him: to dances, to the theatre, and for long trips in his car. He entered eagerly into her young friendships, frantic to prove himself as young at heart as she. He paid her the extravagant compliments of a lover, and gave her her grandmother's beautiful jewelry, as well as every trinket that caught her eye. And Billy accepted his attentions with a finished coquetry that was far from childlike, a flush on her satin cheek, a dimple puckering the corner of her mouth, and silky lashes lowered over her satisfied eyes. She was inevitably precocious in many ways, but she was young enough still to fancy herself one of the irresistible beauties and belles of the world, and to flaunt a perfectly conscious arrogance in the eyes of all other women. All this was bewildering and painful to Rachael. She had never loved her husband--love entered into none of her relationships--her marriage had been only a step in the steady progress of her life toward the position she desired in the world. But she had liked him. She had liked his child, and she had come into the new arrangement kindly and gallantly determined to make the venture at least as profitable to them both as it was to her. To be ignored, to be deliberately set aside, to be insulted by a selfishness so calculating and so deliberate as to make her own attitude seem all warmth and generosity by comparison, genuinely astonished her. At first, indeed, a sort of magnificent impatience had prevented her from feeling any stronger emotion than astonishment. It was too ridiculous, said the bride to herself tolerantly; it could not go on, of course, this preposterous consideration of a child of ten, this belittling consideration of her own place in the scheme as less Clarence's wife than Billy's mother. It must adjust itself with every week that they three lived together, the child slipping back to her own life, the husband and wife sharing theirs. When Clarence's first fears for his daughter's comfort under the new rule were set at rest, when his confidence in the wisdom and efficiency of his wife was fully established, then a normal relationship must ensue. "Surely Clarence wouldn't ask a woman to marry him just to give Billy a home and social backing?" Rachael asked herself, in those first puzzled days in Paris. That was seven years ago. She knew exactly that for truth now. Long ago she had learned that whatever impulse had moved Clarence Breckenridge to ask her to marry him was quickly displaced by his vision of Billy's need as being greater than his own. It had been an unpalatable revelation, for Rachael was a woman proud as well as beautiful. But presently she had accepted the situation as it stood, somehow fighting her way, as the years went by, to fresh acceptances: the acceptance of Billy's ripening charms, the acceptance of Clarence's more and more frequent times of inebriated irresponsibility. Silently she made her mental adjustments, moving through her gay and empty life in an unsuspected bitterness of solitude, won to protest and rebellion only when the cold surface she presented to the world was threatened from within or without. It was distinctly threatened now, she realized with a little sick twist of apprehension at heart, when her casual inquiry to a maid upon entering was answered by a discreet, "Yes, Mrs. Breckenridge, Mr. Breckenridge came home half an hour ago. Alfred is with him." This was unexpected. Rachael did not glance either at her guest or her stepdaughter, but she disposed of them both in a breath. "Someone wants you on the telephone, Billy," she repeated after the maid's information. "Take it in the library. Run right up to my room, Elinor, and I'll be there in two minutes. I'll send some one in with towels and brushes; you've time for a tub. Take these things, Helda, and give them to Annie, and tell her to lookout for Miss Vanderwall." The square entrance hall was sweet with flowers in the early spring evening, Oriental rugs were spread on the dull mirror of the floor, opened doors gave glimpses of airy colonial interiors, English chintzes crowded with gay colored fruits and flowers, brick fireplaces framed in classic white and showing a brave gleam of brass firedogs in the soft lamplight. Not a book on the long tables, not an etching on the dull rich paper of the walls, struck a false note. It was all exquisitely in tone. But Rachael Breckenridge, at best, saw less its positive perfections than the tiniest opening through which an imperfection might push its way, and in such an hour as this she saw it not at all. Her mouth a trifle firm in its outline, her face a little pale, she went quickly up the wide white stairway and along the open balcony above. There were several doors on this balcony, which was indeed the upper hall. Mrs. Breckenridge opened one of them without knocking, and closed it noiselessly behind her. The room into which she admitted herself presented exactly the picture she had expected. The curtains, again of richly colored cretonne, were drawn, a softly toned lamp on the reading table, and another beside the bed, cast circles of pleasant light on the comfortable wicker chairs, the cream-colored woodwork, and the scattered books and magazines. Several photographs of Carol, beautifully framed, were on bookcase and dresser, and a fine oil painting of the child at fourteen looked down from the mantel. On the bed, a mahogany four-poster, with carved pineapples finishing the posts, the frilled cretonne cover had been flung back; Mr. Breckenridge had retired; his blond head was sunk in the pillows; he clutched the blankets about him with his arms, his face was not visible. A quiet manservant, who was by turns butler, chauffeur, and valet, was stepping softly about the room. Rachael interrogated him in a low tone: "Asleep, Alfred?" "Oh, no, ma'am!" the man said quickly. "He's been feeling ill. He says he has a chill." "When did he get home?" the wife asked. "About half an hour ago, Mrs. Breckenridge. Mr. Butler telephoned me. Some of the gentlemen were going on--to one of the beach hotels for dinner, I believe, but Mr. Breckenridge felt himself too unwell to join them, so I went for him with the little car, and Mr. Joe Butler and Mr. Parks came home with him, Mrs. Breckenridge." "Do you know if he went to bed last night at all?" "No, ma'am, he said he did not. All the gentlemen looked as if they--looked as if they might have--" Alfred hesitated delicately. "It was Mr. Berry Stokes' bachelor dinner," he presently added. At this moment there was a convulsion in the bed, and the red face of Clarence Breckenridge revealed itself. The eyes were bloodstained, the usually pale skin flushed and oily, the fair, thin hair tumbled across a high and well-developed forehead. Rachael knew every movement of the red and swollen lips, every tone of the querulous voice. "Does Alfred have to stay up here doing a chambermaid's work?" demanded the man of the house fretfully. "My God! Can you or can't you manage--between your teas and card parties--to get someone else to put this room in order?" He ended in a long moan, and dropped his head again into the pillows. "Do you know what he wants?" Rachael asked the man in a quick whisper. "Go down and get it, then!" "I'm co-o-old!" said the man in the bed, going into a sudden and violent chill. "I've caught my death, I think. Joe made a punch--some sort of an eggnog--eggs were bad, I think. I'm poisoned. The stuff was rotten!" He sank mumbling back into the pillows. Rachael, who had been hanging his coat carefully in the big closet adjoining his room, came to the bedside and laid her cool fingers on his burning forehead. If irrepressible distaste was visible in her face, it was only a faint reflection of the burning resentment in her heart. "You've got a fever, Clarence," she announced quietly. The answer was only a furious and incoherent burst of denunciation; the patient was in utter physical discomfort, and could not choose his terms. Rachael--not for the first nor the hundredth time--felt within her an impulse to leave him here, leave him to outwear his miseries without her help. But this she could not do without throwing the house into an uproar. Clarence at these times had no consideration for public opinion, had no dignity, no self-control. Much better satisfy him, as she had done so many times before, and keep a brave face to the world. So she placed a hot-water bag against his cold feet, went to her own room adjoining to borrow a fluffy satin comforter with which to augment his own bed covering, laid an icy towel upon his throbbing forehead, and when Alfred presently appeared with a decanter of whisky, Rachael watched her husband eagerly gulp down a glass of it without uttering one word of the bitter protest that rose to her lips. She was not a prude, with the sublime inconsistency of most women whose lives are made the darker for drink; she did not identify herself with any movement toward prohibition, or refuse the cocktails, the claret, and the wine that were customarily served at her own and at other people's dinner-tables. But she hated coarseness in any form, she hated contact with the sodden, self-pitying, ugly animal that Clarence Breckenridge became under the influence of drink. To-night, when he presently fell asleep, somewhat more comfortable in body, and soothed in spirit by the promise of a visit from the doctor, Rachael went into her own room and sinking into a deep chair sat staring stupidly at the floor. She did not think of the husband she had just left, nor of the formal dinner party being given, only half a mile away, to a great English novelist--a dinner to which the Breckenridges had of course been asked and upon which Rachael had weeks ago set her heart. She was tired, and her thoughts floated lazily about nothing at all, or into some opaque region of their own knowing, where the ills of the body might not follow. Presently Miss Vanderwall, clothed in a trailing robe of soft Arabian cotton, came briskly out of the bathroom, her short dark hair hanging in a mane about her rosy face. "Why so pensive, Rachael?" she asked cheerfully, pressing a button that lighted the circle of globes about the dressing-table mirror, and seating herself before it. But under her loose locks she sent a keen and concerned look at her hostess' thoughtful face. "Tired," Rachael answered briefly, not changing her attitude, but with a fleeting shadow of a smile. "How's Clancy?" "Asleep. He's wretched, poor fellow! Berry Stokes' bachelor dinner, you know. That crowd is bad for him." "I KNEW it must have been an orgy!" Miss Vanderwall declared vivaciously. "That was a silly slip of mine in the car. Billy doesn't know he went, I suppose?" "No, he promised her he wouldn't. But everyone was at the dinner. Some of them came home early, I believe. But it was all kept quiet, because Aline Pearsall is such a little shrinking violet, I suppose," Mrs. Breckenridge said. "The Pearsalls are to think it was just an impromptu affair. Billy and Aline of course have no idea what a party it was. But Clarence says that poor Berry was worse than he, and a few of them are still keeping it up. It's a shame, of course--" Her uninterested voice dropped into silence. "Men are queer," Miss Vanderwall said profoundly, busy with ivory-backed brushes, powders, and pastes. "The mystery to me--about men," mused Mrs. Breckenridge, her absent eyes upon the buckled slipper she held in her hand, "is not that they are as helpless as babies the moment anything goes wrong with their poor little heads or their poor little tummies, but that they work so hard, in spite of that, to increase the general discomfort of living. Women have a great deal of misery to bear, they are brave or cowardly about it as the case may be, but at least they endure and renounce and diet and keep early hours--or whatever's to be done--they TRY to lessen the sum of physical misery. But men go cheerily on--they smoke too much, and eat too much, and drink too much, and they bring the resulting misery sweetly and confidently to some woman to bear for them. It's hopeless!" "H'm!" was Miss Vanderwall's thoughtful comment. Presently she added dubiously: "Did you ever think that another child might make a big difference to Clarence, Rachael? That he might come to care for a son as he does for Billy, don't you know--" "Oh, I wasn't speaking of Clarence," Mrs. Breckenridge said coldly. And Elinor, recognizing a false step, winced inwardly. "No, I didn't suppose you were!" she assented hastily. "If there's one thing I AM thankful for," Rachael presently said moodily, "it's that I haven't a child. I'm rather fond of kiddies--nice kiddies, myself; and Clarence likes children, too. But things are quite bad enough now without that complication!" She brushed the loosened hair from her face restlessly, and sighed. "Sometimes, when I see the other girls," said she, "I think I'd make a rather good mother! However"--and getting suddenly to her feet, she flung up her head as if to be rid of the subject--"however, my dear, we shall never know! Don't mind me to-night, Elinor, I'm in a horrible mood, it will take nothing at all to set me off in what Bill used to call a regilyer tant'um!" "Tantrum nothing," said Elinor, in eager sympathy, feeling with the greatest relief that she was reinstated in Rachael's good graces after her stupid blunder. "I don't see how you stand it at all!" "It isn't the drinking and headaches and general stupidity in themselves, you know," Rachael said, reverting to her original argument, "but it's the atrocious UNNECESSITY of it! I don't mind Clarence's doing as other men do, I certainly don't mind his caring so much for his daughter"--her fine brows drew together--"but where do _I_ come in?" she demanded with a quizzical smile. "What's MY life? I ask only decency and civility, and I don't get it. The very servants in this house pity me--they see it all. When Clarence isn't himself, he needs me; when he is, he is all for Billy. I must apologize for breaking engagements; people don't ask us out any more, and no wonder! I have to coax money out of him for bills; Billy has her own check-book. I have to keep quiet when I'm boiling all over. I have to defend myself when I know I'm bitterly, cruelly wronged!" Neither woman had any scruples about the subject under discussion, but even to Elinor Rachael had never spoken so freely before, and the guest, desperately attempting to remember every word for the delectation of her family and friends later on, felt herself at once honored and thrilled. "Rachael--but why do you stand it?" Mrs. Breckenridge threw her a look full of all conscious forbearance. "Well, what would YOU do?" "Well. I'd"--Miss Vanderwall arrested the hand with which she was carefully spreading her lips with red paste, to fling it, with a large gesture, into the air--"I'd--why don't you GET OUT? Simply drop it all?" she asked. "For several reasons," the other woman returned promptly with a sort of hard, bright pride. "One very excellent one is that I haven't one penny. But I tell you, Elinor, if I knew how to put my hand on about a thousand dollars a year--there are little towns in France, I have friends in London--well"--and with a sudden straightening of her whole body Rachael Breckenridge visibly rallied herself--"well, what's the use of talking?" she said. But, as she rose abruptly, Elinor saw the glint of tears on her lashes, and said to herself with a sort of pleased terror that things between Clarence and Rachael must be getting serious indeed. She admired Mrs. Breckenridge deeply; more than that, the younger woman's friendship and patronage were valuable assets to Miss Vanderwall. But the social circle of Belvedere Hills was a small circle, and Elinor had spent every one of her thirty-five summers, or a part of every one, in just this limited group. There was little malice in her pleasure at getting this glimpse behind the scenes in Rachael's life; she would repeat her friend's confidence, later, with the calm of a person doing the accepted and expected thing, with the complacence of one who proves her right to other revelations from her listeners in turn. It was by such proof judiciously displayed that Elinor held her place in the front ranks of her own select little group of gossips and intimates. She wished the Breckenridges no harm, but if there were dark elements in their lives, Elinor enjoyed being the person to witness them. Thoughtfully adding a bloom to her cheeks with her friend's exquisite powder, Miss Vanderwall reflected sagely that, when one came to think of it, it must really be rather rotten to be married to Clarence Breckenridge. Rachael presently came back, with the signs of her recent emotion entirely effaced, and her wonderful skin glowing faintly from a bath. Superbly independent of cosmetics, independent even of her mirror, she massed the thick short lengths of dark hair on the top of her head, thrust a jewelled pin through the coil, and began to hook herself into a lacy black evening gown that was loose and comfortable. Before this was finished her stepdaughter rapped on the door, and being invited, came in with the full self-consciousness of seventeen. "All hooked up straight?" asked Rachael. "That gown looks rather well." "Do you good women realize what time it is?" Miss Breckenridge asked, by way of reply. "Has she got it a shade too short?" speculated Rachael, thoughtful eyes on the girl's dress. "Well--I was wondering!" Carol said eagerly, flinging down her wrap, to turn and twist before a door that was a solid panel of mirror. "What do you think--we'll dance." "Oh, not a bit," Rachael presently decided. "They're all up to the knees this year, anyway. Car come round?" "Long ago," said Billy, and Elinor, reaching for her own wrap, declared herself ready. "I wish you were going, Rachael," the girl added as she turned to follow their guest from the room. "Come back here a moment, Bill," Mrs. Breckenridge said casually, seating herself at the dressing-table without a glance at her stepdaughter. For a moment Miss Breckenridge stood irresolute in the doorway, then she reluctantly came in. "You're just seventeen, Billy," said the older woman indifferently. "When you're eighteen, next March, I suppose you may do as you please. But until then--either see a little less of Joe Pickering, or else come right out in the open about it, and tell your father you want to see him here. This silly business of telephoning and writing and meeting him, here, there, and everywhere, has got to stop." Billy stared steadily at her stepmother, her breath coming quick and high, her cheeks red. "Who said I met him--places?" she said, in a seventeen-year-old-girl's idea of a tragic tone. Mrs. Breckenridge's answer to this was a shrug, a smile, and a motherly request not to be a fool. There was silence for a moment. Then Billy said recklessly: "I like him. And you can't make me deny it!" "Like him if you want to," said Mrs. Breckenridge, "although what you can see in a man twice your age--with his particular history--However, it's your affair. But you'll have to tell your father." Billy shut her lips mutinously, her cheeks still scarlet. "I don't see why!" she burst forth proudly, at last. To this Mrs. Breckenridge offered no argument. Carefully filing a polished fingertip she said quietly: "I didn't suppose you would." "And I think that if you tell him YOU interfere in a matter that doesn't in the LEAST concern you," Billy pursued hotly, uncomfortably eager to strike an answering spark, and reduce the conversation to a state where mutual concessions might be in order. "You have no BUSINESS to!" Her stepmother was silent. She put on a ring, regarded it thoughtfully on her spread fingers, and took it off again. "In the first place," Billy said sullenly, "you'll tell him a lot of things that aren't so!" Silence. Outside the motor horn sounded impatiently. Billy suddenly came close to her stepmother, her dark, mobile little face quite transformed by anger. "You can tell him what you please," she said in a cold fury, "but I'll know WHY you did it--it's because you're jealous, and you want everyone in the world to be in love with YOU! You hate me because my father loves me, and you would do anything in the world to make trouble between us! I've known it ever since I was a little girl, even if I never have said it before! I--" She choked, and tears of youthful rage came into her eyes. "Don't be preposterous, Bill. You've said it before, every time you've been angry, in the last five years," the older woman said coolly. "This only means that you will feel that you have to wake me up, when you come in to-night, to say that you are sorry." "I will not!" said the girl at white heat. "Well, I hope you won't," Rachael Breckenridge said amiably, "for if there is one thing I loathe more than another, it is being waked up for theatricals in the middle of the night. Good-bye. Be sure to thank Mrs. Bowditch for chaperoning you." "Are you going to speak to Clancy?" the girl demanded imperiously. "Run along, Billy," Rachael said, with a faint show of impatience. "Nobody could speak to your father about anything to-night, as you ought to know." For a moment Billy stood still, breathing hard and with tightly closed lips, her angry eyes on her step-mother. Then her breast rose on a childish, dry sob, she dropped her eyes, and moved a shining slipper-toe upon the rug with the immortal motion of embarrassed youth. "You--you used to like Joe, Rachael," she said, after a moment, in a low tone. "I don't dislike him now," Rachael said composedly. "He's awfully kind--and--and good, and Lucy never understood him, or tried to understand him!" said Billy in a burst. The other woman smiled. "If Joe Pickering told you any sentimental nonsense like that, kindly don't retail it to me," she said amusedly. In a second Billy was roused to utter fury. Her cheeks blazed, her breath came short and deep. "I hate you!" she said passionately, and ran from the room. Mrs. Breckenridge sat still for a few moments, but there was no emotion but utter weariness visible in her face. After a while she said, "Oh, Lord!" in a tone compounded of amusement and disgust, and rising, she took a new book from the table, and went slowly downstairs. In the lower hall Alfred met her, his fat young face duly mysterious and important in expression. "Mr. Breckenridge got a telephone message from Doctor Jordan, Mrs. Breckenridge; the doctor's been called into town to a patient, so he can't see Mr. Breckenridge to-night." "Oh! Well, he'll probably be here in the morning," Rachael said carelessly. "Excuse me, Mrs. Breckenridge, but Mr. Breckenridge seemed to be a good deal worried about himself, and he had me call Doctor Gregory," the man pursued respectfully. "Doctor GREGORY!" echoed his mistress, with a laugh like a wail. "Alfred, what were you THINKING of! Why didn't you call me?" "He wouldn't have me call you," Alfred said unhappily. "He spoke to the doctor himself. We got the housekeeper first, and she said Doctor Gregory was dressing. 'Tell him it's a matter of life and death,' says Mr. Breckenridge. Then we got him. 'I'm dining out,' he says, 'but I'll be there this evening.'" "Oh, dear, dear, dear!" Mrs. Breckenridge said half to herself in serio-comic desperation. "Gregory--called in for a--for a--for this! If I could get hold of him! He didn't say where he was dining?" "No, Mrs. Breckenridge," the man answered, with a great air of efficiency. "Well, Alfred, I wish sometimes you knew a little more--or a little less!" Rachael said dispassionately. "Light a fire in the library, will you? I'll have my dinner there. Tell Ellie to send me up something broiled--nothing messy--and some strong coffee." CHAPTER II The coffee was strong. Mrs. Breckenridge found it soothing to rasped nerves and tired body, and after the dinner things had been cleared away she sat on beside the library fire, under the soft arc of light from the library lamp, sipping the stimulating fluid, and staring at the snapping and flashing logs. A sense of merely physical well-being crept through her body, and for a little time even her active brain was quieter; she forgot the man now heavily sleeping upstairs, the pretty little tyrant who had rushed off to dinner at the Chases', and the many perplexing elements in her own immediate problem. She saw only the quiet changes in the fire as yellow flame turned to blue--sank, rose, and sank again. The house was still. Kitchenward, to be sure, there was a great deal of cheerful laughter and chatter, as Ellie, sitting heavily ensconced in the largest rocker, embroidered a centrepiece for her sister's birthday, Annie read fortunes in the teacups, Alfred imitated the supercilious manner of a lady who had called that afternoon upon Mrs. Breckenridge, and Helda, a milk-blond Dane with pink-rimmed eyes, laughed with infantile indiscrimination at everything, blushing an agonized scarlet whenever Alfred's admiring eye met her own. But the kitchen was not within hearing distance of the quiet room where Rachael sat alone, and as the soft spring night wore on no sound came to disturb her revery. It was not the first solitary evening she had had of late, for Clarence had been more than usually reckless, and was developing in his wife, although she did not realize it herself, a habit of introspection quite foreign to her real nature. She had never been a thoughtful woman, her days for many years had run brilliantly on the surface of life, she knew not whence the current was flowing, nor why, nor where it led her; she did not naturally analyze, nor dispute events. Only a few years ago she would have said that to an extraordinary degree fortune had been kind to her. She had been born with an adventurous spirit, she had played her game well and boldly, and, according to all the standards of her type, she had won. But sitting before this quiet fire, perhaps it occurred to her to wonder how it happened that there were no more hazards, no more cards left to play. She was caught in a net of circumstances too tight for her unravelling. Truly it might be cut, but when she stood in the loose wreckage of it--how should she use her freedom? If it was a cage, at least it was a comfortable cage; at least it was better than the howling darkness of the unfamiliar desert beyond. And yet she raged, and her hurt spirit flung itself again and again at the bars. Young and beautiful and clever, how had life tricked her into this deadlock, where had been the fault, and whose? For some undefined reason Rachael rarely thought of the past. She did not care to bring its certainties, its panorama of blinded eyes and closed doors before her mental vision. But to-night she found herself walking again in those old avenues; her thoughts went back to the memories of her girlhood. Girlhood? Her eyes smiled, but with the smile a little twinge of bitterness drew down her mouth. What a discontented, eager, restless girlhood it had been, after all. A girlhood eternally analyzing, comparing, resenting, envying. How she had secretly despised the other girls, typical of their class, the laughing, flirting, dress-possessed girls of a small California town. How she had despised her aunts, all comfortably married and prosperous, her aunts' husbands, her stodgy, noisy cousins! And, for that matter, there had never been much reverence in her regard for her mother, although Rachael loved that complaining little woman in her cool way. But for her father, the tall, clever, unhappy girl had a genuine admiration. She did not love him, no one who knew Gerald Fairfax well could possibly have sustained a deep affection for him, but she believed him to be almost as remarkably educated and naturally gifted as he believed himself to be. Her uncles were simply country merchants, her mother's fat, cheerful father dealt in furniture, and, incidentally, coffins, but her father was an Englishman, and naturally held himself above the ordinary folk of Los Lobos. Nobody knew much about him, when he first made his appearance in Los Lobos, this silky-haired, round-faced, supercilious stranger, in his smart, shabby Norfolk coat, which was perhaps one reason why every girl in the village was at once willing to marry him, no questions asked. His speech was almost a different tongue from theirs; he was thirty-five, he had dogs and a man-servant, instead of the usual equipment of mother, sisters, and "hired girl," and he seemed eternally bored and ungracious. This was enough for the Los Lobos girls, and for most of their mothers, too. The newcomer bought a small ranch, three miles out of town, and lounged about it in a highly edifying condition of elegant idleness. He rode a good horse, drank a great deal, and strode out of the post-office once a week scattering monogrammed envelopes carelessly behind him. He had not been long in town before people began to say that his elder brother was a lord; a duke, Mrs. Chess Baxter, the postmistress said, because to her question regarding the rumor he had answered carelessly: "Something of that sort." Thirty years ago there were a great many detached Englishmen in California, fourth and fifth sons, remittance men, family scapegraces who had been banished to the farthest frontier by relatives who regarded California as beyond the reach of gossip, and almost beyond the reach of letters. Checks, small but regular, arrived quarterly for these gentry, who had only to drink, sleep, play cards, and demoralize the girls of the country. Here and there among them, to be sure, were pink-skinned boys as fresh and sweet as the apple-blossoms under which they rode their horses, but for the most part the emigrants were dissipated, disenchanted, clinging loyally to the traditions of the older country that had discarded them, and scorning the fragrant and inexhaustible richness of the new land that had made them welcome. They were, as a class, silent, only voluble on the subject of the despised country of their adoption, and absolutely non-committal as to their own histories. But far from questioning their credentials, the women and girls everywhere accepted them eagerly, caught something of an English accent and something of an English arrogance. So Clara Mumford, a rose of a girl, cream-skinned, blue-eyed, and innocent with the terrible innocence of the village girlhood that feels itself so wise--Clara, who knew, because her two older sisters were married, where babies come from, and knew, because of Alta Porter's experience, that girls--nice girls, who went with one through the high school--can yield to temptation and be ruined--Clara only felt, in shyly announcing her engagement to Gerald Fairfax, that Fate had been too kind. That this glittering stranger twice her age--why, he was even a little bald--a man who had travelled, who knew people of title, knew books, and manners, and languages--that he should marry an undertaker's daughter in Los Lobos! It was unbelievable. Clara's only misgiving during her short engagement was that he would disappear like a dream. She agreed with everything he said; even carrying her new allegiance to the point of laughing a little at her own people: the layer cakes her mother made for the Sunday noonday dinner; the red-handed, freckled swain who called on her younger sister in the crisp, moonlighted winter evenings; and the fact that her father shaved in the kitchen. A few weeks slipped by, and Clara duly confided her youth and her innocence and her roses to her English husband, a little ashamed of the wedding presents her friends sent her, even a little doubtful of her parents' handsome gift of a bird's-eye maple bedroom set and a parlor set in upholstered cherry. On her side she accepted everything unquestionably: the shabby little ranch house that smelled of wood smoke, and tobacco smoke, and dogs; the easy scorn of her old friends on her husband's part that so soon alienated her from them; the drink that she quickly learned to regard with uneasiness and distrust. It was not that Jerry ever got really intoxicated, but he got ugly, excitable, irritable, even though quite in control of his actions and his senses. Clara was a good cook, although not as expert as her fond mother's little substitutions and innocent manipulations during their engagement had led Gerald to believe. But she loved to please him, and when flushed and triumphant she put down some especially tempting dish before him, and felt his arm about her, tears of actual joy would stand in her bright eyes. They had some happy days, some happy hours, in the first newness of being together. Gerald's man, Thomas, was an early cause of annoyance to Clara. She would not have objected to cooking for a farm "hand"; that was a matter of course with all good farmers' wives. But Thomas was more British, in all that makes the British objectionable, than his master, and Thomas was quite decidedly addicted to drink. He never thought of wiping a dish, or bringing Clara in a bucket of water from the well. He ate what she set out upon the kitchen table for him, three times a day, chatting pleasantly enough of the farm, the horses, chickens, and vegetable garden, if Clara was in an amiable mood, but if, busy at the sink, or clearing the dining-room table, she was inwardly fuming with resentment at his very existence, Thomas could be silent, too, and would presently saunter away, stuffing his pipe, without even the common courtesy of piling his dishes together for her washing. Thomas held long conversations with his master as they idled about the place; Clara would hear their laughter. The manservant slept in a small shed detached from the main house, and there were times when he did not appear in the morning. At such times Gerald with a pot of strong coffee likewise disappeared into the cabin. "Pore old rotter!" the husband would say generously. "He's a decentish sort, don't you know? I meanter say, poor old Thomas did me an awfully good turn once--and that!" Clara inferred from various hints that Gerald had once been in the English army, and had met Thomas, and befriended him, or been befriended by him, at that period of his existence. But, greatly to the little bride's disappointment, Gerald never spoke of his old home or his connections there. Clara had to draw what comfort she could from his intimation that all his relatives were unbelievably eminent and distinguished, the least of them superior in brain and achievement to any American who ever drew the breath of life. And presently she forgot Thomas, forgot the petty annoyance of cooking and summer heat and dogs and physical discomfort, in the overwhelming prayer that the coming child, about whose advent Gerald, at first annoyed, had later been so generously good-natured, might prove a boy. Gerald, living uncomplainingly in this dreadful little country town, enduring Western conditions with such dignity, and loving his little wife despite her undertaker father, would be seriously disgusted, she knew, if she gave him a daughter. "A--a girl?" Clara stammered, her wet eyes on the doctor's face, her panting little figure lost in the big outline of her mother's spare-room bed. She managed a brave smile, but there was a bitter lump in her throat. A girl! And she had been so brave, so sweet with Jerry, who had not enjoyed the three or four days of waiting at her mother's house; so strong in her agonies, as became the healthy, normal little country girl she was! Fate owed her a son, she had done her share, she had not flinched. And now--a girl! Fresh tears of disappointment came to take the place of tears of pain in her eyes. She remembered that Jerry had said, a few days before, "It'll be a boy, of course--all the old women about seem to have settled that--and I believe I'll cable Cousin Harold." "Ma says it'll be a boy," Clara had submitted hopefully, longing to hear more of "Cousin Harold," to whom Gerald alluded at long intervals. "Of course it will--good old girl!" Jerry had agreed. And that was only Thursday night, and this was in the late dawn of cold, wintry Saturday morning. Her mother bent over her and kissed her wet forehead. Mrs. Mumford's big kind face was radiant; she had already four small grandsons; this was the first grand-daughter. More than that, the nurse was not here yet; she had been supreme through the ordeal; she had managed one more birth extremely well, and she rejoiced in the making of a nation. "Such a nice baby, darling!" she whispered, "with her dear little head all covered with black hair! Neta's dressing her." "Where's Gerald?" the young mother asked weakly. "Right here! I'll let him in for a moment!" There was a satisfaction in Mrs. Mumford's voice; everything was proceeding absolutely by schedule. "And just as anxious to see you as you are to see him!" she added happily. These occasions were always the same, and always far more enjoyable to this practised parent than any pageant, any opera, any social distinction could have been. To comfortably, soothingly lead the trembling novice through the long experience, to whisk about the house capably and briskly busy with the familiar paraphernalia, to cry in sympathy with another's tears, to stand white-lipped, impotent, anguished through a few dreadful moments, and then to laugh, and rejoice, and reassure, before the happy hours of resting, and feeding, and cuddling began--this was the greatest satisfaction in her life. Clara, afraid in this first moment to face his disappointment, felt in another the most delicious reassurance and comfort she had known in months. Jerry, taking the chair by the bedside, was so dear about it! The long night had much impressed the new-made father. They had had coffee at about two o'clock--Clara remembered wondering how they could sit enjoying it, instead of dashing the hideous cups to the floor, and rushing out of the horrible enclosure of walls and curtains--and as he bent over her she knew he had had something stronger since--but he was so dear! "Well, we've had a night of it, eh?" he said kindly. "Funny how much one takes the little beggars for grawnted until it's one's own that kicks up the row? You've not seen her--she's a nice little beggar. You might get some sleep, I should think. I'm going to hang around until some sort of a family jamboree is over, at one o'clock--your mother insists that we have dinner--and then I'll go out to the rawnch. But I'll be in in the morning!" "Girl!" said Clara, apologetically, whimsically, deprecatingly, her weak fingers clinging tightly to his. "Ah, well, one carn't help that!" he answered philosophically. "We'll have a row of jolly little chaps yet!" But there was never another child. Clara, having cast her fortunes in with her lord, was faithful to him through every breath she drew. But before Rachael's first crying, feverish little summer was over there had been some definite changes at the ranch. Thomas was gone, and Clara, pale and exhausted with the heat, engaged Ella, a young woman servant of her mother's selecting, to bake and wash and carry in stove-wood. Clara managed them all, Gerald, the baby, and the maid. Perhaps at first she was just a little astonished to find her husband as easily managed as Ella and far more easily managed than Rachael. Gerald Fairfax was surprised, too, lazily conceding his altered little wife her new and energetic way with a mental reservation that when she was strong and well again and the child less a care, things would be as they were. But Clara, once in power, never weakened for a moment again. Rachael grew up, a solitary and unfriendly, yet a tactful and diplomatic, little person on the ranch. She early developed a great admiration for her father, and a consequent regard for herself as superior to her associates. She ruled her mother absolutely from her fourth year, and remained her grandmother's great favorite among a constantly increasing flock of grandchildren. Some innate pride and scorn and dignity in the child won her her own way through school and school days; her young cousins were bewildered themselves by the respect and fealty they yielded her despite the contempt in which they held her affectations. Clara had never been a religious woman and, married to an utter unbeliever, she had little enough to give a child of her own. But Clara's mother was a church woman, and her father a deeply religious man. It was his mother, "old lady Mumford"--Rachael's great-grandmother--who taught the child her catechism whenever she could get hold of that restless and lawless little girl. Rachael had great fear and respect for her great-grandmother, and everything that was fine and good in the child instinctively responded to the atmosphere of her little home. It was an unpretentious home, even for Los Lobos: only a whitewashed California cabin with a dooryard full of wall flowers and geraniums, and pungent marigolds, and marguerites that were budding, blossoming, and gone to rusty decay on one and the same bush. The narrow paths were outlined with white stone ale-bottles, turned upside down and driven into the soft ground, and under the rustling tent of a lilac bush there were three or four clay pots filled with dry earth. There was a railed porch on the east side of the house, with vines climbing on strings about it, and here the old woman, clean with the wonderful, cool-fingered cleanness of frail yet energetic seventy-five, would sit reading in the afternoon shade that fell from the great shoulders of the blue mountains. Inside were three rooms; there was no bathroom, no light but the kerosene lamps the old hands tended daily, no warmth but the small kitchen stove. All the furniture was old and shabby and cheap, and the antimacassars and pictures and teacups old Mrs. Mumford prized so dearly were of no value except for association's sake. Rachael's great-grandmother lived upon tea and toast and fruit sauce; sometimes she picked a dish of peas in her own garden and sometimes made herself a rice pudding, but if her children brought her in a chicken or a bowl of soup she always gave it away to some poorer neighbor who was ill, or who was "nursing that great strapping baby." She read the Bible to Rachael and exhorted the half-believing, half-ashamed child to lay its lessons to heart. "Your life will be full of change and of pleasure, there will be many temptations and much responsibility," said the sweet, stern, thin old voice. "Arm yourself against the wickedness of the world!" Rachael, pulling the old collie's silky ears, thought nothing of the wickedness of the world but much of possible change and pleasure. She hoped her aged relative was right; certainly one would suppose Granny to be right in anything she said. The time would have swiftly come when the child's changing heart would have found no room for this association, but before Rachael was twelve Granny was gone, the little house, with its few poor treasures shut inside it, was closed and empty. And only a year or two later a far more important change came into the girl's life. She had always disliked Los Lobos, had schemed and brooded and fretted incessantly through her childhood. It was with astonished delight that she heard that her parents, who had never, in a financial sense, drawn a free breath since their marriage, who had worried and contrived, who had tried indifference and bravado and strictest economy by turns, had sold their ranch for almost two thousand dollars more than its accumulated mortgages, and were going to England. It was a glorious adventure for Rachael, even though she was too shrewd not to suspect the extreme hazard of the move. She talked in Los Lobos of her father's "people," hinted that "the family, you know, thinks we'd better be there," but she knew in her heart that a few months might find them all beggars. Her father bought her a loose, big, soft blue coat in San Francisco, and a dashing little soft hat for the steamer. Rachael never forgot these garments throughout her entire life. It mattered not how countrified the gown under the coat, how plain the shoes on her slender feet. Their beauty, their becomingness, their comfort, actually colored her days. For twenty dollars she was transformed; she knew herself to be pretty and picturesque. "That charming little girl with the dark braids, going to England," she heard some man on the steamer say. The ranch, the chickens, weeds, and preserving, the dusty roads and shabby stores of Los Lobos were gone; she was no longer a gawky child; she was a young lady in a loose, soft, rough blue coat, with a black quill in her soft blue hat. England received her wandering son coolly, but Rachael never knew it. Her radiant dream--or was it an awakening?--went on. Her mother, a neat, faded, querulous little woman, whose one great service was in sparing her husband any of the jars of life, was keyed to frantic anxiety lest Jerry be unappreciated, now that he had come back. Clara met the few men to whom her husband introduced her in London with feverish eagerness; afraid--after fifteen years--to say one word that might suggest her own concern in Jerry's future, quivering to cross-examine him, when they were alone, as to what had been said, and implied, and suggested. Nothing definite followed. They lived for a month or two at a delightful roomy boarding-house in London, where the modest meals Clara ordered appeared as if by magic, and where Miss Fairfax never sullied her pretty hands with dishwashing. Then they went to visit "Aunt Elsie" in a suburban villa for several weeks, a visit Rachael never thought of afterward without a memory of stuffy, neat, warm rooms, and a gushing of canaries' voices. Then they went down to Sussex, in the delicious fullness of spring, to live with several other persons in a dark country house, where "Cousin Harold" died, and there was much odorous crepe and a funeral. Cousin Harold evidently left something to Gerald. Rachael knew money was not an immediate problem. Hot weather came, and they went to the seaside with an efficient relative called Ethel, and Ethel's five children. Later, back in London, Gerald said, in his daughter's hearing, that he had made "rather a good thing of that little game of Bobbie's. Enough to tide us over--what? Especially if the Dickies ask us down for a bit," he had added. The Dickies did ask them down for a bit. They went other places. Gerald made a little money on the races, made "a good thing" of this, and "turned a bit over on that." Weeks made months and months years, and still they drifted cheerfully about, Gerald happier than he had ever been in exile, Clara fearful, admiring, ill at ease, Rachael in a girl's paradise. She grew beautiful, with a fine and distinguished beauty definite in its appeal; before she was seven-teen she had her little reputation for it; she moved easily into a circle higher than even her father had ever known. She was witty, young, lovely, and in this happier atmosphere her natural gayety and generosity might well develop. She went about continually, and every year the circle of her friends was widened by more distinguished names. At seventeen Mrs. Gouveneur Pomeroy of New York brought the young beauty back with her own daughter, Persis, for a winter in the great American city, and when Persis died Rachael indeed became almost as dear to the stricken parents. When she went back to London they gave her not only gifts but money, and for two years she returned to them for long visits. So America had a chance to admire the ravishing Miss Fairfax, too, and Rachael had many conquests and one or two serious affairs. The girls had their first dances at the Belvedere Club; Rachael met them all, who were later to be her neighbors: the Morans and Parmalees, the Vanderwalls and the Torrences, and the Chases. She met Clarence Breckenridge and his wife, and the exquisitely dressed little girl who was Billy to-day. And through all her adventures she looked calmly, confidently, and with conscious enjoyment for a husband. She flirted a little, and danced and swam and drove and played golf and tennis a great deal, but she never lost sight for an instant of the serious business of life. Money she must have--it was almost as essential to her as air--and money she could only secure through a marriage. The young Englishman who was her first choice, in her twentieth year, had every qualification in the world. When he died, two or three months before the wedding-day, Rachael's mother was fond of saying in an aside to close friends that the girl's heart was broken. Rachael, lovely in her black, went down to stay with Stephen's mother, and for several weeks was that elderly lady's greatest comfort in life. Silent and serious, her manner the perfection of quiet grief, only Rachael herself knew how little the memory of Stephen interfered with her long reveries as she took his collies about in the soft autumn fogs. Only Rachael knew how the sight of Trecastle Hall, the horses, the servants, and the park filled her heart with despair. She might have been Lady Trecastle! All this might so easily have been her own! She had loved Stephen, of course, she told herself; loving, with Rachael, simply meant a willingness to accept and to give. But love was of course a luxury; she was after the necessities of life. Well, she had played and lost, but she could play again. So she went to the Pomeroys' for the winter, and in the spring was brought back to London by her father's sudden death. Gerald Fairfax's life insurance gave his widow a far more secured income than he had ever given his wife. It was microscopic, to be sure, but Clara Fairfax was a practised economist. The ladies settled in Paris, and Rachael was seriously considering a French marriage when, by the merest chance, in the street one day, a small homesick girl clutched at her thin black skirt, and sent her an imploring smile. Rachael, looking graciously down from under the shade of her frilly black parasol, recognized the little Breckenridge girl, obviously afflicted with a cold and lonesomeness and strangeness. Enslaving the French nurse with three perfectly pronounced sentences, Rachael went home with the clinging Carol, put her to bed, cheered her empty little interior with soup, soothed her off to sleep, and was ready to meet her crazed and terrified father with a long lecture on the care of young children, when, after an unavoidable afternoon of business, he came back to his hotel. The rest followed. Rachael liked Clarence, finding it agreeable that he knew how to dress, how to order a dinner, tip servants, and take care of a woman in a crowd. His family was one of the oldest in America, and he was rich. She was sorry that Billy's mother was living, but then one couldn't have everything, and, after all, she was married again, which seemed to mitigate the annoyance. Rachael said to herself that this was a wiser marriage than the proposed one with poor Stephen: Stephen had been a wild, romantic boy, full of fresh passion and dazed with exultant dreams; Clarence was a man, longing less for moonshine and roses and the presence of his beloved one than for a gracious, distinguished woman who would take her place before the world as mistress of his home and guardian of his child. She had sometimes doubted her power to make Stephen happy--Stephen, who talked with all a boy's heavenly shyness of long days tramping the woods and long nights over the fire, of little sons and daughters romping in the Trecastle gardens; but she entered into her marriage with Clarence Breckenridge with entire self-confidence. She had been struggling more or less definitely all her life toward just such a position as this; it was a comparatively easy matter to fill it, now that she had got it. Carol she considered a decided asset. The child adored her, and her services to Carol were so much good added to the beauty, charm, and wisdom that she brought into the bargain. That Clarence could ask more in the way of beauty, wisdom, and charm was not conceivable; Rachael knew her own value too well to have any doubts on that score. And had her husband been a strong man, her dignified and ripened loveliness must inevitably have won him. She stood ready to be won. She held to her bond in all generosity. What heart and soul and body could do for him was his to claim. She did not love him, but she did not need love's glamour to show her what her exact value to him might be; what was her natural return for all her marriage gave her. But quick-witted and cold-blooded as she was, she could not see that Clarence was actually a little afraid of her. He had been too rich all his life to count his money as an argument in his favor, and although he was not clever he knew Rachael did not love him, and hardly supposed that she ever could. He felt with paternal blindness that she had married him partly for the child's sake, and returned to the companionship of his daughter with a real sense of relief. Rachael, in turn, was puzzled. Carol was undeniably a pretty child, with all a spoiled child's confident charm, but in all good-natured generosity Rachael could not see in her the subtle and irresistible fascinations that her father so eagerly exploited. Surely no girl of ten, however gifted, could be reasonably supposed to eclipse completely the woman Rachael knew herself to be; surely no parental infatuation could extend itself to the point of a remarriage with the bettering of a small child's position alone the object. Philosophy came promptly to the aid of the new-made wife. Billy was a child, and Clarence a greater child. The situation was annoying, was belittling to her own pride, but she would meet it with dignity nevertheless. After all, the visible benefits of the marriage were still hers: the new car, the new furs, the new and wonderful sense of financial ease, of social certainty. She schooled herself to listen with an indulgent smile to her husband's fond rhapsodies about his daughter. She agreed amiably that Billy would be a great beauty, a heart-breaker, that "the little monkey had all the other women crazy with jealousy now, by Jove!" She selected the little gowns and hats in which the radiant Billy went off for long days alone with "Daddy," and she presently graciously consented to share the little girl's luxurious room because Billy sometimes awakened nervously at night. Rachael had been accustomed to difficulties in dealing with the persons nearest her; she met them resolutely. Sometimes a baffling sense of failure smote the surface of her life, like a cold wind that turns to white metal the smooth waters of a lake, but she held her head proudly above it, and even Clarence and his daughter never guessed what she endured. What did it matter? Rachael asked herself wearily. She had not asked for love. She had resolutely exchanged what she had to give for what she had determined to get; Clarence had made no blind protestations, had expected no golden romance. He admired her; she knew he thought it was splendid of her to manage the engagement and marriage with so little fuss; perhaps his jaded pulses fluttered a little when Rachael, exquisite in her bridal newness, stooped at the railway station to give the drooping Billy a good-bye kiss, and promise that in three days they would be back to rescue her from the hated governess; but paramount above all other emotions, she suspected, was the tremendous satisfaction of having gained just the right woman to straighten out his tangled domestic affairs, just the mother, as the years went by, to do the correct thing for Billy. Of some of these things the woman who sat idly before the library fire was thinking, as the quiet evening wore on, and the purring of the flames and the ticking of the little mantel clock accented rather than disturbed the stillness. She was unhappy with a cold, dry wretchedness that was deeper than any pang of passion or of hate. The people she met, the books she read, the gowns she planned so carefully, and the social events that were her life, all--all--were dust and ashes. Clarence was less a disappointment and a shame to her than an annoyance; he neglected her, he humiliated her, true, but this meant infinitely less than that he bored her so mercilessly. Billy, with her youthful complacencies and arts, bored her; the sympathy of a few close friends bored her as much as the admiration and envy of the many who were not close. Cards, golf, dinners, and dances bored her. Rachael thought tonight of a woman she had known closely, a beautiful woman, too, and a rich and gifted woman, who, not many months ago, had quietly ended it all, had been found by horrified maids in her gray-and-silver boudoir lovelier than ever, in fixed and peaceful beauty, with the soft folds of her lacy gown spreading like the petals of a great flower about her and the little gleam of an empty bottle in her still, ringed hand... A voice broke the library stillness. Rachael roused herself. "What is it, Helda?" she asked. "Doctor Gregory? Ask him to come in. And ask Alfred--is Alfred still downstairs?--ask him to go up and see if Mr. Breckenridge is awake. "This is very decent of you, Greg," she said, a moment later, as the doctor came into the room. "It doesn't seem right to interfere with your dinner for the same old stupid thing!" "Great pleasure to do anything for you, Rachael," the newcomer said promptly and smilingly with the almost perfunctory courtesy that was a part of Warren Gregory's stock in trade. "You don't call on me often! I wish you did!" She said to herself, as they both sat down before the fire, that it was probably true. Doctor Gregory was notoriously glad of an opportunity to serve his friends. He had not at all regretted the necessity of leaving his dinner partner at the salad for a professional call. He was quite ready to enjoy the Breckenridge sitting-room, the fire, the lamplight, the company of a beautiful woman. Rachael and he knew each other well, almost intimately; they had been friends for many years. She had often been his guest at the opera, had often chaperoned his dinner-parties at the club, for Warren Gregory's only woman relative was his old mother, who was neither of an age nor a type to take any part in his social life. He was forty, handsome, dignified, with touches of gray in his close-clipped hair, but no other sign of years in his face or his big, well-built figure. He had clever, fine eyes behind black-rimmed glasses, a surgeon's clever hands, a pleasant voice. He lived with his mother in a fine old house on Washington Square, in New York City, and worked as tirelessly as if he were a penniless be ginner at his profession instead of a rich man, a rich woman's heir, and already recognized as a genius in his own line. All women liked him, and he liked them all. He sent them books, marked essays in magazines for their individual consideration, took them to concerts, remembered their birthdays. But his only close friends were men, the men with whom he played tennis and golf, or with whom he was associated in his work. With all his cleverness and all his charm, Warren Gregory was not a romantic figure in the eyes of most women. He had inherited from his old Irish mother a certain mildness, and a lenience, where they were concerned. He neither judged them nor idolized them. They belonged only to his leisure hours. His real life was in his club, in his books, and in the hospital world where there were children's tiny bones to set. He was conscious, as a man born in a different circle always is conscious, that he had, by a series of pleasant chances, been pushed straight into the inner heart of the social group whose doors are so resolutely closed to many men and women, and he liked it. His grand father had had blood but no money, his mother money but no social claim. He inherited, with the O'Connell millions, the Gregory name, and for perhaps ten years he had enjoyed an unchallenged popularity. He had inherited also, without knowing it, a definitely different standard from that held by all the men and women about him. In his simple, unobtrusive way he held aloof from much that they said and did. Greg, said the woman, was a regular Puritan about gossip, about drinking, about gambling. They never suspected the truth: that he was shy. Sure of his touch as a surgeon, pleasantly definite about books and pictures, spontaneous and daring in the tennis court or on the links, under his friendly manner with women was the embarrassment of a young boy. Before his tenth year his rigidly conscientious mother had instilled into the wondering little-boy mind certain mysterious yet positive moral laws. Purity and self-control were in the air he breathed while at her side, and although a few years later school and college had claimed him, the effect of those early lessons was definite upon his character. Diffidence and a sort of fear had protected him, far more effectually than any other means might have done, from the common vices of his age, and in those days a certain good-natured scorn from all his associates made him feel even more than his natural shyness, and marked him rather apart from other young men. Keenly aware of this, it had been a tremendous surprise to the young physician, returning from post-graduate work in Germany a few years later, to find that what had once been considered a sort of laughable weakness in him was called strength of character now; that what had been a clumsy boy's inarticulateness was more charitably construed into the silence of a clever man who will not waste his words; and that mothers whose sons he had once envied for their worldly wisdom were turning to him for advice as to the extrication of these same sons from all sorts of difficulties. Being no fool, he accepted the changed attitude with great readiness, devoting himself to his work and his mother, and pleasantly conscious that he was a success. He let women alone, except where music and art, golf and the club theatricals were the topic of interest, and, consequently, had come to his fortieth year with some little awe and diffidence still left for them in his secret heart. Rachael had told him, not long ago, that she believed he took no interest in women older than fourteen and younger than fifty, and there was some truth in the charge. But he was conscious to-night of taking a distinct interest in her as he sat down beside her fire. He had never seen her so beautiful, he thought. She had dressed so hastily, so carelessly, that an utter simplicity enhanced the natural charm. Her dark hair was simply massed, her gown was devoid of ornament, her hands bare, except for her wedding-ring. On her earnest, exquisite face the occasion had stamped a certain soberness, she was neither hostess nor guest to-night; just a heartsick wife under the shadow of anger and shame. "Well, what is it to-night?" Warren Gregory asked kindly. "Oh, the same old thing, Greg. The Berry Stokes' dinner, you know!" "Shame!" the doctor said warmly, touched by her obvious depression. "I'll go up. I can give him some pills. But you know, he can't keep this up forever, Rachael. He's killing himself!" In her sensitive mood the mildly reproachful tone was too much. Rachael's breast rose, her eyes brightened angrily. "Perhaps you'll tell me what more I can do, Greg!" He looked at her in surprise; the shell of Mrs. Breckenridge's cool reserve was not often pierced. "My dear girl--" he stammered. "Why, Rachael--!" For battling with a moment of emotion she had flung her beautiful head back against the brilliant cretonne of the chair, her eyes closed, her hands grasping the chair-arms. A tear slipped from under her lids. "I didn't for one second mean--" he began again uncomfortably. Suddenly she straightened herself in her chair, and opened her eyes widely. He saw her lovely breast, under its filmy black chiffon, rise stormily. Her voice was rich with protest. "No, you didn't mean anything, Greg, nobody means anything! Nobody is anything but sorry for me: you, Billy, Elinor, the woman who expected us at dinner to-night, the servants at the club!" she said hotly. "Nobody blames me, and yet every one wonders how it happens! Nobody thinks it anything but a little amusing, a little shocking. I am to write the notes, and make the excuses, and be shamed--and shamed--shamed--" Her voice broke. She rose to her feet, and rested an elbow on the mantel, and stared moodily at the fire. There was a silence. "Rachael, I'm sorry!" Gregory said presently, impulsively. Instantly her April smile rewarded him. "I know you are, Greg!" she answered gratefully. "And I know," she added, in a low tone, "that you are one of the persons who will understand--when I end it all!" "End it all!" he echoed sharply. "Not suicide," she reassured him smilingly. She flung herself back in her chair again, holding her white hand, with its ring, between her face and the fire. "No," she said thoughtfully, "I mean divorce." There eyes met; both were pale, serious. "Divorce!" he echoed, after a pause. "I never thought of it--for you!" "I haven't thought of it myself, much," Rachael admitted, with a troubled smile. As a matter of fact she had thought of it, since the early days of her marriage, but never as an actual possibility. She had preferred bondage and social position to freedom and the uncomfortable status of the divorced woman. She realized now that she might think of it in a slightly different way. She had been a penniless nobody seven years ago; she was a personage now. The mere fact that he was a Breckenridge would win some sympathy for Clarence, but she would have her faction, too. More than that, she would never be younger, never handsomer, never better able to take the plunge, and face the consequences. "I'm twenty-eight, Greg," she said reasonably, "I'm not stupid, I'm not plain--don't interrupt me! Is this to be my fate? I'm capable of loving--of living--I don't want to be bored--bored--bored for the rest of my life!" Warren Gregory, stunned and surprised, eyed her sympathetically. "Belvedere Bay bore you?" he asked, smiling a little uneasily. "No--it's not that. I don't want more dinners and dances and jewels and gowns!" Rachael answered musingly. She stared sombrely at the fire, and there was a moment's silence. Suddenly her mood changed. She smiled, and locking her hands together, as she leaned far forward in her chair, she looked straight into his eyes. "Greg," she said, "do you know what I'd like to be? I'd like to be far away from cities and people, a fisherman's wife on an ocean shore, with a baby coming every year, and just the delicious sea to watch! I could be a good wife, Greg, if anybody really--loved me!" Laughing as she looked at him, she did not disguise the fact that tears misted her lashes. Warren Gregory felt himself stirred as he had not been before in his life. "Well," he said, with an unsteady laugh, "you could be anything! With you for his wife, what couldn't a man do!" Hardly conscious of what he did or said, he got to his feet, and she stood, too, smiling up at him. Both were breathing hard. "To think," he said, with a sort of repressed violence, "that you, of all women, should be Clarence Breckenridge's wife!" "Not long!" she answered, in a whisper. "You mean that you are really going to leave him, Rachael?" "I mean that I must, Greg, if I am not to go mad!" "And where will you go?" she asked. "Oh--to Vera, to Elinor." She paused, frowning. "Or away by myself," she decided suddenly. "Away from them all!" "Rachael," he said quickly, "will you come to my mother?" Rachael smiled. "To your mother!" He read her incredulity in her voice. "But she loves you," he said eagerly. "And she'd be--we'd both be so proud to show people--to prove--that we knew where the right lay!" "My dear Don Quixote," she answered affectionately, "I love you for asking me! But I will be better alone. I must think, and plan. I've made a mess of my life so far, Greg; I must take the next step carefully!" He was clinging to her hands as she stood, in all her grave beauty, before him. "If I hadn't been such a bat, Rachael, all those eleven years ago!" he said, daringly, breathlessly. "Have we known each other so long, Greg?" "Ever since that first visit of yours with little Persis Pomeroy! And I remember you so well, Rachael. I remember that Bobby Governeur was enslaved!" "Dear old Bobby! But I don't remember you, Greg!" "Because I was thirty then, my dear, and you were seventeen! I was just home from four years' work in Germany; I was afraid of girls your age!" "Afraid--of ME?" The three words were like a caress, like holding her in his arms. "I'm afraid so!" he said, not quite steadily. "I'm afraid I've always liked you too well. I--I CARE--that you're unhappy, that you're unkindly treated. I--I--wish I could do something, Rachael." "You DO do something," she said, deeply stirred in her turn. "I'm--you don't know how fond I am of you, Greg!" For answer she felt his arms about her, and for a throbbing minute they stood so; Rachael braced lightly, her beautiful breast rising and falling, her breath coming quickly. Her magnificent eyes, wide-open, like a frightened child's, were fixed steadily upon him. He caught the fragrance of her hair, of her fresh skin; he felt the softness and firmness of her slender arms. "Rachael!" he said, in a sharp whisper. "Don't--don't say that--if you don't--mean it!" "Greg!" she answered, in the same tone. "Don't--frighten me!" Instantly she was free, and he was standing by the fire with folded arms, looking at her. "You have missed love, and I have missed it," Warren Gregory said presently. "We'll be patient, Rachael. I'll wait; we'll both wait--" "Greg!" she could only answer still in that stricken whisper, still pale. She stood just as he had left her. A silence fell between them. The physician took out a cigarette from his gold case with trembling ringers. "I'm a little giddy, Rachael," he said after a moment. "I--on my honor I don't know what's happened to me! You're the most wonderful woman in the world--I've always thought that--but it never occurred to me--the possibility--" He paused, confused, unable to find the right words. "You've been facing this all alone," he continued presently. "Poor Rachael! You've been splendid--wonderfully brave! You have me beside you now; I'll help you if I may. Some day we may find a way out! Well," he finished abruptly, "suppose I go up and see Clarence?" For answer she rose, and without speaking again went ahead of him up the stairway and left him at the door of her husband's room. He did not see her again that night. Half an hour later he came down, dismissed his car, and walked home under the spring stars. In his veins, like a fire, still ran the excited, glorious consciousness of his madness. In his ears still echoed the wonderful golden voice; he could hear her very words, and he took certain phrases from his memory, and gloated over them as another man might have gloated over strings of pearls: "I'd like to be far away from cities and people, a fisherman's wife on an ocean shore with a baby coming every year and just the delicious sea to watch!" "Greg--don't frighten me!" Exquisite, desirable, enchanting--every inch of her--her voice, her eyes, her slender hand with its gold circle. What a woman! What a wife! What radiant youth and beauty and charm--and all trampled in the mire by Clarence Breckenridge, of all insensate brutes! How could laughter and courage and beauty survive it? He was going to the club, a mile away from the Breckenridge house, but long before the visions born that evening were exhausted, he saw the familiar lights, and the awninged porches, and heard the faint echoes of the orchestra. They were dancing. Warren Gregory turned away again, and plunged into the darkness of the roadside afresh. "My dear Don Quixote!" With what a look of motherly amusement and tenderness she had said it. What a woman! He had never kissed her. He had never even thought of kissing Clarence Breckenridge's wife. He thought of his mother, tried to forget her with a philosophical shrug, and found that the slender, black-clad, quiet-voiced vision was not to be so easily dismissed. It was said of old Madam Gregory that she had never been heard to raise her voice in the course of her sixty honored years. Of the four sons she had borne, three were dead, and the husband she had loved so faithfully lay beside them. She was slightly crippled, her outings confined to a slow drive every day. She was solitary in a retinue of servants. But that modulated voice and those cool, temperate eyes were still a power. His mother's displeasure was a very real thing to Warren Gregory, and the thought of adding another sorrow to the weight on those thin shoulders was not an easy one for him to entertain. It would be a sorrow. Mrs. Gregory was a rigid Catholic, her life's one prayer nowadays was that her beloved son might become one, too. Her marriage at seventeen to a non-Catholic had been undertaken in the firm conviction that faith like hers must win the conversion of her beloved James, the best, the most honorable of men. When her oldest son was born, and given his father's name, she saw, in her husband's willingness to further plans for the baptism, definite cause for hope. Another son was born, there was another christening; it was the father's own hand that gave the third baby lay-baptism only a few moments before the tiny life slipped back into the eternity from which it had so lately come. A year or two later a fourth son was born. Presently the dignified Mrs. Gregory was taking a trio of small, sleek-headed boys to Sunday-school, watching every phase in the development of their awakening souls with terror and with hope. What fears she suffered in spirit during those years no one but herself knew. Outwardly, the hospitable, gracious life of the great house went on; the Gregorys were prominent in charities, they opened their mountain camp for the summer, they travelled abroad, they had an audience with the Pope. Time went on, and the twelve-year-old George was taken from them, breaking the father's heart, said the watching world. But there was a strange calm in the mother's eyes as they rested on the dead child's serene face: Heaven had her free offering, now she must have her reward. A few months later James Gregory became a convert to her religion. Charles, the second son, had never wavered from his mother's faith, and rejoiced with her in this great event. But the first-born, Warren, as all but his mother called him, to avoid confusion with his father, was a junior in college when these changes took place, and when he came home for the long vacation his mother knew what her cross must be for the years to come. He listened to her with the appalling silence of the nineteen-year-old male, he kissed her, he returned gruff, embarrassed answers to her searching questions of his soul, and he escaped from her with visibly expanding lungs and averted eyes. She knew that she had lost him. Men called him a good man, and she assented with dry lips and heavy eyelids. Charles died, leaving a young widow and an infant son, the father shortly followed, and Warren came home from his interne year, and was a good son to her in her dark hour. When they began to say of him that he would be great, she smiled sadly. "My father was a doctor," she said once to an old friend, "and James inherits it!" But at a memory of her own father, erect and rosy among his girls and boys in the family pew, she burst into tears. "I would rather have him with his father, with George and Charles, and with my angel Francis, than have him the greatest man that ever lived!" she said. But if she had not made him a good Catholic she had made him a good man, and it was a fair and honorable record that Warren Gregory could offer to the woman he loved. Love--it had come to him at last. His thoughts went back to Rachael. It seemed to him that he had always known how deeply, how recklessly he loved her. He had a thrilling memory of her as Persis Pomeroy's guest, years ago, an awkward, delightful seventeen-year-old, with her hair in two thick braids, looped up at the neck, and tied with a flaring black bow. He remembered watching her, hearing for the first time the delicious voice with its English accent: "Well, I should say it was indeed!" "Well, I should say it was indeed!" Across more than ten years he recalled the careless, crisp little answer to some comment from Persis, his first precious memory of Rachael. The girls, he remembered, were supposedly too young for a certain dance that was imminent, they were opposing their youthful petulance--baffled roses and sunshine--to Mrs. Pomeroy's big, placid negatives. Gregory could still see the matron's comfortably shaking head, see Persis attacking again and again like a frantic butterfly, and see "the little English girl," perched on the porch rail, looking from mother to daughter smilingly, with her blue, serious eyes. Why had he never thought of her again until Clarence Breckenridge brought her back with him, a bride, six years later? Or, rather, having thought of her, as he undoubtedly had, why had he not found the time to cross the water and go to see her? Nothing might have come of it, true. But she might have yielded to him as readily as to Clarence Breckenridge! "I love her!" he said to himself, and it seemed wonderful, sad, and sweet, joyous and terrible to admit it. "I love her. But she doesn't love me or anyone, poor Rachael! She's forgotten me already!" CHAPTER III As a matter of fact, Rachael thought about him very often during the course of the next two or three days, and after he had left her that night she could think of nothing else. To the admiration of men she was cheerfully accustomed; perhaps it would be safe to say that not in the course of the past ten years had she ever found herself alone in a man's company without evoking a more or less definite declaration of his admiration for her. But to-night's affair was a little distinctive for several reasons. Warren Gregory was a most exceptional man, for one thing; he was reputedly a coldblooded man, for another; and for a third, he had been extraordinarily in earnest. There had been no hesitation, he had committed himself wholeheartedly. She was conscious of a pleasurable thrill. However gracious, however gallant Warren was, there had been no social pretence in his attitude to-night. And for a few moments she let her imagination play pleasantly with the situation. It was at least a new thought, and life had run in a groove for a long, long time. Granted the preliminaries safely managed, it would be a great triumph for the woman whom Clarence Breckenridge had ignored to come back into this group as Warren Gregory's wife. Rachael got into bed, flinging two or three books down beside her pillow and lighting the shaded lamp that stood at the bedside. She found herself unable to read. "Wouldn't Florence and Gardner buzz!" she thought with a smile. "And if they buzzed at the divorce, what WOULDN'T they say if I really did remarry? But the worst of it is"--and Rachael reaching for The Way of All Flesh sighed wearily--"the worst of it is that one never DOES carry out plans, or _I_ never do, any more. I used to feel equal to any situation, now I don't--getting old, perhaps. I wonder"--she stared dreamily at the soft shadows in the big room--"I wonder if things are as queer to most people as they are to me? I don't get much joy out of life, as it is, and yet I don't DARE cut loose and go away. No maid, no club, living at some cheap hotel--no, I couldn't do that! I wish there was someone who could advise me--some disinterested person, someone who--well, who loved me, and who knew that I've always tried to be decent, always tried to play the game. All I want is to be reasonably well treated; to have a good time and be among pleasant people--" Her thoughts wandered about among the various friends whose judgment might serve at this crisis to clear her own thoughts and simplify the road before her. Strangely enough, Warren Gregory's own mother was the first of whom she thought; that pure and austere and uncompromising heart would certainly find the way. Whether Rachael had the courage to follow it was another question. She loved old Mrs. Gregory; they were good friends. But Rachael dismissed her with a little shudder, as from the spatter of icy water against her bared breast. The bishop? Rachael and Clarence duly kept a pew in one of the city's fashionable churches; it was the Breckenridge family pew, rented by the family for a hundred years. But they never sat in it, although Rachael felt vaguely sometimes that for reasons undefined they should, and Clarence was apt in moments of sentiment to reproach his wife with the statement that his grandmother had been a faithful church woman, and his mother had always attended church on pleasant mornings in winter. But the bishop called on Rachael once a year, and Rachael liked him, and mingled an air of pretty penitence for past negligences with a gracious promise of better conduct in future. His Grace was a fine, breezy, broadminded man, polished in manner, sympathetic, and tolerant. He had not risen to his present eminence by too harsh a rebuke of the sinner. His handsome young assistant, Father Graves, as he liked to be called, was far more radical. But a great deal was forgiven this attractive boyish celibate by the women of the Episcopal parish. They enjoyed his scoldings, gave him their confidences, and asked his advice, though they never followed it. His slender, black-clad figure, with the Roman collar, was admired by many bright eyes at receptions and church bazaars. Still, Rachael could not somehow consider herself as seriously asking either of these two clergymen for advice. She could see the bishop, fitting finely groomed fingers together, pursing his lips for a judicial reply. "My dear Mrs. Breckenridge, that Clarence is now passing through a most unfortunate, most lamentable, period in his life is, alas, perfectly true. His mother--a lovely woman--was one of my wife's dearest friends, one of my own. His first marriage was much against her wishes, poor dear lady, and--as my wife was saying the other day--had she lived to see him happily married again, and her grandchild in such good hands, it could not but have been a great joy to her. Yes. ... Now, you and I know Clarence--know his good points, and know his faults. That's one of the sad things about us poor human beings, we get to know each other so well! And isn't it equally true that we're not patient enough with each other?--oh, yes, I know we try. But do we try HARD enough? Isn't there generally some fault on both sides, quick words, angry, hasty actions, argument and blame, when we say things we don't mean and that we are sure to regret, eh? We all get tired of the stupid round of daily duty, and of the people we are nearest to--that's a sad thing, too. We'd all like a change, like to see if we couldn't do something else better! And so comes the break, and the cloud on a fine old name, and all because we aren't better soldiers--we don't want to march in line! Bless me, don't I know the feeling myself? Why, that good little wife of mine could tell you some tales of discouragement and disenchantment that would make you open your eyes! But she braces me up, she puts heart into me--and the first thing I know I'm marching again!" And having comfortably shifted the entire trend of the conversation from his parishioner to himself and found nothing insurmountable in his own problem, the good bishop would chuckle mischievously at finding his eminent self quite human after all, and would suggest their going in to find Mrs. Bishop, and having a cup of tea. These women, always restless and dissatisfied, were a part of his work; he prided himself upon the swiftness and tact with which he disposed of them. Rachael's mouth twisted wryly at the thought of him. No, she could not bare her soul to the bishop. Nor could she approach Father Graves with any real hope of a helping word. To seek him out in his study--that esthetically bare and yet beautiful room, with its tobacco-brown hangings and monastic furnishing in black oak--would be to invite mischief. To sit there, with her eloquent eyes fixed upon his, her haunting voice wrapping itself about his senses, would be a genuine cruelty toward a harmless, well-intentioned youth whose heroism in abjuring the world, the flesh, and the devil had not yet been great enough to combat his superb and dignified egotism. At best, he would be won by Rachael's revelation of her soul to a long and frankly indiscreet talk of his own; at worst, he would construe her confidences in an entirely personal sense, and feel that she came not at all to the priest and all to the man. Dismissing him from her councils, Rachael thought of Florence Haviland, the good and kind-hearted and capable matron who was Clarence's sister and only near relative. She and Florence had always been good friends, had often discussed Clarence of late. What sort of advice would Florence's forty-five years be apt to give to Rachael's twenty-eight? "Don't be so absurd, Rachael, half the men in our set drink as much as Clarence does. Don't jump from the frying-pan into the fire. Remember Elsie Rowland and Marian Cowles when you talk so lightly of divorce!" That would be Florence's probable attitude. Still, it was a bracing attitude, heartily positive, like everything Florence did and said. And Florence was above everything else a church member, a prominent Christian in her self-sacrificing wifehood and motherhood, her social and charitable and civic work. She might be unflattering, but she would be right. Rachael's last conscious thought, as she went off to sleep, was that she would take the earliest possible moment to extract a verdict from Florence. She went into her husband's room at ten o'clock the next morning to find Billy radiantly presiding over a loaded breakfast tray, and the invalid, pale and pasty, and with no particular interest in food evinced by the twitching muscles of his face, nevertheless neatly brushed and shaved, propped up in pillows, and making a visible effort to appear convalescent. "How are you this morning?" Rachael asked perfunctorily, with her quick glance moving from the books on the table to the wood fire burning lazily behind brass firedogs. Everything was in perfect order, Helda's touch visible everywhere. "Fine," Clarence answered, also perfunctorily. His coffee was untouched, and the cigarette in his long holder had gone out, but Billy was disposing of eggs, toast, bacon, and cream with youthful zest. Clarence's hot, sick gaze rested almost with hostility upon his wife's cool beauty; in a gray linen gown, with a transparent white ruffle turned back from her white throat, she looked as fresh as the fresh spring morning. "Headache?" said the nicely modulated, indifferent voice. To this solicitude Clarence made no answer. A dark, ugly look came into his face, and he turned his eyes sullenly and wearily away. "How was the Chase dinner, Bill?" pursued the cheerful visitor, unabashed. "Same old thing," Carol answered briefly. "You're not up to the Perrys' lunch to-day, are you, Clancy?" "Oh, my God, no!" burst from the sufferer. "Well, I'll telephone them. If Florence comes in this morning I'm going to say you're asleep, so keep quiet up here. Do you want to see Greg again?" "No, I don't!" said Clarence, with unexpected vigor. "Steer him off if you can. Preaching at me last night as if he'd never touched anything stronger than malted milk!" "I don't imagine I'll have much trouble steering him off," Rachael said coldly. "His Sundays are pretty well occupied without--sick calls!" There was a delicate and scornful emphasis on the word "sick" that brought the blood to Clarence Breckenridge's face. Billy flushed, too, and an angry light flamed into her eyes. "That's not fair, Rachael!" the girl said hotly, "and you know it's not!" The glances of the three crossed. Billy was breathing hard; Clarence, shakily holding a fresh match to his cold cigarette, sent a lowering look from daughter to wife. Rachael shrugged her shoulders. "Well, I'll have my breakfast," she said, and turning she went from the room and downstairs to the sunshiny breakfast porch. There were flowers on the little round table, a bright glitter was struck from silver and glass, an icy grapefruit, brimming with juice, stood at her place. The little room was all windows, and to-day the cretonne curtains had been pushed back to show the garden brave in new spring green, the exquisite freshness of elm and locust trees that bordered it, and far away the slopes of the golf green, with the scarlet and white dots that were early players moving over it. Sunshine flooded the world, great plumes of white and purple lilac rustled in their tents of green leaves, a bee blundered from the blossoming wistaria vine into the room, and blundered out again. Far off Rachael heard a cock breaking the Sabbath stillness with a prolonged crow, and as the clock in the dining-room chimed one silver note for the half-hour, the bells of the church in the little village of Belvedere Bay began to ring. Of the comfort, the beauty, and the harmony of all this, however, Rachael saw and felt nothing. Her brief interview with her husband had left a bitter taste in her mouth. She felt neither courage nor appetite for the new day. Annie carried away the blue bowl of porridge untouched, reporting to Ellie: "She don't want no eggs, nor sausage, nor waffles--nothing more!" Ellie, the cook, who boarded a four-year-old daughter with the gardener and his wife, at the gate-lodge, was deep in the robust charms of this young person, and not sorry to be uninterrupted. "Thank goodness she don't," she said. "Do you want a little waffle all for yourself, Lovey? Do you want to pour the batter into Ma's iron yourself? Pin a napkin round her, Annie! An' then you can eat it out on the steps, darlin', because it just seems to be a shame to spend a minute indoors when God sends us a mornin' like this!" "It must have been grand, walking to church this morning, all right," said Alfred, who was busy with golf sticks and emery on the vine-shaded porch. "It was!" said Ellie and Annie together, and Annie added: "Rose from Bowditch's was there, and she says she can't get away but about once a month. She always has to wait on the children's breakfast at eight, and then down comes the others at half-past nine, or later, the way she never has a moment until it's too late for High! I told her she had a right to look for another place!" "There's worse places than this," Ellie said, watching her small daughter begin on her waffle. A general nodding of heads in a contented silence indicated that there was some happiness in the Breckenridge household even though it was below stairs. Rachael's sombre revery was presently interrupted by the smooth crushing of wheels on the pebbled drive and the announcement of Mrs. Haviland, who followed her name promptly into the breakfast-room. A fine, large, beautifully gowned woman, with a prayer book in her white-gloved hand, and a veil holding her close, handsome spring hat in place, she glanced at the coffee and hot bread with superiority only possible to a person whose own breakfast is several hours past. "Rachael, you lazy woman!" said Florence Haviland lightly, breathing deep, as a heavy woman in tight corsets must perforce breathe on a warm spring morning. "Do you realize that it's almost eleven o'clock?" "Perfectly!" Mrs. Breckenridge said. "I slept until nine, and felt quite proud of myself to think that I had got through so much of the day!" Mrs. Haviland gave her a sharp look in answer, not quite disapproving, yet far from pleased. "I started the girlies off to eight o'clock service," she said capably. "Fraulien went with them, and that leaves the maids free to go when they please." This was one of Mrs. Haviland's favorite illusions. "Gardner begged off this morning, he's been so good about going lately that I couldn't very well refuse, so I started early and have just dropped him at the club." "Was Gardner at the Berry Stokes bachelor dinner on Friday night?" asked Rachael. Mrs. Haviland was all comprehension at once. "No, he couldn't. Mr. Payne of the London branch was here you know, and Gardner's been terribly tied. He left yesterday, thank goodness. Clarence went of course? Oh, dear, dear, dear!" The last three words came on a gentle sigh. Clarence's sister compressed her lips and shook her handsome head. "Is he very bad?" she asked reluctantly. "Pretty much as usual," Rachael answered philosophically. "I had Greg in." And suddenly, unexpectedly, she felt a quick happy flutter at her heart, and a roseate mist drifted before her eyes. "It's disgraceful!" Mrs. Haviland said, eying Rachael hopefully for a wifely denial. As this was not forthcoming, she went on briskly: "However, my dear, Clarence isn't the only one! They say Fred Bowditch is actually"--her voice sank to a discreet undertone as she added the word--"violent; and poor Lucy Pickering needed a rest cure the moment she got her divorce, she was in such a nervous state. I'm not defending Clarence--" "What are you doing, then?" Rachael asked, with her cool smile. "Well, I--" Mrs. Haviland, who had been drifting comfortably along on a tide of words, stopped, a little at a loss. "I hope I don't have to defend your own husband to you, Rachael," she said reproachfully. "I'm getting pretty tired of it," said Rachael moodily. Mrs. Haviland watched the downcast beautiful face opposite her with a sense of growing alarm. "My dear," she said impressively, "of course it's hard for you; we all know that. But just at this time, Rachael, it would be absolutely FATAL to have any open break with Clarence--" Rachael flung up her head impatiently, then dropped her face in her hands. "I don't want any open break," she muttered. "You do? Oh, you DON'T?" Mrs. Haviland questioned anxiously. "No, of course you don't. He's not himself now, for several reasons. For one--and that's what I specially came to speak to you about--for one thing, he's terribly worried about Carol. Carol," repeated Mrs. Haviland significantly, "and Joe Pickering." Rachael raised sombre eyes, but did not speak. "Is Carol here?" her aunt asked delicately. "Dressing," Rachael answered briefly. "Do you realize," Mrs. Haviland said, "that everyone is beginning to talk?" "Perfectly," Rachael admitted. "But what do you expect me to do?" "SOMETHING must be done," said the other woman firmly. "By whom?" Rachael countered lightly. "Well--by Clarence, I suppose," Mrs. Haviland suggested discontentedly. "Clarence!" Rachael's tone was but a scornful breath. Her glance toward the ceiling evoked more clearly than any words a vision of Clarence's condition at the moment. "Well, I suppose he can't do anything just now, anyway," his sister conceded ruefully. "Can't you--couldn't you talk to her, Rachael?" "Talk to her?" Mrs. Breckenridge smiled at some memory. "My dear Florence, you don't suppose I haven't talked to her!" "Well, I suppose of course you have," Mrs. Haviland said hastily. "But my dear, it's dreadful! People are beginning to ask questions; a reporter--we don't know who he was--telephoned Gardner. Of course Gardner hung up--" "I can say no more than I have said," Rachael observed thoughtfully. "What authority have I? Clarence could influence her, I think, but she lies simply and flatly to Clarence." Mrs. Haviland winced at the ugly word. "Joe drinks," Rachael went on, "but he doesn't drink as much as her adored Daddy does. Joe is thirty-nine and Billy is seventeen--well, that's not his fault. Joe is divorced--well, but Carol's mother is living, and Clarence's second wife isn't exactly ostracised by society! A clergyman of your own church married Clarence and me--" The little scornful twist of the beautiful mouth stung a church woman conscious of personal integrity, and Mrs. Haviland said: "A great many of them won't! The church is going to take a stand in the matter. The bishops are considering a canon. ..." Mrs. Breckenridge shrugged her shoulders indifferently. Theology did not interest her. "And as Billy is too young and too blind to see that Joe isn't a gentleman," she continued, "or to realize that Lucy got her divorce against his will, to believe that her money might well influence a gentleman of Joe's luxurious tastes and dislike for office work--why, I suppose they will be married!" "Never!" said Florence Haviland, with some heat, "DON'T!" "Unless Clarence shoots him," submitted Rachael. A look of intense anxiety clouded Mrs. Haviland's eyes. "I believe he would," she said, in a wretched whisper, with a cautious glance about. "He might," his wife said seriously. "If ever it comes to that, we shall simply have to keep them apart. You see Billy--the clever little devil--" "Oh, Rachael, DON'T use such words!" said the church woman. "Father Graves was saying only the other day that one's speech should be 'yea, yea' and--" "I daresay!" Mrs. Breckenridge's smile was indulgent. It had been many years since Florence had succeeded in ruffling her. "Billy, then," she resumed, "keeps her father happy in the thought that he is all the world to her, and that her occasional chats with Joe are of an entirely uplifting and impersonal character." "Impersonal! Uplifting!" Mrs. Haviland repeated indignantly. "There wasn't very much uplift about them the other night. Gardner and I stopped in to see if we couldn't take you to the Hoyts', but you'd gone. Carol had on that flame-colored dress of hers, her hair was fluffed all over her ears in that silly way the girls do now; Joe couldn't take his eyes off her. The only light they had in the drawing-room was the yellow lamp and the fire; it was the coziest thing I ever saw!" "Vivvy Sartoris was here!" Rachael said quickly. "Don't you believe it, my dear!" Mrs. Haviland returned triumphantly. "Carol was very demure, 'Tante' this and 'Tante' that, but I knew right away that something was amiss! 'Oh,' I said right out flatly, 'are you alone here, Carol?' and she answered very prettily: 'Vivian was to be here, but she hasn't come yet!' This was after half-past seven." "I understood Vivian WAS here," said Rachael, flushing darkly. "Let me see--the next morning--where was I? Oh, yes, it was your luncheon, and Billy had gone out for some tennis when I came downstairs. I supposed of course--but I didn't ask. I DID ask Helda what time she had let the gentleman out and she said before eleven--not much after half-past ten, in fact." "You see, we mustn't go on suppositions and halftruths any more," said Mrs. Haviland in delicate reproach. "When we have that wonderful and delicate thing, a girl's soul, to deal with, we must be SURE." "I suppose I'd better tell Clarence that--about Wednesday night," Rachael said, downing with some effort an impulse to ask Florence not to be so smug. "Well, I think you had," the other agreed, with visible relief. "As for me," Mrs. Breckenridge said, nettled by her sister-in-law's attitude, and mischievously interested in the effect of her thunderbolt, "I'm just desperately tired of it. I can't see that I'm doing Clarence, or Billy, or myself, any good! I'd like to resign, and let somebody else try for a while!" Steel leaped into Mrs. Haviland's light-blue eyes. She felt the shock in every fibre of body and soul, but she flung herself gallantly into the charge. Her large form straightened, her expression achieved a certain remoteness. "What do you mean by that?" she asked sharply. "The usual thing, I suppose," Rachael answered indifferently. The older woman, watching her closely, essayed a brief, dry laugh. "Don't talk absurdities," she said boldly. But Rachael saw the uneasiness under the assured manner, and smiled to herself. "It's not absurd at all," she protested, still with her smiling, half-negligent air; "I've put it off years longer than most women would; now I'm getting rather tired." "It's a great mistake to talk that way, whether you mean it or not," Mrs. Haviland said, after an uncomfortable moment, during which her face flushed, and her breath began to come rather fast. "But you're joking, of course; you're too sensible to take any step that would only plunge you into fresh difficulties. Clarence is very trying, I know--we all know that--but let's try to face the situation sensibly, and not fly off the handle like this! Why, Rachael dear, I can hardly believe it's your cool-headed, reasonable self talking," she went on more quietly. "Don't--don't even think about it! In the first place, you couldn't get it!" "Oh, yes, I could. Clarence wouldn't contest it," Rachael said. "He'd agree to anything to be rid of me. If not--if he wouldn't agree to my filing suit under the New York law, I could establish my residence in California or Nevada, and bring suit there. ..." Mrs. Haviland gasped. "Give up your home and your car and your maids for some small hotel?" she questioned, with her favorite air of neatly placing her fingertip upon the weak spot in her opponent's armor. "No clubs, no dinners, none of your old friends--have you thought of that?" "You may imagine that I've thought of it from a good many angles, Florence," Rachael said coldly, finding that what had been a mere drifting idea was beginning to take rather definite form in her mind. It was delightful to see the usually complacent and domineering Florence so agitated and at a loss. "I never dreamed--" Mrs. Haviland mused dazedly. "How long, in Heaven's name, have you been thinking about it?" "Oh, quite some time," said Rachael. "Well, it's awful!" the other woman said. "It'll make the most awful--and as if poor Clarence hadn't been all through it all once! I declare it makes me sick! But I can't believe you're serious. Rachael, think--think what it means!" "It's a very serious thing," the other assented placidly. "But Clarence has no one but himself to blame." "Only Clarence won't BE blamed, my dear; men never are!" Mrs. Haviland suggested unkindly. Rachael reddened. "_I_ don't care what they say or whom they blame!" she answered proudly. "Ah, well, my dear, we aren't any of us really indifferent to criticism," the older woman said, watching closely the effect of her words. "People are censorious--it's too bad, it's a pity--but there you are. 'There must have been something we didn't understand,' they say, 'there must be another man!'" Rachael raised her head a little, and managed a smile. "That's what they say," Mrs. Haviland went on, mildly triumphant. "And no matter how brave or how independent a woman is, she doesn't like THAT." There came to the speaker suddenly, under her smooth flow of words, a sickening shock of realization: it was of Rachael and Clarence she was speaking, her nearest relatives; it was one of the bulwarks of her world that was threatened! Without her knowledge her tone became less sure and more sincere. "For God's sake, think what you are doing, dear," she said pleadingly; "think of Carol and of us all! Don't drag us all through the papers again! I know what Clarence is, poor wretched boy; he's always had too much money, he's always had his own way. I know what you put up with week in and week out--" Mrs. Haviland's usual attitude of assured superiority never impressed her sister-in-law. Her pompous magnificence was a source of unmitigated amusement to Rachael. But now the older woman's emotion had carried her on to genuine and honest expression in spite of herself, and listening, Rachael found herself curiously stirred. She looked down, conscious of a sudden melting in her heart, a thickening in her throat. "I've always been so fond of you, Rachael," Florence went on. "I've always stood your friend--you know that--" "I know," Rachael said huskily, her lashes dropped. "Long before I knew how much you would be liked, Rachael, and what a fuss people were going to make over you, I made you welcome," continued Florence simply, with tears in her eyes. "I thanked God that Clarence had married a good woman, and that Carol would have a refined and a--I may say a Christian home. Isn't that true?" "I know," Rachael said again with an effort, as she paused. "Then think it over," besought the other woman eagerly. "Think that Carol will marry, and that Clarence--" Her ardent tone dropped suddenly. There was a moment's pause. Then she added dryly, "How do, dear?" "How do, Tante Firenze!" said Carol, who had come abruptly into the room. "How are the girls? Say, listen! Is Isabelle going to the Bowditches'?" "I don't even know that Charlotte is going," Mrs. Haviland said, with an auntly smile of baffling sweetness that yet contained a subtle reproof. "Uncle Gardner and I haven't made up our minds. Isabelle in any case would only go to look on, so she is not so much interested, but poor Charlotte is simply on tenterhooks to know whether it's to be yes or no. Girls' first parties"--her indulgent smile included Rachael--"dear me, how important they seem!" "I should think you'd have to answer Mrs. Bowditch," said Carol in plain disgust at this maternal vacillation. "Mrs. Bowditch is fortunately an old enough friend, dear, to waive the usual formalities," her aunt answered sweetly. "But, my gracious--Charlotte's two months older than I am, and she won't know any of the men!" Carol protested. "Don't speak in that precocious way, Bill," Rachael said sharply. "You went to your first dances last winter!" Carol gave her stepmother a look conspicuously devoid of affection, and turned to adjust her smart little hat with the aid of a narrow mirror hanging between the glass dining-room doors. "You couldn't drop me at the club, on your way to church, Tante?" she presently inquired. And to Rachael she added, with youthful impatience, "I told Dad where I was going!" Mrs. Haviland rose somewhat heavily. "Glad to. Any chance of you coming to lunch, Rachael? What are your plans?" "Thank you, no, woman dear! I may go over to Gertrude's for tea." The little group broke up. Mrs. Haviland and her niece went out to the waiting motor car purring on the pebbled drive. Rachael idly watched them out of sight, sighed at the thought of wasting so beautiful a day indoors, and went slowly upstairs. Her husband, comfortably propped in pillows, looked better. "Clarence," said she, depositing several pounds of morning papers upon the foot of his bed, "who's Billy lunching with at the club?" Clarence picked up the uppermost paper, fixed his eyes attentively upon it, and puffed upon his cigarette for reply. "Do you know?" Rachael asked vigorously. No answer. Mr. Breckenridge, his eyes still intent upon what he was reading, held his cigarette at arm's length over the brass bowl on the table beside the bed, and dislodged a quarter-inch of ash with his little finger. Rachael, briskly setting his cluttered table to rights, gave him an angry glance that, so far as any effect upon him was concerned, was thrown away. "Don't be so rude, Clarence," she said, in annoyance. "Billy said you agreed to her going to the club for golf. Who's she with?" At last Mr. Breckenridge raised sodden and redshot eyes to his wife's face, moistening his dark and swollen lips carefully with his tongue before he spoke. He was a fat-faced man, who, despite evidences of dissipation, did not look his more than forty years. There was no gray in his thin, silky hair, and there still lingered an air of youth and innocence in his round face. This morning he was in a bad temper because his whole body was still upset from the Friday night dinner and drinking party, and in his soul he knew that he had cut rather a poor figure before Billy, and that the little minx had taken instant advantage of the situation. "I just want to say this, Rachael," Clarence said, with an icy dignity only slightly impaired by the lingering influences of drink. "I'm Billy's father, and I understand her, and she understands me. That's all that's necessary; do you get me?" He put his cigarette holder back in his mouth, gripped it firmly between his teeth, and turned again to his paper. "If some of you damned jealous women who are always running around trying to make trouble would let her ALONE" he went on sulkily, "I'd be obliged to you--that's all!" Rachael settled her ruffles in a big wing-chair with the innocent expression of a casual caller. She took a book from the reading table, and fluttered a few pages indifferently. "Listen, Clancy," said she placatingly. "Florence was just here, and she says--and I agree--that there is no question that Joe Pickering is devoted to Bill. Now, I don't say that Billy is equally devoted--" "Ha! Better not!" said Clarence at white heat, one eye watchful over the top of the paper. "But I DO say," pursued Rachael steadily, "that she is with him a good deal more than she will admit. Yesterday, for instance, when she was playing tennis with the Parmalees and the Pinckard boy, Kent came up to the house to get some ginger ale. I happened to be dummy, and I went out on the terrace. Joe's horse was down near the courts, and Joe and Billy were sitting there on one of the benches--where the others were I don't know. When Kent went down with the ginger ale, Joe got on his horse and went off. Of course it was only for a few minutes, but Billy didn't say anything about it--" Her voice, with a tentative question in it, rested in air. Clarence turned a page with some rustling of paper. "Then Florence says," Rachael went on after a moment, "that when she and Gardner stopped here Wednesday night Joe was here, and Vivvie Sartoris wasn't here. Now, of course, I don't KNOW, for I didn't ask Alfred---" "There you go," said the sick man witheringly. "That's right--ask the maids, and get all the servants talking; all come down on the heels of a poor little girl like a pack of yapping wolves! I suppose if she was plain and unattractive--I should think you'd be ashamed," he went on, changing his high and querulous key to one of almost priestly authority and reproof, "Upon my word, it's beneath your dignity. My little girl comes to me, and she explains the whole matter. Pickering admires her--she can't help that--and she has an influence over him. She tells me he hasn't touched a thing but beer for six weeks, just because she asked him to give up heavy drinking. He told her the other day that if he had met her a few years ago, Lucy never would have left him. She's wakened the boy up, he's a different fellow--" "All that may be true," Rachael said quickly, the color that his preposterous rebuke had summoned to her cheeks still flushing them, "still, you don't want Billy to marry Joe Pickering! You know that sort of pity, and that business of reforming a man--" She paused, but Clarence did not speak. "Not that Billy herself realizes it, I daresay," Rachael added presently, watching the reader's absorbed face for an answering look. Silence. "Clarence!" she began imperatively. Clarence withdrew his attention from the paper with an obvious effort, and spoke in a laboriously polite tone. "I don't care to discuss it, Rachael." "But--" Rachael stopped short on the word. Silence reigned in the big, bright room except for the occasional rustle of Clarence's newspaper. His wife sat idle, her eyes roving indifferently from the gayly papered walls to the gayly flowered hangings, the great bowl of daffodils on the bookcase, the portrait of Carol that, youthful and self-conscious, looked down from the mantel. On the desk a later photograph of Carol, in a silver frame, was duly flanked by one of Rachael, the girl in the gown she had worn for her first big dance, the woman looking out from under the narrow brim of a snug winter hat, great furs framing her beautiful face, and her slender figure wrapped in furs. Here also was a picture of Florence Haviland, her handsome face self-satisfied, her trio of homely, distinguished-looking girls about her, and a small picture of Gardner, and two of Clarence's dead mother: one, as they all remembered her, a prim-looking woman with gray hair and magnificent lace on her unfashionable gown, the other, taken thirty years before, showing her as cheerful and youthful, a cascade of ringlets falling over her shoulder, the arm that coquettishly supported her head resting upon an upholstered pedestal, a voluminous striped silk gown sweeping away from her in rich folds. There was even a picture of Clarence and Florence when they were respectively eight and twelve, Clarence in a buttoned serge kilt and plaid stockings, his fat, gentle little face framed in damp careful curls, Florence also with plaid stockings and a scalloped frock. Clarence sat in a swing; Florence, just behind him, leaned on an open gate, her legs crossed carelessly as she rested on her elbows. And there was a picture of their father, a simple-faced man in an ample beard, taken at that period when photographs were highly glazed, and raised in bas relief. Least conspicuous of all was a snapshot framed in a circle of battered blue-enamel daisies, the picture of a baby girl laughing against a background of dandelions and meadow grass. And Rachael knew that this was Clarence's greatest treasure, that it went wherever he went, and that it was worn shabby and tarnished from his hands and his lips. Sometimes she looked at it and wondered. What a bright-faced, gay little thing Billy had been! Who had set her down in that field, and quieted the rioting eyes and curls and dimples, and anchored the restless little feet, while Baby watched Dad and the black box with the birdie in it? Paula? Once, idly interested in those old days before she had known him, she had asked about the picture. But Clarence, glad to talk of it, had not mentioned his wife. "It was before my father died; we were up in the old Maine place," he had said. "Gosh, Bill was cute that day! We went on a drive--no motor cars then--and took our lunch, and after lunch the kid comes and settles herself in my arms--for a nap, if you please! 'Say, look-a-here,' I said, 'what do you think I am--a Pullman?' I wanted a smoke, by George! She wasn't two, you know. Her fat little legs were bare, we'd put her into socks, and her face was flushed, and she just looked up at me through her hair and said, 'Hing!' Well, it was good-bye smoke for me! I sang all right, and she cuddled down as pleased as a kitten, and off she went!" To-day Rachael's eyes wandered from the picture to Clarence's face. She tried to study it dispassionately, but, still shaken by their recent conversation, and sitting there, as she knew she was sitting there, merely to prove that it had had no effect upon her, she felt this to be a little difficult. What sort of a little boy had he been? A fat little boy, of course. She disliked fat little boys. A spoiled little boy, never crossed in any way. His mother made him go to Sunday-school, and dancing school, and to Miss Nesmith's private academy, where he was coaxed and praised and indulged even more than at home. And old Fanny, who was still with Florence, superintended his baths and took care of his clothes, and ran her finger over the bristles of his toothbrush every morning, to see if he had told her the truth. He rarely did; they used to laugh about those old deceptions. Clarence used to laugh as violently as the old woman when she accused him of occasional kicking and biting. Other boys came in to play with him. Was it because of his magic lantern and his velocipede, his unending supply of cream puffs and licorice sticks, or because they liked him? Rachael knew only a detail here and there: that he had danced a fancy dance with Anna Vanderwall when he was a fat sixteen, at a Kermess, and that he had given a stag dinner to twenty youths of his own age a few days before he went off to college, and that they had drunk a hundred and fifty dollars' worth of champagne. She knew that his allowance at college was three hundred dollars a month, and that he never stayed within it, and it was old Fanny's boast that every stitch the boy ever wore from the day he was born came from London or Paris. His underwear was as dainty as a bride's; he had his first dress suit at fifteen; at college he had his suite of three big rooms furnished like showrooms, his monogrammed cigarettes, his boat, and his horse. The thought of all these things used to distress his mother when she was old and much alone. She attempted to belittle the luxury of Clarence's boyhood. She told Rachael that he was treated just as the other boys were. Her conscience was never quite easy about his upbringing. "You can't hold a boy too tight, you know, or else he'll break away altogether," old lady Breckenridge would say to Rachael, sitting before a coal fire in the gloomy magnificence of her old-fashioned drawingroom and pressing the white fingers of one hand against the agonized joints of the other. "I was often severe with Clarence, and he was a good boy until he got with other boys; he was always loving to me. He never should have married Paula Verlaine," she would add fretfully. "A good woman would have overlooked his faults and made a fine man of him, but she was always an empty-headed little thing! Ah, well"--and the poor old woman would sigh as she drew her fluffy shawl about her shoulders--"I cannot blame myself, that's my great consolation now, Rachael, when I think of facing my Master and rendering an account. I have been heavily afflicted, but I am not the first God-fearing woman who has been visited with sorrow through her children!" Clarence had visited his mother often in the weeks that preceded her death, but she did not take much heed of his somewhat embarrassed presence, nor, to Rachael's surprise, did her last hours contain any of those heroic joys that are supposedly the reward of long suffering and virtue. An unexpressed terror seemed to linger in her sickroom, indeed to pervade the whole house; the invalid lay staring drearily at the heavy furnishings of her immense dark room, a nurse slipped in and out; the bloody light of the westering sun, falling through stairway windows of colored glass, blazed in the great hallway all through the chilly October afternoons. Callers came and went, there were subdued voices and soft footsteps; flowers came, their wet fragrance breaking from oiled paper and soaked cardboard boxes, the cards that were wired to them resisting all attempts at detachment. Clergymen came, and Rachael imitated their manner afterward, to the general delight. On the day before she died Mrs. Breckenridge caught her son's plump cool hand in her own hot one, and made him promise to stop drinking, and to go to church, and to have Carol confirmed. Clarence promised everything. But he did not keep his promises. Rachael had not thought he would; perhaps the old lady herself had not thought he would. He was sobered at the funeral, but not sober. Six weeks later all the bills against the estate were in. Florence had some of the family jewels and the family silver, Rachael had some, some was put away for Billy; the furniture was sold, the house rented for a men's club, and a nondescript man, calling upon young Mrs. Breckenridge, notified her that the stone had been set in place as ordered. They never saw it; they paid a small sum annually for keeping the plot in order, and the episode of Ada Martin Langhorne Breckenridge's life was over. Clarence drank so heavily after that, and squandered his magnificent heritage so recklessly, that people began to say that he would soon follow his mother. But that was four years ago, and Rachael looking dispassionately at him, where he lay dozing in his pillows, had to admit that he had shown no change in the past four--or eight, or twelve--years. Like many a better woman, and many a better wife, she wondered if she would outlive him, vaguely saw herself, correct and remote, in her new black. Involuntarily she sighed. How free she would be! She wished Clarence no ill, but the fact remained that, loose as was the bond between them, it galled and checked them both at every step. Their conversations were embittered by a thousand personalities, they instinctively knew how to hurt each other; a look from Clarence could crush his poised and accomplished wife into a mere sullen shrew, and she knew that it took less than a look from her--it took the mere existence of her youth and health and freshness--to infuriate him sometimes. At best, their relationship consciously avoided hostility. Rachael was silent, fuming; Clarence fumed and was silent; they sank to light monosyllables; they parted as quickly as possible. Would Clarence like to dine with this friend or that? Rachael didn't think he would, but might as well ask him. No, thank you! he wouldn't be found dead in that bunch. Did Rachael want to go with the Smiths and the Joneses to dine at the Highway, and dance afterward? Oh, horrors! no, thank you! It was only when she spoke of Billy that Rachael was sure of his interest and attention, and of late she perforce had for Billy only criticism and disapproval. Rachael read the girl's vain and shallow and pleasure-loving little heart far more truly than her father could, and she was conscious of a genuine fear lest Billy bring sorrow to them all. Society was indulgent, yes, but an insolent and undeveloped little girl like Billy could not snap her fingers at the law without suffering the full penalty. Rachael would suffer, too. Florence and her girls would suffer, and Clarence--well, Clarence would not bear it. "What an awful mix-up it is!" Rachael thought wearily. "And what a sickening, tiresome place this world is!" And then suddenly the thought of Warren Gregory came back, and the new curious sensation of warmth tugged at her heart. CHAPTER IV Mrs. Gardner Haviland, whirling home in her big car, after church, was hardly more pleased with life than was her beautiful sister-in-law, although she was not quite as conscious of dissatisfaction as was Rachael. Her position as a successful mother, wife, housekeeper, and member of society was theoretically so perfect that she derived from it, necessarily, an enormous amount of theoretical satisfaction. She could find no fault with herself or her environment; she was pleasantly ready with advice or with an opinion or with a verdict in every contingency that might arise in human affairs, as a Christian woman of unimpeachable moral standing. She knew her value in a hectic and reckless world. She did not approve of women smoking, or of suffrage, but she played a brilliant game of bridge, and did not object to an infinitesimal stake. She belonged to clubs and to their directorates, yet it was her boast that she knew every thought in her children's hearts, and the personal lives and hopes and ambitions of her maids were as an open book to her. Still, she had her moments of weakness, and on this warm day of the spring she felt vaguely disappointed with life. Rachael's hints of divorce had filled her with a real apprehension; she felt a good aunt's concern at Billy's reckless course, and a good sister's disapproval of Clarence and his besetting sin. But it was not these considerations that darkened her full handsome face as she went up the steps of her big, widespread country mansion; it was some vaguer, more subtle discontent. She had not dressed herself for the sudden warmth of the day, and her heavy flowered hat and trim veil had given her a headache. The blazing sunlight on white steps and blooming flowers blinded her, and when she stepped into the dark, cool hall she could hardly see. The three girls were there, well-bred, homely girls, in their simple linens: Charlotte, a rather severe type, eyeglassed at eighteen, her thick, light-brown hair plainly brushed off her face and knotted on her neck, was obviously the opposite of everything Billy was; conscientious, intellectual, and conscious of her own righteousness, she could not compete with her cousin in Billy's field; she very sensibly made the best of her own field. Isabelle was a stout, clumsy girl of sixteen, with a metal bar across her large white teeth, red hair, and a creamy skin. Little Florence was only nine, a thin, freckled, sensitive child, with a shy, unsmiling passion for dogs and horses, and little in common with the rest of the world. Their mother had expected sons in every case, and still felt a little baffled by the fact of her children's sex. Charlotte proving a girl, she had said gallantly that she must have a little brother "to play with Charlotte." Isabelle, duly arriving, probably played with Charlotte much more amiably than a brother would have done, and Mrs. Haviland blandly accepted her existence, but in her heart she was far from feeling satisfied. She was, of course, an absolutely competent mother to girls, but she felt that she would have been a more capable and wonderful mother to boys. More than six years after Isabelle's birth Florence Haviland began to talk smilingly of "my boy." "Gardner worships the girls," she said, with wifely indulgence, "but I know he wants a son--and the girlies need a brother!" A resigned shrug ended the sentence with: "So I'm in for the whole thing again!" It was said that Mrs. Haviland greeted the news that the third child was a daughter with a mechanically bright smile, as one puzzled beyond all words by perverse event, and that her spoken comment was the single mild ejaculation: "Extraordinary!" Now the two older Haviland girls, following their mother into her bedroom, seated themselves there while she changed her dress. Florence junior, in passionate argument with the butler over the death of one of the drawing-room goldfish, remained downstairs. Mrs. Haviland, casting the hot, high-collared silk upon the bed, took a new embroidered pongee from a box, and busied herself with its unfamiliar hooks and straps. Charlotte and Isabelle were never quite spontaneous in their conversations with their mother, their attitude in talking with her being one of alert and cautious self-consciousness; they did not breathe quite naturally, and they laughed constantly. Yet they both loved this big, firm, omnipotent being, and believed in her utterly and completely. "We met Doctor Gregory and Charlie near the club this morning, M'ma," volunteered Isabelle. "And they asked about Mrs. Bowditch's dance," Charlotte added with a little innocent craft. "But I said that M'ma had been unable to decide. Of course I said that we would LIKE to go, and that you knew that, and would allow it if you possibly could." "That was quite right, dear," Mrs. Haviland said to her oldest daughter, calmly ignoring the implied question, and to Isabelle she added kindly: "M'ma doesn't quite like to hear you calling a young man you hardly know by his first name, Isabelle. Of course, there's no harm in it, but it cheapens a girl just a LITTLE. While Charlotte might do it because she is older, and has seen Charlie Gregory at some of the little informal affairs last winter, you are younger, and haven't really seen much of him since he went to college. Don't let M'ma hear you do that again." Isabelle turned a lively scarlet, and even Charlotte colored and was silent. The younger girl's shamed eyes met her mother's, and she nodded in quick embarrassment. But this tacit consent did not satisfy Mrs. Haviland. "You understand M'ma, don't you, dear?" she asked. Isabelle murmured something indistinguishable. "Yes, M'ma!" said that lady herself, encouragingly and briskly. Isabelle duly echoed a husky "Yes, M'ma!" "Did you give my message to Miss Roper, Charlotte?" pursued the matron. "She wasn't at church, M'ma," said Charlotte, taken unawares and instinctively uneasy. "Mrs. Roper said she had a heavy cold; she said she'd been sleeping on the sleeping porch." "So M'ma's message was forgotten?" the mother asked pleasantly. Charlotte perceived herself to be in an extremely dangerous position. Long ago both girls had lost, under this close surveillance and skilful system of cross-examination, their original regard for truth as truth. That they usually said what was true was because policy and self-protection suggested it. Charlotte had time now for a flying survey of the situation and its possibilities before she answered, somewhat uncertainly: "I asked Mrs. Roper to deliver it, M'ma. Wasn't that--" Her voice faltered nervously. "Was it something you would have rather telephoned about?" "Would rather have telephoned about?" Mrs. Haviland corrected automatically. "Well, M'ma would rather FEEL that when she sends a message it is given to JUST the person to whom she sent it, in JUST the way she sent it. However, in this case no harm was done. Don't hook your heel over the rung of your chair, dear! Ring the bell, Isabelle, I want Alice." "I'll hook you, M'ma!" volunteered Charlotte. "Thank you, dear, but I want to speak to Alice. And now you girls might run along. I'll be down directly." A moment later she submitted herself patiently to the maid's hands. Florence was a conscientious woman, and she felt that she owed Alice as well as herself this little office. Charlotte might have hooked her gown for her; indeed, she might with a small effort have done it herself, but it was Alice's duty, and nothing could be worse for Alice, or any servant, than to have her duties erratically assumed by others on one day and left to her on the next. This was the quickest way to spoil servants, and Florence never spoiled her servants. "They have a pleasant day for their picnic," she observed now, kindly. Alice was on her knees, her face puckered as she busied herself with the hooks of a girdle, but she smiled gratefully. Her two brothers had borrowed their employer's coal barge to-day, and with a score of cherished associates, several hundred sandwiches, sardines, camp-chairs, and bottles of root beer, with a smaller number of chaperoning mothers and concertinas, and the inevitable baby or two, were making a day of it on the river. Alice had timidly asked, a few days before, for a holiday to-day, that she might join them, but Mrs. Haviland had pointed out to her reasonably that she, Alice, had been at home, unexpectedly, because of her mother's illness, not only the previous Sunday, but the Saturday, too, and had got half-a-day's leave of absence for her cousin's wedding only the week before that. Alice was only eighteen, and her little spurt of bravery had been entirely exhausted long before her mistress's pleasant voice had stopped. Nothing more was said of the excursion until to-day. "I guess they'll be eating their lunch, now, at Old Dock Point," said Alice, rising from her knees. "Well, I hope they'll be careful; one hears of so many accidents among foolish young people there!" Mrs. Haviland answered, going downstairs to join her daughters in the hall, and, surrounded by them, proceeding to her own lunch. For a while she was thoughtfully silent, and the conversation was maintained between the older girls and their governess. Charlotte and Isabelle chatted both German and French charmingly. Little Florence presently began to talk of her goldfish, meanwhile cutting a channel across her timbale through which the gravy ran in a stream. Usually their mother listened to them with a quiet smile; they were well-educated girls, and any mother's heart must have been proud of them. But to-day she felt herself singularly dissatisfied with them. She said to herself that she hated Sundays, of all the days of the week. Other days had their duties: music, studies, riding, tennis, or walks, but on Sundays the girls were a dead weight upon her. Somehow, they were not in the current of good times that the other girls and boys of their ages were having. If she suggested brightly that they go over to the Parmalees' or the Morans' and see if the young people were playing tennis, she knew that Charlotte would delicately negative the idea: "They've got their sets all made up, M'ma, and one hates to, unless they specially ask one, don't you know?" They might go, of course, and greet their friends decorously, and watch the game smilingly for a while. Then they would come home with Fraulein, not forgetting to say good-bye to their hostess. But, although Charlotte played a better game than many of the other girls, and Isabelle played a good game, too, there were always gay little creatures in dashing costumes who monopolized the courts and the young men, and made the Haviland girls feel hopelessly heavy and dull. They would come home and tell their mother that Vivian Sartoris let two of the boys jump her over the net, and that Cousin Carol wore Kent Parmalee's panama all afternoon, and called out to him, right across the court, "Come on down to the boathouse, Kent, and let's have a smoke!" "Poor Vivian--poor Billy!" Mrs. Haviland would say. "Men don't really admire girls who allow them such familiarities, although the silly girls may think they do! But when it comes to marrying, it is the sweet, womanly girls to whom the men turn!" She did not believe this herself, nor did the girls believe it, but, if they discussed it when they were alone together, before Mamma, they were always decorously impressed. "Any plans for the afternoon, girlies?" she asked now, when the forced strawberries were on the table, and little Florence was trying to eat the nuts out of her cake, and at the same time carefully avoid the cake itself and the frosting. "What's Carol doing, M'ma?" "When M'ma asks you a question, Isabelle, do not answer with another question, dear. I dropped Carol at the club, but I think Aunt Rachael means to pick her up there later, and go on to Mrs. Whittaker's for tea." "We met Mrs. Whittaker in the Exchange yesterday, M'ma, and she very sweetly said that you were to--that is, that she hoped you would bring us in for a little while this afternoon. Didn't she, Isabelle?" "I don't want to go!" Isabelle grumbled. But her mother ignored her. "That was very sweet of Aunt Gertrude. I think I will go over to the club and see what Papa is planning and how his game is going, and then I could pick you girls up here." "I'm going over to play with Georgie and Robbie Royce!" shrilled Florence. "They're mean to me, but I don't care! I hit George in the stomach---" Mrs. Haviland looked as pained as if the reported blow had fallen upon her own person, but she was strangely indulgent to her youngest born, and now did no more than signal to the nurse, old Fanny, who stood grinning behind the child's chair, that Miss Florence might be excused. Florence was accordingly borne off, and the girls drifted idly upstairs, Isabelle confiding to her sister as she dutifully brushed her teeth that she wished "something" would happen! Alice muttered to Sally, another maid, over her strong hot tea, that you might as well be dead as never do a thing in God's world you wanted to do, but the rest of the large staff enjoyed a hearty meal, and when Percival brought the car around at three o'clock, Mrs. Haviland, magnificent in a change of costume, spent the entire trip to the club in the resentful reflection that the man had obviously had coffee and cream and mutton for his lunch--disgusting of him to come straight to his car and his mistress still redolent of his meal, but what could one do? In Mrs. Haviland's upper rear hall was a framed and typewritten list of rules for the maids, conspicuous upon which were those for daily baths and regular use of toothbrushes. But Percival never had seen this list, and he was a wonderful driver and a special favorite with her husband. She decided that there was nothing to be done, unless of course the thing recurred, although the moment's talk with Percival haunted and distressed her all day. She duly returned to the house for her daughters a little after four o'clock, and in amicable conversation they went together to the tea, a crowded, informal affair, in another large house full of rugs and flowers, rooms dark and rich with expensive tapestries and mahogany, rooms bright and gay with white enamel and chintz and wicker furniture. Everybody was here. Jeanette and Phyllis, as well as Elinor Vanderwall, Peter Pomeroy and George, the Buckneys and Parker Hoyt, the Emorys, the Chases, Mrs. Sartoris and old Mrs. Torrence and Jack, all jumbled a greeting to the Havilands. Of Carol they presently caught a glimpse standing on a sheltered little porch with Joe Pickering's sleek head beside her. They were apparently not talking, just staring quietly down at the green terraces of the garden. Rachael was pouring tea, her face radiant under a narrowbrimmed, close hat loaded with cherries, her gown of narrow green and white stripes the target for every pair of female eyes in the room. Charlotte Haviland, in her mother's wake, chanced to encounter Kenneth Moran, a red-faced, well-dressed and blushing youth of her own age. Her complacent mother was witness to the blameless conversation between them. "How do you do, Kenneth? I didn't know you were here!" "Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? How do you do, Isabelle? I didn't know you were here!" Isabelle grinned silently in horrible embarrassment but Charlotte said, quick-wittedly: "How is your mother, Kenneth, and Dorothy?" "She's well--they're well, thank you. They're here somewhere--at least Mother is. I think Dorothy's still over at the Clays', playing tennis!" He laughed violently at this admission, and Charlotte laughed, too. "It's lovely weather for tennis," she said encouragingly. "We--" "You--" Mr. Moran began. "I beg your pardon!" "No, I interrupted you!" "No, that was my fault. I was only going to say that we ought to have a game some morning. Going to have your courts in order this year?" "Yes, indeed," Charlotte said, with what was great vivacity for her. "Papa has had them all rolled; some men came down from town--we had it all sodded, you know, last year." "Is that right?" asked Mr. Moran, as one deeply impressed. "We must go to it--what?" "We must!" Charlotte said happily. "Any morning, Kenneth!" "Sure, I'll telephone!" agreed the youth enthusiastically. "I'm trying to find Kent Parmalee; his aunt wants him!" he added mumblingly, as he began to vaguely shoulder his way through the crowd again. "You'd better take a microscope!" said Charlotte wittily. And Mr. Moran's burst of laughter and his "That's right, too!" came back to them as he went away. "Dear fellow!" Mrs. Haviland said warmly. "Isn't he nice!" Charlotte said, fluttered and glowing. She hoped in her heart that she would meet him again, but although the Havilands stayed until nearly six o'clock they did not do so; perhaps because shortly after this conversation Kenneth Moran met Miss Vivian Sartoris, and they took a plateful of rich, crushy little cakes and went and sat under the stairs, where they took alternate bites of each other's mocha and chocolate confections, and where Vivian told Kenneth all about a complicated and thrilling love affair between herself and one of the popular actors of the day. This narrative reflected more credit upon the young woman's imagination than upon her charms had the listener but suspected it, but Kenneth was not a brilliant boy, and they had a lovely time over their confidences. Charlotte's romantic encounter with the gentleman, however, made her happy for several hours, and colored her cheeks rosily. "You're getting pretty, Carlotta!" said her Aunt Rachael, observing this. "Don't drink tea, that's a good child! You can stuff on cakes and chocolate of course, Isabelle," she added, "but Charlotte's complexion ought to be her FIRST THOUGHT for the next five years!" "I don't really want any," asserted Charlotte, feeling wonderfully grown-up and superior to the claims of a nursery appetite. "But can't I help you, Aunt Rachael?" "No, my dear, you can't! I'm through the worst of it, and being bored slowly but firmly to death! Gertrude, I'm just saying that your party bores me." "So sorry about you, Rachael!" said the slim, laceclad hostess calmly. "Here's Judy Moran! Nearly six, Judy, and we dine at seven on Sundays. But never mind, eat and drink your fill, my child." "Billy's flirtin' her head off out there!" wheezed stout Mrs. Moran, dropping into a chair. "Joe and Kent and young Gregory and half a dozen others are out there with her." Mrs. Breckenridge, who had begun to frown, relaxed in her chair. "Ah, well, there's safety in numbers!" she said, reassured. "You take cream, Judy, and two lumps? Give Mrs. Moran some of those little damp, brown sandwiches, Isabelle. A minute ago she had some of the most heavenly hot toast here, but she's taken it away again! I wish I could get some tea myself, but I've tried three times and I can't!" She busied herself resignedly with tongs and teapot, and as Mrs. Moran bit into her first sandwiches, and the Haviland girls moved away at a word from their mother, Rachael raised her eyes and met Warren Gregory's look. He was standing, ten feet away, in a doorway, his eyelids half dropped over amused eyes, his hands sunk in his coat pockets. Rachael knew that he had been there for some moments, and her heart struggled and fluttered like a bird in a snare, and with a thrill as girlish as Charlotte's own she felt the color rise in her cheeks. "Come have some tea, Greg," she said, indicating the empty chair beside her. "Thank you, dear," he answered, his head close to hers for a moment as he sat down. The little word set Rachael's heart to hammering again. She glanced quickly to see if Mrs. Moran had overheard, but that lady had at last caught sight of the maid with the hot toast, and her ample back was turned toward the teatable. Indeed, in the noisy, disordered room, which was beginning to be deserted by straggling groups of guests, they were quite unobserved. To both it was a delicious moment, this little domestic interlude of tea and talk in the curved window of the dining-room, lighted by the last light of a spring day, and sweet with the scent of wilting spring flowers. "You make my heart behave in a manner not to be described in words!" said Rachael, her fingers touching his as she handed him his tea. "It must be mine you feel," suggested Warren Gregory; "you haven't one--by all accounts!" "I thought I hadn't, Greg, but, upon my word---" She puckered her lips and raised her eyebrows whimsically, and gave her head a little shake. Doctor Gregory gave her a shrewdly appraising look, sighed, and stirred his tea. "If ever you discover yourself to be the possessor of such an organ, Rachael," said he dispassionately, "you won't joke about it over a tea-table! You'll wake up, my friend; we'll see something besides laughter in those eyes of yours, and hear something besides cool reason in your voice! I may not be the man to do it, but some man will, some day, and--when John Gilpin rides--" The eyes to which he referred had been fixed in serene confidence upon his as he began to speak. But a second later Rachael dropped them, and they rested upon her own slender hand, lying idle upon the teatable, with its plain gold ring guarded by a dozen blazing stones. Had he really stirred her, Warren Gregory wondered, as he watched the thoughtful face under the bright, cherry-loaded hat. "You know how often there is neither cool reason nor any cause for laughter in my life, Greg," she said, after a moment. "As for love--I don't think I know what love is! I am an absolutely calculating woman, and my first, last, and only view of anything is just how much it affects me and my comfort." "I don't believe it!" said the doctor. "It's true. And why shouldn't it be?" Rachael gave him a grave smile. "No one," said she seriously, "ever--ever--EVER suggested to me that there was anything amiss in that point of view! Why is there?" "I don't understand you," said the doctor simply. "One doesn't often talk this way, I suppose," she said slowly. "But there is a funny streak of--what shall I call it?--conscience, or soul, or whatever you like, in me. Whether I get it from my mother's Irish father or my father's clergyman grandfather, I don't know, but I'm eternally defending myself. I have long sessions with myself, when I'm judge and jury, and invariably I find 'Not Guilty!'" "Not guilty of what?" the man asked, stirring his untasted cup. "Not guilty of anything!" she answered, with a child's puzzled laugh. "I stick to my bond, I dress and talk and eat and go about--" Her voice dropped; she stared absently at the table. "But--" the doctor prompted. "But--that's just it--but I'm so UNHAPPY all the time!" Rachael confessed. "We all seem like a lot of puppets, to me--like Bander-log! What are we all going round and round in circles for, and who gets any fun out of it? What's YOUR answer, Greg--what makes the wheels go round?" "'Tis love--'tis love--that makes--etcetera, etcetera," supplied the doctor, his tone less flippant than his words. "Oh--love!" Rachael's voice was full of delicate scorn. "I've seen a great deal of all sorts and kinds of love," she went on, "and I must say that I consider love a very much overrated article! You're laughing at me, you bold gossoon, but I mean it. Clarence loved Paula madly, kidnapped her from a boarding-school and all that, but I don't know how much THEIR seven years together helped the world go round. He never loved me, never once said he did, but I've made him a better wife than she did. He loves Bill, now, and it's the worst thing in the world for her!" "THERE'S some love for you," said Doctor Gregory, glancing across the room to the figures of Miss Leila Buckney and Mr. Parker Hoyt, who were laughing over a cabinet full of ivories. "I wonder just what would happen there if Parker lost his money to-morrow--if Aunt Frothy died and left it all to Magsie Clay?" Rachael suggested, smiling. The doctor answered only with a shrug. "More than that," pursued Rachael, "suppose that Parker woke up to-morrow morning and found his engagement was all a dream, found that he really hadn't asked Leila to marry him, and that he was as free as air. Do you suppose that the minute he'd had his breakfast he would go straight over to Leila's house and make his dream a heavenly reality? Or would he decide that there was no hurry about it, and that he might as well rather keep away from the Buckney house until he'd made up his mind?" "I suppose he might convince himself that an hour or two's delay wouldn't matter!" said the doctor, laughing. "If you talk to me of clothes, or of jewelry, or of what one ought to send a bride, and what to say in a letter of condolence, I know where I am," said Rachael, "but love, I freely confess, is something else again!" "I suppose my mother has known great love," said the man, after a pause. "She spends her days in that quiet old house dreaming about my father, and my brothers, looking at their pictures, and reading their letters--" "But, Greg, she's so unhappy!" Rachael objected briskly. "And love--surely the contention is that love ought to make one happy?" "Well, I think her memories DO make her happy, in a way. Although my mother is really too conscientious a woman to be happy, she worries about events that are dead issues these twenty years. She wonders if my brother George might have been saved if she had noticed his cough before she did; there was a child who died at birth, and then there are all the memories of my father's death--the time he wanted ice water and the doctors forbade it, and he looked at her reproachfully. Poor Mother!" "You're a joy to her anyway, Greg," Rachael said, as he paused. "Charley is," he conceded thoughtfully, "and in a way I know I am! But not in every way, of course," Warren Gregory smiled a little ruefully. "So the case for love is far from proved," Rachael summarized cheerfully. "There's no such thing!" "On the contrary, there isn't anything else, REALLY, in the world," smiled the man. "I've seen it shining here and there; we get away from it here, somewhat, I'll admit"--his glance and gesture indicated the other occupants of the room--"and, like you, I don't quite know where we miss it, and what it's all about, but there have been cases in our wards, for instance: girls whose husbands have been brought in all smashed up--" "Girls who saw themselves worried about rent and bread and butter!" suggested Rachael in delicate irony. "No, I don't think so. And mothers--mothers hanging over sick children--" The women nodded quickly. "Yes, I know, Greg. There's something very appealing about a sick kiddie. Bill was ill once, just after we were married, such a little thing she looked, with her hair all cut! And that DID--now that I remember it--it really did bring Clarence and me tremendously close. We'd sit and wait for news, and slip out for little meals, and I'd make him coffee late at night. I remember thinking then that I never wanted a child, to make me suffer as we suffered then!" "Mother love, then, we concede," Doctor Gregory said, smiling. "Well, yes, I suppose so. Some mothers. I don't believe a mother like Florence ever was really made to suffer through loving. However, there IS mother love!" "And married love." "No, there I don't agree. While the novelty lasts, while the passion lasts--not more than a year or two. Then there's just civility--opening the city house, opening the country house, entertaining, going about, liking some things about each other, loathing others, keeping off the dangerous places until the crash comes, or, perhaps, for some lucky ones, doesn't come!" "What a mushy little sentimentalist you are, Rachael!" Gregory said with a rather uncomfortable laugh. "You're too dear and sweet to talk that way! It's too bad--it's too bad to have you feel so! I wish that I could carry you away from all these people here--just for a while! I'd like to prescribe that sea beach you spoke about last night! Wouldn't we love our desert island! Would you help me build a thatched hut, and a mud oven, and string shells in your hair, and swim way out in the green breakers with me?" "And what makes you think that there would be some saving element in our relationship?" Rachael asked in a low voice. "What makes you think that our love would survive the--the dry-rot of life? People would send us silver and rugs, and there would be a lot of engraving, and barrels of champagne, and newspaper men trying to cross-examine the maids, and caterers all over the place, but a few years later, wouldn't it be the same old story? You talk of a desert island, and swimming, and seaweed, Greg! But my ideas of a desert island isn't Palm Beach with commercial photographers snapping at whoever sits down in the sand! Look about us, Greg--who's happy? Who isn't watching the future for just this or just that to happen before she can really feel content? Young girls all want to be older and more experienced, older girls want to be young; this one is waiting for the new house to be ready, that one--like Florence--is worrying a little for fear the girls won't quite make a hit! Clarence worries about Billy, I worry about Clarence--" "I worry about you!" said Doctor Gregory as she paused. "Of course you do, bless your heart!" Rachael laughed. "So here we are, the rich and fashionable and fortunate people of the world, having a cloudless good time!" "You know, it's a shame to eat this way--ruin our dinners!" said Mrs. Moran, suddenly entering the conversation. "Stop flirting with Greg, Rachael, and give me some more tea. One lump, and only about half a cup, dear. Tell me a good way to get thin, Greg! Agnes Chase says her doctor has a diet--you eat all you want, and you get thin. Agnes says Lou has a friend who has taken off forty-eight pounds. Do you believe it, Greg? I'm too fat, you know--" "You carry it well, Judy," said Rachael, still a little shaken by the abruptly closed conversation, as the doctor, with a conscious thrill, perceived. "Thank you, my dear, that's what they all say. But I'd just as soon somebody else should carry it for awhile!" "Listen, Rachael," said their hostess, coming up suddenly, and speaking quickly and lightly, "Clarence is here. Where in the name of everything sensible is Billy?" "Clarence!" said Rachael, uncomfortable premonition clutching at her heart. "Yes; you come and talk to him, Rachael," Mrs. Whittaker said, in the same quick undertone. "He's all right, of course, but he's just a little fussy--" "Oh, if he wouldn't DO these things!" Rachael said apprehensively as she rose. "I left him all comfortable--Joe Butler was coming in to see him! It does EXASPERATE me so! However!" "Of course it does, but we all know Clarence!" Mrs. Whittaker said soothingly. "He seems to have got it into his head that Billy--You go talk to him, Rachael, and I'll send her in." "Billy's doing no harm! What did he say?" Rachael asked impatiently. "Oh, nothing definite, of course. But as soon as I said that Billy was here--he'd asked if she was--he said, 'Then I suppose Mr. Pickering is here, too!'" "He's the one person in the world afraid of talk about Billy, yet if he starts it, he can blame no one but himself!" Rachael said, as she turned toward the adjoining room. An unexpected ordeal like this always annoyed her. She was equal to it, of course; she could smooth Clarence's ruffled feelings, keep a serene front to the world, and get her family safely home before the storm; she had done it many times before. But it was so unnecessary! It was so unnecessary to exhibit the Breckenridge weaknesses before the observant Emorys, before that unconscionable old gossip Peter Pomeroy, and to the cool, pitying gaze of all her world! She found Clarence the centre of a small group in the long drawing-room. He and Frank Whittaker were drinking cocktails; the others--Jeanette Vanderwall, Vera Villalonga, a flushed, excitable woman older than Rachael, and Jimmy and Estelle Hoyt--had refused the drink, but were adding much noise and laughter to the newcomer's welcome. "Hello, Clarence" Rachael said, appraising the situation rapidly as she came up. "I would have waited for you if I had thought you would come!" "I just--just thought I would--look in," Clarence said slowly but steadily. "Didn't want to miss anything. You all seem to be having--having a pretty good time!" "It's been a lovely tea," Rachael assured him enthusiastically. "But I'm just going. Billy's out here on the porch with a bunch of youngsters; I was just going after her. Don't let Frank give you any more of that stuff, Clancy. Stop it, Frank! It always gives him a splitting headache!" The tone was irreproachably casual and cheerful, but Clarence scowled at his wife significantly. His dignity, as he answered, was tremendous. "I can judge pretty well of what hurts me and what doesn't, thank you, Rachael," he said coldly, with a look ominous with warning. "That's just what you can't, dear," Mrs. Whittaker, who had joined the group, said pleasantly. "Take that stuff away, Frank, and don't be so silly! If Frank," she added to the group, "hadn't been at it all afternoon himself he wouldn't be such an idiot." "Greg says he'll take us home, Clarence," Rachael said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "It's a shame to carry you off when you've just got here, but I'm going." "Where's Billy?" Clarence asked stubbornly. "Right here!" his wife answered reassuringly. And to her great relief Billy substantiated the statement by coming up to them, a little uneasy, as her stepmother was, over her father's appearance, yet confident that there was no real cause for a scene. To get him home as fast as possible, and let the trouble, whatever it might be, break there, was the thought in both their minds. "Had enough tea, Monkey?" said Rachael pleasantly, aware of her husband's sulphurous gaze, but carefully ignoring it. "Then say day-day to Aunt Gertrude!" "If Greg takes you home, send Alfred back with the runabout for me," Billy suggested. "So that you can stay a little longer, eh?" said Clarence, in so ugly a tone and with so leering a look for his daughter that Rachael's heart for a moment failed her. "That's a very nice little plan, my dear, but, as it happens, I came over in the runabout! I'm a fool, you know," said Clarence sullenly. "I can be hoodwinked and deceived and made a fool of--oh, sure! But there's a limit! There's a limit," he said in stupid anger to his wife. "And if I say that I don't like certain friendships for my daughter, it means that _I_ DON'T LIKE CERTAIN FRIENDSHIPS FOR MY DAUGHTER, do you get me? That's clear enough, isn't it, Gertrude?" "It's perfectly clear that you're acting like an idiot, Clancy," Mrs. Whittaker said briskly. "Nobody's trying to hoodwink you; it isn't being done this year! You've got an awful katzenjammer from the Stokes' dinner, and all you men ought to be horsewhipped for letting yourselves in for such a party. Now if you and Rachael want to go home in the runabout, I'll send Billy straight after you with Kenneth or Kent--" "I'll take Billy home," Clarence said heavily. By this time Rachael was so exquisitely conscious of watching eyes and listening ears, so agonized over the realization that the fuss Clarence Breckenridge made at the Whittakers' over Joe Pickering would be handed down, a precious tradition, over every tea and dinner table for weeks to come, so miserably aware that a dozen persons, at least, among the audience were finding in this scene welcome confirmation of all the odds and ends of gossip that were floating about concerning Billy, that she would have consented blindly to any arrangement that might terminate the episode. It was not the first time that Clarence had made himself ridiculous and his family conspicuous when not quite himself. At almost every tea party and at every dance and dinner at least one of the guests similarly distinguished himself. Rachael knew that there would be no blame in her friends' minds, but she hated their laughter. "Do that, then," she agreed quickly. "Greg, will bring me!" "By George," said Clarence darkly to his hostess, "I'd be a long time doing that to you, Gertrude! If you had a daughter--" "My dear Clarence, your daughter is old enough to know her own mind!" Mrs. Whittaker said impatiently. "And you're only making me conspicuous for something that's ENTIRELY in your own brain!" blazed Billy. As usual, her influence over her father was instantaneous. "Because I love you, you know that," he said meekly. "I--I may be TOO careful, Billy. But--" "Nonsense!" said Billy in a nervous undertone close to tears. "If you loved me you'd have some consideration for me!" "When I say a thing, don't you say it's nonsense," Clarence said with heavy fatherly dignity. "I'll tell you why--because I won't stand for it!" "Oh, aren't they hopeless!" Mrs. Whittaker asked with an indulgent laugh and a glance for Rachael. "Well, I won't be taken home like a bad child!" flamed Billy. "I'd like to bump both your silly heads together," Rachael exclaimed, steering them toward the porch. "Yes, you bring the car around, Kent," she added to one of the onlookers in an urgent aside. "Come on, Bill? get in. Get in, Clarence! Don't be an utter fool--" In another moment it was settled. Billy, looking fretty and sulky, said: "Good-bye, Aunt Gertrude! I'm sorry for this, but it's not my fault!" Frank Whittaker almost bodily lifted his somewhat befuddled guest into the car, the door of the runabout went home with a bang. Billy snatched the wheel, and Clarence, with an attempt at a martyred expression, sank back in his seat. The car rocked out of sight, and was gone. Rachael, in silent dignity, turned about on the wide brick steps to reenter the house. Where there had been a dozen interested faces a moment ago there was no one now except Gertrude Whittaker, whose expression betrayed her as tactfully divided between unconcern and sympathy, and Frank Whittaker, who was looking thoughtfully at the cloudless spring sky as one anticipating a change of weather. Rachael caught Mrs. Whittaker's eye and shrugged her shoulders wearily. She began slowly to mount the steps. "It was nothing at all!" said the hostess cheerfully, adding immediately, "You poor thing!" "All in the day's work!" Rachael said, on a long sigh. And turning to the man who stood silently in the doorway she asked, with all the confidence of a weary child, "Will you take me home, Greg?" Her glance and the doctor's met. In the last soft, brilliant light of the afternoon long shadows fell from the great trees nearby. Rachael's green and white gown was dappled with blots of golden light, her troubled, glowing eyes were of an almost unearthly beauty, and her slender figure, against the background of colonial white paint and red brick, had all the tremulous, reedy grace of a young girl's figure. In the long look the two exchanged there was some new element born of this wonderful hour of spring, and of the woman's need, and the man's nearness. Both knew it, although Rachael did not speak again, and, also in silence, the doctor nodded, and went past her down the steps for his car. "Too bad!" Mrs. Whittaker said, coming back from a brief disappearance beyond the doorway. "But such things will happen! It's too bad, Rachael, but what can one do? Are you going to be warm enough? Sure? Don't give it another thought, dear, nobody noticed it, anyway. And listen--any chance of a game tonight? I could send over for you. Marian's with me, you know, and we could get Peter or Greg for a fourth." "No chance at all," Rachael said bitterly. She had always loved to play bridge with Greg; under the circumstances it would be a delicious experience. She layed brilliantly, and Greg, when he was matched by partner and opponents, became absorbed in the game with absolutely fanatic fervor. Rachael had a vision of her own white hand spreading out the cards, of the nod and glance that said clearly: "Great bidding, Rachael; we're as safe as a church!" Clarence did not play bridge, he did not care for music, for books, for pictures. He played poker, and sometimes tennis, and often golf; a selfish, solitary game of golf, in which he cared only for his own play and his own score, and paid no attention to anyone else. Gregory's great car came round the drive. "Good-bye, Gertrude," said Rachael with an unsmiling nod of farewell, and Mrs. Whittaker thought, as Elinor Vanderwall had thought the night before, that she had never seen Rachael look so serious before, and that things in the Breckenridge family must be coming rapidly to a crisis. Doctor Gregory, as the lovely Mrs. Breckenridge packed her striped green and white ruffles trimly beside him, turned upon her a quick and affectionate smile. It asked no confidence, it expressed no sympathy, it was simply the satisfied glance of a man pleased with the moment and with the company in which he found himself. To Rachael, overwrought, nervous, and ashamed, no mood could have been more delicately tuned. She sank back against the deep upholstery luxuriously, and drew a long breath, inhaling the delicious air of early summer twilight. What a sweet, clean, solid sort of friend Greg was, thought Rachael, noticing the clever, well-groomed hands on the wheel, the kindly earnestness of the handsome, sun-browned face, the little wrinkle between the dark eyes that meant that Doctor Gregory was thinking. "Straight home?" said he, giving her a smiling glance. "If you please, Greg," Rachael answered, a sudden vision of the probable state of affairs at home causing her to end the words with a quick sigh. Silence. They were running smoothly along the lovely country roads that were bowered so generously in fresh green that great feathery boughs of maple and locust brushed against the car. The birds were still now, and the sunlight gone, although all the world was still flooded with a soft golden light. The first dew had fallen, bringing forth from the dust a sweet and pungent odor. "Thinking about what I said to you last night?" asked the doctor suddenly. "I am afraid I am--a little," Rachael answered, meeting his quick side glance with another as fleet. "And what do you think about it?" he asked. For answer Rachael only sighed wearily, and for a while they went on in silence. But when they had almost reached the Breckenridge gateway Doctor Gregory spoke again. "Do you often have a scene like that one just now to get through?" The color rushed into Rachael's face at his friendly, not too sympathetic, tone. She was still shaken from the encounter with Clarence, and still thrilling to the memory of her talk with Warren Gregory last night, and it was with some new quality of hesitation, almost of bewilderment, that she said: "That--that wasn't anything unusual, Greg." Doctor Gregory stopped the car at the foot of her own steps, the noise of the engine suddenly ceased, and they faced each other, their heads close together. "But since last night," Rachael added, smiling after a moment's thought, "I know I have a friend. I believe now, when the crash comes, and the whole world begins to talk, that one person will not misjudge me, and one person will not misunderstand." "Only that?" he asked. She raised her glorious eyes quickly, trying to smile, and it brought his heart to a quick stop to see that they were brimming with tears. "Only that?" she echoed. "My dear Greg, after seven such years as I have had as Clarence's wife, that is not a small thing!" Their hands were together now, and he felt hers cling suddenly as she said: "Don't--don't let me drag you into this, Greg!" "This is what I want you to believe," Warren Gregory told her, "that you are not his wife, you are nothing to him any more. And some day, some day, you're going to be happy again!" A wonderful color flooded her face; she gave him a look half-frightened, half-won. Then with an almost inaudible "Good-night," she was gone. Warren Gregory stood watching the slender figure mount the steps. She did not turn to nod him a fare-well, but vanished like a shadow into the soft shadows of the doorway. Yet he was enough a lover to find consolation in that. Rachael Breckenridge was not flirting now, forces far greater than any she had ever known were threatening the shallow waters of her life, and she might well be troubled and afraid. "She is not his wife any more," Warren Gregory said, half aloud, as he turned back to his car. "From now on she belongs to me! She SHALL be mine!" CHAPTER V From that day on a bright undercurrent made bearable the trying monotony of her life. Rachael did not at once recognize the rapid change that began to take place in her own feelings, but she did realize that Warren Gregory's attitude had altered everything in her world. He was flirting, of course, he was only half in earnest; but it was such delicious flirting, it was a half-earnestness so wonderfully satisfying and sweet. She did not see him every day, sometimes she did not see him for two or three days, but no twenty-four hours went by without a message from him. A day or two after the troubled Sunday on which he had driven her home she stood silent a moment, in the lower hall, one hand resting on the little box of damp, delicious Freesia lilies, the fingers of the other twisting his card. The little message scribbled on the card meant nothing to other eyes, just the two words "Good morning!" but in some subtle way they signified to her a morning in a wider sense, a dawning of love and joy and peace in her life. The next day they met--and how wonderful these casual meetings among a hundred gay, unseeing folk, had suddenly become!--and on the following day he came to tea with her, a little hour whose dramatic and emotional beauty was enhanced rather than spoiled for them both when Clarence and Billy and some friends came in to end it. On Thursday the doctor's man delivered into Mrs. Breckenridge's hand a package which proved to be a little book on Browning of which he had spoken to her. On the fly leaf was written in the donor's small, fine handwriting, "R. from G. The way WAS Caponsacchi." Rachael put the book on her bedside table, and wore June colors all day for the giver's sake. Greg, she thought with a fluttering heart, was certainly taking things with rather a high hand. Could it be possible, could it be POSSIBLE, that he cared for a woman at last, and was she, Rachael Breckenridge, a neglected wife, a penniless dependent upon an unloving husband, that woman? Half-forgotten emotions of girlhood began to stir within her; she flushed, smiled, sighed at her own thoughts, she dreamed, and came bewildered out of her dreams, like a child. What Clarence did, what Carol did, mattered no longer; she, Rachael, again had the centre of the stage. Weeks flew by. The question of summer plans arose: the Villalongas wanted all the Breckenridges in their Canadian camp for as much as possible of July and August. Clarence regarded the project with the embittered eye of utter boredom, Billy was far from enthusiastic, Rachael made no comment. She stood, like a diver, ready for the chilling plunge from which she might never rise, yet, after which, there was one glorious chance: she might find herself swimming strongly to freedom. The sunny, safe meadows and the warm, blue sky were there in sight, there was only that dark and menacing stretch of waters to breast, that black, smothering descent to endure. Now was the time. The pretence that was her married life must end, she must be free. In her thought she went no farther. Rachael outwardly was no better than the other women of her world; inwardly there was in her nature an instinctive niceness, a hatred for what was coarse or base. For years the bond between her and Clarence Breckenridge had been only an empty word. But it was there, none the less, and before she could put any new plan into definite form, even in her own heart, it must be broken. Many of the women she knew would not have been so fine. For more than one of them no tie was sacred, and no principle as strong as their own desire for pleasure. But she was different, as all the world should see. No carefully chaperoned girl could be more carefully guarded than Rachael would be guarded by herself until that time--the thought of it put her senses to utter rout--until such time as she might put her hand boldly in Gregory's, and take her place honorably by his side. The taste of freedom already began to intoxicate her even while she still went about Clarence's house, bore his moods in silence, and imparted to Billy that half-scornful, half-humorous advice that alone seemed to penetrate the younger woman's shell of utter perversity. Mrs. Breckenridge, as usual followed by admiring and envious and curious eyes, walked in a world of her own, entirely oblivious of the persons and events about her, wrapped in a breathless dream too exquisitely bright to be real. It was a dream still so simple and vague that she was not conscious of wishing for Warren Gregory's presence, or of being much happier when they were together than when she was deliciously alone with her thoughts of him. About a month after the Whittaker tea Rachael found herself seated in the tile-floored tea-room at the country club with Florence. There had been others in the group, theoretically for tea, but these were scattered now, and among the various bottles and glasses on the table there was no sign of a teacup. "So glad to see you alone a moment, Rachael--one never does," said Florence. "Tell me, do you go to the Villalongas'?" "Clarence and Billy will, I suppose," the other woman said with an enigmatic smile. "But not you?" "Perhaps; I don't know, Florence." Rachael's serene eyes roved the summer landscape contentedly. Mrs. Haviland looked a little puzzled. "Things are better, aren't they, dear?" she asked delicately. "Things?" "Between you and Clarence, I mean." "Oh! Yes, perhaps they are. Changed, perhaps." "How do you mean changed?" Florence was instantly in arms. "Well, it couldn't go on that way forever, Florence," Rachael said pleasantly. Rendered profoundly uneasy by her tone, the other woman was silent for a moment. "Perhaps it is just as well to make different plans for the summer," she said presently. "We all get on each other's nerves sometimes, and change or separation does us a world of good." "Doctor Gregory! Doctor Gregory! At the telephone!" chanted a club attendant, passing through the tea-room. "On the tennis courts," Mrs. Breckenridge said, without turning her head. "You had better make it a message: explain that he's playing!" "I didn't see him go down," remarked Florence, diverted. "His car came in about half an hour ago; he and Joe Butler went down to the courts without coming into the club at all," Rachael said. "I wonder what he's doing this summer?" mused the older lady. "I believe he's going to take his mother abroad with him," said the well-informed Rachael. "She'll visit some friends in England and Ireland, and then join him. He's to do the Alps with someone, and meet her in Rome." "She tell you?" asked Mrs. Haviland, interested. "He did," the other said briefly. "I didn't know she had any friends," was Florence's next comment. "I don't see her visiting, somehow!" "Oh, my dear. Old Catholic families with chapels in their houses, and nuns, and Mother Superiors!" Rachael's tone was light, but as she spoke a cold premonition seized her heart. She fell silent. A moment later Charlotte, who had been hovering uncertainly in the doorway of the room, came out to join her mother with a brightly spontaneous air. "Oh, here you are, M'ma!" said Charlotte. "Are you ready to go?" "Been having a nice time, dear?" her mother asked fondly. "Very," Charlotte said. "I've been looking over old magazines in the library--SO interesting!" This literary enthusiasm struck no answering spark from the matron. "In the library!" said Florence quickly. "Why, I thought you were with Charley!" "Oh, no, M'ma," answered Charlotte, with her little air that was not quite prim and not quite mincing, and that yet suggested both. "Charley left me just after you did; he had an engagement with Straker." She reached for a macaroon, and ate it with a brightly disengaged air, her eyes, behind their not unbecoming glasses, studying the golf links with absorbed interest. "Anyone else in the library?" Florence asked in a dissatisfied tone. "No. I had it all to myself!" the girl answered pleasantly. "Why didn't you go down to the courts, dear? I think Papa is playing!" "I didn't think of it, M'ma," said Charlotte lucidly. "What a dreadful age it is," mused Rachael. "I wonder which phase is hardest to deal with: Billy or poor little Carlotta?" Aloud, from the fulness of her own happiness, she said: "Suppose you walk down to the courts with me, Infant, and we will see what's going on?" "If M'ma doesn't object," said the dutiful daughter. "No, go along," Florence said with vague discontent. "I've got to do some telephoning, anyway." Charlotte, being eighteen, could think of nothing but herself, and Rachael, wrapped in her own romance, was amused, as they walked along, to see how different her display of youthful egotism was from Billy's, and yet how typical of all adolescence. "Isn't it a wonderful afternoon, Aunt Rachael?" Charlotte said, as one in duty bound to be entertaining. "I do think they've picked out such a charming site for the club!" And then, as Rachael did not answer, being indeed content to drink in the last of the long summer day in silence, Charlotte went on, with an air blended of comprehension and amusement: "Poor M'ma, she would so like me to be a little, fluffy, empty-headed butterfly of a girl, and I know I disappoint her! It isn't that I don't like boys," pursued Charlotte, the smooth and even stream of her words beginning to remind Rachael of Florence, "or that they don't like me; they're always coming to me with their confidences and asking my advice, but it's just that I can't take them seriously. If a boy wants to kiss me, why, I say to him in perfect good faith, 'Why shouldn't you kiss me, John? When I'm fond of a person I always like to kiss him, and I'm sure I'm fond of you!'" Charlotte stopped for a short laugh full of relish. "Of course that takes the wind out of their sails completely," she went on, "and we have a good laugh over it, and are all the better friends! That is," said Charlotte, thoroughly enjoying herself, "I treat my men friends exactly as I do my girl friends. Do you think that's so extraordinary, Aunt Rachael? Because I can't do anything different, you know--really I can't!" "Just be natural--that's the best way," said Rachael from the depths of an icy boredom. "Of course, some day I shall marry," the girl added in brisk decision, "because I love a home, and I love children, and I think I would be a good mother to children. But meanwhile, my books and my friends mean a thousand times more to me than all these stupid boys! Why is it other girls are so crazy about boys, Aunt Rachael?" asked Charlotte, brightly sensible. "Of course I like them, and all that, but I can't see the sense of all these notes and telephones and flirtations. I told Vivvie Sartoris that I was afraid I knew all these boys too well; of course Jack and Kent and Charley are just like brothers! It all"--Charlotte smiled, signed, shook her disillusioned young head--"it all seems so awfully SILLY to me!" she said, and before Rachael could speak she had caught breath again and added laughingly: "Of course I know Billy doesn't agree with me, and Billy has plenty of admiration of a sort, and I suppose that satisfies her! But, in short," finished Charlotte, giving Rachael's arm a squeeze as they came out upon the tennis courts, "in short, you have an exacting little niece, Auntie dear, and I'm afraid the man who is going to make her happy must be out of the ordinary!" Rachael sighed a long deep sigh, but no other answer was demanded, for the knot of onlookers welcomed them eagerly to the benches beside the courts, and even the players--Gardner Haviland, Louis Chase, a fat young man in an irreproachable tennis costume; Warren Gregory and Joe Butler found time for a shouted "Hello!" "How do you do, Kent?" said Charlotte to a young man who was sprawling on the sloping grass between the benches and the court. The young man blinked, sat up, and snatched off his hat. "Oh, how do you do, Charlotte? I didn't know you were here," he said enthusiastically. "Some game--what?" "It SEEMS to be," said Charlotte with smiling, deep significance. Both young persons laughed heartily at this spirited exchange. A silence fell. Then Mr. Parmalee turned back to watch the players, and Charlotte, who had seated herself, leaned back in her seat and gave a devoted attention to the game. Gregory came to Rachael the instant the game was over; she had known, since the first triumphant instant when his eyes fell upon her, that he would. She had seen the color rush under his brown skin, and, alone among all the onlookers, had known why Greg put three balls into the net, and why he laughed so inexplicably as he did so. And Rachael thought, for the first time, how sweet it would be to be his wife, to sit here lovely in lavender stripes and loose white coat: Warren Gregory's wife. "You mustn't do that," he said, sitting down on the bench beside her, and wiping his hot face. "Mustn't do what?" she asked. "Mustn't turn up suddenly when I don't expect you. It makes me dizzy. Look here--what are you doing? I'm going up to the pool. I've got to get back into town to-night. When can I see you?" "Why"--Rachael rose slowly, and slowly unfurled her parasol--"why, suppose we walk up together?" They strolled away from the courts deliberately, openly. Several persons remembered weeks later that they went slowly, stopped now and then. No one thought much of it at the time, for only a week later Doctor Gregory took his mother to England, and during that week it was ascertained that he and Mrs. Breckenridge saw each other only once, and then were in the presence of his mother and of Carol Breckenridge and young Charles Gregory as well. There was no tiniest peg for gossip to hang scandal upon, for where old Mrs. James Gregory was, decorum of an absolutely puritanic order prevailed. Yet that stroll across the grass of the golf links was a milestone in Rachael Breckenridge's life, and every word that passed between Gregory and herself was graven upon her heart for all time. The aspect of laughter, of flirtation, was utterly absent to-day. His tone was crisp and serious, he spoke almost before they were out of the hearing of the group on the courts. "I've been wanting to talk to you, Rachael; in fact"--he laughed briefly--"in fact, I am talking to you all day long, these days," he said, "arguing and consulting and advising and planning. But before we can talk, there's Clarence. What about Clarence?" Something in the gravity of his expression as their eyes met impressed Rachael as she had rarely been impressed in her life before. He was in deadly earnest, he had planned his campaign, and he must take the first step by clearing the way. How sure he was, how wonderfully, quietly certain of his course. "We are facing a miserable situation, but it's a commonplace one, after all," said Warren Gregory, as she did not speak. "I--you can see the position I'm in. I have to ask you to be free before I can move. I can't go to Breckenridge's wife---" The color burned in both their faces as they looked at each other. "It IS a miserable position, Greg," Rachael said, after a moment's silence. "And although, as you say, it's commonplace enough, somehow I never thought before just what this sort of thing involves! However, the future must take care of itself. For the present there's only this. I'm going to leave Clarence." Warren Gregory drew a long breath. "He won't fight it?" "I don't think he will." Rachael frowned. "I think he'll be willing to furnish--the evidence. Especially if he has no reason to suspect that I have any other plans," she added thoughtfully. "Then he mustn't suspect," the doctor said instantly. "Nor anyone," she finished, with a look of alarm. "Nor anyone, of course," he repeated. "I don't know that I HAVE any other plans," Rachael said sadly. "I won't think beyond that one thing. Our marriage has been an utter and absolute failure, we are both wretched. It must end. I hate the fuss, of course--" He was watching her closely, too keenly tuned to her mood to disquiet her with any hint of the lover's attitude now. "And just how will you go about it?" he asked. "I shall slip off to some quiet place, I think. I'll tell him before he goes away. My attorneys will handle the matter for me--it's a sickening business!" Rachael's beautiful face expressed distaste. "It's done every day," Warren Gregory said. "Of course divorce is not a new idea to me" Rachael presently pursued. "But it is only in the last two or three days--for a week, perhaps--that it has seemed to have that inevitable quality--that the-sooner-over-the-better sort of urgency. I wonder why I didn't do it years ago. I shall"--she laughed sadly--"I shall hate myself as a divorced woman," she said. "It's a survival of some old instinct, I suppose, but it doesn't seem RIGHT." "It's done all the time," was the doctor's simple defence. "And oh, my dear," he added, "you will know--and I will know--we can't keep knowing--" She stopped short, her lovely face serious in the shade of her parasol, her dark-blue eyes burning with a sort of noble shame. "Greg!" she said quickly and breathlessly. "Please---Let's not--let's not say it. Let me feel, all this summer, that it wasn't said. Let me feel that while I was living under one man's roof, and spending his money, that I didn't even THINK of another man. It's done all the time, you say, that's true. But I HATE it. Whether I leave Clarence, and make my own life under new conditions, and never remarry, or whether, in a year or two--but I won't think of that!" And to his surprise and concern, as she stopped short on the grassy path, the eyes that Rachael turned toward him were brimming with tears. "You s-see what a baby I am becoming, Greg," she said unsteadily. "It's all your doing, I'm afraid! I haven't cried for years--loneliness and injustice and unhappiness don't make me cry! But just lately I've known what it was to dream of--of joy, Greg. And if that joy is ever really coming to us, I want to be worthy of it. I want to start RIGHT this time. I want to spend the summer quietly somewhere, thinking and reading. I'm going to give up cards and even cocktails. You smile, Greg, but I truly am! Just for this time, I mean. And it's come to me, just lately, that I wouldn't leave Clarence if he really needed me, or if it would make him unhappy. I'm going to be different--everything SEEMS different already--" "Don't you know why?" he said with his grave smile, as she paused. It was enchanting to him to see the color flood her face, to see her shy eyes suddenly averted. She did not answer, and they walked slowly toward the clubhouse steps. "There's only one thing more to say," Warren Gregory said, arresting her for one more moment. "It's this: as soon as you're free, I'm coming for you. You may not have made up your mind by that time, Rachael. My mind will never change." Shaken beyond all control by his tone, Rachael did not even raise her eyes. Her flush died away, leaving her face pale. He saw her breast rise on a quick breath. "Will you write me?" he asked, after a moment. "Oh, yes, Greg!" she answered quickly, in a voice hardly above a whisper. "When do you go?" "On Wednesday--a week from to-day, in fact. And that reminds me, Billy says you are coming into town early next week?" "Monday, probably." Rachael was coming back to the normal. "She needs things for camp, and I've got a little shopping to do." "Then could you lunch with Mother? Little Charley'll be there: no one else. Bring Billy. Mother'd love it. You're a great favorite there, you know." "I may not always be a favorite there," Rachael said with a rueful smile. "Don't worry about Mother," Warren Gregory said with a confidence that in this moment of excitement and exhilaration he almost felt was justified. "Mother's a dear!" That was all their conversation. When they entered the clubhouse Doctor Gregory turned toward the swimming pool and Rachael was instantly drawn into a game of bridge. She played like a woman in a dream, was joined by Billy, went home in a dream, and presently found herself and her husband fellow guests at a dreamlike dinner-party. Why not?--why not?--why not? The question drummed in head and heart day and night. Why not end bondage, and taste freedom? Why not end unhappiness, and try joy? She had done her best to make her first marriage a success, and she had failed. Why not, with all kindness, with all generous good wishes, end the long experiment? Who, in all her wide range of acquaintances, would think the less of her for the obviously sensible step? The world recognized divorce as an indispensable institution: one marriage in every twelve was dissolved. And remarriage, a brilliant second marriage, was universally approved. Even such a stern old judge as Warren's mother counted among her acquaintances the divorced and remarried. To reappear, triumphant, beloved, beautiful, before one's old world-- But no--of this Rachael would not permit herself to think. Time alone could tell what her next step must be. The only consideration now must be that, even if Warren Gregory had never existed, even if there were no other man than Clarence Breckenridge in the world, she must take the step. Better poverty, and work, and obscurity, if need be, with freedom, than all Clarence could offer her in this absurd and empty bondage. Once firmly decided, she began to chafe against the delays that made an immediate announcement of her intentions unwise. If a thing was to be done, as well do it quickly, thought Rachael, as she listened patiently to the vacillating decisions of Carol and her father in regard to the Villalonga camping plan. At one time Clarence completely abandoned the idea, throwing the watchful and silent Rachael into utter consternation. Carol was alternately bored by the plan and wearily interested in it. Their characteristic absorption in their own comfort was a great advantage to Rachael at this particular juncture; she had been included in Mrs. Villalonga's invitation as a matter of course, but such was the life of the big, luxurious establishment known as the "camp" that all three of the Breckenridges, and three more of them had there been so many, might easily have spent six weeks therein without crossing each other's paths more than once or twice a week. It never occurred to either Carol or her father to question Rachael closely as to her pleasure in the matter. They took it for granted that she would be there if no pleasanter invitation interfered exactly as they themselves would. An enormous income enabled the sprightly Mrs. Villalonga to conduct her midsummer residence in the Canadian forests upon a scale that may only be compared to a hotel. She usually asked about one hundred friends to visit her for an indefinite time, and of this number perhaps half availed themselves of the privilege, drifting in upon her at any time, remaining only while the spirit moved, and departing unceremoniously, perhaps, if the hostess chanced to be away at the moment, with no farewells at all, when any pleasanter prospect offered. Mrs. Villalonga was a large, coarse-voiced woman, with a heart of gold, and the facial characteristics that in certain unfortunate persons suggest nothing so much as a horse. She sent a troop of servants up to the woods every year, following them in a week or two with her first detachment of guests. She paid her chef six thousand dollars a year, and would have paid more for a better chef, if there had been one. She expected three formal meals every day, including in their scope every delicacy that could be procured at any city hotel, and also an indefinite number of lesser meals, to be served in tennis pavilion, or after cards at night, or whenever a guest arrived. By the time she reached the camp everything must be complete for another summer, awnings flapping gently outside the striped canvas "tents" that were really roomy cabins provided with shower baths and wide piazzas. The great cement-walled swimming pool must be cleaned, the courts rolled, the cars all in order, the boats and bath-houses in readiness. A miniature grocery and drug store must be established in the building especially designed for this use; the little laundry concealed far up in the woods must be operating briskly. Then, from the middle of June to the first of September, the camp was in full swing. There were dances and campfires and theatricals and fancy-dress affairs innumerable. Ice and champagne and California peaches and avocados from Hawaii poured from the housekeeping department in an unending stream; there were new toothbrushes and new pajamas for the unexpected guest, there were new bathing suits in boxes for the girls who had driven over from Taramac House and who wanted a swim, there were new packs of cards and new boxes of cigars, and there were maids--maids--maids to run for these things when they were wanted, and carry them away when their brief use was over. Then it would be September, and everything would end as suddenly as it began. The Villalongas would go to Europe, or to Newport, Vera loudly, joyously, insistently urging everyone to visit them there if it were the latter. In November they would be in their town house with new paintings and new rugs to show their guests: a portrait of Vera, a rug stolen from a Sultan's palace. Everybody said that Vera Villalonga did this sort of thing extremely well; indeed she had no rival in her own particular field. The weekly society journals depended upon her to supply them with spectacular pictures of a Chinese ball every November and a Micareme dance every spring; they sent photographers all the way up to her camp that their readers might not miss a yearly glimpse of the way Mrs. Villalonga entertained. But Rachael, who had spent a portion of six summers with the Villalongas, found herself, in her newly analytical mood, wondering just who got any particular pleasure out of it all. Vera herself, perhaps. Certainly her husband, who would spend all his time playing poker and tennis, would have been as happy elsewhere. Her two sons, tall, dark young men, in connection with whose characters the world in general contented itself merely with the word "wild," would be there only for a week or two at most. Billy would wait for Joe Pickering's letters, Clarence would drink, and watch Billy. Little Mina Villalonga, who had a minor nervous ailment, would wander about after Billy. The Parmalees would come up for a visit, and the Morans would come. Jack Torrence, spoiled out of all reason, would promise a week and come for two days; Porter Pinckard would compromise upon a mere hour or two, charging into the camp in his racing car, introducing hilarious friends, accepting a sandwich and a bottle of beer, and then tearing off again. Straker Thomas, silent, mysterious, ill, would drift about for a week or two; Peter Pomeroy would go up late in July, and be adored by everyone, and take charge of the theatricals. "The maids probably get any amount of fun out of it," mused Rachael. Vera was notably generous to her servants: a certain pool was reserved for them, and their numbers formed a most congenial society every summer. "I don't believe I'll go to Vera's this year," Mrs. Breckenridge said aloud to her husband and stepdaughter. "I'm not crazy about it," Billy agreed fretfully. "Might as well," was the man's enthusiastic contribution. "Oh, I'm GOING!" Billy said discontentedly. "But I don't see why you and Rachael have to go." "Don't you?" her father said significantly. "Joe Pickering's going to be in Texas this whole summer, if that's what you mean!" flamed Billy. "I'm glad to hear it," Clarence commented. "Anyway, you might depend upon Vera to take absolute good care of Bill," Rachael said soothingly. "It's time you both got away to some cooler place, if you are going to fight so about nothing! Why do you do it? Billy can't marry anyone for eleven months, and if she wants to marry the man in the moon then you can't stop her. So there you are!" "And I'm capable of running my own affairs," finished Billy with a look far from filial. "You only waste your breath arguing with Clarence when he's got one of his headaches," Rachael said to her stepdaughter an hour or two later when they were spinning smoothly into the city for the planned shopping. "Of course he'll go to Vera's, and of course you'll go, too! Just don't tease him when he's all upset." "Well, what does he drink and smoke so much, and get this way for?" Billy demanded sullenly. "What does anybody do it for?" Rachael countered. And a second later her singing heart was with Gregory again. He did not do it! She entered into Billy's purchasing perplexities with great sympathy; a successful hat was found, several deliciously extravagant and fragile dresses for camping. "You're awfully decent about all this, Rachael." Billy said once; "it must be a sweet life we lead you sometimes!" Something in the girl's young glance touched Rachael strangely. They were in the car again now, going toward Mrs. Gregory's handsome, old-fashioned house on Washington Square. Rachael was inspired to seize the propitious second. "Listen, Bill," she said, and paused. Billy eyed her curiously. Obtuse as she was, a certain change in Rachael had not entirely escaped the younger woman. "Well?" she asked, on guard. "Well--" Rachael faltered. Motherly advice was not much in her line. "It's just this, Bill," she resumed slowly, "when you think of marriage, don't think of just a few weeks or a few months; think of all the time. Think of other things than just--that sort of--love. Children, you know, and--and books, don't you know? Things that count. Be--I don't say be guided entirely by what your father and lots of other persons think, but be influenced by it! Realize that we have no motive but--but affection, in advising you to be sure." The stumbling, uncertain words were unlike Mrs. Breckenridge's usual certain flow of reasoning. But in spite of this, or because of it, Billy was somewhat impressed. "I had an aunt in California," Rachael continued, "who cried, and got whipped and locked up, and all the rest of it, and she carried her point. But she was unhappy. ..." "You mean because Joe is divorced?" Billy asked in a somewhat troubled voice. The scarlet rushed to Rachael's face. "N--not entirely," she answered in some confusion. "That is, you don't think divorced people ought to remarry, even if the divorce is fair enough?" Billy pursued, determined to be clear. "Well, I suppose every case is different, Bill." "That's what you've always SAID!" Billy accused her vivaciously. "You said, time and time again, that if people can't live together in peace they OUGHT to separate, but that it was another thing if they married again!" "Did I?" Rachael asked weakly, adding a moment later, with obvious relief in her tone: "Here we are! It's only this, Bill," she finished, as they mounted the brownstone steps, "be sure. You can do anything, I suppose. Only be sure!" Mrs. Gregory would be down in a few minutes, old Dennison said. Rachael murmured something amiable, and the two went into the dark, handsome parlors; the house was full of parlors; on both sides of the hall stately, crowded rooms could be glimpsed through open doors. "Isn't it fierce?" Billy said with a helpless shrug. Rachael smiled and shook her head slowly in puzzled consent. "Don't you suppose they ever AIR it?" pursued the younger woman in a low tone. The air had a peculiarly close, dry smell. "It wouldn't seem so," Rachael said, looking at the life-size statues of Moorish and Neopolitan girls, the mantel clock representing a Dutch windmill, the mantel itself, of black marble, gilded and columned, with a mirror in a carved walnut frame stretching ten feet above it, the beaded fire screen, the voluminous window curtains of tasselled rep, and the ornate walnut table across whose marble top a strip of lace had been laid. Everything was ugly and expensive and almost everything was old-fashioned, all the level surfaces of tables, mantel, and piano top were filled with small articles, bits of ivory carving from China, leather boxes, majolica jars, photographs in heavy frames, enormous illustrated books, candlesticks, and odd teacups and trays. Smiling down--how Rachael knew that smile, half-quizzical and half-tender--from a corner of the room was a beautiful oil portrait of Warren Gregory, the one really fine thing in the room. By some chance the painter had caught on his face the very look with which he might, in the flesh, have studied this dreadful room. Rachael felt a thrill go to her heels as she looked back at the canvas, and far down in the deeps of her being the thought stirred that some day her hand might be the one to change all this--to make the woodwork colonial white, and the paper rich with color, to have the black marble changed to creamy tiles, and the rep curtains torn away. Then how charming the place would be when visitors came in from the hot street! "A million apologies--all my fault!" said Doctor Gregory in the doorway. His mother, in rustling black silk, was on his arm. She had given up her cane to-day to use the living support, and no lover could have wished to appear more charming in his lady's eyes than did Warren Gregory appear to Rachael as he lowered the frail old figure to a chair and neglected his guests while he made his mother comfortable. "He would have you think, now, that I was the cause of the delay," said the old lady in a sweet voice that betrayed curiously the weakness of the flesh and the strength of the spirit. "But I assure you my beauty is no longer a matter of great importance to me!" "So it was Greg who was curling his hair?" Rachael asked, with one swift and eloquent glance for him before she drew a much-fringed hassock to his mother's knee and seated herself there with the confidence of a captivating child. "I always thought he was rather vain! But let's not talk about him, we only make him worse. Tell me about yourself?" Mrs. Gregory was a rather spirited old lady, and liked to fancy, with the pathetic complacency of the passing generation, that her sense of humor quite kept up with the times. Rachael knew her well, and knew all her stories, but this only made her the pleasanter companion. She quickly carried the conversation into the past, and was content to be a listener; indeed, with a hostess far removed in type from herself it was the only safe role to play. The conversation was full of pitfalls for this charming and dutiful worldling, and Rachael was too clever to risk a fall. She was afraid of the crippled little gentlewoman in the big chair, and Warren Gregory was afraid, too. Some mysterious element in her regard for them made luncheon an ordeal for them both, although Billy's healthy young eyes saw only an old woman, impotent and alone; the maids were respectful and pitying, and young Charles Gregory, who joined them at luncheon, Was obviously unimpressed by his grandmother's power, but was smitten red and inarticulate at the first glimpse of Billy. This youth, after silently disposing of several courses, finally asked in a husky voice for Miss Charlotte Haviland, and relapsed into silence again. Billy flirted youthfully with her host, Rachael devoted herself to the old lady. She had always been happy here, a marked favorite with old Mrs. Gregory to whom her audacious nonsense had always seemed a great delight before. But to-day she was conscious of a change, she could not control the conversation with her usual sure touch, she floundered and contradicted herself like a schoolgirl. One of her brilliant stories fell rather flat because its humor was largely supplied by an intoxicated man--"of course it was dreadful, but then it was funny, too!" Rachael finished lamely. Another flashing account won from the old hostess the single words "On Sunday?" "Well, yes. It was on Sunday. I am afraid we are absolute pagans; we don't always remember to go to church, by any means!" Rachael began to feel that a cloud of midges were buzzing about her face. Every topic led her deeper into the quicksand. There was a definite touch of resentment under the gracious manner in which she presently said her good-bye, and they were no sooner in the motor car than she exclaimed to Billy: "Didn't Mrs. Gregory seem horribly cross to you to-day? She made me feel as if I'd broken all the Commandments and was dancing on the pieces!" "What do you know about Charles asking for Charlotte?" was Billy's only answer. "Isn't he just the sort of mutt who would ask for Charlotte!" "Isn't she quite lovely?" said Mrs. Gregory from over the fleecy yarn she was knitting, when the guests had gone. "Carol?" the doctor countered. "Yes, Carol, too. But I was thinking of Mrs. Breckenridge. Do you see her very often, James?" "Quite a bit. Do you mind my smoking?" "I often wonder," pursued the old lady innocently, "what such a sweet, gay, lovely girl could see in a fellow like poor Clarence Breckenridge!" "Great marvel she doesn't throw him over!" Warren said casually. "It distresses me to hear you talk so recklessly, my son," Mrs. Gregory said after a brief pause, "Lord, Mother," her son presently observed impatiently, "is it reasonable to expect that because a girl like that makes a mistake when she is twenty or twenty-one, that she shall pay for it for the rest of her life?" "Unfortunately, we are not left in any doubt about it," the old lady said dryly. And as Warren was silent she went on with quavering vigor: "It is not for us to judge her husband's infirmities. She is his wife." "Oh, well, there's no use arguing it," the man said pleasantly after a sulphurous interval. "Fortunately for her, most people don't feel as you do." "You surely don't think that _I_ originated this theory?" his mother asked quietly after a silence, during which her long needles moved a little more swiftly than was natural. "I don't think anything about it. I KNOW that you're much, much narrower about such things than your religion or any religion gives you any right to be," Warren asserted hotly. "It is nothing to me, but I hate this smug parcelling out of other people's affairs," he went on. "Mrs. Breckenridge is a very wonderful and a most unfortunate woman; her husband isn't fit to lace her shoes--" "All that may be true," his mother interrupted with some agitation. "All that may be true, you say! And yet if Rachael left him, and tried to find happiness somewhere else--" "The law is not of MY making, James," the old lady intervened mildly, noting his use of the discussed woman's name with a pang. "But it IS of your making--you people who sit around and say what's respectable and what's not respectable! Who are you to judge?" "I try not to judge," Mrs. Gregory said so simply that the man's anger cooled in spite of himself. "And perhaps I am foolish, James, all mothers are. But you are the last of my four sons, and I am a widow in my old age, and I tremble for you. When a woman with beauty as great as that confides in you, my child, when she turns to you, your soul is in danger, and your mother sees it. I cannot--I cannot be silent--" Rachael herself, an hour ago, had not used her youth and beauty with more definite design than was this other woman using her age and infirmity now. Warren Gregory was almost as readily affected. "My dear Mother," he said sensibly and charmingly, "don't think for one instant that I do not appreciate your devotion to me. What has suddenly put into your head this concern about Mrs. Breckenridge, I can't imagine. I know that if she were ever in any trouble or need you would be the first to defend her. She is in a peculiarly difficult position, and in a professional way I am somewhat in her confidence, that's all!" "I should think she could do something with Clarence," the old lady said, somewhat mollified. "Interest him in something new; lead him away from bad influences." "Clarence is rather a hopeless problem," Warren Gregory said. The talk drifted away to other persons and affairs, but when they presently parted, with great amiability on both sides, Warren Gregory knew that his mother's suspicions had in some mysterious way been aroused, and old Mrs. Gregory, sitting alone in the heat of the afternoon, writhed in the grip of a definite apprehension. Absurd--absurd--to interpret that married woman's brightly innocent glances into a declaration of love, absurd to find passion concealed in Warren's cheerfully hospitable manner. But she could not shake off the terrified conviction that it was so. "Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Moulton of England have rented for the season the house of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge, at Belvedere Bay," stated the social columns authoritatively. "Mr. Breckenridge and Miss Carol Breckenridge will leave at once for the summer camp of Mrs. Booth Villalonga, at Elks Leap, where Mrs. Breckenridge will join them after spending a few weeks with friends." Rachael saw the notice on the morning of the last day that she and Clarence were together. In the afternoon Billy and Clarence were to leave for the north, and Rachael was to go to Florence for a day or two. She had been unusually indefinite about her plans for the summer, but in the general confusion of all plans this had not been noticed. She had superintended the packing and assorting and storing of silver and linen, as a matter of course, and it was easy to see that certain things indisputably her own went into certain crates. Nobody questioned her authority, and Clarence and Billy paid no attention whatever to the stupid proceeding of getting the house in order for tenants. On this last morning she sat at the breakfast table studying these two who had been her companions for seven years, and who suspected so little that this companionship was not to last for another seven years, for an indefinite time. Billy was in a bad temper because her father was not taking Alfred and the car with them to the camp, as he had done for the two previous years. Clarence, sullen as always under Billy's disapproval, was pretending to read his paper. He had a severe headache this morning, his face looked flushed and swollen. He was dreading the twenty-four hours in a hot train, even though the Bowditches, going up in their own car to their own camp, had offered the Breckenridges its comparative comfort and coolness for the entire trip. "Makes me so sick," grumbled Billy, who looked extremely pretty in a Chinese coat of blue and purple embroideries; "every time I want to move I'll have to ask Aunt Vera if I may have a car! No fun at all!" "Loads of horses and cars up there, my dear," Rachael said pacifically. She was quivering from head to foot with nervous excitement; the next few hours were all-important to her. And, under the pressure of her own great emotions, Billy seemed only rather pitiful and young to-day, and even Clarence less a conscious tyrant, and more a blundering boy, than he had seemed. She bore them no ill will after these seven hard years; indeed a great peace and kindliness pervaded her spirit and softened her manner toward them both. Her marriage had been a great disappointment, composed of a thousand small disappointments, but she was surprised to find that some intangible and elementary emotion was about to make this parting strangely hard. "Yes, but it's not the same thing," Billy raged. Rachael began a low-voiced reassurance to which the younger woman listened reluctantly, scowling over her omelette, and interposing an occasional protest. "Oh, yap--yap--yap! My God, I do get tired of hearing you two go on and on and on!" Clarence presently burst out angrily. "If you don't want to go, Billy, say so. I'm sick of the whole thing, anyway!" "You know very well I never wanted to go," Billy answered. And because, being now committed to the Villalonga visit, she perversely dreaded it, she pursued aggrievedly, "I'd EVER so much rather have gone to California, Dad!" How sure the youngster was of her power, Rachael thought, watching him instantly soften under his daughter's skilful touch. "For five cents," he said eagerly, "I'd wire Vera, and you and I'd beat it to Santa Barbara! What do you say?" "And if Rachael promised to be awfully good, she could come, too!" Billy laughed. But the girl's gay patronage was never again to be extended to Rachael Breckenridge. "You couldn't disappoint Vera now," she protested. "Oh, Lord! make some objections!" Clarence growled. "My dear boy, it's nothing to me, whatever you do," Rachael said quickly. "But Vera Villalonga is a very important friend for Bill. There's no sense in antagonizing her--" "No, I suppose there isn't," Billy said slowly. "But I wish she'd not ask us every summer. I suppose we shall be doing this for the rest of our lives!" She trailed slowly from the room, and Clarence took one or two fretful glances at his paper. "Gosh, how you do love to spoil things!" he said bitterly to his wife in a sudden burst. Rachael did not answer. She rose after a few moments, and carried her letters into the adjoining room. When Clarence presently passed the door she called him in. "Now or never--now or never!" said Rachael's fast-beating heart. She was pale and breathing quickly as he came in. But Clarence, sick and headachy, did not notice these signs of strong emotion. "Clarence, I need some money," Rachael said simply. "What for?" he asked unencouragingly. The color came into his wife's face. She did not ask often for money, although he was rich, and she had been his wife for seven years. It was a continual humiliation to Rachael that she must ask him at all for the little actual money she spent, and tell him what she did with it when she got it. Clarence might lose more money at poker in a single night than Rachael touched in a month; it had come to him without effort, and of the two, she was the one who made a real effort to hold the home together. Yet she was a pensioner on his bounty, obliged to wait for the propitious mood and moment. Under her hand at this moment was Mary Moulton's check for one thousand dollars, more than she had ever had at one time in her life. She could not touch it, but Clarence would turn it into bills, and stuff them carelessly into his pocket, to be scattered in the next week or two wherever his idle fancy saw fit. "Why, for living, and travelling expenses," she answered, with what dignity she could muster. "Thought you had some money," he grumbled in evident distaste. "Come in here a moment," Rachael said in a voice that rather to his surprise he obeyed. "Sit down there," she went on, and Clarence, staring at her a little stupidly, duly seated himself. His wife twisted about in her desk chair so that she could rest an arm upon the back of it, and faced him seriously across that arm. "Clarence," said she, conscious of a certain dryness in her mouth, and a sick quivering and weakness through-out her whole body, "I want to end this." "What?" asked Clarence, puzzled and dull, as she paused. "I want to be free," Rachael said, stumbling awkwardly over the phrase that sounded so artificial and dramatic. They looked at each other, Clarence's bewildered look slowly changing to one of comprehension under his wife's significant expression. There was a silence. "Well?" Clarence said, ending it with an indifferent shrug. "Our marriage has been a farce for years--almost from the beginning," Rachael asserted eagerly. "You know it, and I know it--everyone does. You're not happy, and I'm wretched. I'm sick of excuses, and pretending, and prevaricating. There isn't a thing in the world we feel alike about; our life has become an absolute sham. It isn't as if I could have any real influence over you--you go your way, and do as you please, and I take the consequences. I realize now that every word I say jars on you. Why, sometimes when you come into a room and find me there I can tell by the expression on your face that you're angry just at that! I've too much self-respect, I've too much pride, to go on this way. You know how I hate divorce--no woman in the world hates it more--but tell me, honestly, what do we gain by keeping up a life like this? I used to be happy and confident and full of energy a few years ago; now I'm bored all the time. What's the use, what's the use--that's the way I feel about everything--" "You're not any more tired of it than I am!" Clarence interrupted sullenly. "Then why keep it up?" she asked urgently. "You've Billy, and your clubs, and your car, to fill your time. There'll be a fuss, of course, and I hate that, but we'll both be away. We've given it a fair trial, but we simply aren't meant for each other. Good heavens! it isn't as if we were the first man and woman who--" "Don't talk as if I were opposing you," Clarence said with a weary frown. Rachael, snubbed, instantly fell silent. "I've got my side in all this dissatisfied business, too," the man presently said with unsteady dignity. "You never cared a damn for me, or what became of me! I've had you ding-donging your troubles at me day and night; it never occurs to you what I'm up against." He looked at his watch. "You want some money?" he asked. "If you please," Rachael answered, scarlet-cheeked. "Well, I can write a check--" he began. "Here's this check of Mary Moulton's for July," Rachael said, nervously adding: "She wants to pay month by month, because I think she hopes you'll rent after August. I believe she'd keep the place indefinitely, on account of being near her mother, and for the boys." Clarence took the check, and, hardly glancing at it, scrawled his slovenly "C. L. Breckenridge" across the back with a gold-mounted fountain pen. Rachael, whose face was burning, received it back from his hand with a husky "Thank you. You'll have to furnish the grounds, I presume--there will be a referee--nothing need get out beyond the fact that I am the complainant. You--won't contest? You--won't oppose anything?" She hated herself for the question, but it had to be asked. "Nope," the man said impatiently. "And"--Rachael hesitated--"and you won't say anything, Clarence," she suggested, "because the papers will get hold of it fast enough!" "You can't tell me anything about that," he said sullenly. Then there came a silence. Rachael, looking at him, wished that she could hate him a little more, wished that his neglects and faults had made a little deeper impression. For a minute or two neither spoke. Then Clarence got up and left the room, and Rachael sat still, the little slip held lightly between her fingers. The color ebbed slowly from her face, her heart resumed its normal beat, moments went by, the little clock on her desk ticked on and on. It was all over; she was free. She felt strangely shaken and cold, and desolately lonely. He loved her as little as she loved him. They had never needed each other, yet there was in this severance of the bond between them a strange and unexpected pain. It was as if Rachael's heart yearned over the wasted years, the love and happiness that might have been. Not even the thought of Warren Gregory seemed warm or real to-day; a great void surrounded her spirit; she felt a chilled weariness with the world, with all men--she was sick of life. On the following day she gave Florence a hint of the situation. It was only fair to warn the important, bustling matron a trifle in advance of the rest of the world. Rachael had had a long night's sleep; she already began to feel deliciously young and free. She was to spend a few nights at the Havilands', and the next week supposedly go to the Princes' at Bar Harbor; really she planned to disappear for a time from her world. She must go up to town for a consultation with her lawyer, and then, when the storm broke, she would slip away to little Quaker Bridge, the tiny village far down on Long Island upon which, quite by chance, she had stumbled two years before. No one would recognize her there, no one of her old world could find her, and there for a month or two she could walk and bathe and dream in wonderful solitude. Then--then Greg would be home again. "I want to tell you something, Florence," Rachael said to her sister-in-law when she was stretched upon the wide couch in Florence's room, watching with the placidity of a good baby that lady's process of dressing for an afternoon of bridge, or rather the operations with cold cream, rubber face brush, hair tonic, eyebrow stick, powder, rouge, and lip paste that preceded the process of dressing. Mrs. Haviland, even with this assistance, would never be beautiful; in justice it must be admitted that she never thought herself beautiful. But she thought rouge and powder and paste improved her appearance, and if through fatigue or haste she was ever led to omit any or all of these embellishments, she presented herself to the eyes of her family and friends with a genuine sensation of guilt. Perhaps three hours out of all her days were spent in some such occupation; between bathing, manicuring, hair-dressing, and intervals with her dressmaker and her corset woman it is improbable that the subject of her appearance was long out of the lady's mind. Yet she was not vain, nor was she particularly well satisfied with herself when it was done. That about one-fifth of her waking time--something more than two months out of the year--was spent in an unprofitable effort to make herself, not beautiful nor attractive, but something only a little nearer than was natural to a vague standard of beauty and attractiveness, never occurred, and never would occur, to Florence Haviland. "What is it?" she asked now sharply, pausing with one eyebrow beautifully pencilled and the other less definite than ever by contrast. "I don't suppose it will surprise you to hear that Clarence and I have decided to try a change," Rachael said slowly. "How do you mean a change?" the other woman said, instantly alert and suspicious. "The usual thing," Rachael smiled. "What madness has got hold of that boy now?" his sister exclaimed aghast. "It's not entirely Clarence," Rachael explained with a touch of pride. "Well, then, YOU'RE mad!" the older woman said shortly. "Not necessarily, my dear," Rachael answered, resolutely serene. "Go talk to someone who's been through it," Florence warned her. "You don't know what it is! It's bad enough for him, but it's simple suicide for you!" "Well, I wanted you to hear it from me," Rachael submitted mildly. "Do you mean to say you've decided, seriously, to do it?" "Very seriously, I assure you!" "How do you propose to do it?" Florence asked after a pause, during which she stared with growing discomfort at her sister-in-law. "The way other people do it," Rachael said with assumed lightness. "Clarence agrees. There will be evidence." Mrs. Haviland flushed. "You think that's fair to Clarence?" she asked presently. "I think that in any question of fairness between Clarence and me the balance is decidedly in my favor!" Rachael said crisply. "Personally, I shall have nothing to do with it, and Clarence very little. Charlie Sturgis will represent me. I suppose Coates and Crandall will take care of Clarence--I don't know. That's all there is to it!" Her placid gaze roved about the ceiling. Mrs. Haviland gazed at her in silence. "Rachael," she said desperately, "will you TALK to someone--will you talk to Gardner?" "Why should I?" Rachael sat up on the couch, the loosened mass of her beautiful hair falling about her shoulders. "What has Gardner or anyone else to do with it? It's Clarence's business, and my business, and it concerns nobody else!" she said warmly. "You look on from the outside. I've borne it for seven years! I'm young, I'm only twenty-eight, and what is my life? Keeping house for a man who insults me, and ignores me, who puts me second to his daughter, and has put me second since our wedding day--making excuses for him to his friends, giving up what I want to do, never knowing from day to day what his mood will be, never having one cent of money to call my own! I tell you there are days and days when I'm too sick at heart to read, too sick at heart to think! Last summer, for instance, when we were down at Easthampton with the Parmalees, when everyone was so wild over bathing, and tennis, and dancing, Clarence wasn't sober ONE MOMENT of the time, not one! One night, when we were dancing--but I won't go into it!" "I know," Florence said hastily, rather frightened at this magnificent fury. "I know, dear, it's too bad--it's dreadful--it's a great shame. But men are like that! Now Gardner--" "All men aren't like that! Gardner does that sort of thing now and then, I know," Rachael rushed on, "but Gardner is always sorry. Gardner takes his place as a man of dignity in the world. I am nothing to Clarence; I have never been to him one-tenth of what Billy is! I have borne it, and borne it, and now I just can't--bear it--any longer!" And Rachael, to her own surprise and disgust, burst into bitter crying, and, stammering some incoherency about an aching head, she went to her own room and flung herself across the bed. The suppressed excitement of the last few days found relief in a long fit of sobbing; Florence did not dare go near her. The older woman tried to persuade herself that the resentment and bitterness of this unusual mood would be washed away, and that Rachael, after a nap and a bath, would feel more like herself, but nevertheless she went off to her game in a rather worried frame of mind, and gave but an imperfect attention to the question of hearts or lilies. Rachael, heartily ashamed of what she would have termed her schoolgirlish display of emotion, came slowly to herself, dozed over a magazine, plunged into a cold bath, and at four o'clock dressed herself exquisitely for Mrs. Whittaker's informal dinner. Glowing like a rose in her artfully simple gown of pink and white checks, she went downstairs. Florence had come in late, bearing a beautiful bit of pottery, the first prize, and was again in the throes of dressing, but Gardner was downstairs restlessly wandering about the dimly lighted rooms and halls. He was fond of Rachael, and as they walked up and down the lawn together he tried, in a blunt and clumsy way, to show her his sympathy. "Floss tells me you're about at the end of your rope--what?" said Gardner. "Clarence is the limit, of course, but don't be too much in a hurry, old girl. We'd be--we'd be awfully sorry to have you come to a smash, don't you know--now!" Thus Gardner. Rachael gave him a glimmering smile in the early dusk. "Not much fun for me, Gardner," she said gravely. "Sure it's not," Gardner answered, clearing his throat tremendously. Neither spoke again until Florence came down, but later, in all honesty, he told his wife that he had pitched into Rachael no end, and she had agreed to go slow. Florence, however, was not satisfied with so brief a campaign. She and Rachael did not speak of the topic again until the last afternoon of Rachael's stay. Then the visitor, coming innocently downstairs at tea time, was a little confused to see that besides Mrs. Bowditch and her oldest daughter, and old Mrs. Torrence, the Bishop and Mrs. Thomas were calling. Instantly she suspected a trap. "Rachael, dear," Florence said sweetly, when the greetings were over, "will you take the bishop down to look at the sundial? I've been boasting about it." "You sound like a play, Florence," her sister-in-law said with a little nervous laugh. "'Exit Rachael and Bishop, L.' Surely you've seen the sundial, Bishop?" "I had such a brief glimpse of it on the day of the tea," Bishop Thomas said pleasantly, "that I feel as if I must have another look at that inscription!" Smiling and benign, rather impressive in his clerical black, the clergyman got to his feet, and turned an inviting smile to Rachael. "Shall I take you down, Bishop?" Charlotte asked, her eagerness to be socially useful fading into sick apprehension at her mother's look. "No, I'll go!" Rachael ended the little scene by catching up her wide hat. "Come on, Bishop," she said courageously, adding, as soon as they were out of hearing, "and if you're going to be dreadful, begin this moment!" "And why, pray, should I be dreadful?" the bishop asked, smiling reproachfully. "Am I usually so dreadful? I don't believe it would be possible, among these lovely roses"--he drew in a great breath of the sweet afternoon air--"and with such a wonderful sunset telling us to lift up our hearts." And sauntering contentedly along, the bishop gave her an encouraging smile, but as Rachael continued to walk beside him without raising her eyes, presently he added, whimsically: "Would it be dreadful, Mrs. Breckenridge, if one saw a heedless little child--oh, a sweet and dear, but a heedless little child--going too near the cliffs--would it be dreadful to say: 'Look out, little child! There's a terrible fall there, and the water's cold and dark. Be careful!'" The bishop sat down on the carved stone bench that had been set in the circle of shrubs that surrounded the sundial, and Rachael sat down, too. "Well, what about the child?" he persisted, when there had been a silence. Rachael raised sombre eyes, her breast rose on a long sigh. "I am not a child," she said slowly. "Aren't we all children?" asked the bishop, mildly triumphant. Rachael, sitting there in Florence's garden, looking down at the white roofs of the village and the smooth sheet of blue that was Belvedere Bay, felt a burning resentment enter her heart. How calm and smug and sure of themselves they were, these bishops and Florences and old lady Gregorys! How easy for them to advise and admonish, to bottle her up with their little laws and platitudes, these good people married to other good people, and wrapped in the warmth of mutual approval and admiration! The bishop was talking-- "Children, yes, the best and wisest of us is no more than that," he was saying dreamily, "and we must bear and forbear with each other. Not easy? Of course it's not easy! But no cross no crown, you know. I have known Clarence a great many years--" "I am sorry to hurt Florence--God knows I'm sorry for the whole thing!" Rachael said, "but you must admit that I am the best judge of this matter. I've borne it long enough. My mind is made up. You and I have always been good friends, Bishop Thomas"--she laid a beautiful hand impulsively on his arm--"and you know that what you say has weight with me. But believe me, I'm not jumping hastily into this: it's come after long, serious thought. Clarence wants to be free as well--" "Clarence does?" the clergyman asked, with a disapproving shake of his head. "He has said so," Rachael answered briefly. "And what will your life be after this, my child?" To this she responded merely with a shrug. Perhaps the bishop suspected that such a calm confidence in the future indicated more or less definite plans, for he gave her a shrewd and searching look, but there was nothing to be said. The lovely lady continued to stare at the soft turf with unsmiling eyes, and the clergyman could only watch her in puzzled silence. "After all," Rachael said presently, giving him a rueful glance, "what are the statistics? One marriage in twelve fails--fails openly, I mean--for of course there are hundreds that don't get that far. Sixty thousand last year!" "If those ARE the statistics," said the bishop warmly, "it is a disgrace to a Christian country!" "But you don't call this a Christian country?" Rachael said perversely. "It is SUPPOSEDLY so," the clergyman asserted. "Supposedly Christian," she mused, "and yet one marriage out of every twelve ends in divorce, and you Christians--well, you don't CUT us! We may not keep holy the Sabbath day, we may not honor our fathers and mothers, we may envy our neighbor's goods, yes, and his wife, if we like, but still--you don't refuse to come to our houses!" "I don't know you in this mood," said Bishop Thomas coldly. "Call it Neroism, or Commonsensism, or Modernism, or anything you like," Rachael said with sudden fire, "but while you go on calling what you profess Christianity, Bishop, you simply subscribe to an untruth. You know what our lives are, myself and Florence and Gardner and Clarence; is there a Commandment we don't break all day long and every day? Do we give our coats away, do we possess neither silver nor gold in our purses, do we love our neighbors? Why don't you denounce us? Why don't you shun the women in your parish who won't have children as murderers? Why don't you brand some of the men who come to your church--men whose business methods you know, and I know, and all the world knows--as thieves!" "And what would my branding them as murderers and thieves avail?" asked the bishop, actually a little pale now, and rising to face her as she rose. "Are we to judge our fellowmen?" "I'm not," Rachael said, suddenly weary, "but I should think you might. It would be at least refreshing to have you, or someone, demonstrate what Christianity is. It would be good for our souls. Instead," she added bitterly, "instead, you select one little thing here, and one little thing there, and putter, and tinker, and temporize, and gloss over, and build big churches, with mortgages and taxes and insurance to pay, in the name of Christianity! If I were little Annie Smith, down in the village here, I could get a divorce for twenty-five dollars, and you would never hear of it. But Clarence Breckenridge is a millionaire, and the Breckenridges have gone to your church for a hundred years, and so it's a scandal that must be averted if possible!" "The church frowns on divorce," said the bishop sternly. "At the very present moment the House of Bishops, to which I have the distinguished honor to belong, is considering taking a decided stand in the matter. Divorce is a sin--a sin against one of God's institutions. But when I find a lady in this mood," he continued, with a sort of magnificent forbearance, "I never attempt to combat her views, no matter how extraordinarily jumbled and--and childish they are. As a clergyman, and as an old friend, I am grieved when I see a hasty and an undisciplined nature about to do that which will wreck its own happiness, but I can only give a friendly warning, and pass on. I do not propose to defend the institution to which I have dedicated my life before you or before anyone. Shall we go back to the house?" "Perhaps we had better," Rachael agreed. And as they went slowly along the wide brick walk she added in a softened tone: "I do appreciate your affectionate interest in--in us, Bishop. But--but it does exasperate me, when so many strange things are done in the name of Christianity, to have--well, Florence for instance--calmly decreeing that just these other certain things shall NOT be done!" "Then, because we can't all be perfect, it would be better not to try to be good at all?" the bishop asked, restored to equanimity by what he chose to consider an unqualified apology, and resuming his favorite attitude of benignant adviser. Rachael sighed wearily in the depth of her soul. She knew that kindly admonitory tone, that complacent misconception of her meaning. She said to herself that in a moment he would begin to ask himself questions, and answer them himself. "We are not perfect ourselves," said the clergyman benevolently, "yet we expect perfection in others. Before we will even change our own lives we like to look around and see what other people are doing. Perfectly natural? Of course it's perfectly natural, but at the same time it's one of the things we must fight. I shall have to tell you a little story of our Rose, as I sometimes tell some of my boys at the College of Divinity," continued the good man. Rose, an exemplary unmarried woman of thirty, was the bishop's daughter. "Rose," resumed her father, "wanted to study the violin when she was about twelve, and her peculiar old pater decided that first she must learn to cook. Her mother quite agreed with me, and the young lady was accordingly taken out to the kitchen and introduced to some pots and pans. I also got her some book, I've forgotten its name--her mother would remember; 'Complete Manual of Cookery'--something of that sort. A day or two later I asked her mother how the cooking went. 'Oh,' she said, 'Rose has been reading that book, and she knows more than all the rest of us!'" Rachael laughed generously. They had reached the house again now, and Florence, glancing eagerly toward them, was charmed to see both smiling. She felt that the bishop must have influenced Rachael, and indeed the clergyman himself was sure that her mood was softer, and found opportunity before he departed to say to his hostess in a low tone that he fancied that they would hear no more of the whole miserable business. "Oh, Bishop, how wonderful of you!" said Florence thankfully. CHAPTER VI Two weeks later the news of the Breckenridge divorce burst like a bomb in the social sky. Immediately pictures of the lovely wife, of Clarence, of the town house and the country house began to flood the evening papers, and even the morning journals found room for a column or two of the affair on inside pages. Clarence was tracked to his mountain retreat, and as much as possible was made of his refusal to be interviewed. Mrs. Breckenridge was nowhere to be found. The cold wind of publicity could not indeed reach her in the quiet lanes and along the sandy shore of Quaker Bridge. Rachael, known to everyone but her kind old landlady as "Mrs. Prescott," could even glance interestedly at the papers now and then. Her identity, in three long and peaceful months, was not even so much as suspected. She did not mind the plain country table, the inconvenient old farmhouse; she loved her new solitude. Unquestioned, she dreamed through the idle days, reading, thinking, sleeping like a child. She spent long hours on the seashore watching the lazy, punctual flow and tumble of the waves that were never hurried, never delayed; her eyes followed the flashing wings of the gulls, the even, steady upward beat of strong pinions, the downward drifting through blue air that was of all motion the most perfect. And sometimes in those hours it seemed to Rachael that she was no more in the great scheme of things than one of these myriad gulls, than one of the grains of sand through which she ran her white, unringed fingers. Clarence was a dream, Belvedere Bay was a dream; it was all a hazy, dim memory now: the cards and the cocktails, the dancing and tennis, the powder and lip-red in hot rooms and about glittering dinner tables. What a hurry and bustle and rush it all was--for nothing. The only actualities were the white sand and the cool green water, and the summer sun beating down warmly upon her bare head. She awakened every morning in a large, bright, bare room whose three big windows looked into rustling maple boughs. The steady rushing of surf could be heard just beyond the maples. Sometimes a soft fog wrapped the trees and the lawn in its pale folds, and the bell down at the lighthouse ding-donged through the whole warm, silent morning, but more often there was sunshine, and Rachael took her book to the beach, got into her stiff, dry bathing suit, in a small, hot bathhouse furnished only by a plank bench and a few rusty nails, and plunged into the delicious breakers she loved so well. Busy babies, digging on the beach, befriended her, and she grew to love their sudden tears and more sudden laughter, their stammered confidences, and the touch of their warm, sandy little hands. She became an adept at pinning up their tiny bagging undergarments, and at disentangling hat elastics from the soft hair at the back of moist little necks. If a mother occasionally showed signs of friendliness, Rachael accepted the overture pleasantly, but managed to wander next day to some other part of the beach, and so evade the definite beginning of a friendship. The warm sunshine, flavored by the salty sea, soaked into her very bones. Everything about Quaker Bridge was bare, and worn, and clean; nothing was crowded, or hurried, or false. Barren dunes, and white, bleaching sand, colorless little houses facing the elm-lined main street, colorless planks outlining the road to the water; the monotonous austerity, the pure severity of the little ocean village was full of satisfying charm for her. If she climbed a sandy rise beyond Mrs. Dimmick's cottage, and faced the north, she could see the white roadway, winding down to Clark's Bar, where the ocean fretted year after year to free the waters of the bay only twelve feet away. Beyond on the slope, was the village known as Clark's Hills, a smother of great trees with a weather-whipped spire and an occasional bit of roof or fence in evidence, to show the habitation of man. In other directions, facing east or west or south, there was nothing but the sand, and the coarse straggling bushes that rooted in the sand, and the clear blue dome of the sky. Rachael, whose life had been too crowded, gloried in the honey-scented emptiness of the sand hills, the measureless, heaving surface of the ocean, the dizzying breadth and space in which, an infinitesimal speck, she moved. She had sensibly taken her landlady, old Mrs. Dimmick, into her confidence, and pleased to be part of the little intrigue, and perhaps pleased as well to rent her two best rooms to this charming stranger, the old lady protected the secret gallantly. It was all much more simple than Rachael had feared it would be. Nobody questioned her, nobody indeed paid attention to her; she wandered about in a blissful isolation as good for her tired soul as was the primitive life she led for her tired body. Yet every one of the idle days left its mark upon her spirit; gradually a great many things that had seemed worth while in the old life showed their true and petty and sordid natures now; gradually the purifying waters of solitude washed her soul clean. She began to plan for the future--a future so different from the crowded and hurried past! Warren Gregory's letters came regularly, postmarked London, Paris, Rome. They were utterly and wholly satisfying to Rachael, and they went far to make these days the happiest in her life. Her heart would throb like a girl's when she saw, on the little drop-leaf table in the hallway, the big square envelope addressed in the doctor's fine hand; sometimes--again like a girl--she carried it down to the beach before breaking the seal, thrilled with a thousand hopes, unready to put them to the test. Yesterday's letter had said: "My dearest,"--had said: "Do you realize that I will see you in five weeks?" Could to-day's be half as sweet? She was never disappointed. The strong tide of his devotion for her rose steadily through letter after letter; in August the glowing letters of July seemed cold by contrast, in September every envelope brought her a flaming brand to add to the fires that were beginning to blaze within her. In late September there was an interval; and Rachael told herself that now he was on the ocean--now he was on the ocean-- By this time the digging babies were gone, the beach was almost deserted. Little office clerks, men and women, coming down for the two weeks of rest that break the fifty of work, still arrived on the late train Saturday, and went away on the last train two weeks from the following Sunday, but there were no more dances at the one big hotel, and some of the smaller hotels were closed. The tall, plain, attractive woman--with the three children and the baby, who drove over from Clark's Hills every day, and, who, for all her graying hair and sun-bleached linens, seemed to be of Rachael's own world--still brought her shrieking and splashing trio to the beach, but she had confided to Mrs. Dimmick, who had known her for many summers, that even her long holiday was drawing to a close. Mrs. Dimmick brought extra blankets down from the attic, and began to talk of seeing her daughter in California. Rachael, drinking in the glory of the dying summer, found each day more exquisite than the last, and gratified her old hostess by expressing her desire to spend all the rest of her life in Quaker Bridge. She had, indeed, come to like the villagers thoroughly; not the summer population, for the guests at all summer hotels are alike uninteresting, but for the quiet life that went on year in and year out in the little side streets: the women who washed clothes and swept porches, who gardened with tow-headed babies tumbling around them, who went on Sundays to the little bald-faced church at ten o'clock. Rachael got into talk with them, trying to realize what it must be to walk a hot mile for the small transaction of selling a dozen eggs for thirty cents, to spend a long morning carefully darning an old, clean Nottingham lace curtain that could be replaced for three dollars. She read their lives as if they had been an absorbing book laid open for her eyes. The coming of the Holladay baby, the decline and death of old Mrs. Bird, the narrow escape of Sammy Tew from drowning, and the thorough old-fashioned thrashing that Mary Trimble gave her oldest son for taking a little boy like Sammy out beyond the "heads,"--all these things sank deep into the consciousness of the new Rachael. She liked the whitewashed cottages with their blazing geraniums and climbing honeysuckle, and the back-door yards, with chickens fluffing in the dust, and old men, seated on upturned old boats, smoking and whittling as they watched the babies "while Lou gets her work caught up". October came in on a storm, the most terrifying storm Rachael had ever seen. Late in the afternoon of September's last golden day a wind began to rise among the dunes, and Rachael, who, wrapped in a white wooly coat and deep in a book, had been lying for an hour or two on the beach, was suddenly roused by a shower of sand, and sat up to look at the sky. Clouds, low and gray, were moving rapidly overhead, and although the tide was only making, and high water would not be due for another hour, the waves, emerald green, swift, and capped with white, were already touching the landmost water-mark. Quickly getting to her feet, she started briskly for home, following the broken line of kelp and weeds, grasses, driftwood, and cocoanut shells that fringed the tide-mark, and rather fascinated by the sudden ominous change in sea and sky. In the little village there was great clapping of shutters and straining of clotheslines, distracted, bareheaded women ran about their dooryards, doors banged, everywhere was rush and flutter. "D'clare if don't think th' folks at Clark's Hills going to be shut of completely," said Mrs. Dimmick, bustling about with housewifely activity, and evidently, like all the village and like Rachael herself, a little exhilarated by the oncoming siege. "What will they do?" Rachael demanded, unhooking a writhing hammock from the porch as the old woman briskly dragged the big cane rockers indoors. "Oh, ther' wunt no hurt come t'um," Mrs. Dimmick said. "But--come an awful mean tide, Clark's Bar is under water. They'll jest have to wait until she goes down, that's all." "Shell I bring up some candles from suller; we ain't got much karosene!" Florrie, the one maid, demanded excitedly. Chess, the hired man, who was Florrie's "steady," began to bring wood in by the armful, and fling it down by the airtight stove that had been set up only a few days before. The wind began to howl about the roof; trees in the dooryard rocked and arched. Darkness fell at four o'clock, and the deafening roar of the ocean seemed an actual menace as the night came down. Chess and Florrie, after supper, frankly joined the family group in the sitting-room, a group composed only of Rachael and Mrs. Dimmick and two rather terrified young stenographers from the city. These two did not go to bed, but Rachael went upstairs as usual at ten o'clock, and drifted to sleep in a world of creaking, banging, and roaring. A confusion and excited voices below stairs brought her down again rather pale, in her long wrapper, at three. The Barwicks, mother, father, and three babies, had left their beach cottage in the night and the storm to seek safer shelter and the welcome sound of other voices than their own. After that there was little sleep for anyone. Still in the roaring darkness the clocks presently announced morning, and a neighbor's boy, breathless, dripping in tarpaulins, was blown against the door, and burst in to say with youthful relish that the porches of the Holcomb house were under water, and the boardwalk washed away, and folks said that the road was all gone betwixt here and the lighthouse. Rain was still falling in sheets, and the wind was still high. Rachael braved it, late in the afternoon, to go out and see with her own eyes that the surf was foaming and frothing over the deserted bandstand at the end of the main street, and got back to the shelter of the house wet and gasping, and with the first little twist of personal fear at her heart. Suppose that limitless raging green wall down there rose another ten--another twenty--feet, swept deep and roaring and resistless over little Quaker Bridge, plunged them all for a few struggling, hopeless moments into its emerald depths, and then washed the little loosely drifting bodies that had been men and women far out to sea again? What could one do? No trains came into Quaker Bridge to-day; it was understood that there were washouts all along the line. Rachael sat in the dark, stuffy little sitting-room with the placid Barwick baby drowsing in her lap, and at last her face reflected the nervous uneasiness of the other women. Every time an especially heavy rush of rain or wind struck the unsubstantial little house, Mrs. Barwick said, "Oh, my!" in patient, hopeless terror, and the two young women looked at each other with a quick hissing breath of fear. The night was long with horror. There were other refugees in Mrs. Dimmick's house now; there were in all fifteen people sitting around her little stove listening to the wind and the ocean. The old lady herself was the most cheerful of the group, although Rachael and one or two of the others managed an appearance at least of calm. "Declare," said the hostess, more than once, "dunt see what we's all thinkin' of not to git over to Clark's Hills 'fore the bar was under water! They've got sixty-foot elevation there!" "I'd just as soon try to get there now," said Miss Stokes of New York eagerly. "There's waves eight feet high washin' over that bar," Ernest Barwick said, and something in the simple words made little Miss Stokes look sick for a moment. "What's our elevation?" Rachael asked. "'Bout--" Mr. Barwick paused. "But you can't tell nothing by that," he contented himself with remarking after a moment's thought. "But I never heard--I never HEARD of the sea coming right over a whole village!" Rachael hated herself for the fear that dragged the words out, and the white lips that spoke them. "Neither did I!" said half a dozen voices. There was silence while the old clock on the mantel wheezed out a lugubrious eight strokes. "LORD, how it rains!" muttered Emily Barwick. Nine o'clock--ten o'clock. The young women, the old woman, the maid and man who would be married some day if they lived, the husband and wife who had been lovers like them only a few years ago, and who now had these three little lives to guard, all sat wrapped in their own thoughts. Rachael sat staring at the stove's red eye, thinking, thinking, thinking. She thought of Warren Gregory; his steamer must be in now, he must be with his mother in the old house, and planning to see her any day. To-morrow--if there was a to-morrow--might bring his telegram. What would his life be if he might never see her again? She could not even leave him a note, or a word; on this eve of their meeting, were they to be parted forever? Should she never tell him how dearly--how dearly--she loved him? Tears came to her eyes, her heart was wrung with exquisite sorrow. She thought of Billy--poor little Billy--who had never had a mother, who needed a mother so sadly, and of her own mother, dead now, and of the old blue coat of thirteen years ago, and the rough blue hat. She thought of her great-grandmother in the little whitewashed California cottage under the shadow of the blue mountains, with the lilacs and marigolds in the yard. And colored by her new great love, and by the solemn fears of this endless night, Rachael found a tenderness in her heart for all those shadowy figures that had played a part in her life. At midnight there came a thundering crash on the ocean side of the house. "Oh, God, IT'S THE SEA!" screamed Emily Barwick. They all rushed to the door and flung it open, and in a second were out in the wild blackness of the night. Still the roaring and howling and shrieking of the elements, still the infuriated booming of the surf, but--thank God--no new sound. There was no break in the flying darkness above them; the street was a running sheet of water in the dark. Yet strangely they all went back into the house vaguely quieted. Rachael presently said that no matter what was going to happen, she was too cold and tired to stay up any longer, and went upstairs to bed. Miss Stokes and Miss McKim settled themselves in their chairs; Emily Barwick went to sleep with her head against her husband's thin young shoulder. Somebody suggested coffee, and there was a general move toward the kitchen. Rachael, a little bewildered, woke in heavenly sunlight in exactly the position she had taken when she crept into bed the night before. For a few minutes she lay staring at the bright old homely room, and at the clock ticking briskly toward nine. "Dear Lord, what a thing sunshine is?" she said then slowly. No need to ask of the storm with this celestial reassurance flooding the room. But after a few moments she got up and went to the window. The trees, battered and torn, were ruffling such leaves as were left them gallantly in the wind, the paths still ran yellow water, the roadway was a muddy waste, eaves were still gurgling, and everywhere was the drip and splash of water. But the sky was clear and blue, and the air as soft as milk. As eager as a child Rachael dressed and ran downstairs, and was out in the new world. The fresh wind whipped a glorious color into her face; the whole of sea and sky and earth seemed to be singing. Trees were down, fences were down, autumn gardens were all a wreck; and the ocean, when she came to the shore, was still rolling wild and high. But it was blue now, and the pure sky above it was blue, and there was utter protection and peace in the sunny air. Landmarks all along the shore were washed away, and beyond the first line of dunes were pools left by the great tide, scummy and sinking fast into the sand, to leave only a fringe of bubbles behind. Minor wreckages of all sorts lay scattered all along the beach: poles and ropes, boxes and barrels. Rachael walked on and on, breathing deep, swept out of herself by the fresh glory of the singing morning. Presently she would go back, and there would be Warren's letter, or his telegram, or perhaps himself, and then their golden days would begin--their happy time! But even Warren to-day could not intrude upon her mood of utter gratitude and joy in just living--just being young and alive in a world that could hold such a sea and such a sky. A full mile from the village, along the ocean shore, a stream came down from under a cliff, a stream, as Rachael and investigating children had often proved to their own satisfaction, that rose in a small but eminently satisfactory cave. The storm had washed several great smooth logs of driftwood into the cave, and beyond them to-day there was such a gurgling and churning going on that Rachael, eager not to miss any effect of the storm, stepped cautiously inside. The augmented little river was three times its usual size, and was further made unmanageable by the impeding logs swept in by the high tide. Straw and weeds and rubbish of every description choked its course, and little foaming currents and backwaters almost filled the cave with their bubbling and swirling. Rachael, with a few casual pushes of a sturdy little shoe, accomplished such surprising results in freeing and directing the stream that she fell upon it in sudden serious earnest, grasping a long pole the better to push obstructing matters aside, and growing rosy and breathless over her self-imposed and senseless undertaking. She had just loosened a whole tangle of wreckage, and had straightened herself up with a long, triumphant "Ah-h!" of relief, as the current rushed it away, when a shadow fell over the mouth of the cave. Looking about in quick, instinctive fear, she saw Warren Gregory smiling at her. For only one second she hesitated, all girlhood's radiant shyness in her face. Then she was in his arms, and clinging to him, and for a few minutes they did not speak, eyes and lips together in the wild rapture of meeting. "Oh, Greg--Greg--Greg!" Rachael laughed and cried and sang the words together. "When did you come, and how did you get here? Tell me--tell me all about it!" But before he could begin to answer her their eager joy carried them both far away from all the conversational landmarks, and again they had breath only for monosyllables, instinct only to cling to each other. "My girl, my own girl!" Warren Gregory said. "Oh, how I've missed you--and you're more beautiful than ever--did you know it? More beautiful even than I remembered you to be, and that was beautiful enough!" "Oh, hush!" she said, laughing, her fingers over the mouth that praised her, his arm still holding her tight. "I'll never hush again, my darling! Never, never in all the years we spend together! I am going to tell you a hundred times a day that you are the most beautiful, and the dearest--Oh, Rachael, Rachael, shall I tell you something? It's October! Do you know what that means?" "Yes, I suppose I do!" She laughed, and colored exquisitely, drawing herself back the length of their linked arms. "Do you know what you're going to BE in about thirty-six hours?" "Now--you embarrass me! Was--was anything settled?" "Shall you like being Mrs. Gregory?" "Greg--" Tears came to her eyes. "You don't know how much!" she said in a whisper. They sat down on a great log, washed silver white with long years of riding unguided through the seas, and all the wonderful world of blue sky and white sand might have been made for them. Rachael's hand lay in her lover's, her glorious eyes rarely left his face. Browned by his summer of travel, she found him better than ever to look upon; hungry after these waiting months, every tone of his voice held for her a separate delight. "Did you ever dream of happiness like this, Rachael?" "Never--never in my wildest flights. Not even in the past few months!" "What--didn't trust me?" "No, not that. But I've been rebuilding, body and soul. I didn't think of the future or the past. It was all present." "With me," he said, "it was all future. I've been counting the days. I've not done that since I was at school! Rachael, do you remember our talk the night after the Berry Stokes' dinner?" "Do I remember it?" "Ah, my dear, if anyone had said that night that in six months we would be sitting here, and that you would have promised yourself to me! You don't know what my wife is going to mean to me, my dearest. I can't believe it yet!" "It is going to mean everything in life to me," she said seriously. "I mean to be the best wife a man ever had. If loving counts--" "Do you mean that?" he said eagerly. "Say it--do you mean that you love me?" "Love you?" She stood up, pressing both hands over her heart as if there were real pain there. For a few paces she walked away from him, and, as he followed her, she turned upon him the extraordinary beauty of her face transfigured with strong emotion. "Greg," she said quietly, "I didn't know there was such love! I've heard it called fire and pain and restlessness, but this thing is ME! It is burning in me like flame, it is consuming me. To be with you"--she caught his wrist with one hand, and with her free hand pointed out across the smiling ocean--"to be with you and KNOW you were mine, I could walk straight out into that water, and end it all, and be glad--glad--glad of the chance! I loved you yesterday, but what is this to-day, when you have kissed me, and held me in your arms!" Her voice broke on something like a sob, but her eyes were smiling. "All my life I've been asleep," said Rachael. "I'm awake now--I'm awake now! I begin to realize how helpless one is--to realize what I should have done if you hadn't come--" "My darling," Gregory said, his arms about her "what else--feeling as we feel--could I have done?" Held in his embrace, she rested her hands upon his shoulders, and looked wistfully into his eyes. "It is as WE feel, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, it isn't only me? You--you love me?" Looking down at her dropped, velvety lashes, feeling the warm strong beat of her heart against his, holding close as he did all her glowing and fragrant beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most exquisite moment of his life. Her youth, her history, her wonderful poise and sureness so intoxicatingly linked with all a girl's unexpected shyness and adorable uncertainties, all these combined to enthrall the man who had admired her for many years and loved her for more than one. "Love you?" he asked, claiming again the lips she yielded with such a delicious widening of her eyes and quickening of breath. "You see, Warren," she said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give myself to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly have. I don't want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife, and to learn your faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down into harness--one year, five years--ten years married! Oh, you don't know how I LONG to be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit being nearly forty. Forty--doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate--and that's what I want. I--I shall love getting gray, and feeling that you and I don't care so much about going places, don't you know? We'll like better just being home together, won't we? We're older than most people now, aren't we?" He laughed aloud at the bright face so enchantingly young in its restored beauty. He had expected to find her charming, but in this new phase of girlishness, of happiness, she was a thousand times more charming than he had dreamed. It was hard to believe that this eager girl in a striped blue and yellow and purple skirt, and rough white crash hat, was the bored, the remote, the much-feared Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge. Something free and sweet and virginal had come back to her, or been born in her. She was like no phase of the many phases in which he had known her; she was a Rachael who had never known the sordid, the disillusioning side of life. Even her seriousness had the confident, eager quality of youth, and her gayety was as pure as a child's. She had cast off the old sophistication, the old recklessness of speech; she was not even interested in the old associates. The world for her was all in him and their love for each other, and she walked back to Quaker Bridge, at his side, too wholly swept away from all self-consciousness to know or to care that they were at once the target for all eyes. A wonderful day followed, many wonderful days. Doctor Gregory's great touring car and his livened man were at Mrs. Dimmick's door when they got back, an incongruous note in little Quaker Bridge, still gasping from the great storm. "Your car?" Rachael said. "You drove down?" "Yesterday. I put up at Valentine's--George Valentine's, you know, at Clark's Hills." "Oh, that's my nice lady--gray haired, and with three children?" Rachael said eagerly. "Do you know her?" "Know her? Valentine is my closest associate. They meet us in town to-morrow: he's to be best man. You'll have to have them to dinner once a month for the rest of your life!" The picture brought her happy color, the shy look he loved. "I'm glad, Greg. I like her immensely!" They were at the car; she must flush again at the chauffeur's greeting, finding a certain grave significance, a certain acceptance, in his manner. "Wife and baby well, Martin?" "Very well, thank you, Mrs. Breckenridge." "Still in Belvedere Hills?" "Well, just at present, yes, Madam." "You see, I am looking for suitable quarters for all hands," Doctor Gregory said, his laugh drowning hers, his eyes feasting on her delicious confusion. She was aware that feminine eyes from the house were watching her. Presently she had kissed Mrs. Dimmick good-bye. Warren had put his man in the tonneau; he would take the wheel himself for the three hours' run into town. "Good-bye, my dear!" said the old lady, adding with an innocent vacuity of manner quite characteristic of Quaker Bridge. "Let me know when the weddin's goin' to be!" "I'll let you know right now," said Doctor Gregory, who, gloved and coated, was bustling about the car, deep in the mysterious rites incidental to starting. "It's going to be to-morrow!" "Good grief!" exclaimed Mrs. Dimmick delightedly. "Well," she added, "folks down here think you've got an awfully pretty bride!" "I'm glad she's up to the standard down here," Warren Gregory observed. "Nobody seems to think much of her looks up in the city!" Rachael laughed and leaned from her place beside the driver to kiss the old lady again and to wave a general good-bye to Florrie and Chess and the group on the porch. As smoothly as if she were launched in air the great car sprang into motion; the storm-blown cottages, the battered dooryards, the great shabby trees over the little post office all swept by. They passed the turning that led to Clark's Bar, and a weather-worn sign-post that read "Quaker Bridge, 1 mile." It was not a dream, it was all wonderfully true: this was Greg beside her, and they were going to be married! Rachael settled back against the deep, soft cushions in utter content. To be flying through the soft Indian summer sunshine, alone with Greg, to actually touch his big shoulder with her own, to command his interest, his laughter, his tenderness, at will--after these lonely months it was a memorable and an enchanting experience. Their talk drifted about uncontrolled, as talk after long silence must: now it was a waiter on the ocean liner of whom Gregory spoke, or perhaps the story of a small child's rescue from the waves, from Rachael. They spoke of the roads, splendidly hard and clean after the rain, and of the villages through which they rushed. But over their late luncheon, in a roadside inn, the talk fell into deeper grooves, their letters, their loneliness, and their new plans, and when the car at last reached the traffic of the big bridge, and Rachael caught her first glimpse of the city under its thousand smoking chimneys, there had entered into their relationship a new sacred element, something infinitely tender and almost sad, a dependence upon each other, a oneness in which Rachael could get a foretaste of the exquisite communion so soon to be. They were spinning up the avenue, through a city humming with the first reviving breath of winter. They were at the great hotel, and Rachael was laughing in Elinor Vanderwall's embrace. The linen shop, the milliner, a dinner absurdly happy, and one of the new plays--a sunshiny morning when she and Elinor breakfasted in their rooms, and opened box after box of gowns and hats--the hours fled by like a dream. "Nervous, Rachael?" asked Miss Vanderwall of the vision that looked out from Rachael's mirror. "Not a bit!" the wife-to-be answered, feeling as she said it that her hands, busy with long gloves, were shaking, and her knees almost unready to support her. "It must be wonderful to marry a man like Greg," said the bridesmaid thoughtfully. "He simply IS everything and HAS everything--" "Ah, Elinor, it's wonderful to marry the man you love!" Rachael turned from the mirror, her blue eyes misted with tears under the brim of her wedding hat. "YOU!" Elinor smiled. "That I should live to see it! You--in love!" "And unashamed, and proud of it!" Rachael said with a tremulous laugh. "Are you all ready? Shall we go down?" She turned at the door and put one arm about her friend. "Kiss me, Elinor, and wish me joy," said she. "I don't have to!" asserted Miss Vanderwall, with a hearty kiss nevertheless, "for it will be your own fault entirely if there's ever the littlest, teeniest cloud in the sky!" END OF BOOK I BOOK II CHAPTER I Yet, even then, as Rachael Gregory admitted to herself months later, there had been a cloud in the sky--a cloud so tiny and so vague that for many days she had been able to banish it in the flooding sunshine all about her whenever it crossed her vision. But it was there, and after a while other tiny clouds came to bear it company, and to make a formidable shadow that all her philosophy could not drive away. Philosophy is not the bride's natural right; the honeymoon is a time of unreason; a crumpled rose-leaf in those first uncertain weeks may loom larger than all the far more serious storms of the years to come. Rachael, loving at last, was overwhelmed, intoxicated, carried beyond all sanity by the passion that possessed her. When Warren Gregory came to find her at Quaker Bridge on that unforgettable morning after the storm, a chance allusion to Mrs. Valentine, the charming unknown lady with the gray hair, had distracted Rachael's thoughts from the point at issue. But later on, during the long drive, she had remembered it again. "But Greg, dear, did you tell me that you and Doctor Valentine drove down yesterday in all that frightful storm?" "No, no, of course not, my child; we came down late the night before--why, yesterday we couldn't get as far as the gate! Mrs. Valentine's brother was there, and we played thirty-two rubbers of bridge! Sweet situation, you two miles away, and me held up after three months of waiting!" She said to herself, with a little pain at her heart, that she didn't understand it. It was all right, of course, whatever Greg did was all right, but she did not understand it. To be so near, to have that hideous war of wind and water raging over the world, and not to come somehow--to swim or row or ride to her, to bring her delicious companionship and reassurance out of the storm! Why, had she known that Greg was so near no elements that ever raged could have held her-- But of course, she was reminding herself presently, Greg had never been to Quaker Bridge, he had no reason to suppose her in actual danger; indeed, perhaps the danger had always been more imagined than real. If his hosts had been merely bored by the weather, merely driven to cards, how should he be alarmed? "Did the Valentines know what a tide we were having in Quaker Bridge?" she asked, after a while. "Never dreamed it; didn't know we'd been cut off until it was all over!" That was reassuring, at least. "And, you see, I couldn't say much about our plans. Alice Valentine's all wool, of course, but she's anything but a yard wide! She wouldn't have understood--not that it matters, but it was easier not! She was sweet to you at the wedding, and she'll ask us to dinner, and you two will get along splendidly. But she's not as--big as George." "You mean, she doesn't like the--divorce part of it?" "Or words to that effect," the doctor answered comfortably. "Of course, she'd never have said a word. But they are sort of simple and old-fashioned. George understands--that's all I care about. Do you see?" "I see," she answered slowly. But when he spoke again the sunshine came back to her heart; he had planned this, he had planned that, he had wired Elinor, the power boat was ready. She was a woman, after all, and young, and the bright hours of shopping, of being admired and envied, and, above all, of being so newly loved and protected, were opening before her. What woman in the world had more than she, what woman indeed, she asked herself, as he turned toward her his keen, smiling look of solicitude and devotion, had one-tenth as much? Later on, in that same day, there was another tiny shadow. Rachael, however, had foreseen this moment, and met it bravely. "How's your mother, Greg?" she asked suddenly. "Fine," he answered, and with a swift smile for her he added, "and furious!" "No--is she really furious?" Rachael asked, paling. "Now, my dearest heart," Warren Gregory said with an air of authority that she found strangely thrilling and sweet, "from this moment on make up your mind that what my good mother does and says is absolutely unimportant to you and me! She has lived her life, she is old, and sick, and unreasonable, and whatever we did wouldn't please her, and whatever anyone does, doesn't satisfy her anyway! In forty years--in less than that, as far as I'm concerned--you and I'll be just as bad. My mother acted like a martyr on the steamer; she was about as gay with her old friends in London as you or I'd be at a funeral; she had an air of lofty endurance and forbearance all the way, and, as I said to Margaret Clay in Paris, the only time I really thought she was enjoying herself was when she had to be hustled into a hospital, and for a day or two there we really thought she was going to have pneumonia!" Rachael's delightful laugh rang out spontaneously from utter relief of heart. "Oh, Greg, you're delicious! Tell me about old Lady Frothingham, is she difficult, too? And how's pretty Magsie Clay?" "Now, if we're married to-morrow," the doctor Went on, too much absorbed in his topic to be lightly distracted. "But do you hear me, Ma'am? How does it sound?" "It sounds delicious! Go on!" "If we're married to-morrow, I say--it could be to-day just as well, but I suppose you girls have to buy clothes, and have your hands manicured, and so on--" "You know we do, to say nothing of lying awake all night talking about our beaux!" "Well"--he conceded it somewhat reluctantly--"then, to-morrow, some time before I go with Valentine to call for you, I'll go down to see my mother. She'll kiss me, and sigh, and feel martyred. In a month or two she'll call on me at the office. 'Why don't you and your wife come to see me, James?' 'Would you like us to, Mother? We fancied you were angry at us.' 'I am sorry, my son, of course, but I have never been angry. Will you come to-morrow night?' And when we go, my dear, you'd never dream that there was anything amiss, I assure you!" "I'll make her love me!" said Rachael, smiling tenderly. "Perhaps some day you'll have a very powerful argument," he said with a significant glance that brought the quick blood to her face. "Mother couldn't resist that!" She did not answer. It was a part of this new freshness and purity of aspect that she could not answer. "You asked about Margaret Clay," the doctor remembered presently. "She was the same old sixpence, only growing up now; she owns to nineteen--isn't she more than that? She always did romance and yarn so much about herself that you can't believe anything." "She's about twenty-one, perhaps no more than twenty," Rachael said, after some thought. "Did they say anything about Parker and Leila?" "No, but the old lady can't do much harm there. She'll not last another six months. She may leave Margaret a slice, but it won't be much of a slice, for Parker could fight if it was. Leila's pretty safe. We'll have to go to that wedding, by the way!" "Oh, Greg, the fun of going places together!" She was her happiest self again. His mother and Alice Valentine and everything else but their great joy was forgotten as they lingered over their luncheon and planned for their wedding day. If they could only have been alone together, always, thought the new-made wife, when two perfect weeks on the powerful motor boat were over, and all the society editors were busily announcing that Doctor and Mrs. James Warren Gregory were furnishing their luxurious apartment in the Rotterdam, where they would spend the winter. They were so happy together; there was never enough time to talk and to be silent, never enough of their little luncheons all by themselves, their theatre trips, their afternoon drives through the sweet, clear early winter sunshine on the Park. Always in the later years Rachael could feel the joy of these days again when she caught the scent of fresh violets. Never a day passed that Warren did not send her or bring her a fragrant boxful. They quivered on the breast of her gown, and on her dressing-table they made her bedroom sweet. Now and then when she and Warren were to be alone she braided her dark hair and wound it about her head, tucking a few violets against the rich plaits, conscious that the classic simplicity of the arrangement enhanced her beauty, and was pleased in his pleasure. It suited her whim to carry out the little affectation in her soaps and toilet waters; he could not pick up her handkerchief or hold her wrap for her without freeing the delicate faint odor of her favorite flower. When they met downtown for dinner there was always the little ceremony of finding the florist, and all the operas this winter were mingled for Rachael with the most exquisite fragrance in the world. These days were perfect. It was only when the outside world entered their paradise that anything less than perfect happiness entered, too. Rachael's old friends--Judy Moran, Elinor, and the Villalongas--said, and said with truth, that she had changed. She had not tried to change, but it was hard for her to get the old point of view now, to laugh at the old jokes, to listen to the old gossip. She had been cold and wretched only a year before, but she had had the confident self-sufficiency of a gypsy who walks bareheaded and irresponsible through a world whose treasure will never come her way. Now Rachael, tremulous and afraid, was the guardian of the great treasure, she knew now what love meant, and she could no longer face even the thought of a life without love. Tirelessly, and with increasing satisfaction, she studied her husband's character, finding, like all new wives, that almost all her preconceived ideas of him had been wrong. Like all the world, she had always fancied Greg something of an autocrat, positive almost to stubbornness in his views. Now it was amusing to discover that he was really a rather mild person, except where his work was concerned, rarely taking the initiative in either praising or blaming anybody or anything, deeply influenced by the views of other persons, and content to be rather a listener and onlooker than an active participant in what did not immediately concern him. Rachael found this, for some subtle reasons of her own, highly pleasing. It made her less afraid of her husband's criticism, and spared her many of those tremors common to the first months of married life. Also, it gave her an occasional chance to influence him, even to protect him from his own indifference to this issue or that. She laughed at him, accusing him of being an impostor. Why, everyone thought Dr. Warren Gregory, with his big scowl and his firm-set jaw, was an absolute Tartar, she exulted, when as a matter of fact he was only a little boy afraid of his wife! He hated, she learned, to be uncertain as to just the degree of dressing expected of him on different occasions, he hated to enter hotels by the wrong doors, to hear her dispraise an opera generally approved, or find good in a book branded by the critics as worthless. With all his pride in her beauty, he could not bear to have her conspicuous; if her laughter or her unusual voice attracted any attention in a public place, she could see that it made him uncomfortable. These things Rachael might have considered flaws in another man. In Warren they were only deliciously amusing, and his reliance upon her, where she had expected only absolute self-possession from him, seemed to make him more her own. Rachael, daughter of wandering adventurers, had a thousand times more assurance than he. In her secret heart she had no regard for any social law; society was a tool to be used, not a weight under which one struggled helplessly. She dictated where he followed precedent; she laughed where he was filled with apprehension. Seriously, she set her wits and her love to the task of accustoming him to joy, and day by day he flung off the old, half-defined reluctances that still bound him, and entered more fully into the delights of the care-free, radiant hours that lay before them. His wife saw the change in him, and rejoiced. But what she did not see, as the months went on, was the no less marked change in herself. As Warren's nature expanded, and as he began to reach quite naturally for the various pleasures all about him, Rachael's soul experienced an alteration almost directly opposed. She became thoughtful, almost reserved, she began to show a certain respect for convention--not for the social conventions at which she had always laughed, and still laughed, but for the fundamental laws of truth, simplicity, and cleanness, upon which the ideal of civilization, at least, is based. She noticed that she was beginning to like "good" persons, even homely, dowdy, good persons, like Alice and George Valentine. She lost her old appetite for scandal, for ugly stories, for reckless speech. Warren, freed once and for all from his old prejudice, found nothing troublesome now in the thought that she had been another man's wife; it was a common situation, it was generally approved. As in other things, he had had stupidly conventional ideas about it once--that was all. But Rachael winced at the sound of the word "divorce," not because of her own divorce, but at the thought that some other man and woman had promised in their first love what later they could not fulfil, and hated each other now where they had loved each other once, at the thought that perhaps--perhaps one of them loved the other still! "Divorce is--monstrous," she said soberly to her husband in one of their hours of perfect confidence. "How can we say it, of all persons, my darling? Don't be hidebound!" "No," she smiled reluctantly, "I suppose we can't. But--but I never feel like a divorced woman, Warren, I feel like a different woman, but not as if that term fitted me. It sounds so--coarse. Don't you think it does?" "No, I never thought of it quite that way. Everyone makes mistakes," he answered cheerfully. "Don't you care--that it's true of me?" she asked. "Are you trying to make me jealous, you gypsy!" he laughed. But there was no answering laughter in her face. "Yes, perhaps I am," she admitted, as if she were a little surprised that it was so. And in her next slowly worded sentence she discovered for herself another truth. "I mind it, Warren!" she said. "I wish, with all my heart, that it wasn't so!" "That isn't very consistent, sweet. Your life made you what you were, the one woman in the world I could ever have loved. Why quarrel with the process?" "I wish you cared!" she said wistfully. "Cared?" "Yes--suffered over it--objected. Then I could keep proving to you that I never in my life loved anyone, man, woman, or child, until now!" "But I believe that, my darling!" She smiled at his wide, innocent look, a mother's amused yet hopeless smile, and as they rose from their late luncheon he put his arm about her and tipped her beautiful face up toward his own. "Don't you realize, my darling, that just as you are, you are perfect to me--not nearly perfect, or ninety-nine per cent. perfect, but pressed down and running over, a thousand per cent., a million per cent.?" he asked. Her dark beauty glowed; she was more lovely than ever in her exquisite content. "Oh, Warren, if you'd only say that to me over and over!" she begged. "Dear Heaven, hear the woman! What else DO I do?" "Oh, I don't mean now. I mean always, all through our lives. It's ALL I want to hear!" "Do you realize that you are an absolute--little--tyrant?" he asked, laughing. Radiantly she laughed back. "I only realize one thing in these days," she answered; "I only live for one thing!" It was true. The world for her now was all in her husband, his smile was her light, and she lived almost perpetually in the sunshine. When they were parted--and they were never long parted--the memory of this glance or that tone, this eager phrase or that sudden laugh, was enough to keep her happy. When they met again, whether she came to meet him in his own hallway, or rose, lovely in her furs, and walked toward him in some restaurant or hotel, joy lent her a new and almost fearful beauty. To dress for him, to make him laugh, to hold his interest, this was all that interested her, and for the world outside of their own house she cared not at all. They had their own vocabulary, their own phrases for moments of mirth or tenderness; among her gowns he had his favorites. among the many expressions of his sensitive face there were some that it was her whimsical pleasure always to commend. Their conversation, as is the way with lovers, was all of themselves, and all of praise. Long before they were ready for the world it began to make its demands. Rachael loved her own home--they had chosen a large duplex apartment on Riverside Drive--loved the memorable little meals they had before the fire, the lazy, enchanting hours of reading or of music in the big studio that united the two large floors, the scent of her husband's cigar, the rustle of her own gown, the snow slipping and lisping against the window, and it was with great reluctance that she surrendered even one evening. But there was hospitable Vera Villalonga and her dreadful New Year's dance, and there were the Bowditch dinner and the Hoyt dinner and the Parmalee's dance for Katrina. Unwillingly the beautiful Mrs. Gregory yielded to the swift current, and presently they were caught in the rush of the season, and could not have withdrawn themselves except for serious cause. Rachael smiled a little wryly one morning over Mrs. George Valentine's cordially worded invitation to an informal dinner, but she accepted it as a matter of course, and wore her most beautiful gown. She deliberately set out to capture her hostess' friendship, and simple, sweet Mrs. Valentine could not long resist her guest's beauty and charm--such a young, fresh creature as she was, not a bit one's idea of an adventuress, so genuinely interested in the children, so obviously devoted to Warren. Rachael, on her side, contemplated the Valentines with deep interest. She found them a rather puzzling study, unlike any married couple that she had ever chanced to know. Alice was one of those good, homely, unfashionable women who seem utterly devoid of the instinct for dressing properly. Her masses of dull brown hair she wore strained from her high forehead and wound round her head in a fashion hopelessly obsolete. Her evening gown, of handsome gray silk, was ruined by those little fussy touches of lace and ruffling that brand a garment instantly as "homemade." George was one of the plainest of men, shy, awkward, insignificant looking, with a long-featured, pleasant face, and red hair. Warren had told his wife at various times that George was "a prince," and physically, at least, Rachael found him disappointing, especially beside her own handsome husband. She knew he was clever, with a large practice besides his work as head surgeon at one of the big hospitals, but Warren had added to this the information that George was a poor business man, and ill qualified to protect his own interests. Yet, in his own home--a handsome and yet shabby brownstone house in the West Fifties--he appeared to better advantage. There was a brightness in his plain face when he looked at his wife, and an adoring response in her glance that after twelve years of married life seemed admirable to Rachael. "Alice" was a word continually on his lips; what Alice said and thought and did was evidently perfection. Before the Gregorys had been ten minutes in the house on their first visit he had gone downstairs to inspect the furnace, wound and set a stopped clock, answered the telephone twice, and fondly carried upstairs a refractory four-year-old girl, who came boldly down in her nightgown, with reproaches and requests. On his return from this trip he brought down the one-year-old baby, another girl, delicious in the placid hour between supper and bed, and he and his wife and Warren Gregory exchanged admiring glances as the beautiful Mrs. Gregory took the child delightedly in her arms, contrasting her own dark and glowing loveliness with the tiny Katharine's gold and roses. It was a quiet evening, but Rachael liked it. She liked their simple, affectionate talk, their reminiscences, the serenity of the large, plainly furnished rooms, the glowing of coal fires in the old-fashioned steel-barred grates. She liked Alice Valentine's placidity, the sureness of herself that marked this woman as more highly civilized than so many of the other women Rachael knew. There was none of Judy's and Gertrude's and Vera's excitability and restlessness here. Alice was concerned neither with her own appearance nor her own wants; she was free to comment with amusement or wonder or admiration upon larger affairs. Rachael wondered, as beautiful women have wondered since time began, what held this man so tightly to this mild, plain woman, and by what special gift of the gods Alice Valentine might know herself secure beyond all question in a world of beauty and charm and youth. "Well, what d'you think of her, Alice?" Doctor Gregory had asked proudly when his wife was on his arm and leave-taking was in order. "Think you're lucky, Greg," Mrs. Valentine answered earnestly. "You've got a dear, good, lovely wife!" "And you are going to let me come and make friends with the boy and the girls some afternoon?" Rachael asked. "If you WILL," their mother said, and she and Rachael kissed each other. Gregory chuckled, in high feather, all the way home. "You're a wonder, Ladybird! I have NEVER seen you sweeter nor prettier than you were to-night!" Rachael leaned back in the car with a long, contented sigh. "One can see that she was all ready to hate me, Greg; a woman who had been married, and who snapped up her favorite bachelor--" He laughed triumphantly. "She doesn't hate you now!" "No, and I'll see to it that she never does. She's my sort of woman, and the children are absolute loves! I like that sort of old-fashioned prejudice--honestly I do--that honor-thy-father-and-thy-mother-and-keep holy-the-sabbath-day sort of person. Don't you, Greg?" "We--ll, I don't like narrowness, sweet." "No." Rachael pondered in the dark. "Yet if you're not narrow you seem to be--really the only word for it is--loose," she submitted. "Somehow lately, a great many persons--the girls I know--do seem to be a little bit that way." "You don't find THEM judging you!" her husband said. Rachael answered only by a rather faint negative; she would not elucidate further. This was one of the things she could never tell Warren, a thing indeed that she would hardly admit to her own soul. But she said to herself that she knew now the worst evil of divorce. She knew that it coarsened whomever it touched, that it irresistibly degraded, that it lowered all the human standard of goodness and endurance, and self-sacrifice. However justified, it was an evil; however properly consummated, it soiled the little group it affected. The disinclination of a good woman like Alice Valentine to enter into a close friendship with a younger and richer and more beautiful woman whose history was the history of Rachael Gregory was no mere prejudice. It was the feeling of a restrained and disciplined nature for an unchecked and ill-regulated one; it was the feeling of a woman who, at any cost, had kept her solemn marriage vow toward a woman who had broken her word. Rachael was beginning to find it more comprehensible, even more acceptable, than the attitude of her own old world. Fresh from the Eden that was her life with Warren, she had turned back to the friends whose viewpoint had been hers a few months ago. Were they changed, or was she? Both were changed, she decided. She had been a cold queen among them once, flattered by their praise and laughter, reckless in speech, and almost as reckless in action. But now her only kingdom was in Warren Gregory's heart. She had no largesse for these outsiders; she could not answer them with her old quick wit now; indeed she hardly heard them. And on their side, where once there had been that certain deference due to the woman who, however wretched and neglected, was still Clarence Breckenridge's wife, now she noticed, with quick shame, a familiarity, a carelessness, that indicated plainly exactly the fine claim to delicacy that she had forfeited. Her position in every way was better now than it had been then. But in some subtle personal sense she had lost caste. A story was ventured when she chanced to be alone with Frank Whittaker and George Pomeroy that her presence would have forbidden in the old days, and Allen Parmalee gave her a sensation of absolute sickness by merrily introducing her to his sister from Kentucky with the words: "Don't stare at her so hard, Bess! Of course you remember her: she was Mrs. Breckenridge last year, but now she's making a much better record as Mrs. Gregory!" The women were even more frank; Clarence's name was often mentioned in her presence; she was quite simply congratulated and envied. "My dear," said Mrs. Cowles, at a women's luncheon, "you were extraordinarily clever, of course, but don't forget that you were extremely lucky, too. Clarence making no fuss, taking all the trouble to provide the evidence, and Greg being only too anxious to step into his shoes, made it easy for you!" "I'm no prude," Rachael smiled, over a raging heart. "But I couldn't see this coming, nobody did. All I could do was to break free before my self-respect was absolutely gone!" "Go tell that to the White Wings, darling," laughed Mrs. Villalonga, lazily blowing smoke into rings and spirals. "Seriously, Vera, I mean it!" "Seriously, Rachael, do you mean to tell me that you hadn't the SLIGHTEST idea--" Mrs. Villalonga roused herself, to smilingly study the other woman's face as she asked the question. "Not a word--not a HINT?" "Ah, well--" Rachael's face was flaming. She would have put her hand in the fire to be able to say "No." The others laughed cheerfully. "Nobody misunderstands you, dear: you were in a rotten fix and you got out of it nicely," said fat Mrs. Moran, and Mrs. Villalonga added consolingly: "Why, my heavens, Rachael, I'd leave Booth to-morrow for anyone half as handsome as Warren Gregory!" In March the Gregorys sent out cards for their first really large entertainment, a Mardi-Gras ball. Rachael and Warren spent many happy hours planning it: the studio was to be cleared, two other big rooms turned into one for the supper, music for dancing, musical numbers for the entertainment; it would be perfect in every detail, one of the notable affairs of the winter. Rachael hailed it as the end of the season. They were to make a flying trip to the Bermudas in April, and after that Rachael happily planned a month or two in the almost deserted city before Warren would be free to get away to the mountains or the boat. It was with a delightful sense of freedom that she realized that her first winter in her new role was nearly over. Next winter her divorce and remarriage would be an old story, there would be other gossip more fascinating and more new, she would be taken quite for granted. Again, she might more easily evade the social demand next winter without exposing herself to the charge of being fickle or changed. This year her brave and dignified facing of the world had been a part of the price she paid for her new happiness. Now it was paid. And for another reason, half-defined, Rachael was glad to see the months go by. She had been Warren Gregory's wife for nearly six months now, and the rapture of being together was still as great for them both as it had been in the first radiant days of their marriage. For herself, indeed, she knew that the joy was constantly deepening, and even the wild hunger and passion of her heart could find no flaw in his devotion. Her surrender to him was with a glorious and unashamed completeness, the tones of her extraordinary voice deepened when she spoke to him, and in her eyes all who looked might read the story of insatiable and yet satisfied love. CHAPTER II Plans for the big dance presently began to move briskly, and there was much talk of the affair. As hostess, Rachael would not mask, nor would Warren, but they were already amusing themselves with the details of elaborate costumes. Warren's rather stern and classic beauty was to be enhanced by the blue and buff of an officer of the Revolution, fine ruffles falling at wrist and throat, wide silver buckles on square-toed shoes, and satin ribbon tying his white wig. Rachael, separately tempted by the thought of Dutch wooden shoes and of the always delightful hoop skirts, eventually abandoned both because it was not possible historically to connect either costume with the one upon which Warren had decided. She eventually determined to be the most picturesque of Indian maidens, with brown silk stockings disappearing into moccasins, exquisite beadwork upon her fringed and slashed skirt, feathers in her loosened hair, and a small but matchless tiger skin, strapped closely across her back, to lend a touch of distinction to the costume. On the Monday evening before the dance she tried on her regalia and appeared before her husband and three or four waiting dinner guests, so exquisite a vision of glowing and radiant beauty that their admiration was almost a little awed. Her cheeks were crimson between her loosened rich braids of hair; her eyes shone deeply blue, and the fantastic costume, with its fluttering strips of leather and richly colored wampum, gave an extraordinary quality of youth and almost of frailty to her whole aspect. "The woman just sent this home. I couldn't resist showing you!" said Rachael, in a shower of compliments. "Isn't my tiger a darling? Warren went six hundred and seventy-two places to catch him. Of course there never was a stripey tiger like this in North America but what care I? I'm only a poor little redskin; a trifling inconsistency like that doesn't worry ME!" "Me taky you my wikiup-HUH!" said Frank Whittaker invitingly. "You my squaw?" "Come here, Hattie Fishboy," said her husband, catching her by the arm. His face showed no more than an amused indulgence to her caprice, but Rachael knew he was pleased. "Well, when you first planned this outfit I thought it was going to be an awful mess," said he, turning her slowly about. "But it isn't so bad!" "Isn't so bad!" Mrs. Bowditch said scornfully; "it's the loveliest thing I ever saw. I'll tell you what, Rachael, if you come down to Easthampton this summer we'll have a play, and you can be an Indian--" "I'd love it," Rachael said, and making a deep bow before her husband she added: "I'll be Squaw-Afraid-of-Her-Man!" She heard them laughing as she ran upstairs to change to a more conventional dress. "Etta," said she, consigning the Indian costume to her maid, "I'm too happy to live!" Etta, one of those homely, conscientious women who extract in some mysterious way an actual pride and pleasure from the beauty of the women whom they serve, smiled faintly and dully. "The weather's getting real nice now," she submitted, as one who will not discourage a worthy emotion. Rachael laughed out joyously. The next instant she had flung up a window and leaned out in the spring darkness. Trees on the drive were rustling over pools of light, a lighted steamboat went slowly up the river, the brilliant eyes of motor cars curved swiftly through the blackness. A hurdy-gurdy, guarded by two shadowy forms, was pouring out a wild jangle of sound from the curb. When the window was shut, a moment later, the old Italian man and woman who owned the musical instrument decided that they must mark this apartment house for many a future visit, and, chattering hopefully, went upon their way. The belladonna in the spangled gown, who had looked down upon them for a brief interval, meanwhile ran down to her guests. She was in wild spirits, inspired with her most enchanting mood; for an hour or two there was no resisting her. Mrs. Whittaker and Mrs. Bowditch fell as certainly under her spell as did the three men. "She really HAS changed since she married Greg," said Louise Bowditch to Mrs. Whittaker; "but it's all nonsense--this talk about her being no more fun! She's more fun than ever!" "She's prettier than ever," Gertrude Whittaker said with a sigh. The next afternoon, a dreary, wet afternoon, at about four o'clock, Warren Gregory stepped out of the elevator, and quietly admitted himself to his own hallway with a latchkey. It was an unusual hour for the doctor to come home, and in the butler's carefully commonplace tone as he answered a few questions Warren knew that he knew. The awning had been stretched across the sidewalk, caterers' men were in possession, the lovely spacious rooms were full of flowers; the big studio had been emptied of furniture, there were great palms massed in the musicians' corner; maids were quietly busy everywhere; no eye met the glance of the man of the house as he went upstairs. He found Mrs. Gregory alone in her own luxurious room. No one who had seen her in the excited beauty of the night before would have been likely to recognize her now. She was pale, tense, and visibly nervous, wrapped in a great woolly robe, as if she were cold, and with her hair bound carelessly and tightly back as a woman binds it for bathing. "You've seen it?" she said instantly, as her husband came in. "George called my attention to it; I came straight home. I knew"--he was kneeling beside her, one arm about her, all his tenderness and devotion in his face--"I knew you'd need me." She laid an arm about his neck, sighed deeply, but continued to stare distractedly beyond him. "Warren, what shall we do?" she said with a certain vagueness and brokenness in her manner that he found very disquieting. "Do, sweetheart?" he echoed at a loss. "With all those people coming to-night," she added, mildly impatient. "Why, what CAN we do, dear?" "You don't mean," Rachael said incredulously, "that we shall have to GO ON with it?" "Think a minute, dearest. Why shouldn't we?" "But"--her color, better since his entrance, was waning again--"with Clarence Breckenridge dying while we dance!" she shuddered. "Could anything be more preposterous than your letting anything that concerns Clarence Breckenridge affect what you do now?" he asked with kindly patience. "No, it's not that!" she answered feverishly. "But--but for any old friend one would--would make a difference, and surely--surely he was more than that!" "He WAS more than that, of course, but he has been less than nothing to you for a long time!" "Yes, legally--technically, of course," Rachael agreed nervously. She sat silent for a moment, frowning over some sombre thought. "But, Warren, they'll all know of it, they'll all be THINKING of it," she said presently. "I--really I don't think I can go through it!" "It's too bad, of course," Warren Gregory said with his arm still about her. "I'd give ten thousand dollars to have had the poor fellow select some other time. But you've had nothing to do with it, and you simply must put it out of your mind!" "It was Billy's marriage, of course!" "Of course. She was married yesterday, you see, the day she came of age. Poor kid--it's rather a sad start for her, especially with no one but Joe Pickering to console her!" "She was mad about her father," Rachael said in a preoccupied whisper. "Poor Billy--poor Billy! She never crossed him in anything but this. What did you see it in?" "The World. How did you hear it?" "Etta brought up the paper." She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. "It seemed to jump at me--his picture and the name. Is he living--where is he?" "At St. Mark's. He won't live. Poor fellow!" Warren Gregory scowled thoughtfully as he gave a moment's thought to the other man's situation, and then smiled sunnily at his wife with a brisk change of topic. "Well," he said cheerfully, "is anyone in this place glad to see me, or not, or what?" "It just seems to me that I CANNOT face all those people to-night!" Rachael said, giving him a quick, unthinking kiss before she gently put him away from her, and got to her feet. "It seems so wrong--so coarse--to be utterly and totally indifferent to the man who was my husband a year ago. I don't love him, he is nothing to me, but it's all wrong, this way. If it was Peter Pomeroy or Joe Butler, of COURSE we'd put off our dance--Warren," she turned to him with sudden hope in her eyes, "do you suppose anybody'll come?" "My dear girl," he said, displeased, "why are you working yourself into a fever over this? It's most unfortunate, but as far as you're concerned, it's unavoidable, and you'll simply have to put a brave face on it, and get through it SOMEHOW! I am absolutely confident that when you've pulled yourself together you'll come through with flying colors. Of course everyone'll come; this is their chance to show you exactly how little they ever think of you as Breckenridge's wife! And this is your chance, too, to act as if you'd never heard of him. Dash it! it does spoil our little party, but it can't be helped!" "Do you suppose Billy's with him?" Rachael asked, her absent, glittering eyes fixed upon her own person as she sat before her mirror. "Oh, no--she and Pickering sailed yesterday for England--that's the dreadful thing for her. Clarence evidently spent the whole night at the club, sitting in the library, thinking. Berry Stokes went in for his mail after the theatre, and they had a little talk. He promised to dine there to-night. At about ten this morning Billings, the steward there, saw old Maynard going out--Maynard's one of the directors--and asked him if he wouldn't please go and speak to Mr. Breckenridge. Mayn went over to him, and Clarence said, 'Anything you say--'" Rachael gave a gasp that was like a shriek, and put her two elbows on the dressing-table, and her face in her hands. It was Clarence's familiar phrase. "Oh, don't--don't--don't--Greg!" "Well, that was all there was to it," her husband said, watching her anxiously. "He had the thing in his pocket. He stood up--everybody heard it. Fellows came rushing in from everywhere. They got him to a hospital." "Florence is with him, of course?" "Florence is at Palm Beach." "Then who IS with him, Greg?" "My dear girl, how do I know? It's none of my affair!" Rachael sat still for perhaps two minutes, while her husband, ostentatiously cheerful, moved about the room selecting a change of clothes. "To-morrow you can take it as hard as you like, sweet," said he. "But to-night you'll have to face the music! Now get into something warm--it's a little cool out--and I'll take you for a spin, and we'll have dinner somewhere. Then we'll get back here about eight o'clock, and take our time dressing." "Yes, I'll do that," Rachael agreed automatically. A moment later she said urgently: "Warren, isn't there a chance that I'm right about this? Mightn't it be better simply to telephone everyone that the dance is postponed? Make it next week, or Mi-Careme--anything. If they talk--let them! I don't care what they say. They'll talk anyway. But every fibre of my being, every delicate or decent instinct I ever had, rebels against this. Say I'm not well, and let them buzz! I know what you are going to say--I know that it would SEEM less sensitive, less fine, to mourn for one man while I'm another man's wife, than to absolutely ignore what happens to him, but you know what's the truth! I never loved him, and I love every hair of your head--you know that. Only--" She stopped short, baffled by the difficulty of expressing herself accurately. "If you really love me, do what I ask you to-night," Warren Gregory said firmly. His wife sat as if turned to stone for only a few seconds. When she spoke it was naturally and cheerfully. "I'll be ready in no time, dear. Where are we to dine?" She glanced at her little crystal clock as she spoke, as if she were computing casually the length of the drive before dinner. But what she said in her heart was, "At this time to-morrow it will all have been over for many hours!" A few days later the Gregorys sailed for Bermuda, Rachael with a sense of whipped and smarting shame that was all the more acute because she could not share it with this dearest comrade and confidant. Warren thought indeed that the miserable episode of the past week had been dismissed from her mind, and delighting like a boy in the little holiday, and proud of his beautiful wife, he found their hours at sea cloudless. With two men, whose acquaintance was made on the steamer, they played bridge, and Rachael's game drew other players from all sides to watch her leads and grin over her bidding. They walked up and down the deck for hours together, they lay side by side in deck chairs lazily watching the blue water creep up and down the painted white ropes of the rail; but they never spoke of Clarence Breckenridge. The Mardi-Gras dance had been like a hideous dream to Rachael. She had known that it would be hard from the first sick moment in which the significance of Clarence's suicide had rushed upon her. She had known that her arriving guests would be gay and conversational, that the dance and the supper would go with a dash and swing which no other circumstance could more certainly have assured for them; and she knew that in every heart would be the knowledge that Clarence Breckenridge was dying by his own hand, and his daughter on the ocean, and that this woman in the Indian dress, with painted lips and a tiger skin outlining her beautiful figure, had been his wife. This she had expected, and this was as she had expected. But there were other circumstances that made her feel even more acutely the turn of the screw. Joe Butler, always Clarence's closest friend, did not come to the dance, and at about twelve o'clock an innocent maid delivered to Warren a message that several persons besides Warren heard: "Mr. Butler to speak to you on the telephone, Doctor Gregory." Everyone could surmise where Joe Butler was, but no one voiced the supposition. Warren, handsome in his skirted coat, knee breeches, and ruffles, disappeared from the room, and the dancing went on. The scene was unbelievably brilliant, the hot, bright air sweet with flowers and perfume, and the more subtle odors of silk and fine linen and powder on delicate skin. Warren was presently among them again, and there was a supper, the hostess' lovely face showing no more strain or concern than was natural to a woman eager to make comfortable nearly a hundred guests. After supper there was more dancing, and an augmented gayety. There were no more telephone messages, nor was there any definite foundation for the rumor that was presently stealthily circulating. Women, powdering their noses as they waited for their wraps, murmured it in the dressing-rooms; a clown, smoking in the hall, confided it to a Mephistopheles; a pastry cook, after his effusive good-nights, confirmed it as he climbed into the motorcar that held the Pierrette who was his wife: "Dead, poor fellow!" "Dead, poor Clarence!" said Mrs. Prince, magnificent as Queen Elizabeth, as she and Elinor Vanderwall went downstairs. She had once danced a fancy dance with him more than twenty years ago. "Awful!" said Elinor, shuddering. After the last guest was gone Warren telephoned to the hospital, Rachael, a little tired and pale in the Indian costume, watching and listening tensely. She was sick at heart. Even into the library, where they stood, the Mardi-Gras disorder had penetrated: a blue silk mask was lying across Warren's blotter, a spatter of confetti lay on the polished floor, and on the reading table was a tray on which were two glasses through whose amber contents a lazy bubble still occasionally rose. The logs that had snapped in the fireplace were gone, only gray ashes remained, and to Rachael, at least, the room's desolation and disorder seemed to typify her own state of mind. She could tell from Warren's look that he found the whole matter painful and distasteful to an almost unbearable degree; on his handsome serious face was an expression of grim endurance, of hurt yet dignified protest against events. He did not blame her, how could he blame her? But he was suffering in every fibre of his sensitive soul at this sordid notoriety, at this blatant voicing of a hundred ugly whispers in a matter so closely touching the woman he loved. "Dead?" Rachael said quietly, when his brief conversation was over. Warren Gregory, setting the telephone back upon the desk, nodded gravely. Rachael made no comment. For a moment her eyes widened nervously, and a little shudder rippled through her. Then silently she gathered up the leather belt and chains of beads that she had been loosening as she listened, and slowly went toward the door. They did not speak again of Clarence that night, although they chatted easily for the next hour on other topics, even laughing a little as the various episodes of the evening were passed in review. But Rachael did not sleep, nor did she sleep during the long hours of the following night. On the third night she wakened her husband suddenly from his sleep. "Greg--Greg! Won't you talk to me a little? I'm going mad, I think!" "Rachael! What is it?" stammered the doctor, blinking in the dim light of Rachael's bedside lamp. His wife, haggard, with her rich hair falling in two long braids over her shoulders, was sitting on the side of his bed. "What is it, darling--hear something?" he asked, more naturally, putting his arm about her. "I've been lying awake--and lying awake!" said Rachael, panting. "I haven't shut my eyes--it's nearly three. Greg, I keep seeing it--Clarence's face, you know, with that horrible scar! What shall I do?" Shivering, gasping, wild-eyed, she clung to him, and for a long hour he soothed her as if she had been an hysterical child. He put her into a comfortable chair, mixed her a sedative, and knelt beside her, slowly winning her back to calm and sanity again. It was terrible, of course, but no one but Clarence himself was to blame, unless it was poor Billy-- "Yes, I must see Billy when she comes back!" Rachael said quickly, when the tranquillizing voice reached this point. If Warren Gregory's quiet mouth registered any opposition, she did not see it, and he did not express it. She was presently sound asleep, still catching a long childish breath as she slept. But she woke smiling, with all the horrid visions of the past few days apparently blotted out, and she and Warren went gayly downtown to get steamer tickets, and buy appropriate frocks and hats for the spring heat of Bermuda. In midsummer came the inevitable invitation to visit old friends at Belvedere Bay. Rachael was pleased to accept Mrs. Moran's hospitality for a glorious July week. Warren, to her delight, took an eightdays' holiday, and while he looked to his racquet and golf irons she packed her prettiest gowns. Belvedere Bay welcomed them rapturously, and beautiful Mrs. Gregory was the idol of the hour. Mrs. Moulton, giving a tennis tea during this week, duly sent Mrs. Gregory a card. But when society wondering whether Rachael would really be a guest in her own old home, had duly gathered at the Breckenridge house, young Dicky Moran was so considerate as to be flung from his riding-horse. Neither the Gregorys nor the Morans consequently appeared at the tea, but Rachael, meeting all inquirers on the Moran terrace, late in the afternoon, with the news that Dicky was quite all right, no harm done, asked prettily for details of the affair they had missed. She told herself that the past really made no difference in the radiant present, but she knew it was not so. In a thousand little ways she had lost caste, and she saw it, if Warren did not. A certain bloom was gone. Girls were not quite as deferentially adoring, women were a little less impressed. The old prestige was somehow lessened. She knew that newcomers at the club, struck by her beauty, were a little chilled by her history. She felt the difference in the very air. In her musings she went over the old arguments hotly. Why was she merely the "divorced Mrs. Gregory?" Why were these casual inquirers not told of Clarence, of her long endurance of neglect and shame? More than once the thought came to her, that if other, events had been as they were, and only the facts of her divorce and remarriage lacking, she would have been Clarence's widow now. "What's the difference? It all comes out the same!" commented Warren, to whom she confided this thought. "Then you and I would have been only engaged now," said Rachael, smiling. "And I would like that!" "You mean you regret your marriage?" he laughed, his arms about her. "I'd like to live the first days over and over and over again, Greg!" she answered passionately. "You are an insatiable creature!" he said. But her earnestness was beginning to puzzle him a little. She was too deeply wrapped in her love for her own happiness or his. There was something almost startling in her intensity. She was jealous of every minute that they were apart; she made no secret of her blind adoration. Warren had at first found this touching; it had humbled him. Later, in the first months of their marriage, he had shared it, and their mutual passion had seemed to them both a source of inexhaustible delight. But now, even while he smiled at her, his keen sensitiveness where her dignity was concerned had shown him that there was in her attitude something a little pitiful, something even a little absurd. Judy and Gertrude and little Mrs. Sartoris listened interestedly when Rachael talked of Greg, of his likes, his dislikes, his favorite words, his old-maidish way of arranging his ties, his marvellous latest operation. But Warren, watching his wife's flushed, lovely face, wondered if they were laughing at her. He smiled uncomfortably when she interrupted her bridge game to come across the club porch to him, to ask him if the tennis had been good, to warn him that he would catch cold if he did not instantly get out of those wet flannels, to ask Frank Whittaker what he meant by beating her big boy three sets in succession? "Rachael, I'm dealing for you--come back here!" Gertrude might call. "Deal away!" Rachael, one hand on Warren's arm, would look saucily at the others over his shoulder. "I like my beau," she would assert brazenly, "and if you say a word more, I'll kiss him here and now!" They all shrieked derisively when the kiss was duly delivered and Gregory Warren with a self-conscious laugh had escaped to his shower. But Rachael saw nothing absurd; she told Warren that she loved him, and let them laugh if they liked! "Listen, dearest!" he said on the last night of their stay. "Will you be a darling, and not trail round the links if we play to-morrow?" "Why not?" asked Rachael absently, fluffing his hair from her point of vantage on the arm of his chair. "Well, wouldn't you rather stay up on the porch with the girls?" "If you men want to swear at your strokes, I decline to be a party to it!" Rachael said maternally. "I know. But, darling, it does rather affect our game," Warren said uncertainly; "that is, you don't play, you see! And it only gets you hot and mussy, and I love my wife to be waiting when we come up. It isn't that I don't think you're a darling to want to do it," he added in hasty concern. No use. She was deeply hurt. She went to her dressing-table and began her preparations for the night with a downcast face. Certainly she wouldn't bother Warren. She only did it because she loved him so. A tear splashed down on her white hand. Next day she triumphantly accompanied the golfers. Warren had petted and coaxed her out of her sulks, and she was radiant again. When they had said their good-byes to Judy, and were spinning into town in the car that afternoon, she made him confess that she had not spoiled the game at all; he couldn't make her believe that Frank and Tom and Peter had been pretending their pleasure at having her go along! But later in the summer she realized that Belvedere Bay was smiling quietly at her bride-like infatuation, and she resented it deeply. The discovery came about on a lazy summer afternoon when several women, Rachael among them, were enjoying gossip and iced drinks on the Parmalees' porch. Rachael had been talking of the emeralds that Warren was having reset for her, and chanced to observe that Tiffany's man had said that Warren's taste in jewelry was astonishing. "Rachael," yawned little Vivian Sartoris, "for heaven's sake talk about something else than Warren?" "I talk about him because I like him!" Rachael said. "Better than anybody else in the world." "And he likes you better than anybody else in the world, I suppose?" Vivian said idly. "He says so," Rachael answered with a demure smile. "Then that settles it!" Vivian laughed. But she and several of her intimates fell into low conversation, and the older women were presently interrupted by Vivian's voice again. "Rachael!" she challenged, "Katrina says that SHE knows somebody Warren likes as well as he does you!" "I did not!" protested Katrina, scarlet-cheeked and giggling, giving Vivian, who sat next her on the wide tiled steps, a violent push. "Oh, you did, too!" one of the group exclaimed. Katrina murmured something unintelligible. "Well, that's the same thing!" Vivian assured her promptly. "She says now that Warren DID like her as well, Rachael!" "Well, don't tell me who it is, and break my heart!" Rachael warned them. But her old sense of humor so far failed her that she could not help adding curiously, "If Warren ever cared for anybody else, he'll tell me!" There was a general burst of laughter, and Rachael colored. "No, it's nobody," Katrina said hastily. "It's only idiocy!" She and the other girls laughed in a suppressed fashion for some time. Finally, to Rachael's secret relief, Gertrude Whittaker energetically demanded the secret. More giggling ensued. Then Katrina agreed that she would whisper it in Mrs. Whittaker's ear, which she did. Rachael saw Gertrude color and look puzzled for a second, then she laughed scornfully. "What geese girls are! I never heard anything so silly!" Gertrude said. Several hours later she told Rachael. She did not tell her without some hesitation. It was so silly--it was just like that scatter-brained Katrina, she said. Rachael, proudly asserting that nothing Katrina said would make any difference to her, nevertheless urged the confidence. "Well, it's nothing," Gertrude said at last. "This is what Katrina said: she said that Warren Gregory had liked Rachael Breckenridge as well as he liked Rachael Gregory! That was all." Rachael looked puzzled in turn for a minute. Then she smiled proudly, and colored. "But that's not true," she said presently. "For I have never seen a man change as much since marriage as Warren! It's still a perfect miracle to him. He says himself that he gets happier and happier--" "Oh, Rachael, you're hopeless!" Gertrude laughed, and Rachael colored again. She flushed whenever she thought of this particular visit. Far happier were the days they spent with the Valentines at Clark's Bar. Rachael loved them all dearly, from little Katharine to the big quiet doctor; she was not misunderstood nor laughed at here. They swam, tramped, played cards, and talked tirelessly. Rachael slept like a child on the wide, windbathed porch. To the great satisfaction of both doctors she and Alice grew to be devoted friends, and when Warren's holiday was over, Rachael stayed on, for a longer visit, and the men came down in the car on Fridays. On her birthday this year her husband gave Rachael Gregory, and her heirs and assigns forever, a roomy, plain old colonial farmhouse that stood near Alice's house, in a ring of great elms, looking down on the green level surface of the sea. Rachael accepted it with wild delight. She loved the big, homelike halls, the simple fireplaces, the green blinds that shut a sweet twilight into the empty rooms. Her own barns, her own strip of beach, her own side yard where she and Alice could sit and talk, she took eager possession of them all. She went into town for chintzes, papers, wicker tables and chairs. She brought old Mrs. Gregory down for the housewarming, and had all the Valentines to dinner on the August evening when the Gregorys moved in. And late that same evening, when Warren's arms were about her, she told him her great news. There were to be little feet running about Home Dunes, and a little voice echoing through the new home. "Shall you be glad, Greg?" she asked, with tears in her eyes; "shall you be just a little jealous?" "Rachael!" he said in a quick, tense whisper, afraid to believe her. And Rachael, caught in his dear arms, and with his cheek against her wet lashes, felt a triumph and a confidence rise within her, and a glorious content that it was so. When the happy suspicion was a happy certainty she told his mother, and entered at once into the world of advice and reassurance, planning and speculation that belongs to women alone. Mrs. Valentine was also full of eager interest and counsel, and Rachael enjoyed their solicitude and affection as she had enjoyed few things in life. This was a perfectly natural symptom, that was a perfectly natural phase, she must do this thing, get that, and avoid a third. The fact that she was not quite herself in soul or body, that she must be careful, must be guarded and saved, was a source of strange and mysterious satisfaction to her as the quick months slipped by. Her increasing helplessness shut her quite naturally away into a world that contained only her husband and herself and a few intimate friends, and Rachael found this absolutely satisfying, and did not miss the social world that hummed on as busily and gayly as ever without her. Her baby was born in March, a beautiful boy, like his father even in the first few moments of his life. Rachael, whose experience had been, to her astonishment, described complacently by physician and nurses as "perfectly normal," was slow to recover from the experience in body; perhaps never quite recovered in soul. It changed all her values of life--this knowledge of what the coming of a child costs; she told Alice that she was glad of the change. "What a fool I've been about the shadows," she said. "This is the reality! This counts, as it seems to me that nothing else I ever did in my life counts." She felt nearer than ever to Warren now, and more dependent upon him. But a new dignity came into her relationship with him: husband and wife, father and mother, they wore the great titles of the world, now! He found her more beautiful than ever, and as the baby was the centre of her universe, and all her hopes and fears and thoughts for the child, the old bridal attitude toward him vanished forever, and she was the more fascinating for that. His love for her rose like a great flame, and the passionate devotion for which she had been wistfully waiting for months enveloped her now, when, shaken in body and soul, she wished only to devote herself to the miracle that was her child. When he was but six weeks old James Warren Gregory Third terrified the little circle of his family and friends with a severe touch of summer sickness. The weather, in late April, was untimely--hot and humid--and the baby seemed to suffer from it, even in his airy nursery. There were two hideous days in which he would take no food, and when Rachael heard nothing but the little wailing voice through the long hours. All night she sat beside him, hearing Warren's affectionate protests as little as she heard the dignified remonstrance of the nurse. When day came she was haggard and exhausted, but still she would not leave her baby. She knelt at the crib, impressing the tiny countenance upon mind and heart--her first-born baby, upon whose little features the wisdom of another world still lingered like a light! Only a few weeks old, and thousands of them older than he died every year! Fear in another form had come to Rachael now--life seemed all fear. "Oh, Warren, is he very ill?" "Pretty sick, dear little chap!" "But, Warren, you don't think--" "My darling, I don't know!" She turned desperately to George Valentine when that good friend came in his professional capacity at five o'clock. "George, there's been a change--I'm sure of it. Look at him!" "You ought to take better care of your wife, Greg," was Doctor Valentine's quiet almost smiling answer to this. "You'll have her sick next!" "How is he?" Rachael whispered, as the newcomer bent over the baby. There was a silence. "Well, my dear," said Doctor Valentine, as he straightened himself, "I believe this little chap has decided to remain with us a little while. Very--much--better!" Rachael tried to smile, but burst out crying instead, and clung to her husband's shoulder. "Let him have his sleep out, Miss Snow," said the doctor, "and then sponge him off and try him with food!" "Oh--yes--yes--yes!" the baby's mother said eagerly, drying her eyes. "And you'll be back later, George?" "Not unless you telephone me, and I don't think you'll have to," George Valentine said. Rachael's face grew radiant with joy. "Oh, George, then he is better!" She was breathing like a runner. "Better! I think he'll be himself to-morrow. Console yourself, my dear Rachael, with the thought that you'll go through this a hundred times with every one of your children!" "Oh, what a world!" Rachael said, half laughing and half sighing. But later she said to Warren, "Yet isn't it deliciously worth while!" He had persuaded her to have some supper, and then they had come back to the nursery, to see if the baby really would eat. He had awakened, and had had his bath, and was crying again, but, as Rachael eagerly said, it was a healthy cry. Trembling and smiling, she took the little creature in her arms, and when the busy little lips found her breast, Rachael felt as if she could hardly bear the exquisite incoming rush of joy again. Warren, watching her, smiled in deep satisfaction, and Miss Snow smiled, too. But before she gave herself up to the luxury of possession the mother's tears fell hot on the baby's delicate gown and tiny face, and from that hour Rachael loved her son with the passionate and intense devotion she felt for his father. Years later, looking at the pictures they took of him that summer, or perhaps stopped by the sight of some white-coated baby in the street, she would say to herself,--with that little heartache all mothers know, "Ah, but Jim was the darling baby!" After the first scare he bloomed like a rose, a splendid, square, royal boy who laughed joyously when admitted to the company of his family and friends, and lay contentedly dozing and smiling when it seemed good to them to ignore him. Rachael found him the most delightfully amusing and absorbing element her life had ever known; she would break into ecstatic laughter at his simplest feat--when he yawned, or pressed his little downy head against the bars of his crib and stared unsmilingly at her. She would run to the nursery the instant she arrived home, her eager, "How's my boy?" making the baby crow, and struggle to reach her, and it was an event to her to meet his coach in the park, and give him her purse or parasol handle with which to play. Often old Mary, the nurse, would see Mrs. Gregory pick up a pair of tiny white shoes that still bore the imprint of the fat little feet, and touch them to her lips, or catch a crumpled little linen coat from the drawer, and bury her face in it for a moment. Even in his tiny babyhood he was companionable to his mother, Rachael even consenting to the plan of taking him to Home Dunes in June, although by this arrangement she saw Warren only at week-end intervals until the doctor's vacation came in August. When he came down, and the big car honked at the gate, she invariably had the baby in her arms when she came to meet him. "Hello, Daddy. Here we are! How are you, dearest?" Rachael would say, adding, before he could answer her: "We want you to notice our chic Italian socks, Doctor Gregory; how's that for five months? Take him, Greg! Go to Daddy, Little Mister!" "All very well, but how's my wife?" Warren Gregory might ask, kissing her over the baby's bobbing head. "Lovely! Do you know that your son weighs fifteen pounds--isn't that amazing?" Rachael would hang on his free arm, in happy wifely fashion, as they went back to the house. "Want to go with me to London?" he asked her one day in the late fall when they were back in town. "Why not Mars?" she asked placidly, putting a fresh, stiff dress over Jimmy's head. "No, but I'm serious, my dear girl," Warren Gregory said surprised. "But--I don't understand you. What about Jim?" "Why, leave him here with Mary. We won't be gone four weeks." Rachael smiled, but it was an uneasy, almost an affronted, smile. "Oh, Warren, we couldn't! I couldn't! I would simply worry myself sick!" "I don't see why. The child would be perfectly safe. George is right here if anything happened!" "George--but George isn't his mother!" Rachael fell silent, biting her lip, a little shadow between her brows. "What is it--the convention?" she presently asked. "Do you HAVE to go?" "It isn't absolutely necessary," Warren said dryly. But this was enough for Rachael, who opened the subject that evening when George and Alice Valentine were there. "George, DOES Warren have to go to this London convention, or whatever it is?" "Not necessarily," smiled Doctor Valentine. "Why, doesn't he want to go?" "I don't want him to go!" Rachael asserted. "It would be a senseless risk to take that baby across the ocean," Alice contributed, and no more was said of the possibility then or at any other time, to Rachael's great content. But when the winter season was well begun, and Jimmy delicious in his diminutive furs, Doctor Gregory and his wife had a serious talk, late on a snowy afternoon, and Rachael realized then that her husband had been carrying a slight sense of grievance over this matter for many weeks. He had come in at six o'clock, and was changing his clothes for dinner, half an hour later, when Rachael came into his dressing-room. Her hair had been dressed, and under her white silk wrapper her gold slippers and stockings were visible, but she seemed disinclined to finish her toilette. "Awful bore!" she said, smiling, as she sat down to watch him. "What--the Hoyts? Oh, I don't think so!" he answered in surprise. "They all bore me to death," Rachael said idly. "I'd rather have a chop here with you, and then trot off somewhere all by ourselves! Why don't they leave us alone?" "My dear girl, that isn't life," Warren Gregory said firmly. His tone chilled her a little, and she looked up in quick penitence. But before she could speak he antagonized her by adding disapprovingly: "I must say I don't like your attitude of criticism and ungraciousness, my dear girl! These people are all our good friends; I personally can find no fault with them. You may feel that you would rather spend all of your time hanging over Jim's crib--I suppose all young mothers do, and to a certain extent all mothers ought to--but don't, for heaven's sake, let everything else slip out of your life!" "I know, I know!" Rachael said breathlessly and quickly, finding his disapproval almost unendurable. Warren did not often complain; he had never spoken to her in this way before. Her face was scarlet, and she knew that she wanted to cry. "I know, dear," she added more composedly; "I am afraid I do think too much about Jim; I am afraid"--and Rachael smiled a little pitifully--"that I would never want anyone but you and the boy if I had my own way! Sometimes I wish that we could just slip away from everybody and everything, and never see these people again!" If she had expected him to endorse this radical hope she was disappointed, for Warren responded briskly: "Yes, and we would bore each other to death in two months!" Rachael was silent, but over the sinking discouragement of her heart she was gallantly forming new resolutions. She would think more of her clothes, she would make a special study of dinners and theatre parties, she would be seen at the opera at least every other week. "I gave up the London trip just because you weren't enthusiastic," Warren was saying, with the unmistakable readiness of one whose grievances have long been classified in his mind. "It's baby--baby--baby! I don't say much--" "Indeed you don't!" Rachael conceded gratefully. "But I think you overdo it, my dear!" finished her husband kindly. Clarence Breckenridge's wife would have assumed a different attitude during this little talk, but Rachael Gregory felt every word like a blow upon her quivering heart. She could not protest, she could not ignore. Her love for him made this moment one of absolute agony, and it was with the humility of great love that she met him more than halfway. "You're right, of course, Greg, and it must have been stupid for you!" Stupid! It seemed even in this moment treason, it seemed desecration, to use this word of their quiet, wonderful summer together! "Well," he said, mollified, "don't take what I say too much to heart. It's only that I love my wife, and am proud of her, and I don't want to cut out everything else but Jim's shoes and Mary's day off!" He came over and kissed her, and Rachael clung to him. "Greg, as if I could be angry with you for being jealous of your son!" "Trust a woman to put that construction on it," he said, laughing. "You like to think I'm jealous, don't you?" "I like anything that makes you seem my devoted adorer," Rachael answered wistfully, and smiling whimsically she added, "and I am going to get some new frocks, and give a series of dinners, and win you all over again!" "Bully!" approved Doctor Gregory, cheerfully going on with his dressing. Rachael watched him thoughtfully for a moment before she went on to her own dressing-room. Long afterward she remembered that this conversation marked a certain change in her life; it was never quite glad, confident morning again, although for many months no definite element seemed altered. Alice and old Mrs. Gregory had told her, and all the world agreed, that the coming of her child would draw her husband and herself more closely together, but, as Rachael expressed it to herself, it was if she alone moved--moved infinitely nearer to her husband truly, came to depend upon him, to need him as she had never needed him in her life before. But there was always the feeling that Warren had not moved. He stood where he had always been, an eager sympathizer in these new and intense experiences, but untouched and unaltered himself. For her pain, for her responsibility, for her physical limitations, he had the most intense tenderness and pity, but the fact remained that he might sleep through the nights, enjoy his meals, and play with his baby, when the mood decreed, untroubled by personal handicap. Rachael, like all women, thought of these things seriously during the first year of her child's life, and in February, when Jimmy was beginning to utter his first delicious, stammering monosyllables, it was with great gravity that she realized that motherhood was approaching her again, that at Thanksgiving she would have a second child. She was wretchedly languid and ill during the entire spring, and found her mother-in-law's and Alice Valentine's calm acceptance of the situation bewildering and discouraging. "My dear, I don't eat a meal in comfort, the entire time!" Alice said cheerfully. "I mind that more than any other phase!" "But I am such a broken reed!" Rachael smiled ruefully. "I have no energy!" The older woman laughed. "I know, my dear--haven't I been through it all? Just don't worry, and spare Greg what you can--" Rachael could do neither. She wanted Warren every minute, and she wanted nobody else. Her favorite hours were when she lay on the couch, near the fire, playing with his free hand, while he read to her or talked to her. She wanted to hear, over and over again, that he loved no one else; and sometimes she declined invitations without even consulting him, "because we're happier by our own fire than anywhere else, aren't we, dearest?" "Don't tell me about your stupid operations!" she would smile at him, "talk about--US!" She went over and over the details of her old life with a certain morbid satisfaction in his constant reassurance. Her marriage had not been the cause of Clarence's suicide, nor of Billy's elopement; she had done her share for them both, more than her share! Summer came, and she and the baby were comfortably established at Home Dunes. Warren came when he could, perhaps twice a month, and usually without warning. If he promised her the week-ends, she felt aggrieved to have him miss one, so he wired her every day, and sent her books and fruit, letters and magazines every week, and came at irregular intervals. Alice and George Valentine and their children, her garden, her baby, and the ocean she loved so well must fill this summer for Rachael. CHAPTER III The beautiful Mrs. Gregory made her first appearance in society, after the birth of her second son, on the occasion of Miss Leila Buckney's marriage to Mr. Parker Hoyt. The continual postponement of this event had been a standing joke among their friends for two or three years; it took place in early December, at the most fashionable of all the churches, with a reception and supper to follow at the most fashionable of all the hotels. Leila naturally looked tired and excited; she had made a gallant fight for her lover, for long years, and she had won, but as yet the returning tide of comfort and satisfaction had not begun in her life. Parker had been a trying fiance; he was a cool-blooded, fishlike little man; there had been other complications: her father's heavy financial losses, her mother's discontent in the lingering engagement, her sister's persisting state of unmarriedness. However, the old aunt was at last dead. Parker had dutifully gone to her side toward the end, and had returned again, duly, bringing the casket, and escorting Miss Clay. And now Mamma was dressed, and Edith was in a hideously unbecoming green and silver gown, and the five bridesmaids were duly hatted and frocked in green and silver, and she was dressed, too, realizing that her new corsets were a trifle small, and her lace veil too heavy. And the disgusting caterer had come to some last-moment agreement with Papa whereby they were to have the supper without protest, and the florist's insolent man had consented to send the bouquets at last. The fifteen hundred dreadful envelopes were all addressed, the back-breaking trying-on of gowns was over, the three hundred and seventy-one gifts were arranged in two big rooms at the hotel, duly ticketed, and the three hundred and seventy-one dreadful personal notes of thanks had been somehow scribbled off and dispatched. Leila was absolutely exhausted, and felt as pale and pasty as she looked. People were all so stupid and tiresome and inconsiderate, she said wearily to herself, and the awful breakfast would be so long and dull, with everybody saying the same thing to her, and Parker trying to be funny and simply making himself ridiculous! The barbarity of the modern wedding impressed itself vaguely upon the bride as she laughed and talked in a strained and mechanical manner, and whatever they said to her and to her parents, the guests were afterward unanimous in deciding that poor Leila had been an absolute fright. But Mrs. Gregory, in her dark blue suit and her new sables, won everybody's eyes as she came down the church aisle with her husband beside her. Her son was not quite a month old, and if she had not recovered her usual wholesome bloom, there was a refined, almost a spiritual, element in her beauty now that more than made up for the loss. She wore a fragrant great bunch of violets at her breast, and under the sweeping brim of her hat her beautiful eyes were as deeply blue as the flowers. She seemed full of a new wifely and matronly charm to-day, and it was quite in key with the pose that old Mrs. Gregory and young Charles should be constantly in her neighborhood. Her relatives with her, her babies safe at home, young Mrs. Gregory was the personification of domestic dignity and decorum. At the hotel, after the wedding, she was the centre of an admiring group, and conscious of her husband's approving eyes, full of her old brilliant charm. All the old friends rallied about her--they had not seen much of her since her marriage--and found her more magnetic than ever. The circumstances of her marriage were blotted out by more recent events now: there was the Chase divorce to discuss; the Villalonga motor-car accident; Elinor Vanderwall had astonished everybody a few weeks before by her sudden marriage to millions in the person of old Peter Pomeroy; now people were beginning to say that Jeanette Vanderwall might soon be expected to follow suit with Peter's nephew George. The big, beautifully decorated reception-room hummed with gay gossip, with the tinkling laughter of women and the deeper tones of men. Caterers' men began to work their way through the crush, bearing indiscriminately trays of bouillon, sandwiches, salads, and ices. The bride, with her surrounding bridesmaids, was still standing at the far end of the room mechanically shaking hands, and smilingly saying something dazed and inappropriate to her friends as they filed by; but now various groups, scattered about the room, began to interest themselves in the food. Elderly persons, after looking vaguely about for seats, disposed of their coffee and salad while standing, and soon there was a general breaking-up; the Buckney-Hoyt wedding was almost a thing of the past. Rachael, thinking of the impending dinner-hour of little Gerald Fairfax Gregory, began to watch the swirling groups for Warren. They could slip away now, surely; several persons had already gone. Her heart was in her nursery, where Jim was toddling back and forth tirelessly in the firelight, and where, between the white bars of the new crib, was the tiny roll of snowy blankets that enclosed the new baby. "That's a pretty girl," she found herself saying involuntarily as her absent eyes were suddenly arrested by the face and figure of one of the guests. "I wonder who that is?" The brown eyes she was watching met hers at the same second, and smiling a little question, their owner came toward her. "Hello, Rachael," the girl said. "How are you after all these years?" "Magsie Clay!" Rachael exclaimed, the look of uncertainty on her face changing to one of pleasure and welcome. "Well, you dear child, you! How are you? I knew you were here, and yet I couldn't place you. You've changed--you're thinner." "Oh, much thinner, but then I was an absolute butterball!" Miss Clay said. "Tell me about yourself. I hear that you're having a baby every ten minutes!" "Not quite!" Rachael said, laughing, but a little discomposed by the girl's coolness. "But I have two mighty nice boys, as I'll prove to you if you'll come see me!" "Don't expect me to rave over babies, because I don't know anything about them," said Magsie Clay, with a slow, drawling manner that was, Rachael decided, effective. "Do they like toys?" "Jimmy does, the baby is rather young for tastes of any description," Rachael answered with an odd, new sense of being somehow sedate and old-fashioned beside this composed young woman. Miss Clay was not listening. Her brown eyes were moving idly over the room, and now she suddenly bowed and smiled. "There's Greg!" she said. "What a comfort it is to see a man dress as that man dresses!" "I've been looking for you," Warren Gregory said, coming up to his wife, and, noticing the other woman, he added enthusiastically: "Well, Margaret! I didn't know you! Bless my life and heart, how you children grow up!" "Children! I'm twenty-two!" Miss Clay said, pouting, with her round brown eyes fixed in childish reproach upon his face. They had been great friends when Warren was with his mother in Paris, nearly four years ago, and now they fell into an animated recollection of some of their experiences there with the two old ladies. While they talked Rachael watched Magsie Clay with admiration and surprise. She knew all the girl's history, as indeed everybody in the room knew it, but to-day it was a little hard to identify the poised and beautiful young woman who was looking so demurely up from under her dark lashes at Warren with the "little Clay girl" of a few years ago. Parker Hoyt's aunt, the magnificent old Lady Frothingham, had been just enough of an invalid for the twenty years preceding her death to need a nurse or a companion, or a social secretary, or someone who was a little of all three. The great problem was to find the right person, and for a period that actually extended itself over years the right person was not to be found, and the old lady was consequently miserable and unmanageable. Then came the advent of Mrs. Clay, a dark, silent, dignified widow, who more than met all requirements, and who became a companion figure to the little, fussing, over-dressed old lady. From the day she first arrived at the Frothingham mansion Mrs. Clay never failed her old employer for so much as a single hour. For fifteen years she managed the house, the maids, and, if the truth were known, the old lady herself, with a quiet, irresistible efficiency. But it was early remarked that she did not manage her small daughter with her usual success. Magsie was a fascinating baby, and a beautiful child, quicker of speech than thought, with a lovely little heart-shaped face framed in flying locks of tawny hair. But she was unmanageable and strong-willed, and possessed of a winning and insolent charm hard to refuse. Her mother in her silent, repressed way realized that Magsie was not having the proper upbringing, but her own youth had been hard and dark, and it was perhaps the closest approach to joy that she ever knew when Magsie glowing under her wide summer hats, or radiant in new furs, rushed up to demand something preposterous and extravagant of her mother, and was not denied. She was a stout, conceited sixteen-year-old when her mother died, so spoiled and so self-centred that old Lady Frothingham had been heard more than once to mutter that the young lady could get down from her high horse and make herself useful, or she could march. But that was six years ago. And now--this! Magsie had evidently decided to make herself useful, but she had managed to make herself beautiful and fascinating as well. She was in mourning now for the good-hearted old benefactress who had left her a nest-egg of some fifteen thousand dollars, and Rachael noticed with approval that it was correct mourning: simple, severe, Parisian. Nothing could have been more becoming to the exquisite bloom of the young face than the soft, clear folds of filmy veiling; under the small, close-set hat there showed a ripple of rich golden hair. The watching woman thought that she had never seen such self-possession; at twenty-two it was almost uncanny. The modulated, bored young voice, the lazily lifted, indifferent young eyes, the general air of requesting an appreciative world to be amusing and interesting, or to expect nothing of Miss Magsie Clay, these things caused Rachael a deep, hidden chuckle of amusement. Little Magsie had turned out to be something of a personality! Why, she was even employing a distinct and youthfully insolent air of keeping Warren by her side merely on sufferance--Warren, the cleverest and finest man in the room, who was more than twice her age! "To think that she is younger than Charlotte!" Rachael ejaculated to herself, catching a glimpse of Charlotte, towed by her mother, uncomfortable, ignored, blinking through her glasses. And when she and Warren were in the car homeward bound, she spoke admiringly of Magsie. "Did you ever see any one so improved, Warren? Really, she's quite extraordinary!" Warren smiled absently. "She's a terribly spoiled little thing," he remarked. "She's out for a rich man, and she'll get him!" "I suppose so," Rachael agreed, casting about among the men she knew for an appropriate partner for Miss Clay. "Suppose so!" he echoed in good-humored scorn. "Don't you fool yourself, she'll get what she's after! There isn't a man alive that wouldn't fall for that particular type!" "Warren, do you suppose so?" his wife asked in surprise. "Well, watch and see!" "Perhaps--" Rachael's interest wandered. "What time have you?" she asked. He glanced at his watch. "Six-ten." "Six-TEN! Oh, my poor abused baby--and I should have been here at quarter before six!" She was all mother as she ran upstairs. Had he been crying? Oh, he had been crying! Poor little old duck of a hungry boy, did he have a bad, wicked mother that never remembered him! He was in her arms in an instant, and the laughing maid carried away her hat and wrap without disturbing his meal. Rachael leaned back in the big chair, panting comfortably, as much relieved over his relief as he was. The wedding was forgotten. She was at home again; she could presently put this baby down and have a little interval of hugging and 'tories with Jimmy. "You'll get your lovely dress all mussed," said old Mary in high approval. "Never mind, Mary!" her mistress said in luxurious ease before the fire, "there are plenty of dresses!" A week later Warren came in, in the late afternoon, to say that he had met Miss Clay downtown, and they had had tea together. She suggested tea, and he couldn't well get out of it. He would have telephoned Rachael had he fancied she would care to come. She had been out? That was what he thought. But how about a little dinner for Magsie? Did she think it would be awfully stupid? "No, she's not stupid," Rachael said cordially. "Let's do it!" "Oh, I don't mean stupid for us," Warren hastened to explain. "I mean stupid for her!" "Why should it be stupid for her?" Rachael looked at him in surprise. "Well, she's awfully young, and she's getting a lot of attention, and perhaps she'd think it a bore!" "I don't imagine Magsie Clay would find a dinner here in her honor a bore," Rachael said in delicate scorn. "Why, think who she is, Warren--a nurse's daughter! Her father was--I don't know what--an enlisted man, who rose to be a sergeant!" "I don't believe it!" he said flatly. "It's true, Warren. I've known that for years--everybody knows it!" "Well," Warren Gregory said stubbornly, "she's making a great hit just the same. She's going up to the Royces' next week for the Bowditch theatricals, and she's asked to the Pinckard dinner dance. She may not go on account of her mourning." "Her mourning is rather absurd under the circumstances," Rachael said vaguely, antagonized against anyone he chose to defend. "And if people choose to treat her as if she were Mrs. Frothingham's daughter instead of what she really is, it's nice for Magsie! But I don't see why we should." "We might because she is such a nice, simple girl," Warren suggested, "and because we like her! I'm not trying to keep in the current; I've no social axe to grind; I merely suggested it, and if you don't want to--" "Oh, of course, if you put it that way!" Rachael said with a faint shrug.. "I'll get hold of some eligibles--we'll have Charlie, and have rather a youthful dinner!" Warren, who was shaving, was silent for a few minutes, then he said thoughtfully: "I don't imagine that Charlie is the sort of person who will interest her. She may be only twenty-two, but she is older than most girls in things like that. She's had more offers now than you could shake a stick at--" "She told you about them?" "Well, in a general way, yes--that is, she doesn't want to marry, and she hates the usual attitude, that a lot of college kids have to be trotted out for her benefit!" This having been her own exact attitude a few seconds before, Rachael flushed a little resentfully. "What DOES she want to do?" Warren shaved on for a moment in silence, then with a rather important air he said impulsively: "Well, I'll tell you, although she told me in confidence, and of course nothing may come of it. You won't say anything about it, of course? She wants to go on the stage." "Really!" said Rachael, who, for some reason she could not at this moment define, was finding the conversation extraordinarily distasteful. "Yes, she's had it in mind for years," Warren pursued with simplicity. "And she's had some good offers, too. You can see that she's the kind of girl that would make an immediate hit, that would get across the footlights, as it were. Of course, it all depends upon how hard she's willing to work, but I believe she's got a big future before her!" There was a short silence while he finished the operation of shaving, and Rachael, who was busy with the defective clasp of a string of pearls, bent absorbedly over the microscopic ring and swivel. "Let's think about the dinner," she said presently. She found that he had already planned almost all the details. When it took place, about ten days later, she resolutely steeled herself for an experience that promised to hold no special enjoyment for her. Her love for her husband made her find in his enthusiasm for Magsie something a little pitiful and absurd. Magsie was only a girl, a rather shallow and stupid girl at that, yet Warren was as excited over the arrangements for the dinner as if she had been the most important of personages. If it had been some other dinner--the affair for the English ambassador, or the great London novelist, or the fascinating Frenchman who had painted Jimmy--she told herself, it would have been comprehensible! But Warren, like all great men, had his simple, almost childish, phases, and this was one of them! She watched her guest of honor, when the evening came, with a puzzled intensity. Magsie was in her glory, sparkling, chattering, almost noisy. Her exquisite little white silk gown was so low in the waist, and so short in the skirt, that it was almost no gown at all, yet it was amazingly smart. She had touched her lips with red, and her eyelids were cunningly given just a hint of elongation with a black pencil. Her bright hair was pushed severely from her face, and so trimly massed and netted as not to show its beautiful quantity, and yet, somehow, one knew the quantity was there in all its gold glory. Rachael, magnificent in black-and-white, was ashamed of herself for the instinctive antagonism that she began to feel toward this young creature. It was not the fact of Magsie's undeniable youth and beauty that she resented, but it was her affectations, her full, pouting lips, her dimples, her reproachful upward glances. Even these, perhaps, in themselves, she did not resent, she mused; it was their instant effect upon Warren and, to a greater or lesser degree, upon all the other men present, that filled her with a sort of patient scorn. Rachael wondered what Warren's feeling would have been had his wife suddenly picked out some callow youth still in college for her admiring laughter and earnest consideration. It was sacrilege to think it. It was always absurd, an older man's kindly interest in, and affection for, a pretty young girl, but what harm? He thought her beautiful, and charming, and talented--well, she was those things. It was January now, in March they were going to California, then would come dear Home Dunes, and before the summer was over Magsie would be safely launched, or married, and the whole thing but an episode! Warren was her husband and the father of her two splendid boys; there was tremendous reassurance in the thought. But that evening, and throughout the weeks that followed, Rachael mused somewhat sadly upon the extraordinary susceptibility of the human male. Magsie's methods were those of a high-school belle. She pouted, she dimpled, she dispensed babyish slaps, she lapsed into rather poorly imitated baby talk. She was sometimes mysterious and tragic, according to her own lights, her voice deep, her eyes sombre; at other times she was all girl, wild for dancing and gossip and matinees. She would widen her eyes demurely at some older woman, plaintively demanding a chaperon, all these bad men were worrying her to death; she had nicknames for all the men, and liked to ask their wives if there was any harm in that? Like Billy, and like Charlotte, she never spoke of anyone but herself, but Billy was a mere beginner beside Magsie, and poor Charlotte like a denizen of another world. Magsie always scored. There was an air of refinement and propriety about the little gypsy that saved her most daring venture, and in a society bored to death with its own sameness she became an instant favorite. Everyone said that "there was no harm in Magsie," she was the eagerly heralded and loudly welcomed cap-and-bells wherever she went. Early in March there was an entertainment given in one of the big hotels for some charity, and Miss Clay, who appeared in a dainty little French comedy, the last number on the program, captured all the honors. Her companion player, Dr. Warren Gregory, who in the play had taken the part of her guardian, and, with his temples touched with gray, his peruke, and his satin coat and breeches, had been a handsome foil for her beauty, was declared excellent, but the captivating, piquant, enchanting Magsie was the favorite of the hour. Before the hot, exciting, memorable evening was over the rumor flew about that she had signed a contract to appear with Bowman, the great manager, in the fall. The whole experience was difficult for Rachael, but no one suspected it, and she would have given her life cheerfully to keep her world from suspecting. Long before the rehearsals for the little play were over she knew the name of that new passion that was tearing and gnawing at her heart. No use to tell herself that if Magsie WAS deeply admired by Warren, if Magsie WAS beautiful, if Magsie WAS constantly in his thoughts, way, she, Rachael, was still his wife; his home, his sons, his name were hers! She was jealous--jealous--jealous of Magsie Clay. She could not bear even the smothering thought of a divided kingdom. Professionally, socially, the world might claim him; but no one but herself should ever claim even one one-hundredth of that innermost heart of his that had been all her own! The thought pierced her vitally, and she felt in sick discouragement that she could not fight, she could not meet his cruelty with new cruelty. Her very beauty grew dimmed, and the old flashing wit and radiant self-confidence were clouded for a time. When she was alone with her husband she felt constrained and serious, her heart a smouldering furnace of resentment and pain. "What do you think of this, dearie?" he asked eagerly one afternoon. "We got talking about California at the Princes' last night, and it seems that Peter and Elinor plan to go; only not before the first week in April. Now, that would suit me as well as next week, if it wouldn't put you out. Could you manage it? The Pomeroys take their car, and an awfully nice crowd; just you and I--if we'll go--Peter and Elinor, and perhaps the Oliphants, and a beau for Magsie!" Rachael had been waiting for Magsie's name. But there seemed to be nothing to say. She rose to the situation gallantly. She put the boys in the care of their grandmother and the faithful Mary, with Doctor Valentine's telephone number pasted prominently on the nursery wall. She bought herself charming gowns and hats, she made herself the most delightful travelling companion that ever seven hot and spoiled men and women were fortunate enough to find. When everyone, even Magsie, was bored and cross, upset by close air, by late hours, by unlimited candy and cocktails, Mrs. Gregory would appear from her stateroom, dainty, interested, ready for bridge or gossip, full of enthusiasm for the scenery and for the company in which she found herself. When she and Warren were alone she often tried to fancy herself merely an acquaintance again, with an acquaintance's anxiety to meet his mood and interest him. She made no claims, she resented nothing, and she schooled herself to praise Magsie, to quote her, and to discuss her. The result was all that she could have hoped. After the five weeks' trip Warren was heard to make the astonishing comment that Magsie was a shallow little thing, and Rachael, hungrily kissing her boys' sweet, bewildered faces, and laughing and crying together as Mary gave her an account of every hour of her absence, felt more than rewarded for the somewhat sordid scheme and the humiliating effort. Little Gerald was in short clothes now, a rose of a baby, and Jimmy at the irresistible age when every stammered word and every changing expression had new charm. CHAPTER IV Ten days later, in the midst of her preparations to leave the city for Clark's Hills, Rachael was summoned to the telephone by the news of a serious change in young Charlie Gregory's condition. Charlie had been ill for perhaps a week; kept at home and babied by his grandmother and Miss Cannon, the nurse, visited daily by his adored Aunt Rachael, and nearly as often by the uproarious young Gregorys, and duly spoiled by every maid in the house. Warren went in to see him often in the evenings, for trivial as his illness was, all the members of his immediate family agreed later that there had been in it, from the beginning, something vaguely alarming and menacing. He was a quiet, peculiar, rather friendless youth at twenty-six; he had never had "girls," like the other boys, and, while he read books incessantly, Rachael knew it to be rather from loneliness than any other motive, as his silence was from shyness rather than reserve. His dying was as quiet as his living, between a silent luncheon in the gloomy old dining-room when nobody seemed able either to eat or speak, and a dreadful dinner hour when Miss Cannon sobbed unobtrusively, Warren and Rachael talked in low tones, and the chairs at the head and foot of the table were untenanted. Only a day or two later his grandmother followed him, and Rachael and her husband went through the sombre days like two persons in an oppressive dream. Great grief they did not naturally feel, for Warren's curious self-absorption extended even to his relationship with his mother, and Charlie had always been one of the unnecessary, unimportant figures of which there are a few in every family. But the events left a lasting mark upon Rachael's life. She had grown really to love the old woman, and had felt a certain pitying affection for Charlie, too. He had been a good, gentle, considerate boy always, and it was hard to think of him as going before life had really begun for him. On the morning of the day he died an incident had occurred, or rather two had occurred, that even then filled her with vague discomfort, and that she was to remember for many days to come. She had been crossing the great, dark entrance hall, late in the morning, on some errand to the telephone, or to the service department of the house, her heart burdened by the sombre shadow of death that already lay upon them all, when the muffled street-door bell had rung, and the butler, red eyed, had admitted two women. Rachael, caught and reluctantly glancing toward them, had been surprised to recognize Charlotte Haviland and old Fanny. "Charlotte!" she said, coming toward the girl. And at her low, tense tone, Charlotte had begun to cry. "Aunt Rachael"--the old name came naturally after seven years--"you'll think I'm quite crazy coming here this way"--Charlotte, as always, was justifying her shy little efforts at living--"but M'ma was busy, and"--the old, nervous gasp--"and it seemed only friendly to come and--and inquire--" "Don't cry, dear!" said Rachael's rich, kind voice. She put a hand upon Charlotte's shoulder. "Did you want to ask for Charlie?" "I know how odd, how very odd it must look," said Charlotte, managing a wet smile, "and my crying--perfectly absurd--I can't think why I'm so silly!" "We've all been pretty near crying, ourselves, this morning," Rachael said, not looking at her, but rather seeming to explain to the sympathetic yet pleasurably thrilled Fanny. "Dear boy, he is very ill. Doctor Hamilton has just been here; and he tells us frankly that it is only a question of a few hours now--" At this poor Charlotte tried to compose her face to the merely sorrowful and shocked expression of a person justified in her friendly concern, but succeeded only in giving Mrs. Gregory a quivering look of mortal hurt. "I was afraid so," she stammered huskily. "Elfrida Hamilton told me. I was so--sorry--" Rachael began to perceive that this was a great adventure, a tragic and heroic initiative for Charlotte. Poor Charlotte, red-eyed behind her strong glasses, the bloom of youth gone from her face, was perhaps touching this morning, the pinnacle of the few strong emotions her life was to know. "How well did you know Charlie, dear?" asked Rachael when Fanny was for the moment out of hearing and they were in the dark, rep-draped reception-room. She had asked Charlotte to sit down, but Charlotte nervously had said that she could stay but another minute. "Oh, n-n-not very well, Aunt Rachael--that is, we didn't see each other often, since"--Rachael knew since when, and liked Charlotte for the clumsy substitute--"since Billy was married. I know Charlie called, but M'ma didn't tell me until weeks later, and then we were on the ocean. We met now and then, and once he telephoned, and I think he would have liked to see me, but M'ma felt so strongly--there was no way. And then last summer--we h-h-happened to meet, he and I, at Jane Cook's wedding, and we had quite a talk. I knew M'ma would be angry, but it just seemed as if I couldn't think of it then. And we talked of the things we liked, you know, the sort of house we both liked--not like other people's houses!" Charlotte's plain young face had grown bright with the recollection, but now her voice sank lifelessly again. "But M'ma made me promise never to speak to him again, and of course I promised," she said dully. "I see." Rachael was silent. There seemed to be nothing to say. "I suppose I couldn't--speak to him a moment, Aunt Rachael?" Charlotte was scarlet, but she got the words out bravely. "Oh, my dear, he wouldn't know you. He doesn't know any of us now. He just lies there, sometimes sighing a little--" Charlotte was as pale now as she had been rosy before, her lip trembled, and her whole face seemed to be suffused with tears. "I see," she said in turn. "Thank you, Aunt Rachael, thanks ever so much. I--I wish you'd tell his grandmother how sorry I am. I--suppose Fanny and I had better go now." But before she went Rachael opened her arms, and Charlotte came into them, and cried bitterly for a few minutes. "Poor little girl!" said the older woman tenderly. "Poor little girl!" "I always loved you," gulped Charlotte, "and I would have come to see you, if M'ma--And of course it was nothing but the merest friendship b-between Charlie and me, only we--we always seemed to like each other." And Charlotte, her romance ended, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and went away. Rachael went slowly upstairs. Late that same afternoon, as she and the trained nurse were dreamily keeping one of the long sick-watches, she looked at the patient, and was surprised to see his rather insignificant eyes fixed earnestly upon her. Instantly she went to the bedside and knelt down. "What is it, Charlie-boy?" she asked, in the merest rich, tender essence of a tone. The sick eyes broke over her distressedly. She could see the fine dew of perspiration at his waxen temples, and the lean hand over which she laid her own was cool after all these feverish days, unwholesomely cool. "Aunt Rachael--" The customs of earth were still strong when he could waste so much precious breath upon the unnecessary address. The nurse hovered nervously near, but did not attempt to silence him. "Going fast," he whispered. "It will be rest, Charlie-boy," she answered, tears in her eyes. He smiled, and drifted into that other world so near our own for a few moments. Then she started at Charlotte's name. "Charlotte," he said in a ghostly whisper, "said she would like a house all green-and pink-with roses--" Rachael was instantly tense. Ah, to get hold of poor starved little Charlotte, to give her these last precious seconds, to let her know he had thought of her! "What about Charlotte, dear, dear boy?" she asked eagerly. "I thought--it would be so pleasant--there--" he said, smiling. He closed his eyes. She heard the little prayer that he had learned in his babyhood for this hour. Then there was silence. Silence. Silence. Rachael looked fearfully at the nurse. A few minutes later she went to tell his grandmother, who, with two grave sisters sitting beside her, had been lying down since the religious rites of an hour or two ago. Rachael and the smaller, rosy-faced nun helped the stiff, stricken old lady to her feet, and it was with Rachael's arm about her that she went to her grandson's side. That night old Mrs. Gregory turned to her daughter-in-law and said: "You're good, Rachael. Someone prayed for you long ago; someone gave you goodness. Don't forget--if you ever need--to turn to prayer. I don't ask you to do any more. It was for James to make his sons Christians, and James did not do so. But promise me something, Rachael: if James--hurts you, if he fails you--promise me that you will forgive him!" "I promise," Rachael said huskily, her heart beating quick with vague fright. Mrs. Gregory was in her deep armchair, she looked old and broken to-night, far older than she would look a few days later when she lay in her coffin. Rachael had brought her a cup of hot bouillon, and had knelt, daughter fashion, to see that she drank it, and now the thin old hand clutched her shoulder, and the eager old eyes were close to her face. "I have made mistakes, I have had every sorrow a woman can know," said old Mrs. Gregory, "but prayer has never failed me, and when I go, I believe I will not be afraid!" "I have made mistakes, too," Rachael said, strangely stirred, "and for the boys' sake, for Warren's sake, I want to be--wise!" The thin old hand patted hers. Old Mrs. Gregory lay with closed eyes, no flicker of life in her parchment-colored face. "Pray about it!" she said in a whisper. She patted Rachael's hands for another moment, but she did not speak again. At the funeral, kneeling by Warren's side in the great cathedral, her pale face more lovely than ever in a setting of fresh black, Rachael tried for the first time in her life to pray. They were rich beyond any dream or need now. Rachael could hardly have believed that so great a change in her fortune could make so little change in her feeling. A sudden wave of untimely heat smote the city, and it was hastily decided that the boys and their mother must get to the shore, leaving all the details of settling his mother's estate to Warren. In the autumn Rachael would make those changes in the old house of which she had dreamed so many years ago. Warren was not to work too hard, and was to come to them for every week-end. He took them down himself in the car, Rachael beside him on the front seat, her baby in her arms, Martin and Mary, with Jim, in the tonneau. Home Dunes had been opened and aired; luncheon was waiting when they got there. Rachael felt triumphant, powerful. Between their mourning and Warren's unexpected business responsibilities she would have a summer to her liking. He went away the next day, and Rachael began a series of cheerful letters. She tried not to reproach him when a Saturday night came without bringing him, she schooled herself to read, to take walks, to fight depression and loneliness. She and Alice practised piano duets, studied Italian, made sick calls in the village, and sewed for the babies of dark's Hills and Quaker Bridge. About twice a month, usually together, the two went up to the city for a day's shopping. Then George and Warren met them, and they dined and perhaps went to the theatre together. It was on one of these occasions that Rachael learned that Magsie Clay was in town. "Working hard--too hard," said Warren in response to her questions. "She's rehearsing already for October." "Warren! In all this heat?" "Yes, and she looks pulled down, poor kid!" "You've seen her, then?" "Oh, I see her now and then. Betty Bowditch had her to dinner, and now and then she and I go to tea, and she tells me about her troubles, her young men, and the other women in the play!" "I wonder if she wouldn't come down to us for a week?" Rachael said pleasantly. Warren brightened enthusiastically. A little ocean air would do Magsie worlds of good. Magsie, lunching with Rachael at Rachael's club the following week, was prettily appreciative. "I would just love to come!" she said gratefully. "I'll bring my bathing suit, and live in the water! But, Rachael, it can only be from Friday night until Monday morning. Perhaps Greg will run me down in the car, and bring me up again?" "What else would I do?" Warren said, smiling. Rachael fixed the date. On the following Friday night she met Warren and Magsie at the gate, at the end of the long run. Warren was quite his old, delightful self; the boys, perfection. Alice gave a dinner party, and Alice's brother did not miss the opportunity of a flirtation with Magsie. The visit, for everyone but Rachael, was a great success. The little actress and Rachael's husband were on friendly, even intimate, terms; Magsie showed Warren a letter, Warren murmured advice; Magsie reached a confident little brown hand to him from the raft; Warren said, "Be careful, dear!" when she sprang up to leap from the car. Well, said Rachael bravely, no harm in that! Warren was just the big, sweet, simple person to be flattered by Magsie's affection. How could she help liking him? She went to the gate again, on Monday morning this time, to say good-bye. Magsie was tucked in trimly in Rachael's place beside Rachael's husband; her gold hair glinted under a smart little hat; gloves, silk stockings, and gown were all of the becoming creamy tan she wore so much. "Saturday night?" Rachael said to Warren. "Possibly not, dear. I can tell better later in the week." "You don't know how we slaves envy you, Rachael!" Magsie said. "When Greg and I are gasping away in some roof-garden, having our mild little iced teas, we'll think of you down here on the glorious ocean!" "We're a mutual consolation league!" Warren said with an appreciative laugh. "He laughs," Magsie said, "but, honestly, I don't know where I'd be without Greg. You don't know how kind he is to me, Rachael!" "He's kind to everyone," Rachael smiled. "I don't have to TELL you how much I've enjoyed this!" Magsie added gratefully. "Do it any other time you can!" Rachael waved them out of sight. She stood at the gate, in the fragrant, warm summer morning, for a long time after they were gone. In the late summer, placidly wasting her days on the sands with the two boys, a new experience befell Rachael. She had hoped, at about the time of Jimmy's third birthday, to present him and his little brother with a sister. Now the hope vanished, and Rachael, awed and sad, set aside a tiny chamber in her heart for the dream, and went on about her life sobered and made thoughtful over the great possibilities that are wrapped in every human birth. Warren had warned her that she must be careful now, and, charmed at his concern for her grief and shock, she rested and saved herself wherever she could. But autumn came, and winter came, and she did not grow strong. It became generally understood that Mrs. Gregory was not going about this season, and her friends, when they came to call in Washington Square, were apt to find her comfortably established on the wide couch in one of the great rooms that were still unchanged, with a nurse hovering in the background, and the boys playing before the fire. Rachael would send the children away with Mary, ring for tea, and chatter vivaciously with her guests, later retailing all the gossip to Warren when he came to sit beside her. Often she got up and took her place at the table, and once or twice a month, after a quiet day, was tucked into the motor car by the watchful Miss Snow, and went to the theatre or opera, to be brought carefully home again at eleven o'clock, and given into Miss Snow's care again. She was not at all unhappy, the lessening of social responsibility was a real relief, and Warren's solicitude and sympathy were a tonic of which she drank deep, night and morning. His big warm hands, his smile, the confidence of his voice, these thrilled and rejuvenated her continually. The boys were a delight to her. In their small rumpled pajamas they came into her room every morning, dewy from sleep, full of delicious plans for the day. Jim was a masterful baby whose continually jerking head was sure to bump his mother if she attempted too much hugging, but dark-eyed, grave little Derry was "cuddly"; he would rest his shining head contentedly for minutes together on his mother's breast, and when she lifted him from his crib late at night for a last kiss, his warm baby arms would circle her neck, and his rich little voice murmur luxuriously, "Hug Derry." Muffled rosily in gaiters and furs, or running about her room in their white, rosetted slippers, with sturdy arms and knees bare, or angelic in their blue wrappers after the evening bath, they were equally enchanting to their mother. "It's a marvel to see how you can be so patient!" Warren said one evening when he was dressing for an especially notable dinner, and Rachael, in her big Chinese coat, was watching the process contentedly from the couch in his upstairs sitting-room. "Well, that's the odd thing about ill health, Greg--you haven't any chance to answer back," she answered thoughtfully. "If money could make me well, or if effort could, I'd get well, of course! But there seem to be times when you simply are SICK. It's an extraordinary experience to me; it's extraordinary to lie here, and think of all the hundreds of thousands of other women who are sick, just simply and quietly laid low with no by-your-leave! Of course, my being ill doesn't make much trouble; the boys are cared for, the house goes on, and I don't suffer! But suppose we were poor, and the children needed me, and you couldn't afford a nurse--then what? For I'd have to collapse and lie here just the same!" "It's no snap for me," Warren grumbled after a silence. "Gosh! I will be glad when you're well--and when the damn nurse is out of the house!" "Warren, I thought you liked Miss Snow!" "Well, I do, I suppose--in a way. But I don't like her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner--so everlastingly sweet and fresh!' I declare I believe my watch is losing time--this is the third time this week I've been late!'" This was said in exactly Miss Snow's tone, and Rachael laughed. But when he was gone a deep depression fell upon her. Dear old boy, it was not much of a life for him, going about alone, sitting down to his meals with only a trained nurse for company! Shut away so deliciously from the world with her husband and sons, enjoying the very helplessness that forced her to lean so heavily upon him, she had forgotten how hard it was for Greg! Yet how could she get well when the stubborn weakness and languor persisted, when her nights were so long and sleepless, her appetite so slight, her strength so quickly exhausted? "When do you think I will get well, Miss Snow?" she would ask. "Come, now, we're not going to bother our heads about THAT," Miss Snow would say cheerfully. "Why, you're not sick! You've just got to rest and take care of yourself, that's all! Dear ME, if you were suffering every minute of the time, you might have something to grumble about!" Doctor Valentine was equally unsatisfactory, although Rachael loved the simple, homely man so much that she could not be vexed by his kindly vagueness: "These things are slow to fight, Rachael," said George Valentine. "Alice had just such a fight years ago. When the human machinery runs down, there's nothing for it but patience! You did too much last winter, nursing the baby until you left for California, and then only the hot summer between that and September! Just go slow!" Perhaps once a month Magsie came in to see Rachael, ready to pour tea, to flirt with any casual caller, or to tickle the roaring baby with the little fox head on her muff. She had been playing in a minor part in a successful production. Among all the callers who came and went perhaps Magsie was the most at home in the Gregory house--a harmless little affectionate creature, unimportant, but always welcome. Slowly health and strength came back, and one by one Rachael took up the dropped threads of her life. The early spring found her apparently herself again, but there was a touch of gray here and there in her dark hair, and Elinor and Judy told each other that her spirits were not the same. They did not know what Rachael knew, that there was a change in Warren, so puzzling, so disquieting, that his wife's convalescence was delayed by many a wakeful hour and many a burst of secret tears on his account. She could not even analyze it, much less was she fit to battle with it with her old splendid strength and sanity. His general attitude toward her, in these days, was one of paternal and brisk kindliness. He liked her new gown, he didn't care much for that hat, she didn't look awfully well, better telephone old George, it wouldn't do to have her sick again! Yes, he was going out, unless she wanted him for something? She was reminded hideously of her old days with Clarence. Shaken and weak still, she fought gallantly against the pain and bewilderment of the new problem. She invited the persons he liked to the house, she effaced her own claim, she tried to get him to talk of his cases. Sometimes, as the spring ripened, she planned whole days with him in the car. They would go up to Ossining and see the Perrys, or they would go to Jersey and spend the day with Doctor Cheseborough. Perhaps Warren accepted these suggestions, and they had a cloudless day. Or when Sunday morning came, and the boys, coated and capped, were eager to start, he might evade them. "I wonder if you'll feel badly, Petty, if I don't go?" "Oh, WARREN!" "Well, my dear, I've got some work to do. I ought to look up that meningitis case--the Italian child. Louise'll give me a bite of lunch--" "But, dearest, that spoils our day!" Rachael would fling her wraps down, and face him ruefully. "How can I go alone! I don't want to. And it's SUCH a day, and the babies are so sweet--" "There's no reason why you and the children shouldn't go." She had come to know that mild, almost reproachful, tone. "Oh, but Warren, that spoils it all!" "I'm sorry!" Rachael would shut her lips firmly over protest. At best she might wring from him a reluctant change of mind and an annoyed offer of company which she must from sheer pride decline. At worst she would be treated with a dignified silence--the peevish and exacting woman who could not understand. So she would go slowly down to the car, to Mary beaming beside Martin in the front seat, to the delicious boys tumbling about in the back, eager for Mother. With one on each side of her, a retaining hand on the little gaiters, she would wave the attentive husband and father an amiable farewell. The motor car would wheel about in the bare May sunshine, the river would be a ripple of dancing blue waves, morning riders would canter on the bridle-path, and white-frocked babies toddle along the paths. Such a morning for a ride, if only Warren were there! But Rachael would try to enjoy her run, and would eat Mrs. Perry's or Mrs. Cheseborough's fried chicken and home-made ices with gracious enthusiasm; everyone was quite ready to excuse Warren; his beautiful wife was the more popular of the two. He was always noticeably affectionate when they got home. Rachael, her color bright from sun and wind, would entertain him with a spirited account of the day while she dressed. "I wish I'd gone with you; I will next time!" he invariably said. On the next Sunday she might try another experience. No plans to-day. The initiative should be left to him. Breakfast would drag along until after ten o'clock, and Mary would appear with a low question. Were the boys to go out to the Park? Rachael would pause, undecided. Well, yes, Mary might take them, but bring them in early, in case Doctor Gregory wished to take them somewhere. And ten minutes later he might jump up briskly. Well! how about a little run up to Pelham Manor, wonderful morning--could she go as she was? Rachael would beg for ten minutes; she might come downstairs in seven to find him wavering. "Would you mind if we made it a pretty short run, dear, and then if I dropped you here and went on down to the hospital for a little while?" "Why, Warren, it was your suggestion, dear! Why take a drive at all if you don't feel like it!" "Oh, it's not that--I'm quite willing to. Where are the kids?" "Mary took them out. They've got to be back for naps at half-past eleven, you see." "I see." He would look at his watch. "Well, I'll tell you what I think I'll do. I'll change and shave now--" A pause. His voice would drop vaguely. "What would YOU like to do?" he might suggest amiably. Such a conversation, so lacking in his old definite briskness where their holidays were concerned, would daunt Rachael with a sense of utter forlornness. Sometimes she offered a plan, but it was invariably rejected. There were friends who would have been delighted at an unexpected lunch call from the Gregorys, but Warren yawned and shuddered negatives when she mentioned their names. In the end, he would go off to the hospital for an hour or two, and later would telephone to his wife to explain a longer absence: he had met some of the boys at the club and they were rather urging him to stay to lunch; he couldn't very well decline. "Would you like to have me come down and join you anywhere later?" his wife might ask in the latter case. "No, thank you, no. I may come straight home after lunch, and in that case I'd cross you. Boys all right?" "Lovely." Rachael would sit at the telephone desk, after she had hung up the receiver, wrapped in bitter thought, a bewildered pain at her heart. She never doubted him; to-morrow good, old, homely, trustworthy George Valentine, whose wife and children were visiting Alice's mother in Boston, would speak of the bridge game at the club. But with his wife waiting for him at home, his wife who lived all the six days of the week waiting for this seventh day, why did he need the society of his men friends? A commonplace retaliation might have suggested itself to her, but there was no fighting instinct in Rachael now. She did not want to pique him, to goad him, to flirt with him. He should be hers honorably and openly, without devices, without intrigue. Stirred to the deeps of her being by wifehood and motherhood, by her passionate love for her husband and children, it was a humiliating thought that she must coquette with and flatter other men. As a matter of fact, she found it difficult to talk with any interest of anything except Warren, his work and his plans, of Jimmy and Derry, and perhaps of Home Dunes. If it were a matter of necessity she might always turn to the new plays and books, the opera of the season, or the bill for tenement requirements or juvenile delinquents, but mere personalities and intrigue she knew no more. These matters were all of secondary interest to her now; it seemed to Rachael that the time had come when mere personalities, when bridge and cocktails and dancing and half-true scandals were not satisfying. "Warren," she said one evening when the move to Home Dunes was near, "should you be sorry if I began to go regularly to church again?" "No," he said indifferently, giving her rather a surprised glance over his book. "Churchgoing coming in again?" "It's not that," Rachael said, smiling over a little sense of pain, "but I--I like it. I want the boys to think that their mother goes to church and prays--and I really want to do it myself!" He smiled, as always a little intolerant of what sounded like sentiment. "Oh, come, my dear! Long before the boys are old enough to remember it you'll have given it up again!" "I hope not," Rachael said, sighing. "I wish I had never stopped. I wish I were one of these mild, nice, village women who put out clean stockings for the children every Saturday night, and clean shirts and ginghams, and lead them all into a pew Sunday morning, and teach them the Golden Rule, and to honor their father and their mother, and all the rest of it!" "And what do you think you would gain by that?" Warren asked. "Oh, I would gain--security," Rachael said vaguely, but with a suspicion of tears in her eyes. "I would have something to--to stand upon, to be guided by. There is a purity, an austerity, about that old church-going, loving-God-and-your-neighbor ideal. Truth and simplicity and integrity and uprightness--my old great-grandmother used to use those words, but one doesn't ever hear them any more! Everything's half black and half white nowadays; we're all as good or as bad as we happen to be born. There's no more discipline, no more self-denial, no more development of character! I want to--to hold on to something, now that forces I can't control are coming into my life." "What do you mean by forces you can't control?" he asked with a sort of annoyed interest. "Love, Warren," she answered quickly. "Love for you and the boys, and fear for you and the boys. Love always brings fear. And illness--I never thought of it before I was ill. And jealousy--" "What have you got to be jealous of?" he asked, somewhat gruffly, as she paused. "Your work," Rachael said simply; "everything that keeps you away from me!" "And you think going to Saint Luke's every Sunday morning at eleven o'clock, and listening to Billy Graves, will fix it all up?" he smiled not unkindly. But as she did not answer his smile, and as the tears he disliked came into her eyes, his tone changed. "Now I'll tell you what's the matter with you, my dear," he said with a brisk kindliness that cut her far more just then than severity would have done, "you're all wound up in self-analysis and psychologic self-consciousness, and you're spinning round and round in your own entity like a kitten chasing her tail. It's a perfectly recognizable phase of a sort of minor hysteria that often gets hold of women, and curiously enough, it usually comes about five or six years after marriage. We doctors meet it over and over again. 'But, Doctor, I'm so nervous and excited all the time, and I don't sleep! I worry so--and much as I love my husband, I just can't help worrying!'" Looking up and toward his wife as she sat opposite him in the lamp-light, Warren Gregory found no smile on the beautiful face. Rachael's hurt was deeper than her pride; she looked stricken. "Don't put yourself in their class, my dear!" her husband said leniently. "You need some country air. You'll get down to Clark's Hills in a week or two and blow some of these notions away. Meanwhile, why don't you run down to the club every morning, and play a good smashing game of squash, and take a plunge. Put yourself through a little training!" He reopened his book. Rachael did not answer. Presently glancing at her he saw that she was reading, too. CHAPTER V That his overtired nerves and her exhausted soul and body would have recovered balance in time, did not occur to Rachael. She suffered with all the intensity of a strongly passionate nature. Warren had changed to her; that was the terrible fact. She went about stunned and sick, neglecting her meals, forgetting her tonic, refusing the distractions that would have been the best thing possible for her. Little things troubled her; she said to herself bitterly that everything, anything, caused irritation between herself and Warren now. Sometimes the atmosphere brightened for a few days, then the old hopeless tugging at cross purposes began again. "You're sick, Rachael, and you don't know it!" said Magsie Clay breezily. June was coming in, and Magsie was leaving town for the Villalonga camp. She told Rachael that she was "crazy" about Kent Parmalee, and Rachael's feeling of amazement that Magsie Clay could aspire to a Parmalee was softened by an odd sensation of relief at hearing Magsie's plans--a relief she did not analyze. "I believe I am sick!" Rachael agreed. "I shall be glad to get down to the shore next week." She told Warren of Magsie's admission that night. "Kent! She wouldn't look at him!" Warren said comfortably. "It would be a brilliant match for her," Rachael countered quietly. She saw that she had antagonized him, but he did not speak again. One of their unhappy silences fell. Home Dunes, as always, restored health and color magically. Rachael felt more like herself after the first night's sleep on the breezy porch, the first invigorating dip in the ocean. She began to enjoy her meals again, she began to look carefully to her appearance. Presently she was laughing, singing, bubbling with life and energy. Alice, watching her, rejoiced and marvelled at her recovery. Rachael's beauty, her old definite self-reliance, came back in a flood. She fairly radiated charm, glowing as she held George and Alice under the spell of her voice, the spell of her happy planning. Her letters to Warren were in the old, tender, vivacious strain. She was interested in everything, delighted with everything in Clark's Hills. She begged him for news; Vivian had a baby? And Kent Parmalee was engaged to Eliza Bowditch--what did Magsie's say? And did he miss her? The minute she got home she was going to talk to him about having a big porch built on, outside the nursery, and at the back of the house; what about it? Then the children could sleep out all the year through. George and Alice positively stated that they were going around the world in two years, and if they did, why couldn't the Gregorys go, too? "You're wonderful!" said Alice one day. "You're not the same woman you were last winter!" "I was ill last winter, woman! And never so ill as when they all thought I was entirely cured! Besides--" Rachael looked down at her tanned arm and slender brown fingers marking grooves in the sand. "Besides, it's partly--bluff, Alice," she confessed. "I'm fighting myself these days. I don't want to think that we--Greg and I--can't go back, can't be to each other--what we were!" What an April creature she was, thought Alice, seeing that tears were close to the averted eyes, and hearing the tremble in Rachael's voice. "Goose!" she said tenderly. "You were a nervous wreck last year, and Warren was working far too hard! Make haste slowly, Rachael." "But it's three weeks since he was here," Rachael said in a low voice. "I don't understand it, that's all!" "Nor I--nor he!" Alice said, smiling. "Next week!" Rachael predicted bravely. And a second later she had sprung up from the sand and was swimming through the surf as if she swam from her own intolerable thoughts. The next week-end would bring him she always told herself, and usually after two or three empty Sundays there would come a happy one, with the new car which was built like a projectile, purring in the road, George and Alice shouting greetings as they came in the gate, Louise excitedly attempting to outdo herself on the dinner, and the sunburned noisy babies shrieking themselves hoarse as they romped with their father. To be held tight in his arms, to get his first big kiss, to come into the house still clinging to him, was bliss to Rachael now. But as the summer wore away she noticed that in a few hours the joy of homecoming would fade for him, he would become fitfully talkative, moodily silent, he would wonder why the Valentines were always late, and ask his wife patiently if she would please not hum, his head ached-- "Dearest! Why didn't you say so!" "I don't know. It's been aching all day!" "And you let those great boys climb all over you!" "Oh, that's all right." "Would you like a nap, Warren, or would you like to go over to the beach, just you and me, and have a swim?" "No, thank you. I may run the car into Katchogue"--Katchogue, seven miles away, was the site of the nearest garage--"and have that fellow look at my magneto. She didn't act awfully well coming down!" "Would you like me to go with you, Warren?" "Love it, my dear, but I have to take Pierre. He's got twice the sense I have about it!" And again a sense of heaviness, of helplessness, would fall upon Rachael, so that on Sunday afternoon it was almost a relief to have him go away. "Well," she would say in the nursery again, after the good-byes, kissing the fat little shoulder of Gerald Fairfax Gregory where the old baby white ran into the new boyish tan, "we will not be introspective and imaginative, and cry for the moon. We will take off our boys' little old, hot rumply shirts, and put them into their nice cool nighties, and be glad that we have everything in the world--almost! Get me your Peter Rabbit Book, Jimmy, and get up here on my other arm. Everybody hasn't the same way of showing love, and the main thing is to be grateful that the love is there. Daddy loves his boys, and his home, and his boys' mother, only it doesn't always occur to him that--" "Are you talking for me, or for you, Mother?" Jimmy would sometimes ask, after puzzled and attentive listening. "For me, this time, but now I'll talk for you!" Rachael satisfied her hungry heart with their kisses, and was never so happy as when both fat little bodies were in her arms. She grudged every month that carried them away from babyhood, and one day Alice Valentine found her looking at a book of old photographs with an expression of actual sadness on her face. "Look at Jim, Alice, that second summer--before Derry was born! Wasn't he the dearest little fatty, tumbling all over the place!" "Rachael, don't speak as if the child was dead!" Alice laughed. "Well, one loses them almost as completely," Rachael said, smiling. "Jim is such a great big, brown, mischievous creature now, and to think that my Derry is nearly two!" "Think of me, with Mary fifteen!" Mrs. Valentine countered, "and just as baby-hungry as ever! But I shall have to do nothing but chaperon now, for a few years, and wait for the grandchildren." "I shouldn't mind getting old, Alice," Rachael said, "if I were like you; you're so temperate and unselfish and sweet that no one could help loving you! Besides, you don't sit around worrying about what people think, you just go on cutting out cookies, and putting buttons on gingham dresses, and let other people do the worrying!" And suddenly, to the other woman's concern, she burst into bitter crying, and covered her face with her hands. "I'm so frightened, Alice!" sobbed Rachael. "I don't know what's the matter with me, but I FEEL--I feel that something is all wrong! I don't seem to have any HOLD on Warren any more--you can't explain such things--but I'm--" She got to her feet, a splendid figure of tragedy, and walked blindly to the end of the long porch, where she stood staring down at the heaving, sun-flooded expanse of the blue sea, and at the roofs of little Quaker Bridge beyond the bar. Lazy waves were creaming, in great interlocked circles, on the white beach, the air was as clear as crystal on the cloudless September morning. Not a breath of wind stirred the tufted grass on the dunes; down by the weather-blown bath-houses a dozen children, her own among them, were shouting and splashing in the spreading shallows. Alice Valentine, her plain, sweet face a picture of sympathy, sat dumb and unmoving. In her own heart she felt that Rachael's was a terrible situation. What WAS the matter with Warren Gregory, anyway, wondered Alice; he had a beautiful wife, and beautiful children, and if George, with all his summer substituting and hospital work, could come to his family, as he did come every Friday night, it was upon no claim of hard work that Warren could remain away. As a matter of fact, Alice knew it was not for work that he stayed, for George, the least critical of friends, had once or twice told her of yachting parties in which Warren had participated--men's parties, of which Rachael perhaps might not have disapproved, but of which Rachael certainly did not know. George had told her vaguely that Greg liked to play golf on Saturday afternoons, and sleep late on Sunday, and seemed to feel it more of a rest than coming down to the shore. "I am a fool to break down this way," said Rachael, interrupting her guest's musings to come back to her chair, and showing a composed face despite her red eyes, "but my--my heart is heavy to-day!" Something in the simple dignity of the words brought the tears to Alice's eyes. She held out her hand and Rachael took it and clung to it, as she went on: "I had a birthday yesterday--and Warren forgot it!" "They all do that!" Alice said cheerfully. "George never remembers mine!" "But Warren always has before," Rachael said, smiling sadly, "and--and it came to me last night--I didn't sleep very well--that I am thirty-four, and--and I have given him all I have!" Again tears threatened her self-control, but she fought them resolutely, and in a moment was herself again. "You love too hard, my dear woman," Alice Valentine remonstrated affectionately; "nothing is worse than extremes in anything. Say to yourself, like a sensible girl, that you have a good husband, and let it go at that! Be as cool and cheerful with Warren as if he were--George, for instance, and try to interest yourself in something entirely outside your own home. I wonder if perhaps this place isn't a little lonely for you? Why don't you try Bar Harbor or one of the mountain places next year, and go about among people, and entertain a little more?" "But, Alice, people BORE me so--I've had so much of it, and it's always the same thing!" "I know; I hate it, too. But there are funny phases in marriage, Rachael, and one has to take them as they come. Warren might like it." Rachael pondered. Elinor Pomeroy and the Villalongas, the Whittakers and Stokes and Parmalees again! Noise and hurry, and dancing and smoking and drinking again! She sighed. "I believe I'll suggest it to Warren, Alice. Then if he's keen for it, we'll do it next year." "I would." Mrs. Valentine rose, and looked toward the beach with an idea of locating Martha and Katrina before sending for them. "Isn't it almost lunch time?" she asked, adding in a matter-of-fact tone: "Don't worry any more, Rachael; it's largely a bad habit. Just look the whole thing in the face, and map it out like a campaign. 'The way to begin living the ideal life is to begin,' my father used to say!" This talk, and others like it, had the effect of bracing Rachael to fresh endurance and of spurring her to fresh courage for the few days that its effect lasted. But sooner or later her bravery would die away, and an increasing discouragement possess her. Lying in her bare, airy bedroom at night, with sombre eyes staring at the arch of stars above the moving sea, an almost unbearable loneliness would fall upon soul and body; she needed Warren, she said to herself, often with bitter tears. Warren, splashing in his bath, scattering wet towels and discarded garments so royally about the place; Warren, in a discursive mood, regarding some operation as he stropped his razor; Warren's old, half-unthinking "you look sweet, dear," when, fresh and dainty, his wife was ready to go downstairs--for these and a thousand other memories of him she yearned with an aching desire that racked her like a bodily pain. "Oh, it isn't right for him to torture me so!" she would whisper to herself. "It isn't right!" October found them all back in the city, an apparently united and devoted family again. Rachael entered with great zest into the delayed matter of redecorating and refurnishing the old home on Washington Square, finding the dignified house--Warren's birthplace--more and more to her liking as modern enamel fixtures went into the bathrooms, simple modern hangings let sunshine and air in at the long-darkened windows, and rich tapestry papers and Oriental rugs subdued the effect of severe cream woodwork and colonial mantels. She found Warren singularly unenthusiastic about it, almost ungracious when he answered her questions or decided for her any detail. But Rachael was firmly resolved to ignore his moods, and went blithely about her business, displaying an indifference--or an assumed indifference--that was evidently somewhat puzzling to Warren and to all her household. She equipped the boys in dark-blue coats and squirrel-skin caps for the winter, marvelling a little sadly that their father did not seem to see the charms so evident to all the world. A rosier, gayer, more sturdy pair of devoted little brothers never stamped through snowy parks, or came chattering in for chops and baked potatoes. Every woman in the neighborhood, every policeman, knew Jim and Derry Gregory; their morning walks were so many separate little adventures in popularity. But Warren, beyond paternal greetings at breakfast, and an occasional perfunctory query as to their health, made no attempt to enter into their lives. They were still too small to interest their father except as good and satisfactory babies. One bitter December day the thunderbolt fell. Rachael felt that she had always known it, that she had been sitting in this hideous hotel dining-room for years watching Warren--and Margaret Clay. There was a bitter taste of salt water in her mouth, there was a hideous drumming at her heart. She felt sick and cold from her bewildered brain down to her very feet. When one felt like this--one fainted. But Rachael did not faint, although it was by sheer power of will that she held her reeling senses. No scene--no, there mustn't be a scene--for Jimmy's sake, for Derry's sake, no scene. She was here, in the Waldorf Grill, of course. She had been--what had she been doing? She had been--she came downtown after breakfast--of course, shopping. Shopping for the children's Christmas. They were to have coasters--they were old enough for coasters--she must go on this quiet way, thinking of the children--five was old enough for coasters--and Jim always looked out for Derry. She couldn't go out. They hadn't seen her; they wouldn't see her, here in this corner. But she dared not stand up and pass them again. Warren--and Magsie. Warren--and Magsie. Oh, God--God--God--what should she do--she was going to faint again. Here was her shopping list, a little wet and crumpled because she had put her glove on the snowy handle of the motor-car door. Mary had said that it would be a white Christmas--how could Mary tell?--this was only the eighteenth, only the eighteenth--ridiculous to be panting this way, like a runner. Nothing was going to hurt her-- "Anything--anything!" she said to the waiter, with dry, bloodless lips, and a ghastly attempt at a smile. "Yes, that will do. Thank you, yes, I suppose so. Yes, if you will. Thank you. That will do nicely." And now she must be quiet. That was the main thing now. They must not see her. She had been shopping, and now she was having her lunch in the Grill. If she could only breathe a little less violently--but she seemed to have no control over her heaving breast, she could not even close her mouth. Nobody suspected anything, and if she could but control herself, nobody would, she told herself desperately. She never knew that the silent, gray-haired waiter recognized her, and recognized both the man and woman who sat only thirty feet away. She had not ordered coffee, but he brought her a smoking pot. It was not the first time he had encountered the situation. Rachael drank the vivifying fluid, and her nerves responded at once. She sat up, set her lips firmly, forced herself to dispose of gloves and napkin in the usual way. Her breath was coming more evenly--so much was gained. As for this deadly cold and quivering sensation of nausea, that was no more than fatigue and the frightfully cold wind. So it was Magsie. Rachael had not been seven years a wife to misread Warren's eyes as he looked at the girl. No woman could misread their attitude together, an attitude of wonderful, sweet familiarity with each other's likes and dislikes under all its thrilling newness. Rachael had seen him turn that very glance, that smiling-eyed yet serious look-- Oh, God! it could not be that he had come to care for Magsie! Her hard-won calm was shattered in a second, she was panting and quivering again. Her husband, her own big, tender, clever Warren--but he was hers, and the boys--he was HERS! Her husband--and this other woman was looking at him with all her soul in her eyes, this other woman cared--all the world might see how she cared for him--and was loved in return! What had she been hearing, lately, of Magsie? Rachael began dizzily to recall what she could. Magsie had been "on the road," she had had a small part in an unsuccessful play early in the winter. Rachael had been for some reason unable to see it, but she had sent Magsie flowers, and--she remembered now--Warren had represented himself as having looked in on the play with some friends, one evening, and as having found it pretty poor stuff. So little had Magsie and Magsie's affairs seemed to matter, then, that Rachael could not even remember the name of the play, nor of hearing it discussed. The world in general had not seemed inclined to make much of the professional advent of Miss Margaret Clay, and presently the play closed, and Warren, in answer to a careless question from Rachael, had said that they would probably take it on the road until spring. And then, some weeks ago, she had asked about Magsie again, and Warren had said: "I believe she's in town. Somebody told me the other day that she was to have a part in one of Bowman's things this winter." "It's amazing to me that Magsie doesn't get ahead faster," Rachael had mused. No more was said. And how pretty she was, how young she was, Rachael thought now, with a stabbing pain at her heart. How earnestly they were talking--no ordinary conversation. Presently tears were in the little actress's eyes; she had no handkerchief, but Warren had. He gave it to her, and she surreptitiously wiped her eyes, and smiled at him, like a pretty child, in her furs. Rachael felt actually sick with shock. She felt as if some vital cord in her anatomy had been snapped, and as if she could never control these heavy languid limbs of hers again. Her head ached. A lassitude seemed to possess her. She felt cold, and old, and helpless in the face of so much youth and beauty. Magsie--and Warren. She must accustom herself to the thought. They cared for each other. They cared--Rachael's heart seemed to shut with an icy spasm, she felt herself choking and shut her eyes. Well, what could they do--at worst? Could Magsie go out now, and get into the Gregory motor car, and say, "Home, Martin!" to the man? Could Magsie run up the steps of the Washington Square house, gather the cream of the day's news from the butler in a breath, and, flinging off furs and wraps, catch the two glorious boys to her heart? No! However the situation developed, Rachael was still the wife. Rachael held the advantage, and whatever poor Magsie's influence was, it could be but temporary, it must be unrecognized and unapproved by the world. Slowly self-control came back, the dizziness subsided, the room sank and settled into its usual aspect. It was hideous, but it was a fact, she must face it--she must face it. There was an honorable way, and a dignified way, and that must be her way. No one must know. Presently the table near her was empty, and she began to breathe more naturally. She pondered so deeply that for a long time the room was forgotten, and the moving crowd shifted about her unseen. Then abstractedly she rose, and went slowly out to the waiting car. She carried a heart of lead. "I've kept you waiting, Martin?" Martin merely touched his hat. It was four o'clock. And so Rachael found herself facing an unbelievable situation. To love, and to know herself unloved, was a cold, dull misery that clung like a weight to her heart. Her thoughts stumbled in a close, hot fog; from sheer weariness she abandoned them again and again. She had never been a reasonable woman, but she forced herself to be reasonable now. Logic and philosophy had never been her natural defences, but she brought logic and philosophy to bear upon this hideous circumstance. She did not waste time and tears upon a futile "Why?" It was too late now to question; the fact spoke for itself. Warren's senses were wrapped in the charms of another woman. His own devoted and still young and beautiful wife was not the first devoted and young and beautiful woman to have her claim displaced. For days after the episode in the Waldorf lunch-room she moved like a conspirator, watching, thinking. Warren had never seemed more considerate of her happiness, more satisfied with life. He was full of agreeable chatter at breakfast, interested in her plans, amused at the boys. He did not come home for luncheon, but usually ran up the steps at five o'clock, and was reading or dressing when Rachael wandered into his room to greet him after the day. He never kissed her now, or touched her hand even by chance; she was reminded, in his general aspect, of those occasions when the delicious Derry wandered out from the nursery, evading the nap which was his duty, but full of the airy conversation and small endearments that only a child on sufferance knows. Rachael tried in vain to understand the affair; what evil genius possessed Warren; what possessed Magsie? She tried to think kindly of Magsie; poor child, she had had no ugly intention, she was simply spoiled, simply an egotist undeveloped in brain and soul! But--Warren! Well, Warren's soft, simple heart had been touched by all that endearing kittenish confidence, by Magsie's belief that he was the richest and cleverest and most powerful of men. So they were meeting for lunch, for tea--where else? What did they talk about, what did they plan or hope or expect? Through all her hot impatience Rachael believed that she could trust them both, in the graver sense. Warren was as unlikely to take advantage of Magsie's youthful innocence as Magsie was to definitely commit herself to a reckless course. But what then? Absurd, preposterous as it was, it was not all a joke. It had already shut the sun from all Rachael's sky. What was it doing to Warren--to Magsie? With Rachael in a cold and dangerous mood, Warren evasive, unresponsive, troubled, what was Magsie feeling and thinking? Proudly, and with a bitter pain at her heart, Rachael went through her empty days. Her household affairs ran as if by magic; never was there a more successful conspiracy for one man's comfort than that organized by Rachael and her maids. For the first time since their marriage she and Warren were occupying separate rooms now, but Rachael made it a special charge to go in and out of his room constantly when he was there. She would come in with his mail and his newspaper at nine o'clock, full of cheerful solicitude, or follow him in for the half-hour just before dinner, chatting with apparent ease of heart while he dressed. Only apparent ease of heart, however, for Warren's invariable courtesy and sweetness filled his wife with sick apprehension. Ah, for the old good hours when he scolded and argued, protested and laughed over the developments of the day. Sometimes, nowadays, he hardly heard her, despite his bright, interested smile. Once he had commented upon her gown the instant she came into the room; now he never seemed to see her at all; as a matter of fact, their eyes never met. In February he told her suddenly that Margaret Clay was to open in another fortnight at the Lyric, in a new play by Gideon Barrett, called "The Bad Little Lady." "At the Lyric!" Rachael said in a rush of something almost like joy that they could speak of Magsie at last, "and one of Barrett's! Well, Magsie is coming on! What part does she take?" "The lead--the title part--Patricia Something-or-other, I believe." "The LEAD! At the Lyric--why, isn't that an astonishing compliment to Magsie!" Warren looked for his paper-cutter, cut a page, and shrugged his shoulders without glancing up from his book. "Well, yes, I suppose it is. But of course she's gone steadily ahead." "But I thought she wasn't so successful last winter, Warren?" "I don't know," he said politely, wearily, uninterestedly. "How did you hear this, Warren?" his wife asked, with a deceitful air of innocence. "Met her," he answered briefly. "Well, we must see the play," Rachael said briskly. For some reason her heart was lighter than it had been for weeks. This was something definite and in the open at last after all these days of blundering in the dark. "We could take a box, couldn't we, and ask George and Alice?" she added. Warren's expression was that of a boy whose way with his first sweetheart is too suddenly favored by parents and guardians, and Rachael could have laughed at his face. "Well," he said without enthusiasm. A week later he told her that he had secured the box, but suggested that someone else than the Valentines be asked, Elinor and Peter, for instance. "You and George aren't quite as good friends as you were, are you?" Rachael said, gravely. "Quite," Warren said with his bright, deceptive smile and his usual averted glance. "Ask anyone you please--it was merely a suggestion!" Rachael asked Peter and Elinor, and gave them a delicious dinner before the play. She looked her loveliest, a little fuller in figure than she had been seven years before, and with gray here and there in her rich hair, but still a beautiful and winning presence, and still with something of youth in her spontaneous, quick speech and ready laughter. Warren was, as always, the attentive host, but Rachael noticed that he was abstracted and nervous to-night, and wondered, with a chill at her heart, if Magsie's new venture meant so much to him as his manner implied. It was an early dinner, and they reached the theatre before the curtain rose. "It looks like a good house," said Rachael, settling herself comfortably. "You can't tell anything by this," Warren said, quickly; "it's a first night and papered." "Aren't you smart with your professional terms?" Elinor Pomeroy laughed, dropping the lorgnette through which she had been idly studying the house. "What _I_'D like to know," she added interestedly, "what _I_'D like to know is, who's doing this for Magsie Clay? Vera Villalonga says she knows, but I don't believe it. Magsie's a little nobody, she has no special talent, and here she is leading in a Barrett play--" Peter Pomeroy's foot here pressed lightly against Rachael's; a hint, Rachael instantly suspected, that was intended for his wife. "Now I think Magsie's as straight as a string," the unconscious Mrs. Pomeroy went on, "but she must have a rich beau up her sleeve, and the question is, who is he? I don't--" But here, it was evident, Peter's second appeal to his wife's discretion was felt, and it suddenly arrested her flow of eloquence. "--I don't doubt," floundered Elinor, "that--that is--and of course Magsie IS a talented creature, so that naturally--naturally--some girl makes a hit every year, and why shouldn't it be Magsie? Which is right, Peter, 'why shouldn't it be she' or 'why shouldn't it be her?' I never know," she finished somewhat incoherently. "I should think any investment in Magsie would be perfectly safe," said Rachael's delightful voice. And boldly she added: "Do you know who is backing this, Warren?" "To a certain extent--I am," Warren said, after an imperceptible pause. To Peter he added, in a lower voice, the voice in which men discuss business matters: "It was a question of the whole deal falling through--I think she'll make good--this fellow Barrett--" Rachael began to chat with Elinor, but there was bitterness in her soul. She had leaped into the breach, she had saved the situation, at least before Elinor and Peter. But it was not fair--not fair for Warren to have been deep in this affair with Magsie, with never a word to his wife! She--Rachael--would have been all interest, all sympathy. There was no reason between civilized human beings why this eternal question of sex should debar men and women from common ambitions and common interests! Let Warren admire Magsie if he wanted to do so, let him buy her her play, and stand between her and financial responsibility, jet him admire her--yes, even love her, in his generous, big-brotherly way! But why shut out of this new interest the kindly cooperation of his devoted wife, who had never failed him, who had borne him sons, who had given him the whole of her passionate heart in the full glory of youth, and in health, and in sickness, when it came, had turned to him for all the happiness of her life! The play began, and presently the house was applauding the entrance of Miss Margaret Clay. She came down a wide, light-flooded stairway, and in her childish white gown and flower-wreathed shepherdess hat looked about sixteen. "How young she is!" Rachael thought with a pang. Her voice was young, too, the fact being that Magsie was frightened, and that Nature was helping her play her first big ingenue part. Rachael glanced in the darkness at Warren. He had not joined in the applause, nor did his handsome face express any pleasure. He was leaning forward, his hands locked and hanging between his knees, his eyes riveted on the little white figure that was moving and talking down there in the bright bath of light beyond the footlights. Despite all reason, despite her desperate effort at self-control, Rachael felt an agony of pure jealousy seize her. In an absolute passion of envy she looked down at Magsie Clay. The young, flower-crowned head, the slender, slippered feet, the youthful and appealing voice--what weapons had she against these? And beyond these was the additional lure--as old as the theatre itself--of the fascinating profession: the work that is like play, the rouge and curls, the loves and rages so openly assumed yet so strangely and stirringly effective! Rachael had gowns a thousand times handsomer than these youthful muslins and embroideries; Rachael's own home was a setting far more beautiful than any that could be simulated within the limits of a stage; if Magsie was a successful ingenue, Rachael might have been called a natural queen of tragedy and of comedy! And yet-- And yet, it was because she, too, saw the charm and came under the spell, that Rachael suffered to-night. If she could have laughed it to scorn, could have admired the surface prettiness, and congratulated Magsie upon the almost perfect illusion, then she would have had the most effective of all medicines with which to cure Warren's midsummer madness. But it seemed to Rachael, stunned with the terrible force of jealousy, that Magsie was the great star of the stage, that there never had been such a play and such a leading lady. It seemed to her that not only to-night's triumph, but a thousand other triumphs were before her, not only the admiration of these twelve or fifteen hundred persons, but that of thousands more! Magsie would be a rage! Magsie's young favors would be sought far and wide. Magsie's summer home, Magsie's winter apartments, Magsie's clothes and fads, these would belong to the adoring public of the most warmhearted and impressionable city in the world! Rachael saw it all coming with perhaps more certainty than did even the little actress behind the footlights. "Cute play, but I don't think much of Magsie!" Elinor Pomeroy said frankly. Elinor Vanderwall would not have been so impolitic. But Rachael felt that she would have liked to kiss her guest. "I think Magsie is rather good," she said deliberately. "Nothing like praising the girl with faint damns!" Peter Pomeroy chuckled. "Well, what do you think, Peter?" his hostess asked. "I--oh, Lord! I don't see a play once a year," he said, with the manner, if not the actual presence, of a yawn. "I think it's rather good. I'll tell you what, Greg, I don't see you losing any money on it," he added, with interest; "it'll run; the matinee girls will come!" "Magsie'd kill you for that," Elinor said. "I don't suppose we could see Magsie, Warren, after this is over?" Rachael asked to make him speak. "What did you say, dear?" He brought his gaze from a general study of the house to a point only a few inches out of range of her own. "No, I hardly think so," he answered when she had repeated her question. "She's probably excited and tired." "You wouldn't mind my sending a line down by the boy?" Rachael persisted. "Well, I don't think I'd do that--" He hesitated. "Oh, I'm strong for it!" Elinor said vivaciously. "It'll cheer Magsie up. She's probably scared blue, and even I can see that this isn't making much of a hit!" The note was accordingly scribbled and dispatched; Rachael's heart was singing because Warren had not denied Elinor's comment upon the success of the play. The leading man, a popular and prominent actor, was disturbingly good, and there was the part of an Irish maid, a comedy part, so well filled by some hitherto unknown young actress that it might really influence the run of the play; but still, there was a consoling indication already in the air that Margaret Clay's talent was somewhat too slight to sustain a leading woman. At eleven it was over, and if Rachael had had to endure the comment that the second act was "the best yet," there was the panacea, immediately to follow, that the end of the play was "pretty flat." Presently they all filed back to the dark, windy stage, and joined Magsie in her dressing-room. She was glowing, excited, eager for praise. Never was a young and lovely woman more confident of her charm than Magsie to-night. A flushed self-satisfaction was present on her face during every second of the ten minutes she gave them; her laughter was self-conscious, her smile full of artless gratification; she could not speak to any member of the little group unless the attention of everyone present was riveted upon her. A callow youth, evidently her adorer, was awaiting her. She spoke slightingly of Bryan Masters, the leading man. "He's charming, Rachael," said Magsie, smiling her bored young smile, with deliciously red lips, as she was buttoned into a long fur coat, "but--he wants to impose on the fact that--well, that I have arrived, if you know what I mean? As everyone knows, his day is pretty well over. Now you think I'm conceited, don't you, Greg. Oh, I like him, and he does do it rather well, don't you think? But Richie"--Richie was the escorting young man--"Richie and I tease him by breaking into French now and then, don't we?" laughed Magsie. Sauntering out from the stage entrance with her friends, Miss Clay was the cynosure of all eyes, and knew it; part of the audience still waited for the tedious line of limousines to disperse. She could not move her bright glance to Warren's without encountering the admiring looks of men and women all about her; she could not but hear their whispers: "There, there she is--that's Miss Clay now!" Richie, introduced as Mr. Gardiner, muttered that his car was somewhere; it proved to be a handsome car with a chauffeur. Magsie raised her bright face pleadingly to Warren's as she took his hands for goodbye. "Say you were proud of me, Warren?" He laughed, his indulgent glance flashing to Elinor and to Rachael, as one who invited their admiration of an attractive child, before he looked down at her again. "Proud of you! Why, I'm as happy as you are about it!" "You know," Magsie said to Elinor naively, still holding Warren's hands, "he's helped me--tremendously. He's been just--an absolute angel to me!" And real and becoming tears came suddenly to her eyes; she dropped Warren's hands to find a filmy little handkerchief. A second later her smile flashed out again. "You don't mind his being kind to me, do you, Rachael?" she asked childishly. Rachael's mouth was dry, she felt that her smile was hideous. "Why should I, Magsie?" she asked a little huskily, "He's kind to everyone!" A moment later the Gregorys and their guests were in the car whirling toward the Pomeroy home and supper. It was more than an hour later that Rachael and her husband were alone, and then she only said mildly: "I wish you had let me know you were helping Magsie, so--so conspicuously, Warren. One hates to be taken unawares that way." "She asked me to keep the thing confidential," he answered with his baffling simplicity. "She had this good chance, but she couldn't quite swing it. I had no idea that you would care, one way or the other." "Well, she ought to be launched now," Rachael said. She hated to talk of Magsie, especially in his company, where she could do nothing but praise, but she could somehow find it difficult to speak of anything else tonight. "Cunning little thing, there she was, holding on to my hands, as innocently as a child!" Warren said with a musing smile. "She's a funny girl--all fire and ice, as she says herself!" Rachael smothered a scornful interjection. Let Magsie employ the arts of a schoolgirl if she would, but at least let the great Doctor Gregory perceive their absurdity! "Young Mr. Richie Gardiner seemed louche" she observed after a silence which Warren seemed willing indefinitely to prolong. "H'm!" Warren gave a short, contented laugh. "He's crazy about her, but of course to her he's only a kid," he volunteered. "She's funny about that, too. She's emotional, of course, full of genius, and full of temperament. She says she needs a safety-valve, and Gardner is her safety-valve. She says she can sputter and rage and laugh, and he just listens and quiets her down. To-night she called him her 'bread-and-butter'--did you hear her?" "I wonder what she considers you--her champagne?" Rachael asked with a poor assumption of amusement. But Warren was too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice it. "It's curious how I do inspire and encourage her," he admitted. "She needs that sort of thing. She's always up in the clouds or down in the dumps." "Do you see her often, Warren?" Rachael asked with deadly calm. "I've seen her pretty regularly since this thing began," he answered absently, still too much wrapped in the memories of the evening to suspect his wife's emotion. Rachael did not speak again. CHAPTER VI Only Miss Margaret Clay perused the papers on the following morning with an avidity to equal that of Mrs. Warren Gregory. Magsie read hungrily for praise, Rachael was as eager to discover blame. The actress, lying in her soft bed, wrapped in embroidered silk, and sleepily conscious that she was wakening to fame and fortune, gave, it is probable, only an occasional fleeting thought to her benefactor's wife, but Rachael, crisp and trim over her breakfast, thought of nothing but Magsie while she read. Praise--and praise--and praise. But there was blame, too; there was even sharply contemptuous criticism. On the whole, Rachael had almost as much satisfaction from her morning's reading as Magsie did. The three most influential papers did not comment upon Miss Clay's acting at all. In two more, little Miss Elsie Eaton and Bryan Masters shared the honors. The Sun remarked frankly that Miss Clay's amateurish acting, her baby lisp, her utter unacquaintance with whatever made for dramatic art, would undoubtedly insure the play a long run. Rachael knew that Warren would see all these papers, but she cut out all the pleasanter reviews and put them on his dresser. "Did you see these?" she asked him at six o'clock. "I glanced at some of them. You've not got The Sun here?" "No--that was a mean one," Rachael said sweetly. "I thought it might distress you, as it probably did Magsie." "I saw it," he said, evidently with no thought of her feeling in the matter. "Lord, no one minds what The Sun thinks!" "She's really scored a success," said Rachael reluctantly. Warren did not answer. For the next three evenings he did not come home to dinner, nor until late at night. Rachael bore it with dignity, but her heart was sick within her. She must simply play the waiting game, as many a better woman had before her, but she would punish Warren Gregory for this some day! She dressed herself charmingly every evening, and dined alone, with a book. Sometimes the old butler saw her look off from the page, and saw her breast rise on a quick, rebellious breath; and old Mary could have told of the hours her mistress spent in the nursery, sitting silent in the darkness by the sleeping boys, but both these old servants were loyalty's self, and even Rachael never suspected their realization of the situation and their resentment. To Vera, to Elinor, even to Alice Valentine, she said never a word. She had discussed Clarence Breckenridge easily enough seven years before, but she could not criticise Warren Gregory to anyone. On the fourth evening, when they were to dine with friends, Warren reached home in time to dress, and duly accompanied his wife to the affair. He complained of a headache after dinner, and they went home at about half-past ten. Rachael felt his constraint in the car, and for very shame could not make it hard for him when he suggested that he should go downtown again, to look in at the club. "But is this right, is it fair?" she asked herself sombrely while she was slowly disrobing. "Could I treat him so? Of course I could not! Why, I have never even looked at a man since our very wedding day--never wanted to. And I will be reasonable now. I will be reasonable, but he tries me hard--he makes it hard!" She put her face in her hands and began to cry. Warren was deluded and under a temporary spell, but still her dear and good and handsome husband, her dearest companion and confidant. And she missed him. Oh, to have him back again, in the old way, so infinitely dear and interested, so quick with laughter, so vigorous with comment, so unsparing where he blamed! To have him come and kiss the white parting of her hair once more as she sat waiting for him at the breakfast table, turn to her in the car with his quick "Happy?" once more, hold her tight once more against his warm heart! How unlike him it was, how contemptible it was, this playing with the glorious thing that had been their love! For the first time in her life Rachael could have played the virago, could have raged and stamped, could have made him absolutely afraid to misuse her so. He did not deserve such consideration, he should not be treated so gently. While she sat alone, in the long evenings, she tried to follow him in her thoughts. He was somewhere in the big, warm, dark theatre, watching the little pool of brightness in which Magsie moved, listening to the crisp, raw freshness of Magsie's voice. Night after night he must sit there, drinking in her beauty and charm, torturing himself with the thought of her inaccessibility. It seemed strange to Rachael that this world-old tragedy should come into her life with all the stinging novelty of a calamity. People and press talked about a murder, about an earthquake, about a fire. Yet what was death or ruin or flames beside the horror of knowing love to be outgrown, of living beside this empty mask and shell of a man whose mind and soul were in bondage elsewhere? Rachael came to know love as a power, and herself a victim of that power abused. Slowly resentment began to find room in her heart. It was all so childish, so futile, so unnecessary! A prominent surgeon, the husband of a devoted wife, the father of two splendid sons, thus flinging pride and sanity to the wind, thus being caught in the lightly flung net of an ordinary, pretty little actress, the daughter of a domestic servant and a soldier in the ranks! And what was to be the outcome? Rachael mused sombrely. Was Warren to tire simply of his folly, Magsie to carelessly fill his place in the ranks of her admirers, Rachael to gracefully forgive and forget? It was an unpalatable role, yet she saw no other open to her. What was to be gained by coldness, by anger, by controversy? Was a man capable of Warren's curious infatuation to be merely scolded and punished like a boy? She was helpless and she knew it. Until he actually transgressed against their love, she could make no move. Even when he did, or if he did, her only recourse was the hated one of a public scandal: accusations, recriminations. She began to understand his nature as she had not understood it in all these years. Bits of his mother's brief comment upon him came back to her; uncomprehensible when she first heard them, they were curiously illuminating now. He had been a naturally good boy, awkward, silent, conscientious; turning toward integrity as normally as many of his companions turned toward vice. Despite his natural shyness, his diffidence of manner, he had been strong himself and had scorned weakness in anyone; upright, he needed little guiding. The praise of servants and of his mother's friends had been quite frankly his; even his severe mother and father had been able to find little fault in the boy. But they had early learned that when a minor correction was demanded by their first-born's character, it was almost impossible to effect it. His standard of behavior was high, fortunately, for it was also unalterable. There was no hope of their grafting upon his conscience any new roots. James knew right from wrong with infallible instinct; he was not often wrong, but when he was, no outside criticism affected him. As a baby, he would defend his rare misdeeds, as a boy, he was never thrashed, because there was always some good reason for what he did. He had been misinformed, he certainly understood the other fellows to say this; he certainly never heard the teacher forbid that; handsome, reasonable, self-respecting, he won approval on all sides, and because of this mysterious predisposition toward what was right and just, came safely to the years when he was his own master and could live unchallenged by the high moral standard he set himself. Some of this Rachael began to perceive. It was a key to his conduct now. He respected Magsie, he admired her; there was no reason why he should not indulge his admiration. No unspoken criticism from his wife could affect him, because he had seen the whole situation clearly and had decided what was seemly and safe in the matter. Criticism only brought a resentful, dull red color to Warren Gregory's face, and confirmed him more stubbornly in the course he was pursuing. He could even enjoy a certain martyr-like satisfaction under undeserved censure, all censure being equally incomprehensible and undeserved. Rachael had once seen in this quality a certain godlike supremacy, a bigness, and splendidness of vision that rose above the ordinary standards of ordinary men; now it filled her with uneasiness. "Well," she thought, with a certain desperate philosophy, "in a certain number of months or years this will all be over, and I must simply endure it until that time comes. Life is full of trouble, anyway!" Life was full of trouble; she saw it on all sides. But what trivial matters they were, after all, that troubled Elinor and Vera and Judy Moran! Vera was eternally rushing into fresh, furious hospitalities, welcoming hordes of men and women she scarcely knew into her house; chattering, laughing, drinking; flattering the debutantes, screaming at the telephone, standing patient hours under the dressmaker's hands; never rested, never satisfied, never stopping to think. Judy Moran's trouble was that she was too fat; nothing else really penetrated the shell of her indolent good nature. Kenneth might be politely dropped from the family firm, her husband might die and be laid away, her brother-in-law commence an ugly suit for the reclamation of certain jewels and silver tableware, but all these things meant far less to Mrs. Moran than the unflattering truths her bedroom scales told her every morning. She had reached the age of fifty without ever acquiring sufficient self-control to rid herself of the surplus forty pounds, yet she never buttered a muffin at breakfast time, or crushed a French pastry with her fork at noon, without an inward protest. She spent large sums of money for corsets and gowns that would disguise her immense weight rather than deny herself one cup of creamed-and-sugared tea or one box of chocolates. And she suffered whenever a casual photograph, or an unexpected glimpse of herself in a mirror, brought to her notice afresh the dreadful two hundred and twenty pounds. And Elinor had her absurd and unnecessary troubles, rich man's wife as she was now, and firmly established in the social group upon whose outskirts she had lingered so long. The single state of her four sisters was a constant annoyance to her, especially as Peter was not fond of the girls, and liked to allude to them as "spinsters" and "old maids," and to ask more entertaining and younger women to the house. Elinor had never wanted a child, but in the third or fourth year of her marriage she had begun to perceive that it might be wise to give her worldly old husband an heir, much better that, at any cost, than to encourage his fondness for Barbara Oliphant's boy, his namesake nephew, who was an officious, self-satisfied little lad of twelve. But Nature refused to cooperate in Elinor's maternal plans and Peter Junior did not make his appearance at the big house on the Avenue. Elinor grew yearly noisier, more reckless, more shallow; she rushed about excitedly from place to place, sometimes with Peter, sometimes with one of her sisters; not happy in either case, but much given to quarrelsome questioning of life. It was not that she could not get what she wanted so much as that she did not know her own mind and heart. Whatever was momentarily tiresome or distasteful must be pushed out of her path, and as almost every friend and every human experience came sooner or later into this category, Elinor found herself stranded in the very centre of life. Alice had her troubles, too, but when her thoughts came to Alice, Rachael found a certain envy in her heart. Ah, those were the troubles she could have welcomed; she could have cried with sheer joy at the thought that her life might some day slip into the same groove as Alice's life. Rachael loved the atmosphere of the big, shabby house now; it was the only place to which she really cared to go. There was in Alice Valentine's character something simple, direct, and high-principled that communicated itself to everybody and everything in her household. A small girl in her nursery might show symptoms of diphtheria, a broken tile on the roof might deluge the bedroom ceilings, an old cook leave suddenly, or a heavy rain fall upon a Sunday predestined for picknicking, but Alice Valentine, plain, slow of speech, and slow of thought, went her serene way, nursing, consoling, repairing, readjusting. She had her cares about George, but they were not like Rachael's cares for Warren. Alice knew him to be none too strong, easily tired, often discouraged. His professional successes were many, but there were times when the collapse of a tiny child in a free hospital could blot from George's simple, big, tender heart the memory of a dozen achievements. The wife, deep in the claims of her four growing children, sometimes longed to put her arms about him, to run away with him to some quiet land of sunshine and palms, some lazy curve of white beach where he could rest and sleep, and drift back to his old splendid energy and strength. She longed to cook for him the old dishes he had loved in the early days of their marriage, to read to him, to let the world forget them while they forgot the world. Instead, a hundred claims kept them here in the current of affairs. Mary was a tall, sweet, gracious girl of sixteen now, like her father, a pretty edition of his red hair and long-featured clever face. Mary must go on with her music, must be put through the lessoning and grooming of a gentlewoman, and take her place in the dancing class that would be the Junior Cotillion in a year or two. Alice Valentine was not a worldly woman, but she knew it would be sheer cruelty to let her daughter grow up a stranger in her own world, different in speech and dress and manner from all the other girls and boys. So Mary went to little dances at the Royces' and the Bowditches', and walked home from her riding lesson with little Billy Parmalee or Frank Whittaker, or with Florence Haviland and Bobby Oliphant. And Alice watched her gowns, and her hair, and her pretty young teeth only a little less carefully than she listened to her confidences, questioned her about persons and things, and looked for inaccuracies in her speech. George Junior was a care, too, in these days at the non-committal, unenthusiastic age of fourteen, when all the vices in the world, finger on lip, form a bright escort for waking or sleeping hours, and the tenderest and most tactful of maternal questions slips from the shell of boyish silence and gruffness unanswered. Full of apprehension and eagerness, Alice watched her only son; she could not give him every hour of her busy days; she would have given him every instant if she could. He was a good boy, but he was human. Dressed for dinner and the theatre, his mother would look into the children's sitting-room to find Mary reading, George reading, Martha, very conscious of being there on sufferance, also reading virtuously and attentively. "Good-night, my darlings! You're going to bed promptly at nine, aren't you, Mary--and Gogo, too? You know we were all late last night," Alice would say, coming in. "I am!" Mary would give her mother her sunny smile. "Leslie Perry is going to be here to-morrow night, anyway, and we're going to Thomas Prince's skating party in the afternoon, aren't we, Mother?" "Thomas Prince, the big boob!" Gogo might comment without bitterness. "He's not a big boob, either, is he, Mother?" Mary was swift in defence. "He's not nearly such a boob as Tubby Butler or Sam Moulton!" "Gosh, that's right--knock Tubby!" Gogo would mumble. "Oh, my darling boy, and my darling girl!" Alice, full of affection and distress, would look from one to the other. Gogo, standing near his mother, usually had a request. "They're all over at Sam's to-night. Gosh! they're going to have fun!" "Father said 'NOT again this week,'" Mary might chant. "Mary!" Alice's reproachful look would silence her daughter; she would put an arm about her son. "What is it to-night, dear?" "Oh, nothing much!" Gogo would fling up his dark head impatiently. "Just Tubby and Sam?" "I guess so," gruffly. "But Daddy feels--" Alice would stop short in perplexity. Why shouldn't he go? She had known Mrs. Moulton from the days when they both were brides, the Moultons' house was near, and it was dull for Gogo here, under the sitting-room lamp. If he had only been as contented as Mary, who, with a good time to remember from yesterday, and another to look forward to to-morrow, was perfectly happy to-night. But boys were different. Sam was a trustworthy little fellow, but Alice did not so much like Tubby Butler. And George did not like to have Gogo away from the house at night. She would smile into the boy's gloomy eyes. "Couldn't you just read to-night, my son, or perhaps Mary would play rum with you? Wouldn't that be better, and a long night's sleep, than going over to Sam's EVERY night?" But she would leave a disappointed and sullen boy behind her; his disgusted face would haunt her throughout the entire evening. Martha was not so much a problem, and little Katharine was still baby enough to be a joy to the whole house. But between the children's meals, their shoes and hats and lessons, Alice was a busy woman, and she realized that her responsibilities must increase rather than lessen in the next few years. When Mary was married, and Gogo finishing college, and Martha ready to be entertained and chaperoned by her big sister, then she and George might take Kittiwake and run away; but not now. Rachael formed the habit of calling at the Valentine house through the wet winds of March and April, coming in upon Alice at all hours, sometimes with the boys, sometimes alone. Alice, in her quiet way, was ready to open her heart completely to her brilliant friend. Rachael spoke of all topics except one to Alice. They discussed houses and maids, the children, books and plays and plans for the summer, birth and death, the approaching responsibility of the vote, philosophies and religions, saints and sages. And the day came when Rachael spoke of Warren and of Margaret Clay. It was a quiet, wet spring afternoon, a day when the coming of green leaves could be actually felt in the softened air. The two women were upstairs in Alice's white and blue sitting-room enjoying a wood fire. Jim and Derry were in the playroom with Kittiwake; the house was silent, so silent that they could hear the drumming of rain on the leads, and the lazy purr of the fire. Alice was first incredulous, and then stunned at the story. Rachael told all she knew, the change in her husband, the opening night of "The Bad Little Lady," her lonely dinners and evenings, and Magsie's complacent attitude of possession. "Well," said Alice, who had been an absorbed and astounded listener, when she finished, "I confess I don't understand it! If Warren Gregory is making a fool of himself over Margaret Clay, no one is going to be as much ashamed as he is when he is over it. I think with you," Alice added, much in earnest, "that as far as any actual infidelity goes, neither one would be CAPABLE of it! Magsie's a selfish little featherhead, but she has her own advantage too close at heart, and Warren, no matter what preposterous theory he has to explain his interest in Magsie, isn't going to actually do anything that would put him in the wrong!" She paused, but Rachael did not speak, and something in her aspect, as she sat steadily watching the fire, smote Alice to the heart. "I have never been so shocked and so disappointed in my life!" Alice went on, "I can't YET believe it! The only thing you can do is keep quiet and dignified, and wait for the whole thing to wear itself out. This explains the change between George and Warren. I knew George suspected something from the way he tried to shut me up when I saw Warren the other night at the theatre." "Now that I've talked about it," Rachael smiled, "I believe I feel better!" And presently she dried her eyes, and even laughed at herself a little as she and Alice fell to talking of other things. When Rachael, a boy in each hand, said good-bye, and went out into the pale, late afternoon sunshine that followed the rain, Alice accompanied her to the door, and stood for a moment with her at the top of the street steps. "You're so lovely, Rachael," said her friend affectionately. "It doesn't seem right to have anything ever trouble anyone so pretty!" Rachael only smiled doubtfully in answer, but Derry and Jim talked all the way home, their mother listening in silence. She found their conversation infinitely more amusing when uninfluenced by her. Both were naturally observant, Jim logical and reasonable, Derry always misled by his fancy and his dreams. When Tim was a lion, he was a lion who lived in the Gregory nursery, sat in the chairs that belonged to the Gregory children, and preyed upon their toys, as toys. But Derry was a beast of another calibre. The polished nursery floor was the still water of jungle pools, and the cribs were trees which a hideous and ferocious beast, radically differing in every way from little Gerald Gregory, climbed at will. Jim was a lion who liked to be interrupted by grown-ups, who was laughing at his make-believe all the time, but Derry was so frightfully in earnest as to often terrify himself, and almost always impress his brother, with his roarings and ravaging. To-day their conversation ran along pleasantly; they were companionable little brothers, and only unmanageable when separated. "All the men walking home will get their feet horrid an' wet," said Jim, "and then the ladies will scold 'em!" "This would be a great, big ocean for a fairy," Derry commented, flicking a wide puddle with a well-protected little foot. "Jim," he added in an anxious undertone, "could a fairy drown?" "Not if he had his swimming belt on," Jim said hardily. "All the fairies have to take little white rose leaves, and make themselves swimming belts," Derry said dreamily, "'r else their mothers won't let them go swimming, will they, Mother?" They did not wait for her answer, and Rachael was free to return to her own thoughts. But the interruption roused her, and she watched the little pair with pleasure as they trotted before her on the drying sidewalks. Derry was blond and Jim dark, yet they looked alike, both with Rachael's dark, expressive eyes, and with their father's handsome mouth and sudden, appealing smile. But Rachael fancied that her oldest son was most like his father in type, and found it hard to be as stern with Jim as she was with the impulsive reckless, eager Derry, whose faults were more apt to be her own. To-night she went with them to the nursery, where their little table was already set for supper and their small white beds already neatly turned down. "Mother's going to give us our baths!" shouted Jim. Both boys looked at her eagerly; Rachael smiled doubtfully. "Mother's afraid that she will have to dress, to meet Daddy downtown," she began regretfully, when old Mary interposed respectfully: "Excuse me, Mrs. Gregory. But Dennison took a message from Doctor this afternoon. I happen to know it because Louise asked me if I didn't think she had better order dinner for you. Doctor has been called to Albany on a case, and was to let you know when to expect him." "Goody--goody--good-good!" shouted Jim, and Derry joined in with a triumphant shriek, and clasped his arms tightly about his mother's knees. Rachael had turned a little pale, but she kissed both boys, and only left them long enough to change her gown to something loose and comfortable. Then she came back to the nursery, and there were baths, and games, and suppers, and then stories and prayers before the fire, Mary and Rachael laughing over the fluffy heads, revelling in the beauty of the little bodies. When they were in bed she went down to a solitary dinner, and, as she ate it, her thoughts went back to other solitary dinners years ago. Utter discouragement and something like a great, all-enveloping fear possessed her. She was afraid of life. She had dented her armor, broken her steel, she had been flung back and worsted in the fight. What was the secret, then, Rachael asked the fire, if youth and beauty and high hopes and great love failed like so many straws? Why was Alice contented, and she, Rachael, torn by a thousand conflicting hopes and fears? Why was it, that with all her cleverness, and all her beauty, the woman who had been Rachael Fairfax, and Rachael Breckenridge, and Rachael Gregory, had never yet felt sure of joy, had never dared lay hands upon it boldly, and know it to be her own, had trembled, and apprehended, and distrusted where women of infinitely lesser gifts had been able to enter into the kingdom with such utter certainty and serenity? Sitting through the long evening by the fire, in the drowsy silence of the big drawing-room, Rachael felt her eyes grow heavy. Who was unhappy, who was happy--what was all life about anyway--Dennison and old Mary came in at eleven, and looked at her for a long five minutes. Their eyes said a great many things, although neither spoke aloud. The fire had burned low, the light of a shaded lamp fell softly on the sleeping woman's face. There was a little frown between the beautiful brows, and once she sighed lightly, like a child. The man stepped softly back into the hall, and Mary touched her mistress. "Mrs. Gregory, you've dropped off to sleep!" Rachael roused, looked up, smiling bewilderedly. Her look seemed to search the shadows beyond the old woman's form. Slowly the new look of strain and sorrow came back into her eyes. "Why, so I did!" she said, getting to her feet. "I think I'll go upstairs. Any message from Doctor Gregory?" "No message, Mrs. Gregory." "Thank you, Mary, good-night!" Rachael went slowly out through the dimly lighted arch of the hall doorway, and slowly upstairs. She deliberately passed the nursery door. Her heart was too full to risk a visit to the boys to-night. She lighted her room and sank dazedly into a chair. "I dreamed that we were just married, and in the old studio," she said, half aloud. "I dreamed I had the old-feeling again, of being so sure, and so beloved! I thought Warren had come home early and had brought me violets!" CHAPTER VII A day later Dennison brought up the card of Miss Margaret Clay. Rachael turned it slowly in her hands, pondering, with a quickened heartbeat and a fluctuating color. Magsie had been often a guest in Rachael's house a year ago, but she had not been to see Rachael for a long time now. They were to meet, they were to talk alone together--what about? There was nothing about which Rachael Gregory cared to talk to Margaret Clay. A certain chilliness and trembling smote Rachael, and she sat down. She wished she had been out. It would be simple enough to send down a message to that effect, of course, but that was not the same thing. That would be evading the issue, whereas, had she been out, she could not have held herself responsible for missing Magsie. Well, the girl was in the neighborhood, of course, and had simply come in to say now do you do? But it would mean evasions, and affectations, and insincerities to talk with Magsie; it would mean lying, unless there must be an open breach. Rachael found herself in a state of actual dread of the encounter, and to end it, impatient at anything so absurd, she asked Dennison to bring the young lady at once to her own sitting-room. This was the transformed apartment that had been old Mrs. Gregory's, running straight across the bedroom floor, and commanding from four wide windows a glimpse of the old square, now brave in new feathery green. Rachael had replaced its dull red rep with modern tapestries, had had it papered in peacock and gray, had covered the old, dark woodwork with cream-colored enamel and replaced the black marble mantel with a simply carved one of white stone. The chairs here were all comfortable now; Rachael's book lay on a magazine-littered table, a dozen tiny, leather-cased animals, cows, horses, and sheep, were stabled on the hearth, and the spring sunlight poured in through fragile curtains of crisp net. Over the fireplace the great oil portrait of Warren Gregory smiled down, a younger Warren, but hardly more handsome than he was to-day. A pastel of the boys' lovely heads hung opposite it, between two windows, and photographs of Jim and Derry and their father were everywhere: on the desk, on the little grand piano, under the table lamp. This was Rachael's own domain, and in asking Magsie to come here she consciously chose the environment in which she would feel most at ease. Upstairs came the light, tripping feet. "In here?" said the fresh, confident voice. Magsie came in. Rachael met her at the door, and the two women shook hands. Magsie hardly glanced at her hostess, her dancing scrutiny swept the room and settled on Warren's portrait. She looked her prettiest, Rachael decided miserably. She was all in white: white shoes, white stockings, the smartest of little white suits, a white hat half hiding her heavy masses of trimly banded golden hair. If her hard winter had tired Magsie--"The Bad Little Lady" was approaching the end of its run--she did not show it. But there was some new quality in her face, some quality almost wistful, almost anxious, that made its appeal even to Warren Gregory's wife. "This is nice of you, Magsie," Rachael said, watching her closely, and conscious still of that absurd flutter at her heart. Both women had seated themselves, now Rachael reached for the silk-lined basket where she kept a little pretence of needlework, and began to sew. There were several squares of dark rich silks in the basket, and their touch seemed to give her confidence. "What are you making?" said Magsie with a rather touching pretence at interest. Rachael began to perceive that Magsie was ill at ease, too. She knew the girl well enough to know that nothing but her own affairs interested her; it was not like Magsie to ask seriously about another woman's sewing. "Warren likes silk handkerchiefs," explained Rachael, all the capable wife, "and those I make are much prettier than those he can find in the shops. So I pick up pieces of silk, from time to time, and keep him supplied." "He always has beautiful handkerchiefs," said Magsie rather faintly. "I remember, years ago, when I was with Mrs. Torrence, thinking that Greg always looked so--so carefully groomed." "A doctor has to be," Rachael answered sensibly. There were no girlish vapors or uncertainties about her manner; she had been the man's wife for nearly seven years; she was in his house; she need not fear Magsie Clay. "I suppose so," Magsie said vaguely. "What are your plans, Magsie?" Rachael asked kindly, as she threaded a needle. "We close on the eighteenth," Magsie announced. "Yes, so I noticed." Rachael had looked for this news every week since the run of the play began. "Well, that was a successful engagement, wasn't it?" she asked. It began to be rather a satisfaction to Rachael to find herself at such close quarters at last. What a harmless little thing this dreaded opponent was, after all! "Yes, they were delighted," Magsie responded still in such a lackadaisical, toneless, and dreary manner that Rachael glanced at her in surprise. Magsie's eyes were full of tears. "Why, what's the matter, my dear child?" she asked, feeling more sure of herself every instant. Her guest took a little handkerchief from her pretty white leather purse, and touched her bright brown eyes with it lightly. "I'll tell you, Rachael," said she, with an evident effort at brightness and naturalness, "I came here to see you about something to-day, but I--I don't quite know how to begin. Only, whatever you think about it, I want you to remember that your opinion is what counts; you're the one person who--who can really advise me, and--and perhaps help me and other people out of a difficulty." Rachael looked at her with a twinge of inward distaste. This rather dramatic start did not promise well; she was to be treated to some youthful heroics. Instantly the hope came to her that Magsie had some new admirer, someone she would really consider as a husband, and wanted to make of Rachael an advocate with Warren, who, in his present absurd state of infatuation, might not find such a situation to his taste. "I want to put to you the case of a friend of mine," Magsie said presently, "a girl who, like myself, is on the stage." Rachael wondered if the girl really hoped to say anything convincing under so thin a disguise, but said nothing herself, and Magsie went on: "She's pretty, and young--" Her tone wavered. "We've had a nice company all winter," she remarked lamely. This was beginning to be rather absurd. Rachael, quite at ease, raised mildly interrogatory eyes to Magsie. "You'll go on with your work, now that you've begun so well, won't you?" she asked casually. "W--w--well, I suppose so," Magsie answered dubiously, flushing a sudden red. "I--don't know what I shall do!" "But surely you've had an unusually encouraging beginning?" pursued Rachael comfortably. "Oh, yes, there's no doubt about that, at least!" Magsie said. About what was there doubt, then? Rachael wondered. She deliberately allowed a little silence to follow this remark, smiling, as if at her own thoughts, as she sewed. The younger woman's gaze roved restlessly about the room, she leaned from her chair to take a framed photograph of the boys from a low bookcase, and studied it with evidently forced attention. "They're stunning!" she said in an undertone as she laid it aside. "They're good little boys," their mother said contentedly. "I know that the queerest persons in the world, about eating and drinking, are actresses, Magsie," she added, smiling, "so I don't know whether to offer you tea, or hot soup, or an egg beaten up in milk, or what! We had a pianist here about a year ago, and--" "Oh, nothing, nothing, thank you, Rachael!" Magsie said eagerly and nervously. "I couldn't--" "The boys may be in soon," Rachael remarked, choosing to ignore her guest's rather unexpected emotion. This seemed to spur Magsie suddenly into speech. She glanced at the tall old moonfaced clock that was slowly ticking near the door, as if to estimate the time left her, and sat suddenly erect on the edge of her chair. "I mustn't stay,"' she said breathlessly. "I--I have to be back at the theatre at seven, and I ought to go home first for a few minutes. My girl--she's just a Swedish woman that I picked up by chance--worries about me as if she were my mother, unless I come in and rest, and take an eggnog, or something." She rallied her forces with a quite visible effort. "It was just this, Rachael," said Magsie, looking at the fire, and twisting her white gloves in desperate embarrassment, "I know you've always liked me, you've always been so kind to me, and I can only hope that you'll forgive me if what I say sounds strange to you. I thought I could come here and say it, but--I've always been a little bit afraid of you, Rachael--and I"--Magsie laughed nervously--"and I'm scared to death now!" she said simply. Something natural, unaffected, and direct in her usually self-conscious and artificial manner struck Rachael with a vague sense of uneasiness. Magsie certainly did not seem to be acting now; there were real tears in her pretty eyes, and a genuine break in her young voice. "I'm going straight ahead," she said rapidly, "because I've been getting up my courage this whole week to come and see you, and now, while Greg is in Albany, I can't put it off any longer. He doesn't know it, of course, and, although I know I'm putting myself entirely at your mercy, Rachael, I believe you'll never tell him if I ask you not to!" "I don't understand," Rachael said slowly. "I've been thinking it all out," Magsie went on, "and this is the conclusion--at least, this is what I've thought! You have always had everything, Rachael. You've always been so beautiful, and so much admired. You loved Clarence, and married him--oh, don't think I'm rude, Rachael," the girl pleaded eagerly, as Rachael voiced an inarticulate protest, "because I'm so desperately in earnest, and s-s-so desperately unhappy!" Her voice broke on a rush of tears, but she commanded it, and hurried on. "You've always been fortunate, not like other women, who had to be second best, but ALWAYS the cleverest, and ALWAYS the handsomest! I remember, when I heard you were to marry Greg, I was just sick with misery for two or three days! I had seen him a few weeks before in Paris, but he said nothing of it, didn't even mention you. Don't think I was jealous, Rachael--it wasn't that. But it seemed to me that you had everything! First the position of marrying a Breckenridge, then to step straight into Greg's life. You'll never know how I--how I singled you out to watch--" "Just as I have singled you out this horrible winter," Rachael said to herself, in strange pain and bewilderment at heart. Magsie watched her hopefully, but Rachael did not speak, and the girl went on: "When I came to America I thought of you, and I listened to what everyone said of you. You had a splendid boy, named for Greg, and then another boy; you were richer and happier and more admired than ever! And Rachael--I know you'll forgive me--you were so much FINER than ever--when I met you I saw that. I couldn't dislike you, I couldn't do anything but admire, with all the others. I remember at Leila's wedding, when you wore dark blue and furs, and you looked so lovely! And then I met Greg again. And truly, truly, Rachael, I never dreamed of this then!" "Dreamed of what?" Rachael said with dry lips. The girl's voice, the darkening room, the dull, fluttering flames of the dying fire, seemed all like some oppressive dream. "Dreamed--" Magsie's voice sank. Her eyes closed, she put one hand over her heart, and pressed it there. "Then came my plan to go on the stage," she said, taking up her story, "and one day, when I was especially blue, I met Greg. We had tea together. I've never forgotten one instant of that day! He tried to telephone you, but couldn't get you; we just talked like any friends. But he promised to help me, he was so interested, and I was homesick for Paris, and ready to die in this awful city! After that you gave me a dinner, and then we had theatricals, and then Bowman placed me, and I had to go on the road. But I saw Greg two or three times, and one day--one day last winter"--again her voice faltered, as if she found the memories too poignant for speech--"we drove in the Park," she said dreamily; "and then Greg saw how it was." Rachael sat silent, stunned. "Oh, Rachael," the girl said passionately. "Don't think I didn't fight it! I thought of you, I tried to think for us all. I said we would never see each other again, and I went away--you know that! For months after that day in the Park we hardly saw each other. And then, last summer, we met again. And he talked to me so wonderfully, Rachael, about making the best of it, about being good friends anyway--and I've lived on that! But I can't live on that forever, Rachael." "You've been seeing each other?" Rachael asked stupidly. "Oh, every day! At tea, you know, or sometimes especially before you came back, at dinner. And, Rachael, nobody will ever know what it's done for me! Greg's managed all my business, and whenever I was utterly discouraged and tired he had the kindest way of saying: 'Never mind, Magsie, I'm tired and discouraged, too!'" Magsie's face glowed happily at the memory of it. "I know I'm not worthy of Greg's friendship," she said eagerly. "And all the time I've thought of you, Rachael, as having the first right, as being far, far above me in everything! But--I'm telling you everything, you see--" Magsie interrupted herself to explain. "Go on!" Rachael urged, clearing her throat. "Well, it's not much. But a week or two ago Greg was talking to me about your being eager to get the boys into the country early this year. He looked awfully tired that afternoon, and he said that he thought he would close this house, and live at the club this summer, and he said 'That means you have a dinner date every night, Magsie!' And suddenly, Rachael--I don't know what came over me, but I burst out crying"--Magsie's eyes filled now as she thought of it--"and I said, 'Oh, Greg, we need each other! Why can't we belong to each other! You love me and I love you; why can't we give up our work and the city and everything else, and just be happy!'" "And what did--Warren say?" Rachael asked in a whisper. "Oh, Rachael! That's what I've been remembering ever since!" Magsie said. "That's what made me want to come to you; I KNEW you would understand! You're so good; you want people to be happy," said Magsie, fighting tears again and trying to smile. "You have everything: your sons, your position, your beauty--everything! I'm--I'm different from some women, Rachael. I can't just run away with him. There is an honorable and a right way to do it, and I want to ask you if you'll let us take that way!" "An honorable way?" Rachael echoed in an unnatural voice. "Well--" Magsie widened innocent eyes. "Nobody has ever blamed YOU for taking it, Rachael!" she said simply. "And nobody ever blamed Clarence, with Paula!" Rachael, looking fixedly at her, sat as if turned to stone. "You are brave, Magsie, to come and tell me this," she said at last quietly. "You are kind to listen to me," Magsie answered with disarming sincerity. "I know it is a strange thing to do." She laughed nervously. "Of course, I know THAT!" she added. "But it came to me that I would the other day. Greg and I were talking about dreams, you know--things we wanted to do. And we talked about going away to some beach, and swimming, and moonlight, and just rest--and quiet--" "I see," Rachael said. "Greg said, 'This is only a dream, Magsie, and we mustn't let ourselves dream!'" Magsie went on. "But--but sometimes dreams come true, don't they?" She stopped. There was an unearthly silence in the room. "I've tried to fight it, and I cannot," Magsie presently said in a small, tired voice; "it comes between me and everything I do. I'm not a great actress--I know that. I don't even want to be any more. I want to go away where no one will ever see me or hear of me again. I've heard of this--feeling"--she sent Rachael a brave if rather uncertain smile--"but I never believed in it before! I never believed that when--when you care"--Rachael was grateful to be spared the great word--"you can't live or breathe or think anything"--again there was an evasion--"but the one thing!" And with a long, tired sigh, again she relapsed into silence. Rachael could find nothing to say. "Honestly, HONESTLY," the younger woman presently added, "you mustn't think that either one of us saw this coming! We were simply carried away. It was only this year, only a few months ago, that I began to think that perhaps--perhaps if you understood, you would set--Greg free. You want to live just for the boys, you love the country, and books, and a few friends. Your life would go on, Rachael, just as it has, only he would be happy, and I would be happy. Oh, my God," said Magsie, with quivering lips and brimming eyes, "how happy I would be!" Rachael looked at her in impassive silence. "At all events," the visitor said more composedly, "I have been planning for a week to come to you, Rachael, and have this talk. I may have done more harm than good--I don't know; but from the instant I thought of it I have simply been drawn, as if I were under a spell. I haven't said what I meant to, I know that. I haven't said"--her smile was wistful and young and sweet, as, rising from her chair, she stood looking down at Rachael--"how badly I feel that it--it happens so," said Magsie. "But you know how deeply I've always admired you! It must seem strange to you that I would come to you about it. But Ruskin, wasn't it, and Wagner--didn't they do something like this? I knew, even if things were changed between you and Greg, that you would be big enough and good enough to help us all to find the--the solution, if there is one!" Rachael stood up, too, so near her guest that she could put one hand on Magsie's shoulder. The girl looked up at her with the faith of a distressed child. "I'm glad you did come, Magsie," said Rachael painfully, "although I never dreamed, until this afternoon, that--this--could possibly have been in Warren's thoughts. You speak of--divorce, quite naturally, as of course anyone may, to me. But I never had thought of it. It's a sad tangle, whatever comes of it, and perhaps you're right in feeling that we had better face it, and try to find the solution, if, as you say, there is one." And Rachael, breathing a little hard, stood looking down at Magsie with something so benign, so tragic, and so heroic in her beautiful face that the younger woman was a little awed, even a little puzzled, where she had been so sure. She would have liked to put her arms about her hostess's neck, and to seal their extraordinary treaty with a kiss, but she knew better. As well attempt to kiss the vision of a ministering angel. Rachael, one arm on Magsie's shoulder, her whole figure and her face expressing painful indecision, had never seemed so remote, so goddesslike. "And--and you won't tell him of this?" faltered Magsie. "Ah--you must leave that to me," Rachael said with a sad smile. For a few seconds longer they looked at each other. Then Rachael dropped her arm, and Magsie moved a little. The visitor knew that another sentence must be in farewell, but she felt strangely awkward, curiously young and crude. Rachael, except for the falling of her arm, was motionless. Her eyes were far away, she seemed utterly unconscious of herself and her surroundings. Magsie wanted to think of one more thing to say, one clinching sentence, but everything seemed to be said. Something of the other woman's weariness and coldness of spirit seemed to communicate itself to her; she felt tired and desolate. It seemed a small and insignificant matter that she had had her momentous talk with Rachael, and had succeeded in her venture. Love was failing her, life was failing. "I hope--I haven't distressed you--too awfully, Rachael," Magsie faltered. She had not thought of herself, a few hours ago, as distressing Rachael at all. She had thought that Rachael might be scornful, might be cold, might overwhelm her with her magnificence of manner, and shame her for her daring. She had come in on a sudden impulse, and had had no time for any thought but that her revelation would be exciting and dramatic and astonishing. She was sincerely anxious to have Warren freed, but not so swept away by emotion that she could not appreciate this lovely setting and her own picturesque position in the eyes of her beautiful rival. "Oh, no!" Rachael answered, perfunctorily polite, and with her eyes still fixed darkly on space. And as if half to herself, she added, in a breathless, level undertone: "It all rests with Warren!" Presently Magsie breathed a faint "Good-bye," following it with an almost inaudible murmur that Dennison would let her out. Then the white figure was gone from the gloom of the room, and Rachael was alone. For a time she was so dazed, so emotionally exhausted by the event of the last hour, that she stood on, fixed, unseeing, one hand pressed against her side as if she stopped with it the mouth of a wound. Occasionally she drew a long, sharp breath as the dying sometimes breathe. "It all rests with Warren," she said presently, half-aloud, and in a toneless, passive voice. And slowly she turned and slowly went to the window. The room was dark, but twilight lingered in the old square, and home-going men and women were filing across it. The babies and their nurses were gone now, there were only lounging men on the benches. Lumbering green omnibuses rocked their way through the great stone arch, and toward the south, over the crowded foreign quarter, the pink of street lamps was beginning to battle with the warm purple and blue that still hung in the evening sky. The season had been long delayed, but now there was a rustle of green against the network of boughs; a few warm days would bring the tulips and the fruit blossoms. What a sweet, good, natural world it was in which to be happy! With its wheeling motor cars, its lovers seated in high security for the long omnibus ride, its laborers pleasantly ready for the home table and the day's domestic news! The chattering little Jewish girls from one of the uptown department stores were gay with shrilly voiced plans; the driver, riding lazily home on a pile of empty bags, had no quarrel with the world; the smooth-haired, unhatted Italian women from the Ghetto, with shawls wrapped over their full breasts, and serene black-eyed babies toddling beside them, were placidly content with the run of their days. It remained for the beautiful woman in the drawing-room to look with melancholy eyes upon the springtime, and tear out her heart in an agony no human power could cure. "It all rests with Warren," Rachael said. Magsie was nothing, she was nothing; the world, the boys, were nothing. It was for Warren to hold their destinies in his hands and decide for them all. No use in raging, in reasoning, in arguing. No use in setting forth the facts, the palpable right and wrong. No use in bitterly asking the unanswering heavens if this were right and just, this system that could allow any young girl to feel any married man, any father, her natural prey. She had come to love Warren just as in a few years she might come to love someone else. That was all permissible; regrettable perhaps for Warren's wife, an unmistakable calamity for Warren's boys, but, from Magsie's standpoint, comprehensible and acceptable. If Warren were free, Magsie was well within her rights; if he were not, Rachael was the last woman in the world to dispute it. After a while Rachael began to move mechanically about the room. She sat down at her desk and wrote a few checks; the boys little first dancing lessons must be paid for, the man who mended the clock, the woman who had put all her linen in order. She wrote briskly, reaching quickly for envelopes and stamps, and, when she had finished, closed the desk with her usual neatness. She telephoned the kitchen; had she told Louise that Doctor Gregory might come home at midnight? He might be at home for breakfast. Then she glanced about the quiet room, and went softly out, through the inner door, to her own bedroom adjoining. She walked on little usual errands between bureau and wardrobe, steadily proceeding with the changing of her gown. Once she stopped short, in the centre of the floor, and stood musing for a few silent minutes, then she said, aloud and lightly: "Poor Magsie--it's all so absurd!" If for a few seconds her thoughts wandered, they always came swiftly back. Magsie and Warren had fallen in love with each other--wanted to marry each other. Rachael tried to marshal her whirling thoughts; there must be simple reason somewhere in this chaotic matter. She had the desperate sensation of a mad-woman trying to prove herself sane. Were they all crazy, to have got themselves into this hideous fix? What was definite, what facts had they upon which to build their surmises? Warren was her husband, that was one fact; Warren loved her, that was another. They had lived together for nearly eight years, planned together, they knew each other now, heart and soul. And there were two sons. These being facts for Rachael, what facts had Magsie? Rachael's heart rose on a wild rush of confidence. Magsie had no basis for her pretension. Magsie was young, and she had madly and blindly fallen in love. There was her single claim: she loved. Rachael could not doubt it after that hour in the sitting-room. But what pitiable folly! To love and to admit love for another woman's husband! Thinking, thinking, thinking, Rachael lay awake all night. She composed herself a hundred times for sleep, and a hundred times sleep evaded her. Magsie--Warren--Rachael. Their names swept round and round in her tired brain. She was talking to Magsie, so eloquently and kindly; she was talking to Warren. Warren was shocked at the mere thought of her suspicions, had seen nothing, had suspected nothing, couldn't believe that Rachael could be so foolish! Warren's arms were about her, he was going to take her and the boys away. This was a bad atmosphere for wives, this diseased and abnormal city, Warren said. She was buying steamer coats for Derry and Jim-- Magsie! Again the girl's tense, excited face rose before Rachael's fevered memory. "You mustn't think either one of us saw this coming!" Rachael rose on her elbow, shook her pillows, flashed a night-light on her watch. Quarter to three. It was a rather dismal hour, she thought, not near enough either midnight or morning. Tossing so long, she would be sleepless all night now. Well, what was marriage anyway? Was there never a time of serenity, of surety? Was any pretty, irresponsible young woman free to set her heart upon another woman's husband, the father of another woman's children? Rachael suddenly thought of Clarence. How different the whole thing had seemed then! Clarence's pride, Clarence's child, had they been so hurt as her pride and her children were to be hurt now? She must not allow herself to be so easily frightened. She had been thinking too many months of the one thing; she could not see it fairly. Why, Magsie had been infinitely more dangerous in the early days of her success; there was nothing to fear from the simple, apprehensive Magsie of this afternoon! The only sensible thing was to stop thinking of it, and to go to sleep. But Rachael felt sick and frightened, experienced sensations of faintness, sensations like hunger. Her eyes seemed painfully open, she could not shut them. Her breath came fitfully. She sighed, turned on her side. She would count one hundred, breathing deep and with closed eyes. "Sixteen, seventeen!" Rachael sat suddenly erect, and looked at her watch again. Twenty-two minutes past three. Morning broke with wind and rain; the new leaves in the square were tossing wildly; sleet struck noisily against the windows. Rachael, waking exhausted, after not more than an hour's sleep, went through the process of dressing in a weary daze. The boys, as was usual, came in during the hour, full of fresh conversation and eager to discuss plans for the day. Jim tied strings from knob to knob of her bureau drawers, Derry amused himself by dashing a chain of glass beads against the foot of the bed until the links gave and the tiny balls rolled in every direction over the floor. "Never mind," Rachael consoled the discomfited junior, "Pauline will come in and pick them all up. Mother doesn't care!" Derry, however, howled on unconsoled, and Rachael, stopping, half-dressed, to take him in her arms, mused while she kissed him over the tiny sorrow that could so convulse him. Was she no more than a howling baby robbed of a toy? Nothing could be more real than Derry's sense of loss, no human being could weep more desolately or more unreasonably. Were her love and her life no more than a string of baubles, scattered and flung about by some irresponsible hand? Was nothing real except the great moving sea and the arch of stars above the spring nights? Life and death, and laughter and tears, how unimportant they were! Eight years ago she had felt herself to be unhappy; now she knew that in those days she had known neither sorrow nor joy. Since then, what an ecstasy of fulfilled desire had been hers! She had lived upon the heights, she had tasted the fullest and the sweetest of human emotions. What other woman--Cleopatra, Helen, all the great queens of countries and of art--had known more exquisite delight than hers had been in those first days when she had waited for Warren to come to her with violets? The morning went on like an ugly dream. At nine o'clock Rachael sent down an untouched breakfast tray. Mary took the boys out into the struggling sunshine. The house was still. Rachael lay on her wide couch, staring wretchedly into space. Her head ached. The moonfaced clock struck a slow ten, the hall clock downstairs following it with a brisk silver chime. Vendors in the square called their wares; the first carts of potted spring flowers were going their rounds. Shortly after ten o'clock she heard Warren run upstairs and into his room. She could hear his voice at the telephone; he wanted the hospital--Doctor Gregory wished to speak to Miss Moore. Miss Moore? Doctor Gregory would be there at eleven ... please have everything ready. Miss Moore, who was a veteran nurse and a privileged character, asked some question as to the Albany case; Warren wearily answered that the patient had not rallied; it was too bad--too bad. Once it would have been Rachael's delight to soothe him, to give him the strong coffee he needed before eleven o'clock, to ask about the poor Albany man. Now she hardly heard him. Beginning to tremble, she sat up, her heart beating fast. "Warren!" she called in a shaken voice. He came to her door immediately, and they faced each other, his perfunctory greeting arrested by her look. "Warren," said Rachael with a desperate effort at control, "I want you to tell me about--about you and Magsie Clay." Instantly his face darkened. He gazed back at her steadily, narrowing his eyes. "What about it?" he asked sharply. Rachael knew that she was growing angry against her passionate resolution to keep the conversation in her own hands. "Magsie came to see me yesterday," she said, panting. Had she touched him? She could not tell. There was no wavering in his impassive face. "What about it?" he asked again after a silence. His wife pushed the rich, tumbled hair from her face with a wild gesture, as if she fought for air. "What about it?" she echoed, in a constrained tone, still with that quickened shallow breath. "Do you think it is CUSTOMARY for a girl to come to a man's wife, and tell her that she cares for him? Do you think it is CUSTOMARY for a man to have tea every day with a young actress who admits she is in love with him--" "I don't know what you're talking about!" Warren said, his face a dull red. "Do you mean to tell me that you don't know that Margaret Clay cares for you," Rachael asked in rising anger, "and that you have never told her you care for her--that you and she have never talked about it, have never wished that you were free to belong to each other!" "You will make yourself ill!" Warren said quietly, watching her. His tone brought Rachael abruptly to her senses. Fury and accusation were not her best defence. With Warren calm and dignified she would only hurt her claim by this course. In a second she was herself again, her breath grew normal, she straightened her hair, and with a brief shrug walked slowly from the room into her own sitting-room adjoining. Following her, Warren found her looking down at the square from the window. "If you are implying anything against Magsie, you are merely making yourself ridiculous, Rachael," he said nervously. "Neither Magsie nor I have forgotten your claim for a single instant. If she came here and talked to you, she did so absolutely without my knowledge." "She said so," Rachael admitted, heart and mind in a whirl. "From a sense of protection--for her," Warren went on, "I did NOT tell you how much we have come to mean to each other. I am extremely--unwilling--to discuss it now. There is nothing to be said, as far as I am concerned. It is better not to discuss it; we shall not agree. That Magsie could come here and talk to you surprises me. I naturally don't know what she said, or what impression she gave you. I would only remind you that she is young--and unhappy." He glanced at the morning paper he carried in his hand with an air of casual interest, and added in a moderate undertone, "It's an unhappy business!" Rachael stood as if she had been shot through the heart--motionless, dumb. She felt the inward physical convulsion that might have followed an actual shot. Her heart seemed to be struggling under a choking flood, and black circles moved before her eyes. Watching her, Warren presently began to enlarge upon the subject. His tone was that of frank and unashamed, if regretful, narrative. Rachael perceived, with utter stupefaction, that although he was sorry, and even angry at being drawn into this talk, he was far from being confused or ashamed. "I am sorry for this, Rachael," he began in the logical tone she knew so well. "I think, frankly, that Magsie made a mistake in coming to you. The situation isn't of my making. Magsie, being a woman, being impulsive and impatient, has taken the law into her own hands." He shrugged. "She may have been wise, or unwise, I can't tell!" He paused, but Rachael did not speak or stir. Warren had rolled up the paper, and now, in his pacing, reaching the end of the room, he turned, and, thrusting it into his armpit, came back with folded arms. "Now that this thing has come up," he said in a practical tone, "it is a great satisfaction to me to realize how reasonable a woman you are. I want you to know just how this whole thing happened. Magsie has always been a most attractive girl to me. I remember her in Paris, years ago, young, and with a pretty little way of turning her head, and effective eyes." "I know all this, Warren!" Rachael said wearily. "I know you do. But let me recapitulate it," he said, resuming in a businesslike voice: "When I met her at Hoyt's wedding I knew right away that we had a personality to deal with--something rare! I remember thinking then that it would be interesting to see whom she cared for, what that volcanic little heart would be in love--Time went on; we saw more of her. I met her, now and then, we had the theatricals, and the California trip. One day, that fall, in the Park, I took her for a drive, innocently enough, nothing prearranged. And I remember asking if any lucky man had made an impression upon her." Warren smiled, his eyes absent. Rachael's look of superb scorn was wasted. "It came to me in a flash," he went on, "that Magsie had come to care for me. Poor little Magsie, she hadn't meant to, she hadn't seen it coming. I remember her looking up at me--she didn't have to say a word. 'I'm sorry, Magsie,' I said. That was all. The touching thing was that even in that trouble she turned to me. We talked it over, I took her back to her hotel, and very simply she said, 'Kiss me, once, Greg, and I'll be good!' After that I didn't see her for a long, long time. "It seemed to me a sacred charge--you can see that. I couldn't doubt it, the evidence was right there before my eyes, and thinking it over, I couldn't be much surprised. We were in the fix, and of course there was nothing to be done. She went away and that was the end of it, then. But when I saw her again last winter the whole miserable business came up. The rest, of course, she told you. She is unhappy and rebellious, or she would never have dared to come to you! I can't understand her doing so, now, for Magsie is a good little sport, Rachael; she knows you have the right of way. The affair has always been with that understanding. However much I feel for Magsie, and regret the whole thing--why, I am not a cad!" He struck her to her heart with his friendly smile. "You brought the subject up; I don't care to discuss it," he said. "I don't question your actions, and all I ask is that you will not question mine!" "Perhaps--the world--may some day question them, Warren!" Rachael tried to speak quietly, but she was beginning to be frightened at her own violence. She shook with actual chill, her mouth was dry and her cheeks blazing. "The world?" He shrugged. "I can hardly see that it is the world's business that you go your way and I go mine!" he said reasonably. He glanced at his watch. "Perhaps you will be so good as to say no more about it?" he suggested. "I have no time, now, anyway. Marriage--" "Warren!" Rachael interrupted hoarsely. She stopped. "Marriage," he went on, "never stands still! A man and woman are growing nearer together hourly, or they are growing apart. There is no need, between reasonable beings, for recriminations and bitterness. A man is only a man, after all, and if I have been carried off my feet by Magsie--as I admit I have been--why, such things have happened before! When she and my wife--who might have protected my dignity--meet to discuss the question of their feelings, and their rights, then I confess that I am beyond my depth." He took a deep chair and sat back, his knees crossed, his elbow on the chair arm, his chin resting on his hand, as one conscious of scoring a point. "And what about the boys' feelings and rights?" Rachael said in a low, tense tone. "There you are!" Warren exclaimed. "It's all absurd on the face of it--the whole tangle!" His wife looked at him in grave, dispassionate scrutiny. Of what was he made, this handsome, well-groomed man of forty-eight? What fatal infection had poisoned heart and brain? She saw him this morning as a stranger, and as a most repellent stranger. "But it is a tangle in which one still sees right and wrong, Warren," she said, desperately struggling for calm. "Human relationships can't be discussed as if they were the moves on a chess-board. I make no claim for myself--the time has gone by when I could do so--but there is honor and decency in the world, there is simple uprightness! Your attentions, as a married man, can only do Magsie harm, and your daring"--suddenly she began restlessly to pace the floor as he had done--"your daring in coming here to me, to tell me that any other woman has a claim on you," she said, beginning to breathe violently, "only shows me how blind, how drugged you are with--I don't know what to call it--with your own utter lawlessness! What right has Margaret Clay compared to MY right? Are my claims, and my sons' claims, to be swept aside because a little idle girl of Magsie's age chooses to flirt with my husband? What is marriage, anyway--what is parenthood? Are you mad, Warren, that you can come here to our home and talk of 'tangles'--and rights? Do you think I am going to argue it with you, going to belittle my own position by admitting, for one second, that it is open to question?" She flashed him one blazing look, then resumed her walking and her angry rush of words. "Why, if some four-year-old child came in here and began to contend for Derry's place," Rachael asked passionately, "how long would we seriously consider his right? If I must dispute the title of Magsie Clay this year, why not of Jennie Jones next year, of Polly Smith the year after that? If--" "Now you are talking recklessly," Warren Gregory said quietly, "and you have entirely lost sight of the point at issue. Nobody is attempting a controversy with you." The cool, analytical voice robbed Rachael of all her fire. She sat down, and was silent. "What you say is quite true," pursued Warren, "and of course, if a woman chooses to stand on her RIGHTS--if it becomes a question of legal obligation--" "Warren! When was our marriage that?" "I don't say it was that! I am protesting because YOU talk of rights and titles. I only say that if the problem has come down to a mere question of what is LEGAL, why, that in itself is a confession of failure!" "Failure!" she echoed with white lips. "I am not speaking of ourselves, I tell you!" he said, annoyed. "But can any sane person in these days deny that when a man and woman no longer pull together in double harness, our world accepts an honorable change?" Rachael was silent. These had been her words eight years ago. "They may have reasons for not making that change," Warren went on logically; "they may prefer to go on, as thousands of people do, to present a perfectly smooth exterior to the world. But don't be so unfair as to assume that what hundreds of good and reputable men and women are doing every day is essentially wrong!" "You know that you may say this--to me, Warren," she said with a leaden heart. "Anybody may say it to anybody!" he answered irritably. "Tying a man and a woman together doesn't necessarily make them--" She interrupted with a quick, breathless, "WARREN!" "Well!" Again he shrugged his shoulders and again glanced at his watch. "It seems to me that you shouldn't have spoken of the matter if you were not prepared to discuss it!" he said. Rachael felt the room whirling. She could neither see nor feel anything now but the fury that possessed her. Perhaps twice in her life before, never with him, had she so given way to anger. "_I_ shouldn't have spoken of it, Warren!" she echoed. "I should have borne it, and smiled, and said nothing! Perhaps I should! Perhaps some women would have done that--" "Rachael!" he interrupted quickly. But she swept down his words in the wild tide of her own. "Warren!" she said with deadly decision, "I'm not that sort of woman. You've had your fun--now it's my turn! Now it's my turn!" Rachael repeated in a voiceless undertone as she rapidly paced the room. "Now you can turn to the world, and SEE what the world thinks! Let them know how often you and Magsie have been together, let them know that she came here to ask me to set you free, and then see what the general verdict is! I'm not going to hush this up, to refrain from discussing it because you don't care to, because it hurts your feelings! It SHALL be discussed, and you shall be free! You shall be free, and if you choose to put Magsie Clay here in my place, you may do so!" "Rachael!" he said angrily. And he caught her thin wrists in his hands. "Don't touch me!" she said, wrenching herself free. "Don't touch me, you cruel and wicked and heartless--! Go to Magsie! Tell her that I sent you to her! Take your hands off me, Warren--" Standing back, discomfited, he attempted reason. "Rachael! Don't talk so! I don't know what to make of you! Why, I never saw you like this. I never heard you--" The door of her room closed behind her. She was gone. A long silence fell in the troubled room where their voices had warred so lately. Warren looked at his watch, looked at her door. Then he went out the other door, and downstairs, and out of the house. Rachael heard him go. She was still breathing fast, still blind to everything but her own fury. She would punish him, she would punish him. He should have his verdict from the world he trusted so serenely; he should have his Magsie. The clocks struck eleven: first the slow clock in her sitting-room, then the quick silvery echo from downstairs. Rachael glanced about nervously. The Bank--the boys' lunches--the trunks-- She went downstairs. In the little breakfast-room off the big dining-room the array of Warren's breakfast waited. Old Mary, with the boys, had just come in the side door. "Mary," Rachael said quickly, "I want you to help me. Pack some clothes for the boys and me, and give them some luncheon. We are going down to Clark's Hills on the two o'clock train--" "My God! Mrs. Gregory, you look very bad, my dear!" said Mary. The unconscious endearment, the shock and concern visible on Mary's homely, honest face were too much for Rachael. Her face changed to ivory, she put one hand to her throat, and her lips quivered. "Help me--some coffee--Mary!" she whispered. "I think--I'm dying!" BOOK III CHAPTER I Warren went to the hospital and performed his operation. It was a long, hard strain for all concerned, and the nurses told each other afterward that you could see Doctor Gregory's heart was in it, he looked as bad as the child's father and mother did. It was after one o'clock when the surgeons got out of their white gowns, and Warren was in the cold, watery sunlight of the street before he realized that he had had nothing to eat since his dinner in Albany last night. He looked about vaguely; there were plenty of places all about where he could get a meal. He saw Magsie-- Magsie often drove about in hansom-cabs--they were one of her delights; and more than once of late she had come to meet Warren at some hospital, or even to pick him up at the club. But this was the first time that she had done so without prearrangement. She leaned out of the cab, a picture of youth and beauty, and waved a white glove. How did she know he was in here? she echoed his question. He had written her from Albany that he would operate at Doctor Berry's hospital this morning she reminded him. And where was he going now? "I'm awfully worried this morning, honey-girl," said Warren, "and I can't stop to play with nice little Magsies in new blue dresses! My head is blazing, and I believe I'll go home--" "When did you get in, and where did you have breakfast?" she asked with pretty concern. "Greg, you've not had any? Oh, I believe he hasn't had any! And it's after one, and you've been operating! Get STRAIGHT in--" "No, dear!" he smiled as she moved to one side of the seat, and packed her thin skirts neatly under her, "not to-day! I'll--" "Warren Gregory!" said Magsie sternly, "you get right straight in here, and come and have your breakfast! Now, what's nearest? The Biltmore!" She poked the upper door with her slim umbrella. "To the Biltmore!" commanded Magsie. At a quiet table Warren had coffee and eggs and toast, and more coffee, and finally his cigar. The color came back into his face, and he looked less tired. Magsie was a rather simple little soul under her casing of Parisian veneer, and was often innocently surprised at the potency of her own charm. That men, big men and wise men, were inclined to take her artful artlessness at its surface value was a continual revelation to her. Like Rachael, she had gone to bed the night before in a profoundly thoughtful frame of mind, a little apprehensive as to Warren's view of her call, and uneasy as to the state in which she had left his wife. But, unlike Rachael, Magsie had not been wakeful long. The consideration of other people's attitudes never troubled her for more than a few consecutive minutes. She had been genuinely stirred by her talk that afternoon, and was honestly determined to become Mrs. Warren Gregory; but these feelings did not prevent her from looking back, with thrilled complacence, to the scene in Rachael's sitting-room, and from remembering that it was a dramatic and heroic thing for a slender, pretty girl in white to go to a man's wife and plead for her love. "No harm done, anyway!" Magsie had reflected drowsily, drifting off to sleep; and she had awakened conscious of no emotion stronger than a mild trepidation at the possibility of Warren's wrath. Dainty and sweet, she came to meet him halfway, and now sat congratulating herself that he was soothed, fed, and placidly smoking before their conversation reached deep channels. "Greg, dear, I've got a horrible confession to make!" began Magsie when this propitious moment arrived. "You mean your call on Rachael?" he asked quickly, the shadow coming back to his eyes. "Why did you do it?" Magsie was conscious of being frightened. "Was she surprised, Greg?" "I don't know that she was surprised. Of course she was angry." "Well," Magsie said, widening her childish eyes, "didn't you EXPECT her to be angry?" "I didn't expect her to take any attitude whatever," Warren said with a look half puzzled and half reproving. "Greg!" Magsie was quite honestly astonished. "What did you expect her to do? Give you a divorce without any feeling whatever?" There was no misunderstanding her. For a full minute Warren stared at her in silence. In that minute he remembered some of his recent talks with Magsie, some of his notes and presents, he remembered the plan that involved a desert island, sea-bathing, moonlight, and solitude. "I think, if you had been listening to us," Magsie went on, as he did not answer, "you could not have objected to one word I said! And Rachael was lovely, Greg. She told me she would not contest it--" "She told you THAT?" "Well, she said several times that it must be as you decide." Magsie dimpled demurely. "And I was--nice, too!" she asserted youthfully. "I didn't tell her about this--and this!" and with one movement of her pretty hand Magsie indicated the big emerald on her ring finger and the heavy bracelet of mesh gold about her wrist. Suddenly her face brightened, and with an eager movement she leaned across the narrow table, and caught his hand in both her own. "Ah, Greg," she said tenderly, "does it seem true, that after all these months of talking, and hoping, you and I are going to belong to each other?" "But I have no idea that Rachael is seriously considering a divorce," Warren said slowly. "Why should she? She has no cause!" "She thinks she has!" Magsie said triumphantly. "She isn't the sort of woman to think things without reason," Warren said. "She doesn't have to think," Magsie assured him with the same air of satisfaction; "she knows! Everyone knows how much you and I have been together: everyone knows that you backed 'The Bad Little Lady'--" "Everyone has no right to draw conclusions from that!" Warren said. Magsie shrugged her shoulders. "And what do we care, Greg? I don't care what the world thinks as long as I have you! Let them have the letters, let them buzz--we'll be miles away, and we won't care! And in a year or two, Greg, we'll come back, and they'll all flock about us--you'll see! That's the advantage of a name like the Gregory name! Why, who among them all dropped Clarence on Paula's account, or Rachael on Clarence's?" "Your going to see her has certainly--complicated things," Warren said reflectively. "On the contrary," Magsie said confidently, "it has cleared things up. It had to come, Greg; every time you and I talked about it we brought the inevitable nearer! Why, you weren't ever at home. Could that have gone on forever? You had no home, no wife, no freedom. I was simply getting sick of the whole thing! Now at least we're all open and aboveboard; all we've got to do is quietly set the wheels in motion!" "Well, I'll tell you what must be the first step, Magsie," Warren said after thought; "I'm going home now to see Rachael. I'll talk the whole thing over with her. Then I'll come to see you." "Positively?" asked Magsie. "Positively." "You won't just telephone that you're delayed, Greg, and leave me to wonder and worry?" the girl asked wistfully. "I'll wait until any hour!" He looked at her kindly, with a gentleness of aspect new in their relationship. "No, dear. It's nearly three now. I'll come take you to tea at, say, half-past four. I am operating again to-night, at nine, and SOME TIME I've got to get in a bath and some sleep. But there'll be time for tea." Magsie chattered gayly, but Warren was almost silent as they gathered together their belongings, and went out to the street. He called her another cab and beckoned to the man who was waiting with his own car. "In a few months, perhaps," said Magsie at parting, "when he's all tired and cross, I'll make him coffee AT HOME, and see that he gets his rest and quiet whenever he needs it!" She did not like his answer. "Rachael's a wonder at that sort of thing," he said. Magsie had not heard him speak so of his wife for months. "In fact, she spoils me," he added. "Spoils you by leaving you alone in this hot town for six months out of every year?" Magsie laughed lightly. "Good-bye, dear! At half-past four?" But even while he nodded Warren Gregory was resolving, in his soul, that he must never see Magsie Clay again. His world was strange and alarming; was falling to pieces about him. He was thirsting for Rachael: her voice, her reproaches, her forgiveness. In seven minutes he would be at home talking to his wife-- Dennison reported, with an impassive face, that Mrs. Gregory had left two hours ago with the children. He believed that they were gone to the Long Island house, sir. Warren, stupefied, went slowly upstairs to have the news confirmed by Pauline. Mrs. Gregory had taken Mary and Millie, sir. And there was a note. Of course there was a note. To emotion like Rachael's emotion silence was the only unthinkable thing. She had planned a dozen notes, written perhaps five. The one she left was brief: MY DEAR WARREN: I am leaving with the children for Clark's Hills. You will know best what steps to take in the matter of the freedom you desire. I will cooperate in any way. I have written Magsie that I will not contest your divorce. If for any reason you come to Clark's Hills, I will of course be obliged to see you. I ask you not to come. Please spare me another such talk as ours this morning. I have plenty of money. Always faithfully, R. G. Warren read it, and stood in the middle of her bedroom with the sheet crushed in his hand. Pauline had put the empty room in order--in terrible and desolate order. Usually there were flowers in the jars and glass bowls, a doll's chair by the bed, and a woolly animal seated in the chair; a dainty litter of lace scattered on Rachael's sewing-table. Usually she was there when he came in tired, to look up beautiful and concerned: "Something to eat, dear, or are you going to lie down?" Standing here with the note that ended it all in his hand, he wondered if he was the same man who had so often met that inquiry with an impatient: "Just please don't bother me, dear!" Who had met the succeeding question with, "I don't know whether I shall dine here or not!" It was half-past three. In an hour he would see Magsie. In that hour Magsie had received Rachael's note, and her heart sang. For the first time, in what she would have described as this "funny, mixed-up business," she began seriously to contemplate her elevation to the dignity of Warren Gregory's wife. Rachael's note was capable of only one interpretation: she would no longer stand in their way. She was taking the boys to the country, and had given Warren the definite assurance of her agreement to his divorce. If necessary, on condition that her claim to the children was granted, she would establish her residence in some Western city, and proceed with the legal steps from there. Magsie was frightened, excited, and thrilled all at once. She felt as if she had set some enormous machinery in motion, and was not quite sure of how it might be controlled. But on the whole, complacency underlay all other emotions. She was going to be married to the richest and nicest and most important man of her acquaintance! At heart, however, her manner belied her; Magsie had little self-confidence. She lived in a French girl's terror that youth would leave her before she had time to make a good match. If nobody knew better than Magsie that she was pretty, also nobody knew better that she was not clever. Men tired of her dimples and giggles and round eyes. Bryan Masters admired her, to be sure, but then Bryan Masters was also a divorced man, and an actor whose popularity was already on the wane. Richie Gardiner admired her in his pathetic, hopeless way, and Richie was young and rich. But Magsie shuddered away from Richie's coughing and fainting; his tonics and his diet had no place in her robust and joyous scheme of life. Besides, all Magsie's world would envy her capture of Greg; he belonged to New York. And Richie's father had been a miner, and his mother was "impossible!" Magsie dressed exquisitely for the tea; it seemed to her that she had never been so pleasantly excited in her life. She felt a part of the humming, crowded city, the spring wind and the uncertain sky. Life was thrilling and surprising. Half-past four o'clock came, and Warren came. They were in Magsie's little apartment now, and she could go into his arms. Warren was rather quiet as they went out to tea, but Magsie did not notice it. As a matter of fact, the man was bewildered; he was tired and worried about his work; but that was the least of it. He could not believe that the day's dazing and flying memories were real--the Albany train, Rachael's room, the hospital, Magsie and the Biltmore breakfast-room, Rachael's room again, and now again Magsie. Were the lawsuits about which one read in the papers based on no more than this? Apparently not. Magsie seemed perfectly confident of the outcome; Rachael had not shown any doubt. One woman had practically presented him to the other; the law was to be consulted. The law? How would those letters of Magsie's read if the law got hold of them? His memory flew from note to note. These hastily scratched words would be flung to the wind of gossip, that wind that blew so merrily among the houses where he was known. He had called Magsie his "wonder-child" and his "good little bad girl!" He had given her rings and sashes and a gold purse and a hat and white fox furs--any one gift he had made her was innocent enough in itself! But taken with all the others-- Magsie was in high feather; some tiresome preliminaries, and the day was won! She had not planned so definite a campaign, but it was all coming about in a fashion that more than fulfilled her plans. So, said Magsie to herself, stirring her tea, that was to be her fate: Paris, America, the stage, and then a rich marriage? Well, so be it. She could not complain. "Greg," she said a dozen times, "isn't it all like a dream?" To Warren Gregory, as he walked down the street after leaving her at the theatre, it was indeed like a dream, a frightful dream. He could hardly credit his senses, hardly believe that all these horrible things were true, that Rachael knew all about Magsie, and that Magsie was quietly thinking of divorce and marriage! Rachael, in such a rage, rushing away with the boys--why, he had made no secret of his admiration for Magsie from Rachael, he had often talked to her enthusiastically of Magsie! And here she was furiously offering him his freedom. Well, what had he done after all? What a preposterous fuss about nothing. His thoughts were checked and chilled by the memory of letters that Magsie had. Magsie could prove nothing by those letters-- But what a fool they would make him! Warren Gregory remembered the case of a dignified college professor whose private correspondence had recently been given to the press, and he felt a cool shudder run down his spine. Rachael, reading those letters! It was unthinkable! She and the world would think him a fool! It came to him suddenly that she and the world would be right. He was a fool, and it was a fool's paradise in which he had been wandering: to take his wife and home and sons for granted, and to spend all his leisure at the feet of a calculating little girl like Magsie! "What did you expect her to do?" Magsie had asked. What would any sane man expect her to do? Smile with him at the new favorite's charms, and take up her life in loneliness and neglect? And now, Rachael was gone, and he stood promised to Magsie. So much was clear. Rachael would fight for her divorce. Magsie would fight for her husband. "Oh, my God, how did we ever get into this sickening, sickening mess?" Warren said out loud in his misery. He had not dined, he did not think of dinner as he paced the windy, cool city streets hour after hour. Nine struck, and he hailed a cab, and went to the hospital, moving through his work like a man in a dream. The woman whose life he chanced to save throughout all her days would say she had had a lovely doctor. Warren hardly saw her. He thought only of Magsie, Magsie who had in her possession a number of compromising letters, every one sillier than the last--Magsie, who expected him to divorce his wife and marry her. He was in such a state of terror that he could not think. Every instant brought more disquiet to his thoughts; he felt as if, when he stepped out into the street again, the newsboys might be calling his divorce, as if honor and safety and happiness were gone forever. He did not see Magsie again that night, but walked and walked, entering his house sick and haggard, and sleeping the hours restlessly away. At nine o'clock the next morning he went to the telephone, and called the Valentine house. Doctor Valentine was not at home, he was informed. Was Mrs. Valentine there? Would she speak to Doctor Gregory? A long pause. Then the maid's pleasant impersonal voice again. Mrs. Valentine begged Doctor Gregory to excuse her. Warren felt as if he had been struck in the face. Under the eyes of irreproachable and voiceless servants he moved about his silent house. The hush of death seemed to him to lie heavy in the lovely rooms that had been Rachael's delight, and over the city that was just breaking into the green of spring. He dressed, and left directions with unusual sternness; he would be at the hospital, or the club, if he was wanted. He would come home to dinner at seven. "Mrs. Gregory may be back in a day or so, Pauline," he said. "I wish you'd keep her rooms in order--flowers, and all that." "Yes, sir," Pauline said respectfully. "Excuse me, Doctor--" she added. "Well?" said Warren as she paused. "Excuse me, Doctor, but I telephoned Mrs. Prince yesterday, as Mrs. Gregory suggested," Pauline went on timidly, "and she would be glad to have me come at any time, sir." Warren's expression did not change. "You mean that Mrs. Gregory dismissed you?" he suggested. "Yes, sir!" said Pauline with a sniff. "She paid me for--" "Then I should make an arrangement with Mrs. Prince, by all means!" Warren said evenly. But a deathlike terror convulsed his heart. Rachael had burned her bridges! He sent Magsie a note and flowers. He was "troubled by unexpected developments," he said, and too busy to see her to-day, but he would see her to-morrow. CHAPTER II Magsie had awakened to a sense of pleasure impending. It was many months since she had felt so important and so sure of herself. Her self-esteem had received more than one blow of late. Bowman had attempted to persuade her to take "The Bad Little Lady" on the road; Magsie had indignantly declined. He had then offered her a poor part in a summer farce; about this Magsie had not yet made up her mind. Now, she said to herself, reading Warren's note over her late breakfast tray, perhaps she might treat Mr. Bowman to the snubbing she had long been anxious to give him. Perhaps she might spend the summer quietly, inconspicuously, somewhere, placidly awaiting the hour when she would come out gloriously before the world as Warren Gregory's wife. Not at all a bad prospect for the daughter of old Mrs. Torrence's companion and housekeeper. A caller was announced and was admitted, a thin, restless woman who looked thirty-five despite or perhaps because of the rouge on her sunken cheeks and the smart gown she wore. The years had not treated Carol Pickering kindly: she was an embittered, dissatisfied woman now, noisily interested in the stage as a possible escape from matrimony for herself, and hence interested in Magsie, with whom she had lately formed a sort of suspicious and resentful intimacy. Joe Pickering had entirely justified in eight years the misgivings felt toward him by everyone who had Carol Breckenridge's interests at heart. His wife had come to him rich, and a few hours after their wedding her father's death had more than doubled the fortune left her by her grandmother. But it would be a sturdy legacy indeed that might hope to resist such inroads as the aimless and ill-matched young couple made upon it from their first day together. Idly acquiring, idly losing, being cheated and robbed on all sides, they drifted through an unhappy and exciting year or two, finally investing much of their money in bonds, and a handsome residue in that favorite dream of such young wasters: the breeding of horses for the polo market. "What if we lose it all--which we won't--we've still got the bonds!" Joe Pickering, leaden pockets under his eyes, his weak lips hanging loose, had said with his unsteady laugh. What inevitably followed, and what he had not foreseen, was that he should lose more than half the bonds, too. They were seriously crippled now, and began to quarrel, to hate each other for a greater part of the time; and their little son's handsome dark eyes fell on some sad scenes. But now, in the child's sixth year, they were still together, still appearing in public, and still, in that mysterious way known only to their type, rushing about on motor parties, buying champagne, and entertaining after a fashion in their cramped but pretentious apartment. Of late Billy had been seriously considering the stage. She was but twenty-six, after all, and she still had a girl's thirst for admiration and for excitement. She had called on Magsie, entertained the young actress, and the two had discovered a certain affinity. Magsie was delighted to see her now. They greeted each other affectionately, and Magsie, sending out her tray, settled herself comfortably in her pillows, and took the interested Carol entirely into her confidence, with the single reservation of Warren Gregory's name. "Handsome, and rich as Croesus, and his wife would divorce him, and belongs to one of the best families," summarized Billy. "Why, I think you would be a fool to do anything else!" "S'pose I would," dimpled Magsie in interesting embarrassment. "Have a heart, and tell me who it is," teased Carol, slipping her foot from her low shoe to study a hole in the heel of her silk stocking. "Oh, I couldn't!" Magsie protested. "Well, I shall guess, if I can," the other woman warned her. And presently she added: "I'll tell you what, if you do give it up, I'm going straight to Bowman, and ask for your place in your new show! There's nothing about it that I couldn't do, and I believe he might give me a chance! I'll tell you what: you wait until the last moment before you tell him, and then he can't be prepared in advance. And I'll risk having Jacqueline make me a couple of gowns, and be all ready to jump in. I'll learn the part, too," said Billy kindling; "you'll coach me in it, won't you?" "Of course I will!" Magsie agreed, but she did not say it heartily. The conversation was not extremely pleasing to Magsie at the moment. She loved Warren, of course, but it was certainly a good deal to resign, even to marry a Gregory of New York! Why, here was Billy, who had been a rich man's daughter, and had married the man of her choice, and had a nice child, mad to step into her shoes! And it was a painful reflection that probably Billy could do it. Billy was smart, she had a dash and finish about her that might well catch a manager's eye, and more than that, it was a rather poor part. It was no such part as Magsie had had in "The Bad Little Lady." There was a comedian in this cast, and a matinee idol for a leading man, and Magsie must content herself with a part and a salary much smaller than was given to either of these. She thought of Warren, and also fleetingly of Bryan Masters, and even of Richie Gardiner, and decided that it was a bitter and empty world, and she wished she had never been born. Bowman would be smart enough to see that he need pay Billy almost no salary, that she might be a discovery--the discovery for which all managers are always so pathetically on the alert, and that in case the play failed--Magsie was sure, this morning, that it would be the flattest failure ever seen on Broadway--he would have no irate leading lady to pacify; Billy would be only too grateful for the opportunity to try and fail. "Farce is the most difficult thing in the world to play," she said, now clinging desperately to her little distinction. "Oh, I know that!" Billy answered absently. She would have a smart apartment on the Drive, and dear little old Breck should drive with her in the Park, and go to the smartest boys' school in the country-- "And of course, I may not marry!" said Magsie. Carol hardly heard her. She was looking about the comfortable hotel apartment, all in a pretty disorder now, with Magsie's various possessions scattered about. There were pictures of actors on the mantel, heavily autographed, and flowers thrust carelessly into vases. There was a great sheaf of Killarney roses; the envelope that had held a card still dangled from their stems. Carol would have given a great deal to know whose card had been torn from it, and whose name was ringing just now in Magsie's brain. She even cared enough to tentatively interrogate Anna, Magsie's faithful Swedish woman. "Well, perhaps we shall have a change here, Anna?" Billy said brightly but cautiously, when she was in the hall. She wondered whether the woman would let her slip a bill into her hand. "Maybe," said Anna impassively. "How shall you like keeping house for a man and wife?" Billy pursued. "Aye do that bayfore," remarked Anna, responsive to this kindly interest; "aye ban hahr savan yahre, now, en des country." "And do you like Miss Clay's young man?" Billy said boldly. But at this shift of topic the light faded from Anna's infantile blue eyes, and a wary look replaced it. "She got more as one feller," she remarked discouragingly. Billy, outfaced, departed, feeling rather contemptible as she walked down the street. Joe was at home; she had left him in bed when she left the house at ten o'clock, and little Breck had been rather listlessly chatting with the colored boy in the elevator, and had begged his mother to take him downtown. Billy was really sorry for the little boy, but she did not know what to do about it; she wondered what other women did with little lonely boys of six. If she went home, it would not materially better the situation; the cook was cross to-day anyway, and would be crosser if Joe shouted for his breakfast in his usual ungracious manner. She could not go to Jacqueline and talk dresses unless she was willing to pay something on the last bill. Billy thought of the bank, as she always did think of the bank, when her reflections reached this point. There were the bonds, not as many as they had been, but still fine, salable bonds. She could pay the cook, pay the dressmaker, take Breck home a game, look at hats, spend the day in exactly the manner that pleased her best. She had promised Joe that they would discuss the sale of the next one together when they had sold the last bond, a month ago, and avoid it if possible. But what difference did one make?--a paltry fifty dollars a year! Perhaps it would be possible not to tell Joe-- Billy looked in her purse. She had a dollar bill and fifty cents, more than enough to take her to the bank in appropriate style. She signalled a taxicab. Magsie did not see Warren the next day, but they had tea and a talk on the day following. She told him gayly that he needed cheering, and presently took him into Tiffany's, where Warren found himself buying her a coveted emerald. Somehow during the afternoon he found himself talking and planning as if they really loved each other, and really were to be married. But it was an unsatisfactory hour. Magsie was excited and nervous, and was rather relieved than otherwise that her interviews with her admirer were necessarily short. As a matter of fact, the undisciplined little creature was overtired and unreasonable. She would have given her whole future for a quiet week in bed, with frivolous novels to read, and Anna to spoil her, no captious manager to please, no exhausting performances to madden her with a sense of her own and other people's imperfections, and no Warren to worry her with his long face. Added to Magsie's trials, in this dreadful week, was an interview with the imposing mother of young Richie Gardiner, a handsome, florid lady, who had inherited a large fortune from the miner husband whose fortunes she had gallantly shared through some extraordinary adventures in Nome. Mrs. Gardiner idolized her son; she was not inclined to be generous to the little flippant actress who had broken his heart. Richie would not go to the healing desert, he would not go to any place out of sound of Miss Clay's voice, out of the light of Miss Clay's eyes. Mrs. Gardiner had no objection to Magsie's person, nor to her profession, the fact being that her own origin had been even more humble than that of Miss Clay, but she wanted the treasure of her boy's love to be appreciated; she had been envying, since the hour of his birth, the woman who should win Richie's love. Stout, overdressed, deep-voiced, she came to see the actress, and they both cried; Magsie said that she was sorry--she was so bitterly sorry--but, yes, there was someone else. Mrs. Gardiner shrugged philosophically, wiped her eyes, drew a deep breath. No help for it! Presently she heavily departed; her solid weight, her tinkling spangles, and her rainbow plumes vanished into the limousine, and she was whirled away. Magsie sighed; these complications were romantic. What could one do? CHAPTER III Silent, abstracted, unsmiling, Rachael got through the days. She ate what Mary put before her, slept fairly well, answered the puzzled boys the second time they addressed her. She buckled sandals, read fairy tales, brushed the unruly heads, and listened to the wavering prayers day after day. Her eyes were strained, her usually quick, definite motions curiously uncertain; otherwise there was little change. Alice, in spite of her husband's half protest, went down to Clark's Hills, deciding in the first hour that the worst of the matter was all over and Rachael quite herself, gradually becoming doubtful, and returning home in despair. Her tearful account took George down to the country house a week later. Rachael met them; they dined with her. She was interested about the Valentine children, interested in their summer plans. She laughed as she quoted Derry's latest ventures with words. She walked to her gate to wave them good-bye on Monday morning, and told Alice that she was counting the days until the big family came down. But George and Alice were heavy hearted as they drove away. "What IS it?" asked Alice, anxious eyes upon her husband's kind, homely face. "She's like a person recovering from a blow. She's not sick; but, George, she isn't well!" "No, she's not well," George agreed soberly. "Bad glitter in her eyes, and I don't like that calm for fiery Rachael! Well, you'll be down here in a week or two--" "Last week," Alice said not for the first time, "she only spoke of--of the trouble, you know--once. We were just going out to dinner, and she turned to me, and said: 'I didn't like my bargain eight years ago, Alice, and I tore my contract to pieces! Now I'll pay for it.'" "And you said?" "I said, 'Oh, nonsense, Rachael. Don't be morbid! There's no parallel between the cases!'" "H'm!" The doctor was silent for a long time. "I don't know what Greg's doing," he added after thought. "The question is, what is Magsie doing?" said Alice. "In my opinion, Rachael's simply blown up," George submitted. "Magsie told her they had talked of marriage!" Alice countered. George gave an incredulous snort. "Well, then, Magsie lied," he said firmly. "She really isn't the lying type, George. And there's no question that Greg and she did see each other every day, and that he wrote her letters and gave her presents!" Alice finished rather timidly, for her husband's face was a thunder-cloud. The old car flew along at thirty-five miles an hour. "Damn FOOL!" George presently muttered. Alice glanced at him in sympathetic concern. "George, why don't you see him?" George preserved a stern silence for perhaps two flying minutes, then he sighed. "Oh, he'll come to me fast enough when he needs me! Lord, I've pulled old Greg out of trouble before." His whole face grew tender as he added: "You know Greg is a genius, Alice; he's not like other men!" "I should hope he wasn't!" said Alice with spirit. "We--ll!" She was sorry for her vehemence when George merely shook his head and ended the conversation on the monosyllable. After a while she attempted to reopen the subject. "If geniuses can act that way, I'd rather have our girls marry grocers!" The girls' father smiled absently. "Oh, well, of course!" he conceded. "Greg is no more a genius than you are, George," argued Alice. "Oh, Alice, Alice!" he protested, really distressed, "don't ever let anyone hear you say that! Why, that only shows that you don't know what Greg is. Lord, the man seems to have an absolute instinct for bones; he'll take a chance when not one of the rest will! No, you mark my words, Alice, Greg has let Magsie Clay make a fool of him; he's been overtired and nervous--we've all seen that--but he's as innocent of any actual harm in this thing as our Gogo!" "Innocent!" sniffed Alice. "He'll break Rachael's heart with his innocence, and then he'll marry Magsie Clay--you'll see!" "He'll come to me to get him out of it within the month--you'll see!" George retorted. "He'll keep out of your way!" Alice predicted confidently. "I know Greg. He has to be perfect or nothing." But it was only ten days later that Warren Gregory walked up the steps of the Valentine house at about ten o'clock on a silent, hazy morning. George had not yet left the house for the day. The drawing-room furniture was swathed in linen covers, and a collection of golf irons, fishing rods, canoe paddles, and tennis rackets crowded the hallway. The young Valentines were departing for the country to-morrow, and their excited voices echoed from above stairs. Warren had supposed them already gone. Rachael was alone, then, he reflected, alone in that desolate little country village! He nodded to the maid, and asked in a guarded tone for Doctor Valentine. A moment later George Valentine came into the drawing-room, and the two men exchanged a look strange to their twenty years of affectionate intercourse. Warren attempted mere cold dignity; he was on the defensive, and he knew it. George's look verged on contempt, thinly veiled by a polite interest in his visitor's errand. "George," said Warren suddenly, when he had asked for Alice and the children, and an awkward silence had made itself felt; "George, I'm in trouble. I--I wonder if you can help me out?" He could hardly have made a more fortunate beginning; halting as the words were, and miserable as was the look that accompanied them, both rang true to the older man, and went straight to his heart. "I'm sorry to hear it," George said. Warren folded his arms, and regarded his friend steadily across them. "You know Rachael has left me, George?" he began. "I--well, yes, Alice went down there first, and then I went down," George said. "We only came back ten days ago." There was another brief silence. "She--she hasn't any cause for this, you know, George," Warren said, ending it, after watching the other man hopefully for further suggestion. "Hasn't, huh?" George asked thoughtfully, hopefully. "No, she hasn't!" Warren reiterated, gaining confidence. "I've been a fool, I admit that, but Rachael has no cause to go off at half-cock, this way!" "What d'you mean by that?" George asked flatly. "What do you mean--you've been a fool?" "I've been a fool about Magsie Clay," Warren admitted, "and Rachael learned about it, that's all. My Lord! there never was an instant in my life when I took it seriously, I give you my word, George!" "Well, if Rachael takes it seriously, and Magsie takes it seriously, you may find yourself beginning to take it seriously, too," George said with a dull man's simple evasion of confusing elements. "Rachael may get her divorce," Warren said desperately. "I can't help that, I suppose. I've got a letter from her here--she left it. I don't know what she thinks! But I'll never marry Margaret Clay--that much is settled. I'll leave town--my work's ended, I might as well be dead. God knows I wish I were!" "Just how far have you gone with Magsie?" George interrupted quietly. "Why, nothing at all!" Warren said. "Flowers, handbags, things like that! I've kissed her, but I swear Rachael never gave me any reason to think she'd mind that." "How often have you seen her?" George asked in a somewhat relieved tone. "Have you seen her once a week?" "Oh, yes! I say frankly that this was a--a flirtation, George. I've seen her pretty nearly every day---" "But she hasn't got any letters--nothing like that?" Warren's confident expression changed. "Well, yes, she has some letters. I--damn it! I am a fool, George! I swear I wrote them just as I might to anybody. I--I knew it mattered to her, you know, and that she looked for them. I don't know how they'd read!" George was silent, scowling, and Warren said, "Damn it!" again nervously, before the other man said: "What do you think she will do?" "I don't know, George," Warren said honestly. "Could you--buy her off?" George presently asked after thought. "Magsie? Never! She's not that type. She's one of ourselves as to that, George. It was that that made me like Magsie--she's a lady, you know. She thinks she's in love; she wants to be married. And if Rachael divorces me, what else can I do?" "Rachael wants the divorce for the boys," George said. "She told Alice so. She said that except for that, nothing on earth would have made her consider it. But she doesn't want you and Magsie Clay to have any hold over her sons--and can you blame her? She's been dragged through all this once. You might have thought of that!" "Oh, my God!" Warren said, stopping by the mantel, and putting his face in his hands. "Well, what did you think would happen?" George asked as Magsie had asked. Then for perhaps two long minutes there was absolute silence, while Warren remained motionless, and George, in great distress, rubbed his upstanding hair. "George, what shall I do?" Warren burst out at length. "Why, now I'll tell you," the older man said in a tone that carried exquisite balm to his listener. "Alice and I have talked this over, of course, and this seems to me to be the only way out: we know you, old man--that's what hurts. Alice and I know exactly what has got you into this thing. You're too easy, Warren. You think because you mean honorably by Magsie Clay, and amuse yourself by being generous to her, that Magsie means honorably by you. You've got a high standard of morals, Greg, but where they differ from the common standards you fail. If the world is going to put a certain construction upon your attentions to an actress, it doesn't matter what private construction you happen to put upon them! Wake up, and realize what a fool you are to try to buck the conventions! What you need is to study other people's morals, not to be eternally justifying and analyzing your own. I don't know how you'll come out of this thing. Upon my word, it's the worst mess we ever got into since you misquoted Professor Diggs and he sued you. Remember that?" "Oh, George--my God--how you stood by me then," Warren said. "Get me out of this, and I'll believe that there never was a friend like you in the world! I don't know what I ever did to have you and Alice stand by me--" "Alice isn't standing by you to any conspicuous extent," George Valentine said smilingly, "although, last night, when she was putting the girls to bed, she put her arms about Martha, and said, 'George, she wouldn't be here to-day if Greg hadn't taken the chance and cut that thing out of her throat!' At which, of course," Doctor Valentine added with his boyish smile, "Martha's dad had to wipe his eyes, and Martha's mother began to cry!" And again he frankly wiped his eyes. "However, the thing is this," he presently resumed, "if you could buy off Magsie--simply tell her frankly that you've been a fool, that you don't want to go on with it--no, eh?" A little discouraged by Warren's dubious shake of the head, he went on to the next suggestion. "Well, then, if you can't--tell her that there cannot be any talk at present of a legal separation, and that you are going away. Would you have the nerve to do that? Tell her that you'll be back in eight months or a year. But of course the best thing would be to buy her off, or call it off in some way, and then write Rachael fully, frankly--tell her the whole thing, ask her to wait at least one year, and then let you see her--" Warren could see himself writing this letter, could even see himself walking into the dear old sitting-room at Home Dunes. "I might see Magsie," he said after thought, "and ask her what she would take in place of what she wants. It's just possible, but I don't believe she would---" "Well, what could she do if you simply called the whole thing off?" George asked. "Hang it! it's a beastly thing to do, but if she wants money, you've got it, and you've done her no harm, though nobody'll believe that." "She'll take the heartbroken attitude," Warren said slowly. "She'll say that she trusted me, that she can't believe me, and so on." "Well, you can stand that. Just set your jaw, and think of Rachael, and go through with it once and for all." "Yes, but then if she should turn to Rachael again?" "Ah, well, she mustn't do that. Let her think that, after the year, you'll come to a fresh understanding rather than let her fight. And meanwhile, if I were you, I would write Rachael a long letter and make a clean breast. Alice and the girls go down to-morrow; they'll keep me in touch. How about coming in here for a bachelor dinner Friday? Then we can talk developments." "George, you certainly are a generous loyal friend!" Warren Gregory said, a dry huskiness in his voice as he wrung the other's hand in good-bye. George went upstairs to tell the interested and excited and encouraged Alice about their talk, and Alice laughed and cried with-pleasure, confident that everything would come out well now, and grateful beyond words that Greg was showing so humbled and penitent a spirit. "Leave Rachael to me!" Alice said exultingly. "How we'll all laugh at this nonsense some day!" Even Warren Gregory, walking down the street, was conscious of new hope and confidence. He was not thinking of Magsie to-day, but of Rachael, the most superb and splendid figure of womanhood that had ever come into his life. How she had raged at him in that last memorable talk; how vital, how vigorous she was, uncompromising, direct, courageous! And as a swimmer, who miles away from shore in the cruel shifting green water, might think with aching longing of the quiet home garden, the kitchen with its glowing fire and gleaming pottery, the pleasant homely routine of uneventful days, and wonder that he had ever found safety and comfort anything less than a miracle, Warren thought of the wife he had sacrificed, the children and home that had been his, unchallenged and undisputed, only a few months before. He knew just where he had failed his wife. He felt to-day that to comfort her again, to take her to dinner again, violets on her breast, and to see her loosen her veil, and lay aside her gloves with those little gestures so familiar and so infinitely dear would be heaven, no less! What comradeship they had had, they two, what theatre trips, what summer days in the car, what communion over the first baby's downy head, what conferences over the new papers and cretonnes for Home Dunes! Girded by these and a hundred other sacred memories he went to Magsie, who was busy, the maid told him, with her hairdresser. But she presently came out to him, wrapped snugly in a magnificent embroidered kimono, and with her masses of bright hair, almost dry, hanging about her lovely little face. She had never in all their intercourse shown him quite this touch of intimacy before, and he felt with a little wince of his heart that it was a sign of her approaching possession. "Greg, dear," said Magsie seating herself on the arm of his chair, and resting her soft little person against him, "I've been thinking about you, and about the wonderful, WONDERFUL way that all our troubles have come out! If anyone had told us, two months ago, that Rachael would set you free, and that all this would have happened, we wouldn't have believed it, would we? I watched you walking down the street yesterday afternoon, and, oh, Greg, I hope I'm going to be a good wife to you; I hope I'm going to make up to you for all the misery you've had to bear!" This was not the opening sentence Warren was expecting. Magsie had been petulant the day before, and had pettishly declared that she would not wait a year for any man in the world. Warren had at once seized the opening to say that he would not hold her to anything against her will, to be answered by a burst of tears, and an entreaty not to be "so mean." Then Magsie had to be soothed, and they had gone to tea as a part of that familiar process. But to-day her mood was different; she was full of youthful enthusiasm for the future. "You know I love Rachael, Greg, and of course she is a most exceptional woman," bubbled Magsie happily, "but she doesn't appreciate the fact that you're a genius--you're not a little everyday husband, to be held to her ideas of what's done and what isn't done! Big men are a law unto themselves. If Rachael wants to hang over babies' cribs, and scare you to death every time Jim sneezes--" Warren listened no further. His mind went astray on a memory of the night Jim was feverish, a memory of Rachael in her trailing dull-blue robe, with her thick braids hanging over her shoulders. He remembered that Jim was promised the circus if he would take his medicine; and how Rachael, with smiling lips and anxious eyes, had described the big lions and the elephants for the little restless potentate---- "--because I've had enough of Bowman, and enough of this city, and all I ask is to run away with you, and never think of rehearsals and routes and all the rest of it in my life again!" Magsie was saying. Presently she seemed to notice his silence, for she asked abruptly: "Where's Rachael?" Warren roused himself from deep thought. "At the Long Island house; at Clark's Hills." "Oh!" Magsie, who was now seated opposite him, clasped her hands girlishly about her knees. "What is the plan, Greg?" she asked vivaciously. "Her plan?" Warren said clearing his throat. "Our plan!" Magsie amended contentedly. And she summarized the case briskly: "Rachael consents to a divorce, we know that. I am not going on with Bowman, I've decided that. Now what?" She eyed his brooding face curiously. "What shall I do, Greg? I suppose we oughtn't to see each other as we did last summer? If Rachael goes West--and I suppose she will--shall I go up to the Villalongas'? They're terribly nice to me; and I think Vera suspects---" "What makes you think she does?" Warren asked, feeling as if a hot, dry wind suddenly smote his skin. "Because she's so nice to me!" Magsie answered triumphantly. "Rachael's been just a little snippy to Vera," she confided further, "or Vera thinks she has. She's not been up there for ages! I could tell Vera---" Warren's power of reasoning was dissipated in an absolute panic. But George had primed him for this talk. He assumed an air of business. "There are several things to think of, Magsie," he said briskly, "before we can go farther. In the first place, you must spend the summer comfortably. I've arranged for that--" He handed her a small yellow bank-book. Magsie glanced at it; glanced at him. "Oh, Greg, dear, you're too generous!" "I'm not generous at all," he answered with an honest flush. "I know what I am now, Magsie, I'm a cad." "Who says you're a cad?" Magsie demanded indignantly. "I say so!" he answered. "Any man is a cad who gets two women into a mess like this!" "Greg, dear, you shan't say so!" Her slender arms were about his neck. "Well--" He disengaged the arms, and went on with his planning. "George Valentine is going to see Rachael," he proceeded. "About the divorce?" said Magsie with a nod. "About the whole thing. And George thinks I had better go away." "Where?" demanded Magsie. "Oh, travelling somewhere." "Rio?" dimpled Magsie. "You know you have always had a sneaking desire to see Rio." Warren smiled mechanically. It had been Rachael's favorite dream "when the boys are big enough!" His sons--were they bathing this minute, or eagerly emptying their blue porridge bowls? "Magsie, dear," he said slowly, "it's a miserable business--this. I'm as sorry as I can be about it. But the truth is that George wants me to get away only until he and Alice can get Rachael into a mood where she'll forgive me. They see this whole crazy thing as it really is, dear. I'm not a young man, Magsie, I'm nearly fifty. I have no business to think of anything but my own wife and my work and my children--Don't look so, Magsie," he broke off to say; "I only blame myself! I have loved you--I do love you--but it's only a man's love for a sweet little amusing friend. Can't we--can't we stop it right here? You do what you please; draw on me for twice that, for ten times that; have a long, restful summer, and then come back in the fall as if this was all a dream---" Magsie had been watching him steadily during this speech, a long speech for him. At first she had been obviously puzzled, then astonished, now she was angry. She had grown pale, her pretty childish mouth was a little open, her breath coming fast. For a full minute, as his voice halted, there was silence. "Then--then you didn't mean all you said?" Magsie demanded stormily, after the pause. "You didn't mean that you--cared? You didn't mean the letters, and the presents, and the talks we've had? You knew I was in earnest, but you were just fooling!" Sheer excitement and fury kept her panting for a moment, then she went on: "But I think I know who's done this, Greg!" she said viciously; "it's Mrs. Valentine. She and her husband have been talking to you; they've done it. She's persuaded you that you never were in earnest with me!" Magsie ran across the room, flung open the little desk that stood there, and tore the rubber band from a package of letters. "You take her one of these!" she said, half sobbing. "Ask her if that means anything! Greg, dear!" she interrupted herself to say in a child's reproachful tone, "didn't you mean it?" And with her soft hair floating, and her figure youthful under the simple lines of her Oriental robe, she came to stand close beside him, her mood suddenly changed. "Don't you love me any more, Greg?" said she. "Love you!" he countered with a rueful laugh, "that's the trouble." She linked her soft little hands in his, raised reproachful eyes. "But you don't love me enough to stand by me, now that Rachael is so cross?" she asked artlessly. "Oh, Greg, I will wait years and years for you!" Warren's expression was of wretchedness; he managed a smile. "It's only that I hate to let you in for it all, dear. And let her in for it. I feel as if we hadn't thought it out--quite enough," he said. "What does it let Rachael in for?" she asked quickly. "Here's her letter, Greg--I'll read it to you! Rachael doesn't mind." "Well--it will be horrible for you," he submitted in a troubled tone. "Horrible for us both." "You mean your work can't spare you?" she asked with a shrewd look. "No!" He shrugged wearily. "No. The truth is, I want to get away," he said in an undertone. "Ah, well!" Magsie understood that. "Of course you want to get away from the fuss and the talk, Greg," she said eagerly. "I think we all ought to get away: Rachael to Long Island, I to Vera, you anywhere! We can't possibly be married for months---" Suddenly her voice sank, she dropped his hands, and locked her smooth little arms about his neck. "But I'll be waiting for you, and you for me, Greg," she whispered. "Isn't it all settled now, isn't it only a question of all the bother, lawyers and arrangements, before you and I belong to each other as we've always dreamed we might?" He looked down gravely, almost sadly, and yet with tenderness, upon the eager face. He had always found her lovable, endearing, and sweet; even out of this hideous smoke and flame she emerged all charming and all desirable. He tightened his arms about the thinly wrapped little figure. "Yes. I think it's all settled now, Magsie!" he said. "Well, then!" She sealed it with one of her quick little kisses. "Now sit down and read a magazine, Greg," she said happily, "and in ten minutes you'll see me in my new hat, all ready to go to lunch!" CHAPTER IV The blue tides rose and fell at Clark's Hills, the summer sun shone healingly down upon Rachael's sick heart and soul. Day after day she took her bare-headed, sandalled boys to the white beach, and lay in the warm sands, with the tonic Atlantic breezes blowing over her. Space and warmth and silence were all about; the incoming breakers moved steadily in, and shrank back in a tumble of foam and blue water; gulls dipped and wheeled in the spray. As far as her dreaming eyes could reach, up the beach and down, there was the same bath of warm color, blue sea melting into blue sky, white sand mingling with yellow dunes, until all colors, in the distance, swam in a haze of dull gold. Now and then, when even the shore was hot, the boys elected to spend their afternoon by the bay on the other side of the village. Here there was much small traffic in dingies and dories and lobster-pots; the slower tides rocked the little craft at the moorings, and sent bright swinging light against the weather-worn planks under the pier. Rachael smiled when she saw Derry's little dark head confidently resting against the flowing, milky beard of old Cap'n Jessup, or heard the bronzed lean younger men shout to her older son, as to an equal, "Pitch us that painter, will ye, Jim!" She spoke infrequently but quietly of Warren to Alice. The older woman discovered, with a pang of dismay, that Rachael's attitude was fixed beyond appeal. There was such a thing as divorce, established and approved; she, Rachael, had availed herself of its advantages; now it was Warren's turn. Rachael would live for her sons. They must of course be her own. She would take them away to some other atmosphere: "England, I think," she told Alice. "That's my mother country, you know, and children lead a sane, balanced life there." "I will be everything to them until they are--say, ten and twelve," she added on another day, "and then they will begin to turn toward their father. Of course I can't blame him to them, Alice. And some day they will come to believe that it is all their mother's fault--that's the way with children! And so I'll pay again." "Dearest girl, you're morbid!" Alice said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "No, I mean it, I truly mean that! It is disillusioning for young boys to learn that their father and mother were not self-controlled, normal persons, able to bear the little pricks of life, but that our history has been public gossip for years, that two separate divorces are in their immediate history!" "Rachael, don't talk so recklessly!" Rachael smiled sadly. "Well, perhaps I can be a good mother to them, even if they don't idealize me!" she mused. "I have come to this conclusion," she told Alice one day, about a fortnight later, "while civilization is as it is, divorce is wrong. No matter what the circumstances are, no matter where the right and wrong lie, divorce is wrong." "I suppose there are cases of drink or infidelity--" Alice submitted mildly. "Then it's the drink, or the infidelity that should be changed!" Rachael answered inflexibly. "It's the one vow we take with God as witness; and no blessing ever follows a broken vow!" "I think myself that there are not many marriages that couldn't be successes!" Alice said thoughtfully. "Separation, if you like!" Rachael conceded with something of her old bright energy. "Change and absence, for weeks and months, but not divorce. Paula Verlaine should never have divorced Clarence; she made a worse match, if that was possible, and involved three other small lives in the general discomfort. And I never should have married Clarence, because I didn't love him. I didn't want children then; I never felt that the arrangement was permanent; but having married him, I should have stayed by him. I know the mood in which Clarence took his own life; he never loved me as he did Bill, but he wouldn't have done it if I had been there!" "I cannot consider Clarence Breckenridge a loss to society," Alice said. "I might have made Clarence a man who would have been a loss to society," Rachael mused. "He was proud; loved to be praised. And he loved children; one or two babies in the nursery would have put Billy in second place. But he bored me, and I simply wouldn't go on being bored. So that if I had had a little more courage, or a little more prudence in the first place, Billy, Clarence, perhaps Charlotte and Charlie, Greg, Deny, Jim, Joe Pickering, and Billy might all have been happier, to say nothing of the general example to society." "I hear that Billy is unhappy enough now," Alice said, pleased at Rachael's unusual vivacity. "Isabella Haviland told my Mary that Cousin Billy was talking about divorce." "From Joe?--is that so?" Rachael looked up interestedly. "I hadn't heard it, and somehow I don't believe it! They have a curious affinity through all their adventures. Poor little Bill, it hasn't been much of a life!" "They say she is going on the stage," Alice pursued, "which seems a pity, especially for the child's sake. He's an attractive boy; we saw him with her at Atlantic City last winter--one of those wonderfully dressed, patient, pathetic children, always with the grown-ups! The little chap must have a rather queer life of it drifting about from hotel to hotel. They're hard up, and I believe most of the shops and hotels have actually black-listed them. He would seem to be the sort of man who cannot hold on to anything, and, of course, there's the drinking! She's not the girl to save him. She drinks rather recklessly herself; it's a part of her pose." "I wonder if she would let the youngster come down here and scramble about with my boys?" Rachael said unexpectedly. She had not seriously thought of it; the suggestion came idly. But instantly it took definite hold. "I wonder if she would?" she added with more animation than she had shown for some time. "I would love to have him, and of course the boys would go wild with joy! I would be so glad to do poor old Billy a good turn. She and I were always friends, and had some queer times together. And more than that"--Rachael's eyes darkened--"I believe that if I had had the right influence over her she never would have married Joe. I regarded the whole thing too lightly; I could have tried, in a different way, to prevent it, at least. I am certainly going to write her, and ask for little Breckenridge. It would be something to do for Clarence, too," Rachael added in a low tone, and as if half to herself, "and for many long years I have felt that I would be glad to do something for him! To have his grandson here--doesn't it seem odd?-and perhaps to lend Billy a hand; it seems almost like an answer to prayer! He can sleep on the porch, between the boys, and if he has some old clothes, and a bathing suit--" "MY DEAR BILLY," she wrote that night, "I have heard one or two hints of late that you have a good many things in your life just now that make for worry, and am writing to know if my boys and I may borrow your small son for a few weeks or a month, so that one small complication of a summer in the city will be spared you. We are down here on Long Island on a strip of high land that runs between the beautiful bay and the very ocean, and when Jim and Derry are not in the one they are apt to be in the other. It will be a great joy to them to have a guest, and a delight to me to take good care of your boy. I think he will enjoy it, and it will certainly do him good. "I often think of you with great affection, and hope that life is treating you kindly. Sometimes I fancy that my old influence might have been better for you than it was, but life is mistakes, after all, and paying for them, and doing better next time. "Always affectionately yours, RACHAEL." Three days elapsed after this letter was dispatched, and Rachael had time to wonder with a little chill if she had been too cordial to Billy, and if Billy were laughing her cool little laugh at her one-time step-mother's hospitality and moralizing. But as a matter of fact, the invitation could not have been more happily timed for young Mrs. Pickering. Billy, without any further notice to Magsie, had been to see Magsie's manager, coolly betraying her friend's marriage plans, pledging the angry and bewildered Bowman to secrecy, and applying for the position on her own account in the course of one brief visit. Bowman would not commit himself to engaging Billy, but he was infinitely obliged to her for the news of Magsie, and told her so frankly. It was when she returned home from this call, and hot and weary, was trying to break an absolute promise to the boy, involving the Zoo and ice-cream, that Rachael's letter arrived. Billy read it through, sat thinking hard, and presently read it again. The softest expression her rather hard young face ever knew came over it as she sat there. This was terribly decent of Rachael, thought Billy. She must be the busiest and happiest woman in the world, and yet her heart had gone out to little Breck. The last line, however, meant more than all the rest, just now, to Billy Pickering. She was impressionable, and not given to finding out the truths of life for herself. Rachael's opinions she had always respected. And now Rachael admitted that life was all mistakes, and added that heartening line about paying for them, and doing better. "'Cause I am so hot--and I never had any lunch--and you said you would!" fretted the little boy, flinging himself against her, and sending a wave of heat through her clothing as he did so. "Listen, Breck," she said suddenly, catching him lightly in her arm, and smiling down at him, "would you like to go down and stay with the Gregory boys?" "I don't know 'em," said Breck doubtfully. "Down on the ocean shore," Billy went on, "where you could go in bathing every day, and roll in the surf, and picnic, and sleep out of doors!" "Did they ask me?" he demanded excitedly. "Their mother did, and she says that you can stay as long as you're a good boy, down there where it's nice and cool, digging in the sand, and going bare foot--" "I'll be the best boy you ever saw!" Breck sputtered eagerly. "I'll work for her, and I'll make the other kids work for her--she'll tell you she never saw such a good boy! And I'll write you letters--" "You won't have to work, old man!" Billy felt strangely stirred as she kissed him. She watched him as he rushed away to break the news of his departure to the stolid Swedish girl in the kitchen and the colored boy at the elevator. He jerked his little bureau open, and began to scramble among his clothes; he selected a toy for Jim and a toy for Derry, and his mother noticed that they were his dearest toys. She took him downtown and bought him a bathing suit, and sandals, and new pajamas, and his breathless delight, as he assured sympathetic clerks that he was going down to the shore, made her realize what a lonely, uncomfortable little fellow he had been all these months. He could hardly eat his supper that night, and had to be punished before he would even attempt to go to sleep, and the next morning he waked his mother at six, and fairly danced with impatience and anxiety as the last preparations were made. Billy took him down to Clark's Hills herself. She had not notified Rachael, or answered her in any way, never questioning that Rachael would know her invitation to be accepted. But from the big terminal station she did send a wire, and Rachael and the boys met her after the hot trip. "Billy, it was good of you to come," Rachael said, kissing her quite naturally as they met. "I never thought of doing anything else," Billy said, breathing the fresh salt air with obvious pleasure. "I had no idea that it was such a trip. But he was an angel--look at them now, aren't they cute together?" Rachael's boys had taken eager possession of their guest; the three were fast making friends as they trotted along together toward the old motor car that Rachael ran herself. "It's a joy to them," their mother said. "Get in here next to me, Bill; I'm not going even to look at you until I get you home. Did you ever see the water look so delicious? We'll all go down for a dip pretty soon. I live so simply here that I'm entirely out of the way of entertaining a guest, but now that you're here, you must stay and have a little rest yourself!" "Oh, thank you, but--" Billy began in perfunctory regret. Her tone changed: "I should love to!" she said honestly. Rachael laughed. "So funny to hear your old voice, Bill, and your old expressions." "I was just thinking that you've not changed much, Rachael." "I? Oh, but I've gray hair! Getting old fast, Billum." "And how's Greg?" Billy did not understand the sudden shadow that fell across Rachael's face, but she saw it, and wondered. "Very well, my dear." "Does he get down here often? It's a hard trip." "He always comes in his car. They make it in--I don't know--something like two hours and ten minutes, I think. This is my house, with all its hydrangeas in full bloom. Yes, isn't it nice? And here's Mary for Breckenridge's bag." Rachael had got out of the car, and now she gave Billy's boy her hand, and stood ready to help him down. "Well, Breck," said she, "do you think you are going to like my house, and my little boys? Will you give Aunt Rachael a kiss?" Billy said nothing as the child embraced his new-found relative heartily, nor when Rachael took her upstairs to show her the third hammock between the other two, and herself invested the visitor in blue overalls and a wide hat. But late that evening, after a silence, she said suddenly: "You're more charming than ever, Rachael; you're one of the sweetest women I ever saw!" "Thank you!" Rachael said with a little note of real pleasure under her laugh. "You've grown so gentle, and good," said Billy a little awkwardly. "Perhaps it's just because you're so sweet to Breck, and because you have such a nice way with children, but I--I am ever and ever so grateful to you! I've often thought of you, all this time, and of the old days, and been glad that so much happiness of every sort has come to you. At first I felt dreadfully--at that time, you know--" She stopped and faltered, but Rachael looked at her kindly. They were sitting on the wide porch, under the velvet-black arch of the starry sky, and watching the occasional twinkle of lights on the dark surface of the bay. "You may say anything you like to me, Billy," Rachael said. "Well, it was only--you know how I loved him--" Billy said quickly. "I've so often thought that perhaps you were the only person who knew what it all meant to me. I only thought he would be angry for a while. I thought then that Joe would surely win him. And afterward, I thought I would go crazy, thinking of him sitting there in the club. I had failed him, you know! I've never talked about it. I guess I'm all tired out from the trip down." It was clumsily expressed; the words came as if every one were wrung from the jealous silence of the long years, but presently Billy was beside Rachael's chair, kneeling on the floor, and their arms were about each other. "I killed him!" sobbed Billy. "He spoke of me the last of all. He said to Berry Stokes that he--he loved me. And he had a little old picture of me--you remember the one in the daisy frame?--over his heart. Oh, Daddy, Daddy!--always so good to me!" "No, Bill, you mustn't say that you killed him," Rachael said, turning pale. "If you were to blame, I was, too, and your grandmother, and all of us who made him what he was. I didn't love him when I married him, and he was the sort of man who has to be loved; he knew he wasn't big, and admirable, and strong, but many a man like Clancy has been made so, been made worth while, by having a woman believe in him. I never believed in him for one second, and he knew it. I despised him, and where he sputtered and stammered and raged, I was cool and quiet, and smiling at him. It isn't right for human beings to feel that way, I see it now. I see now that love--love is the lubricant everywhere in the world, Bill. One needn't be a fool and be stepped upon; one has rights; but if loving enough goes into everything, why, it's bound to come out right." "Oh, I do believe it!" said Billy fervently, kneeling on the floor at Rachael's feet, her wet, earnest eyes on Rachael's face, her arms crossed on the older woman's knees. "I believe," Rachael said, "that in those seven years I might have won your father to something better if I had cared. He wasn't a hard man, just desperately weak. I've thought of it so often, of late, Bill. There might have been children. Clancy had a funny little pathetic fondness for babies. And he was a loving sort of person---" "Ah, wasn't he?" Billy's eyes brimmed again. "Always that to me. But not to you, Rachael, and little cat that I was--I knew it. But you see I had no particular reverence for marriage, either. How should I? Why, my own mother and my half-sisters--hideous girls, they are, too--were pointed out to me in Rome a year ago. I didn't know them! I could have made your life much easier, Rachael. I wish I had. I was thinking that this afternoon when Breck was letting you carry him out into deep water, clinging to you so cunningly. He is a cute little kid, isn't he? And he'll love you to death! He's a great kisser." "He's a great darling," smiled Rachael, "and all small boys I adore. He'll begin to put on weight in no time. And--I was thinking, Bill--he would have reconciled Clancy to you and Joe, perhaps; one can't tell! If I had not left him, Clarence might have been living to-day, that I know. He only--did what he did in one of those desperate lonely times he used to dread so." "Ah, but he was terrible to you, Rachael!" Billy said generously. "You deserved happiness if anyone ever did!" Again she did not understand Rachael's sharp sigh, nor the little silence that followed it. Their talk ran on quite naturally to other topics: they discussed all the men and women of that old world they both had known, the changes, the newcomers, and the empty places. Mrs. Barker Emory had been much taken up by Mary Moulton, and was a recognized leader at Belvedere Bay now; Straker Thomas was in a sanitarium; old Lady Torrence was dead; Marian Cowles had snatched George Pomeroy away from one of the Vanderwall girls at the last second; Thomas Prince was paralyzed; Agnes Chase had married a Denver man whom nobody knew; the Parker Hoyts had a delicate little baby at last; Vivian Sartoris had left her husband, nobody knew why. Billy was quite her old self as she retailed these items and many more for Rachael's benefit. But Rachael saw that the years had made a sad change in her before the three days' visit was over. Poor little, impudent, audacious Billy was gone forever--Billy, who had always been so exquisite in dress, so prettily conspicuous on the floor of the ballroom, so superbly self-conscious in her yachting gear, her riding-clothes, her smart little tennis costumes! She was but a shadow of her old self now. The smart hats, the silk stockings, the severely trim frocks were still hers, but the old delicious youth, her roses, her limpid gaze, the velvety curve of throat and cheek, these were gone. Billy had been spirited, now she was noisy. She had been amusingly precocious, now she was assuming an innocence, a naivete, that were no longer hers, had never been natural to her at any time. She had always been coolly indifferent to the lives of other men and women. Now she was embittered as to her own destiny, and full of ugly and eager gossip concerning everyone she knew. She chanced upon the name of Magsie Clay, little dreaming how straight the blow went to Rachael's heart, but had excellent reasons of her own for not expressing the belief that Magsie would soon leave the stage, and so gave no hint of Magsie's rich and mysterious lover. She did tell Rachael that she herself meant to go on the stage, but imparted no details as to her hopes for doing so. "Just how much money is left, Billy?" Rachael presently felt herself justified in asking. "Oh, well"--Billy had always hated statistics--"we sold the Belvedere Bay place last year, you know, but it was a perfect wreck, and the Moultons said they had to put seventeen thousand dollars into repairs, but I don't believe it, and that money, and some other things, were put into the bank. Joe was just making a scene about it--we have to draw now and then--we sank I don't know what into those awful ponies, and we still have that place--it's a lovely house, but it doesn't rent. It's too far away. The kid adores it of course, but it's too far away, it gives me the creeps. It's just going to wreck, too. Joe says sometimes that he's going to raise chickens there. I see him!" Billy scowled, but as Rachael did not speak, she presently came back to the topic. "But just how much of my money is left, I don't know. There are two houses in East One Hundredth--way over by the river. Daddy took them for some sort of debt." Rachael remembered them perfectly. But she could not revert to the days when she was Clarence's wife without a pang, and so let the allusion go. "Why he took them I don't know," Billy resumed, "ten flats, and all empty. They say it would cost us ten thousand dollars to get them into shape. They're mortgaged, anyway." "But Billy, wouldn't that bring you in a fair income, in itself, if it was once filled?" "My dear, perhaps it would. But do you think you could get Joe Pickering to do it? As long as the money in the bank lasts--I forget what it is, several thousand, more than twenty, I think--we'll go along as we are. Joe has a half-interest in a patent, anyway, some sort of curtain-pole; it's always going to make us a fortune!" "But, Billy, if you and the boy took a little place somewhere, and you had one good maid--up there on the pony farm, for instance--surely it would be saner, surely it would be wiser, than trying to think of the stage now with him on your hands!" "Except that I would simply die!" Billy said. "I love the city, and the excitement of not knowing what will turn up. And if Joe would behave himself, and if I should make a hit, why, we'll be all right." A queer, hectic, unsatisfying life it must be, Rachael thought, saying good-bye to her guest a day or two later. Dressing, rouging, lacing, pinning on her outrageously expensive hats, jerking on her extravagant white gloves, drinking, rushing, screaming with laughter, screaming with anger, Billy was one of that large class of women that the big city breeds, and that cannot live elsewhere than in the big city. She would ride in a thousand taxicabs, worrying as she watched the metre; she would drink a thousand glasses of champagne, wondering anxiously if Joe were to pay for it; she would gossip of a dozen successful actresses without the self-control to work for one-tenth of their success, and she would move through all the life of the theatres and hotels without ever having her place among them, and her share of their little glory. And almost as reckless in action as she was in speech, she would cling to the brink of the conventions, never quite a good woman, never quite anything else, a fond and loyal if a foolish and selfish mother, some day noisily informing her admirers that she actually had a boy in college, and enjoying their flattering disbelief. And so would disappear the last of the handsome fortune that poor Clarence's father had bequeathed to him, and Clarence's grandson must fight his way with no better start than his grandfather had had financially, and with an infinitely less useful brain and less reliable pair of hands. Billy might be widowed or freed in some less unexceptionable way, and then Billy would marry again, and it would be a queer marriage; Rachael could read her fate in her character. She wondered, walking slowly the short mile that lay between her house and the station, when Billy was gone, just how a discerning eye might read her own fate in her own character. Just what did the confused mixture of good motives and bad motives, erratic unselfishnesses and even more erratic weaknesses that was Rachael, deserve of Fate? She had bought some knowledge, but it had been dearly bought; she had bought some goodness, but at what a cost of pain! "I don't believe that Warren ever did one-tenth the silly things we suspected him of!" Alice exclaimed one day. "I believe he was just an utter fool, and Magsie took advantage of it!" Rachael did not answer, but there was no brightening of her sombre look. Her eyes, grave and sad, held for Alice no hope that she had come, as George and Alice had come, to a softer view of Warren's offence. "I see him always as he was that last horrible morning," she said to Alice. "And I pray that I will never look upon his face again!" And when presently Alice hinted that George was receiving an occasional letter from Warren, Rachael turned pale. "Don't quote it to me, Alice," she said gently; "don't ask me to hear it. It's all over. I haven't a heart any more, just a void and a pain. You only hurt me--I can't ever be different. You and George love me, I know that. Don't drive me away. Don't ever feel that it will be different from what it is now. I--I wish him no ill, God knows, but--I can't. It wouldn't be happiness for me or for him. Please, PLEASE--!" Alice, in tears, could only give her her way. CHAPTER V Upon the discontented musings of Miss Margaret Clay one hot September morning came Mrs. Joseph Pickering, very charming in coffee-colored madras, with an exquisite heron cockade upon her narrow tan hat. Magsie was up, but not dressed, and was not ill pleased to have company. Her private as well as professional affairs were causing her much dissatisfaction of late, and she was at the moment in the act of addressing a letter to Warren, now on the ocean, from whom she had only this morning had an extremely disquieting letter. Warren had come to see her the day before sailing, and with a grave determination new to their intercourse, had repeated several unpalatable truths. Rachael, on second thoughts, he told her, had absolutely refused him a divorce. "But she can't do that! She wrote me herself--" Magsie had begun in anger. His distressed voice interrupted her. "She's acting for the boys, Magsie. And she's right." "Right!" The little actress turned pale as the full significance of his words and tone dawned upon her. "But--but what do you mean! What about ME?" To this Warren had only answered with an exquisitely uncomfortable look and the simple phrase, "Magsie, I'm sorry." "You mean that you're not going to MAKE her keep her word?" And again she had put an imperative little hand upon his arm, sure of her power to win him ultimately. Days afterward the angry blood came into her face when she remembered his kind, his almost fatherly, smile, as he dislodged the hand. "Magsie, I'm sorry. You can't despise me as I despise myself, dear. I'm ashamed. Some day, perhaps, there'll be something I can do for you, and then you'll see by the way I do it that I want with all my heart to make it up to you. But I'm going away now, Magsie, and we mustn't see each other any more." Magsie, repulsed, had flung herself the length of the little room. "You DARE tell me that, Greg?" "I'm sorry, Magsie!" "Sorry!" Her tone was vitriol. "Why, but I've got your letters. I've got your own words! Everyone knows-the whole world knows! Can you deny that you gave me this?--and this? Can you deny--" "No, I'm not denying anything, Magsie. Except--that I never meant to hurt you. And I hope there was some happiness in it for you as there was for me." Magsie had dropped into a chair with her back to him. "I've made you cross," she said penitently, "and you're punishing me! Was it my seeing Richie, Greg? You know I never cared---" "Don't take that tone," he said. Her color flamed again, and she set her little teeth. He saw her breast rise and fall. "Don't think you can do this, Greg," she said with icy viciousness. "Don't delude yourself! I can punish you, and I will. Alice and George Valentine can fix it all up to suit themselves, but they don't know me! You've said your say now, and I've listened. Very well!" "Magsie," he said almost pleadingly, interrupting the hard little voice, "can't you see what a mistake it's all been?" She looked at him with eyes suddenly flooded with tears. "M-m-mistake to s-s-say we loved each other, Greg?" The man did not answer. Presently Magsie began to speak in a sad, low tone. "You can go now if you want to, Greg. I'm not going to try to hold you. But I know you'll come back to me to-morrow, and tell me it was all just the trouble other people tried to make between us--it wasn't really you, the man I love!" "I'll write you," he said after a silence. And from the doorway he added, "Good-bye." Magsie did not turn or speak; she could not believe her ears when she heard the door softly close. Next day brought her only a letter from the steamer, a letter reiterating his good-byes, and asking her again to forgive him. Magsie read it in stupefaction. He was gone, and she had lost him! The first panic of surprise gave way to more reasonable thinking. There were ways of bringing him back; there were arguments that might persuade Rachael to adhere to her original resolution. It could not be dropped so easily. Magsie began to wonder what a lawyer might advise. Billy came in upon her irresolute musing. "Hello, dearie! But I'm interrupting---" said Billy. "Oh, hello, darling! No, indeed you're not," Magsie said, tearing up an envelope lazily. "I was trying to write a letter, but I have to think it over before it goes." "I should think you could write a letter to your beau with your eyes shut," Billy said. "You've had practice enough! I know you're busy, but I won't interrupt you long. Upon my word, I had a hard enough time getting to you. There was no boy at the lift, and only a dear old Irish girl mopping up the floors. We had a long heart-to-heart talk, and I gave her a dollar." "A dollar! I'll have to move-you're raising the price of living!" said Magsie. "She's the janitor's wife, and they're rich already. What possessed you?" "Well, she unpinned her skirts and went after the boy," Billy said idly, "and it was the only thing I had." She was trying quietly to see the name on the envelope Magsie had destroyed, but being unsuccessful, she went on more briskly, "How is the beau, by the way?" "I wish I had never seen the man!" Magsie said, glad to talk of him. "His wife is raising the roof now---" "I thought she would!" Billy said wisely. "I didn't see any woman, especially if she's not young, giving all that up without a fight! You know I said so." "I know you did," said Magsie ruefully. "But I don't see what she can do!" "Well, she can refuse to give him his divorce, can't she?" Billy said sensibly. "But CAN she?" Magsie was obviously not sure. "Of course she can!" "But she doesn't want him. I went to see her--" "Went to see her? For heaven's sake, what did you do that for?" "Because I cared for him," Magsie said, coloring. "For heaven's sake! You had your nerve! And what sort of a person is she?" "Oh, beautiful! I knew her before. And she said that she would not interfere. She was as willing as he was; then---" "But now she's changed her mind?" "Apparently." Magsie scowled into space. "Well, what does HE say?" Billy asked after a pause. "Why, he can't--or he seems to think he can't--force her." "Well, I don't know that he can--here. There are states--" "Yes, I know, but we're here in New York," Magsie said briefly. A second later she sat up, suddenly energetic and definite in voice and manner. "But there ARE ways of forcing her, as she will soon see," said Magsie in a venomous voice. "I have his letters. I could put the whole thing into a lawyer's hands. There's such a thing as-as a breach of promise suit--" "Not with a married man," Billy interrupted. Magsie halted, a little dashed. "How do you know?" she demanded. "You'd have to show you had been injured--and you've known all along he was married," Billy said. "Well"--Magsie was scarlet with anger--"I could make him sorry, don't worry about that!" she said childishly. "Of course, if his wife DID consent, and then changed her mind, and you sent his letters to her," Billy said after cogitation. "It might--he may have glossed it all over, to her, you know." "Exactly!" Magsie said triumphantly. "I knew there was a way! She's a sensitive woman, too. You know you can't go as far as you like with a girl, Billy," she went on argumentatively, "without paying for it somehow!" "Make him pay!" said the practical Billy. "I don't want--just money," Magsie said discontentedly. "I want--I don't want to be interfered with. I believe I shall do just that," she went on with a brightening eye. "I'll write him---" "Tell him. Ever so much more effective than writing!" Billy suggested. "Tell him then," Magsie did not mean to betray his identity if she could help it, "that I really will send these things on to his wife--that's just what I'll do!" "Are there children?" asked Billy. "Two--girls," Magsie said with barely perceptible hesitation. "Grown?" pursued the visitor. "Ye-es, I believe so." Magsie was too clever to multiply unnecessary untruths. She began to dress. "What are you doing this afternoon?" asked Billy. "I have the Butlers' car for the day. Joe brought it into town to be fixed, and can't drive it out until tomorrow. We might do something. It's a gorgeous car." "I'm not doing one thing in the world. Where's Joe?" "Joe Pickering?" asked Billy. "Oh, he's gone off with some men for some golf and poker. We might find someone, and go on a party. Where could we go--Long Beach? It's going to be stifling hot." "Stay and have lunch with me," said Magsie. "I can't to-day. I'm lunching with a theatrical man at Sherry's. I tell you I'm in deadly earnest. I'm going to break in! Suppose I come here for you at just three. Meanwhile, you think up someone. How about Bryan Masters?" Magsie made a face. "Well," said Billy, departing, "you think of someone, and I will. Perhaps the Royces would go--a nice little early party. The worst of it is, no one's in town!" She ran downstairs and jumped into the beautiful car. "Sherry's, please, Hungerford," said Billy easily. "And then you might get your lunch, and come for me sharp at half-past two." The man touched his hat. Billy leaned back against the rich leather upholstery luxuriously; she was absolutely content. Joe was quiet and away, dear little old Breck was in seventh heaven down on the cool seashore, and there was a prospect of a party to-night. As they rolled smoothly downtown the passing throng might well have envied the complacent little figure in coffee-colored madras with the big heron feather in her hat. When Billy was gone, Magsie, with a thoughtful face and compressed lips, took two packages of letters from her desk and wrapped them for posting. She fell into deep musing for a few minutes before she wrote Rachael's name on the wrapper, but after that she dressed with her usual care, and carried the package to the elevator boy for mailing. As she came back to her rooms a caller was announced and followed her name into Magsie's apartment almost immediately. Magsie, with a pang of consternation, found herself facing Richie Gardiner's mother. Anna would never have permitted this, was Magsie's first resentful thought, but Anna was on a vacation, and the elevator boy could not be expected to discriminate. "Good morning, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie; "you'll excuse my dressing all over the place, but I have no maid this week. How's Richie?" Mrs. Gardiner was oblivious of anything amiss. She sat down, first removing a filmy scarf of Magsie's from a chair, and smiled, the little muscle-twitching smile of a person in pain, as if she hardly heard Magsie's easy talk. "He doesn't seem to get better, Miss Clay," said she, almost snorting in her violent effort to breathe quietly. "Doctor doesn't say he gets worse, but of course he don't fool me--I know my boy's pretty sick." The agony of helpless motherhood was not all lost upon Magsie, even though it was displayed by a large, plain woman in preposterous clothes, strangely introduced into her pretty rooms, and a most incongruous figure there. "What a SHAME!" she said warmly. "It's a shame to anyone that knew Rich as I did a few years ago," his mother said. "There wasn't a brighter nor a hardier child. It wasn't until we came to this city that he begun to give way--and what wonder? It'd kill a horse to live in this place. I wish to God that I had got him out of it when he had that first spell. I may be--I don't know, but I may be too late now." Tears came to her eyes, the hard tears of a proud and suffering woman. She took out a folded handkerchief and pressed it unashamedly to her eyes. "But he wouldn't go," she resumed, clearing her throat. "He was going to stay here, live or die. And Miss Clay, YOU know why!" She stopped short, a terrible look upon Magsie. "I?" faltered Magsie, coloring, and feeling as if she would cry herself. "You kept him," said his mother. "He hung round you like a bee round a rose--poor, sick boy that he was! He's losing sleep now because he can't get you out of his thoughts." She stopped again, and Magsie hung her head. "I'm sorry," she said slowly. And with the childish words came childish tears. "I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Gardiner," stammered Magsie. "I know--I've known all along--how Richie feels to me. I suppose I could have stopped him, got him to go away, perhaps, in time. But--but I've been unhappy myself, Mrs. Gardiner. A person--I love has been cruel to me. I don't know what I'm going to do. I worry and worry!" Magsie was frankly crying now. "I wish there was something I could do for Richie, but I can't tell him I care!" she sobbed. Both women sat in miserable silence for a moment, then Richard Gardiner's mother said: "It wouldn't do you any harm to just--if you would--to just see him, would it? Don't say anything about this other man. Could you do that? Couldn't you let him think that maybe if he went away and came back all well you'd--you might--there might be some chance for him? Doctor says he's got to go away AT ONCE if he's going to get well." The anguish in her voice and manner reached Magsie at last. There was nothing cruel about the little actress, however sordid her ambitions and however selfish her plans. "Could you get him away, now?" she said almost timidly. "Is he strong enough to go?" "That's what Doctor says; he ought to go away TO-DAY, but--but he won't lissen to me," his mother answered with trembling lips. "He's all I have. I just live for Rich. I loved his father, and when Dick was killed I had only him." "I'll go see him," said Magsie in sudden generous impulse. "I'll tell him to take care of himself. It's simply wicked of him to throw his life away like this." "Miss Clay," said Mrs. Gardiner with a break in her strong, deep voice, "if you do that--may the Lord send you the happiness you give my boy!" She began to cry again. "Why, Mrs. Gardiner," said Magsie in a hurt, childish voice, "I LIKE Richie!" "Well, he likes you all right," said his mother on a long, quivering breath. With big, coarse, tender fingers she helped Magsie with the last hooks and bands of her toilette. "If you ain't as pretty and dainty as a little wax doll!" she observed admiringly. Magsie merely sighed in answer. Wax dolls had their troubles! But she liked the doglike devotion of Richie's big mother, and the beautiful car--Richie's car. Perhaps the hurt to her heart and her pride had altered Magsie's sense of values. At all events, she did not even shrink from Richie to-day. She sat down beside the white bed, beside the bony form that the counterpane revealed in outline, and smiled at Richie's dark, thin eager face and sunken, adoring eyes. She laid her warm, plump little hand between his long, thin fingers. After a while the nurse timidly suggested the detested milk; Richie drank it dutifully for Magsie. They were left together in the cool, airy, orderly room, and in low, confidential tones they talked. Magsie was well aware that the big doctors themselves would not interrupt this talk, that the nurses and the mother were keeping guard outside the door. Richie was conscious of nothing but Magsie. In this hour the girl thought of the stormy years that were past and the stormy future. She had played her last card in the game for Warren Gregory's love. The letters, without an additional word, were gone to Rachael. If Rachael chose to use them against Warren, then the road for Magsie, if long, was unobstructed. But suppose Rachael, with that baffling superiority of hers, decided not to use them? Magsie had seriously considered and seriously abandoned the idea of holding out several letters from the packages, but the letters, as legal documents, had no value to anyone but Rachael. If Rachael chose to forgive and ignore the writing of them, they were so much waste paper, and Magsie had no more hold over Warren than any other young woman of his acquaintance. But Magsie was more or less committed to a complete change. The break with Bowman could not be avoided without great awkwardness now. She despised herself for having so simply accepted a bank account from Warren, yet what else could she do? Magsie had wanted money all her life, and when that money was gone---Richie was falling into a doze, his hand still tightly clasping hers. She slipped to her knees beside the bed, and as he lazily opened his eyes she gave him a smile that turned the room to Heaven for him. When a nurse peeped cautiously in, a warning nod from Magsie sent the surprised and delighted woman away again with the great news. Mr. Gardiner was asleep! The clock struck twelve, struck one, still Magsie knelt by the bedside, watching the sleeping face. Outside the city was silent under the summer sun. In the great hospital feet cheeped along wide corridors, now and then a door was opened or closed. There was no other sound. Magsie eyed her charge affectionately. When he had come to her dressing-room in former days trying to ignore his cough, trying to take her about and to order her suppers as the other men did, he had been vaguely irritating; but here in this plain little bed, so boyish, so dependent, so appreciative, he seemed more attractive than he ever had before. Whatever there was maternal in Magsie rose to meet his need. She could not but be impressed by the royal solicitude that surrounded the heir to the "Little Dick Mine." Mrs. Richard Gardiner would be something of a personage, thought Magsie dreamily. He might not live long! Of course, that was calculating and despicable; she was not the woman to marry where she did not love! But then she really did love Richie in a way. And Richie loved her--no question of that! Loved her more than Warren did for all his letters and gifts, she decided resentfully. When Richie wakened, bewildered, at one o'clock, Magsie was still there. She insisted that he drink more milk before a word was said. Then they talked again, Magsie in a new mood of reluctance and gentleness, Richie half wild with rising hope and joy. "And you would want me to marry you, feeling this way?" Magsie faltered. "Oh, Magsie!" he whispered. A tear fell on the thin hand that Magsie was patting. Through dazzled eyes she saw the future: reckless buying of gowns--brief and few farewells--the private car, the adoring invalid, the great sunny West with its forests and beaches, the plain gold ring on her little hand. In the whole concerned group--doctor, nurse, valet, mother, maid--young Mrs. Gardiner would be supreme! She saw herself flitting about a California bungalow, lending her young strength to Richie's increasing strength in the sunwashed, health-giving air. She put her arms about him, laid her rosy cheek against his pale one. "And you really want me to go out," Magsie began, smiling through tears, "and get a nice special license and a nice little plain gold ring and come back here with a nice kind clergyman, and say 'I will'---" But at this her tears again interrupted her, and Richard, clinging desperately to her hand, could not speak either for tears. His mother who had silently entered the room on Magsie's last words suddenly put her fat arms about her and gave her the great motherly embrace for which, without knowing it, she had hungered for years, and they all fell to planning. Richard could help only with an occasional assent. There was nothing to which he would not consent now. They would be married as soon as Magsie and his mother could get back with the necessities. And then would he drink his milk, good boy--and go straight to sleep, good boy. Then to-morrow he should be helped into the softest motor car procurable for money, and into the private car that his mother and Magsie meant to engage, by hook or crook, to-night. In six days they would be watching the blue Pacific, and in three weeks Richie should be sleeping out of doors and coming downstairs to meals. He had only to obey his mother; he had only to obey his wife. Magsie kissed him good-bye tenderly before leaving him for the hour's absence. Her heart was twisting little tendrils about him already. He was a sweet, patient dear, she told his mother, and he would simply have to get well! "God above bless and reward you, Margaret!" was all Mrs. Gardiner could say, but Magsie never tired of hearing it. When the two women went down the hospital steps they found Billy Pickering, in her large red car, eying them reproachfully from the curb. "This is a nice way to act!" Billy began. "Your janitor's wife said you had come here. I've got two men--" Magsie's expression stopped her. "This is Mr. Gardiner's mother, Billy," Magsie said solemnly. "The doctors agree that he must not stand this climate another day. He had another sinking spell yesterday, and he--he mustn't have another! I am going with them to California--" "You ARE?" Billy ejaculated in amazement. Magsie bridled in becoming importance. "It is all very sudden," she said with the weary, patient smile of the invalid's wife, "but he won't go without me." And then, as Mrs. Gardiner began to give directions to the driver of her own car, which was waiting, she went on inconsequentially, and in a low and troubled undertone, "I didn't know what to do. Do--do you think I'm a fool, Billy?" "But what'll the other man say?" demanded Billy. Magsie, leaning against the door of the car, rubbed the polished wood with a filmy handkerchief. "He won't know," she said. "Won't know? But what will you tell him?" "Oh, he's not here. He won't be back for ever so long. And--and Richie can't live--they all say that. So if I come back before he does, what earthly difference can it make to him that I was married to Richie?" "MARRIED!" For once in her life Billy was completely at a loss. "But are you going to MARRY him?" Magsie gave her a solemn look, and nodded gravely. "He loves me," she said in a soft injured tone, "and I mean to take as good care of him as the best wife in the world could! I'm sick of the stage, and if anything happens with--the other, I shan't have to worry--about money, I mean. I'm not a fool, Billy. I can't let a chance like this slip. Of course I wouldn't do it if I didn't like him and like his mother, too. And I'll bet he will get well, and I'll never come back to New York! Of course this is all a secret. We're going right down to the City Hall for the license now, and the ring---There are a lot of clothes I've got to buy immediately--" "Why don't you let me run you about?" suggested Billy. "I don't have to meet the men until six--I'll have to round up another girl, too; but I'd love to. Let Mama go back to Mr. Gardiner!" "Oh, I couldn't," Magsie said, quite the dutiful daughter. "She's a wonderful person; she's arranging for our own private car, and a cook, and I may take Anna if I can get her!" "All righto!" agreed Billy. A rather speculative look came into her face as the other car whirled away. She suddenly gave directions to the driver. "Drive to Miss Clay's apartment, where you picked me up this morning, Hungerford!" she said quickly. "I--I think I left something there--gloves--" "I wonder if you would let me into Miss Clay's apartment?" she said to the beaming janitor's wife fifteen minutes later. "Miss Clay isn't here, and I left my gloves in her rooms." Something in Magsie's manner had made her feel that Magsie had good reason for keeping the name of her admirer hid. Billy had felt for weeks that she would know the name if Magsie ever divulged it. And this morning she had noticed the admission that the wronged wife was a beautiful woman--and the hesitation with which Magsie had answered "Two girls." Then Magsie had said that she would "write him," not at all the natural thing to do to a man one was sure to see, and Rachael had said that Warren was away! But most significant of all was her answer to Billy's question as to whether the children were grown. Magsie had admitted that she knew the wife, had "known her before," and yet she pretended not to know whether or not the children were grown. Billy had had just a fleeting idea of Warren Gregory before that, but this particular term confirmed the suspicion suddenly. So while Magsie was getting her marriage license, Billy was in Magsie's apartment turning over the contents of her wastepaper basket in feverish haste. The envelope was ruined, it had been crushed while wet; a name had been barely started anyway. But here was the precious scrap of commencement, "My dearest Greg--" Billy was almost terrified by the discovery. There it was, in irrefutable black and white. She stuffed it back into the basket, and left the house like a thief, panting for the open air. A suspicion only ten minutes before, now she felt as if no other fact on earth had ever so fully possessed her. For an hour she drove about in a daze. Then she went home, and sat down at her desk, and wrote the following letter: "Mv DEAR RACHAEL: The letter with the darling little 'B' came yesterday. I think he is cute to learn to write his own letter so quickly. Tell him that mother is proud of him for picking so many blackberries, and will love the jam. It is as hot as fire here, and the park has that steamy smell that a hothouse has. I have been driving about in Joe Butler's car all afternoon. We are going to Long Beach to-night. "Rachael--Magsie Clay and a man named Richard Gardiner were married this afternoon. He is an invalid or something; he is at St. Luke's Hospital, and she and his mother are going to take him to California at once. What do you know about that? Of course this is a secret, and for Heaven's sake, if you tell anybody this, don't say I gave it away. "If Magsie Clay should send you a bunch of letters, she will just do it to be a devil, and I want to ask you to burn them up before you read them. You know how you talked to me about divorce, Rachael! What you don't know can't hurt you. Don't please Magsie Clay to the extent of doing exactly what she wants you to do. If anyone you love has been a fool, why, it is certainly hard to understand how they could, but you stand by what you said to me the other day, and forget it. "I feel as if I was breaking into your own affairs. I hope you won't care, and that I'm not all in the dark about this--" "Affectionately, BILLY." CHAPTER VI This letter, creased from constant reading, Rachael showed to George Valentine a week later. The doctor, who had spent the week-end with his family at Clark's Hills, was in his car and running past the gate of Home Dunes on his way back to town when Rachael stopped him. She looked her composed and dignified self in her striped blue linen and deep-brimmed hat, but the man's trained look found the circles about her wonderful eyes, and he detected signs of utter weariness in her voice. "Read this, George," said she, resting against the door of his car, and opening the letter before him. "This came from Billy--Mrs. Pickering, you know--several days ago." George read the document through twice, then raised questioning eyes to hers, and made the mouth of a whistler. "What do you think?" Rachael questioned in her turn. "Lord! I don't know what to think," said George. "Do you suppose this can be true?" Rachael sighed wearily, staring down the road under the warming leaves of the maples into a far vista of bare dunes in thinning September sunshine. "It might be, I suppose. You can see that Billy believes it," she said. "Sure, she believes it," George agreed. "At least, we can find out. But I don't understand it!" "Understand it?" she echoed in rich scorn. "Who understands anything of the whole miserable business? Do I? Does Warren, do you suppose?" "No, of course nobody does," George said hastily in distress. He regarded the paper almost balefully. "This is the deuce of a thing!" he said. "If she didn't care for him any more than that, what's all the fuss about? I don't believe the threat about sending his letters, anyway!" he added hardily. "Oh, that was true enough," Rachael said lifelessly. "They came." George gave her an alarmed glance, but did not speak. "A great package of them came," Rachael added dully. "I didn't open it. I had a fire that morning, and I simply set it on the fire." Her voice sank, her eyes, brooding and sombre, were far away. "But I watched it burning, George," she said in a low, absent tone, "and I saw his handwriting--how well I know it--Warren's writing, on dozens and dozens of letters--there must have been a hundred! To think of it--to think of it!" Her voice was like some living thing writhing in anguish. George could think of nothing to say. He looked about helplessly, buttoned a glove button briskly, folded the letter, and made some work of putting it away in an inside pocket. "Well," Rachael said, straightening up suddenly, and with resolute courage returning to her manner and voice, "you'll have, somebody look it up, will you, George?" "You may depend upon it-immediately," George said huskily. "It--of course it will make an immense difference," he added, in his anxiety to be reassuring saying exactly the wrong thing. Rachael was pale. "I don't know how anything can make a great difference now, George," she answered slowly. "The thing remains--a fact. Of course this ends, in one way, the sordid side, the fear of publicity, of notoriety. But that wasn't the phase of it that ever counted with me. This will probably hurt Warren--" "Oh, Rachael, dear old girl, don't talk that way!" George protested. "You can't believe that Warren will feel anything but a--a most unbelievable relief! We all know that. He's not the first man who let a pretty face drive him crazy when he was working himself to death." George was studying her as he spoke, with all his honest heart in his look, but Rachael merely shook her head forlornly. "Perhaps I don't understand men," she said with a mildness that George found infinitely more disturbing than any fury would have been. "Well, I'll look up records at the City Hall," he said after a pause. "That's the first thing to do. And then I'll let you know. Boys well this morning?" "Lovely," Rachael smiled. "My trio goes fishing to-day, packing its lunch itself, and asking no feminine assistance. The lunch will be eaten by ten o'clock, and the boys home at half-past ten, thinking it is almost sundown. They only go as far as the cove, where the men are working, and we can see the tops of their heads from the upstairs' porch, so Mary and I won't feel entirely unprotected. I'm to lunch with Alice, so my day is nicely planned!" The bright look did not deceive him, nor the reassuring tone. But George Valentine's friendship was more easily displayed by deeds than words, and now, with an affectionate pat for her hand, he touched his starter, and the car leaped upon its way. Just four hours later he telephoned Alice that the wedding license of Margaret Rose Clay and Richard Gardiner had indeed been issued a week before, and that Magsie was not to be found at her apartment, which was to be sublet at the janitor's discretion; that Bowman's secretary reported the absence of Miss Clay from the city, and the uncertainty of her appearing in any of Mr. Bowman's productions that winter, and that at the hospital a confident inquiry for "Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner" had resulted in the discreet reply that "the parties" had left for California. George, with what was for him a rare flash of imagination, had casually inquired as to the name of the clergyman who had performed the ceremony, being answered dispassionately that the person at the other end of the telephone "didn't know." "George, you are an absolute WONDER!" said Alice's proud voice, faintly echoed from Clark's Hills. "Now, shall you cable--anybody--you know who I mean?" "I have," answered the efficient George, "already." "Oh, George! And what will he do?" "Well, eventually, he'll come back." "Do you THINK so? I don't!" "Well, anyway, we'll see." "And you're an angel," said Mrs. Valentine, finishing the conversation. Ten days later Warren Gregory walked into George Valentine's office, and the two men gripped hands without speaking. That Warren had left for America the day George's cable reached him there was no need to say. That he was a man almost sick with empty days and brooding nights there was no need to say. George was shocked in the first instant of meeting, and found himself, as they talked together, increasingly shocked at the other's aspect. Warren was thin, his hair actually showed more gray, there were deep lines about his mouth. But it was not only that; his eyes had a tired and haunted look that George found sad to see, his voice had lost its old confident ring, and he seemed weary and shaken. He asked for Alice and the children, and for Rachael and the boys. "Rachael's well," George said. "She looks--well, she shows what she's been through; but she's very handsome. And the boys are fine. We had the whole crowd down as far as Shark Light for a picnic last Sunday. Rachael has little Breck Pickering down there now; he's a nice little chap, younger than our Katrina--Jim's age. The youngster is in paradise, sure enough, and putting on weight at a great rate." "I didn't know he was there," Warren said slowly. "Like her--to take him in. I wish I had been there--Sunday. I wish to the Lord that it was all a horrible dream!" He stopped and sat silent, looking gloomily at the floor, his whole figure, George thought, indicating a broken and shamed spirit. "Well, Magsie's settled, at least," said George after a silence. "Yes. That wasn't what counted, though," Warren said, as Rachael had said. "She is settled without my moving; there's no way in which I can ever make Rachael feel that I would have moved." Again his voice sank into silence, but presently he roused himself. "I've come back to work, George," he said with a quiet decision of manner that George found new and admirable. "That's all I can do now. If she ever forgives me--but she's not the kind that forgives. She's not weak--Rachael. But anyway, I can work. I'll go to the old house, for the present, and get things in order. And you drop a hint to Alice, when she talks to Rachael, that I've not got anything to say. I'll not annoy her." George's heart ached for him as Warren suddenly covered his face with his hands. Warren had always been the adored younger brother to him, Warren's wonderful fingers over the surgical table, a miracle that gave their owner the right to claim whatever human weaknesses and failings he might, as a balance. George had never thought him perfect, as so much of the world thought him; to George, Warren had always been a little more than perfect, a machine of inspired surgery, underbalanced in many ways that in this one supreme way he might be more than human. George had to struggle for what he achieved; Warren achieved by divine right. The women were in the right of it now, George conceded, they had the argument. But of course they didn't understand--a thing like that had nothing to do with Warren's wife; Rachael wasn't brought into the question at all. And Lord! when all was said and done Warren was Warren, and professionally the biggest figure in George's world. "I don't suppose you feel like taking Hudson's work?" said George now. "He's crazy to get away, and he was telling me yesterday that he didn't see himself breaking out of it. Mrs. Hudson wants to go to her own people, in Montreal, and I suppose Jack would be glad to go, too." "Take it in a minute!" Warren said, his whole expression changing. "Of course I'll take it. I'm going to spend this afternoon getting things into shape at the house, and I think I'll drop round at the hospital about five. But I can start right in to-morrow." "It isn't too much?" George asked affectionately. "Too much? It's the only thing that will save my reason, I think," Warren answered, and after that George said no more. The two men lunched together, and dined together, five times a week, with a curious change from old times: it was Warren who listened, and George who did the talking now. They talked of cases chiefly, for Warren was working day and night, and thought of little else than his work; but once or twice, as September waned, and October moved toward its close, there burst from him an occasional inquiry as to his wife. "Will she ever forgive me, George?" Warren asked one cool autumn dawning when the two men were walking away from the hospital under the fading stars. Warren had commenced an operation just before midnight, it was only concluded now, and George, who had remained beside him for sheer admiration of his daring and his skill, had suggested that they walk for a while, and shake off the atmosphere of ether and of pain. "It's a time like this I miss her," Warren said. "I took it all for granted, then. But after such a night as this, when I would go home in those first years, and creep into bed, she was never too sleepy to rouse and ask me how the case went, she never failed to see that the house was quiet the next morning, and she'd bring in my tray herself--Lord, a woman like that, waiting on me!" George shook his head but did not speak. They walked an echoing block or two in silence. "George, I need my wife," Warren said then. "There isn't an hour of my life that some phase of our life together doesn't come back to me and wring my heart. I don't want anything else--our sons, our fireside, our interests together. I've heard her voice ever since. And I'm changed, George, not in what I always believed, because I know right from wrong, and always have, but I don't believe in myself any more. I want my kids to be taught laws--not their own laws. I want to go on my knees to my girl---" His voice thickened suddenly, and they walked on with no attempt on either side to end the silence for a long time. The city streets were wet from a rain, but day was breaking in hopeful pearl and rose. "I can say this," said George at last: "I believe that she needs you as much as you do her. But Rachael's proud--" "Ah, yes, she's that!" Warren said eagerly as he paused. "And Warren, she has been dragged through the muck during the last few years," George resumed in a mildly expostulatory tone. "Oh, I know it!" Warren answered, stricken. "She hates coarseness," pursued George, "she hates weakness. I believe that if ever a divorce was justified in this world, hers was. But to have you come back at her, to have Magsie Clay break in on her, and begin to yap breezily about divorce, and how prevalent it is, and what a solution it is, why, of course it was enough to break her heart!" "Don't!" Warren said thickly, quickening his pace, as if to walk away from his own insufferable thoughts. For many days they did not speak of Rachael again; indeed George felt that there was nothing further to say. He feared in his own heart that nothing would ever bring about a change in her feeling, or rather, that the change that had been taking place in her for so many weeks was one that would be lasting, that Rachael was an altered woman. Alice believed this, too, and Rachael believed it most of all. Indeed, over Rachael's torn and shaken spirit there had fallen of late a peace and a sense of security that she had never before known in her life. She tried not to think of Warren any more, or at least to think of him as he had been in the happy days when they had been all in all to each other. If other thoughts would creep in, and her heart grow hot and bitter within her at the memory of her wrongs, she resolutely fought for composure; no matter now what he had been or done, that life was dead. She had her boys, the sunsets and sunrises, the mellowing beauty of the year. She had her books, and above all her memories. And in these memories she found much to blame in herself, but much to pity, too. A rudderless little bark, she had been set adrift in so inviting, so welcoming a sea twenty years ago! She had known that she was beautiful, and that she must marry--what else? What more serious thought ever flitted through the brain of little Rachael Fairfax than that it was a delicious adventure to face life in a rough blue coat and feathered hat, and steer her wild little sails straight into the heart of the great waters? She would have broken Stephen's heart; but Stephen was dead. She had seized upon Clarence with never a thought of what she was to give him, with never a prayer as to her fitness to be his wife, nor his fitness to be the father of her children. She had laughed at self-sacrifice, laughed at endurance, laughed at married love--these things were only words to her. And when she had tugged with all her might at the problem before her, and tried, with her pitiable, untrained strength to force what she wished from Fate, then she had flung the whole thing aside, and rushed on to new experiments--and to new failures. Always on the surface, always thinking of the impression she made on the watching men and women about her, what a life it had been! She had never known who made Clarence's money, what his own father had been like, what the forces were that had formed him, and had made him what he was. He did not please her, that began and ended the story. He had presently flung himself into eternity with as little heed as she had cast herself into her new life. Ah, but there had been a difference there! She had loved there, and been awakened by great love. Her child's crumpled, rosy foot had come to mean more to her than all the world had meant before. The smile, or the frown, in her husband's eyes had been her sunshine or her storm. Through love she had come to know the brimming life of the world, the pathos, the comedy that is ready to spill itself over every humble window-sill, the joy that some woman's heart feels whenever the piping cry of the new-born sounds in a darkened room, the sorrow held by every shabby white hearse that winds its way through a hot and unnoticing street. She had clung to husband and sons with the tigerish tenacity that is the rightful dower of wife and mother; she had thought the world well lost in holding them. And then the sordid, selfish past rose like an ugly mist before her, and she found at her lips the bitter cup she had filled herself. She was not so safe now, behind her barrier of love, but that the terrible machinery she had set in motion might bring its grinding wheels to bear upon the lives she guarded. She had flung her solemn promise aside, once; what defence could she make for a second solemn promise now? The world, divorce mad, spun blindly on, and the echo of her own complacent "one in twelve" came faintly, sickly back to her after the happy years. "Divorce has actually no place in our laws, it isn't either wrong or right," Rachael said one autumn day when they were walking slowly to the beach. Over their heads the trees were turning scarlet; the days were still soft and warm, but twilight fell earlier now, and in the air at morning and evening was the intoxicating sharpness, the thin blue and clear steel color that mark the dying summer. Alice's three younger children were in school, and the family came to Clark's Hills only for the week-ends, but Rachael and her boys stayed on and on, enjoying the rare warmth and beauty of the Indian Summer, and comfortable in the old house that had weathered fifty autumns and would weather fifty more. "In some states it is absolutely illegal," Rachael continued, "in others, it's permissible. In some it is a real source of revenue. Now fancy treating any other offence that way! Imagine states in which stealing was only a regrettable incident, or where murder was tolerated! In South Carolina you cannot get a divorce on any grounds! In Washington the courts can give it to you for any cause they consider sufficient. There was a case: a man and his wife obtained a divorce and both remarried. Now they find they are both bigamists, because it was shown that the wife went West, with her husband's knowledge and consent, to establish her residence there for the explicit purpose of getting a divorce. It was well-established law that if a husband or wife seek the jurisdiction of another state for the sole object of obtaining a divorce, without any real intent of living there, making their home there, goes, in other words, just for divorce purposes, then the decree having been fraudulently obtained will not be recognized anywhere!" "But thousands do it, Rachael." "But thousands don't seem to realize--I never did before--that that is illegal. You can't deliberately move to Reno or Seattle or San Francisco for such a purpose. All marriages following a divorce procured under these conditions are illegal. Besides this, the divorce laws as they exist in Washington, California, or Nevada are not recognized by other states, and so because a couple are separated upon the grounds of cruelty or incompatibility in some Western state, they are still legally man and wife in New York or Massachusetts. All sorts of hideous complications are going on: blackmail and perjury! "I wonder why divorce laws are so little understood?" Alice mused. "Because divorce is an abnormal thing. You can't make it right, and of course we are a long way from making it wrong. But that is what it is coming to, I believe. Divorce will be against the law some day! No divorce on ANY GROUNDS! It cannot be reconciled to law; it defies law. Right on the face of it, it is breaking a contract. Are any other contracts to be broken with public approval? We will see the return of the old, simple law, then we will wonder at ourselves! I am not a woman who takes naturally to public work--I wish I were. But perhaps some day I can strike the system a blow. It is women like me who understand, and who will help to end it." "It is only the worth-while women who do understand," said Alice. "You are the marble worth cutting. Life is a series of phases; we are none of us the same from year to year. You are not the same girl that you were when you married Clarence Breckenridge--" "What a different woman!" Rachael said under her breath. "Well," said Alice then a little frightened, "why won't you think that perhaps Warren might have changed, too; that whatever Warren has done, it was done more like--like the little boy who has never had his fling, who gets dizzy with his own freedom, and does something foolish without analyzing just what he is doing?" "But Warren, after all, isn't a child!" Rachael said sadly. "But Warren is in some ways; that's just it," Alice said eagerly. "He has always been singularly--well, unbalanced, in some ways. Don't you know there was always a sort of simplicity, a sort of bright innocence about Warren? He believed whatever anybody said until you laughed at him; he took every one of his friends on his own valuation. It's only where his work is concerned that you ever see Warren positive, and dictatorial, and keen--" Rachael's eyes had filled with tears. "But he isn't the man I loved, and married," she said slowly. "I thought he was a sort of god--he could do no wrong for me!" "Yes, but that isn't the way to feel toward anybody," persisted Alice. "No man is a god, no man is perfect. You're not perfect yourself; I'm not. Can't you just say to yourself that human beings are faulty--it may be your form of it to get dignified and sulk, and Warren's to wander off dreamily into curious paths--but that's life, Rachael, that's 'better or worse,' isn't it?" "It isn't a question of my holding out for a mere theory, Alice," Rachael said after a while; "I'm not saying that I'm all in the right, and that I will never see Warren again until he admits it, and everyone admits it--that isn't what I want. But it's just that I'm dead, so far as that old feeling is concerned. It is as if a child saw his mother suddenly turn into a fiend, and do some hideously cruel act; no amount of cool reason could ever convince that child again that his mother was sweet and good." "But as you get older," Alice smiled, "you differentiate between good and good, and you see grades in evil, too. Everything isn't all good or all bad, like the heroes and the villains of the old plays. If Warren had done a 'hideously cruel' thing deliberately, that would be one thing; what he has done is quite another. The God who made us put sex into the world, Warren didn't; and Warren only committed, in his--what is it?--forty-eighth year one of the follies that most boys dispose of in their teens. Be generous, Rachael, and forgive him. Give him another trial!" "How CAN I forgive him?" Rachael said, badly shaken, and through tears. "No, no, no, I couldn't! I never can." They had reached the beach now, and could see the children, in their blue field coats, following the curving reaches of the incoming waves. The fresh roar of the breakers filled a silence, gulls piped their wistful little cry as they circled high in the blue air. Old Captain Semple, in his rickety one-seated buggy, drove up the beach, the water rising in the wheel-tracks. The children gathered about him; it was one of their excitements to see the Captain wash his carriage, and the old mare splash in the shallow water. Alice seated herself on a great log, worn silver from the sea, and half buried in the white sand, but Rachael remained standing, the sweet October wind whipping against her strong and splendid figure, her beautiful eyes looking far out to sea. "You two have no quarrel," the older woman added mildly. "You and Warren were rarely companionable. I used to say to George that you were almost TOO congenial, too sensitive to each other's moods. Warren knew that you idolized him, Rachael, and consequently, when criticism came, when he felt that you of all persons were misjudging him, why, he simply flung up his head like a horse, and bolted!" "Misjudging?" Rachael said quickly, half turning her head, and bringing her eyes from the far horizon to rest upon Alice's face. The children had seen them now, and were running toward them, and Alice did not attempt to answer. She sighed, and shrugged her shoulders. A dead horseshoe crab on the sands deflected the course of the racing children, except Derry, who pursued his panting way, and as Rachael sat down on the log, cast himself, radiant and breathless, into her arms. She caught the child to her heart passionately. He had always been closer to her than even the splendid first-born because of the giddy little head that was always getting him into troubles, and the reckless little feet that never chose a sensible course. Derry was always being rescued from deep water, always leaping blindly from high places and saved by the narrowest possible chance, always getting his soft mop of hair inextricably tangled in the steering-gear of Rachael's car, or his foot hopelessly twisted in the innocent-looking bars of his own bed, always eating mysterious berries, or tasting dangerous medicines, always ready to laugh deeply and deliciously at his own crimes. Jim assumed a protective attitude toward him, chuckling at his predicaments, advising him, and even gallantly assuming the blame for his worst misdeeds. Rachael imagined them in boarding-school some day; in college; Jim the student, dragged from his books and window-seat to go to the rescue of the unfortunate but fascinating junior. Jim said he was going to write books; Derry was going--her heart contracted whenever he said it--was going to be a doctor, and Dad would show him what to do! Ah, how proud Warren might have been of them, she thought, walking home to-day, a sandy hand in each of hers, Derry hopping on one foot, twisting, and leaping; Jim leaning affectionately against her, and holding forth as to the proper method of washing wagons! What man would not have been proud of this pair, enchanting in faded galatea now, soon to be introduced to linen knickerbockers, busy with their first toiling capitals now, some day to be growling Latin verbs. They would be interested in the Zoo this winter, and then in skating, and then in football--Warren loved football. He had thrown it all away! Widowed in spirit, still Rachael was continually reminded that she was not actually widowed, and in the hurt that came to her, even in these first months, she found a chilling premonition of the years to come. Warm-hearted Vera Villalonga wrote impulsively from the large establishment at Lakewood that she had acquired for the early winter. She had heard that Rachael and Greg weren't exactly hitting it off--hoped to the Lord it wasn't true--anyway, Rachael had been perfectly horrible about seeing her old friends; couldn't she come at once to Vera, lots of the old crowd were there, and spend a month? Mrs. Barker Emery, meeting Rachael on one of the rare occasions when Rachael went into the city, asked pleasantly for the boys, and pleasantly did not ask for Warren. Belvedere Bay was gayer than ever this year, Mrs. Emory said; did Rachael know that the Duchess of Exton was visiting Mary Moulton--such a dear! Georgiana Vanderwall, visiting the Thomases at Easthampton, motored over one day to spend a sympathetic half morning with Rachael, pressing that lady's unresponsive hand with her own large, capable one, and murmuring that of course--one heard--that the Bishop of course felt dreadfully--they only hoped--both such dear sweet people-- Rachael felt as if she would like to take a bath after this well-meant visitation. A day or two later she had a letter from Florence, who said that "someone" had told her that the Gregorys might not be planning to keep their wonderful cook this winter. If that was true, would Rachael be so awfully good as to ask her to go see Mrs. Haviland? "The pack," Rachael said to Alice, "is ready to run again!" CHAPTER VII November turned chilly, and in its second week there was even a flutter of snow at Clark's Hills. Rachael did not dislike it, and it was a huge adventure to the boys. Nevertheless, she began to feel that a longer stay down on the bleak coast might be unwise. The old house, for all its purring furnace and double windows, was draughty enough to admit icy little fingers of the outside air, here and there, and the village, getting under storm shutters and closing up this wing or that room for the winter, was so businesslike in its preparations as to fill Rachael's heart with mild misgivings. Alice still brought her brood down for the week-ends, and it was on one of these that Rachael suddenly decided to move. The two women discussed it, Rachael finally agreeing to go to the Valentines' for a week before going on to Boston--or it might be Washington or Philadelphia--any other city than the one in which she might encounter the boys' father. Alice had never won her to promise a visit before, and although Rachael's confidence in her--for Rachael neither extracted a promise from Alice as to any possible encounter with Warren, nor reminded her friend that she placed herself entirely at Alice's mercy--rather disconcerted Alice, she had a simple woman's strong faith in coincidence, and she felt, she told George, that the Lord would not let this opportunity for a reconciliation go by. Mrs. Valentine had seen Warren Gregory now, more than once, and far more potent than any argument that he might have made was his silence, his most unexpected and unnatural silence. There was no explanation; indeed Warren had little to say on any subject in these days. He liked to come now and then, in the evening, to the Valentine house, but he would not dine there, and confined his remarks almost entirely to answers to George. Physically, Alice thought him shockingly changed. "He is simply broken," she said to George, in something like fright. "I didn't know human beings could change that way. Warren--who used to be so positive! Why, he's almost timid!" She did not tell Rachael this, and George insisted that, while Rachael and the boys were at the house, Warren must be warned to keep away; so that Alice had frail enough material with which to build her dreams. Nevertheless, she dreamed. It was finally arranged that Rachael and little Jim should go up to town on a certain Monday with Alice; that Rachael should make various engagements then, as to storage, packing, and such matters as the care of the piano and the car, for the winter. Then Jim, for the first time in his life, would stay away from his mother overnight with Aunt Alice, Rachael returning to Clark's Hills to bring Mary and Derry up the next day in the car. Jim was to go to the dentist, and to get shoes; there were several excellent reasons why it seemed wise to have him await his mother and brother in town rather than make the long trip twice in one day. Mary smuggled Derry out of sight when the Monday morning came, and Rachael and her oldest son went away with the Valentines in the car. It was a fresh, sweet morning in the early winter, and both women, furred to the eyes, enjoyed the trip. The children, snuggled in between them, chattered of their own affairs, and Rachael interrupted her inexhaustible talk with Alice only to ask a question of the driver now and then. "I shall have to bring my own car over this road to-morrow, Kane," she explained. "I have never been at the wheel myself before in all the times I have done it." "Mar-r-tin does be knowin' every step of the way," suggested Kane. "But Martin hasn't been with me this summer," the lady smiled. "I thought I saw him runnin' the docther's car yesterda' week," mused Kane who was a privileged character. "Well,'tis not hard, Mrs. Gregory. The whole place is plasthered wid posts. But the thing of it is, ma'am," he added, after a moment, turning back toward her without taking his eyes from the road, "there does be a big storm blowin' up. Look there, far over there, how black it is." "But that won't break to-day?" Rachael said uneasily, thinking of Derry. "Well, it may not--that's thrue. But these roads will be in a grand mess if we have anny more rain--that's a fact for ye," Kane persisted. "Then don't come until Wednesday," suggested Alice. "Oh, Alice, but I'll be so frantic to see my boy!" "Twenty-four hours more, you goose!" Alice laughed. Rachael laughed, too, and took several surreptitious kisses from the back of Jimmy's neck as a fortification against the coming separation. Indeed, she found it unbelievably hard to leave him, trotting happily upstairs with his beloved Katharine, and to go about her day's business anticipating the long trip back to Home Dunes without him. However, there were not many hours to spare, and Rachael had much to do. She set herself systematically to work. By one o'clock everything was done, with an hour to spare for train time. But she had foolishly omitted luncheon, and felt tired and dizzy. She turned toward a downtown lunchroom, and was held at the crossing of Fifth Avenue and one of the thirties idly watching the crowd of cars that delayed her when she saw Warren in his car. He was on the cross street, and so also stopped, but he did not see her. Martin was at the wheel, Warren buttoned to the neck in a gray coat, his hat well down over his eyes, alone in the back seat. He was staring steadily, yet with unseeing eyes, before him, and Rachael felt a sense of almost sickening shock at the sight of his altered face. Warren, looking tired and depressed, looking discouraged, and with some new look of diffidence and hurt, besides all these, in his face! Warren old! Warren OLD! Rachael felt as if she should faint. She was rooted where she stood. Fifth Avenue pushed gayly and busily by her under the leaden sky. Furred old ladies, furred little girls, messenger boys and club men, jostling, gossiping, planning. Only she stood still. And after a while she looked again where Warren had been. He was gone. But had he seen her? her heart asked itself with wild clamor. Had he seen her? She began to walk rapidly and blindly, conscious of taking a general direction toward the Terminal Station, but so vague as to her course that she presently looked bewilderedly about to find that she was in Eighth Avenue and that, standing absolutely still again, and held by thought, she was being curiously regarded by a policeman. She gave the man a dazed and sickly smile. "I am afraid I am a little out of my way," she stammered. "I am going to the station." He pointed out the direction, and she thanked him, and blindly went on her way. But her heart was tearing like a living thing in her breast, and she walked like a wounded creature that leaves a trail of life blood. Oh, she was his wife--his wife--his wife! She belonged there, in that empty seat beside him, with her shoulder against that gray overcoat! What was she doing in this desolate street of little shops, faint and heartsick and alone! Oh, for the security of that familiar car again! How often she had sat beside him, arrested by the traffic, content to placidly watch the shifting crowd, to wait for the shrill little whistle that gave them the right of way! If she were there now, where might they be going? Perhaps to a concert, perhaps to look at a picture in some gallery, but first of all certainly to lunch. His first question would be: "Had your lunch?" and his answer only a satisfied nod. But he would direct Martin to the first place that suggested itself to him as being suitable for Rachael's meal. And he would order it, no trouble was too much for her; nothing too good for his wife. She was not beside him. She was still drifting along this hideous street, battling with faintness and headache, and never, perhaps, to see her husband again. One of her sons was in the city, another miles away, To her horror she felt herself beginning to cry. She quickened her pace, and reckless of the waiter's concern, entered the station restaurant and ordered herself a lunch. But when it came she could not eat it, and she was presently in the train, without a book or magazine, still fasting except for a hurried half cup of tea, and every instant less and less able to resist the corning flood of her tears. All the long trip home she wept, quietly and steadily, one arm on the window sill, a hand pressed against her face. There were few other passengers in the train, which was too hot. The winter twilight shut down early, and at last the storm broke; not violently, but with a stern and steady persistence. The windows ran rain, and were blurred with steam, the darkening landscape swept by under a deluge. When the train stopped at a station, a rush of wet air, mingled with the odors of mackintoshes and the wet leather of motor cars, came in. Rachael would look out to see meetings, lanterns and raincoats, umbrellas dripping over eager, rosy faces. She would be glad to get home, she said to herself, to her snuggly little comforting Derry. They would not attempt to make the move to-morrow--that was absurd. It had been far too much of a trip to-day, and Alice had advised her against it. But it had not sounded so formidable. To start at seven, be in town at ten, after the brisk run, and take the afternoon train home--this was no such strain, as they had planned it. But it had proved to be a frightful strain. Leaving Jim, and then catching that heart-rending glimpse of the changed Warren--Warren looking like a hurt child who must bear a punishment without understanding it. "Oh, what are we thinking about, to act in this crazy manner!" Rachael asked herself desperately. "He loves me, and I--I've always loved him. Other people may misjudge him, but I know! He's horrified and shamed and sorry. He's suffering as much as I am. What fools--what utter FOOLS we are!" And suddenly--it was nearly six o'clock now, and they were within a few minutes of Clark's Hills--she stopped crying, and began to plan a letter that should end the whole terrible episode. "Your stop Quaker Bridge?" asked the conductor, coming in, and beginning to shift the seats briskly on their iron pivots, as one who expected a large crowd to accompany him on the run back. "Clark's Hills," Rachael said, noticing that she was alone in the train. "Don't know as we can get over the Bar," the man said cheerily. "Looks as if we were going to try it!" Rachael answered with equal aplomb as the train ran through Quaker Bridge without stopping, and went on with only slightly decreased speed. And a moment later she began to gather her possessions together, and the conductor remarked amiably: "Here we are! But she surely is raining," he added. "Well, we've only got to run back as far as the car barn--that's Seawall--to-night. My folks live there." Rachael did not mind the rain. She would be at home in five minutes. She climbed into a closed surrey, smelling strongly of leather and horses, and asked the driver pleasantly how early the rain had commenced. He evidently did not hear her, at all events made no answer, and she did not speak again. "Where's my Derry?" Rachael's voice rang strong and happy through the house. "Mary--Mary!" she added, stopping, rather puzzled, in the hall. "Where is he?" How did it come to her, by what degrees? How does such news tell itself, from the first little chill, that is not quite fear, to the full thundering avalanche of utter horror? Rachael never remembered afterward, never tried to remember. The moment remained the blackest of all her life. It was not the subtly changed atmosphere of the house, not Mary's tear-swollen face, as she appeared, silent, at the top of the stairs; not Millie, who came ashen-faced and panting from the kitchen; not the sudden, weary little moan that floated softly through the hallway--no one of all these things. Yet Rachael knew--Derry was dying. She needed not to know how or why. Her furs fell where she stood, her hat was gone, she had flown upstairs as swiftly as light. She knew the door, she knew what she would see. She went down on her knees beside him. Her little gallant, reckless, shouting Derry! Her warm, beautiful boy, changed in these few hours to this crushed and moaning little being, this cruelly crumpled and tortured little wreck of all that had been gay and sound and confident babyhood! In that first moment at his side it had seemed to Rachael that she must die, too, of sheer agony of spirit. She put her beautiful head down against the brown little limp hand upon which a rusty stain was drying, and she could have wailed aloud in the bitter rebellion of her soul. Not Derry, not Derry, so small and innocent and confiding--her own child, her own flesh and blood, the fibre of her being! Trusting them, obeying them, and betrayed--brought to this! At her first look she had thought the child dead; now, as she drew back from him, and caught her self-control with a quivering breath, and wrung her hands together in desperate effort to hold back a scream, she found it in her heart to wish he were. His little face was black from a great bruise that spread from temple to chin, his mouth cut and swollen, his eyes half shut. His body was doubled where it lay, a great bubble of blood moved with his breath. He breathed lightly and faintly, with an occasional deep gasp that invariably brought the long, heart-sickening moan. They had taken off part of his clothes, his shoes and stockings, but he still wore his Holland suit, and the dark-blue woolen coat had only been partly removed. Rachael, ashen-faced, rose from her knees, and faced Mary and Millie. With bitter tears the story was told. He had been playing, as usual, in the barn, and Mary had been swinging him. Not high, nothing like as high as Jimmie went. And Millie came out to say that their dinner was ready, and all of a sudden he called out that he could swing without holding on, and put both his hands up in the air. And then Mary saw him fall, the board of the swing falling, too, and striking him as he fell, and his face dashing against the old mill-wheel that stood by the door. And he had not spoken since. His arm had hung down loose-like, as Mary carried him in, and Millie had run for the doctor. But Doctor Peet wouldn't be back until seven, and the girls had dared do no more than wash off his face a little and try to make him comfortable. "I wish the Lord had called me before the day came," said Mary, "me, that would have died for him--for any of you!" "I know that, Mary," Rachael said. "It would have happened as easily with me. We all know what you have been to the boys, Mary. But you mustn't cry so hard. I need you. I am going to drive him into town." "Oh, my God, in this storm?" exclaimed Millie. "There's nothing else to do," Rachael said. "He may die on the way, but his mother will do what she can. I couldn't have Doctor Peet, kind as he is. Doctor Gregory--his father--will know. It's nearly seven now. We must start as fast as we can. You'll have to pin something all about the back seat, Mary, and line it with comforters. We'll put his mattress on the seat--you'll make it snug, won't you?--and you'll sit on the floor there, and steady him all you can, for I'll have to drive. We ought to be there by midnight, even in the storm." "I'll fix it," Mary said, with one great sob, and immediately, to Rachael's great relief, she was her practical self. "And I want some coffee, Millie," she said, "strong; I'm not hungry, but if you have something ready, I'll eat what I can. Did Ruddy come up and get the car to-day, for oil and gas, and so on?" "He did," said Millie, eager to be helpful. "That's a blessing." Rachael turned to look at the little figure on the bed. Her heart contracted with a freezing spasm of terror whenever her eyes even moved in that direction. But there was plenty to do. She got herself into dry, warm clothes. She leaned over her little charge, straightening and adjusting as best she could, shifting the little body as gently as was possible to the smaller mattress, covering it warmly but lightly. As she did so she wondered which one of those long, moaning breaths would be the last; when would little Derry straighten himself--and lie still? No time to think of that. She tied on her hat and veil, and went out to look at the car. The rear seat was lined with pillows, the curtain drawn. She had matches, her electric flashlight, her road maps, a flask of brandy--what else? Millie had run for neighbors, and the chains were finally adjusted. The car had been made ready for the run, and was in good shape. The big shadowy barn that was the garage was full of dancing shapes in the lantern-light. The rain splashed and spattered incessantly outside; a black sky seemed to have closed down just over their heads. She was in a fever to get away. Slowly the dazzling headlights moved in the pitchy blackness, the wheels grated but held their own. The car came to the side door, and the little mattress came out, and the muffled shape that was Mary got in beside it. Then there was buttoning of storm curtains by willing hands, and many a whispered good wish to Rachael as she slipped in under the wheel. Millie was beside her, at the last moment, begging to be of some use if she might. "There's just this, Mrs. Gregory," said Ruddy Simms nervously, when the engine was humming, and, Rachael's gloved hand racing the accelerator, "they say the tide's making fast in all this rain! I don't know how you'll do at the Bar. She's ugly a night, like this; what with the bay eating one side, and the sea breaking over the other!" "Thank you," Rachael said, not hearing him. "God bless you! Good-bye!" She released the clutch. The big car leaped forward, into the darkness. The clock before her eyes said thirty-five minutes past seven. Rain beat against the heavy cloth of the curtains, water swished and splashed under the wheels, and above the purring of the engine they could hear the clinking fall of the chains. There was no other sound except when Derry caught a moaning breath. Clark's Hills passed in blackness, the road dropped down toward the Bar. Rachael could feel that Mary, in the back seat, was praying, and that Millie was praying beside her. Her own heart rose on a wild and desperate prayer. If they could cross this narrow strip between the bay and the ocean, then whatever the fortune of the road, she could meet it. Telephones, at least, were on the other side, resources of all sorts. But to be stopped here! The look of the Bar, when they reached it, struck chill even to Rachael's heart. In the clear tunnels of light flung from the car lamps it seemed all a moving level of restless water smitten under sheets of rain. Anything more desperate than an effort to find the little belt of safety in this trackless spread of merciless seas it would be hard to imagine. At an ordinary high tide the Bar was but a few inches above the sea; now, with a wind blowing, a heavy rain falling, and the tide almost at the full, no road whatever was visible. It was there, the friendly road that Rachael and the hot and sandy boys had tramped a hundred times, but even she could not believe it, now, so utterly impassable did the shifting surface appear. But she gallantly put the car straight into the heart of it, moving as slowly as the engine permitted, and sending quick, apprehensive glances into the darkness as she went. "At the worst, we can back out of this, Millie," said she. "Of course we can," Millie said, suppressing frightened tears with some courage. The water was washing roughly against the running boards; to an onlooker the car would have had the appearance of being afloat, hub-deep, at sea. Slowly, slowly, slowly they were still moving. The car stopped short. The engine was dead. Rachael touched her starter, touched it again and again. No use. The car had stopped. The rain struck in noisy sheets against the curtains. The sea gurgled and rushed about them. Derry moaned softly. And now the full madness of the attempted expedition struck her for the first time. She had never thought that, at worst, she could not go back. What now? Should they stand here on the shifting sand of the Bar until the tide fell--it was not yet full. Rachael felt her heart beating quick with terror. It began to seem like a feverish dream. Neither maid spoke, perhaps neither one realized the full extent of the calamity. With the confidence of those who do not understand the workings of a car, they waited to have it start again. But both girls screamed when suddenly a new voice was heard. Rachael, starting nervously as a man's figure came about the car out of the black night, in the next second saw, with a great rush of relief, that it was Ruddy Simms. He was a mighty fellow, devoted to the Gregorys. He proceeded rather awkwardly to explain that he hadn't liked to think of their trying to cross the Bar, and so had come with them on the running board. "Oh, Ruddy, how grateful I am to you!" Rachael said. "Perhaps you can go back and get us a tow? What can we do?" "Stuck?" asked Ruddy, wading as unconcernedly about the car as if the sun were shining on the scene. "No, I don't think so, not yet. But I can feel the road under us giving already. And I've killed my engine!" Ruddy deliberated. "Won't start, eh?" "She simply WON'T!" "Ain't got a crank, have ye?" Rachael stared. "Why, yes, we have, under my seat here. But is there a chance that she might start on cranking?" she said eagerly. "Dun't know," Ruddy said non-committally. Rachael was instantly on her feet, and after some groping and adjusting, the cranking was attempted. Failure. Ruddy went bravely at it again. Failure. Again Rachael touched the starter. "No use!" she said with a sinking heart. But Ruddy was bred of sea-folk who do not expect quick results. He tugged away again vigorously, and again after that. And suddenly--the most delicious sound that Rachael's ears had ever heard--there was the sucking and plunging that meant success. The car panted like a giant revived, and Ruddy stood back in the merciless green light and sent Rachael a smile. His homely face, running rain, looked at her as bright as an angel's. "Dun't know as I'd stand there, s'deep in my tracks!" shouted Ruddy. Gingerly, timidly, she pushed the car on some ten feet. "What I's thinking," suggested Ruddy then, coming to put his face in close to hers, and shouting over the noise of wind and water, "is this: if I was to walk ahead of ye, kinder feeling for the road with my feet, then you could come after, d'ye see?" "Oh, Ruddy, do you think we can make it, then?" Rachael's face was wet with tears. "Dun't know," he said. He took off his immense boots and gray socks, and rolled up his wet trousers, the better to feel every inch of rise or fall in the ground beneath his feet, and Millie held these for him as if it were a sacred charge. And then, with the full light of the lamps illumining his big figure, and with the water rushing and gurgling about them, and the rain pouring down as if it were an actual deluge, they made the crossing at Clark's Bar. The shifting water almost blinded Rachael sometimes, and sometimes it seemed as if any way but the way that Ruddy's waving arms indicated was the right one; as if to follow him were utter madness. The water spouted up through the clutch, and once again the engine stopped, and long moments went by before it would respond to the crank again. But Rachael pushed slowly on. She was not thinking now, she was conscious of no feeling but that there was an opposite shore, and she must reach it. And presently it rose before them. The road ran gradually upward, a shallow sheet of running water covering it, but firm, hard roadway discernible nevertheless. Rachael stopped the car, and Ruddy came again and put his face close to hers, through the curtains. "Now ye've got straight road, Mrs. Gregory, and I hope to the good Lord you'll have a good run. Thank ye, Millie--much obliged!" "Ruddy!" said Rachael passionately, her wet gloves holding his big, hairy hands tight. "I'll never forget this! If he has a chance to live at all, this is his chance, and you've given it to him! God bless you, a thousand times!" "That's all right," said Ruddy, terribly embarrassed. "You've always been awful good to my folks. I'm glad we done it! Good-night!" Then Ruddy had turned back for the walk home in the streaming blackness, and Rachael, drawing a deep breath, was on her way again. She stopped only for a quick question to Mary. "No change?" "Just the same." The wet miles flew by; rain beat untiringly against the curtains, slished in two great feathers of water from under the rushing wheels. Rachael watched her speedometer; twenty-five--twenty-eight--thirty--they could not do better than that in this weather. And they had a hundred miles to go. But that hundred was only eighty-six now, only eighty. Villages flew by, and men came out and stood on the dripping porches of crossroad stores to marvel as the long scream of Rachael's horn cut through the night air. Twenty minutes past eight o'clock--eight minutes of nine o'clock. The little villages began to grow dark. There was nothing to pass on the road; so much was gain. Except in the villages, and once or twice where a slow, rattling wagon was plodding along on the wet mirror-like asphalt, Rachael might make her own speed. The road lay straight, and was an exceptionally good road, even in this weather. She need hardly pause for signboards. The rain still fell in sheets. Seventy-two miles to go. "How is he, Mary?" "The same, Mrs. Gregory. Except that he gives a little groan now and then--when it shakes him!" "My boy! But not sleeping?" "Oh, no, Mrs. Gregory. He just lies quiet like." "God bless him!" Rachael said under her breath. Aloud she said: "Millie, couldn't you lean over, and watch him a few minutes, and see what you think?" Then they were flying on again. Rachael began to wonder just how long the run was. They always carelessly called it "a hundred miles." But was it really a hundred and two, or ninety-eight? What a difference two or three miles would make to-night! She fell into a nervous shiver; suppose they reached the bridge, and then Mary should touch her arm. "He doesn't look right, Mrs. Gregory!" Suppose that for the little boy that they finally carried into New York there was no longer any hope. Her little Derry-- The child that might have been the joy of a happy home, that might have grown to a dignified inheritance of the love and tenderness that had been between his father and mother. Robbed in his babyhood, taken away from the father he adored, and now--this! Sixty-one miles to go. "Detour to New York." The sign, with all its hideous import, rose before her suddenly. No help for it; she must lose one or two, perhaps a dozen miles, she must give up the good road for a bad one. She must lose her way, too, perhaps. Had Kane gone over this road yesterday? It was much farther on that she had spoken to Kane. Perhaps he had, but she could not remember, doubt made every foot of the way terrible to Rachael. She could only plunge on, over rocks, over bumps, into mud-holes. She could only blindly take what seemed of two turnings the one most probably right. "Oh--Mother!" The little wail came from Derry. Rachael, her heart turned to ice, slowed down--stopped and leaned into the half darkness in the back of the car. The child's lovely eyes were opened. Rachael could barely see his white face. "My darling!" she said. "Will you not--bump me so, Mother?" the little boy whispered. "I will try not to, my heart!" Rachael, wild with terror, looked to Mary's face. Was he dying, now and here? "Oh Moth--it hurts so!" "Does it, my darling?" He drowsed again. Rachael turned back to her wheel. They must go more slowly now, at any cost. The road was terrible, in parts, after the hours of heavy rain, it seemed almost impassable. Rachael pushed on. Presently they were back in the main road again, and could make better time. Of the hundred miles only fifty remained. But that meant nothing now. How much time had she lost in that frightful bypath? Rachael's face was dripping with rain, rain had trickled under her clothing at neck and wrists. Through her raincoat the breast of her gown was soaking, and her feet ached with the strain of controlling the heavy car. Water came in long runnels through the wind-shield, and struck her knees; she had turned her dress back, her thin silk petticoat was soaked, and the muscles of knees and ankles were cold and sore. But she felt these things not at all. Her eyes burned ahead, into the darkness, she heard nothing but the occasional fluttering moan from Derry; she thought nothing but that she might be too late--too late--too late! At the first town of any size she stopped, a telegram to George taking shape in her mind. But the wires here were down, as they had been farther down the Island. The rain was thinning, but the wind was rising every second, and as she rushed on she saw that in many places the lights on the road were out; all the Island lay battered and bruised under the storm. Slowly as they seemed to creep, yet the miles were going by. Freeport--Lynbrook--Jamaica--like a woman in a dream she reached the bridge and a moment later looked down upon the long belt of lights winking in the rain that was New York. And here, on the very apex of the bridge, came the most heart-rending moment of the run, for the little boy began to cough, and for two or three frightful minutes the women hung over him, speechless with terror, and knowing that at any second the exhausted little body might succumb to the strain. Blindly, as with a long, choked cry he sank back again, Rachael went back to her wheel. Third Avenue--Fifth Avenue--Forty-second Street tore by; they were running straight down toward Washington Arch as the clocks everywhere struck midnight. The wide street was deserted in the rain, it shone like a mirror, reflecting long pendants of light. They were turning the corner; she was out of the car, and had glanced at the familiar old house. Wet, exhausted, fired by a passion that made her feel curiously light and sure, Rachael put her arms about her child, and carried him up the steps. Mary had preceded her, the door was opened; a dazed and frightened maid was looking at her. Then she was crossing the familiar hall; lights were in the library, and Warren in the library, somebody with him, but Rachael only caught a glimpse of the old familiar attitude: he was sitting in a straight-backed chair, his legs crossed, and one firm hand grasping a silk-clad ankle as he intently listened to whatever was being said. "Warren!" she said in a voice that those who heard it remembered all their lives. "It's Derry! He's hurt--he's dying, I think! Can you--can you save him?" And with a great burst of tears she gave up the child. "My God--what is it!" said Warren Gregory on his feet, and with Derry in his arms, even as he spoke. For a second the tableau held: Rachael, agonized, her beautiful face colorless, and dripping with rain, her husband staring at her as if he could not credit his senses, the child's limp body in his arms, yet not quite freed from hers. In the background were the whitefaced servants and the gray-headed doctor upon whose conversation the newcomers had so abruptly broken. "We've just brought him up from Clark's Hills!" Rachael said. "From Clark's Hills--YOU!" His look, the dear familiar look of solicitude and concern, tore her to the soul. "There was nothing else to do!" she faltered. "But--you drove up to-night?" "Since seven." He looked at her, and Rachael felt the look sink into her soul like rain into parched land. "And you came straight to me!" His voice sank. "Rachael," he said, "I will save him for you if I can!" And instantly there began such activities in the old house as perhaps even its dignified century of living had never known. Rachael, hungry through these terrible hours of suspense for just the wild rush and hurry, watched her husband as if she had never seen him before. Presently lights blazed from cellar to attic, maids flew in every direction, fires were lighted, the moving of heavy furniture shook the floors. Derry, the little unconscious cause of it all, lay quiet, with Mary watching him. New York had been asleep; it was awakened now. Motor cars wheeled into the Gregorys' street; Mrs. Gregory herself answered the door. Here was the nurse, efficient, yet sympathetic, too, with her paraphernalia and her assistants. Yes, she had been able to get it, Doctor Gregory. Yes, Doctor, she had that. Here was the man from the drug store--that was all right, Doctor, that was what he expected, being waked up in the night; thank you, Doctor. And here was George Valentine, too much absorbed in the business in hand to say more than an affectionate "Hello" to Rachael. But with George was Alice, white-faced but smiling, and little sleepy Jimmy, who was to be smuggled immediately into bed. "I thought you'd rather have him here," said Alice. Rachael knew why. Rachael knew what doctors said to each other, when they gathered, and used those quick, low monosyllables. She knew why Miss Redding was speeding the arrangements for the improvised operating-room with such desperate hurry. She knew why one of these assisting doctors was delegated to do nothing but sit beside Derry, watching the little hurt breast rise and fall, watching the bubble of blood form and break on the swollen mouth. Warren had told her to get into dry clothing, and then to take a stimulant, and have something to eat. And eager to save him what she could, she was warm and dry now. She sat in Derry's room, and presently, when they came to stand beside him, Warren and George, they found her agonized eyes, bright with questions, facing them. But she knew better than to speak. Neither man spoke for a few dreadful moments. Warren looked at the child without a flicker of change in his impassive look; George bit his lip, and almost imperceptibly shook his head. And in their faces Rachael read the death of her last faint hope. "We don't dare anesthetize him until we know just the lie of those broken ribs," said Warren gravely to his wife, "and yet the little chap is so exhausted that the strain of trying to touch it may--may be too much for him. There's no time for an X-ray. Some of these fellows think it is too great a risk. I believe it may be done. If there are internal injuries, we can't hope to--" He paused. "But otherwise, I believe--" Again his voice dropped. He stood looking at the little boy with eyes that were not a surgeon's now; all a father's. "Good little chap," he said softly. "Do you remember how he used to watch Jim, through the bars of his crib, when he was about eight months old, and laugh as if Jim was the funniest thing in the world?" Rachael looked up and nodded with brimming eyes. She could not speak. They carried Derry away, and Rachael followed them up to the head of the stairway outside of the operating-room, and sat there, her hands locked in her lap, her head resting against the wall. Alice dared not join her, she kept her seat by the library fire, and with one hand pressed tight against her eyes, tried to pray. Rachael did not pray. She was unable even to think clearly. Visions drifted through her tired brain, the panorama of the long day and night swept by unceasingly. She was in Eighth Avenue again, she was in the hot train, with the rain beating against the windows, and tears running down her hot cheeks. She was entering the house--"Where's my boy?" And then she was driving the car through that cruel world of water and wind. She would have saved him if she could! She had done her share. Instantly, unflinchingly, she had torn through blackness and storm; a battered ship beating somehow toward the familiar harbor. Now he must be saved. Rachael knew that madness would come upon her if these hideous hours were only working toward the moment when she would know that she had been too late. For the rest of her life she would only review them: the Bar, the wet roads, the detour, and the frightful seconds on the bridge. There had been something expiatory, something symbolic in this mad adventure, this flight through the night. The fires that had been burning in her heart for the past terrible hours were purged, she must be changed forevermore after to-night. But for the new birth, Derry must not be the price! The strain had been too great, the delicate machinery of her brain would give, she could not take up life again, having lost him--and lost him in this way-- They were torturing him; the child's cry of utter agony reached her where she sat. It came to her, in a flash, that Warren had said there might be no merciful chloroform. Cold water broke out on her forehead, she covered her ears with her hands, her breath coming wild and deep. Derry! "Oh, no--Daddy! Oh, no, Daddy! Oh, Mother--Mother--!" "Oh, my God! this is not right," Rachael said half aloud. "Oh, take him, take him, but don't let him suffer so!" She was writhing as if the suffering were her own. For perhaps five horrible moments the house rang, then there was sudden silence. "Now he is dead," Rachael said in the same quiet, half-audible tone. "I am glad. He will never know what pain is again. Five perfect little years, with never one instant that was not sweet and good. Gerald Fairfax Gregory--five years old. One sees it in the papers almost every day. But who thinks what it means? Just the mother, who remembers the first cry, and the little crumpled flannel wrappers, and the little hand crawling up her breast. He walked so much sooner than Jim did, but of course he was lighter. And how he would throw things out of windows--the camera that hit the postman! Oh, my God!" For the anguished screaming had recommenced, and the child wanted his mother. Rachael bore it for endless, agonizing minutes. Presently Alice, white-faced, was kneeling on the step below her, and their wet hands were clasped. "Dearest, why do you sit here!" "Oh, Alice, could I get Warren, do you think? They mustn't--it's too cruel! He's only a baby, he doesn't understand! Better a thousand times to let him go--tell them so! Get George--tell him I say so!" "Rachael, it's terrible," said Alice, who was crying hard, "b-b-but they must think there is a chance, dear. We couldn't interrupt them now. He would see you--there, he's quiet again. That may be all!" But it was not the end for many hours. The women on the stairs, and the sobbing maids in the diningroom, hoped and despaired, and grew faint and sick themselves as the merciless work went on. Once George came out of the room for a few minutes, with a face flaked with white, and his surgeon's gown crumpled, wet with water and stained here and there a terrible red. He did not speak to either woman, and in answer to Alice's breath of interrogation merely shook his head. At four o'clock Warren himself came to the door. Rachael sprang to her feet, was close to him in a second. The sight of him, his gown, his hands, his dreadful face, turned Alice faint, but Rachael's voice was steady. "What is it?" "We are nearly done. Nearly done," Warren said. "I can't tell yet--nobody can. But I must finish it. Do you think you could--he keeps asking for you. I am sorry to ask you--" "Hold him?" Rachael's voice of agony said. "Yes, I could do that. I--I have been wanting to!" "No--there is no necessity for that. He is on the table. But if he could see you. It is the very end of our work," he answered. "It may be that he can't--you must be ready for that." "I am ready," she said. A second later she was in the room with the child. She saw nothing but Derry, his little body beneath the sheet rigidly strapped to the table. The group gave place, and Rachael stood beside him. His beautiful baby eyes, wild with terror and agony, found her; she bent over him, and laid her fingers on his wet little forehead. He wanted his mother to take him away, he had been calling her--hadn't she heard him? Please, please, not to let anyone touch him again! Rachael summoned a desperate courage. She spoke to him, she could even smile. Did he remember the swing--yes, but he didn't remember Mother bringing him all the way up, so that Daddy and Uncle George-- His brave eyes were fixed on hers. He was trying to remember, trying to answer her smile, trying to think of other things than the recommencing pain. No use. The hoarse, terrible little screams began again. His little hand writhed in hers. "Mother--PLEASE--will you make them stop?" Rachael was breathing deep, her own forehead was wet. She knew the child's strength was gone. "Just a little more, dearest," she said, white lipped; eyes full of agonized appeal turned to George. "Doctor--" One of the nurses, her hand on his pulse, said softly. George Valentine looked up. Rachael's apprehensive glance questioned them both. But Warren Gregory did not falter, did not even glance away from his own hands. Then it was over. The tension in the room broke suddenly, the atmosphere changed, although there was not an audible breath. The nurses moved swiftly and surely, needing no instructions. George lifted Derry's little hand from Rachael's, and put one arm about her. Warren put down his instrument, and bent, his face a mask of anxiety, over the child. Derry was breathing--no more. But on the bloodless face that Warren raised there was the light of hope. "I believe he will make it, George," he said. "I think we have saved him for you, Rachael! No--no--leave him where he is, Miss Moore. Get a flat pillow under his head if you can. Cover him up. I'm going to stay here." "Wouldn't he be more comfortable in his bed?" Rachael's shaken voice asked in a low tone. She was conscious only that she must not faint now. "He would be, of course. But it may be just by that fraction of energy that he is hanging on. Brave little chap, he has been helping us just as if he knew--" But this Rachael could not endure. Her whole body shook, the room rocked before her eyes. She had strength to reach the hall, saw Alice standing white and tense, at the top of the stairs--then it was all darkness. It seemed hours later, though it was only minutes, that Rachael came dreamily to consciousness in her own old room, on her own bed. Her idly moving eyes found the shaded lamp, found Alice sitting beside her. Alice's hand lay over her own. For a long time they did not speak. A perfect circle of shadow was flung on the high ceiling from the lamp. Outside of the shadow were the familiar window draperies, the white mantel with its old candlesticks, the exquisite crayon portrait of Jim at three, and Derry a delicious eighteen-months-old. There was the white bowl that had always been filled with violets, empty now. And there were the low bookcases where a few special favorites were kept, and the quaint old mahogany sewing-table that had been old Mrs. Gregory's as a bride. Rachael was exhausted in every fibre of body and soul, consecutive thought was impossible now; her aching head defied the effort, but lying here, in this dim light, there came to her a vision of the years that might be. If she were ever rested again, if little Derry were again his sunny, resolute self, if Warren and she were reunited, then what an ideal of fine and simple and unselfish living would be hers! How she would cling to honor and truth and goodness, how she would fortify herself against the pitfalls dug by her own impulsiveness. She and Warren had everything in life worth while, it was not for them to throw their gifts away. Their home should be the source of help to other homes, their sons should some day go out into the world equipped with wisdom, disciplined and self-controlled, ready to meet life far more bravely than ever their mother had. There was a low voice at her door. Alice was gone, and Warren was kneeling beside her. And as she laid one tired arm about his neck, in the dear familiar fashion of the past, and as their eyes met, Rachael felt that all her life had been a preparation for this exquisite minute. "I thought you would like to know that he is sleeping, and we have moved him," Warren said. "In three days you will have him roaring to get up." Tears brimmed Rachael's eyes. "You saved him," she whispered. "YOU saved him; George says so, too. If that fellow down there had given him chloroform, there would have been no chance. Our only hope was to relieve that pressure on his heart, and take the risk of it being too much for him. He's as strong as a bull. But it was a fight! And no one but a woman would have rushed him up here in the rain." Rachael's eyes were streaming. She could not speak. She clung to her husband's hand for a moment or two of silence. "And now, I want to speak to you," Warren said, ending it. "I have nothing to say in excuse. I know--I shall know all my life, what I have done. It is like a bad dream." His uncertain voice stopped. Husband and wife looked full at each other, both breathing quickly, both faces drawn and tense. "But, Rachael," Warren went on, "I think, if you knew how I have suffered, that you would--that some day, you would forgive me. I was never happy. Never anything but troubled and excited and confused. But for the last few months, in this empty house, seeing other men with their wives, and thinking what a wife you were--It has been like finding my sight--like coming out of a fever--" He paused. Rachael did not speak. "I know what I deserve at your hands," Warren said. "Nobody--nobody--not old George, not anyone--can think of me with the contempt and the detestation with which I think of myself! It has changed me. I will never--I can never, hold up my head again. But, Rachael, you loved me once, and I made you happy--you've not forgotten that! Give me another chance. Let me show you how I love you, how bitterly sorry I am that I ever caused you one moment of pain! Don't leave me alone. Don't let me feel that between you and me, as the years go by, there is going to be a widening gulf. You don't know what the loneliness means to me! You don't know how I miss my wife every time I sit down to dinner, every time I climb into the car. I think of the years to come--of what they might have been, of what they will be without you! And I can't bear it. Why, to go down with you and the boys to Clark's Hills, to tell you about my work, to take you to dinner again--my God! it seems to me like Heaven now, and I look back a few years, when it was all mine, and wonder if I have been sane, wonder if too much work, and all the other responsibilities, of the boys, and Mother's death, and the estate, and poor little Charlie, whether I really wasn't a little twisted mentally!" Rachael tightened her arms about his neck, pressed her wet face to his. "Sweetheart," said her wonderful voice, a mere tired essence of a voice now, "if there is anything to forgive, I am so glad to forgive it! You are mine, and I am yours. Please God we will never be parted again!" And then for a long time there was silence in the room, while husband and wife clung together, and the hurt of the long months was cured, and dissolved, and gone forever. What Warren felt, Rachael could only know from his tears, and his passionate kisses, and the grip of his arms. For herself, she felt that she might gladly die, being so held against his heart, feeling through her entire being the rising flood of satisfied love that is life and breath to such a nature as hers. "I am changed," said Warren after long moments; "you will see it, for I see it myself. I can see now what my mother meant, years ago, when she talked to me about myself. And I am older, Rachael." "I am not younger," Rachael said, smiling. "And I think I am changed, too. All the pressure, all the nervous worry of the last few years, seem to be gone. Washed away, perhaps, by tears--there have been tears enough! But somehow--somehow I am confident, Warren, as I never was before, that happiness is ahead. Somehow I feel sure that you and I have won to happiness, now, won to sureness. With each other, and the boys, and books and music, and Home Dunes, the years to come seem all bright. After all, we are young to have learned how to live!" And again she drew his face down to hers. Alice did not come back again, but Mary came in with a cup of smoking soup. Mrs. Valentine had taken the doctor home, but they would be back later on. It was after six, and Doctor Gregory said Mrs. Gregory was to drink this, and try to get some sleep. But first Mary and Rachael must talk over the terrible and wonderful night, and Rachael must creep down the hall, to smile at the nurse, who sat by the heavily sleeping Derry. Then she slept, for hours and hours, while the winter sun smiled down on the bare trees in the square and women in furs and babies in woolens walked and chattered on the leaf-strewn paths. Such a sleep and such a waking are memorable in a lifetime. Rachael woke, smiling and refreshed, in a radiant world. Afternoon sunshine was streaming in at her windows, she felt rested, deliciously ready for life again. To bathe, to dress with the chatting Jimmy tying strings to her dressing-table, to have the maids quietly and cheerfully coming and going in the old way; this in itself was delight. But when she tiptoed into Derry's room, and found hope and confidence there, found the blue eyes wide open, under the bandage, and heard the enchanting little voice announce, "I had hot milk, Mother," Rachael felt that her cup of joy was brimming. He had fallen out of the swing, Derry told her, and Dad had hurted him, and Jimmy added sensationally that Derry had broken his leg! "But just the same, we wanted our Daddy the moment we woke up this morning," Miss Moore smiled, "and we managed to hold up one arm to welcome him, and it was Daddy that held the glass of milk, wasn't it, Gerald?" "She calls me Gerald because she doesn't know me very well," said Derry in a tactful aside, and Rachael, not daring to laugh for fear of beginning to cry, could only kiss the brown hand, and devour, with tear-dazzled eyes, the eager face. Then she and Jimmy went down to have a meal that was like breakfast and luncheon and tea in one, with Warren. And to Rachael, thinking of all their happy meals together, since honeymoon days, this seemed the best of all. The afternoon light in the breakfast-room, the maids so poorly concealing their delight in this turn of events, little Jim so pleased at finding a meal served at this unusual hour, and his parents seemingly disposed to let him eat anything and everything, and Warren, tired--so strangely gray--and yet utterly content and at peace; these made the hour memorably happy; a forerunner of other happy hours to come. "It seems to me that there never was such a bright sunshine, and never such a nice little third person, and never such coffee, and such happiness!" said Rachael, her eyes reflecting something of the placid winter day; soul and body wrapped in peace. "Yesterday--only yesterday, I was wretched beyond all believing! To-day I think I have had the best hours of my life!" "It is always going to be this way for you, Rachael," her husband said, "my life is going to be one long effort to keep you absolutely happy. You will never grieve on my account again!" "Say rather," she said seriously, "that we know each other, and ourselves, now. Say that I will never demand utter perfection of you, or you of me. But, Warren--Warren--as long as we love each other--" He had come around the table to her side, and was kneeling with his arms about her, and Rachael locked her hands about his neck. He was tired, he had had no sleep after the difficult night, and he seemed to her strangely broken, strangely her own. Rachael felt that he had never been so infinitely dear, so much hers to protect and save. The wonder of marriage came to her, the miracle of love rooted too deep for disturbance, of love fed on faults as well as virtues; so light a tie in the beginning, so powerful a bond as the years go by. "As long as we love each other!" she said, smiling through tears, her eyes piercing him to the very soul. He did not speak, and so for a moment they remained motionless, looking at each other. But when she released him, with one of her quick, shy kisses, he knew that the heart of Rachael was satisfied. 
33113	----	THE DIVORCE OF CATHERINE OF ARAGON THE DIVORCE OF CATHERINE OF ARAGON THE STORY AS TOLD BY THE IMPERIAL AMBASSADORS RESIDENT AT THE COURT OF HENRY VIII. _IN USUM LAICORUM_ BY J. A. FROUDE _BEING A SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME TO THE AUTHOR'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND_ NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1891 [_All rights reserved_] Copyright, 1891, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._ Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I. Prospects of a disputed succession to the crown--Various claimants--Catherine incapable of having further children-- Irregularity of her marriage with the King--Papal dispensations-- First mention of the divorce--Situation of the Papacy--Charles V.--Policy of Wolsey--Anglo-French alliance--Imperial troops in Italy--Appeal of the Pope--Mission of Inigo de Mendoza--The Bishop of Tarbes--Legitimacy of the Princess Mary called in question--Secret meeting of the Legates' court--Alarms of Catherine--Sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon--Proposed reform of the Papacy--The divorce promoted by Wolsey--Unpopular in England---Attempts of the Emperor to gain Wolsey 21 CHAPTER II. Mission of Wolsey to Paris--Visits Bishop Fisher on the way-- Anxieties of the Emperor--Letter of the Emperor to Henry VIII.-- Large offers to Wolsey--Address of the French Cardinals to the Pope--Anne Boleyn chosen by Henry to succeed Catherine--Surprise and displeasure of Wolsey--Fresh attempts of the Emperor to bribe him--Wolsey forced to continue to advocate the divorce--Mission of Dr. Knight to Rome--The Pope at Orvieto--The King applies for a dispensation to make a second marriage--Language of the dispensation demanded--Inferences drawn from it--Alleged intrigue between the King and Mary Boleyn 41 CHAPTER III. Anxiety of the Pope to satisfy the King--Fears of the Emperor-- Proposed alternatives--France and England declare war in the Pope's defence--Campeggio to be sent to England--The King's account of the Pope's conduct--The Pope's distress and alarm--The secret decretal--Instructions to Campeggio 62 CHAPTER IV. Anne Boleyn--Letters to her from the King--The Convent at Wilton--The Divorce--The Pope's promises--Arrival of Campeggio in England--Reception at the Bridewell Palace--Proposal to Catherine to take the veil--Her refusal--Uncertainty of the succession--A singular expedient--Alarms of Wolsey--The true issue--Speech of the King in the City--Threats of the Emperor-- Defects in the Bull of Pope Julius--Alleged discovery of a brief supplying them--Distress of Clement 70 CHAPTER V. Demands of the Imperial Agent at Rome--The alleged Brief--Illness of the Pope--Aspirations of Wolsey--The Pope recovers--Imperial menaces--Clement between the anvil and the hammer--Appeal of Henry to Francis--The trial of the cause to proceed--Instructions to Campeggio--Opinion at Rome--Recall of Mendoza--Final interview between Mendoza and the King 86 CHAPTER VI. The Court at Blackfriars--The point at issue--The Pope's competency as judge--Catherine appeals to Rome--Imperial pressure upon Clement--The Emperor insists on the Pope's admission of the appeal--Henry demands sentence--Interference of Bishop Fisher-- The Legates refuse to give judgment--The Court broken up--Peace of Cambray 99 CHAPTER VII. Call of Parliament--Wolsey to be called to account--Anxiety of the Emperor to prevent a quarrel--Mission of Eustace Chapuys-- Long interview with the King--Alarm of Catherine--Growth of Lutheranism--The English clergy--Lord Darcy's Articles against Wolsey--Wolsey's fall--Departure of Campeggio--Letter of Henry to the Pope--Action of Parliament--Intended reform of the Church-- Alienation of English feeling from the Papacy 110 CHAPTER VIII. Hope of Wolsey to return to power--Anger of Anne Boleyn and the Duke of Norfolk--Charles V. at Bologna--Issue of a prohibitory brief--The Pope secretly on Henry's side--Collection of opinions--Norfolk warns Chapuys--State of feeling in England-- Intrigues of Wolsey--His illness and death 131 CHAPTER IX. Danger of challenging the Papal dispensing power--The Royal family of Spain--Address of the English Peers to the Pope-- Compromise proposed by the Duke of Norfolk--The English Agents at Rome--Arrival of a new Nuncio in England--His interview with the King--Chapuys advises the King's excommunication--Position of the English clergy--Statute of Provisors--The clergy in a Præmunire-- Remonstrances of the Nuncio--Despair of Catherine--Her letter to the Pope--Henry prepares for war--The introduction of briefs from Rome forbidden--Warnings given to the Spanish Ambassador and the Nuncio 141 CHAPTER X. State of feeling in England--Clergy and laity--The Clergy in a Præmunire--The Royal Supremacy--Hesitation at Rome--Submission of the Clergy--The meaning of the new title--More and Fisher--Alarm of the Emperor--Appeal of Catherine to him--Unpopularity of Anne Boleyn--Threats of excommunication--Determination of Henry-- Deputation of Peers to Catherine--Catherine's reply--Intolerable pretensions of the Emperor--Removal of Catherine from the Court 157 CHAPTER XI. Proposals for the reunion of Christendom--Warning addressed to the Pope--Address of the English nobles to Queen Catherine-- Advances of Clement to Henry--Embarrassments of the Pope and the Emperor--Unwillingness of the Pope to decide against the King-- Business in Parliament--Reform of the English Church--Death of Archbishop Warham--Bishop Fisher and Chapuys--Question of annates--Papal Briefs--The Pope urged to excommunicate Henry--The Pope refuses--Anger of Queen Catherine's Agent 175 CHAPTER XII. Henry advised to marry without waiting for sentence--Meeting of Henry and Francis--Anne Boleyn present at the interview--Value of Anne to the French Court--Pressure on the Pope by the Agents of the Emperor--Complaints of Catherine--Engagements of Francis-- Action of Clement--The King conditionally excommunicated--Demand for final sentence--Cranmer appointed Archbishop of Canterbury-- Marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn--Supposed connivance of the Pope--The Nuncio attends Parliament--The Act of Appeals--The Emperor entreated to intervene--Chapuys and the King 192 CHAPTER XIII. The King's claim--The obstinacy of Catherine--The Court at Dunstable--Judgment given by Cranmer--Debate in the Spanish Council of State--Objections to armed interference--The English opposition--Warning given to Chapuys--Chapuys and the Privy Council--Conversation with Cromwell--Coronation of Anne Boleyn-- Discussions at Rome--Bull supra Attentatis--Confusion of the Catholic Powers--Libels against Henry--Personal history of Cromwell--Birth of Elizabeth--The King's disappointment--Bishop Fisher desires the introduction of a Spanish army into England-- Growth of Lutheranism 218 CHAPTER XIV. Interview between the Pope and Francis at Marseilles--Proposed compromise--The divorce case to be heard at Cambray--The Emperor consents--Catherine refuses--The story of the Nun of Kent--Bishop Fisher in the Tower--Imminent breach with the Papacy--Catherine and the Princess Mary--Separation of the Princess from her mother--Catherine at Kimbolton--Appeals to the Emperor-- Encouragement of Lutheranism--Last efforts at Rome--Final sentence delivered by the Pope--The Pope's authority abolished in England 243 CHAPTER XV. The Papal curse--Determined attitude of the Princess Mary-- Chapuys desires to be heard in Parliament--Interview with the King--Permission refused--The Act of Succession--Catherine loses the title of Queen--More and Fisher refuse to swear to the statute--Prospects of rebellion in Ireland--The Emperor unwilling to interfere--Perplexity of the Catholic party--Chapuys before the Privy Council--Insists on Catherine's rights--Singular defence of the Pope's action--Chapuys's intrigues--Defiant attitude of Catherine--Fears for her life--Condition of Europe-- Prospect of war between France and the Empire--Unwillingness of the Emperor to interfere in England--Disappointment of Catherine--Visit of Chapuys to Kimbolton 260 CHAPTER XVI. Prosecution of Lord Dacre--Failure of the Crown--Rebellion in Ireland--Lord Thomas Fitzgerald--Delight of the Catholic party-- Preparations for a rising in England--The Princess Mary--Lord Hussey and Lord Darcy--Schemes for insurrection submitted to Chapuys--General disaffection among the English Peers--Death of Clement VII.--Election of Paul III.--Expectation at Rome that Henry would now submit--The expectation disappointed--The Act of Supremacy--The Italian conjuror--Reginald Pole--Violence and insolence of Anne Boleyn--Spread of Lutheranism--Intended escape of the Princess Mary out of England 283 CHAPTER XVII. Prospects of civil war--England and Spain--Illness of the Princess Mary--Plans for her escape--Spirit of Queen Catherine-- The Emperor unwilling to interfere--Negotiations for a new treaty between Henry and Charles--Debate in the Spanish Council of State--The rival alliances--Disappointment of the confederate Peers--Advance of Lutheranism in England--Cromwell and Chapuys-- Catherine and Mary the obstacles to peace--Supposed designs on Mary's life 301 CHAPTER XVIII. Negotiations for a treaty--Appeal of Catherine to the Emperor-- Fresh plans for the escape of Mary--Forbidden by the Emperor-- The King and his daughter--Suggestion of Dr. Butts--The clergy and the Reformation--The Charterhouse monks--More and Fisher in the Tower--The Emperor in Africa--The treaty--Rebellion in Ireland--Absolution of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald for the murder of the Archbishop of Dublin--Treason of Lord Hussey--Fresh debates in the Spanish Council--Fisher created cardinal--Trial and execution of Fisher and More--Effect in Europe 318 CHAPTER XIX. Campaign of the Emperor in Africa--Uncertainties at Rome--Policy of Francis--English preparations for war--Fresh appeals to the Emperor--Delay in the issue of the censures--The Princess Mary-- Letter of Catherine to the Pope--Disaffection of the English Catholics--Libels against Henry--Cromwell and Chapuys--Lord Thomas Fitzgerald--Dangerous position of Henry--Death of the Duke of Milan--Effect on European policy--Intended Bull of Paul III.-- Indecision of Charles--Prospect of war with France--Advice of Charles to Catherine--Distrust of the Emperor at the Papal Court--Warlike resolution of the Pope restrained by the Cardinals 347 CHAPTER XX. Illness of Queen Catherine--Her physicians' report of her health---Her last letter to the Emperor--She sends for Chapuys-- Interview between Chapuys and Henry--Chapuys at Kimbolton--Death of Catherine--Examination of the body--Suspicion of poison-- Chapuys's opinion--Reception of the news at the Court--Message of Anne Boleyn to the Princess Mary--Advice of Chapuys--Unpopularity of Anne--Court rumours 371 CHAPTER XXI. Funeral of Catherine--Miscarriage of Anne--The Princess Mary and the Act of Supremacy--Her continued desire to escape--Effect of Catherine's death on Spanish policy--Desire of the Emperor to recover the English alliance--Chapuys and Cromwell--Conditions of the treaty--Efforts of the Emperor to recover Henry to the Church--Matrimonial schemes--Likelihood of a separation of the King from Anne--Jane Seymour--Anne's conduct--The Imperial treaty--Easter at Greenwich--Debate in Council--The French Alliance or the Imperial--The alternative advantages--Letter of the King to his Ambassador in Spain 389 CHAPTER XXII. Easter at Greenwich--French and Imperial factions at the English court--Influence of Anne Boleyn--Reports of Anne's conduct submitted to the King--Flying rumours--Secret Commission of Enquiry--Arrests of various persons--Sir Henry Norris and the King--Anne before the Privy Council--Sent to the Tower--Her behaviour and admissions--Evidence taken before the Commission-- Trials of Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeton--Letter of Weston--Trial of Anne and her brother--Executions--Speech of Rochford on the scaffold--Anne sentenced to die--Makes a confession to Cranmer--Declared to have not been the King's lawful wife--Nature of the confession not known--Execution 412 CHAPTER XXIII. Competition for Henry's hand--Solicitations from France and from the Emperor--Overtures from the Pope--Jane Seymour--General eagerness for the King's marriage--Conduct of Henry in the interval before Anne's execution--Marriage with Jane Seymour-- Universal satisfaction--The Princess Mary--Proposal for a General Council--Neutrality of England in the war between France and the Empire 436 CHAPTER XXIV. Expectation that Henry would return to the Roman Communion--Henry persists in carrying out the Reformation--The Crown and the clergy--Meeting of a new Parliament--Fresh repudiation of the Pope's authority--Complications of the succession--Attitude of the Princess Mary--Her reluctant submission--The King empowered to name his successor by will--Indication of his policy--The Pilgrimage of Grace--Cost of the Reformation--The martyrs, Catholic and Protestant 450 INDEX 465 THE DIVORCE OF CATHERINE OF ARAGON. INTRODUCTION. The mythic element cannot be eliminated out of history. Men who play leading parts on the world's stage gather about them the admiration of friends and the animosity of disappointed rivals or political enemies. The atmosphere becomes charged with legends of what they have said or done--some inventions, some distortions of facts, but rarely or never accurate. Their outward acts, being public, cannot be absolutely misstated; their motives, being known only to themselves, are an open field for imagination; and as the disposition is to believe evil rather than good, the portraits drawn may vary indefinitely, according to the sympathies of the describer, but are seldom too favourable. The more distinguished a man is the more he is talked about. Stories are current about him in his own lifetime, guaranteed apparently by the highest authorities; related, insisted upon; time, place, and circumstance accurately given--most of them mere malicious lies; yet, if written down, to reappear in memoirs a hundred years hence, they are likely to pass for authentic, or at least probable. Even where there is no malice, imagination will still be active. People believe or disbelieve, repeat or suppress, according to their own inclinations; and death, which ends the feuds of unimportant persons, lets loose the tongues over the characters of the great. Kings are especially sufferers; when alive they hear only flattery; when they are gone men revenge themselves by drawing hideous portraits of them, and the more distinguished they may have been the more minutely their weaknesses are dwelt upon. "C'est un plaisir indicible," says Voltaire, "de donner des décrets contre des souverains morts quand on ne peut en lancer contre eux de leur vivant de peur de perdre ses oreilles." The dead sovereigns go their way. Their real work for good or evil lives after them; but they themselves are where the opinions expressed about their character affect them no more. To Cæsar or Napoleon it matters nothing what judgment the world passes upon their conduct. It is of more importance for the ethical value of history that acts which as they are related appear wicked should be duly condemned, that acts which are represented as having advanced the welfare of mankind should be duly honoured, than that the real character of individuals should be correctly appreciated. To appreciate any single man with complete accuracy is impossible. To appreciate him even proximately is extremely difficult. Rulers of kingdoms may have public reasons for what they do, which at the time may be understood or allowed for. Times change, and new interests rise. The circumstances no longer exist which would explain their conduct. The student looks therefore for an explanation in elements which he thinks he understands--in pride, ambition, fear, avarice, jealousy, or sensuality; and, settling the question thus to his own satisfaction, resents or ridicules attempts to look for other motives. So long as his moral judgment is generally correct, he inflicts no injury, and he suffers none. Cruelty and lust are proper objects of abhorrence; he learns to detest them in studying the Tiberius of Tacitus, though the character described by the great Roman historian may have been a mere creation of the hatred of the old Roman aristocracy. The manifesto of the Prince of Orange was a libel against Philip the Second; but the Philip of Protestant tradition is an embodiment of the persecuting spirit of Catholic Europe which it would be now useless to disturb. The tendency of history is to fall into wholesome moral lines whether they be accurate or not, and to interfere with harmless illusions may cause greater errors than it aspires to cure. Crowned offenders are arraigned at the tribunal of history for the crimes which they are alleged to have committed. It may be sometimes shown that the crimes were not crimes at all, that the sufferers had deserved their fate, that the severities were useful and essential for some great and valuable purpose. But the reader sees in the apology for acts which he had regarded as tyrannical a defence of tyranny itself. Preoccupied with the received interpretation, he finds deeds excused which he had learnt to execrate; and in learning something which, even if true, is of no real moment to him, he suffers in the maiming of his perceptions of the difference between right and wrong. The whitewashing of the villains of tradition is, therefore, justly regarded as waste of labour. If successful, it is of imperfect value; if unsuccessful, it is a misuse of industry which deserves to be censured. Time is too precious to be squandered over paradoxes. The dead are gone; the censure of mankind has written their epitaphs, and so they may be left. Their true award will be decided elsewhere. This is the common sense verdict. When the work of a man is done and ended; when, except indirectly and invisibly, he affects the living world no more, the book is closed, the sentence is passed, and there he may be allowed to rest. The case is altered, however, when the dead still live in their actions, when their principles and the effects of their conduct are still vigorous and operative, and the movements which they initiated continue to be fought over. It sometimes happens that mighty revolutions can be traced to the will and resolution of a single man, and that the conflict continues when he is gone. The personal character of such a man becomes then of intrinsic importance as an argument for attack or defence. The changes introduced by Henry VIII. are still denounced or defended with renewed violence; the ashes of a conflict which seemed to have been decided are again blown into a flame; and what manner of man Henry was, and what the statesmen and churchmen were who stood by him and assisted him in reshaping the English constitution, becomes a practical question of our own time. By their fruits ye shall know them. A good tree cannot bear evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Roman Catholics argue from the act to the man, and from the man back to the act. The Reformation, they say, was a rebellion against an authority appointed by God for the rule of the world; it was a wicked act in itself; the author or the authors of it were presumably, therefore, themselves wicked; and the worst interpretation of their conduct is antecedently probable, because a revolt against the Church of Christ could only have originated in depraved hearts. Or again, inverting the argument, they say with sufficient plausibility that the sins and crimes of the King are acknowledged facts of history; that from so bad a man no good thing could ever rise; that Henry was a visible servant of the devil, and therefore the Reformation, of which he was the instrument, was the devil's work. If the picture drawn of him by his Catholic contemporaries is correct, the inference is irresistible. That picture, however, was drawn by those whose faith he wounded and whose interests he touched, and therefore might be regarded with suspicion. Religious animosity is fertile in calumny, because it assumes beforehand that every charge is likely to be true in proportion to its enormity, and Catholic writers were credulous of evil when laid to the charge of so dangerous an adversary. But the Catholics have not been Henry's only accusers; all sorts and sects have combined in the general condemnation. The Anglican High Churchman is as bitter against him as Reginald Pole himself. He admits and maintains the separation from Rome which Henry accomplished for him; but he abhors as heartily as Pole or Lingard the internal principles of the Reformation. He resents the control of the clergy by the civil power. He demands the restoration of the spiritual privileges which Henry and his parliaments took away from them. He aspires to the recovery of ecclesiastical independence. He therefore with equal triumph points to the blots in Henry's character, and deepens their shade with every accusation, proved or unproved, which he can find in contemporary records. With him, too, that a charge was alleged at the time is evidence sufficient to entitle him to accept it as a fact. Again, Protestant writers have been no less unsparing from an imprudent eagerness to detach their cause from a disreputable ally. In Elizabeth's time it was a point of honour and loyalty to believe in the innocence of her mother. If Anne Boleyn was condemned on forged or false evidence to make way for Jane Seymour, what appears so clearly to us must have been far clearer to Henry and his Council; of all abominable crimes committed by tyrannical princes there was never one more base or cowardly than Anne's execution; and in insisting on Anne's guiltlessness they have condemned the King, his ministers, and his parliaments. Having discovered him to have murdered his wife, they have found him also to have been a persecutor of the truth. The Reformation in England was at its outset political rather than doctrinal. The avarice and tyranny of the Church officials had galled the limbs of the laity. Their first steps were to break the chains which fretted them, and to put a final end to the temporal power of the clergy. Spiritual liberty came later, and came slowly from the constitution of the English mind. Superstition had been familiarised by custom, protected by natural reverence, and shielded from inquiry by the peculiar horror attaching to unbelief. The nation had been taught from immemorial time that to doubt on the mysteries of faith was the worst crime which man could commit; and while they were willing to discover that on their human side the clergy were but brother mortals of questionable character, they drew a distinction between the Church as a national institution and the doctrines which it taught. An old creed could not yield at once. The King did much; he protected individual Lutherans to the edge of rashness. He gave the nation the English Bible. He made Latimer a bishop. He took away completely and for ever the power of the prelates to punish what they called heresy _ex officio_ and on their own authority; but the zeal of the ultra-Protestants broke loose when the restraint was taken off; the sense of the country was offended by the irreverence with which objects and opinions were treated which they regarded as holy, and Parliament, which had put a bit in the mouth of the ecclesiastical courts, was driven to a substitute in the Bill of the Six Articles. The advanced section in popular movements is usually unwise. The characteristic excellence of the English Reformation is, that throughout its course it was restrained by the law, and the Six Articles Bill, tempered as it was in the execution, was a permissible, and perhaps useful, measure in restraint of intemperance. It was the same in Germany. Anabaptists continued to be burnt in Saxony and Hesse long after Luther's revolt; Calvin thought the stake a fitting penalty for doubts upon the Trinity. John Knox, in Scotland, approved of witch-burning and sending mass-priests to the gallows. Henry could not disregard the pronounced feeling of the majority of the English people. He was himself but one of them, and changed slowly as they changed. Yet Protestant tradition has assumed that the bloody whip with six strings was an act of arbitrary ferocity. It considers that the King could, and ought to, have advanced at once into an understanding of the principle of toleration--toleration of the new opinions, and a more severe repression of the old. The Puritans and Evangelicals forgot that he had given them the English Testament. They forgot that by setting his foot upon the bishops he had opened the pulpits to themselves, and they classed him among the persecutors, or else joined in the shallow laughs of the ultramontane Catholics at what they pleased to call his inconsistency. Thus from all sides a catena of invective has been wrapped about Henry's character. The sensible part of the country held its tongue. The speakers and writers were the passionate and fanatical of both persuasions, and by them the materials were supplied for the Henry VIII. who has been brought down to us by history, while the candid and philosophic thinkers of the last and present centuries have accepted the traditional figure. In their desire to be impartial they have held the balance equal between Catholics and Protestants, inclining slightly to the Catholic side, from a wish to conciliate a respectable body who had been unjustly maligned and oppressed; while they have lavished invectives upon the early Reformers violent enough to have satisfied even Pole himself, whose rhetoric has formed the base of their declamation. Liberal philosophy would have had a bad time of it in England, perhaps in all Europe, if there had been no Henry VIII. to take the Pope by the throat. But one service writers like Macaulay have undoubtedly accomplished. They have shown that it is entirely impossible to separate the King from his ministers--to condemn Henry and to spare Cranmer. Protestant writers, from Burnet to Southey, have tried to save the reforming bishops and statesmen at Henry's expense. Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley have been described as saints, though their master was a villain. But the cold impartiality of Macaulay has pointed out unanswerably that in all Henry's most questionable acts his own ministers and his prelates were active participants--that his Privy Council, his parliaments, his judges on the bench, the juries empanelled to try the victims of his tyranny, were equally his accomplices; some actively assisting; the rest, if these acts were really criminal, permitting themselves to be bribed or terrified into acquiescence. The leading men of all descriptions, the nation itself, through the guilt of its representatives, were all stained in the same detestable colours. It may be said, indeed, that they were worse than the King himself. For the King at least may be pleaded the coarse temptations of a brutal nature; but what palliation can be urged for the peers and judges who sacrificed Anne Boleyn, or More, or Fisher, according to the received hypothesis? Not even the excuse of personal fear of an all-powerful despot. For Henry had no Janissaries or Prætorians to defend his person or execute his orders. He had but his hundred yeomen of the guard, not more numerous than the ordinary followers of a second-rate noble. The Catholic leaders, who were infuriated at his attacks upon the Church, and would if they could have introduced foreign armies to dethrone him, insisted on his weakness as an encouragement to an easy enterprise. Beyond those few yeomen they urged that he had no protection save in the attachment of the subjects whom he was alienating. What strange influence was such a king able to exercise that he could overawe the lords and gentry of England, the learned professions, the municipal authorities? How was it that he was able to compel them to be the voluntary instruments of his cruelty? Strangest of all, he seems to have needed no protection, but rather to have been personally popular, even among those who disapproved his public policy. The air was charged with threats of insurrection, but no conspiracy was ever formed to kill him, like those which so often menaced the life of his daughter. When the North was in arms in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and a question rose among the leaders whether in the event of victory the King was to be deposed, it was found that anyone who proposed to remove him would be torn in pieces by the people. Granting that Henry VIII. was, as Dickens said of him, "a spot of blood and grease" on the page of English history, the contemporary generation of Englishmen must have been fit subjects of such a sovereign. Every country, says Carlyle, gets as good a government as it deserves. The England of the Cromwells and the Cranmers, the Howards and the Fitzwilliams, the Wriothesleys and the Pagets, seems to have been made of baser materials than any land of which mankind has preserved a record. Roman Catholics may fairly plead that out of such a race no spiritual reform is likely to have arisen which could benefit any human soul. Of all the arguments which can be alleged for the return of England to the ancient fold, this is surely the most powerful. Yet England shows no intention of returning. History may say what it pleases, yet England remains tenacious of the liberties which were then won for us, and unconscious of the disgrace attaching to them; unconscious, also, that the version of the story which it accepts contains anything which requires explanation. The legislation of Henry VIII., his Privy Council, and his parliaments is the Magna Charta of the modern world. The Act of Appeals and the Act of Supremacy asserted the national independence, and repudiated the interference of foreign bishop, prince, or potentate within the limits of the English empire. The clergy had held for many centuries an _imperium in imperio_. Subject themselves to no law but their own, they had asserted an irresponsible jurisdiction over the souls and bodies of the people. The Act for the submission of these persons reduced them to the common condition of subjects under the control of the law. Popes were no longer allowed to dispense with ordinary obligations. Clerical privileges were abolished. The spiritual courts, with their intolerable varieties of iniquity, were swept away, or coerced within rational limits. The religious houses were suppressed, their enormous wealth was applied for the defence of the realm, and the worse than Augean dunghill of abuses was cleared out with resolute hand. These great results were accomplished in the face of papal curses, in defiance of superstitious terrors, so despicable when bravely confronted, so terrible while the spectre of supernatural power was still unexorcised; in the face, too, of earthly perils which might make stout hearts shake, of an infuriated priesthood stirring the people into rebellion, of an exasperated Catholic Europe threatening fire and sword in the name of the Pope. These were distinguished achievements, not likely to have been done at all by an infamous prince and infamous ministers; yet done so well that their work is incorporated in the constitution almost in the form in which they left it; and this mighty revolution, the greatest and most far-reaching in modern times, was accomplished without a civil war, by firmness of hand, by the action of Parliament, and a resolute enforcement of the law. Nor has the effect of Henry's legislation been confined to England. Every great country, Catholic or Protestant, has practically adopted its chief provisions. Popes no longer pretend a power of deposing princes, absolving subjects from their allegiance, or selling dispensations for offences against the law of the land. Appeals are no longer carried from the national courts to the court of the Rota. The papal treasury is no longer supplied by the plunder of the national clergy, collected by resident papal officials. Bishops and convocations have ceased to legislate above and independent of the secular authority, and clerks who commit crimes bear the same penalties as the profane. The high quality of the Reformation statutes is guaranteed by their endurance; and it is hard to suppose that the politicians who conceived and carried them out were men of base conditions. The question is not of the character of the King. If nothing was at issue but the merits or demerits of a single sovereign, he might be left where he lies. The question is of the characters of the reforming leaders, who, jointly with the King, were the authors of this tremendous and beneficent revolution. Henry in all that he did acted with these men and through them. Is it possible to believe that qualities so opposite as the popular theory requires existed in the same persons? Is it possible, for instance, that Cranmer, who composed or translated the prayers in the English Liturgy, was the miserable wretch which Macaulay or Lingard describes? The era of Elizabeth was the outspring of the movement which Henry VIII. commenced, and it was the grandest period in English history. Is it credible that so invigorating a stream flowed from a polluted fountain? Before accepting a conclusion so disgraceful--before consigning the men who achieved so great a victory, and risked and lost their lives in the battle, to final execration--it is at least permissible to pause. The difficulty can only be made light of by impatience, by prejudice, or by want of thought. To me at any rate, who wished to discover what the real history of the Reformation had been, it seemed so considerable, that, dismissing the polemical invectives of later writers, I turned to the accounts of their conduct, which had been left behind by the authors of it themselves. Among the fortunate anomalies of the situation, Henry departed from previous custom in holding annual parliaments. At every step which he took, either in the rearrangement of the realm or in his own domestic confusions, he took the Lords and Commons into his council, and ventured nothing without their consent. The preambles of the principal statutes contain a narrative clear and precise of the motives of everything that he did--a narrative which at least may have been a true one, which was not put forward as a defence, but was a mere explanation of acts which on the surface seemed violent and arbitrary. If the explanation is correct, it shows us a time of complications and difficulties, which, on the whole, were successfully encountered. It shows us severe measures severely executed, but directed to public and necessary purpose, involving no sycophancy or baseness, no mean subservience to capricious tyranny, but such as were the natural safeguards during a dangerous convulsion, or remedies of accidents incidental to hereditary monarchy. The story told is clear and distinct; pitiless, but not dishonourable. Between the lines can be read the storm of popular passions, the beating of the national heart when it was stirred to its inmost depths. We see established institutions rooted out, idols overthrown, and injured worshippers exasperated to fury; the air, as was inevitable at such a crisis, full of flying rumours, some lies, some half lies with fragments of truth attaching to them, bred of malice or dizzy brains, the materials out of which the popular tradition has been built. It was no insular revolution. The stake played for was the liberty of mankind. All Europe was watching England, for England was the hinge on which the fate of the Reformation turned. Could it be crushed in England, the Catholics were assured of universal victory, and therefore tongues and pens were busy everywhere throughout Christendom, Catholic imagination representing Henry as an incarnate Satan, for which, it must be admitted, his domestic misadventures gave them tempting opportunities. So thick fell the showers of calumny, that, bold as he was, he at times himself winced under it. He complained to Charles V. of the libels circulated about him in France and Flanders. Charles, too, had suffered in the same way. He answered, humorously, that "if kings gave occasion to be spoken about they would be spoken about; kings were not kings of tongues." Henry VIII. was an easy mark for slander; but if all slanders are to pass as true which are flung at public men whose policy provides them with an army of calumniators, the reputation of the best of them is but a spotted rag. The clergy were the vocal part of Europe. They had the pulpits; they had the writing of the books and pamphlets. They had cause to hate Henry, and they hated him with an intensity of passion which could not have been more savage had he been the devil himself. But there are men whose enmity is a compliment. They libelled Luther almost as freely as they libelled the English king. I myself, after reading and weighing all that I could find forty years ago in prints or manuscripts, concluded that the real facts of Henry's conduct were to be found in the Statute Book and nowhere else; that the preambles of the Acts of Parliament did actually represent the sincere opinion about him of the educated laymen of England, who had better opportunities of knowing the truth than we can have, and that a modern Englishman may be allowed to follow their authority without the imputation of paradox or folly. With this impression, and with the Statute Book for a guide, I wrote the opening portion of my "History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada." The published criticisms upon my work were generally unfavourable. Catholic writers inherited the traditions and the temper of their forefathers, and believed the catena of their own historians. Protestants could not believe in a defence of the author of the Six Articles Bill. Secular reviewers were easily witty at the "model husband" whom they supposed me to be imposing upon them, and resented the interference with a version of the story authenticated by great names among my predecessors. The public, however, took an interest in what I had to say. The book was read, and continues to be read; at the close of my life, therefore, I have to go once more over the ground; and as I am still substantially alone in maintaining an opinion considered heretical by orthodox historians, I have to decide in what condition I am to leave my work behind me. In the thirty-five years which have elapsed since those early volumes appeared large additions have been made to the materials for the history of the period. The vast collection of manuscripts in the English Record Office, which then were only partially accessible, have been sorted, catalogued, and calendared by the industry of my friends Mr. Brewer and Mr. Gairdner. Private collections in great English houses have been examined and reported on by the Historical Manuscripts Commission. Foreign archives at Paris, Simancas, Rome, Venice, Vienna, and Brussels have been searched to some extent by myself, but in a far larger degree by able scholars specially appointed for the purpose. In the despatches, thus made accessible, of the foreign ambassadors resident at Henry's court we have the invaluable, if not impartial, comments of trained and responsible politicians who related from day to day the events which were passing under their eyes. Being Catholics, and representatives of Catholic powers, they were bitterly hostile to the Reformation--hostile alike on political grounds and religious--and therefore inclined to believe and report the worst that could be said both of it and of its authors. But they wrote before the traditions had become stereotyped; their accounts are fresh and original; and, being men of the world, and writing in confidence to their own masters, they were as veracious as their prejudices would allow them to be. Unconsciously, too, they render another service of infinite importance. Being in close communication with the disaffected English peers and clergy, and engaged with them secretly in promoting rebellion, the ministers of Charles V. reveal with extraordinary clearness the dangers with which the Government had to deal. They make it perfectly plain that the Act of Supremacy, with its stern and peremptory demands, was no more than a legitimate and necessary defence against organised treason. It was thus inevitable that much would have to be added to what I had already published. When a microscope is applied to the petal of a flower or the wing of an insect, simple outlines and simple surfaces are resolved into complex organisms with curious and beautiful details. The effect of these despatches is precisely the same--we see with the eyes, we hear with the ears, of men who were living parts of the scenes which they describe. Stories afterwards elaborated into established facts we trace to their origin in rumours of the hour; we read innumerable anecdotes, some with the clear stamp of truth on them, many mere creations of passing wit or malice, no more authentic than the thousands like them which circulate in modern society, guaranteed by the positive assertions of personal witnesses, yet visibly recognisable as lies. Through all this the reader must pick his way and use his own judgment. He knows that many things are false which are reported about his own eminent contemporaries. He may be equally certain that lies were told as freely then as now. He will probably allow his sympathies to guide him. He will accept as fact what fits in with his creed or his theory. He will share the general disposition to believe evil, especially about kings and great men. The exaggerated homage paid to princes, when they are alive, has to be compensated by suspecting the worst of them as soon as they are gone. But the perusal of all these documents leaves the broad aspect of the story, in my opinion, precisely where it was. It is made more interesting by the greater fulness of particulars; it is made more vivid by the clear view which they afford of individual persons who before were no more than names. But I think now, as I thought forty years ago, that through the confusions and contradictions of a stormy and angry time, the statute-book remains the safest guide to follow. If there be any difference, it is that actions which till explained appeared gratuitously cruel, like the execution of Bishop Fisher, are seen beyond dispute to have been reasonable and just. Bishop Fisher is proved by the words of the Spanish Ambassador himself to have invited and pressed the introduction of a foreign Catholic army into England in the Pope's interest. Thus I find nothing to withdraw in what I then wrote, and little to alter save in correcting some small errors of trivial moment; but, on the other hand, I find much to add; and the question rises in what way I had better do it, with fair consideration for those who have bought the book as it stands. To take the work to pieces and introduce the new material into the text or the notes will impose a necessity of buying a new copy, or of being left with an inferior one, on the many friends who least deserve to be so treated. I have concluded, therefore, on writing an additional volume, where such parts of the story as have had important light thrown upon them can be told over again in ampler form. The body of the history I leave as it stands. It contains what I believe to be a true account of the time, of the immediate causes which brought about the changes of the sixteenth century, and of the characters and principles of the actors in them. I have only to fill up certain deficiencies and throw light into places hitherto left dark. For the rest, I do not pretend to impartiality. I believe the Reformation to have been the greatest incident in English history; the root and source of the expansive force which has spread the Anglo-Saxon race over the globe, and imprinted the English genius and character on the constitution of mankind. I am unwilling to believe more evil than I can help of my countrymen who accomplished so beneficent a work, and in a book written with such convictions the mythical element cannot be wholly wanting. Even things which immediately surround us, things which we see and touch, we do not perceive as they are; we perceive only our own sensations, and our sensations are a combined result of certain objects and of the faculties which apprehend them. Something of ourselves must always be intermixed before knowledge can reach us; in every conclusion which we form, in every conviction which is forced upon us, there is still a subjective element. It is so in physical science. It is so in art. It is so in our speculations on our own nature. It is so in religion. It is so even in pure mathematics. The curved and rectilineal figures on which we reason are our own creation, and have no existence exterior to the reasoning mind. Most of all is it so in history, where we have no direct perceptions to help us, but are dependent on the narratives of others whose beliefs were necessarily influenced by their personal dispositions. The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against his own sympathies; but he cannot wholly escape their influence. In judging of the truth of particular statements, the conclusion which he will form must be based partly upon evidence and partly upon what he conceives to be likely or unlikely. In a court of justice, where witnesses can be cross-examined, uncertain elements can in some degree be eliminated; yet, after all care is taken, judges and juries have been often blinded by passion and prejudice. When we have nothing before us but rumours set in circulation, we know not by whom or on what authority, and we are driven to consider probabilities, the Protestant, who believes the Reformation to have been a victory of truth over falsehood, cannot come to the same conclusion as the Catholic, who believes it to have been a curse, or perhaps to the same conclusion as the indifferent philosopher, who regards Protestant and Catholic alike with benevolent contempt. For myself, I can but say that I have discriminated with such faculty as I possess. I have kept back nothing. I have consciously distorted nothing which conflicts with my own views. I have accepted what seems sufficiently proved. I have rejected what I can find no support for save in hearsay or prejudice. But whether accepting or rejecting, I have endeavoured to follow the rule that incidents must not be lightly accepted as authentic which are inconsistent with the universal laws of human nature, and that to disprove a calumny it is sufficient to show that there is no valid witness for it. Finally, I do not allow myself to be tempted into controversy with particular writers whose views disagree with my own. To contradict in detail every hostile version of Henry VIII.'s or his ministers' conduct would be as tedious as it would be irritating and unprofitable. My censors have been so many that a reply to them all is impossible, and so distinguished that a selection would be invidious. Those who wish for invectives against the King, or Cranmer, or Cromwell, can find them everywhere, from school manuals to the grave works of elaborate historians. For me, it is enough to tell the story as it presents itself to my own mind, and to leave what appears to me to be the truth to speak for itself. The English nation throughout their long history have borne an honourable reputation. Luther quotes a saying of Maximilian that there were three real sovereigns in Europe--the Emperor, the King of France, and the King of England. The Emperor was a king of kings. If he gave an order to the princes of the Reich, they obeyed or disobeyed as they pleased. The King of France was a king of asses. He ordered about his people at his will, and they obeyed like asses. The King of England was king of a loyal nation who obeyed him with heart and mind as loyal and faithful subjects. This was the character borne in the world by the fathers of the generation whom popular historians represent as having dishonoured themselves by subserviency to a bloodthirsty tyrant. It is at least possible that popular historians have been mistaken, and that the subjects of Henry VIII. were neither much better nor much worse than those who preceded or came after them. CHAPTER I. Prospects of a disputed succession to the crown--Various claimants-- Catherine incapable of having further children--Irregularity of her marriage with the King--Papal dispensations--First mention of the divorce--Situation of the Papacy--Charles V.--Policy of Wolsey-- Anglo-French alliance--Imperial troops in Italy--Appeal of the Pope-- Mission of Inigo de Mendoza--The Bishop of Tarbes--Legitimacy of the Princess Mary called in question--Secret meeting of the Legates' court-- Alarms of Catherine--Sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon--Proposed reform of the Papacy--The divorce promoted by Wolsey--Unpopular in England-- Attempts of the Emperor to gain Wolsey. In the year 1526 the political prospects of England became seriously clouded. A disputed succession had led in the previous century to a desperate civil war. In that year it became known in private circles that if Henry VIII. was to die the realm would again be left without a certain heir, and that the strife of the Roses might be renewed on an even more distracting scale. The sons who had been born to Queen Catherine had died in childbirth or had died immediately after it. The passionate hope of the country that she might still produce a male child who would survive had been constantly disappointed, and now could be entertained no longer. She was eight years older than her husband. She had "certain diseases" which made it impossible that she should be again pregnant, and Henry had for two years ceased to cohabit with her. He had two children still living--the Princess Mary, Catherine's daughter, then a girl of eleven, and an illegitimate son born in 1519, the mother being a daughter of Sir John Blount, and married afterwards to Sir Gilbert Talboys. By presumptive law the Princess was the next heir; but no woman had ever sat on the throne of England alone and in her own right, and it was doubtful whether the nation would submit to a female sovereign. The boy, though excluded by his birth from the prospect of the crown, was yet brought up with exceptional care, called a prince by his tutors, and probably regarded by his father as a possible successor should his sister go the way of her brothers. In 1525, after the King had deliberately withdrawn from Catherine, he was created Duke of Richmond--a title of peculiar significance, since it had been borne by his grandfather, Henry VII.--and he was granted precedence over the rest of the peerage. Illegitimacy was a serious, but, it might be thought, was not an absolute, bar. The Conqueror had been himself a bastard. The Church, by its habits of granting dispensations for irregular marriages or of dissolving them on pleas of affinity or consanguinity or other pretext, had confused the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate. A Church Court had illegitimatised the children of Edward IV. and Elizabeth Grey, on the ground of one of Edward's previous connections; yet no one regarded the princes murdered in the Tower as having been illegitimate in reality; and to prevent disputes and for an adequate object, the Duke of Richmond, had he grown to manhood, might, in the absence of other claims, have been recognised by Parliament. But the Duke was still a child, and might die as Henry's other sons had died; and other claims there were which, in the face of the bar sinister, could not fail to be asserted. James V. of Scotland was next in blood, being the son of Henry's eldest sister, Margaret. There were the Greys, inheriting from the second sister, Mary. Outside the royal house there were the still popular representatives of the White Rose, the Marquis of Exeter, who was Edward IV.'s grandson; the Countess of Salisbury, daughter of Edward's brother the Duke of Clarence, and sister of the murdered Earl of Warwick; and Henry's life was the only obstacle between the collision of these opposing pretensions. James, it was quite certain, would not be allowed to succeed without a struggle. National rivalry forbade it. Yet it was no less certain that he would try, and would probably be backed by France. There was but one escape from convulsions which might easily be the ruin of the realm. The King was in the flower of his age, and might naturally look for a Prince of Wales to come after him if he was married to a woman capable of bearing one. It is neither unnatural nor, under the circumstances, a matter to be censured if he and others began to reflect upon the peculiar character of his connection with Catherine of Aragon. It is not sufficiently remembered that the marriage of a widow with her husband's brother was then, as it is now, forbidden by the laws of all civilised countries. Such a marriage at the present day would be held _ipso facto_ invalid and not a marriage at all. An irregular power was then held to rest with the successors of St. Peter to dispense, under certain conditions, with the inhibitory rules. The popes are now understood to have never rightly possessed such an authority, and therefore, according to modern law and sentiment, Henry and Catherine never were husband and wife at all. At the time it was uncertain whether the dispensing power extended so far as to sanction such a union, and when the discussion rose upon it the Roman canonists were themselves divided. Those who maintained the widest view of the papal faculty yet agreed that such a dispensation could only be granted for urgent cause, such as to prevent foreign wars or internal seditions, and no such cause was alleged to have existed when Ferdinand and Henry VII. arranged the marriage between their children. The dispensation had been granted by Pope Julius with reluctance, had been acted upon after considerable hesitation, and was of doubtful validity, since the necessary conditions were absent. The marriages of kings were determined with little reference to the personal affection of the parties. Between Henry and Catherine there was probably as much and as little personal attachment as there usually is in such cases. He respected and perhaps admired her character; but she was not beautiful, she was not attractive, while she was as proud and intractable as her mother Isabella. Their union had been settled by the two fathers to cement the alliance between England and Spain. Such connections rest on a different foundation from those which are voluntarily entered into between private persons. What is made up for political reasons may pardonably be dissolved when other reasons of a similar kind require it; and when it became clear that Catherine could never bear another child, that the penalty threatened in the Levitical law against marriages of this precise kind had been literally enforced in the death of the male offspring, and that civil war was imminent in consequence upon the King's death, Henry may have doubted in good faith whether she had ever been his wife at all--whether, in fact, the marriage was not of the character which everyone would now allow to attach to similar unions. Had there been a Prince of Wales, the question would never have arisen, and Henry, like other kings, would have borne his fate. But there was no prince, and the question had risen, and there was no reason why it should not. There was no trace at the outset of an attachment to another woman. If there had been, there would be little to condemn; but Anne Boleyn, when it was first mooted, was no more to the King than any other lady of the court. He required a wife who could produce a son to secure the succession. The powers which had allowed an irregular marriage could equally dissolve it, and the King felt that he had a right to demand a familiar concession which other sovereigns had often applied for in one form or another, and rarely in vain. Thus as early as 1526 certainly, and probably as much as a year before, Cardinal Wolsey had been feeling his way at Rome for a separation between Henry and Catherine. On September 7 in that year the Bishop of Bath, who was English Ambassador at Paris, informed the Cardinal of the arrival there of a confidential agent of Pope Clement VII. The agent had spoken to the Bishop on this especial subject, and had informed him that there would be difficulties about it.[1] The "blessed divorce"--_benedictum divorcium_ the Bishop calls it--had been already under consideration at Rome. The difficulties were not specified, but the political features of the time obliged Clement to be circumspect, and it was these that were probably referred to. Francis I. had been defeated and taken prisoner by the Imperialists at Pavia. He had been carried to Spain, and had been released at Henry's intercession, under severe conditions, to which he had reluctantly consented, and his sons had been left at Madrid as hostages for the due fulfilment of them. The victorious army, half Spanish, half German, remained under the Duke of Bourbon to complete the conquest of Italy; and Charles V., with his already vast dominions and a treasury which the world believed to be inexhaustibly supplied from the gold mines of the New World, seemed advancing to universal empire. France in the preceding centuries had been the hereditary enemy of England; Spain and Burgundy her hereditary friends. The marriage of Catherine of Aragon had been a special feature of the established alliance. She was given first to Prince Arthur, and then to Henry, as a link in the confederacy which was to hold in check French ambition. Times were changing. Charles V. had been elected emperor, largely through English influence; but Charles was threatening to be a more serious danger to Europe than France had been. The Italian princes were too weak to resist the conqueror of Pavia. Italy once conquered, the Papacy would become a dependency of the empire, and, with Charles's German subjects in open revolt against it, the Church would lose its authority, and the organisation of the Catholic world would fall into hopeless decrepitude. So thought Wolsey, the most sharp-sighted of English ministers. He believed that the maintenance of the Papacy was the best defence of order and liberty. The only remedy which he could see was a change of partners. England held the balance between the great rival powers. If the English alliance could be transferred from the Empire to France, the Emperor could be held in check, and his supposed ambition neutralised. Wolsey was utterly mistaken; but the mistake was not an unnatural one. Charles, busy with his Italian wars, had treated the Lutheran schism with suspicious forbearance. Notwithstanding his Indian ingots his finances were disordered. Bourbon's lansquenets had been left to pay themselves by plunder. They had sacked monasteries, pillaged cathedral plate, and ravished nuns with irreverent ferocity. The estates of the Church had been as little spared by them as Lombardy; and to Clement VII. the invasion was another inroad of barbarians, and Bourbon a second Attila. What Bourbon's master meant by it, and what he might intend to do, was as uncertain to Clement as perhaps it was to Charles himself. In the prostrate, degraded, and desperate condition into which the Church was falling, any resolution was possible. To the clearest eyes in Europe the Papacy seemed tottering to its fall, and Charles's hand, if he chose to raise it, might precipitate the catastrophe. To ask a pope at such a time to give mortal offence to the Spanish nation by agreeing to the divorce of Catherine of Aragon was to ask him to sign his death-warrant. No wonder, therefore, that he found difficulties. Yet it was to France and England that Clement had to look for help in his extremities. The divorce perhaps had as yet been no more than a suggestion, a part of a policy which was still in its infancy. It could wait at any rate for a more convenient season. Meantime he sent his secretary, Sanga, to Paris to beg aid; and to Henry personally he made a passionate appeal, imploring him not to desert the Apostolic See in its hour of extreme need. He apologised for his importunacy, but he said he hoped that history would not have to record that Italy had been devastated in the time of Clement VII. to the dishonour of the King and of Wolsey. If France and England failed him, he would himself be ruined. The Emperor would be universal monarch. They would open their eyes at last, but they would open them too late. So piteous was the entreaty that Henry when he read the Pope's letter burst into tears.[2] Clement had not been idle. He had brought his own small army into the field to oppose Bourbon; he joined the Italian League, and prepared to defend himself. He was called the father of Christendom, yet he was at open war with the most Catholic king. But Wolsey reasonably considered that unless the Western powers interfered the end would come. If England was to act, she could act only in alliance with France. The change of policy was ill understood, and was not popular among Henry's subjects. The divorce as yet had not been spoken of. No breath of such a purpose had gone abroad. But English sentiment was imperial, and could endure with equanimity even the afflictions of a pope. The King was more papal than his people; he allowed Wolsey to guide him, and negotiations were set on foot at once for a special treaty with France, one of the conditions of which was to be the marriage of the Princess Mary--allotted like a card in a game--either to Francis or to one of his sons; another condition being that the English crown should be settled upon her should Henry die without a legitimate son. Sir John Russell was simultaneously despatched to Rome with money to help the Pope in paying his troops and garrisoning the city. The ducats and the "kind words" which accompanied them "created incredible joy," encouraged his Holiness to reject unjust conditions which had been offered, and restored him, if for the moment only, "from death to life."[3] If Russell described correctly what he saw in passing through Italy, Clement had good cause for anxiety. "The Swabians and Spaniards," he wrote, "had committed horrible atrocities. They had burnt houses to the value of two hundred million ducats, with all the churches, images, and priests that fell into their hands. They had compelled the priests and monks to violate the nuns. Even where they were received without opposition they had burned the place; they had not spared the boys, and they had carried off the girls; and whenever they found the Sacrament of the Church they had thrown it into a river or into the vilest place they could find. If God did not punish such cruelty and wickedness, men would infer that He did not trouble Himself about the affairs of this world."[4] The news from Italy gave a fresh impulse to Wolsey's policy and the Anglo-French Alliance, which was pushed forward in spite of popular disapproval. The Emperor, unable to pay, and therefore unable to control, his troops, became himself alarmed. He found himself pressed into a course which was stimulating the German revolt against the Papacy, and he professed himself anxious to end the war. Inigo de Mendoza, the Bishop of Burgos, was despatched to Paris to negotiate for a general pacification. From Paris he was to proceed to London to assure Henry of the Emperor's inalienable friendship, and above all things to gain over Wolsey by the means which experience had shown to be the nearest way to Wolsey's heart. The great Cardinal was already Charles's pensionary, but the pension was several years in arrear. Mendoza was to tell him not only that the arrears should be immediately paid up, but that a second pension should be secured to him on the revenues of Milan, and that the Emperor would make him a further grant of 6,000 ducats annually out of the income of Spanish bishoprics. No means was to be spared to divert the hostility of so dangerous an enemy.[5] Wolsey was not to be so easily gained. He had formed large schemes which he did not mean to part with, and in the matter of pensions Francis I. was as liberal in promises as Charles. The Pope's prospects were brightening. Besides the English money, he had improved his finances by creating six new cardinals, and making 240,000 crowns out of the disposition of these sacred offices.[6] A French embassy, with the Bishop of Tarbes at its head, came to England to complete the treaty with Henry in the Pope's defence. Demands were to be made upon the Emperor; if those demands were refused, war was to follow, and the cement of the alliance was to be the marriage of Mary with a French prince. It is likely that other secret projects were in view also of a similar kind. The marriage of Henry with Catherine had been intended to secure the continuance of the alliance with Spain. Royal ladies were the counters with which politicians played; and probably enough there were thoughts of placing a French princess in Catherine's place. However this may be, the legality of the King's marriage with his nominal queen was suddenly and indirectly raised in the discussion of the terms of the treaty, when the Bishop of Tarbes inquired whether it was certain that Catherine's daughter was legitimate. Mr. Brewer, the careful and admirable editor of the "Foreign and Domestic Calendar of State Papers," doubts whether the Bishop did anything of the kind. I cannot agree with Mr. Brewer. The Bishop of Tarbes was among the best-known diplomatists in Europe. He was actively concerned during subsequent years in the process of the divorce case in London, in Paris, and at Rome. The expressions which he used on this occasion were publicly appealed to by Henry in his addresses to the peers and to the country, in the public pleas which he laid before the English prelates, in the various repeated defences which he made for his conduct. It is impossible that the Bishop should have been ignorant of the use which was made of his name, and impossible equally to suppose that he would have allowed his name to be used unfairly. The Bishop of Tarbes was unquestionably the first person to bring the question publicly forward. It is likely enough, however, that his introduction of so startling a topic had been privately arranged between himself and Wolsey as a prelude to the further steps which were immediately to follow. For the divorce had by this time been finally resolved on as part of a general scheme for the alteration of the balance of power. The domestic reasons for it were as weighty as ever were alleged for similar separations. The Pope's hesitation, it might be assumed, would now be overcome, since he had flung himself for support upon England and France, and his relations with the Emperor could hardly be worse than they were. The outer world, and even the persons principally concerned, were taken entirely by surprise. For the two years during which it had been under consideration the secret had been successfully preserved. Not a hint had reached Catherine herself, and even when the match had been lighted by the Bishop of Tarbes the full meaning of it does not seem to have occurred to her. Mendoza, on his arrival in England, had found her disturbed; she was irritated at the position which had been given to the Duke of Richmond; she was angry, of course, at the French alliance; she complained that she was kept in the dark about public affairs; she was exerting herself to the utmost among the friends of the imperial connection to arrest Wolsey's policy and maintain the ancient traditions; but of the divorce she had not heard a word. It was to come upon her like a thunderstroke.[7] Before the drama opens a brief description will not be out of place of the two persons who were to play the principal parts on the stage, as they were seen a year later by Ludovico Falieri, the Venetian ambassador in England. Of Catherine his account is brief. "The Queen is of low stature and rather stout; very good and very religious; speaks Spanish, French, Flemish, and English; more beloved by the Islanders than any queen that has ever reigned; about forty-five years old, and has been in England thirty years. She has had two sons and one daughter. Both the sons died in infancy. One daughter survives." On the King, Falieri is more elaborate. "In the 8th Henry such beauty of mind and body is combined as to surprise and astonish. Grand stature, suited to his exalted position, showing the superiority of mind and character; a face like an angel's, so fair it is; his head bald like Cæsar's, and he wears a beard, which is not the English custom. He is accomplished in every manly exercise, sits his horse well, tilts with his lance, throws the quoit, shoots with his bow excellent well; he is a fine tennis player, and he practises all these gifts with the greatest industry. Such a prince could not fail to have cultivated also his character and his intellect. He has been a student from his childhood; he knows literature, philosophy, and theology; speaks and writes Spanish, French, and Italian, besides Latin and English. He is kind, gracious, courteous, liberal, especially to men of learning, whom he is always ready to help. He appears religious also, generally hears two masses a day, and on holy days High Mass besides. He is very charitable, giving away ten thousand gold ducats annually among orphans, widows, and cripples."[8] Such was the King, such the Queen, whom fate and the preposterous pretensions of the Papacy to dispense with the established marriage laws had irregularly mated, and whose separation was to shake the European world. Pope Clement complained in subsequent years that the burden of decision should have been thrown in the first instance upon himself. If the King had proceeded at the outset to try the question in the English courts; if a judgment had been given unfavourable to the marriage, and had he immediately acted upon it, Queen Catherine might have appealed to the Holy See; but accomplished facts were solid things. Her case might have been indefinitely protracted by legal technicalities till it died of itself. It would have been a characteristic method of escape out of the difficulty, and it was a view which Wolsey himself perhaps at first entertained. He knew that the Pope was unwilling to take the first step. On the 17th of May, 1527, after a discussion of the Treaty with France, he called a meeting of his Legatine court at York Place. Archbishop Warham sate with him as assessor. The King attended, and the Cardinal, having stated that a question had arisen on the lawfulness of his marriage, enquired whether the King, for the sake of public morals and the good of his own soul, would allow the objections to be examined into. The King assented, and named a proctor. The Bull of Julius II. was introduced and considered. Wolsey declared that in a case so intricate the canon lawyers must be consulted, and he asked for the opinions of the assembled bishops. The bishops, one only excepted, gave dubious answers. The aged Bishop of Rochester, reputed the holiest and wisest of them, said decidedly that the marriage was good, and the Bull which legalised it sufficient. These proceedings were not followed up, but the secrecy which had hitherto been observed was no longer possible, and Catherine and her friends learnt now for the first time the measure which was in contemplation. Mendoza, writing on the day following the York Place meeting to the Emperor, informed him, as a fact which he had learnt on reliable authority, that Wolsey, for a final stroke of wickedness, was scheming to divorce the Queen. She was so much alarmed that she did not venture herself to speak of it, but it was certain that the lawyers and bishops had been invited to sign a declaration that, being his brother's widow, she could not be the wife of the King. The Pope, she was afraid, might be tempted to take part against her, or the Cardinal himself might deliver judgment as Papal Legate. Her one hope was in the Emperor. The cause of the action taken against her was her fidelity to the Imperial interests. Nothing as yet had been made formally public, and she begged that the whole matter might be kept as private as possible.[9] That the Pope would be willing, if he dared, to gratify Henry at Charles's expense was only too likely. The German Lutherans and the German Emperor were at the moment his most dangerous enemies. France and England were the only Powers who seemed willing to assist him, and a week before the meeting of Wolsey's court he had experienced in the most terrible form what the imperial hostility might bring upon him. On the 7th of that same month of May the army of the Duke of Bourbon had taken Rome by storm. The city was given up to pillage. Reverend cardinals were dragged through the streets on mules' backs, dishonoured and mutilated. Convents of nuns were abandoned to the licentious soldiery. The horrors of the capture may have been exaggerated, but it is quite certain that to holy things or holy persons no respect was paid, and that the atrocities which in those days were usually perpetrated in stormed towns were on this occasion eminently conspicuous. The unfortunate Pope, shut up in the Castle of St. Angelo, looked down from its battlements upon scenes so dreadful that it must have appeared as if the Papacy and the Church itself had been overtaken by the final judgment. We regard the Spaniards as a nation of bigots, we consider it impossible that the countrymen of Charles and Philip could have been animated by any such bitterness against the centre of Catholic Christendom. Charles himself is not likely to have intended the humiliation of the Holy See. But Clement had reason for his misgivings, and Wolsey's policy was not without excuse. Lope de Soria was Charles's Minister at Genoa, and Lope de Soria's opinions, freely uttered, may have been shared by many a Catholic besides himself. On the 25th of May, a fortnight after the storm, he wrote to his master the following noticeable letter:-- "The sack of Rome must be regarded as a visitation from God, who permits his servant the Emperor to teach his Vicar on earth and other Christian princes that their wicked purposes shall be defeated, the unjust wars which they have raised shall cease, peace be restored to Christendom, the faith be exalted, and heresy extirpated.... Should the Emperor think that the Church of God is not what it ought to be, and that the Pope's temporal power emboldens him to promote war among Christian princes, I cannot but remind your Majesty that it will not be a sin, but a meritorious action, to reform the Church; so that the Pope's authority be confined exclusively to his own spiritual affairs, and temporal affairs to be left to Cæsar, since by right what is God's belongs to God, and what is Cæsar's to Cæsar. I have been twenty-eight years in Italy, and I have observed that the Popes have been the sole cause of all the wars and miseries during that time. Your Imperial Majesty, as Supreme Lord on earth, is bound to apply a remedy to that evil."[10] Heretical English and Germans were not the only persons who could recognise the fitness of the secular supremacy of princes over popes and Churches. Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of Charles himself, and of many more besides him. De Soria's words might have been dictated by Luther or Thomas Cromwell. Had the Emperor at that moment placed himself at the head of the Reformation, all later history would have been different. One statesman at any rate had cause to fear that this might be what was about to happen. Wolsey was the embodiment of everything most objectionable and odious to the laity in the ecclesiastical administration of Europe. To defend the Papacy and to embarrass Charles was the surest method of protecting himself and his order. The divorce was an incident in the situation, but not the least important. Catherine represented the Imperialist interest in England. To put her away was to make the breach with her countrymen and kindred irreparable. He took upon himself to assure the King that after the last outrage the Pope would agree to anything that France and England demanded of him, and would trust to his allies to bear him harmless. That the divorce was a thing reasonable in itself to ask for, and certain to be conceded by any pope who was free to act on his own judgment, was assumed as a matter of course. Sir Gregory Casalis, the English agent at Rome, was instructed to obtain access to Clement in St. Angelo, to convey to him the indignation felt in England at his treatment, and then to insist on the illegality of the King's relations with Catherine, on the King's own scruples of conscience, and on the anxiety of his subjects that there should be a male heir to the crown. The "urgent cause" such as was necessary to be produced when exceptional actions were required of the popes was the imminence or even certainty of civil war if no such heir was born. Catherine meanwhile had again communicated with Mendoza. She had spoken to her husband, and Henry, since further reticence was impossible, had told her that they had been living in mortal sin, and that a separation was necessary. A violent scene had followed, with natural tears and reproaches.[11] The King endeavoured to console her, but it was not a matter where consolation could avail. Wolsey advised him to deal with her gently, till it was seen what the Pope and the King of France would do in the matter. Wolsey himself was to go immediately to Paris to see Francis, and consult with him on the measures necessary to be taken in consequence of the Pope's imprisonment. It was possible that Clement, finding himself helpless, might become a puppet in the Emperor's hands. Under such circumstances he could not be trusted by other countries with the spiritual authority attaching to his office, and schemes were being formed for some interim arrangement by which France and England were to constitute themselves into a separate patriarchate, with Wolsey at its head as Archbishop of Rouen. Mendoza says that this proposal had been actually made to Wolsey by the French Ambassador.[12] In Spain it was even believed to be contemplated as a permanent modification of the ecclesiastical system. The Imperial Councillors at Valladolid told the Venetian Minister that the Cardinal intended to separate the Churches of England and France from that of Rome, saying that as the Pope was a prisoner he was not to be obeyed, and that even if the Emperor released him, he still would not be free unless his fortresses and territory now in the Emperor's hands were restored to him.[13] Wolsey had reason for anxiety, for Catherine and Mendoza were writing to the Emperor insisting that he should make the Pope revoke Wolsey's Legatine powers. In spite of efforts to keep secret the intended divorce, it soon became known throughout England. The Queen was personally popular. The nation generally detested France, and looked on the Emperor as their hereditary friend. The reasons for the divorce might influence statesmen, but did not touch the body of the people. They naturally took the side of an injured wife, and if Mendoza can be believed (and there is no reason why he should not be believed), the first impression was decidedly unfavourable to a project which was regarded as part of the new policy. Mendoza made the most of the opposition. He told the Emperor that if six or seven thousand men were landed in Cornwall, forty thousand Englishmen would rise and join them.[14] He saw Wolsey--he reasoned with him, and when he found reason ineffectual, he named the bribe which the Emperor was willing to give. Knowing what Francis was bidding, he baited his hook more liberally. He spoke of the Papacy: "how the chair was now in the Emperor's hands, and the Emperor, if Wolsey deserved it, would no doubt promote his elevation." The glittering temptation was unavailing. The papal chair had been Wolsey's highest ambition, but he remained unmoved. He said that he had served the Emperor in the past out of disinterested regard. He still trusted that the Emperor would replace the Pope and restore the Church. Mendoza's answer was not reassuring to an English statesman. He said that both the spiritual and temporal powers were now centred in his master, and he advised Wolsey, if he desired an arrangement, to extend his journey from France, go on to Spain, and see the Emperor in person. It was precisely this _centering_ which those who had charge of English liberties had a right to resent. Divorce or no divorce, they could not allow a power possessed of so much authority in the rest of Christendom to be the servant of a single prince. The divorce was but an illustration of the situation, and such a Papacy as Mendoza contemplated would reduce England and all Catholic Europe into fiefs of the Empire. CHAPTER II. Mission of Wolsey to Paris--Visits Bishop Fisher on the way--Anxieties of the Emperor--Letter of the Emperor to Henry VIII.--Large offers to Wolsey--Address of the French Cardinals to the Pope--Anne Boleyn chosen by Henry to succeed Catherine--Surprise and displeasure of Wolsey--Fresh attempts of the Emperor to bribe him--Wolsey forced to continue to advocate the divorce--Mission of Dr. Knight to Rome--The Pope at Orvieto-- The King applies for a dispensation to make a second marriage--Language of the dispensation demanded--Inferences drawn from it--Alleged intrigue between the King and Mary Boleyn. It was believed at the time--and it was the tradition afterwards--that Wolsey, in his mission to Paris, intended to replace Catherine by a French princess, the more surely to commit Francis to the support of Henry in the divorce, and to strengthen the new alliance. Nothing can be inherently more likely. The ostensible reason, however, was to do away with any difficulties which might have been suggested by the objection of the Bishop of Tarbes to the legitimacy of the Princess Mary. If illegitimate, she would be no fitting bride for the Duke of Orleans. But she had been born _bonâ fide parentum_. There was no intention of infringing her prospective rights or of altering her present position. Her rank and title were to be secured to her in amplest measure. The Cardinal went upon his journey with the splendour attaching to his office and befitting a churchman who was aspiring to be the spiritual president of the two kingdoms. On his way to the coast he visited two prelates whose support to his policy was important. Archbishop Warham had been cold about the divorce, if not openly hostile. Wolsey found him "not much changed from his first fashion," but admitting that, although it might be unpleasant to the Queen, truth and justice must prevail. Bishop Fisher was a more difficult subject. He had spoken in the Legate's court in Catherine's favour. It was from him, as the King supposed, that Catherine herself had learnt what was impending over her. Wolsey called at his palace as he passed through Rochester. He asked the Bishop plainly if he had been in communication with the Queen. The Bishop, after some hesitation, confessed that the Queen had sought his advice, and said that he had declined to give an opinion without the King's command. Before Wolsey left London, at a last interview at York Place, the King had directed him to explain "the whole matter" to the Bishop. He went through the entire history, mentioned the words of the Bishop of Tarbes, and discussed the question which had risen upon it, on account of which he had been sent into France. Finally, he described the extreme violence with which Catherine had received the intelligence. The Bishop greatly blamed the conduct of the Queen, and said he thought that if he might speak to her he might bring her to submission. He agreed, or seemed to agree, that the marriage had been irregular, though he did not himself think that it could now be broken. Others of the bishops, he thought, agreed with him; but he was satisfied that the King meant nothing against the laws of God, and would be fully justified in submitting his misgivings to the Pope.[15] Mendoza's and the Queen's letters had meanwhile been despatched to Spain, to add to the anxieties which were overwhelming the Emperor. Nothing could have been less welcome at such a juncture than a family quarrel with his uncle of England, whose friendship he was still hoping to retain. The bird that he had caged at Rome was no convenient prisoner. The capture of Rome had not been ordered by himself, though politically he was obliged to maintain it. The time did not suit for the ambitious Church reforms of Lope de Soria. Peace would have to be made with the Pope on some moderate conditions. His own Spain was hardly quieted after the revolt of the _Comunidades_. Half Germany was in avowed apostasy from the Church of Rome. The Turks were overrunning Hungary, and sweeping the Mediterranean with their pirate fleets, and the passionate and restless Francis was watching his opportunity to revenge Pavia and attack his captor in the Low Countries and in Italy. The great Emperor was moderate, cautious, prudent to a fault. In a calmer season he might have been tempted to take the Church in hand; and none understood better the condition into which it had fallen. But he was wise enough to know that if a reform of the Papacy was undertaken at all it must be undertaken with the joint consent of the other Christian princes, and all his present efforts were directed to peace. He was Catherine's natural guardian. Her position in England had been hitherto a political security for Henry's friendship. It was his duty and his interest to defend her, and he meant to do it; not, however, by sending roving expeditions to land in Cornwall and raise a civil war; all means were to be tried before that; to attempt such a thing, he well knew, would throw Europe into a blaze. The letters found him at Valladolid. He replied, of course, that he was shocked at a proceeding so unlooked for and so scandalous, but he charged Mendoza to be moderate and to confine himself to remonstrance.[16] He wrote himself to Henry--confidentially, as from friend to friend, and ciphering his letter with his own hand. He was unable to believe, he said, that Henry could contemplate seriously bringing his domestic discomforts before the world. Even supposing the marriage illegitimate--even supposing that the Pope had no power to dispense in such cases--"it would be better and more honourable to keep the matter secret, and to work out a remedy." He bade Mendoza remind the King that to question the dispensing power affected the position of other princes besides his own; that to touch the legitimacy of his daughter would increase the difficulties with the succession, and not remove them. He implored the King "to keep the matter secret, as he would do himself." Meanwhile, he told Mendoza, for Catherine's comfort, that he had written to demand a mild brief from the Pope to stop the scandal. He had requested him, as Catherine had suggested, to revoke Wolsey's powers, or at least to command that neither he nor any English Court should try the case. If heard at all it must be heard before his Holiness and the Sacred College.[17] But he could not part with the hope that he might still bring Wolsey to his own and the Queen's side. A council of Cardinals was to meet at Avignon to consider the Pope's captivity. The Cardinal of England was expected to attend. Charles himself might go to Perpignan. Wolsey might meet him there, discuss the state of Europe, and settle the King's secret affair at the same time. Should this be impossible, he charged Mendoza once more to leave no stone unturned to recover Wolsey's friendship. "In our name," he said, "you will make him the following offers:-- "1. The payment of all arrears on his several pensions, amounting to 9,000 ducats annually. "2. Six thousand additional ducats annually until such a time as a bishoprick or other ecclesiastical endowment of the same revenue becomes vacant in our kingdom. "3. The Duke, who is to have Milan, to give him a Marquisate in that Duchy, with an annual rent of 12,000 ducats, or 15,000 if the smaller sum be not enough; the said Marquisate to be held by the Cardinal during his life, and to pass after him to any heir whom he shall appoint."[18] As if this was not sufficient, the Emperor paid a yet further tribute to the supposed all-powerful Cardinal. He wrote himself to him as to his "good friend." He said that if there was anything in his dominions which the Cardinal wished to possess he had only to name it, as he considered Wolsey the best friend that he had in the world.[19] For the ministers of great countries deliberately to sell themselves to foreign princes was the custom of the age. The measure of public virtue which such a custom indicates was not exalted; and among the changes introduced by the Reformation the abolition or suspension of it was not the least beneficial. Thomas Cromwell, when he came to power, set the example of refusal, and corruption of public men on a scale so scandalously enormous was no more heard of. Gold, however, had flowed in upon Wolsey in such enormous streams and from so many sources that the Emperor's munificence and attention failed to tempt him. On reaching Paris he found Francis bent upon war, and willing to promise anything for Henry's assistance. The belief at the French Court was that the Emperor, hearing that the Churches of England and France meant to decline from their obedience to the Roman Communion, would carry the Pope to Spain; that Clement would probably be poisoned there, and the Apostolic See would be established permanently in the Peninsula.[20] Wolsey himself wrote this, and believed it, or desired Henry to believe it, proving the extreme uncertainty among the best-informed of contemporary politicians as to the probable issue of the capture of Rome. The French Cardinals drew and sent an address to the Pope, intimating that as long as he was in confinement they could accept no act of his as lawful, and would not obey it. Wolsey signed at the head of them. The Cardinals Salviati, Bourbon, Lorraine, and the Chancellor Cardinal of Sens, signed after him.[21] The first stroke in the game had been won by Wolsey. Had the Pope recalled his powers as legate, an immediate schism might have followed. But a more fatal blow had been prepared for him by his master in England. Trusting to the Cardinal's promises that the Pope would make no difficulty about the divorce, Henry had considered himself at liberty to choose a successor to Catherine. He had suffered once in having allowed politics to select a wife for him. This time he intended to be guided by his own inclination. When Elizabeth afterwards wished to marry Leicester, Lord Sussex said she had better fix after her own liking; there would be the better chance of the heir that her realm was looking for. Her father fixed also after his liking in selecting Elizabeth's mother. Anne Boleyn was the second daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, a Norfolk knight of ancient blood, and himself a person of some distinction in the public service. Lady Boleyn was a Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Anne was born in 1507, and by birth and connection was early introduced into the court. When a girl she was taken to Paris to be educated. In 1522 she was brought back to England, became a lady-in-waiting, and, being a witty, brilliant young woman, attracted and encouraged the attentions of the fashionable cavaliers of the day. Wyatt, the poet, was among her adorers, and the young Percy, afterwards Earl of Northumberland. It was alleged afterwards that between her and Percy there had been a secret marriage which had been actually consummated. That she had been involved in some dangerous intrigue or other she herself subsequently confessed. But she was attractive, she was witty; she drew Henry's fancy, and the fancy became an ardent passion. Now, for the first time, in Wolsey's absence, the Lady Anne's name appears in connection with the divorce. On the 16th of August Mendoza informed Charles, as a matter of general belief, that if the suit for the divorce was successful the King would marry a daughter of Master Boleyn, whom the Emperor would remember as once ambassador at the Imperial court.[22] There is no direct evidence that before Wolsey had left England the King had seriously thought of Anne at all. Catherine could have had no suspicion of it, or her jealous indignation would have made itself heard. The Spanish Ambassador spoke of it as a new feature in the case. The Boleyns were Wolsey's enemies, and belonged to the growing faction most hostile to the Church. The news as it came upon him was utterly distasteful.[23] Anne in turn hated Wolsey, as he probably knew that she would, and she compelled him to stoop to the disgrace of suing for her favour. The inference is reasonable, therefore, that the King took the step which in the event was to produce such momentous consequences when the Cardinal was not at hand to dissuade him. He was not encouraged even by her own family. Her father, as will be seen hereafter, was from the first opposed to his daughter's advancement. He probably knew her character too well. But Henry, when he had taken an idea into his head, was not to be moved from it. The lady was not beautiful: she was rather short than tall, her complexion was dark, her neck long, her mouth broad, her figure not particularly good. The fascinating features were her long flowing brown hair, a pair of effective dark eyes, and a boldness of character which might have put him on his guard, and did not. The immediate effect was to cool Wolsey's ardour for the divorce. His mission in France, which opened so splendidly, eventuated in little. The French cardinals held no meeting at Avignon. They had signed the address to Clement, but they had not made the Cardinal of York into their patriarch. Rouen was not added to his other preferments. Could he but have proposed a marriage for his sovereign with the Princess of Alençon, all might have been different, but it had fared with him as it fared with the Earl of Warwick, whom Henry's grandfather had sent to France to woo a bride for him, and in his absence married Elizabeth Grey. He perhaps regretted the munificent offers of the Emperor which he had hastily rejected, and he returned to England in the autumn to feel the consequences of the change in his situation. Mr. Brewer labours in vain to prove that Wolsey was unfavourable to the divorce from the beginning. Catherine believed that he was the instigator of it. Mendoza was of the same opinion. Unquestionably he promoted it with all his power, and made it a part of a great policy. To maintain that he was acting thus against his conscience and to please the King is more dishonouring to him than to suppose that he was either the originator or the willing instrument. All, however, was altered when Anne Boleyn came upon the stage, and she made haste to make him feel the change. "The Legate has returned from France," wrote Mendoza on the 26th of October. He went to visit the King at Richmond, and sent to ask where he could see him. The King was in his chamber. It happened that the lady, who seemed to entertain no great affection for the Cardinal, was in the room with the King, and before the latter could answer the message she said for him, "Where else is the Cardinal to come? Tell him he may come here where the King is." The Legate felt that such treatment boded no good to him, but concealed his resentment. "The cause," said Mendoza, "is supposed to be that the said lady bears the Legate a grudge, for other reasons, and because she has discovered that during his visit to France the Legate proposed to have an alliance for the King found in that country."[24] Wolsey persuaded Mendoza that the French marriage had been a fiction, but at once he began to endeavour to undo his work, and prevent the dissolution of the marriage with Catherine. He tried to procure an unfavourable opinion from the English Bishops before legal proceedings were commenced. Mendoza, however, doubted his stability if the King persisted in his purpose, and advised that a papal decision on the case should be procured and forwarded as soon as possible.[25] The Pope's captivity, however, would destroy the value of any judgment which he might give while he continued in durance. The Emperor, encouraged by the intimation that Wolsey was wavering, reverted to his previous hope. In a special memorandum of measures to be taken, the most important, notwithstanding the refusal of the previous offers, was still thought to be to "bribe the Cardinal." He must instantly be paid the arrears of his pensions out of the revenues of the sees of Palencia and Badajoz. If there was not money enough in the treasury, a further and larger pension of twelve or fourteen thousand crowns was to be given to him out of some rich bishopric in Castile. The Emperor admitted that he had promised the Cortes to appoint no more foreigners to Spanish sees, but such a promise could not be held binding, being in violation of the liberties of the Church. Every one would see that it was for the good of the kingdom. The renewed offer was doubtless conveyed to Wolsey, but he probably found that he had gone too deep to retire. If he made such an effort as Mendoza relates, he must have speedily discovered that it would be useless. He had encouraged the King in a belief that the divorce would be granted by the Pope as a matter of course, and the King, having made up his own mind, was not to be moved from it. If Wolsey now drew back, the certain inference would be that he had accepted an imperial bribe. There was no recourse, therefore, but to go on. While Wolsey had been hesitating, the King had, unknown to him, sent his secretary, Dr. Knight, to Rome with directions to obtain access if possible to the Pope, and procure the dispensation which had been already applied for to enable him to marry a second time without the formalities of a judgment. Such an expedient would be convenient in many ways. It would leave Catherine's position unaffected and the legitimacy of the Princess Mary unimpugned. Knight went. He found that without a passport he could not even enter the city, still less be allowed an interview. "With ten thousand crowns he could not bribe his way into St. Angelo." He contrived, however, to have a letter introduced, which the Pope answered by telling Knight to wait in some quiet place. He (the Pope) would "there send him all the King's requests in as ample a form as they were desired." Knight trusted in a short time "to have in his custody as much, perfect, sped, and under lead, as his Highness had long time desired."[26] Knight was too sanguine. The Emperor, finding the Pope's detention as a prisoner embarrassing, allowed him, on the 9th of December, to escape to Orvieto, where he was apparently at liberty; but he was only in a larger cage, all his territories being occupied by Imperial troops, and he himself watched by the General of the Observants, and warned at his peril to grant nothing to Catherine's prejudice. Henry's Secretary followed him, saw him, and obtained something which on examination proved to be worthless. The negotiations were left again in Wolsey's hands, and were pressed with all the eagerness of a desperate man. Pope Clement had ceased to be a free agent. He did not look to the rights of the case. He would gladly have pleased Henry could he have pleased him without displeasing Charles. The case itself was peculiar, and opinions differed on the rights and wrongs of it. The reader must be from time to time reminded that, as the law of England has stood ever since, a marriage with a brother's widow was not a marriage. As the law of the Church then stood, it was not a marriage unless permitted by the Pope; and according to the same law of England the Pope neither has, nor ever had, any authority to dispense with the law. Therefore Henry, on the abstract contention, was in the right. He had married Catherine under an error. The problem was to untie the knot with as little suffering to either as the nature of the case permitted. That the negotiations were full of inconsistencies, evasions, and contradictions, was natural and inevitable. To cut the knot without untying it was the only direct course, but that all means were exhausted before the application of so violent a remedy was rather a credit than a reproach. The first inconsistency was in the King. He did not regard his marriage as valid; therefore he thought himself at liberty to marry again; but he did not wish to illegitimatise his daughter or degrade Catherine. He disputed the validity of the dispensation of Julius II.; yet he required a dispensation from Clement which was equally questionable to enable him to take a second wife. The management of the case having reverted to Wolsey, fresh instructions were sent to Sir Gregory Casalis, the regular English agent at the Papal court, to wait on Clement. Casalis was "bid consider how much the affair concerned the relief of the King's conscience, the safety of his soul, the preservation of his life, the continuation of his succession, the welfare and repose of all his subjects now and hereafter." The Pope at Orvieto was personally accessible. Casalis was to represent to him the many difficulties which had arisen in connection with the marriage, and the certainty of civil war in England should the King die leaving the succession no better provided for. He was, therefore, to request the Pope to grant a commission to Wolsey to hear the case and to decide it, and (perhaps as an alternative) to sign a dispensation, a draft of which Wolsey enclosed. The language of the dispensation was peculiar. Wolsey explained it by saying that "the King, remembering by the example of past times what false claims [to the crown] had been put forward, to avoid all colour or pretext of the same, desired this of the Pope as absolutely necessary." If these two requests were conceded, Henry undertook on his part to require the Emperor to set the Pope at liberty, or to declare war against him if he refused. A dispensation, which was to evade the real point at issue, yet to convey to the King a power to take another wife, was a novelty in itself and likely to be carefully worded. It has given occasion among modern historians to important inferences disgraceful to everyone concerned. The sinister meaning supposed to be obvious to modern critics could not have been concealed from the Pope himself. Here, therefore, follow the words which have been fastened on as for ever fatal to the intelligence and character of Henry and his Ministers. The Pope, after reviewing the later history of England, the distractions caused by rival claimants of the crown, after admitting the necessity of guarding against the designs of the ambitious, and empowering Henry to marry again, was made to address the King in these words:[27]-- "In order to take away all occasion from evil doers, we do in the plenitude of our power hereby suspend _hâc vice_ all canons forbidding marriage in the fourth degree, also all canons _de impedimento publicæ honestatis_ preventing marriage in consequence of clandestine espousals, further all canons relating to precontracts clandestinely made but not consummated, also all canons affecting impediments created by affinity rising _ex illicito coitu_, in any degree even in the first, so far as the marriage to be contracted by you, the petitioner, can be objected to or in any wise be impugned by the same. Further, to avoid canonical objections on the side of the woman by reason of former contract clandestinely made, or impediment of public honesty or justice arising from such clandestine contract, or of any affinity contracted in any degree even the first, _ex illicito coitu_: and in the event that it has proceeded beyond the second or third degrees of consanguinity, whereby otherwise you, the petitioner, would not be allowed by the canons to contract marriage, we hereby license you to take such woman for wife, and suffer you and the woman to marry free from all ecclesiastical objections and censures." The explanation given by Wolsey of the wording of this document is that it was intended to preclude any objections which might be raised to the prejudice of the offspring of a marriage in itself irregular. It was therefore made as comprehensive as possible. Dr. Lingard, followed by Mr. Brewer, and other writers see in it a transparent personal application to the situation in which Henry intended to place himself in making a wife of Anne Boleyn. Two years subsequent to the period when this dispensation was asked for, when the question of the divorce had developed into a battle between England and the Papacy, and the passions of Catholics and Reformers were boiling over in recrimination and invective, the King's plea that he was parting from Catherine out of conscience was met by stories set floating in society that the King himself had previously intrigued with the mother and sister of the lady whom he intended to marry; precisely the same obstacle existed, therefore, to his marriage with Anne, being further aggravated by incest. No attempt was ever made to prove these charges; no particulars were given of time or place. No witnesses were produced, nor other evidence, though to prove them would have been of infinite importance. Queen Catherine, who if any one must have known it if the accusation was true, never alludes to Mary Boleyn in the fiercest of her denunciations. It was heard of only in the conversation of disaffected priests or secret visitors to the Spanish Ambassador, and was made public only in the manifesto of Reginald Pole, which accompanied Paul III.'s Bull for Henry's deposition. Even this authority, which was not much in itself, is made less by the fact that in the first draft of "Pole's Book," sent to England to be examined in 1535, the story is not mentioned. Evidently, therefore, Pole had not then heard of it or did not believe it. The guilt with the mother is now abandoned as too monstrous. The guilt with the sister is peremptorily insisted on, and the words of the dispensation are appealed to as no longer leaving room for doubt. To what else, it is asked, can such extraordinary expressions refer unless to some disgraceful personal _liaison_? The uninstructed who draw inferences of fact from the verbiage of legal documents will discover often what are called "mare's nests." I will request the reader to consider what this supposition involves. The dispensation would have to be copied into the Roman registers, subject to the inspection of the acutest canon lawyers in the world. If the meaning is so clear to us, it must have been clear to them. We are, therefore, to believe that Henry, when demanding to be separated from Catherine, as an escape from mortal sin, for the relief of his conscience and the surety of his succession, was gratuitously putting the Pope in possession of a secret which had only to be published to extinguish him and his plea in an outburst of scorn and laughter. There was no need for such an acknowledgment, for the intrigue could not be proved. It could not be required for the legitimation of the children that were to be born; for a man of Wolsey's ability must have known that no dispensation would be held valid that was granted after so preposterous a confidence. It was as if a man putting in a claim for some great property, before the case came on for trial privately informed both judge and jury that it was based on forgery. We are called on to explain further, why, when all Europe was shaken by the controversy, no hint is to be found in any public document of a fact which, if true, would be decisive; and yet more extraordinary, why the Pope and the Curia, when driven to bay in all the exasperation of a furious controversy, left a weapon unused which would have assured them an easy victory. Wolsey was not a fool. Is it conceivable that he would have composed a document so fatal and have drawn the Pope's pointed attention to it? My credulity does not extend so far. We cannot prove a negative; we cannot prove that Henry had not intrigued with Mary Boleyn, or with all the ladies of his court. But the language of the dispensation cannot be adduced as an evidence of it, unless King, Pope, and all the interested world had parted with their senses. As to the story itself, there is no ground for distinguishing between the mother and the daughter. When it was first set circulating both were named together. The mother only has been dropped, lest the improbability should seem too violent for belief. That Mary Boleyn had been the King's mistress before or after her own marriage is now asserted as an ascertained fact by respectable historians--a fact sufficient, can it be proved, to cover with infamy for ever the English separation from Rome, King, Ministers, Parliaments, Bishops, and every one concerned with it. The effectiveness of the weapon commends it to Catholic controversialists. I have only to repeat that the evidence for the charge is nothing but the floating gossip of Catholic society, never heard of, never whispered, till the second stage of the quarrel, when it had developed into a passionate contest; never even then alleged in a form in which it could be met and answered. It could not have been hid from Queen Catherine if it was known to Reginald Pole. We have many letters of Catherine, eloquent on the story of her wrongs; letters to the Emperor, letters to the Pope; yet no word of Mary Boleyn. What reason can be given save that it was a legend which grew out of the temper of the time? Nothing could be more plausible than to meet the King's plea of conscience with an allegation which made it ridiculous. But in the public pleadings of a cause which was discussed in every capital in Europe by the keenest lawyers and diplomatists of the age, an accusation which, if maintained, would have been absolutely decisive, is never alluded to in any public document till the question had passed beyond the stage of discussion. The silence of all responsible persons is sufficient proof of its nature. It was a mere floating calumny, born of wind and malice. Mr. Brewer does indeed imagine that he has discovered what he describes as a tacit confession on Henry's part. When the Act of Appeals was before the House of Commons which ended the papal jurisdiction in England, a small knot of Opposition members used to meet privately to deliberate how to oppose it. Among these one of the most active was Sir George Throgmorton, a man who afterwards, with his brother Michael, made himself useful to Cromwell and played with both parties, but was then against the divorce and against all the measures which grew out of it. Throgmorton, according to his own account, had been admitted to an interview with the King and Cromwell. In 1537, after the Pilgrimage of Grace, while the ashes of the rebellion were still smouldering, after Michael Throgmorton had betrayed Cromwell's confidence and gone over to Reginald Pole, Sir George was reported to have used certain expressions to Sir Thomas Dyngley and to two other gentlemen, which he was called on by the Council to explain. The letter to the King in which he replied is still extant. He said that he had been sent for by the King after a speech on the Act of Appeals, "and that he saw his Grace's conscience was troubled about having married his brother's wife." He professed to have said to Dyngley that he had told the King that if he did marry Queen Anne his conscience would be more troubled at length, for it was thought he had meddled both with the mother and the sister; that his Grace said: "Never with the mother," and my Lord Privy Seal (Cromwell), standing by, said, "nor with the sister neither, so put that out of your mind." Mr. Brewer construes this into an admission of the King that Mary Boleyn had been his mistress, and omits, of course, by inadvertence, that Throgmorton, being asked why he had told this story to Dyngley, answered that "he spake it only out of vainglory, to show he was one that durst speak for the Commonwealth." Nothing is more common than for "vainglorious" men, when admitted to conversations with kings, to make the most of what they said themselves, and to report not very accurately what was said to them. Had the conversation been authentic, Throgmorton would naturally have appealed to Cromwell's recollection. But Mr. Brewer accepts the version of a confessed boaster as if it was a complete and trustworthy account of what had actually passed. He does not ask himself whether if the King or Cromwell had given their version it might not have borne another complexion. Henry was not a safe person to take liberties with. Is it likely that if one of his subjects, who was actively opposing him in Parliament, had taxed him with an enormous crime, he would have made a confession which Throgmorton had only to repeat in the House of Commons to ruin him and his cause? Mr. Brewer should have added also that the authority which he gave for the story was no better than Father Peto, afterwards Cardinal Peto, as bitter an enemy of the Reformation as Pole himself. Most serious of all, Mr. Brewer omits to mention that Throgmorton was submitted afterwards to a severe cross-examination before a Committee of Council, the effect of which, if he had spoken truly, could only be to establish the authenticity of a disgraceful charge.[28] The last evidence alleged is the confession made by Anne Boleyn, after her condemnation, of some mystery which had invalidated her marriage with the King and had been made the ground of an Act of Parliament. The confession was not published, and Catholic opinion concluded, and concludes still, that it must have been the Mary Boleyn intrigue. Catholic opinion does not pause to inquire whether Anne could have been said to confess an offence of the King and her sister. The cross-examination of Throgmorton turns the conjecture into an absurdity. When asked, in 1537, whom he ever heard say such a thing, he would have had but to appeal to the proceedings in Parliament in the year immediately preceding. Is it likely finally that if Throgmorton's examination proves what Mr. Brewer thinks it proves, a record of it would have been preserved among the official State Papers? If all the stories current about Henry VIII. were to be discussed with as much detail as I have allowed to this, the world would not contain the books which should be written. An Irish lawyer told me in my youth to believe nothing which I heard in that country which had not been sifted in a court of justice, and only half of that. Legend is as the air invulnerable, and blows aimed at it, if not "malicious mockery" are waste of effort. Charges of scandalous immorality are precious to controversialists, for if they are disproved ever so completely the stain adheres. CHAPTER III. Anxiety of the Pope to satisfy the King--Fears of the Emperor--Proposed alternatives--France and England declare war in the Pope's defence-- Campeggio to be sent to England--The King's account of the Pope's conduct--The Pope's distress and alarm--The secret decretal--Instructions to Campeggio. The story returns to Orvieto. The dispensation was promised on condition that it should not be immediately acted on.[29] Catherine having refused to acquiesce in a private arrangement, Wolsey again pressed the Pope for a commission to decide the cause in England, and to bind himself at the same time not to revoke it, but to confirm any judgment which he might himself give. "There were secret causes," he said, "which could not be committed to writing which made such a concession imperative: certain diseases in the Queen defying all remedy, for which, as for other causes, the King would never again live with her as his wife." The Pope, smarting from ill-treatment and grateful for the help of France and England, professed himself earnestly anxious to do what Henry desired. But he was still virtually a prisoner. He had been obliged by the General of the Observants, when in St. Angelo, to promise to do nothing "whereby the King's divorce might be judged in his own dominions." He pleaded for time. He promised a commission of some kind, but he said he was undone if action was taken upon it while the Germans and Spaniards remained in Italy. He saw evident ruin before him, he said, but he professed to be willing to run the hazard rather than that Wolsey should suspect him of ingratitude. He implored the Cardinal, _cum suspiriis et lacrymis_, not to precipitate him for ever, and precipitated he would be if, on receiving the commission, the Cardinal at once began the process.[30] A fortnight later Casalis described a long conversation with the Pope and Cardinals on the course to be pursued. Henry had desired that a second Legate should be sent from Rome to act with Wolsey. To consent to this would directly compromise the Papal Court. Clement had no objection to the going forward with the cause, but he did not wish to be himself responsible. He signed an imperfect commission not inconsistent with his promise to the General of the Observants. On this Wolsey might act or, if he preferred it, might proceed on his own Legatine authority. For himself, instead of engaging to confirm Wolsey's sentence, he said that no doctor could better resolve the point at issue than the King himself. If he was resolved, said the Pope, let him commit his cause to the Legate, marry again, follow up the trial, and then let a public application be made for a Legate to be sent from the Consistory. If the Queen was cited first, she would put in no answer, save to protest against the place and judges. The Imperialists would demand a prohibition, and then the King could not marry, or, if he did, the offspring would be illegitimate. They would also demand a commission for the cause to be heard at Rome, which the Pope would be unable to refuse. But the King being actually married again, they could not ask for a prohibition. They could only ask that the cause should be re-examined at Rome, when the Pope would give sentence and a judgment could be passed which would satisfy the whole world.[31] This was the Pope's own advice, but he did not wish it to be known that it had come from himself. Casalis might select the Legate to England after the first steps had been taken. Campeggio he thought the fittest, being already an English bishop.[32] At any rate, the Pope bade Casalis say he would do his best to satisfy the King, though he knew that the Emperor would never forgive him. It is not certain what would have followed had Henry acted on the Pope's suggestion. The judgment which Clement promised might have been in his favour. Clement evidently wished him to think that it would. But he might, after all, have found himself required to take Catherine back. Either alternative was possible. At any rate he did not mean, if he could help it, to have recourse to violent methods. Charles himself, though he intended to prevent, if he could, a legal decision against his aunt, had hinted at the possibility and even desirableness of a private arrangement, if Catherine would agree. Catherine, unfortunately, would agree to nothing, but stood resolutely upon her rights, and Charles was forced to stand by her. Henry was equally obstinate, and the Pope was between the rock and the whirlpool. The Pope had promised, however, and had promised with apparent sincerity. The Papal states remaining occupied by the Imperial troops, Henry carried out his own part of the engagement by joining France in a declaration of war against the Emperor. Toison d'or and Clarencieulx appeared before Charles at Burgos on the 22nd of January, Charles sitting on his throne to receive their defiance. Toison d'or said that the Emperor had opened Christendom to the Turks, had imprisoned the Pope, had allowed his armies to sack Rome and plunder churches and monasteries, had insulted the holy relics, slain or robbed princes of the Church, cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, outraged nunneries and convents, had encouraged Lutheran heretics in committing these atrocities, &c. For these reasons France declared open war with the Emperor. The English herald--he was accused afterwards of having exceeded his instructions--was almost as peremptory. Henry, in earlier times, had lent Charles large sums of money, which had not been repaid. Clarencieulx said that, unless the Pope was released and the debt settled, the King of England must make common cause with his brother of France. Six weeks' interval was allowed for the Emperor to consider his answer before hostilities on the side of England should commence. The Emperor replied with calmness and dignity. War with France was inevitable. As to England, he felt like Cicero, when doubting whether he should quarrel with Cæsar, that it was inconvenient to be in debt to an enemy. If England attacked him he said he would defend himself, but he declined to accept the defiance. Mendoza was not recalled from London. At the end of the six weeks the situation was prolonged by successive truces till the peace of Cambray. But Henry had kept his word to the Pope. England appeared by the side of France in the lists as the armed champion of the Papacy, and the Pope was expected to fulfil his promises without disguise or subterfuge. Clement's method of proceeding with the divorce was rejected. The dispensation and commission which had been amended with a view to it were rejected also as worthless. Dr. Fox and Stephen Gardiner were despatched to Orvieto with fuller powers and with a message peremptory and even menacing. They were again to impress on the Pope the danger of a disputed succession. They were to hint that, if relief was refused in deference to the Emperor, England might decline from obedience to the Holy See. The Pope must, therefore, pass the commission and the dispensation in the form in which it had been sent from England. If he objected that it was unusual, they were to announce that the cause was of great moment. The King would not be defrauded of his expectation through fear of the Emperor. If he could not obtain justice from the Pope, he would be compelled to seek it elsewhere.[33] The language of these instructions shows that the King and Wolsey understood the Proteus that they were dealing with, and the necessity of binding his hands if he was not to slip from them. It was not now the fountain of justice, the august head of Christendom, that they were addressing, but a shifty old man, clad by circumstances with the robe of authority, but whose will was the will of the power which happened to be strongest in Italy. It was not tolerable that the Emperor should dictate on a question which touched the vital interests of an independent kingdom. Spanish diplomatists had afterwards to excuse and explain away Clement's concessions on the ground that they were signed when he was angry at his imprisonment, had been extorted by threats, and were therefore of no validity. He struggled hard to avoid committing himself. The unwelcome documents were recast into various forms. The dispensation was not signed after all, but in the place of it other briefs were signed of even graver importance. The Pope yielded to the demand to send a second Legate to try the cause with Wolsey in England, where it was assumed as a matter of course that judgment would be given for the King. The Legate chosen was Campeggio, who was himself, as was said, an English bishop. The Pope also did express in writing his own opinion on the cause as favourable to the King's plea. What passed at Orvieto was thus afterwards compendiously related by Henry in a published statement of his case. "On his first scruple the King sent to the Bishop of Rome, as Christ's Vicar, who had the keys of knowledge, to dissolve his doubts. The said Bishop refused to take any knowledge of it and desired the King to apply for a commission to be sent into the realm, authorised to determine the cause, thus pretending that it might no wise be entreated at Rome, but only within the King's own realm. He delegated his whole powers to Campeggio and Wolsey, giving them also a special commission in form of a decretal, wherein he declared the King's marriage null and empowered him to marry again. In the open commission also he gave them full authority to give sentence for the King. Secretly he gave them instructions to burn the commission decretal and not proceed upon it; (but) at the time of sending the commission he also sent the King a brief, written in his own hand, admitting the justice of his cause and promising _sanctissime sub verbo Pontificis_ that he would never advocate it to Rome."[34] Engagements which he intended to keep or break according to the turns of the war between Francis and Charles did not press very heavily perhaps on Clement's conscience, but they were not extorted from him without many agonies. "He has granted the commission," Casalis wrote. "He is not unwilling to please the King and Wolsey, but fears the Spaniards more than ever he did. The Friar-General has forbidden him in the Emperor's name to grant the King's request. He fears for his life from the Imperialists if the Emperor knows of it. Before he would grant the brief he said, weeping, that it would be his utter ruin. The Venetians and Florentines desired his destruction. His sole hope of life was from the Emperor. He asked me to swear whether the King would desert him or not. Satisfied on this point, he granted the brief, saying that he placed himself in the King's arms, as he would be drawn into perpetual war with the Emperor. Wolsey might dispose of him and the Papacy as if he were Pope himself."[35] The Emperor had insisted, at Catherine's desire, that the cause should not be heard in England. The Pope had agreed that it should be heard in England. Consent had been wrung from him, but his consent had been given, and Campeggio was to go and make the best of it. His open commission was as ample as words could make it. He and Wolsey were to hear the cause and decide it. The secret "decretal" which he had wept over while he signed it declared, before the cause was heard, the sentence which was to be given, and he had pledged his solemn word not to revoke the hearing to Rome. All that Clement could do was to instruct the Legate before he started to waste time on his way, and, on his arrival in England, to use his skill to "accommodate matters," and to persuade the Queen--if he found her persuadeable--to save him from his embarrassments by taking the veil. This was a course which Charles himself in his private mind would have recommended, but was too honourable to advise it. The fatal decretal was to be seen only by a very few persons, and then, as Henry said, Campeggio was to burn it. He was instructed also to pass no sentence without first referring back to Rome, and, if driven to extremity, was to find an excuse for postponing a decision; very natural conduct on the part of a weak, frightened mortal--conduct not unlike that of his predecessor, Alexander III., in the quarrel between Becket and Henry II.--but in both cases purely human, not such as might have been looked for in a divinely guided Vicar of Christ. CHAPTER IV. Anne Boleyn--Letters to her from the King--The Convent at Wilton--The Divorce--The Pope's promises--Arrival of Campeggio in England--Reception at the Bridewell Palace--Proposal to Catherine to take the veil--Her refusal--Uncertainty of the succession--A singular expedient--Alarms of Wolsey--The true issue--Speech of the King in the City--Threats of the Emperor--Defects in the Bull of Pope Julius--Alleged discovery of a brief supplying them--Distress of Clement. The marriage with Anne Boleyn was now a fixed idea in Henry's mind. He had become passionately attached to her, though not perhaps she to him. The evidence of his feeling remains in a series of letters to her--how preserved for public inspection no one knows. Some of them were said to have been stolen by Campeggio. Perhaps they were sold to him; at any rate, they survive. A critic in the "Edinburgh Review" described them as such as "might have been written by a pot-boy to his girl." The pot-boy must have been a singular specimen of his kind. One, at any rate, remains to show that, though Henry was in love, he did not allow his love to blind him to his duty as a prince. The lady, though obliged to wait for the full gratification of her ambition, had been using her influence to advance her friends, while Wolsey brought upon himself the rebuke of his master by insufficient care in the distribution of Church patronage. The correspondence throws an unexpected light upon the King's character. The Abbess of Wilton had died. The situation was a pleasant one. Among the sisters who aspired to the vacant office was a certain Eleanor Carey, a near connection of Anne, and a favourite with her. The appointment rested virtually with the Crown. The Lady Anne spoke to the King. The King deputed Wolsey to inquire into the fitness of the various candidates, with a favourable recommendation of Eleanor Carey's claims. The inquiry was made, and the result gives us a glimpse into the habits of the devout recluses in these sacred institutions.[36] "As for the matter of Wilton," wrote Henry to Anne, "my Lord Cardinal here had the nuns before him, and examined them in the presence of Master Bell, who assures me that she whom we would have had Abbess has confessed herself to have had two children by two different priests, and has since been kept not long ago by a servant of Lord Broke that was. Wherefore I would not for all the gold in the world clog your conscience nor mine, to make her ruler of a house which is of so ungodly demeanour, nor I trust you would not that, neither for brother nor sister,[37] I should so distain mine honour or conscience. And as touching the Prioress [Isabella Jordan] or Dame Eleanor's elder sister, though there is not any evident cause proved against them, and the Prioress is so old that of many years she could not be as she was named, yet notwithstanding, to do you pleasure I have done that neither of them shall have it, but that some other good and well-disposed woman shall have it, whereby the house shall be better reformed, whereof I assure you it hath much need, and God much the better served." This letter is followed by another to the Cardinal. Wolsey, in whose hands the King had left the matter, in a second letter which is lost, instead of looking out for the "good and well-disposed woman," though Isabella Jordan's reputation was doubtful, yet chose to appoint her, and the King's observations upon this action of his are worth attending to, as addressed by such a person as Henry is supposed to have been to a Cardinal Archbishop and Legate of the Holy See. Many of the letters signed by the King were the composition of his ministers and secretaries. This to Wolsey was his own. "The great affection and love I bear you, causeth me, using the doctrine of my Master, _quem diligo castigo_, thus plainly as now ensueth to break to you my mind, ensuring you that neither sinister report, affection to my own pleasure, interest, nor mediation of any other body beareth part in this case, wherefore whatsoever I do say, I pray you think it spoken of no displeasure, but of him that would you as much good both of body and soul as you would yourself. "Methinks it is not the right train of a trusty loving friend and servant when the matter is put by the master's consent into his arbitre and judgement--especially in a matter wherein his master hath both royalty and interest, to elect and choose a person who was by him defended. And yet another thing which displeaseth me more. That is to cloke your offence made by ignorance of my pleasure, saying that you expressly knew not my determinate mind in that behalf. Alas, my lord, what can be more evident or plainer than these words, specially to a wise man--'His Grace careth not who, but referreth it all to you, so that none of those who either be or have been spotted with incontinence, like as by report the Prioress hath been in her youth, have it;' and also in another place in the letter, 'And therefore his Highness thinketh her not meet for that purpose;' thirdly, in another place in the same letter by these words, 'And though his Grace speaketh not of it so openly, yet meseemeth his pleasure is that in no wise the Prioress have it, nor yet Dame Eleanor's eldest sister, for many considerations the which your Grace can and will best consider.' "Ah, my Lord, it is a double offence both to do ill and to colour it too; but with men that have wit it cannot be accepted so. Wherefore, good my Lord, use no more that way with me, for there is no man living that more hateth it. These things having been thus committed, either I must have reserved them _in pectore_, whereby more displeasure might happen to breed, or else thus soundly and plainly to declare them to you, because I do think that _cum amico et familiari sincere semper est agendum_, and especially the master to his best beloved servant and friend, for in so doing the one shall be more circumspect in his doing, the other shall declare and show the lothness that is in him to have any occasion to be displeased with him. "And as touching the redress of Religion [convent discipline], if it be observed and continued, undoubtedly it is a gracious act. Notwithstanding, if all reports be true, _ab imbecillis imbecilla expectantur_. How be it, Mr. Bell hath informed me that the Prioress's age, personage and manner, _præ se fert gravitatem_. I pray God it be so indeed, seeing she is preferred to that room. I understand furthermore, which is greatly to my comfort, that you have ordered yourself to Godward as religiously and virtuously as any Prelate or father of Christ's Church can do, where in so doing and persevering there can be nothing more acceptable to God, more honour to yourself, nor more desired of your friends, among the which I reckon myself not the least.... "I pray you, my Lord, think it not that it is upon any displeasure that I write this unto you. For surely it is for my discharge before God, being in the room that I am in, and secondly for the great zeal I bear unto you, not undeserved in your behalf. Wherefore I pray you take it so; and I assure you, your fault acknowledged, there shall remain in me no spark of displeasure, trusting hereafter you shall recompense that with a thing much more acceptable to me. And thus fare you well; advertising you that, thanked be God, I and all my folk be, and have been since we came to Ampthill, which was on Saturday last, July 11, in marvellous good health and clearness of air. "Written with the hand of him that is, and shall be your loving Sovereign Lord and friend,--HENRY R."[38] Campeggio meanwhile was loitering on his way as he had been directed, pretending illness, pretending difficulties of the road. In sending him at all the Pope had broken his promise to Charles. He engaged, however, that no sentence should be given which had not been submitted first to Charles's approval. The Emperor, anxious to avoid a complete rupture with England, let the Legate go forward, but he directed Mendoza to inform Wolsey that he must defend his aunt's honour; her cause was his and he would hold it as such.[39] Wolsey, though afraid of the consequence of opposing the divorce to himself and the Church, yet at heart had ceased to desire it. Mendoza reported that English opinion was still unfavourable, and that he did not believe that the commission would have any result. The Pope would interpose delays. Wolsey would allow and recognise them. Both Legates would agree privately to keep the matter in suspense. The English Cardinal appeared to be against the Queen, but every one knew that secretly he was now on her side.[40] Catherine only was seriously frightened. She had doubtless been informed of the secret decretal by which the Pope appeared to have prejudged her cause. She supposed that the Pope meant it, and did not understand how lightly such engagements sate upon him. The same Clement, when Benvenuto Cellini reproached him for breaking his word, replied, smiling, that the Pope had power to bind and to loose. Catherine came before long to know him better and to understand the bearings of this singular privilege; but as yet she thought that words meant what they seemed to say. When she heard that Campeggio was actually coming, she wrote passionately to the Emperor, flinging herself upon him for protection. Charles calmed her alarm. She was not, he said, to be condemned without a hearing. The Pope had assured him that the Legates should determine nothing to her detriment. The case should be decided at Rome, as she had desired. Campeggio's orders were to advise that it should be dropped. Apart from his present infatuation, the King was a good Christian and would act as one. If he persisted, she might rely on the Pope's protection. She must consent to nothing which would imply the dissolution of her marriage. If the worst came, the King would be made conscious of his duties.[41] In the middle of October the Legate arrived. He had been ill in earnest from gout and was still suffering. He had to rest two days in Calais before he could face the Channel. The passage was wild. A deputation of Peers and Bishops waited to receive him at Dover. Respectful demonstrations had been prepared at the towns through which he was to pass, and a state ceremonial was to accompany his entrance into London. But he was, or pretended to be, too sick to allow himself to be seen. He was eight days on the road from the coast, and on reaching his destination he was carried privately in a state barge to the house provided for his residence. Wolsey called the next morning. The King was absent, but returned two days later to the Bridewell palace. There Campeggio waited on him, accompanied by Wolsey. The weather continued to frown. "I wish," wrote Gerardo Molza to the Marchioness of Mantua, "that you could have seen the two Cardinals abreast, one on his mule, the other carried in his chair, the rain falling fast so that we were all drenched." The King, simple man, believed that the documents which he held secured him. The Pope in sending the Legate had acted in the teeth of the Emperor's prohibition, and no one guessed how the affair had been soothed down. The farce was well played, and the language used was what Henry expected. Messer Floriano, one of Campeggio's suit, made a grand oration, setting out the storming of Rome, the perils of the Church, and the misery of Italy, with moving eloquence. The crowd was so dense in the hall of audience that some of the Italians lost their shoes, and had to step back barefoot to their lodgings through the wet streets. The Legate was exhausted by the exertion, but he was not allowed to rest, and the serious part of the business began at once behind the scenes. He had hoped, as the Emperor said, that the case might be dropped. He found Henry immoveable. "An angel from heaven," he wrote on the 17th of October,[42] "would not be able to persuade the King that his marriage was not invalid. The matter had come to such a pass that it could no longer be borne with. The Cardinal of York and the whole kingdom insisted that the question must be settled in some way." One road out of the difficulty alone presented itself. The Emperor had insisted that the marriage should not be dissolved by Catherine's consent, objecting reasonably that a judgment invalidating it would shake other royal marriages besides hers. But no such judgment would be necessary if Catherine could be induced to enter "lax religion," to take vows of chastity which, at her age and under her conditions of health, would be a mere form. The Pope could then allow Henry to take another wife without offence to any one. The legitimacy of the Princess would not be touched, and the King undertook that the succession should be settled upon her if he had no male heir. The Queen in consenting would lose nothing, for the King had for two years lived apart from her, and would never return to cohabitation. The Emperor would be delivered from an obligation infinitely inconvenient to him, and his own honour and the honour of Spain would be equally untouched. These arguments were laid before the Queen by both the Legates, and urged with all their eloquence. In the interests of the realm, in the interests of Europe, in the interests of the Church, in her own and her daughter's interest as well, it would have been wiser if she had complied. Perhaps she would have complied had the King's plea been confined, as at first, to the political exigencies of the succession. But the open and premature choice of the lady who was to take her place was an indignity not to be borne. She had the pride of her race. Her obstinacy was a match for her husband's. She was shaken for a moment by the impassioned entreaties of Campeggio, and she did not at once absolutely refuse. The Legate postponed the opening of his court. He referred to Rome for further instructions, complaining of the responsibility which was thrown upon him. Being on the spot he was able to measure the danger of disappointing the King after the secret commission, the secret decretal, and the Pope's private letter telling Henry that he was right. Campeggio wrote to Salviati, after his first interview with Catherine, that he did not yet despair. Something might be done if the Emperor would advise her to comply. He asked Fisher to help him, and Fisher seemed not wholly unwilling; but, after a few days' reflection, Catherine told him that before she would consent she would be torn limb from limb; she would have an authoritative sentence from the Pope, and would accept nothing else; nothing should make her alter her opinion, and if after death she could return to life, she would die over again rather than change it.[43] Wolsey was in equal anxiety. He had set the stone rolling, but he could not stop it. If Clement failed the King now, after all that he had promised, he might not only bring ruin on Wolsey himself, but might bring on the overthrow of the temporal power of the Church of England. Catherine was personally popular; but in the middle classes of the laity, among the peers and gentlemen of England, the exactions of the Church courts, the Pope's agents and collectors, the despotic tyranny of the Bishops, had created a resentment the extent of which none knew better than he. The entire gigantic system of clerical dominion, of which Wolsey was himself the pillar and representative, was tottering to its fall. If the King was driven to bay, the favour of a good-natured people for a suffering woman would be a poor shelter either for the Church or for him. Campeggio turned to Wolsey for advice on Catherine's final refusal. The Pope, he said, had hoped that Wolsey would advise the King to yield. Wolsey had advised. He told Cavendish that he had gone on his knees to the King, but he could only say to Campeggio that "the King--fortified and justified by reasons, writings, and counsels of many learned men who feared God--would never yield." If he was to find that the Pope had been playing with him, and the succession was to be left undetermined, "the Church would be ruined and the realm would be in infinite peril." How great, how real, was the dread of a disputed succession, appears from an extraordinary expedient which had suggested itself to Campeggio himself, and which he declares that some perplexed politicians had seriously contemplated. "They have thought," he wrote on the 28th of October, "of marrying the Princess Mary to the King's natural son [the Duke of Richmond] if it could be done by dispensation from His Holiness." The Legate said that at first he had himself thought of this as a means of establishing the succession; but he did not believe it would satisfy the King's desire.[44] If anything could be more astonishing than a proposal for the marriage of a brother and sister, it was the reception which the suggestion met with at Rome. The Pope's secretary replied that "with regard to the dispensation for marrying the son to the daughter of the King, if on the succession being so established the King would abandon the divorce, the Pope would be much more inclined to grant it."[45] Clement's estimate of the extent of the dispensing power was large. But the situation was desperate. He had entangled himself in the meshes. He had promised what he had no intention of performing. He was finding that he had been trifling with a lion, and that the lion was beginning to rouse himself. Again and again Wolsey urged the dangers upon him. He wrote on the 1st of November to Casalis that "the King's honour was touched, having been so great a benefactor to the Holy See. The Pope would alienate all faith and devotion to the Apostolic See. The sparks of opposition which had been extinguished with such care and vigilance would blaze out to the utmost anger of all, both in England and elsewhere."[46] Clement and his Cardinals heard, but imperfectly believed. "He tells us," wrote Sanga, "that if the divorce is not granted the authority of the Apostolic See in England will be annihilated; he is eager to save it because his own greatness is bound up with ours." The Curia was incredulous, and thought that Wolsey was only alarmed for himself. Wolsey, however, was right. Although opinions might have varied on the merits of the King's request, people were beginning to ask what value as a supreme judge a pope could have, who could not decide on a point of canon law. The excitement was growing. Certain knowledge of what was going on was confined to the few who had access to the secret correspondence, and they knew only what was meant for their own eyes. All parties, English and Imperial alike, distrusted the Pope. He had impartially lied to both, and could be depended on by neither, except so far as they could influence his fears. Catherine was still the favourite with the London citizens. She had been seen accidentally in a gallery of the Palace, and had been enthusiastically cheered. The King found it necessary to explain himself. On the 8th of November he summoned the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, the Privy Council, and a body of Peers, and laid the situation before them from his own point of view. He spoke of his long friendship with the Emperor, and of his hope that it would not be broken, and again of his alliance with France, and of his desire to be at peace with all the world. "He had wished," he said, "to attach France more closely to him by marrying his daughter to a French prince, and the French Ambassador, in considering the proposal, had raised the question of her legitimacy. His own mind had long misgiven him on the lawfulness of his marriage. M. de Tarbes' words had added to his uneasiness. The succession to the crown was uncertain; he had consulted his bishops and lawyers, and they had assured him that he had been living in mortal sin.... He meant only to do what was right, and he warned his subjects to be careful of forming hasty judgments on their Prince's actions." Apart from the present question the King was extremely popular, and reports arriving from Spain touched the national pride. There was a talk of calling Parliament. Mendoza and Catherine again urged Charles to speak plainly. The Pope must inhibit Parliament from interfering. The Nuncio in London would present the order, and Parliament, they thought, would submit.[47] They were mistaking the national temper. Mendoza's letters had persuaded the Spanish Council that the whole of England was in opposition to the King. The Spanish Chancellor had said publicly that if the cause was proceeded with there would be war, and "the King would be dethroned by his own subjects." The words were reported to Wolsey, and were confirmed by an English agent, Sylvester Darius, who had been sent to Valladolid on business connected with the truce.[48] Darius had spoken to the Chancellor on the probability of England taking active part with France. "Why do you talk of the King of England?" the Chancellor had answered; "if we wished, we could expel him from his kingdom in three months. What force had the King? his own subjects would expel him. He knew how matters were."[49] It was one thing for a free people to hold independent opinions on the arrangements of their own royal family. It was another to be threatened with civil war at the instigation of a foreign sovereign. Wolsey quoted the dangerous language at a public meeting in London; and a voice answered, "The Emperor has lost the hearts of a hundred thousand Englishmen."[50] A fresh firebrand was thrown into the flames immediately after. The national pride was touched on a side where it was already sensitive from interest. There were 15,000 Flemish artisans in London. English workmen had been jealous of their skill, and had long looked askance at them. The cry rose that they had an army of traitors in their midst who must be instantly expelled. The Flemings' houses were searched for arms, and watched by a guard, and the working city population, traders, shopkeepers, mechanics, apprentices, came over to the King's side, and remained there. Meantime the cause itself hung fire. A new feature had been introduced to enable Campeggio to decline to proceed and the Pope to withdraw decently from his promises. The original Bull of Pope Julius permitting the marriage had been found to contain irregularities of form which were supposed fatal to it. The validity of the objection was not denied, but was met by the production of a brief alleged to have been found in Spain, and bearing the same date with the Bull, which exactly met that objection. No trace of such a brief could be found in the Vatican Register. It had informalities of its own, and its genuineness was justly suspected, but it answered the purpose of a new circumstance. A copy only was sent to England, which was shown by Catherine in triumph to Henry, but the original was detained. It would be sent to Rome, but not to London; without it Campeggio could pretend inability to move, and meanwhile he could refuse to proceed on his commission. Subterfuges which answer for the moment revenge themselves in the end. Having been once raised, it was absolutely necessary that a question immediately affecting the succession should be settled in some way, and many of the peers who had been hitherto cool began to back the King's demands. An address was drawn up, having among others the Duke of Norfolk's signature, telling the Pope that the divorce must be conceded, and complaints were sent through Casalis against Campeggio's dilatoriness. The King, he was to say, would not submit to be deluded. Casalis delivered his message, and describes the effect which it produced. "The Pope," he wrote, "very angry, laid his hand on my arm and forbade me to proceed, saying there was but too good ground for complaint, and he was deluded by his own councillors. He had granted the decretal only to be shown to the King, and then burnt. Wolsey now wished to divulge it. He saw what would follow, and would gladly recall what had been done, even with the loss of one of his fingers." Casalis replied that Wolsey wished only to show it to a few persons whose secrecy might be depended on. Was it not demanded for that purpose? Why had the Pope changed his mind? The Pope, only the more excited, said he saw the Bull would be the ruin of him, and he would make no more concessions. Casalis prayed him to consider. Waving his arms violently, Clement said, "I do consider. I consider the ruin which is hanging over me. I repent what I have done. If heresies arise, is it my fault? I will not violate my conscience. Let them, if they like, send the Legate back, because he will not proceed. They can do as they please, provided they do not make me responsible." Did the Pope mean, then, Casalis asked, that the commission should not proceed? The Pope could not say as much as that; he had told Campeggio, he said, to dissuade the King and persuade the Queen. "What harm could there be," Casalis inquired, "in showing the decretal, under oath, to a few of the Privy Council?" The Pope said the decretal ought to have been burnt, and refused to discuss the matter further.[51] CHAPTER V. Demands of the Imperial Agent at Rome--The alleged Brief--Illness of the Pope--Aspirations of Wolsey--The Pope recovers--Imperial menaces--Clement between the anvil and the hammer--Appeal of Henry to Francis--The trial of the cause to proceed--Instructions to Campeggio--Opinion at Rome--Recall of Mendoza--Final interview between Mendoza and the King. Human pity is due to the unfortunate Pope--Vicar of Christ, supreme judge in Europe, whose decrees were the inspirations of the Holy Ghost--spinning like a whipped top under the alternate lashes of the King of England and the Emperor. He had hoped that his decretal would not be known. It could not be concealed from Mendoza, who discovered, putting the worst interpretation upon it, "that the Pope and King had been endeavouring to intimidate the Queen into retiring into a convent." Finding that he, too, could put no faith in Clement, the Emperor's representative at Rome now forced a new promise from him. The proceedings in England were not to be opened without a fresh direct order from the Pope, and this the Pope was to be forbidden to give. If the King was obstinate and the Queen demanded it, Campeggio was to leave England, and, notwithstanding his engagements to the contrary, Clement was to advocate the cause to Rome. The new brief was sufficient plea. Without it the Legates could come to no conclusion, "the whole right of the Queen being based upon its contents." The Emperor had it in his hands, and by refusing to allow it to be examined, except at Rome, might prevent them from moving. There was little doubt that the brief had been forged for the occasion. The Pope having sent a commission to England, the King considered that he had a right to the production of documents essential to the case. He required Catherine to write to Charles to ask for it. Catherine did as he desired, and the messenger who carried her letter to the Spanish Court was sworn to carry no private or separate missive from her. Mendoza dared not write by the same hand himself, lest his despatches should be examined. He made the messenger, therefore, learn a few words by heart, telling the Emperor that the Queen's letter was not to be attended to. "We thought," he said, "that the man's oath was thus saved."[52] Thus time drifted on. The new year came, and no progress had been made, though Campeggio had been three months in England. The Pope, more helpless than dishonest, continued to assure the King that he would do all that by law could be required of him, and as much as he could do _ex plenitudine potestatis_. No peril should prevent him. "If the King thought his resigning the Papacy would conduce to his purpose, he could be content, for the love he bore his Highness, rather than fail to do the same." If the Pope was so well disposed, the King could not see where the difficulty lay. The Queen had refused his entreaty that she should enter religion. Why should not the Pope, then, allow the decretal to be put in execution? But Cardinal Salviati informed Casalis that a sentence given in virtue of the decretal would have no effect, but would only cause the Pope's deposition.[53] Visibly and unpleasantly it became now apparent to Henry to what issues the struggle was tending. He had not expected it. Wolsey had told him that the Pope would yield; and the Pope had promised what was asked; but his promises were turning to vapour. Wolsey had said that the Emperor could not afford to quarrel with him. The King found that war with the Emperor in earnest was likely enough unless he himself drew back, and draw back he would not. The poor Pope was as anxious as Henry. He had spoken of resigning. He was near being spared the trouble. Harassed beyond his strength, he fell ill, and was expected to die; and before Wolsey there was now apparently the strange alternative either of utter disgrace or of himself ascending the chair of St. Peter as Clement's successor. His election, perhaps, was really among the chances of the situation. The Cardinals had not forgiven the sack of Rome. A French or English candidate had a fair prospect of success, and Wolsey could command the French interest. He had boundless money, and money in the Sacred College was only not omnipotent. He undertook, if he was chosen, to resign his enormous English preferments and reside at Rome, and the vacancy of his three bishoprics and his abbey would pour a cataract of gold into the Cardinals' purses. The Bulls for English bishoprics had to be paid for on a scale which startled Wolsey himself. Already archbishop of York, bishop of Winchester, and abbot of St. Albans, he had just been presented to Durham. He had paid 8,000 ducats to "expedite" his Bulls for Winchester. The Cardinals demanded 13,000 ducats for Durham. The ducat was worth five shillings, and five shillings in 1528 were worth fifty shillings of modern money. At such a rate were English preferments bled to support the College of Cardinals; and if all these great benefices were again vacated there would be a fine harvest to be gathered. For a week or two the splendid vision suspended even the agitation over the divorce; but the Pope revived, and the Legates and he had to resume their ungrateful burden. It was still really uncertain what Clement would do. Weak, impulsive men often leave their course to fate or chance to decide for them. Casalis, when he was able to attend to business again, told him in Wolsey's name that he must take warning from his late danger. "By the wilfully suffering a thing of such high importance to be unreformed to the doing whereof Almighty God worked so openly he would incur God's displeasure and peril his soul." The Imperialists were as anxious as Wolsey, and equally distrustful. In the Sacred College English gold was an influence not to be despised, and Henry had more to give than Charles. Micer Mai, the Imperial agent at Rome, found, as the spring came on, that the Italian Cardinals were growing cold. Salviati insisted to him that Catherine must go into a convent. Casalis denounced the new brief as a forgery, and the Sacred College seemed to be of the same opinion. The fiery Mai complained in the Pope's presence of the scant courtesy which the Ministers of the Emperor were meeting with, while the insolent and overbearing were regaled like the Prodigal Son.[54] The Pope assured him that, come what might, he would never authorise the divorce; but Mai only partially believed him. At trying moments Mai was even inclining to take the same view of the Papacy as Lope de Soria. "At other times," he said, "many things could be got out of the Pope by sheer intimidation; but now that could not be tried, for he would fall into despair, and the Imperialists would lose him altogether. They owed him something for what he had done for them before, otherwise he would be of opinion that it would be for God's service to reduce them to their spiritual powers."[55] Occasionally Mai's temper broke through, and he used language worth observing. One of the Cardinals had spoken slightingly of the Emperor. "I did not call on his Holiness," he wrote to Charles, "but sent him a message, adding that, if ever it came to my notice that the same Cardinal, or any member of the College, had dared to speak in such an indecent manner of the Emperor, I took my most solemn oath that I would have him beheaded or burnt alive within his own apartment. I had this time refrained out of respect for his Holiness; but should the insult be repeated I would not hesitate. They might do as they would with their Bulls and other rogueries--grant or refuse them as they liked; but they were not to speak evil of princes, or make themselves judges in the affairs of kingdoms."[56] This remarkable message was conveyed to the Pope, who seemed rather pleased than otherwise. Mai, however, observed that the revolt of the Lutherans was not to be wondered at, and in what they said of Rome he considered that they were entirely right, except on points of faith.[57] Cardinals had been roughly handled in the sack of the Holy City at but a year's distance. The possibility was extremely real. The Imperial Minister, it appeared, could still command the services of the Spanish garrisons in the Papal territories if severity was needed, and the members of the Sacred College had good reason to be uneasy; but King Henry might reasonably object to the trial of his cause in a country where the assessors of the supreme judge were liable to summary execution if they were insubordinate. That Charles could allow his representative to write in such terms to him proves that he and Mai, and Henry himself, were in tolerable agreement on Church questions. The Pope knew it; one of his chief fears was that the Emperor, France, England, and the German Princes, might come to an understanding to his own disadvantage. Perhaps it might have been so had not the divorce kept Henry and Charles apart. Campeggio wrote to Sanga on the 3rd of April that certain advances had been made by the Lutherans to Henry, in which they promised to relinquish all heresies on articles of faith, and to believe according to Divine law if he and the King of France would reduce the ecclesiastical state to the condition of the Primitive Church, taking from it all its temporalities. He had told the King this was the Devil dressed in angel's clothing, a mere design against the property of the Church; and that it had been ruled by councils and theologians that it was right for the Church to hold temporal property. The King said those rules had been made by Churchmen themselves, and now the laity must interfere. He said also that Churchmen were said to be leading wicked lives, especially about the Court of Rome.[58] Growled at on both sides, in terror for himself, in terror for the Church, the Pope drifted on, hoping for some accident to save him which never came, and wishing perhaps that his illness had made an end of him. The Emperor complained of Campeggio as partial to the King because he held an English bishopric. "If the Pope leaves the succession undetermined," insisted Wolsey, on the other side, "no Prince would tolerate such an injury." "Nothing was done," wrote the Pope's secretary to Campeggio, "and nothing would be done. The Pope was in great trouble between the English and Imperial Ambassadors. He wished to please the King, but the King and Cardinal must not expect him to move till they had forced the Venetians to restore the Papal territories." Stephen Gardiner, who knew Clement well and watched him from day to day, said: "He was a man who never resolved anything unless compelled by some violent affection. He was in great perplexity, and seemed willing to gratify the King if he could, but when it came to the point did nothing. He would be glad if the King's cause could be determined in England by the Legates; and if the Emperor made any suit against what should be done there, they would serve him as they now served the King, and put off the time." So matters would go on, "unless Campeggio would frankly promise to give sentence in the King's favour; otherwise such delays would be found as the counterfeit Brief had caused."[59] Sir Francis Bryan, who was also at the Papal court, wrote to the King that the Pope would do nothing for him, and whoever had told the King that he would, had not done him the best service. "He was very sorry to write thus, but the King must not be fed with their flattering words."[60] To wait longer on the Pope's action was now seen in England to be useless. The Pope dared not offend the Emperor further, and the Emperor had interposed to prohibit future action. Clement had himself several times suggested that the best way was to decide the case first in England in the Legate's court, and leave Catherine to appeal; he had promised Charles that no judgment should be given in England by the Legates; but he had worn so double a face that no one could say which truly belonged to him. Gardiner and Bryan were recalled. The King, finding the Pope's ingratitude, "resolved to dissemble with him, and proceed on the commission granted to Wolsey and Campeggio."[61] The Cardinal of York encouraged his brother Legate by assuring him that if the marriage was now dissolved means would be found to satisfy the Emperor. Catherine would be left with her state undiminished, would have anything that she desired "except the person of the King." The Emperor's natural daughter might be married to the Duke of Richmond, and all would be well.[62] So Wolsey wrote, but his mind was less easy than he pretended. Unless Henry was supported actively by the French, he knew that the Pope would fail him in the end; and Francis had been disappointed in the hope that Henry would stand actively by him in the war. Without effectual help from that quarter, Wolsey saw that he was himself undone. The French Ambassador represented to his Court that Wolsey was sincerely attached to the French alliance, that the King had only been induced to enterprise the affair by the assurance which the Cardinal had always given that he had nothing to fear from the Emperor; Wolsey had advanced the divorce as a "_means to break off for ever the alliance with the Emperor_"; and Francis, by now declaring himself, would confer a very great favour on the King, and would oblige Wolsey as much as if he had made him pope.[63] His master was not only now concerned for the discharge of his conscience and his desire to have issue, but the very safety and independence of England was at stake. He could not have it said that he left the succession to the throne uncleared for the threats of his enemy.[64] The Duke of Suffolk was despatched to Paris to bring Francis to the point. Francis professed the warmest good-will to his brother of England. He undertook to advise the Pope. He assured Suffolk that if the Emperor attempted force Henry would find him at his side; but further he would not pledge himself. The time was past for a Wolsey patriarchate, and Francis, curiously enough, expressed doubts whether Wolsey was not after all betraying Henry. "There are some," he said, "which the King my brother doth trust in that matter that would it should never take effect. Campeggio told me he did not think the divorce would be brought about, but should be dissembled well enough. When the Cardinal of England was with me, as far as I could perceive, he desired the divorce might take place, for he loved not the Queen; but I advise my brother not to trust any man too much, and to look to his own matters. The Cardinal has great intelligence with the Pope, and Campeggio and they are not inclined to it."[65] Things could not go on thus for ever. There would have been an excuse for Clement, if with a consciousness of his high office he had refused to anticipate a judgment till the case had been heard and considered. But from the first the right or wrong of the cause itself had been disregarded as of no moment. Nothing had been thought of but the alternate dangers to be anticipated from the King or the Emperor. Had the French driven the Imperialists out of Italy, the divorce would have been granted without further question. The supreme tribunal in Christendom was transparently influenced by no motive save interest or fear. Clement, in fact, had anticipated judgment, though he dared not avow it. He had appointed a commission, and by the secret decretal had ruled what the decision was to be. The decretal could not be produced, but, with or without it, the King insisted that the court should sit. Campeggio had been sent to try the cause, and try it he should. Notice was given that the suit was to be heard at the end of June. Wolsey perhaps had chosen a date not far from the close of term, that the vacation might suspend the process, and give time for further delay. Since a trial of some kind could not be avoided, final instructions were sent from Rome to Campeggio. "If," wrote Sanga to him, "the Pope was not certain that he remembered the injunctions which he gave him by word of mouth, and which had been written to him many times, he would be very anxious. His Holiness had always desired that the cause should be protracted in order to find some means by which he could satisfy the King without proceeding to sentence. The citation of the cause to Rome, which he had so often insisted on, had been deferred, not because it was doubted whether the matter could be treated with less scandal at Rome than there, but because His Holiness had ever shrunk from a step which would offend the King. But, since Campeggio had not been able to prevent the commencement of the proceedings, His Holiness warned him that the process must be slow, and that no sentence must in any manner be pronounced. He would not lack a thousand means and pretexts, if on no other point, at least upon the brief which had been produced."[66] According to Casalis the view taken of the general situation at Rome was this. "The Pope would not declare openly for the Emperor till he saw how matters went. He thought the Emperor would come to Italy, and if there was a war would be victorious, so that it would be for His Holiness's advantage to obtain his friendship beforehand. If peace was made the Emperor would dictate terms, and more was to be hoped from his help than from the French King. The Emperor was the enemy of the Allies, and sought to recover the honour which he lost by the sack of Rome by making himself protector of the Pope."[67] Wolsey's dream was over, and with it the dreams of Lope de Soria and Micer Mai. The fine project to unite France and England in defence of the Papacy was proving baseless as the sand on which it was built. Henry VIII. was to lead the reform of the Church in England. Charles, instead of beheading cardinals, was to become the champion of the Roman hierarchy. The air was clearing. The parties in the great game were drifting into their natural situations. The fate which lay before Wolsey himself, the fate which lay before the Church of England, of the worst corruptions of which he was himself the chief protector and example, his own conscience enabled him too surely to foresee. Mendoza was recalled, and before leaving had an interview with the King. "The Emperor," he said, "was obliged to defend his aunt. It was a private affair, which touched the honour of his family." The King answered that the Emperor had no right to interfere. He did not meddle himself with the private affairs of other princes. Mendoza was unable to guess what was likely to happen. The suit was to go on. If a prohibitory mandate arrived from the Pope, it was uncertain whether Wolsey would obey it, and it was doubtful also whether any such mandate would be sent. He suspected Clement of possible deliberate treachery. He believed that orders had been sent to the Legate to proceed, and give sentence in virtue of the first commission. In that case the sentence would certainly be against the Queen, and not a moment must be lost in pressing an appeal to Rome.[68] CHAPTER VI. The Court at Blackfriars--The point at issue--The Pope's competency as judge--Catherine appeals to Rome--Imperial pressure upon Clement--The Emperor insists on the Pope's admission of the appeal--Henry demands sentence--Interference of Bishop Fisher--The Legates refuse to give judgment--The Court broken up--Peace of Cambray. The great scene in the hall at the Blackfriars when the cause of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon was pleaded before Wolsey and Campeggio is too well known to require further description. To the Legates it was a splendid farce. They knew that it was to end in nothing. The world outside, even the parties chiefly concerned, were uncertain what the Pope intended, and waited for the event to determine their subsequent conduct. There was more at issue than the immediate question before the Court. The point really at stake was, whether the interests of the English nation could be trusted any longer to a judge who was degrading his office by allowing himself to be influenced by personal fears and interests; who, when called on to permit sentence to be delivered, by delegates whom he had himself appointed, yet confessed himself unable, or unwilling, to decide whether it should be delivered or not. Abstractly Henry's demand was right. A marriage with a brother's wife was not lawful, and no Papal dispensation could make it so; but long custom had sanctioned what in itself was forbidden. The Pope could plead the undisputed usage of centuries, and if when the case was first submitted to him he had unequivocally answered that a marriage contracted _bonâ fide_ under his predecessor's sanction could not be broken, English opinion, it is likely, would have sustained him, even at the risk of a disputed succession, and the King himself would have dropped his suit. But the Pope, as a weak mortal, had wished to please a powerful sovereign. He had entertained the King's petition; he had hesitated, had professed inability to come to a conclusion, finally had declared that justice was on the King's side, and had promised that it should be so declared. If he now drew back, broke his engagements, and raised new difficulties in the settlement of a doubt which the long discussion of it had made serious; if he allowed it to be seen that his change of purpose was due to the menaces of another secular Prince, was such a judge to be any longer tolerated? Was not the Papacy itself degenerate, and unfit to exercise any longer the authority which it had been allowed to assume? This aspect of the matter was not a farce at all. The Papal supremacy itself was on its trial. On the 16th of June the King and Queen were cited to appear in court. Catherine was unprepared. She had been assured by the Emperor that her cause should not be tried in England. She called on Campeggio to explain. Campeggio answered that the Pope, having deputed two Legates for the process, could not revoke their commission without grave consideration. He exhorted her to pray God to enlighten her to take some good advice, considering the times. He was not without hope that, at the last extremity, she would yield and take the vows. But she did not in the least accede to his hints, and no one could tell what she meant to do.[69] She soon showed what she meant to do. On the 18th the court sate. Henry appeared by a proctor, who said for him that he had scruples about the validity of his marriage, which he required to be resolved. Catherine attended in person, rose, and delivered a brief protest against the place of trial and the competency of the judges. Wolsey was an English subject, Campeggio held an English bishopric. They were not impartial. She demanded to be heard at Rome, delivered her protest in writing, and withdrew. It was at once answered for the King that he could not plead in a city where the Emperor was master. The court adjourned for three days that the Cardinals might consider. On the 21st they sate again. The scene became more august. Henry came now himself, and took his place under a canopy at the Legates' right hand. Catherine attended again, and sate in equal state at their left. Henry spoke. He said he believed that he had been in mortal sin. He could bear it no longer, and required judgment. Wolsey replied that they would do what was just; and then Catherine left her seat, crossed in front of them, and knelt at her husband's feet. She had been his lawful wife, she said, for twenty years, and had not deserved to be repudiated and put to shame. She begged him to remember their daughter, to remember her own relations, Charles and Ferdinand, who would be gravely offended. Crowds of women, gathered about the palace gates, had cheered her as she came in, and bade her care for nothing. If women had to decide the case, said the French Ambassador, the Queen would win. Their voices availed nothing. She was told that her protest could not be admitted. She then left the court, was thrice summoned to come back, and, as she refused, was pronounced contumacious. For the King to appear as a suitor at Rome was justly regarded as impossible. Casalis was directed to tell Clement that, being in the Emperor's hands, he could not be accepted as a judge in the case, and that sovereign princes were exempted by prerogative from pleading in courts outside their own dominions. If he admitted the Queen's appeal, he would lose the devotion of the King and of England to the See Apostolic, and would destroy Wolsey for ever.[70] Had the Legates been in earnest there would have been no time to learn whether the appeal was allowed at Rome or not; they would have gone on and given sentence under their commission. It appeared as if this was what they intended to do. The court continued sitting. Catherine being contumacious, there was nothing left to delay the conclusion. She was in despair; she believed herself betrayed. Mendoza, who might have comforted her, was gone. She wrote to him that she was lost unless the Emperor or the Pope interposed. Even Campeggio seemed to be ignorant how he was to avoid a decision. Campeggio, the French Ambassador wrote, was already half conquered. If Francis would send a word to him, he might gather courage to pass sentence, and Henry would be brought to his knees in gratitude. The very Pope, perhaps, in his heart would not have been displeased if the Legates had disobeyed the orders which he had given, and had proceeded to judgment, as he had often desired that they might. Micer Mai's accounts to Charles of the shifts of the poor old man, as the accounts from England reached him, are almost pathetic. Pope, Cardinals, canon lawyers, Mai regarded as equally feeble, if not as equally treacherous. One reads with wonder the Spaniard's real estimate of the persons for whose sake and in whose name Charles and Philip were to paint Europe red with blood. "Salviati," said Mai, "who, though a great rogue, has not wit enough to hide his tricks, showed me the minute of a letter they had written to Campeggio: a more stupid or rascally composition could not have been concocted in hell."[71] Campeggio was directed in this letter to reveal to no one that he had received orders not to give sentence. He was to go on making delays, which was what "those people desired," because, if he was to say that he would make no declaration in the affair, the Archbishop of York would act by himself, the Pope's mandate having been originally addressed to the two Legates conjointly or to one individually. The letter had gone on to direct Campeggio, if he could not manage this, to carry on the proceedings until the final sentence, but not deliver sentence without first consulting Rome. If possible, he was to keep this part of his instructions secret, for fear of displeasing the King. "I lost all patience," Mai continued. "Andrea de Burgo and I went to the Pope, and told him we had seen the instructions sent to Campeggio, which were of such a nature that if we were to inform your Majesty of their contents you would undoubtedly resent the manner in which you were being treated. We would not do that, but we would speak our minds plainly. The letter to Campeggio was a breach of faith so often pledged by his Holiness to your Majesty that the divorce suit should be advocated to Rome. The violation of such a promise and the writing to Campeggio to go on with the proceeding was a greater insult and offence to your Majesty than the commission given to him in the first instance. It was a wonder to see how lightly his Holiness held promises made in accordance with justice and reason. An offence of such a kind bore so much on the honour of your Majesty and the princes of the Imperial family, that your Majesty would not put up with it. The King would have but to ask Campeggio whether he would or would not give sentence, and, if he refused, the duty would then devolve on the other Legate. His Holiness should be careful how he added fuel to the fire now raging in Christendom."[72] It was not enough for Mai that the cause should be revoked to Rome. The English agents said that if an independent sovereign was to be forced to plead at Rome, the Pope must at least hear the suit in person. He must not refer it to the Rota. Mai would not hear of this. To the Rota it must go and nowhere else. The Pope might mean well, but he might die and be succeeded by a pope of another sort, or the English might regain the influence they once had, and indeed had still, in the Papal court. They were great favourites, bribing right and left and spending money freely.[73] What was a miserable pope to do? Casalis, and Dr. Benet who had joined him from England, pointed out the inevitable consequences if he allowed himself to be governed by the Emperor. The Pope replied with lamentations that none saw that better than he, but he was so placed between the hammer and the anvil, that, though he wished to please the King, the whole storm would fall on him. The Emperor would not endure an insult to his family, and had said that he regarded the cause more than all his kingdoms. Those were only ornaments of fortune, while this touched his honour. He would postpone the advocation for a few days, but it could not be refused. He was in the Emperor's power, and the Emperor could do as he pleased with him. The few days' respite meant a hope that news of some decisive act might arrive meanwhile from England. The King must determine, Casalis and Benet thought, whether it would be better to suspend the process at his own request, or to proceed to sentence before the advocation.[74] The Pope, the Commissioners added, was well disposed to the King, and would not refuse to shed his blood for him; but in this cause and at this time he said it was impossible. While matters were going thus at Rome, the suit in England went forward. The Cardinals availed themselves of every excuse for delay; but in the presence of Catherine's determined refusal to recognise the court, delay became daily more difficult. The King pressed for judgment; formal obstacles were exhausted, and the Roman Legate must either produce his last instructions, which he had been ordered not to reveal, or there was nothing left for him to urge as a reason for further hesitation. It was not supposed that in the face of a distinct promise the Pope would revoke the commission. Campeggio and Wolsey were sitting with full powers to hear and determine. Determine, it seemed, they must; when, at the fifth session, uncalled on and unlooked for, the Bishop of Rochester rose and addressed the court. The King, he said, had declared that his only intention was to have justice done, and to relieve himself of a scruple of conscience, and had invited the judges and everyone else to throw light upon a cause which distressed and perplexed him. He [the Bishop], having given two years' diligent study to the question, felt himself bound in consequence to declare his opinion, and not risk the damnation of his soul by withholding it. He undertook, therefore, to declare and demonstrate that the marriage of the King and Queen could be dissolved by no power, human or divine, and for that conclusion he was ready to lay down his life. The Baptist had held it glorious to die in a cause of marriage, when marriage was not so holy as it had been made by the shedding of Christ's blood. He was prepared to encounter any peril for the truth, and he ended by presenting his arguments in a written form.[75] The Bishop's allusion to the Baptist was neither respectful nor felicitous. It implied that Henry, who as yet at least had punished no one for speaking freely, was no better than a Herod. Henry's case was that to marry a brother's wife was not lawful, and the Baptist was of the same opinion. The Legates answered quietly that the cause had not been committed to Fisher, and that it was not for him to pronounce judicially upon it. Wolsey complained that the Bishop had given him no notice of his intended interference. They continued to examine witnesses as if nothing had happened. But Fisher's action was not without effect. He was much respected. The public was divided on the merits of the general question. Many still thought the meaning of it to be merely that the King was tired of an old wife and wanted a young one. Courage is infectious, and comment grew loud and unfavourable. The popular voice might have been disregarded. But Campeggio, who had perhaps really wavered, not knowing what Clement wished him to do, gathered heart from Fisher's demonstration. "We are hurried on," he wrote to Salviati on the 13th of July, "always faster than a trot, so that some expect a sentence in ten days.... I will not fail in my duty or office, nor rashly or willingly give offence to any one. When giving sentence I will have only God before my eyes and the honour of the Holy See."[76] A week later Du Bellay said that things were almost as the King wished, and the end was expected immediately, when Campeggio acted on the Pope's last verbal instructions at their parting at Rome. He was told to go on to the last, but must pause at the final extremity. He obeyed. When nothing was left but to pronounce judgment, he refused to speak it, and said that he must refer back to the Holy See. Wolsey declined to act without him, and Campeggio, when pressed, if we can believe his own account of what he said, answered: "Very well, I vote in favour of the marriage and the Queen. If my colleague agrees, well and good. If not, there can be no sentence, for we must both agree."[77] Wolsey's feelings must be conjectured, for he never revealed them. To the Commissioners at Rome he wrote: "Such discrepancies and contrariety of opinion has ensued here that the cause will be long delayed. In a week the process will have to cease, and two months of vacation ensue. Other counsels, therefore, are necessary, and it is important to act as if the advocation was granted. Campeggio unites with me to urge the Pope, if it must be granted, to qualify the language; for if the King be cited to appear in person or by proxy, and his prerogative be interfered with, none of his subjects will tolerate it; or if he appears in Italy it will be at the head of a formidable army.[78] A citation of the King to Rome on threat of excommunication is no more tolerable than the whole loss of the King's dignity. If, therefore, the Pope has granted any such advocation, it must be revoked. If it arrives here before such a revocation, no mention of it shall be made, not even to the King."[79] This was Wolsey's last effort. Before his despatch could reach Rome the resolution was taken. Had it arrived in time, it would have made no difference while Micer Mai was able to threaten to behead Cardinals in their own apartments. The cause was advoked, as it was called--reserved to be heard in the Rota. The Legates' commission was cancelled. The court at Blackfriars was dissolved, as Campeggio said, in anger, shame, and disappointment. He had fulfilled his orders not without some alarm for himself as he thought of his bishopric of Salisbury. Catherine, springing from despondency into triumph, imagined that all was over. The suit, she thought, would be instantly recommenced at Rome, and the Pope would give judgment in her favour without further form. She was to learn a harsher lesson, and would have consulted better for her happiness if she had yielded to the Pope's advice and retired into seclusion. While the Legates were sitting in London, another conference was being held at Cambray, to arrange conditions of European peace. France and the Empire adjusted their quarrels for another interval. The Pope and the Italian Princes were included--England was included also--and the divorce, the point of central discord between Henry and the Emperor, was passed over in silence as too dangerous to be touched. CHAPTER VII. Call of Parliament--Wolsey to be called to account--Anxiety of the Emperor to prevent a quarrel--Mission of Eustace Chapuys--Long interview with the King--Alarm of Catherine--Growth of Lutheranism--The English clergy--Lord Darcy's Articles against Wolsey--Wolsey's fall--Departure of Campeggio-- Letter of Henry to the Pope--Action of Parliament--Intended reform of the Church--Alienation of English feeling from the Papacy. On the collapse of the commission it was at once announced that the King would summon a Parliament. For many years Wolsey had governed England as he pleased. The King was now to take the reins in his own hands. The long-suffering laity were to make their voices heard, and the great Cardinal understood too well that he was to be called to account for his stewardship. The Queen, who could think of nothing but her own wrongs, conceived that the object must be some fresh violence to herself. She had requested the Pope to issue a minatory brief forbidding Parliament to meddle with her. She had mistaken the purpose of its meeting, and she had mistaken the King's character. Important as the divorce question might be, a great nation had other things to think of which had waited too long. It had originated in an ambitious scheme of Wolsey to alter the balance of power in Europe, and to form a new combination which the English generally disliked. Had his policy been successful he would have been continued in office, with various consequences which might or might not have been of advantage to the country. But he had failed miserably. He had drawn the King into a quarrel with his hereditary ally. He had entangled him, by ungrounded assurances, in a network of embarrassments, which had been made worse by the premature and indecent advancement of the Queen's intended successor. For this the Cardinal was not responsible. It was the King's own doing, and he had bitterly to pay for it. But Wolsey had misled his master into believing that there would be no difficulty. In the last critical moment he had not stood by him as the King had a right to expect; and, in the result, Henry found himself summoned to appear as a party before the Pope, the Pope himself being openly and confessedly a creature in the hands of the Emperor. No English sovereign had ever before been placed in a situation so degrading. Parliament was to meet for other objects--objects which could not be attained while Wolsey was in power and were themselves of incalculable consequence. But Anne Boleyn was an embarrassment, and Henry did for the moment hesitate whether it might not be better to abandon her. He had no desire to break the unity of Christendom or to disturb the peace of his own kingdom for the sake of a pretty woman. The Duke of Norfolk, though he was Anne's uncle, if he did not oppose her intended elevation, did nothing to encourage it. Her father, Lord Wiltshire, had been against it from the first. The Peers and the people would be the sufferers from a disputed succession, but they seemed willing to encounter the risk, or at least they showed no eagerness for the King's marriage with this particular person. If Reginald Pole is to be believed, the King did once inform the Council that he would go no further with it. The Emperor, to make retreat easy to him, had allowed nothing to be said on the subject at Cambray, and had instructed the Pope to hold his hand and make no further movement. He sent a new Ambassador to England, on a mission of _doulceur et amytié_. Eustace Chapuys, the Minister whom he selected, was not perhaps the best selection which he could have made, and Lord Paget, who knew him well, has left an account of him not very favourable. "For Chapuys," he said, "I never took him for a wise man, but for one that used to speak _cum summâ licentiâ_ whatsoever came _in buccam_, without respect of honesty or truth, so it might serve his turn, and of that fashion it is small mastery to be a wise man. He is a great practicer, with which honest term we cover tale-telling, lying, dissimuling, and flattering."[80] Chapuys being the authority for many of the scandals about Henry, this description of him by a competent observer may be borne in remembrance; but there can be no question that Charles sent him to England on an embassy of peace, and one diplomatist is not always perhaps the fairest judge of another of the same trade. The King's hesitation, if he ever did hesitate, was not of long duration. He had been treated like a child, tricked, played with, trifled with, and he was a dangerous person to deal with in so light a fashion. Chapuys reached London in the beginning of September. On landing he found the citation to Rome had not been officially notified to the King, as a morsel too big for him to swallow.[81] The King received him politely, invited him to dine in the palace, and allowed him afterwards to be introduced to Catherine, who was still residing at the court. Three days after he had a long interview with Henry. His commission, he said, was to smooth all differences between the King and his master. The King responded with equal graciousness, but turned the conversation upon those differences themselves. The Emperor, he said, had not used him well. The advocation to Rome was absurd. He had written himself to the Pope with his own hand, telling him it was not only expedient but absolutely necessary that the cause should be tried in England. The Roman territories were still in the occupation of the Imperial troops. The Pope had committed it to two of his Cardinals, had solemnly promised that it should not be revoked, and that he would confirm any sentence which the Legates should pronounce. These engagements the Emperor had obliged the Pope to break. He himself had not proceeded upon light grounds. He was a conscientious prince, he said, who preferred his own salvation to all worldly advantages, as appeared sufficiently from his conduct in the affair. Had he been differently situated and not attentive to his conscience, he might have adopted other measures, which he had not taken and never would take.[82] Chapuys attempted to defend Clement. "Enough of that pope," Henry sharply interrupted. "This is not the first time that he has changed his mind. I have long known his versatile and fickle nature."[83] The Pope, he went on, "would never dare pronounce sentence, unless it favoured the Emperor." Catherine was eagerly communicative. Chapuys learned from her that the King had offered that the case should be heard at Cambray--which she had, of course, refused. She was much alarmed about the Parliament, "the King having played his cards so well that he would have a majority of votes in his favour." It was quite certain that he meant to persevere. She professed outwardly that she was personally attached to the King; yet she desired Chapuys expressly to caution the Emperor against believing that his conduct had anything to do with conscience. The idea of separation, she said, had originated entirely in his own iniquity and malice, and when the treaty of Cambray was completed, he had announced it to her with the words: "My peace with the Emperor is made: it will last as long as you choose."[84] Chapuys had been charged to ascertain the feeling of the English people. He found them generally well affected to the Queen. But the Lutheran heresy was creeping in. The Duke of Suffolk had spoken bitterly of Papal legates, and Chapuys believed if they had nothing to fear but the Pope's malediction, there were great numbers who would follow the Duke's advice and make Popes of the King and Bishops, all to have the divorce case tried in England.[85] The Queen was afraid of pressing her appeal, fearing that if the Commons in Parliament heard that the King had been summoned to Rome, measures injurious to her might easily be proposed and carried.[86] Even the Duke of Norfolk was not satisfactory. He professed to be devoted to the Emperor; he said he would willingly have lost a hand so that the divorce question should never have been raised; but it was an affair of theology and canon law, and he had not meddled with it. If the Emperor had remained neutral, instead of interfering, it would have been sooner settled.[87] But, for the instant, the interests of the people of England were fixed on a subject more immediately close to them. The sins of the clergy had at last found them out. They pretended to be a supernatural order, to hold the keys of heaven and hell, to be persons too sacred for ordinary authority to touch. Their vices and their tyranny had made them and their fantastic assumptions no longer bearable, and all Europe was in revolt against the scandals of the Church and Churchmen. The ecclesiastical courts, as the pretended guardians of morality, had the laity at their mercy; and every offence, real or imaginary, was converted into an occasion of extortion. The courts were themselves nests of corruption; while the lives and habits of the order which they represented made ridiculous their affectations of superiority to common men. Clement's conduct of the divorce case was only a supreme instance of the methods in which the clerical tribunals administered what they called justice. An authority equally oblivious of the common principles of right and wrong was extended over the private lives and language of every family in Catholic Christendom. In England the cup was full and the day of reckoning had arrived. I have related in the first volume of my history of the period the meeting of the Parliament of 1529, and I have printed there the Petition of the Commons to the Crown, with the Bishops' reply to it.[88] I need not repeat what has been written already. A few more words are needed, however, to explain the animosity which broke out against Wolsey. The great Cardinal was the living embodiment of the detested ecclesiastical domination, and a representation in his own person of the worst abuses complained of. He had been a vigorous Minister, full of large schemes and high ambitions. He had been conscious of much that was wrong. He had checked the eagerness of the bench of Bishops to interfere with opinion, had suppressed many of the most disorderly smaller monasteries, and had founded colleges out of their revenues. But he had left his own life unreformed, as an example of avarice and pride. As Legate he had absorbed the control of the entire ecclesiastical organisation. He had trampled on the Peers. On himself he had piled benefice upon benefice. He held three great bishoprics, and, in addition to them, the wealthiest of the abbeys. York or Durham he had never entered; Winchester he may have visited in intervals of business; and he resided occasionally at the Manor of the More, which belonged to St. Albans: but this was all his personal connection with offices to which duties were attached which he would have admitted to be sacred, if, perhaps, with a smile. As Legate and Lord Chancellor he disposed of the whole patronage of the realm. Every priest or abbot who needed a license had to pay Wolsey for it. His officials were busy in every diocese. Every will that was to be proved, every marriage within the forbidden degrees, had to pass under their eyes, and from their courts streams richer than Pactolus flowed into Wolsey's coffers. Foreign princes, as we have seen, were eager to pile pensions upon him. His wealth was known to be enormous. How enormous was now to be revealed. Even his own son--for a son he had--was charged upon the commonwealth. The worst iniquity of the times was the appointing children to the cure of souls. Wolsey's boy was educated at Paris, and held benefices worth 1,500 crowns a year, or 3,000 pounds of modern English money. A political mistake had now destroyed his credit. His enemies were encouraged to speak, and the storm burst upon him. A list of detailed complaints against him survives which is curious alike from its contents, the time at which it was drawn up, and the person by whom it was composed--the old Lord Darcy of Templehurst, the leader afterwards in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Darcy was an earnest Catholic. He had fought in his youth under Ferdinand at the conquest of Granada. He was a dear friend of Ferdinand's daughter, and an earnest supporter, against Wolsey, of the Imperial alliance. His paper is long and the charges are thrown together without order. The date is the 1st of July, when the Legates' court had begun its sittings and was to end, as he might well suppose, in Catherine's ruin. They express the bitterness of Darcy's feelings. The briefest epitome is all that can be attempted of an indictment which extended over the whole of Wolsey's public career. It commences thus:-- "Hereafter followeth, by protestation, articles against the Cardinal of York, shewed by me, Thomas Darcy, only to discharge my oath and bounden duty to God and the King, and of no malice. "1. All articles that touches God and his Church and his acts against the same. "2. All that touches the King's estate, honour and prerogative, and against his laws. "3. Lack of justice, and using himself by his authority as Chancellor faculties legatine and cardinal; what wrongs, exactions he hath used. "4. All his authorities, legatine and other, purchased of the Pope, and offices and grants that he hath of the King's grace, special commissions and instructions sent into every shire; he, and the Cardinal's servants, to be straitly examined of his unlawful acts." Following vaguely this distribution, Darcy proceeds with his catalogue of wrongs. Half the list is of reforms commenced and unfinished, everything disturbed and nothing set right, to "the ruffling of the good order of the realm." Of direct offences we find Wolsey unexpectedly accused of having broken the Præmunire statute by introducing faculties from Rome and allowing the Pope to levy money in the realm contrary to the King's prerogative royal, while for himself, by "colour of his powers as Cardinal legate _a latere_ and faculties spiritual and temporal, he had assembled marvellous and mighty sums of money." Of bishops, abbots, priors, deans, &c., he had received (other sums) for promotion spiritual since his entry. He had appropriated the plate and jewels of the suppressed abbeys. He had raised the "probate duty" all over the realm, the duty going into his own coffers. He had laid importable charges on the nobles of the realm. He had Towered, Fleeted, and put to the walls of Calais a number of the noblemen of England, and many of them for light causes. He had promoted none but such as served about the King to bring to pass his purposes, or were of his council in such things as an honest man would not vouchsafe to be acquainted with. He had hanged, pressed, and banished more men since he was in authority than had suffered death by way of justice in all Christendom besides. He had wasted the King's treasure, &c. He had levied mighty sums of other houses of religion, some for dread to be pulled down, and others by his feigned visitations under colour of virtuous reformation. As Chancellor "he had taken up all the great matters depending in suit to determine after his discretion, and would suffer no way to take effect that had been devised by other men." In other times "the best prelate in the realm was contented with one bishoprick." Darcy demanded that the duties of bishops should be looked into. They should hold no temporal offices, nor meddle with temporal affairs. They should seek no dispensation from the Pope. The tenure of land in England should be looked into, to find what temporal lands were in spiritual men's hands, by what titles, for what purposes, and whether it was followed or no. The King's grace should proceed to determine all reformations, of spiritual and temporal, within his realm. Never more Legate nor Cardinal should be in England: these legacies and faculties should be clearly annulled and made frustrate, and search and enquiry be made what had been levied thereby. He recommended that at once and without notice Wolsey's papers and accounts should be seized. "Then matters much unknown would come forth surely concerning his affairs with Pope, Emperor, the French King, other Princes, and within the realm."[89] Many of Darcy's charges are really creditable to Wolsey, many more are exaggerated; but of the oppressive character of his courts, and of the immense revenue which he drew from them, no denial was possible. The special interest of the composition, however, is that it expresses precisely the temper of the Parliament of 1529. It enables us to understand how the Chancellorship came to be accepted by Sir Thomas More. It contains the views of conservative Catholic English statesmen who, while they had no sympathy with changes of doctrine, were weary of ecclesiastical domination, who desired to restrict the rights of the Pope in England within the limits fixed by the laws of the Plantagenets, to relieve the clergy of their temporal powers and employments, and reduce them to their spiritual functions. Micer Mai and De Soria had said the same thing; Charles V., likely enough, shared their opinion, though he could not see his way towards acting upon it. In England it could be acted upon, and it was. There is no occasion to repeat the well-known tale of the fall of Wolsey. He resigned the seals on the 18th of October; his property was seized and examined into. The Venetian Ambassador reported that his ordinary income was found to have been 150,000 crowns, besides pensions, gifts from foreign princes, and irregular contributions from home. His personal effects were worth half a million more. He said that it had been all gathered for the King; if the King was pleased to take it before his end, the King was welcome to it. The King was thenceforward his own first minister; the Duke of Norfolk became President of the Council; Suffolk was Vice-President, and Sir Thomas More Lord Chancellor. But the King intended to rule with Parliament to advise and to help him. Catherine told Chapuys, in fear for herself, that the elections to the Lower House had been influenced to her own injury. She was mistaken, for the elections had not turned on the divorce. The object of the meeting of the Legislature was to reform the clergy, and upon this all parties among the laity were agreed. It may be (though the Queen could not know it) that exertions were made to counteract or control the local influences of individual nobles or prelates. If the object was to secure a real representation of popular feeling, it was right and necessary to protect the electors against the power of particular persons. But it is at least clear that this Parliament came up charged with the grievances of which Darcy's indictment was the epitome. The Houses met on the 3rd of November, and went at once to business. I can add nothing to what I have written elsewhere on the acts of the first session. Wolsey was impeached; the Peers would have attainted him or sent him to trial for high treason; the Commons were more moderate, listening to Cromwell, who faced unpopularity by defending gallantly his old patron. But the King himself did not wish the fallen Cardinal to be pressed too hard; and it was said that, determined to protect him, he forbade the attainder. He had determined to pardon him, and an attainder would have made pardon more difficult. Very interesting accounts of Wolsey's own behaviour in his calamity are found in the letters of the foreign Ambassadors. Du Bellay saw him on the 17th of October, the day before he surrendered the Great Seal, and found him entirely broken. He wept; he "hoped the French King and Madam would have pity on him." His face had lost its fire; "he did not desire legateship, seal of office, or power; he was ready to give up everything, to his shirt, and live in a hermitage, if the King would not keep him in his displeasure." He wished Francis to write to Henry in his favour. He had been the chief instrument of the present amity with France; and such a service ought not to have given a bad impression of him. Suspicions were abroad that he had received large presents from the French Court; they were probably true, for he said "he hoped Madam would not do him an injury if it were spoken of."[90] Nothing could be more piteous. The poor old man was like a hunted animal; lately lord of the world, and now "none so poor to do him reverence." Darcy had raised the question of the Præmunire. The ancient Statute of Provisors had forbidden the introduction of Bulls from Rome, and the statute was awake again. He was made to confess that the penalties of Præmunire--confiscation of goods and imprisonment--had been incurred by him when he published the Bull which made him Legate, and by the use of which he had unlawfully vexed the greater number of the prelates of the realm, and the King's other subjects. His brother Legate, Campeggio, had remained for some weeks in London after the dissolution of the court. But England was no place for him in the hurly-burly which had broken loose. He went, and had to submit to the indignity of having his luggage searched at Dover. The cause alleged was a fear that he might be taking with him some of Wolsey's jewels. Tradition said that he had obtained possession of the letters of the King to Anne Boleyn, and that it was through him that they reached the Vatican. At any rate, the locks were forced, the trunks inspected, and nothing of importance was found in them.[91] Campeggio complained to the King of the violation of his privilege as ambassador. Henry told him ironically that he had suffered no wrong: his legateship was gone when the cause was revoked; he had no other commission: he was an English bishop, and so far, therefore, an English subject. But a courteous apology was made for the unnecessary violence which had been used;[92] Campeggio's ruffled plumes were smoothed, and he wrote to Salviati from Paris with the latest news of Wolsey, telling him "that the King would not go to extremes, but would act considerately in the matter, as he was accustomed to do in all his actions."[93] Although no mention was made in Parliament of the divorce, the subject, of course, could not sleep. The question of the succession to the crown having been made so prominent, it would, and must, sooner or later, come before the Legislature to be settled, and had already become a topic of general consideration and anxiety. Mary's legitimacy had been impugned. Falieri, writing from London and reporting what he heard in society, said that "by English law females were excluded from the throne." Custom might say so, for no female had, in fact, ever sat on the throne; but enacted law or rule there was none: it was only one uncertainty the more. At any rate, Falieri said that the King had determined to go on with the divorce, that he might have a legitimate male heir. Henry's experience of Clement had taught him that he need not fear any further immediate steps. The advocation of the cause implied of itself a desire for longer delay, and, with more patience than might have been looked for in such a disappointment, he had resolved to wait for what the Pope would do. That an English sovereign should plead before the Rota at Rome was, of course, preposterous. The suggestion of it was an insult. But other means might be found. He had himself proposed Cambray as a neutral spot for a first commission; he really believed that the Pope was at heart on his side, and therefore did not wish to quarrel with him. When Campeggio was leaving England the King wrote to Clement more politely than might have been expected. He did not insist that the English commission should be renewed. "We could have wished," he said, "not less for your sake than our own, that all things had been so expedited as corresponded to our expectation, not rashly conceived, but according to your promises. As it is, we have to regard with grief and wonder the incredible confusion which has arisen. If a Pope can relax Divine laws at his pleasure, surely he has as much power over human laws. We have been so often deceived by your Holiness's promises that no dependence can be placed on them. Our dignity has not been consulted in the treatment which we have met with. If your Holiness will keep the cause now advoked to Rome in your own hands, until it can be decided by impartial judges, and in an indifferent place, in a manner satisfactory to our scruples, we will forget what is past, and repay kindness by kindness."[94] As the Pope had professed to be ignorant of the extent of his dispensing power, the King proposed to submit this part of the question to the canon lawyers of Europe. The Nuncios, meanwhile, in Paris and London advised that the Pope and the Emperor should write in a friendly way to the King. Charles was believed in England to have said "that the King should stick to his wife in spite of his beard." He had not used such words, and ought to disclaim them, but he might endeavour to persuade the King to let the divorce drop. The Parliament meanwhile had been fiercely busy in cutting down the Church courts--abolishing or limiting the various forms of extortion by which the laity had been plundered. The clergy were required to reside upon their benefices. "Pluralities" were restricted. The business of the session had been a series of Clergy Discipline Acts. The Bishop of Rochester especially clamoured over the "want of faith" which such Acts exhibited, but nothing had been done of which the Pope could complain, nothing of which, perhaps, he did not secretly approve. Catherine, through her agents at Rome, demanded instant sentence in her cause. The Pope's inclination seemed again on Henry's side. He described an interview with the Emperor, who had urged Catherine's case. He professed to have replied that he must be cautious when the case was not clear. Many things, he said, made for the King. All the divines were against the power of the Pope to dispense. Of the canon lawyers, some were against it; and those who were not against it considered that the dispensing powers could only be used for a very urgent cause, as, to prevent the ruin of a kingdom. The Pope's function was to judge whether such a cause had arisen; but no such inquiry was made when the dispensation of Julius was granted. The Emperor must not be surprised if he could do no more for the Queen.[95] The Emperor himself thought of nothing less than taking his uncle "by the beard." He wished to be reconciled to him if he could find a way to it. For one thing, he was in sore need of help against the Turks, and Chapuys was directed to ascertain if Henry would give him money. Henry's reply was not encouraging, and sounded ominously, as if his mind was making perilous progress on the great questions of the day. He said it would be a foolish thing for him to remit money to the Emperor and help him to maintain three armies in Italy, which ought to be elsewhere. He had consulted his Parliament, and had found he could not grant it. The said money might be turned to other use, and be employed to promote dissension among Christian princes.[96] At a subsequent interview the conversation was renewed and took a more general turn. The King spoke of the Court of Rome--the ambitious magnificence of which, he said, "had been the cause of so many wars, discords, and heresies." Had the Pope and Cardinals, he said, observed the precepts of the Gospel and attended to the example of the Fathers of the Church [several of whom the King mentioned, to Chapuys' surprise], they would have led a different life, and not have scandalised Christendom by their acts and manners. So far, Luther had told nothing but the truth; and had Luther limited himself to inveighing against the vices, abuses, and errors of the clergy, instead of attacking the Sacraments of the Church, everyone would have gone with him; he would himself have written in his favour, and taken pen in hand in his defence. Into the Church in his own dominions he hoped, little by little, to introduce reforms and end the scandal.[97] These expressions were dangerous enough, but there was worse to follow. "Henry maintained that the only power which Churchmen had over laymen was absolution from sin"; Chapuys found that he had told the Queen that he was now waiting for the opinions of the foreign doctors; when he had obtained these he would forward them to Rome; and should not the Pope, in conformity with the opinions so expressed, declare the marriage null and void, he would denounce the Pope as a heretic and marry whom he pleased.[98] "The Lady Anne," Chapuys said, "was growing impatient, complaining that she was wasting her time and youth to no purpose." The House of Commons had already "clipped the claws" of the clergy, and it was not impossible that, on the plea of the various and contradictory judgments on the matter, they and the people might consent to the divorce. The hope that the King might be held back by national disapproval was thus seen to be waning. The national pride had been touched by the citation of an English sovereign to plead before a foreign court. Charles V. feared that the Pope, alarmed at the prospect of losing England, would "commit some new folly" which might lead to war.[99] The English Nuncio in fact informed Chapuys, much to the latter's astonishment, that the Pope had ordered him to find means to reconcile the King and the Emperor. Chapuys thought the story most unlikely. The Emperor would never have trusted the Pope with such a commission, nor was the Pope a promising mediator, seeing that he was more hated in England than might have been supposed. There were evident signs now that the country meant to support the King. The Duke of Norfolk told the Ambassador that unless the Emperor would permit his master to divorce the Queen and take another wife, there was no remedy left. The King's scruples of conscience, instead of abating, were on the increase, owing to the opinions of others who thought as he did, and no one in the world could turn him.[100] Chapuys thought it more likely than not that the question would be introduced at once into Parliament, where he had heard that a majority had been bribed or gained over to the King's side. With the consent of the Commons he would consider himself secure all round. Should the Pope pronounce in favour of the Queen, the English would say that the sentence was unjust, for, besides the suspicion and ill-will they had towards the Pope and other ecclesiastical judges, they would allege that in confirming the Bull of Pope Julius, the Pope and Cardinals would be only influenced by their own interest "to increase the authority of the Pope, and procure him money by such dispensations."[101] At this moment Chapuys feared some precipitate step on Henry's part. Norfolk, whom he saw frequently, told him that "there was nothing which the King would not grant the Emperor to obtain his consent, even to becoming his slave for ever."[102] "The reform of the clergy was partly owing to the anger of the people at the advocation of the cause to Rome." "Nearly all the people hated the priests," Chapuys said--an important testimony from an unwilling witness. Peers and Commons might be brought to agree that Popes could grant no dispensations in marriages or anything else, and so save their money. If there was nothing to restrain them but respect for the Pope, they would not care much for him, and the Holy See would have no more obedience in England than in Germany. The Duke of Norfolk talked as menacingly as the rest. He said publicly to the Ambassador "that the Pope himself had been the first to perceive the invalidity of the marriage, had written to say that it could not stand, and would so declare himself, or have it legally declared.... and now, being in the Emperor's power, the same Pope would have the case tried and determined only as the Emperor wished."[103] Under these circumstances Chapuys could only advise that means should be taken to weaken or defer the action of Parliament. The Cambray proposal might be revived, or a suggestion made that the cause should be argued before the Sorbonne at Paris. The Duke of Norfolk could perhaps be gained over; but, unfortunately, he and Queen Catherine were not on good terms. The Duke was afraid also--the words show how complicated were the threads which ruled the situation--that, should the King dismiss the Lady Anne, the Cardinal would in all probability regain his influence, owing to his uncommon ability and the King's readiness to restore him to favour. Everyone perceived the King bore the Cardinal no real ill-will, and should the King's affection for the lady abate in the least, the Cardinal would soon find means of settling the divorce in a manner which would cost the opposite party their lives.[104] In this letter of Chapuys is the first allusion which I have found to the Mary Boleyn scandal, then beginning to be heard of in circles opposed to the divorce: "People say," he wrote, "that it is the King's evil destiny that impels him; for had he, as he asserts, only attended to the voice of conscience, there would have been still greater affinity to contend with in this intended marriage than in that of the Queen his wife."[105] The story is referred to as a fresh feature of the case, which had not before been heard of. CHAPTER VIII. Hope of Wolsey to return to power--Anger of Anne Boleyn and the Duke of Norfolk--Charles V. at Bologna--Issue of a prohibitory brief--The Pope secretly on Henry's side--Collection of opinions--Norfolk warns Chapuys-- State of feeling in England--Intrigues of Wolsey--His illness and death. The momentous year of 1529 wore out. Parliament rose before Christmas; Peers and Commons dispersed to their homes; and the chief parties in the drama were still undetermined what next to do. The Duke of Norfolk was afraid of Wolsey's return to power. It was less impossible than it seemed. A parliamentary impeachment, though let fall, ought to have been fatal; but none knew better than Wolsey by how transitory a link the parties who had combined for his ruin were really held together. More and Darcy had little sympathy with the advanced Reformers whose eyes were fixed on Germany. They agreed in cutting down the temporal encroachments of the clergy; they agreed in nothing besides. The King had treated Wolsey with exceptional forbearance. He had left him the Archbishopric of York, with an income equal in modern money to eight or ten thousand pounds a year, and had made him large presents besides of money, furniture, and jewels. Finding himself so leniently dealt with, the Cardinal recovered heart, and believed evidently that his day was not over. In a letter to Gardiner, written in January, 1530, he complained as a hardship of having been made to surrender Winchester and St. Albans. He had not "deserved to lose them," he said, "and had not expected to lose them on his submission. His long services deserved at least a pension."[106] The King agreed, or seemed to agree; for a further grant of 3,000 crowns was allowed him, charged on the See of Winchester. Anne Boleyn was furious. The Duke of Norfolk swore that "sooner than suffer Wolsey's return to office he would eat him up alive."[107] Though he had never seen his diocese, the Cardinal was making no haste to go thither. He lingered on at Esher, expecting to be sent for, and it is evident from the alarm of his rivals that there was real likelihood of it. The Lady Anne so hated him that she quarrelled with her uncle Norfolk for not having pressed his attainder. Catherine liked him equally ill, for she regarded him as the cause of her sufferings. He had been "disevangelised," as Norfolk called it; but Henry missed at every turn his dexterity and readiness of hand. He had monopolised the whole business of the realm; the subordinate officials everywhere were his creatures, and the threads of every branch of administration had centred in his cabinet; without him there was universal confusion. The French Court was strongly in his favour. He had himself made the Anglo-French alliance; and the Anglo-French alliance was still a necessity to Henry, if he meant to defy the Emperor and retain an influence at Rome. The King wished, if he could, to keep on terms with the Pope, and Wolsey, if any one, could keep the Papal Court within limits of moderation. The situation was thus more critical than ever. Catherine knew not what to look for. Those among the peers who, like Norfolk, would naturally have been her friends, and would have preferred that the divorce should never have been spoken of, yet saw no reason why on a private ground the Emperor should light up a European war again. They conceived that by protesting he had done enough for his honour, and that he ought to advise his aunt to give way. According to Chapuys, attempts were privately made to obtain a declaration of opinion from the House of Commons before Parliament rose.[108] He says that the attempts were unsuccessful. It may have been so. But Chapuys could not hope that the unwillingness would last. Charles was determined to stand by Catherine to all extremities. Henry was threatening to marry his mistress whether the Pope consented or not, professing to care not a straw, and almost calling the Pope a heretic. The Pope did not wish to be a party to a scandal, but also would be sorry to see the King lose all submission and reverence to the See of Rome. For himself, the Emperor said he could not see how the affair would end, "but he was certain that Henry would persist, and war would probably come of it." He directed his brother Ferdinand to avoid irritating the German Lutherans, as France might probably take part with England.[109] Fresh efforts were made to persuade Catherine to take the veil. They were as unsuccessful as before.[110] The Emperor was now in Italy. He had gone to Bologna for his coronation on the conclusion of the Peace of Cambray, and the Pope was to be made to feel the weight of his Imperial presence. Henry used the occasion to send a deputation to Bologna, composed of the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne's father, who was personally known to Charles, Dr. Cranmer, then coming into prominence, and Stokesly, the Bishop of London, who, having been first on Catherine's side, had been converted. They were directed to lay before the Emperor the motives for the King's action, to protest against his interference, and to explain the certain consequences if he persisted in supporting the Queen. The Emperor gave a cold answer, and declined to hear the Earl's instructions, while the Pope, the Earl said, was led by the Emperor, and dared not displease him. The second act of the drama was now to open, and Clement was made to strike the first blow. In consequence of the reports from Catherine and Chapuys that Henry was collecting the opinions of the canonists of Europe, and intended to act on them if favourable, a brief was issued on the 7th of March ordering the King to restore Catherine to her rights, and prohibiting him from making a second marriage while the suit was undetermined. The divines and lawyers of Catholic Europe were at the same time threatened with excommunication if they presumed to declare themselves favourable to the divorce. But though the voice was Clement's, the hand was the Emperor's. Clement was being dragged along against his will, and was still "facing both ways" in honest or dishonest irresolution. While issuing the brief under compulsion, he said precisely the opposite in his communication with the French Ambassador, the Bishop of Tarbes. The Ambassador was able to assure his own master that the Pope would never give sentence in Catherine's favour. In direct contradiction of the brief, the Bishop wrote "that the Pope had told him more than three times in secret he would be glad if the marriage between Henry and Anne was already made, either by dispensation of the English Legate or otherwise, provided it was not by his authority or in diminution of his powers of dispensation and limitation of divine law."[111] In England the Pope had still his own Nuncio--a Nuncio who, as Chapuys declared, was "heart and soul" with the King. He was the brother of Sir Gregory Casalis, Henry's agent at Rome, and Henry was said to have promised him a bishopric as soon as his cause should be won. The Pope could not have been ignorant of the disposition of his own Minister. Chapuys reported a mysterious State secret which had reached him through Catherine's physician. The Smalcaldic League was about to be formed among the Protestant Princes of Germany. Francis was inviting the King to support them and to join with himself in encouraging them to dethrone the Emperor; the King was said to have agreed on the ground that the Pope and the Emperor had behaved ill to him, and the probability was that both France and England in the end would become Lutheran. Had there been nothing else, the Queen's sterility was held a sufficient ground for the divorce. If she had been barren from the first, the marriage would have been held invalid at once. Now that the hope of succession was gone, the Pope, it was said, ought to have ended it.[112] The King had been busy all the winter carrying out his project of collecting the opinions of the learned. The Pope's prohibition not having been issued in England, his own Bishops, the Universities, and the canonists had declared themselves in favour of the divorce. The assent had not in all instances been given very willingly. Oxford and Cambridge had attempted a feeble resistance, and at Oxford the Commissioners had been pelted with stones. Still, given it had been, and the conservative Peers and gentry were coming to the same conclusion. The King was known to be wishing to recall Wolsey. The return of Wolsey to power might imply the acceptance of the French policy; perhaps the alliance with the Lutherans--at any rate, war with the Emperor. The Duke of Norfolk and his friends were English aristocrats, adherents of the old traditions, dreading and despising German revolutionists; but they believed that the King and the Emperor could only be drawn together by Charles's consent to the divorce. The King, Norfolk said to Chapuys, was so much bent on it that no one but God could turn him. He believed it imperative for the welfare of the realm that his master should marry again and have male succession; he would give all that he possessed for an hour's interview with the Emperor; if his Majesty would but consent to the marriage, the friendship between him and the King would then be indissoluble;[113] the divorce was nothing by the side of the larger interests at issue; "the King," it was rumoured, "had written, or was about to write, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, that if the Pope persisted in refusing justice, his own and all Church authority would be at an end in England;" the nobles and people, provoked and hurt at the advocation of the suit to Rome, were daily more and more incensed against Churchmen, and would become Lutherans in the end.[114] The Pope had confessed that the presence of the Imperial army in Italy left him no liberty. If revolution came, the Emperor would be the cause of it. The Duke spoke with the indignation of an Englishman at a rumour that the Emperor had "threatened to use all his power in the Queen's support." Such menaces, he said, were useless, and the nation would not endure them. Foreign princes had no authority over English kings. Chapuys did not mend matters by saying that the Emperor was not thinking of employing force, for he did not believe that the King would give occasion for it. The Emperor's interference, indeed, would be unnecessary, for the Duke must be aware that if the divorce was proceeded with there would be a civil war in England.[115] Chapuys was vain of his insight into things and characters. Like so many of his successors, he mistook the opinion of a passionate clique of priests and priest-ridden malcontents for the general sentiment of the nation. They told him, as they told other Spanish ambassadors after him, that all the world thought as they did. Fanatics always think so; and the belief that they were right proved in the end the ruin of the Spanish empire. In the present instance, however, Chapuys may be pardoned for his error. Norfolk imagined that Wolsey was scheming for a return to power on the old anti-Imperial lines. Wolsey was following a more dangerous line of his own. Impatient with the delay in his restoration, he imagined that by embroiling matters more fatally he could make his own help indispensable; and he was drifting into what can only be called treachery--treachery specially dishonourable to him. Wolsey, the originator of the divorce and the French alliance, had now become the friend of Catherine and the secret adviser of Chapuys. He had welcomed, had perhaps advised, the issue of the prohibitory Papal brief. Copies of it were sent for from Flanders to be shown in England. "The Queen," wrote Chapuys on the 10th of May,[116] "is now firmer than ever, and believes the King will not dare make the other marriage; if he does, which may God prevent, I suspect he will repent and be thankful to return to his first marriage, if by so doing he could be freed from his second. _This is the opinion of Cardinal Wolsey and of many others._ The Cardinal would have given his archbishopric that this had been done two years ago. He would have been better revenged on the intrigue which has ruined him." These words, taken by themselves, prove that Wolsey was now in the confidence of Catherine's friends, but would not justify further inference. Another letter which follows leaves no room for doubt. On the 15th of June Chapuys writes again.[117] "I have a letter from the Cardinal's physician, in which he tells me that his master, not knowing exactly the state of the Queen's affairs, cannot give any special advice upon them; but with fuller information would counsel and direct as if he was to gain Paradise by it, as on her depended his happiness, honour, and peace of mind. As things stood he thought that the Pope should proceed to the weightier censures, and should call in the secular arm; there was want of nerve in the way in which things were handled."[118] The calling in the secular arm meant invasion and open war. To advise it was treasonable in any English subject. There may be circumstances under which treason of such a kind might be morally defended. No defence, moral or political, can be made for Wolsey; and it was the more discreditable because at this time he was professing the utmost devotion to his King, and endeavouring to secure his confidence. Three different petitions Norfolk discovered him to have sent in, "desiring as much authority as ever he had." Norfolk no doubt watched him, and may have learnt enough to suspect what he was doing. The whispers and the messages through the intriguing physician had not gone unobserved. The King persisted in his generous confidence, and could not be persuaded that his old friend could be really treacherous,[119] but he consented to send him down to his diocese. Wolsey went, still affecting his old magnificence, with a train of six hundred knights and gentlemen; but he never reached his cathedral city. Chapuys heard, to his alarm, that the physician was arrested and was in the Tower. He congratulated himself that, were all revealed which had passed between him and Wolsey, nothing could be discovered which would compromise his own safety. But it was true that Wolsey's physician had betrayed his master, revealing secrets which he had bound himself never to tell. He had confessed, so Chapuys learnt, that the Cardinal had advised the Pope to excommunicate the King, if he did not send away the "Lady" from the court, hoping thus "to raise the country and obtain the management."[120] Too evidently the Cardinal had been intriguing, and not honourably, merely for his own purposes. He might have persuaded himself that the divorce would be injurious to the country; but after the part which he had played it was not for him to advise the Pope to strike at his master, whom he had himself tempted to go so deep with it. The King was convinced at last. Orders were sent down to arrest him and bring him back to London. He knew that all was now over with him, and that he would not be again forgiven. He refused to take food, and died on his way at Leicester Abbey on St. Andrew's Day. He was buried, it was observed, in the same church where the body lay of Richard III. One report said that he had starved himself; another that he had taken poison. Chapuys says "that he died like a good Christian, protesting that he had done nothing against the King." His designs had failed, whatever they might have been, and he ended his great career struggling ineffectually to conjure back into the vase the spirit which he had himself let loose. CHAPTER IX. Danger of challenging the Papal dispensing power--The Royal family of Spain--Address of the English Peers to the Pope--Compromise proposed by the Duke of Norfolk--The English Agents at Rome--Arrival of a new Nuncio in England--His interview with the King--Chapuys advises the King's excommunication--Position of the English clergy--Statute of Provisors--The clergy in a Præmunire--Remonstrances of the Nuncio--Despair of Catherine-- Her letter to the Pope--Henry prepares for war--The introduction of briefs from Rome forbidden--Warnings given to the Spanish Ambassador and the Nuncio. The question whether the Pope had power to license marriages within the forbidden degrees affected interests immeasurably wider than the domestic difficulties of Henry VIII. Innumerable connections had been contracted, in reliance upon Papal dispensations, the issue of which would be illegitimate if the authority was declared to be insufficient. The Emperor himself was immediately and personally concerned. Emmanuel of Portugal had been three times married. His first wife was Isabel, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, Catherine's sister and Charles's aunt. His second wife was her sister Maria; his third, Charles's sister Eleanor. Charles's own Empress was the child of the second of these marriages, and they had all been contracted under dispensations from Rome. A sudden change of the law or the recognition in a single instance that the Pope's authority in such matters might be challenged would create universal disturbance; and it was not for Catherine's sake alone that the Emperor had so peremptorily resisted Henry's demand. The difficulty would have been evaded had Catherine agreed to take the vows; and Henry himself, when Catherine refused, had been so far conscious of the objection that he had hitherto based his demand on the irregularity of the original Bull of Pope Julius. Clement had said often that a way could be found if Charles would consent; but Charles had not consented. In England, the marriage having been once challenged, a decision of some kind was necessary to avoid a disputed succession, and larger issues had now to be raised. The Emperor having dismissed the English Embassy at Bologna with scant courtesy, the Pope, as we have seen, had fallen back secretly on his old wish that Henry would take the matter into his own hands, disregard the inhibition, and marry as he pleased, without throwing the responsibility on himself. Henry, however, after the assurances which the Pope had given him, was determined that he should not escape in this way. He had gained or extorted a favourable opinion from his own learned corporations. Francis had assisted him to a similar opinion from the University of Paris. Confident in these authorities, a great body of English peers, spiritual and temporal, now presented a formal demand to Clement that the King's petition should be conceded, and intimated that if it was again refused they must seek a remedy for themselves. Wolsey himself signed, for the petition was drawn in the summer before his death. Archbishop Warham signed, followed by bishops, abbots, dukes, earls, and barons. Some, doubtless, had to strain their consciences, but the act as a whole must be taken as their own. The King, unless he was supported by the people, had no means of forcing them or of punishing them if they refused. Norfolk still laboured desperately to work upon Chapuys. He told him, before the address was despatched, that, as there seemed no other way of bringing the business to an end, he would sacrifice the greater part of what he owned in the world if God would be pleased to take to himself the Queen and his niece also,[121] for the King would never enjoy peace of mind till he had made another marriage, for the relief of his conscience and the tranquillity of the realm, which could only be secured by male posterity to succeed to the crown. The King, Norfolk said, could not plead at Rome, which was garrisoned by a Spanish army, and the Pope would do the Emperor's bidding if it was to dance in the streets in a clown's coat; the Queen objected to a trial in England; but could not a neutral place be found with impartial judges? Might not the Cardinal of Liège be trusted, and the Bishop of Tarbes? The blunt and honest Norfolk was an indifferent successor to the dexterous Cardinal. To wish that Catherine and Anne Boleyn were both dead was a natural, but not a valuable, aspiration. A neutral place of trial was, no doubt, desirable, and the Cardinal of Liège might be admissible, but de Tarbes would not do at all. "He had been one of the first," Chapuys remarked, "to put the fancy in the King's head."[122] At Rome the diplomatic fencing continued, the Pope secretly longing to "commit some folly" and to come to terms with Henry, while the Imperial agents kept their claws fixed upon him. In October Mai reported that Henry's representatives were insisting that Clement should dissolve the marriage without legal process, on the ground that the kingdom must have an heir, and because the King protested that he was living in mortal sin. If this could not be done, the Pope should at least promise that if the King married he should not be proceeded against. The Pope seemed too much inclined to listen;[123] but with Mai at his shoulder, he could not afford to be valiant. He was made to answer that he had done his best; but he could not reject the Queen's appeal; the King had not named a proctor to appear for him, and therefore delay had been unavoidable; the threat of the Peers in their address that unless the divorce was granted they would seek a remedy elsewhere, was unworthy of them, and could not have been sanctioned by the King; he had always wished to comply with the King's requests when it could be done with justice.[124] True to his policy of doing nothing and trusting to time, Clement hoped to tire Henry out by smooth words and hopes indirectly conveyed; but he was slowly swept on by the tide, and, when forced to act at all, had to act at Mai's dictation. The Nuncio in England had been too openly on Henry's side. A change was necessary. John Casalis was recalled. The Baron de Burgo was sent to succeed him, who was expected to be of sterner material. Chapuys had ascertained from two legal friends in the House of Commons that, when the next session opened, the divorce would be brought before Parliament, and that Parliament would stand by the King; also that M. du Bellay had come from Paris with promises from Francis to settle matters with the Pope afterwards, if the King cut the knot and married.[125] Unless the Emperor gave way, of which there was no hope, or unless the Pope dared the Emperor's displeasure, to which Clement was as disinclined as ever, a breach with the Papacy seemed now unavoidable. His Holiness still hoped, however, that there might be a third alternative. The new Nuncio reached England in the middle of September. He reported briefly that at his first interview the King told him that, unless the cause was committed to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the English Bishops, he would act for himself, since he knew that the Pope had promised the Emperor to declare for the Queen. Chapuys supplied the Emperor with fuller particulars of the interview. The Nuncio had declared to the King that, in view of the injury likely to ensue to the authority of the Church, "his Holiness would rather die or resign the Papacy than that the cause should not be settled to the mutual satisfaction of those concerned in it." The King, instead of replying graciously, as the Nuncio expected, had broken into violent abuse of the Pope himself and the whole Roman Court. The Church, Henry had said, required a thorough reformation, and the Church should have it. The Pope alone was to blame for the difficulty in which he found himself. He had sent him a brief from Orvieto, admitting the divorce to be a necessity, and now he had promised the Emperor, as he knew from good authority, that judgment should be given for the Queen. He would not endure such treatment. He would never consent that the cause should be decided at Rome, or in any place where either Pope or Emperor had jurisdiction. It was an ancient privilege of England, "that no cause having its origin in that kingdom should be advoked to another." If the Pope would not do him justice, he would appeal to his Parliament, which was about to assemble, and if the Emperor threatened him with war, he hoped to be able to defend himself. The Nuncio had deprecated precipitate action. If the King would only do nothing, the Pope, he said, would pause also, till an amicable settlement could be arrived at; but the King would promise nothing; "he would act as seemed best to himself." Henry being thus peremptory, Chapuys and the Nuncio had to consider what was to be done. The Pope, before the Nuncio's despatch, had received private advices from Wolsey, of which the Baron de Burgo had been informed. The evil, Wolsey had admitted, was too far gone for gentle treatment: it needed cautery and incision; but they must proceed cautiously. If the Pope used threats, the King would go at once to Parliament; there would then be war, in which France would take a part. Might not a personal interview be brought about between the King and the Emperor? The Nuncio could not see his way, but was willing to be guided by Chapuys. Chapuys was for instant action on the Pope's part. Moderation, he said, was useless. He believed (of course Wolsey had told him so) that, if the Pope would deliver sentence at Rome immediately, the King would find no one in the realm, or out of it, to help him in a quarrel against the Church. The responsibility ought not to be thrown upon the Emperor. The Pope must speak, and all good Catholics would be at his side.[126] The Nuncio agreed. The clergy in England were irritated and alarmed, and the opportunity was favourable. The Nuncio and the Ambassadors decided between them that the Pope was to be advised to end the cause at once, threaten the King with excommunication, and let a copy of the brief be in England before Parliament opened. Chapuys, well as he thought that he understood England, had something to learn about it which was to be a disagreeable surprise. He had imagined that the Pope's authority, when boldly asserted there, had never been successfully resisted. Tradition remembered Anselm and Becket. It had forgotten the legislation of the Edwards and of Richard II. According to Chapuys, the Pope was to issue a brief forbidding Parliament to meddle in the divorce case. There were laws on the statute book which forbade the interference of the Pope under any circumstances in the internal affairs of the English realm. Should the Pope, by bull or brief, by presentation to offices of the Church or by delegation of his authority, attempt to exercise direct jurisdiction in England to the prejudice of the rights of the Crown, all persons who introduced such bulls or briefs, who recognized the Pope's pretensions or acted on his orders, fell under Præmunire--a vague but terrible consequence, almost as fatal as a proved charge of treason. The statutes had been long obsolete. The sword was in its scabbard. Wolsey had forgotten their existence when he sought and accepted the position of Legate of the Holy See. Henry had forgotten them when he applied for a Legatine commission to try his cause in London. The clergy who had claimed to be independent of the State, to be an _imperium in imperio_ with the Pope at their head, the officials who had made the name of a Church court execrated in every county in England--all had forgotten them. But the Acts themselves were unrepealed, and survived as a monument of the spirit of a past generation. Doubtless it was known that the Pope was being urged to violence. Doubtless it was known that large numbers of the clergy were prepared to stand by him, in terror at the threatened Reformation. The blow was to be parried by an appeal to the historical precedents of the realm. These impatient persons were to learn that, instead of joining in attack upon the King, they would have enough to do to purchase their pardons for their own offences. The well-tempered steel sprang to light again bright as ever, and while the Nuncio was dreaming of excommunication and interdict, he learnt to his astonishment that the subject coming before Parliament was not the divorce of the Queen, but the position of the whole spiritualty of the realm. By recognising Wolsey as Legate from the Holy See the entire clergy were found to be under Præmunire. On the divorce, perhaps, or on excommunication arising out of it, there might still have been a difference of opinion in Parliament; but the Papal authority was now to be argued there on the lines of the past development of English liberty. Notice of what was coming was given at the beginning of October by a proclamation warning all persons of the illegality of introducing briefs from Rome. The Nuncio rushed to the council chamber; he saw the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk; he asked passionately what was meant? what was the Pope accused of? what English privileges had he violated? why had he not been warned beforehand? The two Dukes answered "that they cared nothing for Pope or Popes in England--not even if St. Peter himself came to life again. The King was Emperor and Pope in his own dominions. The Pope was alienating the English people, and, if he wished to recover their affection, he must deserve it by attending to their petitions."[127] The Nuncio assumed a bold face and told them they would find themselves mistaken if they thought they could intimidate the Holy See. He applied to the King. Henry told him that nothing had been published to the Pope's injury. He was merely using his prerogative to guard against opposition to the ordinances which he had made, or was about to make, for the reformation of the clergy. He had gone promptly to work, lest the Pope should issue an inhibition. The Nuncio knew not what to make of it. Queen Catherine was greatly disturbed; she feared the edict was a proof that the King was not afraid of the Pope after all. On the whole, the Nuncio considered that an attempt was being made to frighten him, and he sent off fresh letters advising the Pope to proceed at once to pass sentence.[128] Henry was, in fact, checkmating them all. With the help of the revived Statute of Provisors he was able to raise the whole question of the Pope's authority in England without fresh legislation on present points of difference. Parliament, which was to have met in October, was prorogued till January, to mature the intended measures. The King went to Hampton Court. He sent for the Nuncio to come to him. He told him that by the citation to Rome the Pope had violated the privileges of sovereign princes, and had broken the promise which he had given him in writing at Orvieto. If the Pope showed no more consideration for him, he would have to show that the Pope's pretension to authority was a usurpation, and very serious consequences would then follow. The King, the Nuncio said, spoke with much show of regret and with tears in his eyes. He added that the present Parliament had been called at the request of the nation for the restraint of the clergy. They were so hated throughout the realm, both by nobles and people, that, but for his protection, they would be utterly destroyed. He should wait to take action till February, to see whether the Pope would meanwhile change his conduct towards him.[129] Norfolk, to whom the Nuncio went next, gave him no comfort; he said that, "though Queen Catherine was a good woman, her coming to England had been the curse of the country;" God had shown his displeasure at the marriage by denying the King a male heir; if the King should die without a son, old feuds would be reopened and the realm would be plunged into misery. It was not tolerable that the vital interests of England should be sacrificed to the Emperor. He advised the Nuncio to use his influence with the Pope. "The King's severity might then perhaps be modified." One more direct appeal was made by Henry himself to Clement. "Finding his just demands neglected, the requests of the King of France unattended to, and the address of his nobles despised and derided," he perceived, he said, that the Pope was wholly devoted to the Emperor's will, and ordained, prorogued and altered to serve the times. He required the Pope, therefore, to set down in writing his grounds for rejecting his suit. He demanded once more that the cause should be heard in England before indifferent judges. "The laws of the realm would not suffer the contrary; he abhorred contention, but would not brook denial."[130] Queen Catherine was in despair. The hearing of the cause had again been postponed at Rome. A party in her favour had been formed in the House of Commons, but were at a loss what course to follow. If the Pope would give a decision they would know what to do, but the delay of sentence seemed to imply that he was himself uncertain where the right really lay. They questioned Chapuys whether any directions had arrived from Rome on which to rest their opposition, hoping perhaps that an inhibitory brief had been issued. Opposition, they feared, would be useless without further action at the Papal Court. "The Pope," Chapuys said, "had been so dilatory and so dissembling that he was not in favour with either side."[131] A change was passing over public feeling. Every day gave strength to the King's cause. Archbishop Warham, who had been hitherto for the Queen, was beginning to waver, and even to think that he might try the suit in his own court.[132] The Queen, the Nuncio, the Bishop of Rochester, and the friends who remained staunch to her agreed unanimously that the boldest course would be the wisest. Immediate sentence at Rome in the Queen's favour was the only remedy. Gentleness was thrown away. Let the King see that the Pope was really in earnest, and he would not venture to go further. Catherine herself wrote to Clement with the passion of a suffering woman. "Delay," she said, "would be the cause of a new hell upon earth, the remedy for which would be worse than the worst that had ever yet been tried."[133] She did not blame the King. The fault was with the wicked counsellors who misled him. Once delivered out of their hands, he would be as dutiful a son of the Church as he had ever been.[134] It is noticeable throughout that each of the two parties assumed that the Pope's judgment when he gave it must be on its own side. The King demanded a sentence in favour of the divorce; the Queen and the Emperor a sentence that the marriage was good. The Pope was to try the cause; but neither admitted that the right or the wrong was doubtful, or that the Pope must hear the arguments before he could decide. Doubtless they were justified in so regarding the Pope's tribunal. The trial would be undertaken, if a trial there was to be, with a foregone conclusion; but what kind of a court of justice could the Rota be if it could be so spoken of, and its master so be addressed? Most idolatries pass through the same stage. The idol is whipped before he is finally discarded. The Holy Ghost is still invited to assist the Cathedral Chapters in the choice of a Bishop, but must choose the person already named by the Prime Minister under pain of Præmunire. Men should choose their idols better. Reasonable beings are not fit objects of such treatment. Much is to be said in favour of stuffed straw or the graven image, which the scourge itself cannot force to speak. Anne Boleyn was jubilant. "She is braver than a lion," wrote Chapuys. She said to one of the Queen's ladies that she wished all the Spaniards in the world were in the sea. The lady told her such language was disrespectful to her mistress. She said she cared nothing for the Queen, and would rather see her hanged than acknowledge her as her mistress.[135] Clement, goaded by Micer Mai, issued at last a second brief, repeating the terms of the first, again forbidding the second marriage, and threatening Parliaments, Bishops, and Divines in England if they dared to interfere. But between a brief and the execution of it was a long interval. Sentence on the original cause he would not pass; and in leaving his final decision doubtful he left opinion free to the rest of the world. The brief was to be presented by the Nuncio. The Pope accompanied it with a deprecatory, and not undignified, letter to Henry from himself.[136] Chapuys feared that "by his loose talk" Clement was secretly encouraging the King. The brief might bring on a crisis. He did not relish the prospect of remaining in England "in the boiling vortex likely to be opened." But as the Queen insisted that he should stay, he pressed unceasingly for "excommunication and interdict." "The Emperor might then make effectual war with the English. They would lose their trade with Spain and Flanders, and the disaffection to the King and Council would be greatly increased."[137] On the spot and surrounded by an atmosphere of passion, Chapuys was in favour of war. The Emperor, still unwilling to part with the hereditary friendship of England, was almost as reluctant as Clement. He had supposed that Henry was influenced by a passing infatuation, that by supporting Catherine he would please the greater part of the nation, and ultimately, perhaps, secure the gratitude of Henry himself. He had not allowed for the changes which were passing over the mind of the English people. He had not foreseen the gathering indignation of a proud race jealous of their liberties when they saw him dictating to the Spiritual Judge of Europe on a question which touched their own security. But he had gone too far to draw back. He found himself sustained, not only by Spanish opinion, but by the part of his subjects about whom he had felt most uneasy. The Italian universities had for the most part gone with Paris and declared against the dispensing power. In Germany Henry had been disappointed. The King of England had been an old antagonist of Luther. Sir Thomas More, as Chancellor, had been enforcing the heresy laws against Luther's English proselytes with increased severity. The Lutherans in turn declared decidedly against Henry's divorce. The Emperor was their feudal sovereign. They saw no reason for entering into a new quarrel with him on a cause which, so far as they understood, was none of their own. Henry was evidently alarmed. Chapuys reported that he was busy building ships, casting cannon, repairing fortresses, and replenishing the Tower arsenal, as if conscious that he might have serious work before him. The Emperor still clung to the belief that he would be afraid to persevere, and Chapuys himself began to think that the Emperor might be more right than himself, and that the storm might pass off. No sign, however, appeared of yielding. The new brief was known to have been issued, and to have been forwarded to the Nuncio. Not contented with the warning already given by proclamation, Norfolk on the 13th of January sent for Chapuys to draw his attention once more to the law. The introduction of briefs from Rome touching the honour and authority of the Crown was forbidden by Act of Parliament. It was understood that "certain decretals" had been procured by the Queen's friends, and were about to be published. The Duke desired the Ambassador to know that if the Pope came in person to present such briefs he would be torn in pieces by the people. It was not a new question. Popes had tried in past times to usurp authority in England. The King's predecessors had always resisted, and the present King would resist also. Kings were before Popes. The King was master in his own dominions. If any such decretal came into the Ambassador's hands, the Duke warned him not to issue it.[138] Imperialist officials were more accustomed to dictate to others than to submit to commands. Chapuys was brave, and, when occasion required, could be haughty to insolence. He thanked the Duke for giving him the notice. "He would not argue," he said, "on the authority possessed by Popes over disobedient kings and kingdoms. It was a notorious fact in full practice at that very time. His curiosity had not extended so far as the study of the English statute book, and on such points he must refer the Council to the Nuncio. For himself he could only say he thought they would have done better if they had not given occasion for such 'briefs' from the Pope. The Emperor would not consent to an unreasonable sentence against the King, for he regarded him as his ally and friend, but he could assure the Duke that if his master was to direct him to assist the publication of any Papal brief in England he would unquestionably execute his Majesty's commands. As to the nation at large, he did not think they would resist the Pope's decretals. He thought, on the contrary, they would help their execution with all their power. Truth and justice must reign everywhere, even among thieves and in hell. The Church of Christ was never so unprovided with defenders as to be unable to carry the world with her, and the English would have no right to complain if the Emperor, having exhausted all means of conciliation, caused justice to take her course."[139] Such language could bear but one meaning. Chapuys perhaps intended to frighten Norfolk. The Duke was suspected to be less staunch in support of the King than he professed to be in Council. The Duchess was a fiery partisan of Catherine, and a close intimate of the Ambassador himself. He thought that he had produced an impression; but Norfolk answered at last that, "if the King could take another wife he certainly would;" the Pope had no business to interfere, except in cases of heresy.[140] To the Nuncio the Duke gave the same warning which he had given to the Ambassador, drawing special attention to the pains and penalties to which disobedience would make him liable. The Nuncio answered, like Chapuys, that at whatever cost he would obey the Pope's orders, and "would die if necessary for his lord and master." CHAPTER X. State of feeling in England--Clergy and laity--The Clergy in a Præmunire-- The Royal Supremacy--Hesitation at Rome--Submission of the Clergy--The meaning of the new title--More and Fisher--Alarm of the Emperor--Appeal of Catherine to him--Unpopularity of Anne Boleyn--Threats of excommunication--Determination of Henry--Deputation of Peers to Catherine--Catherine's reply--Intolerable pretensions of the Emperor-- Removal of Catherine from the Court. A struggle was now inevitable between the King and the Pope, and the result of it would depend on the sentiments of the English nation. Chapuys and the Nuncio believed the majority of the people to be loyally attached to the see of Rome. To the Pope as pope the King and Council were willing to submit; but a pope who was the vassal and mouthpiece of another secular sovereign, they believed the country would support them in refusing to acknowledge. Was Chapuys right or was the King? The Parliament about to open would decide. In the clergy of England the Pope had a ready-made army completely at his devotion. In asserting their independence of civil control the clerical order had been conscious that they could not stand alone, and had attached themselves with special devotion to their Spiritual Sovereign at Rome. They might complain of annates and first-fruits and other tributes which they were made to pay; but the Pope's support they knew to be essential to the maintenance of their professional privileges; and in any contest which might arise they were certain to be found on the side of the Holy See. The hero of the imagination of every English priest was Becket of Canterbury. In theory he regarded the secular prince as ruling only by delegation from the Supreme Pontiff, and as liable in case of contumacy to be deposed. In case of quarrel between the clergy and the State the enormous influence of the Church was pledged to the order and to its chief at Rome. The spiritualty were already exasperated by the clipping of their claws in the last session. From the Bishop of Rochester, who represented clerical opinion in its most accentuated form, from great ladies, and from a party of the nobles with whom, as Catherine's friends, he mainly associated, Chapuys had heard unanimous censures of the King's conduct. These persons told him that the whole nation agreed with them, and certainly the opposition of a body so powerful as the clergy was by itself formidable. Before it came to war, therefore, with the Pontiff, the King had prepared his measures to disarm the Pontiff's legionaries. To clip their claws was not enough. Their mouths had to be held with bit and bridle. Parliament, after repeated prorogations, was opened at last in January. Convocation, which was called simultaneously, was put formally in possession of a fact which had appeared on the first rumour of it incredible--that the whole body of the clergy lay under Præmunire for having recognised Cardinal Wolsey's legation and the Papal Bull by which it was instituted. It was an intimation that the old English laws were awake again. The clergy were subjects of the Crown, not of the Pope, and to impress the fact upon their minds they learnt that legally their property was forfeited, that they would obtain their pardon only on paying a fine of a hundred thousand pounds, and on distinctly acknowledging the King as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Chapuys's correspondence explained the motives of the Government in extorting the confession; and justified the arbitrary use which was made of the Præmunire. The Pope was being urged to excommunicate the King and declare him deposed. The clergy, through whom the Pope would act, were to be forced to admit that they were subjects of the Crown and were bound to obey the laws of their country. It was in no idle vanity, no ambitious caprice that Henry VIII. demanded the title which has been so much debated. It was as a practical assertion of the unity and independence of the realm. England was to have but one sovereign supreme within her own limits, with whom no foreign prince, secular or spiritual, had a right to interfere; and an acknowledgement of their obligation was demanded in ample form from the order which looked elsewhere for its superior. The black regiments were to be compelled to swear allegiance to the proper sovereign. Clement's mind had always misgiven him that, if he pushed Henry too far, mischief would befall him. He had refused the last brief till it was extorted from him.[141] As if Mai had not been pressing and vehement enough, Catherine had now at Rome a special representative of her own, Dr. Ortiz, a bitter Catholic theologian with the qualities which belong to that profession. Mai and Ortiz together, listening to no excuse, drove the Pope on from day to day, demanding sentence with its inevitable consequence. The Cardinals were alarmed. One of them told Mai that, in his opinion, the original dispensation really was void, that Julius had no faculty to dispense in such a case. The Pope suggested that the affair might be suspended for two years. It might then, perhaps, drop and be forgotten. He enquired whether, if the King consented to plead by proxy before him, the Emperor would agree to _any accommodation_. Should the case go on, it might last fifteen or twenty years. All the Cardinals, said Mai, nay, the Pope himself, would like to put off the affair entirely, to avoid trouble.[142] The Court of Rome had, in fact, discovered at last that matters were really serious, that Henry would not be played with, and that the quarrel must be peaceably settled. Mai and Ortiz were furious. They insisted on immediate action. Delay, they said, would be injurious to the Queen. Their orders were to urge the Pope to proceed and pass sentence, whether the parties appeared or not. They hinted that very soon there would be no more trouble from England; they had been told, and they believed, that, with the clergy on Catherine's side, a Papal decree would end the whole business. Their confidence was shaken and their activity rudely arrested by the news of the Præmunire and the demand for the submission of the English clergy. Too well the meaning of it was understood. On Chapuys and the Nuncio it fell like a thunderbolt. They held an anxious consultation, and they agreed on the least wise measure which they could possibly have adopted. The Nuncio, as representing the majesty of the Holy See, determined to go himself to Convocation, and exhort the Bishops to uphold the Church and resist the King and the House of Commons. He actually went, and was much astonished at the reception which he met with. The right reverend body was so "scandalised" at his intrusion that they entreated him to withdraw, without giving him time to declare his errand. They told him that, if he had anything to say, "he must address himself to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was not then present." The Nuncio had to withdraw precipitately. In his vexation he had not even the prudence to depart quietly, but insisted on thrusting on the Bishop of London the words which he had meant to speak.[143] The Bishops and clergy themselves were compelled to submit to the inevitable. The law under which they suffered had marked an epoch of successful resistance to Papal usurpation. The revival of it was to mark another and a greater. They struggled long enough and violently enough to deprive their resistance of dignity, and then, "swearing they would never consent," consented. They agreed to pay the hundred thousand pounds as the price of their pardon. They agreed, in accepting it, to acknowledge the King as Supreme Head of the English Church, and, to ease their conscience, they were allowed to introduce as a qualifying phrase, _quantum per legem Christi licet_. But the law of Christ would avail them little for their special privileges. It would have to be interpreted by the rejection of another form which they had desired to substitute and were not allowed. For "_legem Christi_" they had desired to read "_legem Ecclesiæ_." The supposed claims of the Church were precisely what they were to be compelled to disavow. It was done. The enchantment was gone from them. They had become as other men, shorn Samsons and no longer dangerous. The Pope might say what he pleased. The clergy were now the King's servants, and not the Pope's, and must either support the Crown or become confessed traitors. Thus when the Brief arrived, the Nuncio was allowed to present it. The King took it with a smile and passed it on to the Privy Council, talked to him good-humouredly of indifferent matters, and had never been more polite. In a light way he told the Nuncio that he knew of his attempt to persuade the Bishops to agree to nothing to the Pope's prejudice; but his anxiety was unnecessary; no injury would be done to the Pope, unless the Pope brought it upon himself. The King's graciousness was but too intelligible. To Catherine and Chapuys and all their friends the meaning of it was that Henry had made himself "Pope" in England. The Queen foresaw her own fate as too sure to follow. She feared "that, since the King was not ashamed of doing such monstrous things, and there being no one who could or dared contradict him, he might, one of these days, undertake some further outrage against her own person."[144] The blame of the defeat was thrown on the unfortunate Clement. The Pope's timidity and dissimulation, wrote Chapuys, had produced the effect which he had all along foretold. It had prejudiced the Queen's interests and his own authority. Her cause was making no progress. The Pope had promised Mai that if the King disobeyed his first brief and allowed Anne Boleyn to remain at court he would excommunicate him, and now all that he had done had been to issue another conditional brief less strong than the first, and the Lady was left defiant and with as much authority as ever. The Queen had begun to think that the Pope had no desire to settle the matter, and, as Norfolk observed to Chapuys, was glad that the Princes should be at discord, for fear they might combine to reform the clergy. If the Pope had directly ordered the King to separate from the Lady Anne, the King would never have claimed the supremacy[145] which had caused such universal consternation. The Chancellor [Sir Thomas More] was so horrified at it, Chapuys said, that he would quit office as soon as possible. The Bishop of Rochester was sick with grief. He opposed as much as he could; but they threatened to fling him and his friends into the river, so he had to yield at last, and had taken to his bed in despair. The Bishops, it was thought, would now do anything against the Queen which they were ordered, especially seeing how cold and indifferent the Pope seemed about her fate. The Nuncio had questioned the King about the nature of his new Papacy. The King told him that if the Pope showed him proper respect he might retain his lawful authority, "otherwise he knew what he would himself do."[146] The last words were explained in another letter in which Chapuys said that the Lady Anne was supporting the Lutherans. They had been treated to prison and stake while More had held the seals. On More's retirement they were now to have an easier time of it. Between them and the King there was the link of a common enemy in the Pope, and the King was showing a disposition to protect them. The revival of the Præmunire created embarrassments of many kinds. The Pope had officials of his own in England and Ireland, whom he appointed himself, and could not realise the extent of the change which he had brought on. It is amusing to find him in the midst of the storm peacefully soliciting Henry for help against the Turks, and the Nuncio paying friendly visits to the palace. Henry told him that he had made a final appeal to Rome and was waiting to see the result. The Pope might excommunicate him if he pleased; he cared nothing for his excommunication; the Emperor might, no doubt, hurt him; but he was not sure that the Emperor desired to hurt him, or, if it came to that, he could defend himself and the realm. Norfolk was equally decided. They knew, he said, that the Queen and the Emperor were pressing the Pope for sentence, but it was time lost. If the Pope issued ten thousand excommunications, no notice would be taken of them. The Archbishop and not the Pope was the lawful judge in English causes. Chapuys expressed a hope that a day would come when the King would listen to his true friends again, etc. "You will see before long," replied the Duke, "that the Emperor will repent of not having consented to the divorce."[147] In fact, the Emperor had begun to repent already, or, if not to repent, yet to be perplexed with the addition which his action had brought upon him to his many burdens. The Præmunire and the successful establishment of the authority of the Crown over the clergy had startled all Europe. The King and Parliament, it had been universally supposed, would yield before a threat of excommunication. When it appeared that they were as careless of the Pope's curses as Luther and the Elector of Saxony, the affair wore another aspect. Even the Imperialist Cardinals in the Consistory came round to the Pope's own view and wished to let the cause rest for two or three years. Mai feared that such a course might lead to _Novedades_ or revolution, but admitted that much might be said for it, especially considering the difficulties in Germany. He ceased to press the Pope for immediate sentence, and Dr. Ortiz, Catherine's passionate agent, complained that he found the Emperor's Ambassador growing cold and less eager to support his own arguments.[148] Catherine, seeing her clerical friends prostrated, could but renew her entreaties to her own relations. Her position was growing daily weaker. The nation, seeing the Pope confining himself to weak threats and unable or unwilling to declare her marriage valid, was rapidly concluding that on the main question the King was right, and that to throw the realm into a convulsion for an uncertainty was not tolerable. No appeal had as yet been made to Parliament, but "the King of France," Catherine wrote to Charles, "has asked the Pope to delay sentence. If this be allowed, the means now employed by these people to gain the consent of the nation to his second marriage are such that they will obtain what they desire and accomplish my ruin at the next session. If the delay be not already granted, I entreat your Highness not to consent to it. Insist that the Pope shall give judgment before next October, when Parliament will meet again. Forgive my importunity. I cannot rest till justice is done to me. For the love of Heaven let it be done before the time I name. I myself, if it must be so, shall go to Parliament and declare before its members the justice of my case."[149] The harassed Pope was obstinately cautious, and occasionally even turned upon his persecutors. Mai now urged him to call a General Council and settle all questions. The word "council" rang painfully in Papal ears. Why did not the Emperor make war upon the Lutherans? he pettishly asked. Mai told him the Lutherans were rich and stubborn and strong, and it would be an endless work. Why not then, said Clement, begin with the Swiss, who were not so strong? Mai answered that it could not be. The heretics everywhere made common cause, and the Emperor could not fight them all single-handed. The Pope sighed, and said he feared there would be little help from France and England.[150] In England events moved steadily on, without hesitation, yet without precipitation. The Bishops were not yet agreed on the divorce. At the close of the session (March, 1531) Sir Thomas More read in the Upper House the opinions which had been collected from the Universities at home and abroad, and a debate ensued upon them.... London and Lincoln were on the King's side. St. Asaph and Bath were of opinion that Parliament had no right to interfere. Norfolk cut the argument short by saying that the documents had been introduced merely to be read. There was no proposal before the House. More said briefly that the King knew what his opinion was, and that he need not repeat it. The judgments were sent down to the House of Commons, where Chapuys persuaded himself that they were heard with more displeasure than approval. The session ended, and Parliament was prorogued till the following autumn. The Emperor himself wrote to More. The letter was forwarded through Chapuys, who wished to deliver it in person. More declined his visit and declined the letter. If it was placed in his hand, he said, he must communicate it to the King. Parliament having risen, there was again a breathing time.[151] So far as the persons of the two ladies were concerned who were the central figures in the quarrel, there was little difference of opinion in England. The Duke of Norfolk, who represented the feelings of the great body of the nation, thought that the interests of the succession made the divorce a necessity. The realm could not be left exposed to the risk of another civil war. He was jealous of the honour and liberties of the country, and ill liked to see a question which touched them so nearly left to the pleasure of the Emperor. But Norfolk as much admired Catherine as he disliked his niece, and there were probably few English statesmen who did not regret that a public cause should have been tainted by a love-affair. All the leading men regretted that the King had fastened his choice upon a person neither liked nor respected. Anne's antecedents were unfavourable. Her elevation had turned her brain; she had made herself detested for her insolence and dreaded for her intrigues. Catherine, on the other hand, was a princess of royal birth and stainless honour. The Duke observed to the Marquis of Exeter that it was a wonder to see her courage--nothing seemed to frighten her; "the Devil and no other," he said, "must have originated so wretched a business." The same view of the matter was growing at Rome in the Pope and among the Cardinals. The Bishop of Tarbes, who represented Francis at the Papal Court, warned Clement that the loss of England might be the loss of France also. If the King of England, he said, was driven to desperation, the miserable divorce suit would be the ruin of the world; Francis would and must stand by him if the Pope proceeded to excommunication. His impatience with his marriage might be unreasonable, but was no adequate ground for the convulsion of Catholic Christendom. Clement was at heart of the same opinion. The course which he wished to follow was to delay indefinitely. A formal suspension would not be needed. They had only to go on slowly. The King would then most likely marry, and the cause would drop. Andrea de Burgo, Ferdinand's ambassador, said that the Emperor was strong enough to settle the matter by himself. "Not so strong as you think," Clement observed. "Between the Turks and the Lutherans the Emperor may have trouble enough of his own."[152] The Pope's unwillingness was well understood in England. He made another faint effort to save Catherine; he ordered the Nuncio to announce to Henry that the brief must be obeyed, or "justice would have its course." Believing that the message would be resented, the Nuncio hesitated to deliver it, but, encouraged by Chapuys, at last demanded audience and informed Henry in the Pope's name what he was to expect if he persisted. Henry shortly answered that the Pope was losing his time. He already knew what the Nuncio had come to tell him, but, once for all, he would never accept the Pope as his judge in an affair concerning himself and the English nation. "The Pope may excommunicate me," he said. "I care not a fig for his excommunication. Let him do as he wills at Rome. I will do here as I will.... I take the Pope to be a worthy man on the whole, but ever since the last war he has been so afraid of the Emperor that he dares not act against his wishes."[153] The most obvious resource was to adopt the suggestion already made that the case should be transferred to Cambray, or to some other spot not open to objection, where it could be heard with impartiality. Clement himself was weary of the struggle, and eager to escape from it by any reasonable means. If Catherine would agree, Charles was unlikely to hesitate; but, though weary and worn out with disappointments, she was a resolute woman, and as long as she persisted the Emperor was determined not to desert her. With small hope of success, but as an experiment which it was thought desirable to try, a deputation of Peers and Bishops were commissioned to see Catherine, to ask her to withdraw her demand for an immediate sentence, and consent that the cause should be tried in a neutral place; while the Pope, through his Legate in Spain, made a similar proposition to Charles. The Queen heard that they were coming, and prepared for them by causing several "masses of the Holy Ghost" to be said, that she might be enlightened how to answer. The delegates arrived shortly after the masses were completed, the two Dukes, Lord Exeter, Earls, Barons, Bishops, and canon lawyers, thirty of them in all. Norfolk spoke for the rest. He said that the King had been treated with contempt and vituperation by the Pope on her account; he had been cited to appear personally at Rome--a measure never before enforced by any pope against an English king. He could not go; he could not leave his kingdom--nor could the dispute be settled by the Pope's insistence on it. A fitter place and fitter judges must be chosen by the mutual consent of the parties, or she would be the cause of trouble and scandal to them and their posterity. The Duke entreated her to consider the consequences of refusal--to remember the many good services which the King had rendered to her father and to the Emperor, and to allow the constitution of some other court before which the King could plead. In itself the demand was reasonable. It was impossible for a king of England to plead before the Pope, in the power, as he was, of the Emperor, who was himself a party interested in the dispute. A neutral place might have been easily found. Neutral judges might be less easily procurable; but none could be less fit than his Holiness. The Queen, however, replied stoutly as ever that her cause should be judged by the Pope and by no one else; not that she expected any favour at his hands; so far the Pope had shown himself so partial to the King that more could not be asked of him; she, and not the King, had cause to complain of his Holiness; but the Pope held the place and had the power of God upon earth, and was the image of eternal truth. To him, and only to him, she remitted her case. If trouble came, it would be the work of others, not of her. She allowed that in past times the King had assisted her relations. The Emperor had not denied it, and was the King's true friend. With a scornful allusion to the Supremum Caput, she said, the King might be Lord and Master in temporal matters, but the Pope was the true Sovereign and Vicar of God in matters spiritual, of which matrimony was one.[154] The Spanish Legate had succeeded no better with Charles, who returned a peremptory refusal; but so little confidence had the Emperor in the true Sovereign and Vicar of God that he insisted not merely that the Pope _should try the case but should try it in his own presence, lest the Queen's interests should suffer injury_. The request itself indicated a disposition on the Pope's part to evade his duty. Charles gave him to understand, in language sufficiently peremptory, that he intended that duty to be done.[155] In this direction there was no hope. Catherine had been even more emphatic with the deputation. After her reply to Norfolk, the bishops and lawyers took up the word. She always denied that she had been Prince Arthur's actual wife. She herself on all occasions courted the subject, and was not afraid of indelicacy. The Church doctors responded. They said she had slept with Prince Arthur, and the presumptions were against her. She bade them go plead their presumptions at Rome, where they would have others than a woman to answer them. She was astonished, she said, to see so many great people gathered against a lone lady without friends or counsel. Among the great persons before her she had still some staunch friends. Anne Boleyn was detested by them all; and those who, like Norfolk, wished her, for her own sake, to be less uncompromising could not refuse to admire the gallant spirit of Isabella's daughter. But, alas! the refusal to allow the cause to be heard in a free city, before an impartial tribunal, was equivalent to a consciousness that, unless by a court under the Emperor's control, an unfavourable judgment was to be looked for. They could not, any one of them, allow their Sovereign to plead where an Imperial Minister could threaten the lives of uncompliant Cardinals. But, unless every knightly feeling had been dead in them, they could not have refused their sympathy. Had the Pope spoken plainly from the first, most of the Peers would perhaps have stood by the lady before them with voice and sword. But the Pope had allowed that the King was in the right. He had drawn back only under compulsion, and even at that moment was only prevented by fear from deciding on the King's side. Glad as they might have been had the question never been raised, they could not submit their Prince to the indignity of a condemnation by a coerced tribunal--a tribunal which was to be trusted to proceed only, as it now appeared, in the Emperor's own presence. They carried the answer back to their master. "I feared it would be so," he said, "knowing as I do the heart and temper of the Queen. We must now provide in some other way." Norfolk, who wished well to the Queen, regretted that she had taken a course so little likely to profit her. "The Emperor's action," he said, "in causing the King to be cited to Rome was outrageous and unprecedented. The cause ought to be tried in England, and the Queen had been unwise in rejecting the advice of the Peers."[156] The Emperor on reflection reconsidered his own first refusal to allow the cause to be transferred; to insist on the trial being conducted before himself was really intolerable, and he drew a more moderate reply; but he still persisted that the Pope alone should hear the case, and decide it in the Queen's favour. "The affair," he said, "was of such a nature as to admit of no solution save the declaring that a marriage contracted with the authority and license of the Holy See was valid and indissoluble. As the patron and defender of the Apostolic See he was more in duty bound than any other Prince to remove and defend all small offences and disputes." In fact he still advanced a claim of sovereign jurisdiction which it was impossible for England to allow.[157] Catherine was well aware that the Pope had been a party to the request for the removal of her cause, and bitterly she railed at him. Charles sent her a copy of his own answer. It reassured her, if she had doubted; she saw that, let Clement struggle how he would, she could be confident that her nephew would compel him to decide for her. The Pope, she announced, was responsible for all that had happened by refusing to do her justice. This last move showed that he was as little disposed to apply the remedy[158] as he had been. If the cause was removed from Rome, the judges, whoever they might be, would declare that black was white.[159] Up to this time Catherine had continued at the Court with her own apartments, and with the Princess Mary as her companion. She had refused the only available means of a peaceful arrangement, and was standing out, avowedly resting on the Emperor's protection. She was not reticent. She spoke out freely of her wrongs and her expectations. To separate mother and daughter would have been a needless aggravation had the suit been between private individuals. But Mary was a public person with her own rights on the succession. It was found necessary to remove Catherine from London and to place the Princess out of reach of her influence. Moor Park, which had been a country-house of Wolsey's, was assigned for the Queen's residence, while Mary was sent to the palace at Richmond. Catherine was too proud to resist when resistance would be useless, but she said she would prefer the Tower.[160] The Nuncio remonstrated. He advised the King "to recall her to the Court and shut a hundred thousand tongues." The King replied, "nearly in tears," that he had sent her away because she used such high words and was always threatening him with the Emperor.[161] Of Mary, Henry was personally fond. He met her one day in Richmond Park, spoke affectionately to her, and regretted that he saw her so seldom. She cannot be where the Lady is, said Chapuys, "because the Lady has declared that she will not have it, nor hear of her." She would not even allow the King to speak to Mary without being watched on the occasion just mentioned. She sent two of her people to report what passed between them.[162] CHAPTER XI. Proposals for the reunion of Christendom--Warning addressed to the Pope-- Address of the English nobles to Queen Catherine--Advances of Clement to Henry--Embarrassments of the Pope and the Emperor--Unwillingness of the Pope to decide against the King--Business in Parliament--Reform of the English Church--Death of Archbishop Warham--Bishop Fisher and Chapuys-- Question of annates--Papal Briefs--The Pope urged to excommunicate Henry-- The Pope refuses--Anger of Queen Catherine's Agent. The unity of Christendom was not to be broken in pieces without an effort to preserve it. Charles V. was attempting impossibilities in his own dominions, labouring for terms on which the Lutheran States might return to the Church. He had brought the Pope to consent to the "communion in both kinds," and to the "marriage of priests"--a vast concession, which had been extorted by Micer Mai in the intervals of the discussions on the divorce. Efforts which fail are forgotten, but they represent endeavours at least honourable. Catherine was absorbed in her own grievances. Charles gave them as much attention as he could spare, but had other things to think of. As long as he could prevent Clement from taking any fatal step, he supposed that he had done enough. He had at least done all that he could, and he had evidently allowed Chapuys to persuade him that Henry's course would be arrested at the last extremity by his own subjects. He left Mai to watch the Pope, and Ortiz to urge for sentence; but when the pressure of his own hand relaxed his agents could effect but little. The English Parliament was to open again in January. The King's Commissioners at Rome informed the Consistory that if it was decided finally to try the cause at Rome they were to take their leave, and the King would thenceforward regard the Pope as his public enemy.[163] The threat "produced a great impression." The Pope had no wish to be Henry's enemy in order to please the Emperor. Mai and Ortiz told him that the English menaces were but words; he had but to speak and England would submit. The Pope did not believe it, and became again "lax and procrastinating."[164] The English nobles made a last effort to move Catherine. Lord Sussex, Sir William Fitzwilliam, and Lee, Archbishop of York, who had been her warm supporter, waited on her at Moor Park to urge her, if she would not allow the case to be tried at Cambray, to permit it to be settled by a commission of bishops and lawyers. The Pope confessedly was not free to give his own opinion, and English causes could not be ruled by the Emperor. If Catherine had consented, it is by no means certain that Anne Boleyn would have been any more heard of. A love which had waited for five years could not have been unconquerable; and it was possible and even probable in the existing state of opinion that some other arrangement might have been made for the succession. The difficulty rose from Catherine's determination to force the King before a tribunal where the national pride would not permit him to plead. The independence of England was threatened, and those who might have been her friends were disarmed of their power to help her. Unfortunately for herself, perhaps fortunately for the English race which was yet to be born, she remained still inflexible. "The King's plea of conscience," she said, "was not honest. He was acting on passion, pure and simple; and English judges would say black was white." Sussex and Fitzwilliam knelt to entreat her to reconsider her answer. She too knelt and prayed them for God's honour and glory to persuade the King to return to her, as she was his lawful wife. All present were in tears, but there was no remedy. Chapuys said that the coldness and indifference with which the affair was treated at Rome was paralysing her defenders. The question could not stand in debate for ever, and, unless the Pope acted promptly and resolutely, he feared that some strong act was not far distant.[165] She was destroying her own chance. She persisted in relying on a defence which was itself fatal to her. "God knows what I suffer from these people," she wrote to the Emperor, "enough to kill ten men, much more a shattered woman who has done no harm. I can do nothing but appeal to God and your Majesty, on whom alone my remedy depends. For the love of God procure a final sentence from his Holiness as soon as possible. The utmost diligence is required. May God forgive him for the many delays which he has granted and which alone are the cause of my extremity. I am the King's lawful wife, and while I live I will say no other. The Pope's tardiness makes many on my side waver, and those who would say the truth dare not. Speak out yourself, that my friends may not think I am abandoned by all the world."[166] Well might Catherine despair of Clement. While she was expecting him to excommunicate her husband, he was instructing his Nuncio to treat that husband as his most trusted friend. He invited Henry to assist in the Turkish war; he consulted him about the protection of Savoy from the Swiss Protestants; he apologised to him for the language which he was obliged to use on the great matter. Henry, contemptuous and cool, "not showing the passion which he had shown at other times," replied that the Pope must be jesting in inviting him, far off as he was, to go to war with the Turk. If Christendom was in danger he would bear his part with the other Princes. As to Savoy, the Duke had disregarded the wishes of France and must take the consequences. For the rest, the message which he had sent through his Ambassador at Rome was no more than the truth. "If," said he to the Nuncio, "I ask a thing which I think right, the answer is 'The law forbids.' If the Emperor ask a thing, law and rules are changed to please him. The Pope has greatly wronged me. I have no particular animosity against him. After all, he does not bear me much ill will. The fear of the Emperor makes him do things which he would not otherwise do. Proceedings may be taken against me at Rome. I care not. If sentence is given against me, I know what to do."[167] The Pope never meant to give sentence if he could help it. Every day brought Parliament nearer and he drove Mai distracted with his evasions. "I have said all that I could to his Holiness and the Cardinals without offending them," he reported to Charles. "Your Majesty may believe me when I say that these devils are to a man against us. Some take side openly, being of the French or English faction; others will be easily corrupted, for every day I hear the English Ambassador receives bills for thousands of ducats, which are said to go in bribery."[168] Promises were given in plenty, but no action followed, and Ortiz had the same story to tell Catherine. "Your Ambassador at Rome," she wrote to her nephew, "thinks the Pope as cold and indifferent as when the suit began. I am amazed at his Holiness. How can he allow a suit so scandalous to remain so long undecided? His conduct cuts me to the soul. You know who has caused all this mischief. Were the King once free from the snare in which he has been caught he would confess that God had restored his reason. His misleaders goad him on like a bull in the arena. Pity that a man so good and virtuous should be thus deceived. God enlighten his mind!"[169] To the Emperor himself, perhaps, the problem was growing more difficult than he expected. He himself at last pressed for sentence, but sentence was nothing unless followed by excommunication if it was disobeyed, and the Pope did not choose to use his thunder if there was to be no thunderbolt to accompany it. The Cardinal Legate in Spain assured him that the Emperor would employ all his force in the execution of the censures. The Pope said that he prized that promise as "a word from Heaven." But though Charles might think the English King was doing what was wrong and unjust, was it so wrong and so unjust that fire and sword were to be let loose through Christendom? Chapuys and Catherine were convinced that there would be no need of such fierce remedies. They might be right, but how if they were not right? How if England supported the King? The Emperor could not be certain that even his own subjects would approve of a war for such an object. Three years later, when the moment for action had arrived, if action was to be taken at all, it will be seen that the Spanish Council of State took precisely this view of the matter, and saw no reason for breaking the peace of Europe for what, after all, was but "a family quarrel." The Pope was cautious. He knew better than his passionate advisers how matters really stood. "The Pope may promise," Mai said, "but as long as the world remains in its troubled state, these people will be glad of any excuse to prolong the settlement." January came, when the English Parliament was to meet, and the note was still the same. "The Pope says," wrote Mai, "that we must not press the English too hard. I have exhausted all that I could say without a rupture. I told him he was discrediting the Queen's case and your Majesty's authority. I made him understand that I should be obliged to apply elsewhere for the justice that was denied me at Rome. He owns that I am right, but Consistory follows Consistory and more delays are allowed. We can but press on as we have always done, and urge your Majesty's displeasure."[170] If a sentence could not be had, Ortiz insisted on the issue of another minatory brief. Anne Boleyn must be sent from the court. The King must be made to confess his errors. The Pope assented; said loudly that he would do justice; though England and France should revolt from the Holy See in consequence, a brief should go, and, if it was disobeyed, he would proceed to excommunicate: "the Kings of England and France were so bound together that if he lost one he lost both, but he would venture notwithstanding." But like the Cardinals who condemned Giordano Bruno, Clement was more afraid of passing judgment than Henry of hearing it passed. The brief was written and was sent, but it contained nothing but mild expostulation.[171] All the distractions of the world were laid at the door of the well-meaning, uncertain, wavering Clement. La Pommeraye, the French Ambassador in London, said (Chapuys vouches for the words) that "nothing could have been so easy as to bring all Christian Princes to agree had not that devil of a Pope embroiled and sown dissension through Christendom."[172] In England alone was to be found clear purpose and steadiness of action. The divorce in England was an important feature in the quarrel with the Papacy, but it was but a single element in the great stream of Reformation, and the main anxiety of King and people was not fixed on Catherine, but on the mighty changes which were rushing forward. When a Parliament was first summoned, on the fall of Wolsey, the Queen had assumed that it was called for nothing else but to empower the King to separate from her. So she thought at the beginning, so she continued to think. Yet session had followed session, and the Legislature had found other work to deal with. They had manacled the wrists of her friends, the clergy; but that was all, and she was to have yet another year of respite. The "blind passion" which is supposed to have governed Henry's conduct was singularly deliberate. Seven years had passed since he had ceased cohabitation with Catherine, and five since he had fallen under the fascination of the impatient Anne; yet he went on as composedly with public business as if Anne had never smiled on him, and he was still content to wait for this particular satisfaction. As long as hope remained of saving the unity of Christendom without degrading England into a vassal State of the Empire, Henry did not mean to break it. He had occupied himself, in concert with the Parliament, with reforming the internal disorders and checking the audacious usurpations of the National Church. He had, so far, been enthusiastically supported by the immense majority of the laity, and was about to make a further advance in the same direction. The third Session opened on 13th of January, Peers, Prelates, and Commons being present in full number. By this time a small but active opposition had been formed in the Lower House to resist measures too violently anti-clerical. They met occasionally to concert operations at the Queen's Head by Temple Bar. The Bishops, who had been stunned by the Præmunire, were recovering heart and intending to show fight. Tunstal of Durham, who had been reflecting on the Royal Supremacy during the recess, repented of his consent, and had written his misgivings to the King. The King used the opportunity to make a remarkable reply. "People conceive," he said, "that we are minded to separate our Church of England from the Church of Rome, and you think the consequences ought to be considered. My Lord, as touching schism, we are informed by virtuous and learned men that, considering what the Church of Rome is, it is no schism to separate from her, and adhere to the Word of God. The lives of Christ and the Pope are very opposite, and therefore to follow the Pope is to forsake Christ. It is to be trusted the Papacy will shortly vanish away, if it be not reformed; but, God willing, we shall never separate from the Universal body of Christian men."[173] Archbishop Warham also had failed to realise the meaning of his consent to the Royal Supremacy. He had consecrated the Bishop of St. Asaph on the receipt of a nomination from Rome before the Bulls had been presented to the King. He learnt that he was again under a Præmunire. The aged Primate, fallen on evil times, drew the heads of a defence which he intended to make, but never did make, in the House of Lords. Archbishops, he said, were not bound to enquire whether Bishops had exhibited their Bulls or not. It had not been the custom. If the Archbishop could not give the spiritualities to one who was pronounced a bishop at Rome till the King had granted him his temporalities, the spiritual powers of the Archbishops would depend on the temporal power of the Prince, and would be of little or no effect, which was against God's law. In consecrating the Bishop of St. Asaph he had acted as the Pope's Commissary. The act itself was the Pope's act. The point for which the King contended was one of the Articles which Henry II. sought to extort at Clarendon, and which he was afterwards compelled to abandon. The liberties of the Church were guaranteed by Magna Charta, and the Sovereigns who had violated them, Henry II., Edward III., Richard II., had come to an ill end. The lay Peers had threatened that they would defend the matter with their swords. The lay Peers should remember what befell the knights who slew St. Thomas. The Archbishop said he would rather be hewn in pieces than confess this Article, for which St. Thomas died, to be a Præmunire.[174] Warham was to learn that the spirit of Henry II. was alive again in the present Henry, and that the Constitutions of Clarendon, then premature, were to become the law of the land. Fisher of Rochester had received no summons to attend the present Parliament; but he sent word to the Imperial Ambassador that he would be in his place, whether called up or not, that he might defend Catherine should any measure be introduced which affected her. He begged Chapuys not to mention his name in his despatches, except in cipher. If they met in public Chapuys must not speak to him or appear to know him. He on his part would pass Chapuys without notice till the present tyranny was overpast. Bishop Fisher was entering upon dangerous courses, which were to lead him into traitorous efforts to introduce an invading army into England and to bring his own head to the block. History has only pity for these unfortunate old men, and does not care to remember that, if they could have had their way, a bloodier persecution than the Marian would have made a swift end of the Reformation. I need not repeat what I have written elsewhere on the acts of this Session.[175] A few details only deserve further notice. The privilege of the clergy to commit felony without punishment was at last abolished. Felonious clerks were thenceforward to suffer like secular criminals. An accident provided an illustrative example. A priest was executed in London for chipping the coin, having been first drawn through the streets in the usual way. Thirty women sued in vain for his pardon. He was hanged in his habit, without being degraded, against the protest of the Bishop--"a thing never done before since the Island was Christian."[176] The Constitutions of Clarendon were to be enforced at last. The Arches court and the Bishops' courts were reformed on similar lines, their methods and their charges being brought within reasonable limits. Priests were no longer allowed to evade the Mortmain Acts by working on death-bed terrors. The exactions for mortuaries, legacy duties, and probate duties, long a pleasant source of revenue, were abolished or cut down. The clergy in their synods had passed what laws they pleased and enforced them with spiritual terrors. The clergy were informed that they would no longer be allowed to meet in synod without royal licence, and that their laws would be revised by laymen. Chapuys wittily observed that the clergy were thus being made of less account than cordwainers, who could at least enact their own statutes. A purpose of larger moment was announced by Henry for future execution. More's chancellorship had been distinguished by heresy-prosecutions. The stake in those three years had been more often lighted than under all the administration of Wolsey. It was as if the Bishops had vented on those poor victims their irritation at the rude treatment of their privileges. The King said that the clergy's province was with souls, not with bodies. They were not in future to arrest men on suspicion, imprison, examine, and punish at their mere pleasure. There was an outcry, in which the Chancellor joined. The King suspended his resolution for the moment, but did not abandon it. He was specially displeased with More, from whom he had expected better things. He intended to persist. "May God," exclaimed the orthodox and shocked Chapuys, "send such a remedy as the intensity of the evil requires."[177] None of Henry's misdeeds shocked Chapuys so deeply as the tolerating heresy. The Royal Supremacy had been accepted by Convocation. It was not yet confirmed by Parliament. Norfolk felt the pulses of the Peers. He called a meeting at Norfolk House. He described the Pope's conduct. He insisted on the usual topics--that matrimonial causes were of temporal jurisdiction, not spiritual; that the King was sovereign in his own dominions, etc., etc., and he invited the Peers' opinions. The Peers were cold. Lord Darcy had spoken freely against the Pope in his indictment of Wolsey. It seemed his ardour was abating. He said the King and Council must manage matters without letting loose a cat among the legs of the rest of them.[178] The meeting generally agreed with Darcy, and was not pressed further. Papal privilege came before Parliament in a more welcome form when a bill was introduced to withdraw annates or first fruits of benefices which had been claimed and paid as a tribute to the Holy See. The imposition was a grievance. There were no annates in Spain. The Papal collectors were detested. The House of Commons made no difficulty. The Nuncio complained to the King. The King told him that it was not he who brought forward these measures. They were moved by the people, who hated the Pope marvellously.[179] In the Upper House the Bishops stood by their spiritual chief this time unanimously. Among the mitred Abbots there was division of opinion. The abbeys had been the chief sufferers from annates, and had complained of the exaction for centuries. All the lay Peers, except Lord Arundel, supported the Government. The bill was passed, but passed conditionally, leaving power to the Crown to arrange a compromise if the Pope would agree to treat. For the next year the annates were paid in full, as usual, to give time for his Holiness to consider himself.[180] Thus steadily the Parliament moved on. Archbishop Warham, who was dying broken-hearted, dictated a feeble protest from his bed against all which had been done by it in derogation of the Pope or in limitation of the privileges of the Church. More had fought through the session, but, finding resistance useless, resigned the chancellorship. He saw what was coming. He could not prevent it. If he retained his office he found that he must either go against his conscience or increase the displeasure of the King.[181] He preferred to retire. In this way, at least in England, the situation was clearing, and parties and individuals were drifting into definite positions. Montfalconet,[182] writing to Charles in May, said that he had been in England and had seen Queen Catherine, who was still clamouring for the Pope's sentence. "Every one," he continued, speaking for the Catholic party, whom alone he had seen, "was angry with the Pope, and angry with the Emperor for not pressing him further. Peers, clergy, laity, all loved the Queen. She was patient. She thought that if she could but see the King all might yet be well. Were the sentence once delivered she was satisfied that he would submit."[183] The French Ambassador in London, on the other hand, recommended Francis to force the Pope to hold his hand. He told Chapuys that "France must and would take Henry's part if a rupture came. The Emperor had no right to throw Europe into confusion for the sake of a woman. If the King of England wished to marry again, he should do as Louis XII. had done under the same circumstances--take the woman that he liked and waste no more time and money."[184] At Rome the Pope had been fingering his briefs with hesitating heart. The first, which he had issued under Charles's eye at Bologna, had been comparatively firm. He had there ordered Henry to take Catherine back under penalty of excommunication. The last, though so hardly extracted from him, was meagre and insignificant. The King, when it was presented, merely laughed at it. "The Pope," he said, "complains that I have sent the Queen away. If his Holiness considers her as my wife, the right of punishing her for the rudeness of her behaviour belongs to me and not to him."[185] Ortiz, finding it hopeless to expect a decision on the marriage itself from the Pope, demanded excommunication on the plea of disobedience to the Bologna brief. He had succeeded, or thought he had succeeded, in bringing the Pope to the point. The excommunication was drawn up, "but when it was to be engrossed and sealed the enemy of mankind prevented its completion in a manner only known to God." Ortiz continued to urge. The document could be sent secretly to the Emperor, to be used at his discretion. "If the Emperor thought fit to issue it, bearing, as it did, God's authority, God in such cases would infallibly send his terrors upon earth and provide that no ill should come of it."[186] The Pope was less certain that God would act as Ortiz undertook for him, and continued to offend the Lord by delay. In vain Catherine's representative railed at him, in vain told him that he would commit a great sin and offence against God if he did not excommunicate a King who was, in mortal sin, keeping a mistress at his Court. The Pope rationally answered that there was no evidence of mortal sin. "It was the custom in England for Princes to converse intimately with ladies. He could not prove that, in the present case, there was anything worse, and the King might allege his conscience as a reason for not treating the Queen as a husband."[187] Ortiz insisted that the devil had got hold of the King in the shape of that woman, and unless the Pope obliged him to put her away, the Pope would be damned. But it was an absurdity to excommunicate the King and declare him to have forfeited his crown when the original cause of the quarrel was still undecided. The King might prove after all to be right, as modern law and custom has in fact declared him to have been. Charles himself felt that such a position could not be maintained. Henry was evidently not frightened. There was no sign that the English people were turning against him. If a bull of excommunication was issued, Charles himself would be called on to execute it, and it was necessary to be sure of his ground. Ortiz raged on. "I told his Holiness," he wrote, "that if he did not excommunicate the King I would stand up at the day of judgment and accuse him before God."[188] Charles was obliged to tell Ortiz that he must be more moderate. A further difficulty had risen in Rome itself. If the cause was tried at Rome, was it to be tried before the Cardinals in consistory or before the court of the Rota? The Cardinals were men of the world. Micer Mai's opinion was that from the Rota only a judgment could be with certainty expected in the Queen's favour.[189] "The winds are against us," he wrote to Secretary Covos; "what is done one day is undone the next. The Cardinals will not stir, but quietly pocket the ducats which come from the Emperor, and the larger sums which come from the English, who are lavish in spending. The Pope will not break with France. He says he has so many ties with the Kings of France and England that he must pretend goodwill to the latter for fear they both break off from the Church, as they have threatened to do."[190] CHAPTER XII. Henry advised to marry without waiting for sentence--Meeting of Henry and Francis--Anne Boleyn present at the interview--Value of Anne to the French Court--Pressure on the Pope by the Agents of the Emperor--Complaints of Catherine--Engagements of Francis--Action of Clement--The King conditionally excommunicated--Demand for final sentence--Cranmer appointed Archbishop of Canterbury--Marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn--Supposed connivance of the Pope--The Nuncio attends Parliament--The Act of Appeals--The Emperor entreated to intervene--Chapuys and the King. The Pope had promised Ortiz that nothing should be said of the intended excommunication till the brief was complete. He betrayed the secret to the English Agents, by whom it was conveyed to Henry. The French Ambassador had advised the King to hesitate no longer, but to marry and end the controversy. The Pope himself had several times in private expressed the same wish. But Henry, in love though he is supposed to have been, determined to see Francis in person before he took a step which could not be recalled. He desired to know distinctly how far France was prepared to go along with him in defying the Papal censures. An interview between the two Kings at such a crisis would also show the world that their alliance was a practical fact, and that if the Emperor declared war in execution of the censures he would have France for an enemy as well as England. The intended meeting was announced at the end of August, and, strange to say, there was still a belief prevailing that a marriage would come of it between the King and a French princess, and that Anne would be disappointed after all. "If it be so," wrote Chapuys, "the Lady Anne is under a singular delusion, for she writes to her friends that at this interview all that she has been so long wishing for will be accomplished." One thing was clear, both to the Imperial Ambassador and the Nuncio, that the Pope by his long trifling had brought himself into a situation where he must either have to consent to a judgment against Catherine or encounter as best he could the combination of two of the most powerful Princes in Christendom. The least that he could do was to issue an inhibition against the King's marriage either with Anne or with the Frenchwoman. The Pope's danger was real enough, but Anne Boleyn had nothing to fear for herself. She was to form part of the cortége. She was to go, and to be received at the French court as Henry's bride-elect, and she was created Marchioness of Pembroke for the occasion. Queen Catherine believed that the marriage would be completed at the interview with a publicity which would make Francis an accomplice. The Emperor was incredulous. Reluctantly he had been driven to the conclusion that Henry was really in earnest, and he still thought it impossible that such an outrage as a marriage could be seriously contemplated while the divorce was still undecided.[191] Yet contemplated it evidently was. Politically the effect would have been important, and it is not certain that Francis would not have encouraged a step which would be taken as an open insult by Charles. The objection, so Chapuys heard, came from the lady herself, who desired to be married in state with the usual formalities in London.[192] Invited to the interview, however, she certainly was by Francis. The French Queen sent her a present of jewels. The Sieur de Langey came with special compliments from the King to request her attendance. She had been a useful instrument in dividing Henry from the Emperor, and his master, De Langey said, desired to thank her for the inestimable services which she had rendered, and was daily rendering him. He wished to keep her devoted to his interests. Wolsey himself had not been more valuable to him. He had not to pay her a pension of 25,000 crowns, as he had done to the Cardinal. Therefore he meant to pay her in flattery and in forwarding the divorce at Rome.[193] In vain Catherine poured out to Clement her wailing cries for sentence--sentence without a moment's delay. Less than ever could the Pope be brought to move. He must wait and see what came of the meeting of the Kings; and whether the Emperor got the better of the Turks. It was the harder to bear because she had persuaded herself, and had persuaded Ortiz, that, if the King was once excommunicated, the whole of England would rise against him for his contumacious disobedience.[194] The interview which took place in October between the Kings of France and England was a momentous incident in the struggle, for it did, in fact, decide Henry to take the final step. The scene itself, the festivities, the regal reception of Anne, the Nun of Kent and the discovery of the singular influence which a hysterical impostor had been able to exercise in the higher circles of English life, have already been described by me, and I can add nothing to what I have already written. A more particular account, however, must be given of a French Commission which was immediately after despatched to Rome. Francis had not completely satisfied Henry. He had repeated the advice of his Ambassadors. He had encouraged the King to marry at once. He had reiterated his promises of support if the Emperor declared war. Even an engagement which Henry had desired to obtain from him, to unite France with England in a separate communion, should the Pope proceed to violence, Francis had seemed to give, and had wished his good brother to believe it. But his language had been less explicit on this point than on the other. The Bishop of Tarbes, now Cardinal Grammont, was sent to Rome, with Cardinal Tournon, direct from the interview, with open instructions to demand a General Council, to inform the Pope that if he refused the two Kings would call a Council themselves and invite the Lutheran Princes to join them, and that, if the Pope excommunicated Henry, he would go to Rome for absolution so well accompanied that the Pope would be glad to grant it.[195] If Catherine's friends in Rome were rightly informed, the Cardinals had brought also a secret Commission, which went the full extent of Henry's expectation. The Pope was to be required to fulfil at once the promise which he had given at Orvieto, and to give judgment for the divorce; "otherwise the Kings of France and England would abrogate the Papal authority in their several realms." The Pope, confident that the alternative before him was the loss of the two kingdoms, was preparing to yield.[196] Henry certainly returned to England with an understanding that Francis and himself were perfectly united, and would adopt the same course, whatever that might be. A report went abroad that, relying on these assurances, he had brought his hesitation to an end, and immediately after landing made Anne secretly his wife. The rumour was premature, but the resolution was taken. The Pope, the King said, was making himself the tool of the Emperor. The Emperor was judge, and not the Pope; and neither he nor his people would endure it. He would maintain the liberties of his country, and the Pope, if he tried violence, would find his mistake.[197] It is not easy to believe that on a point of such vast consequence Henry could have misunderstood what Francis said, and he considered afterwards that he had been deliberately deceived; but under any aspect the meeting was a demonstration against the Papacy. Micer Mai, who watched the Pope from day to day, declared that his behaviour was enough to drive him out of his senses. Mai and Ortiz had at last forced another brief out of him--not a direct excommunication, but an excommunication which was to follow on further disobedience. They had compelled him to put it in writing that he might have committed himself before the French Cardinals' arrival. But when it was written he would not let it out of his hands. He was to meet the Emperor again at Bologna, and till he had learnt from Charles's own lips what he was prepared to do, it was unfair and unreasonable, he said, to require an act which might fatally commit him. He was not, however, to be allowed to escape. Catherine, when she heard of the despatch of the Cardinals, again flung herself on her nephew's protection. She insisted that the Pope should speak out. The French must not be listened to. There was nothing to be afraid of. "The English themselves carried no lightning except to strike her."[198] Letters from Ortiz brought her news of the Pope's continued indecision--an indecision fatal, as she considered it, to the Church and to herself. Rumours reached her that the King had actually married, and she poured out her miseries to Chapuys. "The letters from Rome," she said, "reopen all my wounds. They show there is no justice for me or my daughter. It is withheld from us for political considerations. I do not ask His Holiness to declare war--a war I would rather die than provoke; but I have been appealing to the Vicar of God for justice for six years, and I cannot have it. I refused the proposals made to me two years ago by the King and Council. Must I accept them now? Since then I have received fresh injuries. I am separated from my lord, and he has married another woman without obtaining a divorce; and this last act has been done while the suit is still pending, and in defiance of him who has the power of God upon earth. I cover these lines with my tears as I write. I confide in you as my friend. Help me to bear the cross of my tribulation. Write to the Emperor. Bid him insist that judgment be pronounced. The next Parliament, I am told, will decide if I and my daughter are to suffer martyrdom. I hope God will accept it as an act of merit by us, as we shall suffer for the sake of the truth."[199] Catherine might say, and might mean, that she did not wish to be the cause of a war. But unless war was to be the alternative of her husband's submission, the Papal thunders would be as ineffectual as she supposed the English to be. The Emperor had not decided what he would do. He may still have clung to the hope that a decision would not be necessary, but he forced or persuaded the Pope to disregard the danger. The brief was issued, bearing the date at which it was drawn, and was transmitted to Flanders as the nearest point to England for publication. In removing the Queen from his company without waiting for the decision of his cause, and cohabiting with a certain Anne, Clement told the King that he was insulting Divine justice and the Papal authority. He had already warned him, but his monition had not been respected. Again, therefore, he exhorted him on pain of excommunication to take Catherine back as his Queen, and put Anne away within a month of the presentation of the present letter. If the King still disobeyed, the Pope declared both him and Anne to be, _ipso facto_, excommunicated at the expiration of the term fixed, and forbade him to divorce himself by his own authority.[200] It might seem that the end had now come, and that in a month the King, and the subjects who continued loyal to him, would incur all the consequences of the Papal censures. But the proceedings of the Court of Rome were enveloped in formalities. Conditional excommunications affected the spiritual status of the persons denounced, but went no further. A second Bull of Excommunication was still requisite, declaring the King deposed and his subjects absolved from their allegiance, before the secular arm could be called in; and this last desperate remedy could not decently be resorted to, with the approval even of the Catholic opinion of Europe, until it had been decided whether Catherine was really legal queen. The enthusiastic Ortiz, however, believed that judgment on "the principal cause" would now be immediately given, and that the victory was won. He enclosed to the Empress a letter from Catherine to him, "to be preserved as a relic, since she would one day be canonised." "May God inspire the King of England," he said, "to acknowledge the error into which the Enemy of Mankind has led him, and amend his past conduct; otherwise it must follow that his disobedience to the Pope's injunction and his infidelity to God once proved, he will be deprived of his kingdom and the execution of the sentence committed to his Imperial Majesty. This done, all those in England who fear God will rise in arms, and the King will be punished as he deserves, the present brief operating as a formal sentence against him. On the main cause, there being no one in Rome to answer for the opposite party, sentence cannot long be delayed."[201] Ortiz was too sanguine, and the vision soon faded. The brief sounded formidable, but it said no more than had been contained or implied in another which Clement had issued three years before. He had allowed the first to be disregarded. He might equally allow the last. Each step which he had taken had been forced upon him, and his reluctance was not diminished. Chapuys thought that he had given a brief instead of passing sentence because he could recall one and could not recall the other; that "he was playing both with the King and the Emperor;" and in England, as well as elsewhere, it was thought "that there was some secret intelligence between him and the King." The Pope and the Emperor had met at Bologna and Charles's language had been as emphatic as Catherine desired; yet even at Bologna itself and during the conference Clement had assured the English Agents that there was still a prospect of compromise. It was even rumoured that the Emperor would allow the cause to be referred back to England, if securities could be found to protect the rights of the Princess Mary; nay, that he had gone so far as to say, "that, if the King made a suitable marriage, and not a love-marriage, he would bring the Pope and Catherine to allow the first marriage to be annulled."[202] In London the talk continued of the removal of the suit from Rome to Cambray. The Nuncio and the King were observed to be much together and on improved terms, the Nuncio openly saying that his Holiness wished to be relieved of the business. It was even considered still possible that the Pope might concede the dispensation to the King which had been originally asked for, to marry again without legal process. "If," wrote Chapuys, who thoroughly distrusted Clement, "the King once gains the point of not being obliged to appear at Rome, the Pope will have the less shame in granting the dispensation by absolute power, as it is made out that the King's right is so evident; and if his Holiness refuses it, the King will be more his enemy than ever. A sentence is the only sovereign remedy, and the Queen says the King would not resist, if only from fear of his subjects, who are not only well disposed to her and to your Majesty, but for the most part are good Catholics and would not endure excommunication and interdict. If a tumult arose I know not if the Lady, who is hated by all the world, would escape with life and jewels. But, unless the Pope takes care, he will lose his authority here, and his censures will not be regarded."[203] It was true that Anne was ill liked in England, and the King, in choosing her, was testing the question of his marriage in the least popular form which it could have assumed. The Venetian Ambassador mentions that one evening "seven or eight thousand women went out of London to seize Boleyn's daughter," who was supping at a villa on the river, the King not being with her. Many men were among them in women's clothes. Henry, however, showed no sign of change of purpose. He had presented her to the French Court as his intended Queen. And on such a matter he was not to be moved by the personal objections of his subjects. The month allowed in the brief went by. She was still at the court, and the continued negotiations with the Nuncio convinced Catherine's friends that there was mischief at work behind the scenes. Their uneasiness was increased by the selection which was now made of a successor to Archbishop Warham. Thomas Cranmer had been Lord Wiltshire's private chaplain, and had at one time been his daughter's tutor. He had attended her father on his Embassy to the Emperor, had been active in collecting opinions on the Continent favourable to the divorce, and had been resident ambassador at the Imperial court. He had been much in Germany. He was personally acquainted with Luther. He had even married, and, though he could not produce his wife openly, the connection was well known. Protestant priests in taking wives were asserting only their natural liberty. Luther had married, and had married a nun. An example laudable at Wittenberg could not be censurable in London by those who held Luther excused. The German clergy had released themselves from their vows, as an improvement on the concubinage which had long and generally prevailed. Wolsey had a son and was not ashamed of him, even charging his education on English benefices. Clerical marriages were forbidden only by the Church law, which Parliament had never been invited to sanction, and though Cranmer could not introduce a wife into society he was at least as fit for archi-episcopal rank as the great Cardinal. He was a man of high natural gifts, and ardent to replace superstition and corruption by purer teaching. The English Liturgy survives to tell us what Cranmer was. His nomination to the Primacy took the world by surprise, for as yet he had held no higher preferment than an archdeaconry; but the reorganisation of the Church was to begin; Parliament was to meet again in February, and the King needed all the help that he could find in the House of Lords. The Bishops were still but half conquered. A man of intellect and learning was required at the head of them. "King Henry loved a man," it was said. He knew Cranmer and valued him. The appointment was made known in the first month of the new year. Before the new Primate could be installed a Bull of Confirmation was still legally necessary from Rome. The King was in haste. The annates due on the vacancy of the see of Canterbury were despatched at once, the King himself advancing the money and taking no advantage of the late Act. Such unusual precipitancy raised suspicions that something more was contemplated in which Cranmer's help would be needed. The knot had, in fact, been cut which Henry had been so long struggling to untie. The Lady Anne had aspired to being the central figure of a grand ceremony. Her nuptials were to be attended with the pomp and splendour of a royal marriage. Public feeling was in too critical a condition to permit what might have been resented; and, lest the prize should escape her after all, she had brought down her pride to agree to a private service. When it was performed, and by whom, was never known. The date usually received was "on or before the 25th of January." Chapuys says that Cranmer himself officiated in the presence of the lady's father, mother and brother, two other friends of the lady, and a Canterbury priest.[204] But Chapuys was relating only the story current at the time in society. Nothing authentic has been ascertained.... The fact that the marriage had taken place was concealed till the divorce could be pronounced by a Court protected by Act of Parliament, and perhaps with the hope that the announcement could be softened by the news that the nation might hope for an heir. Dispatch was thus necessary with Cranmer's Bulls. He himself spoke without reserve on the right of the King to remarry, "being ready to maintain it with his life." Chapuys and the Nuncio both wrote to request the Pope not to be in a hurry with the confirmation of so dangerous a person.[205] The Pope seemed determined to justify the suspicions entertained of him by his eagerness to meet Henry's wishes. It is certain that the warning had reached him.[206] He sent the Bulls with all the speed he could. He knew, perhaps, what they were needed for. Henry meanwhile was preparing to meet the Parliament, when the secret would have to be communicated to the world. The modern reader will conceive that no other subject could have occupied his mind. The relative importance of things varies with the distance from which we view them. He was King of England first. His domestic anxieties held still the second place. Before the opening, as the matter of greatest consequence, a draft Act was prepared to carry out the object which in the last year he had failed in securing--"an Act to restrain bishops from citing or arresting any of the King's subjects to appear before them, unless the bishop or his commissary was free from private grudge against the accused, unless there were three, or at least two, credible witnesses, and a copy of the libel had in all cases been delivered to the accused, with the names of the accusers." Such an Act was needed. It was not to shield what was still regarded as impiety, for Frith was burned a few months later for a denial of the Real Presence, which Luther himself called heresy. It was to check the arbitrary and indiscriminate tyranny of a sour, exasperated party, who were pursuing everyone with fire and sword who presumed to oppose them. More, writing to Erasmus, said he had purposely stated in his epitaph that he had been hard upon the heretics. He so hated that folk that, unless they repented, he preferred their enmity, so mischievous were they to the world.[207] The spirit of More was alive and dangerous. To Catholic minds there could be no surer evidence that the King was given over to the Evil One than leniency to heretics. They were the more disturbed to see how close the intimacy had grown between him and the Pope's representative. The Nuncio was constantly closeted with Henry or the Council. When Chapuys remonstrated, he said "he was a poor gentleman, living on his salary, and could not do otherwise." "The Pope had advised him to neglect no opportunity of promoting the welfare of religion." "Practices," Chapuys ascertained, were still going forward, and the Nuncio was at the bottom of them. The Nuncio assured him that he had exhorted the King to take Catherine back. The King had replied that he would not, and that reconciliation was impossible. Yet the secret communications did not cease, and the astonishment and alarm increased when the Nuncio consented to accompany the King to the opening of Parliament. He was conducted in state in the Royal barge from Greenwich. Henry sate on the throne, the Nuncio had a chair on his right, and the French Ambassador on his left. The object was to show the nation how little was really meant by the threat of excommunication, to intimidate the Bishops, and to make the clergy understand the extent of favour which they could expect from the Nuncio's master. The Nuncio's appearance was not limited to a single occasion. During the progress of the Session he attended the debates in the House of Commons. Norfolk gave him notice of the days on which the Pope would not be directly mentioned, that he might be present without scandal. The Duke admitted a wish for the world to see that the King and the Court of Rome understood each other. "By this presumption," said Chapuys, "they expect to make their profit as regards the people and the prelates who have hitherto supported the Holy See, who now, for the above reason, dare not speak, fearing to go against the Pope."[208] The world wondered and was satisfied. The Opposition was paralysed. The Bishop of Rochester complained to the Nuncio, and received nothing but regrets and promises which were not observed. Again, a council was held of Peers, Bishops, and lawyers to consider the divorce, when it was agreed at last that the cause might be tried in the Archbishop of Canterbury's court, and that the arrival of the Bulls would be accepted as a sign of the Pope's tacit connivance. Chapuys had failed to stop them. "The Queen," he said, "was thunderstruck, and complained bitterly of his Holiness. He had left her to languish for three and a half years since her appeal, and, instead of giving sentence, had now devised a scheme to prolong her misery and bastardise her daughter. She knew the King's character. If sentence was once given there would be no scandal. The King would obey, or, if he did not, which she thought impossible, she would die happy, knowing that the Pope had declared for her. Her own mind would be at rest, and the Princess would not lose her right. The Pope was entirely mistaken if he thought that he would induce the King to modify his action against the Church. The Lady and her father, who were staunch Lutherans, were urging him on. The sentence alone would make him pause. He dared not disobey, and if the people rose the Lady would find a rough handling." This, Chapuys said, was the Queen's opinion, which she had commanded him to communicate to the Emperor. For himself, he could only repeat his request that the Bulls for Canterbury should be delayed till the sentence was ready for delivery. If the Pope knew Cranmer's reputation as a heretic, he would be in no haste to confirm him.[209] Clement knew well enough what Cranmer was, and the Bulls had been despatched promptly before the Emperor could interfere. The King meanwhile had committed himself, and now went straight forward. He allowed his marriage to be known. Lord Wiltshire had withdrawn his opposition to it.[210] Lord Rochfort, Anne's brother, was sent at the beginning of March to Paris, to say that the King had acted on the advice given him by his good brother at their last interview. He had taken a wife for the establishment of his realm in the hope of having male issue. He trusted, therefore, that Francis would remember his promise. In citing him to Rome the Pope had violated the rights of sovereign Princes. It touched them all, and, if allowed, would give the Pope universal authority. The time was passed when such pretensions could be tolerated.[211] At home he prepared for the worst. The fleet was further increased, new ships were put on the stocks; the yeomanry were armed, drilled, and equipped, and England rang with sounds of preparation for war; while in Parliament the famous Act was introduced which was to form the constitutional basis of national independence, and to end for ever the Papal jurisdiction in England. From the time that Convocation had acknowledged the King to be the Head of the Church the question of appeals to Rome had been virtually before the country. It was now to be settled, and English lawsuits were henceforth to be heard and decided within the limits of the empire. The Sibyl's pages were being rent out one by one. The Præmunire had been revived, and the Pope's claim of independent right to interfere by bull or brief in English affairs had been struck rudely down. Tribute in the shape of annates went next; the appellate jurisdiction was now to follow. Little would then be left save spiritual precedence, and this might not be of long continuance. There had been words enough. The time had come to act. On the introduction of the Act of Appeals the King spoke out to Chapuys as if the spirit of the Plantagenets was awake in him. "He said a thousand things in disparagement of the Pope, complaining of the authority and power he unduly assumed over the kingdoms of Christendom. He professed to have seen a book from the Papal library, in which it was maintained that all Christian princes were only feudatories of the Pope. He himself, he said, intended to put a remedy to such inordinate ambition, and repair the errors of Henry II. and John, who had been tricked into making England tributary to the Holy See." "The Emperor," he said, "not only demanded justice, but would have justice done in his own way, and according to his own caprice. For himself, he thought of resuming to the Crown the lands of the clergy, which his predecessors had alienated without right." Chapuys advised him to wait for a General Council before he tried such high measures. "But the King could not be persuaded" that a council was needed for such a purpose.[212] The Act of Appeals touched too many interests to be passed without opposition. Private persons as well as princes had appealed to the Roman law-courts, and suits pending or determined there might be reopened at home and produce confusion unless provided for. However complacent the Pope might appear, it could not be supposed that he would bear patiently the open renunciation of his authority. Excommunication was half perceived to be a spectre; but spectres had not wholly lost their terrors. With an excommunication pronounced in earnest might come interdict and stoppage of trade, perhaps war and rebellion at home; and one of the members for London said that if the King would refer the question between himself and the Queen to a General Council, the City of London would give him two hundred thousand pounds. The arrival of Cranmer's Bulls, while the Act was still under discussion, moderated the alarm. The Pope evidently was in no warlike humour. At the bottom of his heart he had throughout been in Henry's favour; he hoped probably that a time might come when he could say so, and that all this hostile legislation would then be repealed. When the excitement was at its hottest, and it was known at Rome, not only that the last brief had been defied, but that the King was about to marry the lady, the Pope had borne the news with singular calmness. After all, he said to the Count de Cifuentes, if the marriage is completed, we have only to think of a remedy. The remedy, Cifuentes said, was for the Pope to do justice; the King had been encouraged in his rash course by the toleration with which he had been treated and the constant delays. Clement answered that he would certainly do justice; but if the marriage was "a fact accomplished," he wished to know what the Emperor meant to do. Cifuentes told him that his Holiness must do his part first, and then the Emperor would "act as became a powerful and wise Prince."[213] The Pope had heard this language before. The Emperor was afraid of going to war with England, and the Pope knew it. The alternative, therefore, was either to make some concession to Henry or to let him go on as he pleased, bringing the Holy See into contempt by exposing its weakness: and either course would be equally dispiriting to the Queen and his own friends in England. "Everybody," wrote Chapuys, "cries murder on the Pope for his delays, and for not detaining the Archbishop's Bulls, till the definitive sentence had been given. He was warned of the danger of granting them. There is not a lord in the Court of either side who does not say publicly his Holiness will betray the Emperor. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk speak of it with more assurance, saying they know it well and could give good evidence of it."[214] The Act of Appeals, though strongly resisted in the House of Commons for fear of the consequences, was evidently to pass; and it was now understood that, as soon as it became law, Cranmer was to try the divorce suit and to give final judgment. The Pope's extraordinary conduct had paralysed opposition. The clergy, like some wild animal hardly broken in, were made to parade their docility and to approve beforehand the Archbishop's intended action. It was to be done in haste, for Anne was _enceinte_. The members of the Synod were allowed scant time, even to eat their dinners; they were so harassed that no one opened his mouth to contradict, except the Bishop of Rochester, and Rochester had no weight, being alone against all the rest. So docile was the assembly and so imperious the King that the Queen and all her supporters now regarded her cause as lost.[215] Ortiz wrote from Rome to Charles that, "though he was bound to believe the contrary, he feared the Pope had sent, or might send, absolution to the King." Something might be done underhand to revoke the last brief, although the Pope knew what an evil thing it would be, and how ignominious to the Holy See.[216] The reforming party in England laughed at the expected interdict. The Pope, they said, would not dare to try it, or, if he did, Christian princes would not trouble themselves about him. The King said, significantly, to the Nuncio that he was only defending himself: "if the Pope gave him occasion to reconsider the matter, he might undo what was being aimed at his authority."[217] The Bill passed more rapidly through its later stages. The Papal jurisdiction was ended. Anyone who introduced Briefs of Excommunication or Interdict into the realm was declared guilty of high treason. The Bishop of Rochester, becoming violent, was committed to friendly custody under charge of Gardiner, now Bishop of Winchester. Appeals to the Pope on any matter, secular or spiritual, were forbidden thenceforward, and the Act was made retrospective, applying to suits already in progress. All was thus over. The Archbishop's sentence was known beforehand, and Anne Boleyn was to be crowned at Whitsuntide. Force was now the only remedy, and the constitutional opposition converted itself into conspiracy, to continue in that form till the end of the century. The King was convinced that the strength and energy of the country was with him. When told that there would be an invasion, he said that the English could never be conquered as long as they held together. Chapuys was convinced equally that they would not hold together. The clergy, and a section of the peers with whom he chiefly associated, spoke all in one tone, and he supposed that the language which they used to him represented a universal opinion. Thenceforward he and his English friends began to urge on the Emperor the necessity of armed intervention, and assured him that he had only to declare himself to find the whole nation at his back. "Englishmen, high and low," Chapuys wrote, "desire your Majesty to send an army to destroy the venomous influence of the Lady and her adherents, and reform the realm. Forgive my boldness, but your Majesty ought not to hesitate. When this accursed Anne has her foot in the stirrup she will do the Queen and the Princess all the hurt she can. She boasts that she will have the Princess in her own train; one day, perhaps, she will poison her, or will marry her to some varlet, while the realm itself will be made over to heresy. A conquest would be perfectly easy. The King has no trained army. All of the higher ranks and all the nobles are for your Majesty, except the Duke of Norfolk and two or three besides. Let the Pope call in the secular arm, stop the trade, encourage the Scots, send to sea a few ships, and the thing will be over. No injustice will be done, and, without this, England will be estranged from the Holy Faith and will become Lutheran. The King points the way and lends them wings, and the Archbishop of Canterbury does worse. There is no danger of French interference. France will wait to see the issue, and will give you no more trouble if this King receives his due. Again forgive me, but pity for the Queen and Princess obliges me to speak plainly."[218] The King could hardly be ignorant of the communications between the disaffected nobles and the Imperial Ambassador, but no outward sign appeared that he was aware of them. Lord Mountjoy, however, was sent with a guard to watch Catherine's residence, and, the decisive Act being passed through Parliament, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, with Lord Exeter and the Earl of Oxford, repaired to her once more to invite her, since she must see that further resistance was useless, to withdraw her appeal, and to tell her that, on her compliance, every arrangement should be made for her state and comfort, with an establishment suited to her rank. Chapuys demanded an audience of the King to remonstrate, and a remarkable conversation ensued. The Ambassador said he had heard of the proceedings in Convocation and in Parliament. It was his duty to speak. If the King had no regard for men whom he despised, he hoped that he would have respect to God. "God and his conscience," Henry answered calmly, "were on perfectly good terms." Chapuys expressed a doubt, and the King assured him that he was entirely sincere. Chapuys said he could not believe that at a time when Europe was distracted with heresies the King of England would set so evil an example. The King rejoined that, if the world found his new marriage strange, he himself found it more strange that Pope Julius should have granted a dispensation for his marriage with his brother's wife. He must have an heir to succeed him in his realm. The Emperor had no right to prevent him. The Ambassador spoke of the Princess. To provide a husband for the Princess would be the fittest means to secure the succession. Henry said he would have children of his own, and Chapuys ventured on more dangerous ground than he was aware of by hinting that he could not be sure of that. "Am I not a man," the King said sharply, "am I not a man like others? Am I not a man?" Thrice repeating the words. "But," he added, "I will not let you into my secrets." The Ambassador enquired whether he intended to remain on friendly terms with the Emperor. The King asked him with a frown what he meant by that. On his replying that the Emperor's friendship depended on the treatment of the Queen, the King said coldly that the Emperor had no right to interfere with the laws and constitution of England. Chapuys persisted. The Emperor, he said, did not wish to meddle with his laws, unless they personally affected the Queen. The King wanted to force her to abandon her appeal, and it was not to be expected that she would submit to statutes which had been carried by compulsion. The King grew impatient. The statutes, he said, had been passed in Parliament, and the Queen as a subject must obey them. The Ambassador retorted that new laws could not be retrospective; and, as to the Queen being a subject, if she was his wife she was his subject; if she was not his wife, she was not his subject. This was true, and Henry was to be made to feel the dilemma. He contented himself, however, with saying that she must have patience, and obey the laws of the realm. The Emperor had injured him by hindering his marriage and preventing him from having male succession. The Queen was no more his wife than she was Chapuys's. He would do as he pleased, and if the Emperor made war on him he would fight. Chapuys inquired whether, if an interdict was issued, and the Spaniards and Flemings resident in England obeyed it, his statutes would apply to them. The King did not answer; but, turning to someone present, he said: "You have heard the Ambassador hint at excommunication. It is not I that am excommunicated, but the Emperor, who has kept me so long in mortal sin. That is an excommunication which the Pope cannot take off."[219] To the lords who carried the message to Catherine she replied as she had always done--that Queen she was, and she would never call herself by any other name. As to her establishment, she wanted nothing but a confessor, a doctor, and a couple of maids. If that was too much, she would go about the world and beg alms for the love of God. "The King," Chapuys said, "was naturally kind and generous," but the "Lady Anne had so perverted him that he did not seem the same man." Unless the Emperor acted in earnest, she would make an end of Catherine, as she had done of Wolsey, whom she did not hate with half as much intensity. "All seems like a dream," he said. "Her own party do not know whether to laugh or cry at it. Every day people ask me when I am going away. As long as I remain here it will be always thought your Majesty has consented to the marriage." CHAPTER XIII. The King's claim--The obstinacy of Catherine--The Court at Dunstable-- Judgment given by Cranmer--Debate in the Spanish Council of State-- Objections to armed interference--The English opposition--Warning given to Chapuys--Chapuys and the Privy Council--Conversation with Cromwell-- Coronation of Anne Boleyn--Discussions at Rome--Bull _supra Attentatis_-- Confusion of the Catholic Powers--Libels against Henry--Personal history of Cromwell--Birth of Elizabeth--The King's disappointment--Bishop Fisher desires the introduction of a Spanish army into England--Growth of Lutheranism. If circumstances can be imagined to justify the use of the dispensing power claimed and exercised by the Papacy, Henry VIII. had been entitled to demand assistance from Clement VII. in the situation in which he had found himself with Catherine of Aragon. He had been committed when little more than a boy, for political reasons, to a marriage of dubious legality. In the prime of his life he found himself fastened to a woman eight years older than himself; the children whom she had borne to him all dead, except one daughter; his wife past the age when she could hope to be again a mother; the kingdom with the certainty of civil war before it should the King die without a male heir. In hereditary monarchies, where the sovereign is the centre of the State, the interests of the nation have to be considered in the arrangements of his family. Henry had been married irregularly to Catherine to strengthen the alliance between England and Spain. When, as a result, a disputed succession and a renewal of the civil wars was seen to be inevitable, the King had a distinct right to ask to be relieved of the connection by the same irregular methods. The _causa urgentissima_, for which the dispensing power was allowed, was present in the highest degree, and that power ought to have been made use of. That it was not made use of was due to a control exerted upon the Pope by the Emperor, whose pride had been offended; and that such an influence could be employed for such a purpose vitiated the tribunal which had been trusted with a peculiar and exceptional authority. The Pope had not concealed his conviction that the demand was legitimate in itself, or that, in refusing, he was yielding to intimidation, and the inevitable consequences had followed. Royal persons who receive from birth and station remarkable favours of fortune occasionally have to submit to inconveniences attaching to their rank; and, when the occasion rises, they generally meet with little ceremony. At the outset the utmost efforts had been made to spare Catherine's feelings. Both the King and the Pope desired to avoid a judgment on the validity of her marriage. An heir to the crown was needed, and from her there was no hope of further issue. If at the beginning she had been found incapable of bearing a child, the marriage would have been dissolved of itself. Essentially the condition was the same. Technical difficulties could be disposed of by a Papal dispensation. She would have remained queen, her honour unaffected, the legitimacy of Mary unimpugned, the relations between the Holy See and the Crown and Church of England undisturbed. The obstinacy of Catherine herself, the Emperor's determination to support her, and the Pope's cowardice, prevented a reasonable arrangement; and thus the right of the Pope himself to the spiritual sovereignty of Europe came necessarily under question, when it implied the subjugation of independent princes to another power by which the Court of Rome was dominated. Such a question once raised could have but one answer from the English nation. Every resource had been tried to the extreme limit of forbearance, and all had failed before the indomitable will of a single woman. A request admitted to be just had been met by excommunication and threats of force. With entire fitness, the King and Parliament had replied by withdrawing their recognition of a corrupt tribunal, and determining thenceforward to try and to judge their own suits in their own courts. Thus, on the 10th of May, Cranmer, with three Bishops as assessors, sate at Dunstable under the Royal licence to hear the cause which had so long been the talk of Europe, and Catherine, who was at Ampthill, was cited to appear. She consulted Chapuys on the answer which she was to make. Chapuys advised her not to notice the summons. "Nothing done by such a Court could prejudice her," he said, "unless she renounced her appeal to Rome." As she made no plea, judgment was promptly given.[220] The divorce was complete so far as English law could decide it, and it was doubtful to the last whether the Pope was not at heart a consenting party. The sentence had been, of course, anticipated. On the 27th of April Chapuys informed the Emperor how matters then stood. "Had his Holiness done as he was advised, and inserted a clause in the Archbishop's Bulls forbidding the Archbishop to meddle in the case, he would have prevented much mischief. He chose to take his own way, and thus the English repeat what they have said all along: that in the end the Pope would deceive your Majesty.... The thing now to be done is to force from the Pope a quick and sudden decision of the case, so as to silence those who affirm that he is only procrastinating till he can decide in favour of the King, or who think that your Majesty will then acquiesce and that there will be no danger of war.... I have often tried to ascertain from the Queen what alternative she is looking to, seeing that gentleness produces no effect. I have found her hitherto so scrupulous in her profession of respect and affection for the King that she thinks she will be damned eternally if she takes a step which may lead to war. Latterly, however, she has let me know that she would like to see some other remedy tried, though she refers everything to me."[221] The proceedings at Dunstable may have added to Catherine's growing willingness for the "other remedy." She was no longer an English subject in the eye of the law, and might hold herself free to act as she pleased. Simultaneously, however, a consultation was going forward about her and her affairs in the Spanish Cabinet which was not promising for Chapuys's views. The Spanish Ambassador in London, it was said, was urging for war with England. The history of the divorce case was briefly stated. The delay of judgment had been caused by the King's protest that he could not appear at Rome. That point had been decided against the King. The Pope had promised the Emperor that he would proceed at once to sentence, but had not done it. Brief on brief had been presented to the King, ordering him to separate from Anne Boleyn _pendente lite_, but the King had paid no attention to them--had married the Lady and divorced the Queen. The Emperor was the Queen's nearest relation. What was he to do? There were three expedients before him: legal process, force, and law and force combined. The first was the best; but the King and the realm would refuse the tribunal, and _the Pope always had been, and still was, very cold and indifferent in the matter, and most tolerant to the English King_. Open force, in the existing state of Christendom, was dangerous. To begin an aggression was always a questionable step. Although the King had married "Anne de Bulans," he had used no violence against the Queen, or done anything to justify an armed attack upon him. The question was "a private one," and the Emperor must consider what he owed to the public welfare. Should the third course be adopted, the Pope would have to pronounce judgment and call in the secular arm. All Christian princes would then be bound to help him, and the Emperor, as the first among them, would have to place himself at the head of the enterprise. "But would it not be better and more convenient to avoid, for the present, harsh measures, which might bring on war and injure trade, and insist only on further censures and a sentence of deposition against the King? Should the Pope require to know beforehand what the Emperor would do to enforce the execution, it would be enough to tell the Pope that he must do his part first; any further engagement would imply that the sentence on the principal cause had been decided beforehand. Finally, it would have to be determined whether the Queen was to remain in England or to leave it." These were the questions before the Cabinet. A Privy Councillor, perhaps Granvelle (the name is not mentioned), gave his own opinion, which was seemingly adopted. _All_ these ways were to be tried. The Pope must proceed with the suit. Force must be suspended for the present, _the cause being a personal one, and having already begun when peace was made at Cambray_. The Pope must conclude the principal matter, or at least insist on the revocation of what had been done since the suit commenced, and then, perhaps, force would not be required at all. The advice of the Consulta on the answer to be given to the Pope, should he require to know the Emperor's intentions, was exactly right. Nothing more need be said than that the Emperor would not forget the obligations which devolved on him, as an obedient son of the Church. The Queen, meanwhile, must remain in England. If she came away, a rupture would be inevitable. The speaker advised further that a special embassy should be sent to England to remonstrate with the King. This, however, if unsuccessful, it was felt would lead to war; and opposite to the words the Emperor himself wrote on the margin an emphatic _No_.[222] The mention of the peace of Cambray is important. The divorce had reached an acute stage before the peace was concluded. It had not been spoken of there, and the Emperor was diplomatically precluded from producing it as a fresh injury. Both he and the Council were evidently unwilling to act. The Pope knew their reluctance, and did not mean, if he could help it, to flourish his spiritual weapons without a sword to support them. The King wrote to inform Charles of his marriage. "In the face of the Scotch pretensions to the succession," he said, "other heirs of his body were required for the security of the Crown. The thing was done, and the Pope must make the best of it." This was precisely what the Pope was inclined to do. Cifuentes thought that, though he seemed troubled, "he was really pleased."[223] "He said positively that, if he was to declare the King of England deprived of his crown, the Emperor must bind himself to see the sentence executed."[224] Charles had no intention of binding himself, nor would his Cabinet advise him to bind himself. The time was passed when Most Catholic Princes could put armies in motion to execute the decrees of the Bishop of Rome. The theory might linger, but the facts were changed. Philip II. tried the experiment half a century later, but it did not answer to him. A fresh order of things had risen in Europe, and passionate Catholics could not understand it. Dr. Ortiz shrieked that "the King, by his marriage, was guilty of heresy and schism;" the Emperor ought to use the opportunity, without waiting for further declarations from the Pope, and unsheath the sword which God had placed in his hands.[225] English Peers and Prelates, impatient of the rising strength of the Commons and of the growth of Lutheranism, besieged Chapuys with entreaties for an Imperial force to be landed. They told him that Richard III. was not so hated by the people as Henry; but that, without help from abroad, they dared not declare themselves.[226] Why could they not dare? The King had no janissaries about his throne. Why could they not stand up in the House of Lords and refuse to sanction the measures which they disapproved? Why, except that they were _not_ the people. Numbers might still be on their side, but the daring, the intellect, the fighting-strength of England was against them, and the fresh air of dawning freedom chilled their blood. The modern creed is that majorities have a right to rule. If, out of every hundred men, four-fifths will vote on one side, but will not fight without help from the sword of the stranger; and the remaining fifth will both vote and fight--fight domestic cowards and foreign foes combined--which has the right to rule? The theory may be imperfect; but it is easy to foresee which will rule in fact. The marriage with Anne was formally communicated in the House of Lords. There were some murmurs. The King rose from the throne and said it had been necessary for the welfare of the realm. Peers and Commons acquiesced, and no more was said. The coronation of the new Queen was fixed for the 19th of May. If the great men who had been so eager with Chapuys were poltroons, Chapuys himself was none. Rumours were flying that the Emperor was coming to waste England, destroy the Royal family, and place a foreign Prince on the throne. The Ambassador addressed a letter to Henry, saying that he held powers to take action for the preservation of the Queen's rights; and he gave him notice that he intended to enter immediately on the duties of his office.[227] Henry showed no displeasure at so bold a communication, but sent Thomas Cromwell to him, who was now fast rising into consequence, to remind him that, large as was the latitude allowed to Ambassadors, he must not violate the rights of the Crown, and to warn him to be careful. He was then summoned before the Privy Council. Norfolk had previously cautioned him against introducing briefs or letters from the Pope, telling him that if he did he would be torn in pieces by the people. The Council demanded to see the powers which he said that he possessed. He produced directions which he had received to watch over the Queen's rights, and he then remarked on the several briefs by which the King was virtually excommunicated. Lord Wiltshire told him that if any subject had so acted he would have found himself in the Tower. The King wished him well; but if he wore two faces, and meddled with what did not concern him, he might fall into trouble. Chapuys replied that the Council were like the eels of Melun, which cried out before they were skinned. He had done nothing, so far. He had not presented any "Apostolic letters." As to two faces, the Earl meant, he supposed, that he was about to act as the Queen's Proctor as well as Ambassador; he was not a lawyer; he had no such ambition. Then, speaking in Latin, because part of the Council did not understand French, he dwelt on the old friendship between the Emperor and the King. He said that the part which the Emperor had taken about the divorce was as much for the sake of the King and the realm as for the sake of the Queen, although the Queen and Princess were as a mother and a sister to him. He went through the case; he said their statutes were void in themselves, and, even if valid, could not be retrospective. The Archbishop had been just sworn to the Pope. He had broken his oath, and was under excommunication,[228] and was, therefore, disqualified to act. He reminded the Council of the Wars of the Roses, and told them they were sharpening the thorns for fresh struggles. Doctor Foxe (the King's Almoner, afterwards bishop) replied that the King could not live with his brother's wife without sin, and therefore left her. It was a fact accomplished, and no longer to be argued. To challenge the action of the Archbishop was to challenge the law of the land, and was not to be allowed. The Pope had no authority in England, spiritual or temporal. The introduction of bulls or briefs from Rome was unlawful, and could not be sheltered behind immunities of ambassadors. Chapuys was the representative of the Emperor, not of the Pope, and Foxe cautioned him against creating disturbances in the realm. To this Chapuys quietly answered that he would do his duty, let the consequences be what they might. Being again warned, he said he would wait for two or three days, within which he looked for a satisfactory reply from the King. In leaving the council-room, he said, in imperious fashion, as if he was addressing a set of criminals, that reports were current about the Emperor which he desired to notice. Some declared that he had consented to the marriage with the Lady Anne. Others that he meant to make war. Both allegations alike were false and malicious. So far from wishing to injure England, the Emperor wished to help and support it, and could not believe that he would ever be obliged to act otherwise; and as to consenting to the divorce, if the Pope declared for it he would submit to the Pope's judgment; otherwise the world would not turn him from the path which he meant to follow. He was acting as the King's best friend, as the King would acknowledge if he could forget his passion for the Lady and consider seriously his relations with the Emperor. He begged the Council, therefore, to prevent such rumours from being circulated if they did not wish Chapuys to contradict them himself. The Ambassador was keeping within the truth when he said that Charles was not meditating war. Chapuys's instructions when first sent to England had been not to make matters worse than they were, not to threaten war, nor to imply in any way that there was danger of war.[229] He had himself, however, insisted that there was no alternative. He had encouraged Catherine's friends with hope of eventual help, and continued to convey to the Emperor their passionate wish that "his Majesty's hand would soon reach England," before "the accursed woman" made an end of the Queen and of them--to tell him that, were his forces once on land, they might raise as many men as they pleased, and the London citizens would stand by, "keep the enlistment money," and wait to see which party won. As long, however, as his master was undecided he would not, he said, take measures which would do no good, and only lead to inconvenience. He had merely given the Council "a piece of his mind," and had said what no one else would say, for fear of Lady Anne. The answer to his letter which he expected from the King did not arrive, but instead of it an invitation to dinner from the Duke of Norfolk, which he refused lest his consent should be misconstrued. Ultimately, however, Cromwell came to him with the King's permission. Cromwell, strange to say, had been a strong advocate for the Imperial alliance, in opposition to the French, and with Cromwell the Ambassador's relations were more easy than with the Duke. Their conversations were intimate and confidential. Chapuys professed a hope that the King's affection for the Lady would pass off, and promised, for himself, to pour no more oil on the fire till he received fresh orders. If they wished for peace, however, he said they must be careful of their behaviour to the Queen, and he complained of the removal of her arms from her barge in the river. Such petty acts of persecution ought to be avoided. The removal of the arms was the work of some too zealous friend of Anne. Cromwell had not heard of it, and said that the King would be greatly displeased. Meanwhile he trusted that Spanish notions of honour would not interfere with a friendship so useful to both countries. If it came to war, England would not be found an easy conquest. He defended the King's action. The Pope would not do him justice, so he had slapped the Pope in the face. No doubt he had been influenced by love for the Lady. Neither the King himself, nor all the Preachers in the world, would convince him that love had nothing to do with it. But the King was well read in the canon law, and if his conscience was satisfied it was enough. As Cromwell was so frank, Chapuys asked him when and where the marriage with Anne had been concluded. Cromwell either would not or could not tell him, saying merely that Norfolk had not been present at the ceremony, but others of the Council had, and there was no doubt that it had really taken place. So matters stood in England, every one waiting to learn how the Emperor would act. Anne Boleyn was duly crowned at Whitsuntide--a splendid official pageant compensating for the secrecy of her marriage. The streets were thronged with curious spectators, but there was no enthusiasm. The procession was like a funeral. The Pope was about to meet the King of France at Nice. Norfolk was commissioned to attend the interview, and, as Henry still hoped that the Duke would bring back an acquiescence in his wishes from Clement, Chapuys saw him before his departure. The Duke said the peace of the world now depended on the Emperor. He repeated that his niece's marriage had been no work of his. Her father and he had always been against it, and, but for them, it would have happened a year before. She had been furious with both of them. She was now _enceinte_, and had told her father and himself and Suffolk that she was in better plight than they wished her to be. To attempt to persuade the King to take Catherine back either by threat or argument would be labour thrown away, such "were his scruples of conscience and his despair of having male succession by her." At Cromwell's intercession, the Bishop of Rochester was now released from confinement, and politics were quiet, till the effect was seen of the Nice conference. Anxious consultations were held at Rome before the Pope set out. The Cardinals met in consistory. Henry's belief had been that Francis was prepared to stand by him to the uttermost, and would carry Clement with him. He was now to find, either that he had been misled or had wilfully deceived himself. Cardinal Tournon, who was supposed to have carried an ultimatum from the meeting at Calais, had required the Pope to suspend the process against Henry:[230] if the Pope replied that the offence was too great, and that he must deprive him, Francis did not say that he would risk excommunication himself by taking an open part, but had directed the Cardinal to urge the removal of the suit to a neutral place, as had been often proposed. The Pope told the Count de Cifuentes that this suggestion had been already discussed with the Emperor, and that the Emperor had not entirely disapproved;[231] but the cunning and treacherous Clement had formed a plan of his own by which he thought he could save England and punish Henry. Francis being less firm than he had feared, he thought that, by working on French ambition, he could detach Francis completely from his English ally. The French were known to be eager to recover Calais. What if Calais could be offered them as a bait? They might turn their coats as they had so often done before.[232] Cunning and weakness generally go together. It was an ingenious proposal, and throws a new light on Clement's character. Nothing came of it, for the Emperor, with a view to the safety of Flanders and the eventual recovery of the English alliance, declined to sanction a change of ownership on his own frontier. Finding no encouragement, Clement relapsed into his usual attitude. The Imperialists continued to press for the delivery of sentence before the Pope should leave Rome. The Pope continued to insist on knowing the Emperor's intentions. A Spanish lawyer, Rodrigo Davalos, had been sent to Rome to dissuade the Pope from the Nice interview, and to quicken the action of the Rota. "Queen Catherine's suit," he said, "had been carried on as if it were that of the poorest woman in the world. Since Cifuentes and he had been there the process had been pushed on, but the Advocates and Proctors had not received a real. Their hands required anointing to make them stick to their business. The Cardinals were at sixes and sevens, and refused to pull together, do what Davalos would."[233] Davalos, being a skilful manipulator and going the right way to work, pressed the process forward in the Rota without telling the Pope what he was doing, since Clement would have stopped it had he not been kept in ignorance. But, "God helping, no excuse was left." The forms were all concluded, and nothing remained but to pass the long-talked-of sentence. The Pope was so "importuned" by the French and English Ambassadors to suspend it till after the meeting at Nice that Davalos could not say whether he would get it, after all; but he told the Pope that further hesitation would be regarded by the Emperor as an outrage, and would raise suspicion through the whole world. The Pope promised, but where goodwill was wanting trifles were obstacles. Davalos confessed that he had no faith in his promise. He feared the Pope must have issued some secret brief, which stood in his way.[234] Clement, however, was driven on in spite of himself. Judgment on the principal cause could not be wrung from him. Cardinal Salviati was of opinion that they would never give it till the Emperor would promise that it should be executed.[235] But a Brief _super Attentatis_, which was said to be an equivalent, Clement was required to sign, and did sign--a Bull on which Charles could act if occasion served, the Pope himself swearing great oaths that Henry had used him ill, and that he would bribe Francis to forsake him by the promise of Calais.[236] One more touch must be added to complete the comedy of distraction. A proposal of the Spanish Council to send a special embassy to London to remonstrate with the King had been definitely rejected by the Emperor. It was revived by Chapuys, with whom it had probably originated. He imagined that the most distinguished representatives of the Spanish nation might appear at the English Court and protest against the ill-usage of the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. If the King refused them satisfaction, they might demand to be heard in Parliament. The King would then be placed in the wrong before his own people. The nobles of Aragon and Castile would offer their persons and their property to maintain the Queen's right; and Chapuys said, "_Not a Spaniard would hesitate if they were privately assured first that they would not be taken at their word_."[237] Leaving the Catholic Powers in confusion and uncertainty, we return to England. Catherine had rejected every proposal which had been made to her. There could not be two queens in the same country, and, after Anne's coronation, a deputation waited upon her to intimate that her style must be changed. She must now consent to be termed Princess Dowager, when an establishment would be provided for her as the widow of the King's brother. Her magnificent refusal is well known to history. Cromwell spoke with unbounded admiration of it. Yet it was inconvenient, and increased the difficulty of providing for her, since she declined to accept any grants which might be made to her under the new title, or to be attended by any person who did not treat her and address her as queen. It would have been better if she had required to be allowed to return to Castile; but both the Spanish Council and the Emperor had decided that she must remain in England. The Princess had been allowed to rejoin her. The mother and daughter had made short expeditions together, and had been received with so much enthusiasm that it was found necessary again to part them. Stories were current of insulting messages which Catherine had received from the Lady Anne, false probably, and meant only to create exasperation. The popular feeling was warmly in her favour. She was personally liked as much as Anne was hated; and the King himself was not spared. As a specimen of the licence of language, "a Mrs. Amadas, witch and prophetess, was indicted for having said that 'the Lady Anne should be burned, for she was a harlot. Master Norris (Sir Henry Norris, Equerry to Henry) was bawd between her and the King. The King had kept both the mother and the daughter, and Lord Wiltshire was bawd to his wife and to his two daughters.'"[238] In July the news arrived from Rome of the Brief _de Attentatis_, and with it the unpleasant intelligence that Francis could not be depended on, and that the hopes expected from the meeting at Nice would not be realised. The disappointment was concealed from Anne, for fear of endangering the expected child. Norfolk, who had waited in Paris to proceed in the French King's train, was ordered to return to England. Henry was not afraid, but he was discovering that he had nothing to rely upon but himself and the nation. The terms on which France and the Empire stood towards each other were so critical that he did not expect the Emperor to quarrel with England if he could help it. Chapuys seemed studiously to seek Cromwell. Of Cromwell's fidelity to himself Henry was too well assured to feel uneasy about their intimacy, and therefore they met often and as freely exchanged their thoughts. Chapuys found Cromwell "a man of sense, well versed in affairs of State, and able to judge soundly," with not too good an opinion of the Lady Anne, who returned his dislike. Anne was French; Cromwell was Imperialist beyond all the rest of the Council. "I told him," wrote the Ambassador to Charles, after one of these conversations, "I often regretted your Majesty had not known him in Wolsey's time. He would have been a greater man than the Cardinal, and the King's affairs would have gone much better. He seemed pleased, so I continued. Now was the time for him to do his master better service than ever man did before. Sentence had been given in Rome against the King, and there was no further hope that your Majesty and the Pope would agree to the divorce. I presumed that the King being so reasonable, virtuous, and humane a prince, would not persist longer and blemish the many gifts which God had bestowed on him. I prayed him to move the King. He could do more with him than any other man. He was not in the Council when the accursed business was first mooted. The Queen trusted him, and, when reinstated, would not forget his service. Cromwell took what I said in good part. He assured me that all the Council desired your Majesty's friendship. He would do his best, and hoped that things would turn out well. If I can believe what he says there is still a hope that the King may change. I will set the net again and try if I can catch him; but one cannot be too cautious. The King is disturbed by what has passed at Rome. He fears the Pope will seduce the French King from him."[239] "Who was this Cromwell that had grown to such importance?" Granvelle had asked. "He is the son," replied Chapuys, "of a farrier in Chelsea, who is buried in the parish church there. His uncle, father of Richard Cromwell, was cook to the Archbishop of Canterbury. This Thomas Cromwell was wild in his youth, and had to leave the country. He went to Flanders and to Rome. Returning thence he married the daughter of a wool merchant, and worked at his father-in-law's business. After that he became a solicitor. Wolsey, finding him diligent and a man of ability for good or ill, took him into service and employed him in the suppression of religious houses. When Wolsey fell he behaved extremely well. The King took him into his secret Council. Now he is above everyone, except the Lady, and is supposed to have more credit than ever the Cardinal had. He is hospitable and liberal, speaks English well, and Latin, French, and Italian tolerably."[240] The intimacy increased. Cromwell, though Imperial in politics and no admirer of Anne Boleyn, was notoriously Henry's chief adviser in the reform of the clergy; but to this aspect of him Chapuys had no objection. Neither the Ambassador nor Charles, nor any secular statesman in Europe, was blind to the enormities of Churchmen or disposed to lift a finger for them, if reform did not take the shape of Lutheranism. Charles himself had said that, if Henry had no objects beyond the correction of the spiritualty, he would rather aid than obstruct him. Between Chapuys and Cromwell there was thus common ground; and Cromwell's hint that the King might perhaps reconsider his position may not have been wholly groundless. The action of the Rota, pressed through by Davalos, had taken Henry by surprise. He had not expected that the Pope would give a distinct judgment against him. He had been equally disappointed in the support which he expected from Francis. That he should now hesitate for an instant was natural and inevitable; but the irresolution, if real, did not last. Norfolk wrote to the King from Paris "to care nothing for the Pope:" there were men "enough at his side in England to defend his right with the sword."[241] Henry appealed to a General Council, when a Council could be held which should be more than a Papal delegacy. The revenues of the English sees which were occupied by Campeggio and Ghinucci he sequestrated, as a sign of the abandonment of a detestable system. His own mind, meanwhile, was fastened on the approaching confinement of Anne. With the birth of a male heir to the Crown he knew that his difficulties would vanish. Nurses and doctors had assured him of a son, and the event was expected both by him and by others with passionate expectation. A Prince of Wales would quiet the national uncertainty. It would be the answer of Heaven to Pope and Emperor, and a Divine sanction of his revolt. There is danger in interpreting Providence before the event. If the anticipation is disappointed the weight of the sentence may be thrown into the opposing scale. To the bitter "mortification of the King and the Lady, to the reproach of physicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and sorceresses who affirmed that the child would be a male,"[242] to the delight of Chapuys and the perplexity of a large section of the English people who were waiting for Providence to speak, on the 7th of September the girl who was afterwards to be Queen Elizabeth was brought into the world. This was the worst blow which Henry had received. He was less given to superstition than most of his subjects, but there had been too much of appeals to Heaven through the whole of the controversy. The need of a male heir had been paraded before Christendom as the ground of his action. He had already discovered that Anne was not what his blindness to her faults had allowed him to believe; he was fond of the Princess Mary, and Anne had threatened to make a waiting-maid of her. The new Queen had made herself detested in the Court by her insolence; there had been "lover's quarrels,"[243] from which Catherine's friends had gathered hopes, and much must have passed behind the scenes of which no record survives. A lady of the bed-chamber had heard Henry say he would "rather beg from door to door than forsake her;"[244] on the other hand, Anne acknowledged afterwards that his love had not been returned, and she could hardly have failed to let him see it. Could she be the mother of a prince she was safe, but on this she might well think her security depended. All Henry's male children, except the Duke of Richmond, had died at the birth or in infancy; and words which she let fall to her sister-in-law, Lady Rochford, implied a suspicion that the fault was in the King.[245] It is not without significance that in the subsequent indictment of Sir Henry Norris it was alleged that on the 6th of October, 1533, less than a month after Anne's confinement, she solicited Norris to have criminal intercourse with her, and that on the 12th the act was committed. But to this subject I shall return hereafter. Anyway, the King made the best of his misfortune. If the first adventure had failed, a second might be more successful. The unwelcome daughter was christened amidst general indifference, without either bonfires or rejoicings. She was proclaimed Princess, and the title was taken away from her sister Mary. Chapuys, after what Cromwell had said to him, trusted naturally that the King's mind would be affected by his disappointment. They met again. Chapuys urged that it would be easier to set things straight than at an earlier stage. The King, being of a proud temper, would have felt humiliated if he had been baffled. He might now listen to reason. It was said of Englishmen that when they had made a mistake they were more ready to confess it than other people; and, so far from losing in public esteem, he would only gain, if he now admitted that he had been wrong. The Emperor would send an embassy requesting him affectionately to take Catherine back; his compliance would thus lose all appearance of compulsion. The expectation was reasonable. Cromwell, however, had to tell him in earnest language that it could not be; and the Catholic party in England, who had hoped as Chapuys hoped, and found themselves only further embittered by the exclusion of Mary from the succession, became desperate in turn. From this period their incipient treason developed into definite conspiracy, the leader among the disaffected and the most influential from his reputed piety and learning being Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, whose subsequent punishment has been the text for so many eloquent invectives. Writing on the 27th of September to the Emperor, Chapuys says: "The good Bishop of Rochester has sent to me to notify that the arms of the Pope against these obstinate men are softer than lead, and that your Majesty must set your hand to it, in which you will do a work as agreeable to God as a war against the Turk."[246] This was not all. The Bishop had gone on to advise a measure which would lead immediately and intentionally to a revival of the Wars of the Roses. "If matters come to a rupture, the Bishop said it would be well for your Majesty to attach to yourself the son of the Princess Mary's governess [the Countess of Salisbury, mother of Reginald Pole], daughter of the Duke of Clarence, to whom, according to the opinion of many, the kingdom would belong. He is now studying at Padua. On account of the pretensions which he and his brother would have to the crown, the Queen would like to bestow the Princess on him in marriage, and the Princess would not refuse. He and his brothers have many kinsmen and allies, of whose services your Majesty might make use and gain the greater part of the realm."[247] The Bishop of Rochester might plead a higher allegiance as an excuse for conspiring to dethrone his Sovereign. But those who play such desperate games stake their lives upon the issue, and if they fail must pay the forfeit. The Bishop was not the only person who thus advised Chapuys. Rebellion and invasion became the settled thought of the King's opponents, and Catherine was expected to lend her countenance. The Regent's Council at Brussels, bolder than the Spanish, were for immediate war. A German force might be thrown across the Channel. The Flemish nobles might hesitate, but would allow ships to carry an army to Scotland. The army might then march south; Catherine would join it, and appear in the field.[248] Catherine herself bade Chapuys charge the Pope in her name to proceed to the execution of the sentence[249] "in the most rigorous terms of justice possible;" the King, she said, would then be brought to reason when he felt the bit. She did not advocate violence in words, though what she did advocate implied violence and made it inevitable. Fisher was prepared for any extremity. "The good and holy Bishop of Rochester," Chapuys repeated, "would like your Majesty to take active measures immediately, as I wrote in my last, which advice he has sent to me again lately to repeat.[250] Without this they fear disorder. The smallest force would suffice." Knowing Charles's unwillingness, the Ambassador added a further incitement. Among the preachers, he said, there was one who spread worse errors than Luther. The Prelates all desired to have him punished, but the Archbishop of Canterbury held him up, the King would not listen to them; and, were it not that he feared the people, would long since have professed Lutheranism himself.[251] CHAPTER XIV. Interview between the Pope and Francis at Marseilles--Proposed compromise--The divorce case to be heard at Cambray--The Emperor consents--Catherine refuses--The story of the Nun of Kent--Bishop Fisher in the Tower--Imminent breach with the Papacy--Catherine and the Princess Mary--Separation of the Princess from her mother--Catherine at Kimbolton-- Appeals to the Emperor--Encouragement of Lutheranism--Last efforts of Rome--Final sentence delivered by the Pope--The Pope's authority abolished in England. The Pope's last brief had been sufficiently definite to enable the Emperor to act upon it if Henry still disobeyed. English scruples, however, required a judgment on the divorce itself before force was openly tried. Clement went, as he had intended, to France in October, and met the French King at Marseilles. Norfolk, as has been said, was not allowed to be present; but Gardiner and Bonner attended as inferior agents to watch the proceedings. Cifuentes followed the Papal Court for Charles, and the English Nuncio, who had been at last recalled, was present also. The main result of the interview was the marriage of the Duke of Orleans to the Pope's niece, Catherine de' Medici, a guarantee that Francis was not to follow England into schism but was to remain Catholic. The engagements with which he had tempted Henry into committing himself were thus abandoned, and the honour which had been saved at Pavia was touched, if it was not lost. It had strength enough, however, to lead him still to exert himself to bring Clement to reason. The bribe of Calais was not tried upon him, having been emphatically negatived by the Emperor. The Chancellor of France presented in Henry's name a formal complaint of the Pope's conduct. It was insisted that when he commissioned Campeggio to go to England, he had formally promised not to revoke the cause to Rome, and this promise he had violated. The Pope's answer was curious. He admitted the promise, but he said it was conditional on Queen Catherine's consent, _though this clause was not inserted in the commission lest it might suggest to her to complain_.[252] The answer was allowed to pass. Other objections were similarly set aside, and then the Cardinal de Tarbes, professing to speak in Henry's name, proposed that the Pope should appoint another commission to hear the cause at Cambray, himself nominating the judges. If the Pope would comply he was authorised to say that the King would obey, and, pending the trial, would separate from Anne and recall Catherine to the court. Cifuentes had again urged the Pope to declare Henry deprived. The Pope had refused on the ground that, unless the Emperor would bind himself to execute the sentence in arms, the Holy See would lose reputation.[253] He had, therefore, a fair excuse for listening to the French suggestion. The Cardinals deliberated, and thought it ought to be accepted. If the King would really part with Anne the cause might be even heard in England itself, and no better course could be thought of. The proposal was referred, through the Papal Nuncio, to the Emperor, and the Emperor wrote on the margin of the Nuncio's despatch to him that he could give no answer till he had communicated with Catherine, but that he would write and recommend her to follow the course pointed out by his Holiness.[254] The Spanish party suspected a trick. They thought that there might be an appearance of compliance with the Pope's brief. Catherine might be allowed a room in the Palace till the cause was removed from Rome. It was all but gained in the Rota; if referred back in the manner proposed, it would be delayed by appeals and other expedients till it became interminable. Their alternative was instant excommunication. But the Pope had the same answer. How could he do that? He did not know that the Emperor would take up arms. Were he to issue the censures, and were no effect to follow, the Apostolic See would be discredited. De Tarbes was asked to produce his commission from Henry to make suggestions in his name. It was found when examined to be insufficient. Henry himself, when he learnt what had been done, "changed colour, crushed the letter in his hands, and exclaimed that the King of France had betrayed him."[255] But he had certainly made some concession or other. The time allowed in the last brief had run out. The French Cardinals did not relinquish their efforts. They demanded a suspension of six months, till Henry and Francis could meet again and arrange something which the Pope could accept. The Pope, false himself, suspected every one to be as false as he was. He suspected that a private arrangement was being made between Henry and the Emperor, and Cifuentes himself could not or would not relieve his misgivings. In the midst of the uncertainty a courier came in from England with an appeal _ad futurum Concilium_--when a council could be held that was above suspicion. The word "council" always drove Clement distracted. He complained to Francis, and Francis, provoked at finding his efforts paralysed, said angrily that, were it not for his present need of the King of England's friendship lest others should forestall him there, he would play him a trick that he should remember. The suspension of the censures for an indefinite time was granted, however, after a debate in the Consistory. The English Council, when the proposal for the hearing of the cause at Cambray was submitted to them, hesitated over their answer. They told Chapuys that such a compromise as the Pope offered might once have been entertained, but nothing now would induce the King to sacrifice the interests of his new-born daughter; "all the Ambassadors in the world would not move him, nor even the Pope himself, if he came to visit him."[256] Nevertheless, so anxious were all parties now at the last moment to find some conditions or other to prevent the division of Christendom that the Cardinal de Tarbes's proposition, or something like it, might have been accepted. The Emperor, however, had made his consent contingent on Catherine's acquiescence, and Catherine herself refused--refused resolutely, absolutely, and finally. Charles had written to her as he had promised. Chapuys sent her down the letter with a draft of the terms proposed, and he himself strongly exhorted her to agree. He asked for a distinct "Yes" or "No," and Catherine answered "No." Her cause should be heard in Rome, she said, and nowhere but in Rome; the removal to Cambray meant only delay, and from delay she had suffered long enough; should Anne Boleyn have a son meanwhile, the King would be more obstinate than ever. The Pope must be required to end the cause himself and to end it quickly. The Emperor knew her determination and might have spared his application.[257] She wrote to Chapuys "that, sentence once pronounced, the King, for all his bravado and obstinacy, would listen to reason, and war would be unnecessary." "On that point," the Ambassador said, "she would not find a single person to agree with her."[258] Catherine had pictured to herself a final triumph, and she could not part with the single hope which had cheered her through her long trial. If any chance of accommodation remained after her peremptory answer, it was dispelled by the discovery of the treason connected with the Nun of Kent. The story of Elizabeth Barton has been told by me elsewhere. Here it is enough to say that from the beginning of the divorce suit a hysterical woman, professing to have received Divine revelations, had denounced the King's conduct in private and public, and had influenced the judgment of peers, bishops, statesmen, and privy councillors. She had been treated at first as a foolish enthusiast, but her prophecies had been circulated by an organisation of itinerant friars, and had been made use of to feed the disaffection which had shown itself in the overtures to Chapuys. The effect which she had produced had been recently discovered. She had been arrested, had made a large confession, and had implicated several of the greatest names in the realm. She had written more than once to the Pope. She had influenced Warham. She had affected the failing intellect of Wolsey. The Bishop of Rochester, the Marquis and Marchioness of Exeter, had admitted her to intimate confidence. Even Sir Thomas More had at one time half believed that she was inspired. Catherine, providentially, as Chapuys thought, had declined to see her, but was acquainted with all that passed between her and the Exeters. When brought before the Council she was treated _comme une grosse dame_--as a person of consideration. The occasion was of peculiar solemnity, and great persons were in attendance from all parts of the realm. The Chancellor, in the Nun's presence, gave a history of her proceedings. He spoke of the loyalty and fidelity which had been generally shown by the nation during the trying controversy. The King had married a second wife to secure the succession and provide for the tranquillity of the realm. The woman before them had instigated the Pope to censure him, and had endeavoured to bring about a rebellion to deprive him of his throne. The audience, who had listened quietly so far, at the word "rebellion" broke out into cries of "To the stake! to the stake!" The Nun showed no alarm, but admitted quietly that what the Chancellor said was true. She had acknowledged much, but more lay behind, and Chapuys confessed himself alarmed at what she might still reveal. Cromwell observed to him that "God must have directed the sense and wit of the Queen to keep clear of the woman." But Catherine's confessor had been among the most intimate of her confederates; and to be aware of treason and not reveal it was an act of treason in itself. Sir Thomas More cleared himself. Fisher, the guiltiest of all, was sent to the Tower for misprision. The Pope's final sentence was now a certainty. Francis had cleared his conscience by advocating the compromise. Nothing more could be done, he said, unless Cranmer's judgment was revoked. He chose to forget that the compromise had been rejected by Catherine herself. He complained that as fast as he studied to gain the Pope the English studied to lose him. He had devised a plan, and the English spoilt it. He regretted that he had ever meddled in the matter. The Pope could not help himself; but must now excommunicate the King and call on Christendom to support him.[259] Henry could no longer doubt that he was in serious danger. To the risk of invasion from abroad, disaffection at home had to be added. How far it extended he did not yet know. All along, however, he had been preparing for what the future might bring. The fleet was in high order; the fortifications at Dover and Calais had been repaired; if the worst came he meant to be ready for it; the stoppage of trade might be serious; it was to this that Catherine looked as her most effective weapon; but English commerce was as important to Spain and Flanders as the Flemish woollens to the London citizens, and the leading merchants on both sides came to an understanding that an Interdict would be disregarded. The Lutherans had the courage of their opinions and could be depended on to fight. The laws against heretics were allowed to sleep. Their numbers increased, and the French Ambassador observed to Chapuys that they would not easily be eradicated. Many who were orthodox in the faith were bitter against Rome and Romanism. The Duke of Norfolk was the loudest of them all. Flanders could not live, he said, to a deputation of alarmed citizens, without the English trade; and as to the Pope, the Pope was a wretch and a bastard, a liar and a bad man; he would stake wife and children and his own person to be revenged on him.[260] An order of Council came out that the Pope henceforward was to be styled only Bishop of Rome. Chapuys could not understand it. The Duke, he thought, was strangely changed; he had once professed to be a staunch Catholic. Norfolk had not changed. The peculiar Anglican theory was beginning to show itself that a Church might still be Catholic though it ceased to be Papal. Irritated though he was at his last failure, Francis did not wholly abandon his efforts. A successful invasion of England by the Emperor would be dangerous or even fatal to France. He wrote to Anne. He sent his letter by the hands of her old friend, Du Bellay, and she was so pleased that she kissed him when he presented it. Du Bellay sought out Chapuys. "Could nothing be done," he asked, "to prevent England from breaking with the Papacy? Better England, France, and the Empire had spent a hundred thousand crowns than allow a rupture. The Emperor had done his duty in supporting his aunt; might he not now yield a little to avoid worse?" Chapuys could give him no hope. The treatment of Catherine alone would force the Emperor to take further measures. That Catherine, so far, had no personal ill-usage to complain of had been admitted by the Spanish Council, and alleged as an argument against interference by force in her favour. Chapuys conceived, and probably hoped, that this objection was being removed. What to do with her was not the least of the perplexities in which Henry had involved himself. By the public law of Christendom, a marriage with a brother's widow was illegal. By the law as it has stood ever since in England, the Pope of Rome neither has, nor ever had, a right to dispense in such cases. She was not, therefore, Henry's queen. She deserved the most indulgent consideration; her anger and her resistance were legitimate and natural; but the fact remained. She had refused all compromise. She had insisted on a decision, and an English Court had given judgment against her. If she was queen, Elizabeth was a bastard, and her insistance upon her title was an invitation to civil war. She was not standing alone. The Princess Mary, on her father's marriage with Anne, had written him a letter, which he had praised as greatly to her credit; but either Anne's insolence or her mother's persuasion had taken her back to Catherine's side. Her conduct may and does deserve the highest moral admiration; but the fidelity of the child to her mother was the assertion of a right to be next in succession to the crown. There was no longer a doubt that a dangerous movement was on foot for an insurrection, supported from abroad. If Catherine escaped with Mary to the Continent, war would instantly follow. If there was a rebellion at home, their friends intended to release them, and to use their names in the field. It was found necessary again to part them. The danger would be diminished if they were separated; together they confirmed each other's resolution. Catherine was sent to Kimbolton with a reduced household--her confessor, her doctor, her own personal servants and attendants--who had orders to call her Princess, but obeyed as little as they pleased. Mary was attached to the establishment of her baby sister Elizabeth under charge of Anne Boleyn's aunt, Mrs. Shelton. History with a universal voice condemns the King's conduct as cruel and unnatural. It was not cruel in the sense of being wanton; it was not unnatural in the sense that he had no feeling. He was in a dilemma, through his own actions, from which he could not otherwise extricate himself. Catherine was not his wife, and he knew it; he had been misled by Wolsey into the expectation that the Pope would relieve him; he had been trifled with and played upon; he was now threatened with excommunication and deposition. Half his subjects, and those the boldest and most determined, had rallied to his side; his cause had become the occasion of a great and beneficent revolution, and incidental difficulties had to be dealt with as they rose. Catherine he had long ceased to love, if love had ever existed between them, but he respected her character and admired her indomitable courage. For his daughter he had a real affection, as appeared in a slight incident which occurred shortly after her removal. Elizabeth was at Hatfield, and Mary, whose pride Anne had threatened to humble, was with her. Mrs. Shelton's orders were to box Mary's ears if she presumed to call herself Princess. The King knew nothing of these instructions. He had found his daughter always dutiful except when under her mother's influence, and one day he rode down to Hatfield to see her. The Lady Anne, finding that he had gone without her knowledge, "considering the King's easiness and lightness, if anyone dared to call it so," and afraid of the effect which a meeting with his daughter might have upon him, sent some one in pursuit to prevent him from seeing or speaking with her. The King submitted to his imperious mistress, saw Anne's child, but did not see Mary. She had heard of his arrival, and as he was mounting his horse to ride back she showed herself on the leads, kneeling as if to ask his blessing. The King saw her, bowed, lifted his bonnet, and silently went his way.[261] The French Ambassador met him afterwards in London. The King said he had not spoken to his daughter on account of her Spanish obstinacy. The Ambassador saying something in her favour, "tears rushed into the King's eyes, and he praised her many virtues and accomplishments." "The Lady," said Chapuys, "is aware of the King's affection for his daughter, and therefore never ceases to plot against her." The Earl of Northumberland, once Anne's lover, told him that she meant to poison the Princess. Chapuys had thought it might be better if she avoided irritating her father; he advised her to protect herself by a secret protest, and to let her title drop on condition that she might live with her mother. Lady Anne, however, it was thought, would only be more malicious, and a show of yielding would discourage her friends. Another plan was to carry her off abroad; but war would then be inevitable, and Chapuys could not venture to recommend such an attempt without the Emperor's express consent.[262] Catherine also was, or professed to be, in fear of foul play. Kimbolton was a small but not inconvenient residence. It was represented as a prison. The King was supposed to be eager for her death; and in the animosity of the time he, or at least his mistress, was thought capable of any atrocity. The Queen was out of health in reality, having shown signs of dropsy, and the physicians thought her life uncertain. She would eat nothing which her new servants provided; the little food she took was prepared by her chamberwoman, and her own room was used as a kitchen.[263] Charles had intimated that, if she was ill-used, he might be driven to interfere; and every evil rumour that was current was treasured up to exasperate him into action. No words, Chapuys said in a letter to the Emperor, could describe the grief which the King's conduct to the Queen and Princess was creating in the English people. They complained bitterly of the Emperor's inaction. They waited only for the arrival of a single ship of war to rise _en masse_; and, if they had but a leader to take command, they said, they would do the work themselves. They reminded him of Warwick, who dethroned the King's grandfather, and Henry VII., who dethroned Richard. Some even said the Emperor's right to the throne was better than the present King's; for Edward's children were illegitimate, and the Emperor was descended from the House of Lancaster. If the Emperor would not move, at least he might stop the Flanders trade, and rebellion would then be certain. There was not the least hope that the King would submit. The accursed Anne had so bewitched him that he dared not oppose her. The longer the Emperor delayed, the worse things would grow from the rapid spread of Lutheranism.[264] Wise sovereigns, under the strongest provocation, are slow to encourage mutiny in neighbouring kingdoms. Charles had to check the overzeal of his Ambassador, and to tell him that "the present was no time for vigorous action or movement of any kind." Chapuys promised for the future "to persuade the Queen to patience, and to do nothing which might lead to the inconvenience" which the Emperor pointed out.[265] His impatient English friends whom he called "the people" were still obliged to submit in patience, while the King went on upon his way in the great business of the realm, amidst the "impress of shipwrights," the "daily cast of cannon," and foreign mart of implements for war. An embassy was sent to Germany to treat for an alliance with the Smalcaldic League. A book was issued, with the authority of the Privy Council, on the authority of kings and priests, showing that bishops and priests were equal, and that princes must rule them both. The Scotch Ambassador told Chapuys that if such a book had been published in his country the author of it would have been burnt.[266] Parliament met to pass the Bill, of which Henry had introduced a draft in the previous session, to restrict the Bishops' powers of punishing heretics. Dr. Nixe, the old bishop of Norwich, had lately burnt Thomas Bilney on his own authority, without waiting for the King's writ. Henry had the Bishop arrested, tried him before a lay judge, confiscated his property, and imprisoned him in the Tower. Parliament made such exploits as that of Dr. Nixe impossible for the future. Act followed Act on the same lines. The Pope's Bulls were dispensed with on appointments to vacant sees. The King's nomination was to suffice. The tributes to Rome, which had been levied hitherto in infinite variety of form, were to be swept finally away, and with them an Act was introduced of final separation from the Papacy. Were it only in defiance of the Pope, Chapuys said, such measures impending would matter little, for the motive was understood; but the Preachers were teaching Lutheranism in the pulpits, drawing crowds to hear them, and, unless the root could be torn out, the realm would be lost. Before the closing stroke was dealt in England the last scene of the tragi-comedy had to be played out in Rome itself. On the Pope's return from Marseilles the thunderbolt was expected to fall. The faithful Du Bellay rushed off to arrest the uplifted arm. He found Clement wrangling as before with Cifuentes, and Cifuentes, in despair, considering that, if justice would not move the Pope, other means would have to be found. The English Acts of Parliament were not frightening Clement. To them he had become used. But he knew by this time for certain that, if he deprived Henry, the Emperor would do nothing. Why, said he, in quiet irony, to the Emperor's Minister, does not your master proceed on the Brief _de Attentatis_? It would be as useful to him as the sentence which he asks for. By that the King has forfeited his throne. Cifuentes had to tell him, what he himself was equally aware of, that it was not so held in England. Until the main cause had been decided it was uncertain whether the marriage with Anne Boleyn might not be lawful after all.[267] In one of his varying moods the Pope had said at Marseilles that, if Henry had sent a proctor to plead for him at Rome, sentence would have been given in his favour.[268] It was doubtful whether even the Emperor was really determined, so ambiguous had been his answers when he was asked if he would execute the Bull. Du Bellay arrived in the midst of the suspense. He had brought an earnest message from Francis, praying that judgment might be stayed. As this was the last effort to prevent the separation of England the particulars have a certain interest. In an interview with the Pope Du Bellay said that when he left London he believed that the rupture was inevitable. His own sovereign, however, had sent him to represent to the Holy See that the King of England was on the eve of forming a treaty with the Lutheran Princes. The King of France did not pretend to an opinion on the right or wrong of his brother of England's case; but he wished to warn his Holiness that means ought to be found to prevent such an injury to the Church. The Pope answered that he had thought long and painfully on what he ought to do, and had delayed sentence as long as he was able. The Queen was angry and accused him of having been the cause of all that had happened. If the King of France had any further proposal to offer he was ready to hear it. If not, the sentence must be pronounced. Cifuentes, finding Clement again hesitating, pointed out to him the violent acts which were being done in England, the encouragement of heresy, the cruel treatment of the Queen and Princess, and the risk to the Queen's life if nothing was done to help her. Clement sent for Du Bellay again and inquired more particularly if he had brought no practical suggestion with him. Du Bellay could only say that he had himself brought none; but he trusted that the Pope might devise something, as, without it, not England only but other countries would be irretrievably lost to the Holy See. The Pope said he could think of nothing; and in his account of what had passed to Cifuentes he declared that he had told Du Bellay that he meant to proceed. Cifuentes was not satisfied. He saw that the Pope was still reluctant. He knew that there were intrigues among the Cardinals. He said that Henry was only making use of France to intimidate him. He asserted, with the deluding confidence which blinded the whole Catholic party, that the revolt of England was the act of the King and not of the people. He was certain, he said, that, although the Bishop pretended that he had no expedient to propose, he had one which he dared not disclose. He could not bring the Pope to a resolution. A further delay of six weeks was granted. Messengers were despatched to England, and English Commissioners were sent in answer. They had no concessions to offer, nor were any concessions expected of them. They lingered on the way. The six weeks expired and they had not arrived. The Spanish party in the Consistory were peremptory. They satisfied the Pope's last scruples by assuring him, vaguely, that he might rely upon the Emperor, and on March 23, with an outburst of general enthusiasm, the Bull was issued which declared valid the marriage of Henry and Catherine, the King to be excommunicated if he disobeyed, and to have forfeited the allegiance of his subjects. The secular arm was not yet called in, and, before Charles could be required to move, one more step would still be needed. But essentially, and on the main cause of the trouble, the Pope had at last spoken, and spoken finally.[269] The passionate and devout Ortiz poured out on the occasion the emotions of grateful Catholicity. "The Emperor," he wrote, "had won the greatest of his victories--a victory over Hell. There had been difficulties even to the last. Campeggio had opposed, but at last had yielded to the truth. The Pope repented of his delay, but now feared he had committed a great sin in hesitating so long. The holy martyr, the Queen of England, had been saved. The Cardinals in past years had been bribed by the French King; by the influence of the Holy Spirit they had all decided in the Queen's favour. Their conscience told them they could not vote against her."[270] In England the news of the decision had not been waited for. Two days after the issue of the Bull, the Act abolishing the Pope's authority was read the last time in the House of Lords, to the regret, said Chapuys, of a minority of good men, who could not carry the House along with them. CHAPTER XV. The Papal curse--Determined attitude of the Princess Mary--Chapuys desires to be heard in Parliament--Interview with the King--Permission refused-- The Act of Succession--Catherine loses the title of Queen--More and Fisher refuse to swear to the statute--Prospects of rebellion in Ireland--The Emperor unwilling to interfere--Perplexity of the Catholic party--Chapuys before the Privy Council--Insists on Catherine's rights--Singular defence of the Pope's action--Chapuys's intrigues--Defiant attitude of Catherine-- Fears for her life--Condition of Europe--Prospect of war between France and the Empire--Unwillingness of the Emperor to interfere in England-- Disappointment of Catherine--Visit of Chapuys to Kimbolton. Pretenders to supernatural powers usually confine the display of their skill to the presence of friends and believers. The exercise of such powers to silence opponents or to convince incredulity may be alleged to have existed in the past, or may be foretold as to happen in the future; in the actual present prudent men are cautious of experiments which, if they fail, bring them only into ridicule. Excommunication had real terrors when a frightened world was willing to execute its penalties--when the object of the censure was cut off from the services of religion and was regarded as a pariah and an outlaw. The Princes of Europe had real cause to fear the curse of the Pope when their own subjects might withdraw their obedience and the Christian Powers were ready to take arms to coerce them. But Clement knew that his own thunders would find no such support, and he lacked the confidence of Dr. Ortiz that Heaven, if men failed, would avenge its own wrongs. He had not been permitted even to invite the Emperor formally to enforce the sentence which he had been compelled to pronounce. Protestant Germany had been left unpunished in its heresy. The curse had passed harmless over Luther and Luther's supporters. In England he was assured that his authority was still believed in, and that the King would be brought to judgment by his subjects. But there were no outward signs of it. His Bulls could no longer be introduced there. His clergy might at heart be loyal to him; but they had submitted to the Crown and the Parliament. His name was struck out of the service-books, and the business of life went on as if he had never spoken; the business of life, and also the business of the Government: for, the Pope being disposed of, the vital question of the succession to the Crown had still to be formally arranged. Since the Emperor would not act Chapuys had been feeling his way with the Scotch. If James chose to assert himself, the Ambassador had promised him the Emperor's support. "He might marry the Princess Mary, and the Emperor would welcome the union of the crowns of Scotland and England."[271] Had Mary submitted to her father, her claim to a place in the line of inheritance would not have been taken from her, for she had been born _bonâ fide parentum_ and in no reasonable sense could be held illegitimate. But she had remained immoveable. In small things as well as great she had been unnecessarily irritating. Her wardrobe had required replenishing, and she had refused to receive anything which was not given to her as Princess. Anne Boleyn accused her aunt of being too lenient, Mrs. Shelton having refused to make herself the instrument of Anne's violence. Chapuys feared the "accursed Lady" might be tempted into a more detestable course. But, any way, the nation had broken with the Pope, and Mary could not be left with the prospect of succeeding to the crown while she denied the competency of the English Parliament and the English courts of justice. A bill, therefore, was introduced to make the necessary provisions, establishing the succession in the child, and future children, of Anne. Catherine could not yet believe that Parliament would assent. Parliament, she thought, had never yet heard the truth. She directed Chapuys to apply for permission to appear at the bar of the House of Lords and speak for her and the Princess. After the failure of the Nuncio with Convocation Chapuys had little hope that he would be listened to; but Catherine insisted on his making the attempt, since a refusal, she thought, would be construed into an admission of her right. The Ambassador wrote to the Council. They desired to know what he proposed to say, and he was allowed a private interview with the Duke of Norfolk. He told the Duke that he wished merely to give a history of the divorce case and would say nothing to irritate. The Duke said he would speak to the King; but the Emperor, considering all that the King had done for him, had not treated him well; they would sooner he had gone to war at once than crossed and thwarted them at so many turns. Chapuys protested that war had never been thought of, and it was arranged that he should see the King and himself present his request. Before he entered the presence Norfolk warned him to be careful of his words, as he was to speak on matters so odious and unpleasing that all the sugars and sauces in the world could not make them palatable. The King, however, was gracious. Chapuys boldly entered on the treatment of the Queen and Princess. He had heard, he said, that the subject was to be laid before Parliament, and he desired to present his remonstrances to the Lords and Commons themselves. The King replied civilly that, as Chapuys must be aware, his first marriage had been judicially declared null; the Lady Catherine, therefore, could not any longer be called queen, nor the Lady Mary his legitimate daughter. As to Chapuys's request, it was not the custom in England for strangers to speak in Parliament. Chapuys urged that the Archbishop's sentence was worth no more than the Bishop of Bath's sentence illegitimatising the children of Edward IV. Parliament would, no doubt, vote as the King pleased; but, as to custom, no such occasion had ever arisen before, and Parliament was not competent to decide questions which belonged only to spiritual judges. The Princess was indisputably legitimate, as at the time of her birth no doubt existed on the lawfulness of her mother's marriage. This was a sound argument, and Henry seemed to admit the force of it. But he said that neither pope nor princes had a right to interfere with the laws and institutions of England. Secular judges were perfectly well able to deal with matrimonial causes. The Princess Elizabeth was next in succession till a son was born to him. That son he soon hoped to have. In short, he declined to allow Chapuys to make a speech in the House of Lords; so Chapuys dropped the subject, and interceded for permission to the Princess Mary to reside with her mother. He said frankly that, if harm came to her while in the charge of her present governess, the world would not be satisfied. Of course he knew that for all the gold in the world the King would not injure his daughter; but, even if she died of an ordinary illness, suspicions would be entertained of foul play. With real courage Chapuys reminded Henry that the knights who killed Becket had been encouraged by the knowledge that the king was displeased with him. The enemies of the Princess, perceiving that she was out of favour, and aware of the hatred[272] felt for her by the Lady Anne, might be similarly tempted to make away with her while she was in Mrs. Shelton's charge. If Chapuys really used this language (and the account of it is his own), Henry VIII. was more forbearing than history has represented him. He turned the subject, and complained, as Norfolk had done, of the Emperor's ingratitude. Chapuys said he had nothing to fear from the Emperor, unless he gave occasion for it. He smiled sardonically, and replied that, if he had been vindictive, there had been occasions when he could have revenged himself. It was enough, however, if the world knew how injured he had been. He then closed the conversation, dismissed his visitor, and told him he must be satisfied with the patience with which he had been heard.[273] The Bill for the settlement of the crown was thus discussed without Chapuys's assistance. The terms of it and the reasons for it are familiar to all readers of English history. The King's efforts to obtain an heir male had, so far, only complicated an already dangerous problem. Though the marriage with Catherine had been set aside in an English court, the right of such a Court to pronounce upon it was not yet familiar to the nation generally. The Pope had given an opposite sentence: many of the peers and commons, the Duke of Norfolk among them, though reconciled to the divorce, had not yet made up their minds to schism;[274] and Mary had still many friends who were otherwise loyal to her father. But, after the experience of the last century, Englishmen of all persuasions were frightened at the prospect of a disputed succession, which only a peremptory Act of Parliament could effectively dispose of. The Bill, therefore, passed at last with little opposition. Cranmer's judgment was confirmed as against the Pope's. The marriage with Catherine was declared null, the marriage with Anne valid, and Anne's children the lawful heirs of the crown. The Act alone was not enough. The disclosures brought to light in the affair of the Nun of Kent, the disaffection then revealed, and the rank of the persons implicated in it, necessitated further precautions. Any doubt which might have existed on the extent and character of the conspiracy is removed for ever by the Spanish Ambassador's letters. The Pope was threatening to absolve English subjects from their allegiance; how far he might be able to influence their minds had as yet to be seen; a Commission, therefore, was appointed to require and receive the oaths of all persons whom there was reason to suspect, that they would maintain the succession as determined in the Act. The sentence from Rome had not arrived when the Bill became law, and no action was taken upon it till the terms in which Clement had spoken were specifically known. Catherine, however, seemed to think that the further she could provoke Henry to harsh measures, the nearer would be her own deliverance. She had always persuaded herself that judgment once given at Rome for her, the King would yield. The Act of Succession was thus specially galling, and with the same violent unwisdom which she had shown from the first, and against the direct advice of Chapuys, she had decided that the time was come for Mary "to show her teeth to the King."[275] It was not for her to expose her daughter to perils which she professed to believe were threatening the lives of both of them. But Mary obeyed her but too well. While the Succession Bill was before the two Houses, Anne, probably at Henry's instance, went to Hatfield to invite her to receive her as Queen, promising, if she complied, that she should be treated better than she had ever been. Mary's answer was that she knew no Queen but her mother; if the King's mistress, so she designated Anne, would intercede with her father for her she would be grateful. The Lady, Chapuys heard, had said in a rage that she would put down that proud Spanish blood and do her worst with her. Nor was this all. The determined girl refused to be included in Elizabeth's household, or pay her the respect attaching to her birth. Elizabeth soon after being removed from Hatfield to the More, Mary declined to go with her, and obliged the gentlemen in attendance to place her by force in Mrs. Shelton's litter. The Ambassador felt the folly of such ineffectual resistance. Never, he said, would he have advised her to run such a risk of exasperating the King, while the Lady Anne was never ceasing day or night to injure her. His own advice had been that when violence was threatened she should yield; but he had been overruled by Catherine.[276] Chapuys's intercourse with the Court was now restricted. He was received when he applied for a formal interview; but for his information on what was passing there, he was left to secret friends or to his diplomatic colleagues. He asked the French Ambassador how the King took the Pope's sentence. The ambassador said the King did not care in the least, which Chapuys was unable to believe. The action of the Parliament alarmed and shocked him. Among the hardest blows was the taking from the Bishops the powers of punishing heretics--a violation, as it appeared to him, of common right and the constitution of the realm. The sharp treatment of Bishop Nixe he regarded as an outrage and a crime. The Easter preachers were ordered to denounce the Pope in their sermons. Chapuys shuddered at their language. "They surpassed themselves in the abominations which they uttered." Worse than sermons followed. On the arrival of the "sentence," the Commission began its work in requiring the oath to the Succession Act. Those whose names had been compromised in the revelation of the Nun were naturally the first to be put to the test. Fisher, who had been found guilty of misprision of treason, had so far been left unpunished. It is uncertain whether the Government was aware of his communications with Chapuys, but enough was known to justify suspicion. The oath was offered him. He refused to take it, and he was committed to the Tower in earnest. He had been sentenced to imprisonment before, but had been so far left at liberty. Sir Thomas More might have been let alone, for there was no fear that he would lend himself to active treason. He, too, however, was required to swear, and declined, and followed Fisher to the same place. The Pope had declared war against the King, and his adherents had become the King's enemies. Chapuys himself was suspected. His encouragement of disaffection could not have been wholly concealed. He believed that his despatches had been opened in Calais, and that Cromwell had read them. There had been a Scotch war. As the Emperor was disinclined to stir, Chapuys had looked on James as a possibly useful instrument in disturbing Henry's peace. A Scottish Commission was in London to arrange a treaty, "as they had found England too strong for them alone." The Ambassador, more eager than ever, tried his best to dissuade the Chief Commissioner from agreeing to terms, pointing out the condition of the kingdom and the advantage to Scotland in joining in an attack on the King. The Scotchman listened, and promised to be secret. Chapuys assured him of the Emperor's gratitude,[277] and, though the treaty was concluded, he consoled the Ambassador by saying "that the peace would not prevent his master from waging war on the English. Pleas in plenty could easily be found."[278] Ireland was a yet more promising field of operations. On the first rumour of the divorce the Earl of Desmond had offered his services to the Emperor. Chapuys discovered a more promising champion of the Church in Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, whom he described as "a youth of high promise." If the Pope would send the censures to Dublin, he undertook that Lord Thomas would publish them, and would be found a useful friend. Again, in spite of refusal, he urged the Emperor to take action himself. Harm, he said, would befall the Queen and Princess, if there was longer delay; Mrs. Shelton had told Mary that she would lose her head if she persisted in disobedience; the people loved them well, but were afraid to move without support. The Lutherans were increasing, and would soon be dangerously strong. The present was the time to act. The King thought he could hold the recusants down by obliging them to swear to his statute; but if the chance was allowed, they would show their real minds.[279] One difficulty remained in the way of action. The Pope, though he had given judgment, had not yet called in the secular arm which was supposed to be necessary as a preliminary, and all parties, save Catherine and her passionate advisers, were unwilling that a step should be taken from which there would be no returning. The Emperor did not wish it. Francis, irritated at the refusal to listen to Du Bellay, told the Pope that he was throwing England away. "The Pope," wrote the Cardinal of Jaen to Secretary Covos, "is restive. If we push him too hard he may go over to the enemy."[280] Charles ordered Cifuentes to keep strictly to his instructions. The evident hesitation amused and encouraged the English Cabinet. "Which Pope do you mean?" said the Duke of Norfolk to the Scotch Ambassador, who had spoken of Clement as an arbiter on some point in dispute, "the Pope of Rome or the Pope of Lambeth?" Henry, finding Francis had not wholly deserted him, "praised God" at a public dinner for having given him so good a brother in the King of France. Under these circumstances, the Catholic party in England were alarmed and perplexed. Catherine had been undeceived at last in her expectation that the King would submit when the Pope had spoken. She informed Chapuys that she now _saw it was necessary to use stronger remedies_. What these remedies should be Chapuys said she dared not write, lest her letters should be intercepted. She was aware, too, that the Emperor knew best what should be done. Something must be tried, however, and speedily; for the King was acting vigorously, and to wait would be to be lost. A startling difference of opinion also was beginning to show itself even among the Queen's friends. Some might turn round, Chapuys said, as they feared the Emperor, in _helping her, would set up again the Pope's authority, which they called tyrannical_. It was the alarm at this which enabled the King to hold his subjects together.[281] Though Mary had "shown her teeth" at her mother's bidding, she had not provoked her father to further severities. He asked Mrs. Shelton if her pride was subdued. Mrs. Shelton saying there were no signs of it, he ordered that she should be more kindly treated; and he sent her a message that, if she was obedient, he would find some royal marriage for her. She answered that God had not so blinded her that she should confess that her father and mother had lived in adultery. The words, perhaps, lost nothing in the repeating; but the King said, and said rightly, that it was her mother's influence. Catherine had persuaded her that his kindness was treachery, and that there was a purpose to poison her.[282] A serious question, however, had risen about the Statute of Succession. The oath had been universally taken by everyone to whom it had been offered save More and Fisher. The reason for demanding it was the notorious intention of the Catholic party to take arms in Catherine's and Mary's interests. Were others to be sworn, and were the two ladies chiefly concerned to be exempted? Catherine, in ceasing to be queen, might be held to have recovered her rights as a foreigner. But she had remained in England by her own wish, and at the desire of the Emperor, to assist in fighting out the battle. Mary was undoubtedly a subject, and Catherine and she had both intimated that if the oath was demanded of them they would not take it. The Peers and Bishops were called together to consider the matter, and, as Catherine was a Spanish Princess, Chapuys was invited to attend. The council-room was thronged. The Ambassador was introduced, and a copy of the statute was placed before him. He was informed that English subjects generally had voluntarily sworn to obey it. Two ladies only, Madam Catherine and Madam Mary, had declined, and the pains and penalties were pointed out to him which they might incur if they persisted. Chapuys had been refused an opportunity of speaking his opinion in Parliament. It was now spontaneously offered him. He might, if he had pleased, have denounced the hardship of compelling the Queen and her daughter to assent personally to a statute which took their rights from them. The preamble declared the King's marriage with Catherine to have been invalid, and in swearing to the Act of Succession she would be abandoning her entire plea. There was no intention, however, of forcing the oath upon the mother. Mary was the person aimed at; and Mary might have been spared also, if she had not "shewn her teeth" so plainly. Chapuys, however, spoke out boldly on the whole question. The King, he said, could not deprive the Princess of her place as heir to the crown, nor was the English Parliament competent to decide as to the validity of a marriage. The preamble of the statute was a lie. He would have proved it had he been permitted to speak there. People had sworn because they were afraid, and did not wish to be martyrs; and the oath being imposed by force, they knew that it could be no more binding than the oaths which he had lately taken to the Pope had bound the Archbishop of Canterbury. For a general answer, he produced the Pope's sentence. The obstinacy which they complained of, he said, was in them, and not in the ladies. He could not persuade the ladies to swear; if he could, he would not, unless under orders from the Emperor; and he warned the Council that if they tried further violence they must be prepared to find the Emperor and Ferdinand their open enemies; the Emperor regarded the Queen as his mother, and the Princess as his sister; and, though he allowed that he was speaking without instructions, he intimated distinctly that the Emperor would not fail to protect them, and protect the cause of the Church, which had been intertwined with theirs. Chapuys was bold, bolder perhaps than the Council had expected. The Bishop of Durham rose after a short pause. He had been Catherine's advocate, and, as Chapuys said, was one of the most learned and honest prelates in the realm. But he, too, had come to see that the cause now at issue was the independence of England. He said that the statute had been well considered. It had been passed for the quiet of the realm, and must be obeyed. On Chapuys rejoining that the quiet of the realm required the King's return to his wife, Tunstall mentioned the promises which had been made at the beginning of the suit, and produced the decretal which the Pope had given at Orvieto, declaring the marriage with Catherine invalid. Chapuys, in his answer, admitted, unconsciously, the justice of the English plea. He said the decretal had been issued when the Pope had just escaped from St. Angelo, and was angry and exasperated against the Emperor. As to other promises, he might or might not have made them. If he said he would give judgment in the King's favour, he might have meant merely such a judgment as would be good for the King; or perhaps he was doing as criminal judges often did--holding out hopes to prisoners to tempt confessions from them. Such practices were legitimate and laudable. The English argument was that a judge such as Chapuys described was not to be trusted with English suits. Henry himself could not have put the case more effectively. The Bishop of London spoke, and the Archbishop of York, and then Sampson (the Dean of the Chapel Royal), who affirmed bluntly that the Pope had no inherent rights over England. Man had given him his authority, and man might take it from him. Chapuys replied that the King had found it established when he came to the throne, and had himself recognised it in referring his cause to the Pope. Cranmer was present, but took no direct part. He brought out, however, the true issue, by suggesting, through Tunstall, that the Pope had incapacitated himself by submitting to be controlled by the Emperor. This was the point of the matter. To allow an English suit to be decided by Charles V. was to make England a vassal state of the Empire. To this Chapuys had no valid answer, for none could be given; and he discreetly turned the argument by reflecting on the unfitness of Cranmer also. So far the laymen on the Council had left the discussion to the Bishops, and the Ambassador thought that he had the best of it. The Duke of Norfolk, he imagined, thought so too; for the Duke rose after the taunts at the Archbishop. The King's second marriage, he said, was a _fait accompli_, and to argue further over it was loss of time. They had passed their statute, and he, for one, would maintain it to the last drop of his blood. To refuse obedience was high treason; and, the fact being so, the ladies must submit to the law. The King himself could not disobey an Act which concerned the tranquillity of the realm. Chapuys would not yield. He said their laws were like the laws of Mahomet--laws of the sword--being so far worse, that Mahomet did not make his subjects swear to them. Not with entire honesty--for he knew now that Catherine had consented to the use of force--he added, that they could have small confidence in their own strength if they were afraid of two poor weak women, who had neither means nor will to trouble them. The Council said that they would report to the King, and so the conversation ended. Chapuys spoke afterwards privately to Cromwell. He renewed his warning that, if violence was used, there would be real danger. Cromwell said he would do his best. But there was a general fear that something harsh would be tried at the instigation of the "accursed Concubine." Probably the question would be submitted to Parliament, or as some thought the Queen and Princess would be sent to the Tower.[283] Conceiving extremities to be close, Chapuys asked the Scotch Ambassador whether, if a mandate came from the Pope against England, the Scots would obey it. Certainly they would obey it, was the answer, though they might pretend to regret the necessity. Violence such as Chapuys anticipated was not in contemplation. The opinion of Europe would have been outraged, if there had been no more genuine reason for moderation. An appeal was tried on Catherine herself. The Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Durham, both of whom had been her friends, went down to her to explain the nature of the statute and persuade her to obedience. Two accounts remain of the interview--that of the Bishops, and another supplied to Chapuys by the Queen's friends. The Bishops said that she was in great choler and agony, interrupted them with violent speeches, declared that she was the King's lawful wife, that between her and Prince Arthur there had been never more than a formal connection. The Pope had declared for her. The Archbishop of Canterbury was a shadow. The Acts of Parliament did not concern her.[284] Chapuys's story is not very different, though two elderly prelates, once her staunch supporters, could hardly have been as brutal as he describes. After various rough speeches, he said that the Bishops not only referred to the penalties of the statute (they themselves admitted this) but told her that if she persisted she might be put to death. She had answered that if any of them had a warrant to execute her they might do it at once. She begged only that the ceremony should be public, in the face of the people, and that she might not be murdered in her room.[285] The mission had been rather to advise than to exact, and special demands were rather made on Catherine's side than the King's. Not only she would not swear herself to the statute, but she insisted that her household should be exempted also. She required a confessor, chaplains, physician, men-servants, as many women as the King would allow, and they were to take no oath save to the King and to her. Henry made less difficulty than might have been looked for--less than he would have been entitled to make had he known to what purpose these attendants would be used. The oath was for his native subjects; it was not exacted from herself, or by implication from her confessor, who was a Spaniard, or from her foreign servants.[286] If she would be reasonable he said that some of her requests might be granted. She might order her household as she pleased, if they would swear fidelity to him, and to herself as Princess Dowager. But he could not allow them to be sworn to her as Queen. Chapuys's business was to make the worst of the story to the Emperor. The Court was at Richmond. Chapuys went thither, presented a complaint to the Council, and demanded an interview with the King. Henry would not see him, but sent him a message that he would inquire into what had passed, and would send him an answer. Chapuys, who had been for two years urging war in vain, exaggerated the new injuries. Others, and perhaps he himself, really believed the Queen's life to be in danger. "Every one," he wrote, after describing what had taken place, "fears that mischief will now befall her; the concubine has said she will never rest till she is put out of the way. It is monstrous and almost incredible, yet such is the King's obstinacy, and the wickedness of this accursed woman, that everything may be apprehended."[287] Anne, it is likely, was really dangerous. The King, so far as can be outwardly traced, was making the best of an unpleasant situation. The Council promised Chapuys that his remonstrances should be attended to. The Queen was left to herself, with no more petty persecutions, to manage her household in her own way. They might swear or not swear as pleased themselves and her; and with passionate loyalty they remained devoted to her service, assisting her in the conduct of a correspondence which every day became more dangerous. The European sky meanwhile was blackening with coming storms. Francis had not forgotten Pavia, and as little could allow England to be conquered by Charles as Charles could allow France to be bribed by the promise of Calais. His Agents continued busy at Rome keeping a hand on the Pope; a fresh interview was proposed between the French King and Henry, who was to meet him at Calais again in the summer; and an aggressive Anglo-French alliance was a possibility which the Emperor had still to fear. He had small confidence in the representations of Chapuys, and had brought himself to hope that by smooth measures Henry might still be recovered. A joint embassy might be sent to England from himself and the Pope to remonstrate on the schism. If nothing else came of it, their own position would be set right before the world and in the eyes of English opinion. Clement, however, now made difficulties, and had no desire to help Charles out of his embarrassments. Charles had forced a judgment out of him without promising to execute it. Charles might now realise the inconvenience of having driven him on against his own inclination. Cifuentes had again received instructions to delay the issue of the Brief of Execution, or the calling in the secular arm. The Pope felt that he had been made use of and had been cheated, and was naturally resentful. Cifuentes made his proposal. Clement, "with the placid manner which he generally showed when a subject was disagreeable to him,... said that the embassy might go if the Emperor wished.... It would not be of the slightest use ... but it might do no harm. He must, of course, however, first consult the King of France." Cifuentes not liking the mention of France, the Pope went on maliciously to say that, if he had not gone to Marseilles, France would certainly have broken with the Church, as England had done, and would have set up a Patriarchate of its own. Indeed he was afraid it might yet come to that. The King of France had told him how he had been pressed to consent, and had made a merit of refusing. Cifuentes could but remark on the singular character of the King of France's religious convictions.[288] The embassy was not sent to England, and the Pope kept back his invocation of the secular arm till a Prince could be found who would act. No one would be the first to move, and the meeting of the two Kings at Calais was indefinitely postponed. Francis complained of Henry's arbitrary manner, "speaking to me at times as if I were his subject." The explanation given to the world of the abandonment of the interview was that Henry found it inconvenient to leave the realm. A letter of Chapuys explains where the special inconvenience lay. The Lady Anne would be Regent in his absence, and could not be trusted in her present humour. "I have received word from a trustworthy source," he wrote on the 23d of June to the Emperor, "that the concubine has said more than once, and with great assurance, that the moment the King crosses the Channel to the interview, and she is left Regent, she will put the Princess to death by sword or otherwise. Her brother, Lord Rochford, telling her she would offend the King, she answered she cared not if she did. She would do it if she was burnt or flayed alive afterwards. The Princess knows her danger, but it gives her no concern. She puts her trust in God." Imperfect credit must be given to stories set current by malicious credulity. But the existence of such stories shows the reputation which Anne had earned for herself, and which in part she deserves. Chapuys reiterated his warnings. "Pardon my importunity," he continued, "but, unless your Majesty looks promptly to it, things will be past remedy. Lutheranism spreads fast, and the King calculates that it will make the people stand by him and will gain the Germans. So long as danger is not feared from without, Parliament will agree to all that he wishes. Were your Majesty even to overlook all that he has done, he would persist in the same way. Good Catholics are of opinion that the readiest way to bridle France and Germany is to begin in England. It can be done with ease. The people only wait for your Majesty to give the signal."[289] The inaction of the Emperor was incomprehensible to Catherine's friends. To herself it was distracting. She had fed upon the hope that when the Pope had given judgment her trial would be at an end; that the voice of Catholic Europe would compel the King to submit. The Roman lightning had flashed, but the thunderbolt had not fallen. The English laity, long waiting in suspense, had begun to think, as Chapuys feared they would, that the Pope was the shadow, and Cranmer the substance. Cut off from the world, she thought she was forsaken, or that the Emperor's care for her would not carry him to the point of interference. If no voice was raised in her favour in her own Spain, the Spanish Ambassador might at least show that her countrymen had not forgotten her. She sent pressing messages to Chapuys, begging him to visit her; and Chapuys, impatient himself of his master's hesitating policy, resolved to go. He applied for permission to the Council. It was refused. But the Council could not forbid his making a summer pilgrimage to our Lady of Walsingham, and the road lay near Kimbolton. He wrote to Cromwell that, leave or no leave, he was going into Norfolk, and meant to call there. The porters might refuse him entrance if they pleased. He gave him fair notice. It should not be said that he had acted underhand. It was the middle of July. Making as much display as possible, with a retinue of sixty horse, and accompanied by a party of Spaniards resident in London, the Ambassador rode ostentatiously through the City, and started on the great North Road. Spending a night on the way, he arrived on the second evening within a few miles of Catherine's residence. At this point he was overtaken by two gentlemen of the household, with an intimation that he would not be admitted. He demanded to see their orders, and, the orders not being produced, he said that, being so near the end of his journey, he did not mean to turn back. He would have persisted, but a message came to him from the Queen herself, or from one of her people, to say that she could not receive him; he could proceed to Walsingham if he pleased, but he must not approach within bowshot of the Castle. Some peremptory command must have reached her. A second secret message followed, that, although she had not dared to say so, she was grateful for his visit; and, though he must not come on himself, a party of his suite might show themselves before the gates. Thus the next morning, under the bright July sky, a picturesque Spanish cavalcade was seen parading under the windows of Kimbolton, "to the great consolation of the ladies of the household, who spoke to them from the battlements; and with astonishment and joy among the peasantry, as if the Messiah had actually come." The Walsingham pilgrimage was abandoned, lest it should be thought to have been the real object of the journey; and Chapuys, with polite irony, sent the King word that he had relinquished it in deference to his Majesty's wishes. He returned to London by another road, to make a wider impression upon the people. "The Emperor," he said, in relating his expedition, "would now see how matters stood. The Queen might be almost called the King's prisoner. The house," he said, "was well kept and well found, though there were complaints of shortness of provisions. She had five or six servants, and as many ladies-in-waiting, besides the men whom she looked on as her guards."[290] CHAPTER XVI. Prosecution of Lord Dacre--Failure of the Crown--Rebellion in Ireland-- Lord Thomas Fitzgerald--Delight of the Catholic party--Preparations for a rising in England--The Princess Mary--Lord Hussey and Lord Darcy--Schemes for insurrection submitted to Chapuys--General disaffection among the English Peers--Death of Clement VII.--Election of Paul III.--Expectation at Rome that Henry would now submit--The expectation disappointed--The Act of Supremacy--The Italian conjuror--Reginald Pole--Violence and insolence of Anne Boleyn--Spread of Lutheranism--Intended escape of the Princess Mary out of England. The English Peers are supposed to have been the servile instruments of Henry VIII.'s tyrannies and caprices, to have been ready to divorce or murder a wife, or to execute a bishop, as it might please the King to command. They were about to show that there were limits to their obedience, and that when they saw occasion they could assert their independence. Lord Dacre of Naworth was one of the most powerful of the northern nobles. He had distinguished himself as a supporter of Queen Catherine, and was particularly detested by the Lady Anne. His name appears prominently in the lists supplied to Chapuys of those who could be counted upon in the event of a rising. The Government had good reason, therefore, to watch him with anxiety. As Warden of the Marches he had been in constant contact with the Scots, and a Scotch invasion in execution of the Papal censures had been part of Chapuys's scheme. Dacre was suspected of underhand dealings with the Scots. He had been indicted at Carlisle for treason in June, and had been sent to London for trial. He was brought to the bar before the Peers, assisted by the twelve Judges. An escape of a prisoner was rare when the Crown prosecuted; the Privy Council prepared the evidence, drew up their case, and in bringing a man to the bar made themselves responsible for the charge; failure, therefore, was equivalent to a vote of censure. The prosecution of Dacre had been set on foot by Cromwell, who had perhaps been informed of particulars of his conduct which it was undesirable to bring forward. The Peers looked on Cromwell as another Wolsey--as another intruding commoner who was taking liberties with the ancient blood. The Lady Anne was supposed to have borne malice against Dacre. The Lady Anne was to be made to know that there were limits to her power. Dacre spoke for seven hours to a sympathetic court; he was unanimously acquitted, and the City of London celebrated his escape with bonfires and illuminations. The Court had received a sharp rebuff. Norfolk, who sate as High Steward, had to accept a verdict of which he alone disapproved.[291] At Rome the acquittal was regarded as perhaps the beginning of some commotion with which God was preparing to punish the King of England.[292] More serious news arrived from Ireland. While the English Catholics were muttering discontent and waiting for foreign help, Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, "the youth of promise" whom Chapuys had recommended to Charles's notice, had broken into open rebellion, and had forsworn his allegiance to Henry as an excommunicated sovereign. Fitzgerald was a ferocious savage, but his crimes were committed in the name of religion. In my history of this rebellion I connected it with the sacred cause of More and Fisher, and was severely rebuked for my alleged unfairness. The fresh particulars here to be mentioned prove that I was entirely right, that the rising in Ireland was encouraged by the same means, was part of the same conspiracy, that it was regarded at Rome and by the Papal party everywhere as the first blow struck in a holy war. It commenced with the murder of the Archbishop of Dublin, a feeble old man, who was dragged out of his bed and slaughtered by Fitzgerald's own hand. It spread rapidly through the English Pale, and Chapuys recorded its progress with delight. The English had been caught unprepared. Skeffington, the Deputy, was a fool. Ireland, in Chapuys's opinion, was practically recovered to the Holy See, and with the smallest assistance from the Emperor and the Pope the heretics and all their works would be made an end of there.[293] A fortnight later he wrote still more enthusiastically. Kildare's son was absolute master of the island. He had driven the King to ask for terms; he had refused to listen, and was then everywhere expelling the English or else killing them. The pleasure felt by all worthy people, Chapuys said, was incredible. Such a turn of events was a good beginning for a settlement in England, and the Catholic party desired his Majesty most passionately not to lose the opportunity. On all sides the Ambassador was besieged with entreaties. "An excellent nobleman had met him by appointment in the country, and had assured him solemnly that the least move on the Emperor's part would end the matter." The Irish example had "fired all their hearts. They were longing to follow it." As this intelligence might fail to rouse Charles, the Ambassador again added as a further reason for haste that the Queen and Princess were in danger of losing their lives. Cromwell had been heard to say that their deaths would end all quarrels. Lord Wiltshire had said the same, and the fear was that when Parliament reassembled the ladies might be brought to trial under the statute.[294] If Cromwell and Lord Wiltshire used the words ascribed to them, no evil purpose need have been implied or intended. Catherine was a confirmed invalid; the Princess Mary had just been attacked with an alarming illness. Chapuys had dissuaded Mary at last from making fresh quarrels with her governess; she had submitted to the indignities of her situation with reluctant patience, and had followed unresistingly in the various removals of Elizabeth's establishment. The irritation, however, had told on her health, and at the time of Chapuys's conversation with the "excellent nobleman" her life was supposed to be in danger from ordinary causes. That Anne wished her dead was natural enough; Anne had recently been again disappointed, and had disappointed the King in the central wish of his heart. She had said she was _enceinte_, but the signs had passed off. It was rumoured that Henry's feelings were cooling towards her. He had answered, so Court scandal said, to some imperious message of hers that she ought to be satisfied with what he had done for her; were things to begin again he would not do as much. Report said also that there were _nouvelles amours_; but, as the alleged object of the King's attention was a lady devoted to Queen Catherine, the _amour_ was probably innocent. The Ambassador built little upon this; Anne's will to injure the Princess he knew to be boundless, and he believed her power over Henry still to be great. Mary herself had sent him word that she had discovered practices for her destruction. Any peril to which she might be exposed would approach her, as Chapuys was obliged to confess, from one side only. He ascertained that "when certain members of the Council had advised harsh measures to please the Lady Anne," the King had told them that he would never consent, and no one at the Court--neither the Lady nor any other person--dared speak against the Princess. "The King loved her," so Cromwell said, "a hundred times more than his latest born." The notion that the statute was to be enforced against her life was a chimera of malice. In her illness he showed the deepest anxiety; he sent his own physician to attend on her, and he sent for her mother's physician from Kimbolton. Chapuys admitted that he was naturally kind--"d'aymable et cordiale nature"--that his daughter's death would be a serious blow to himself, however welcome to Anne and to politicians, and that, beyond his natural feeling, he was conscious that, occurring under the present circumstances, it would be a stain on his reputation. More than once Henry had interfered for Mary's protection. He had perhaps heard of what Anne had threatened to do to her on his proposed journey to Calais. She had been the occasion, at any rate, of sharp differences between them. He had resented, when he discovered it, the manner in which she had been dragged to the More, and had allowed her, when staying there, to be publicly visited by the ladies and gentlemen of the court, to the Lady's great annoyance. Nay, Mary had been permitted to refuse to leave her room when Anne had sent for her, and the strictest orders had been given through Cromwell that anyone who treated her disrespectfully should be severely punished.[295] True as all this might be, however, Chapuys's feelings towards the King were not altered, his fears diminished, or his desire less eager to bring about a rebellion and a revolution. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald's performances in Ireland were spurring into energy the disaffected in England. The nobleman to whom Chapuys had referred was Lord Hussey of Lincolnshire, who had been Chamberlain to the Princess Mary when she had an establishment of her own as next in succession to the crown. Lord Hussey was a dear friend of her mother's. Having opened the ground he again visited the Ambassador "in utmost secrecy." He told him that he and all the honest men in the realm were much discouraged by the Emperor's delay to set things straight, as it was a thing which could so easily be done. The lives of the Queen and Princess were undoubtedly threatened; their cause was God's cause, which the Emperor was bound to uphold, and the English people looked to him as their natural sovereign. Chapuys replied that if the Emperor was to do as Lord Hussey desired, he feared that an invasion of England would cause much hurt and suffering to many innocent people. Lord Hussey was reputed a wise man. Chapuys asked him what would he do himself if he were in the Emperor's place. Lord Hussey answered that the state of England was as well known to Chapuys as to himself. Almost everyone was looking for help to the Emperor. There was no fear of his injuring the people; their indignation was so great that there would be no resistance. The war would be over as soon as it was begun. The details, he said, Lord Darcy would explain better than he could do. The Emperor should first issue a declaration. The people would then take arms, and would be joined by the nobles and the clergy. Fisher had used the same language. Fisher was in the Tower, and no longer accessible. Lord Darcy of Templehurst has been already seen in drawing the indictment against Wolsey. He was an old crusader; he had served under Ferdinand and Isabella, was a Spaniard in sympathy, and was able, as he represented, to bring eight thousand men into the field from the northern counties. On Lord Hussey's recommendation Chapuys sent a confidential servant to Darcy, who professed himself as zealous as his friend. Darcy said that he was as loyal as any man, but things were going on so outrageously, especially in matters of religion, that he, for one, could not bear it longer. In the north there were six hundred lords and gentlemen who thought as he did. Measures were about to be taken in Parliament to favour the Lutherans. He was going himself into Yorkshire, where he intended to commence an opposition. If the Emperor would help him he would take the field behind the crucifix, and would raise the banner of Castile. Measures might be concerted with the Scots; a Scotch army might cross the border as soon as he had himself taken arms; an Imperial squadron should appear simultaneously at the mouth of the Thames, and a battalion of soldiers from Flanders should be landed at Hull, with arms and money for the poorer gentlemen. He and the northern lords would supply their own forces. Many of the other Peers, he said, entirely agreed with him. He named especially Lord Derby and Lord Dacre.[296] This letter is of extreme importance, as explaining the laws which it was found necessary to pass in the ensuing Parliament. A deeply rooted and most dangerous conspiracy was actively forming--how dangerous the Pilgrimage of Grace afterwards proved--in which Darcy and Hussey were the principal leaders. The Government was well served. The King and Cromwell knew more than it was prudent to publish. The rebellion meditated was the more formidable because it was sanctified by the name of religion, with the avowed purpose of executing the Papal Brief. Fitzgerald's rising in Ireland was but the first dropping of a storm designed to be universal. Half the Peers who surrounded Henry's person, and voted in Parliament for the reforming statutes, were at heart leagued with his enemies. He had a right to impose a test of loyalty on them, and force them to declare whether they were his subjects or the Pope's. For a moment it seemed as if the peril might pass over. It became known in England in October that Clement VII. had ended his pontificate, and that Cardinal Farnese reigned in his stead as Paul III. On Clement's death the King, according to Chapuys, had counted on a schism in the Church, and was disappointed at the facility with which the election had been carried through; but Farnese had been on Henry's side in the divorce case, and the impression in the English Council was that the quarrel with Rome would now be composed. The Duke of Norfolk, who had been the loudest in his denunciations of Clement, was of the opinion that the King, as a Catholic Prince, would submit to his successor. Even Cromwell laid the blame of the rupture on Clement personally, and when he heard that he was gone, exclaimed that "the Great Devil was dead." Henry knew better than his Minister that "the Great Devil" was not this or that pontiff, but the Papacy itself. He had liberated his kingdom; he did not mean to lead it back into bondage. "Let no man," he said to Norfolk, "try to persuade me to such a step. I shall account no more of the Pope than of any priest in my realm."[297] Farnese undoubtedly expected that Henry would make advances to him, and was prepared to meet them; he told Casalis that he had taken a legal opinion as to whether his predecessor's judgment in the divorce case could be reopened, and a decision given in the King's favour; the lawyers had assured him that there would be no difficulty, and the Pope evidently wished the King to believe that he might now have his way if he would place himself in the Pope's hands. Henry, however, was too wary to be caught. He must have deeds, not words, he said. If the Pope was sincere he would revoke his predecessor's sentence of his own accord. Francis, by whose influence Farnese had been elected, tried to bring Henry to submission, but to no purpose. The King was no longer to be moved by vague phrases like those to which he had once trusted to his cost. Surrounded by treachery though he knew himself to be, he looked no longer for palliatives and compromises, and went straight on upon his way. The House of Commons was with him, growing in heartiness at each succeeding session. The Peers and clergy might conspire in secret. In public, as estates of the realm, they were too cowardly to oppose. Parliament met in November. The other Acts which were passed by it this year are relatively unimportant, and may be read elsewhere. The great business of the session, which has left its mark on history, was to pass the Act of Supremacy, detailing and explaining the meaning of the title which Convocation two years previously had conferred upon the King. Unentangled any longer with saving clauses, the sovereign authority under the law in all causes, ecclesiastical and civil, was declared to rest thenceforward in the Crown, and the last vestiges of Roman jurisdiction in England were swept off and disappeared. No laws, no injunctions, no fancied rights over the consciences of English subjects were to be pleaded further as a rule to their conduct which had not been sanctioned by Crown and Parliament. No clergy, English or foreign, were to exercise thenceforward any power not delegated to them and limited under the law of the land, except what could not be taken from them--their special privilege of administering the sacraments. Double loyalty to the Crown and to the Papacy was thenceforward impossible. The Pope had attempted to depose the King. The Act of Supremacy was England's answer. But to enact a law was not enough. With Ireland in insurrection, with half the nobles and more than half the clergy, regular and secular, in England inviting a Spanish invasion, the King and Commons, who were in earnest in carrying through the reforms which they had begun, were obliged to take larger measures to distinguish their friends from their enemies. If the Catholics had the immense majority to which they pretended, the Constitution gave them the power of legitimate opposition. If they were professing with their lips and sustaining with their votes a course of policy which they were plotting secretly to overthrow, it was fair and right to compel them to show their true colours. Therefore the Parliament further enacted that to deny the royal supremacy--in other words, to maintain the right of the Pope to declare the King deprived--should be high treason, and the Act was so interpreted that persons who were open to suspicion might be interrogated, and that a refusal to answer should be accepted as an acknowledgment of guilt. In quiet times such a measure would be unnecessary, and therefore tyrannical. _Facta arguantur dicta impune sint._ In the face of Chapuys's correspondence it will hardly be maintained that the reforming Government of Henry VIII. was in no danger. The Statute of Supremacy must be judged by the reality of the peril which it was designed to meet. If the Reformation was a crime, the laws by which it defended itself were criminal along with it. If the Reformation was the dawning of a new and brilliant era for Imperial England, if it was the opening of a fountain from which the English genius has flowed out over the wide surface of the entire globe, the men who watched over its early trials and enabled the movement to advance, undishonoured and undisfigured by civil war, deserve rather to be respected for their resolution than reviled as arbitrary despots. To try the actions of statesmen in a time of high national peril by the canons of an age of tranquillity is the highest form of historical injustice. The naked truth--and nakedness is not always indecent--was something of this kind. A marriage with a brother's wife was forbidden by the universal law of Christendom. Kings, dukes, and other great men who disposed as they pleased of the hands of their sons and daughters, found it often desirable, for political or domestic reasons, to form connections which the law prohibited, and therefore they maintained an Italian conjuror who professed to be able for a consideration to turn wrong into right. To marriages so arranged it was absurd to attach the same obligations as belonged to unions legitimately contracted. If, as often happened, such marriages turned out ill, the same conjuror who could make could unmake. This function, also, he was repeatedly called on to exercise, and, for a consideration also, he was usually compliant. The King of England had been married as a boy to Catherine of Aragon, carrying out an arrangement between their respective fathers. The marriage had failed in the most important object for which royal marriages are formed: there was no male heir to the crown, nor any prospect of one. Henry, therefore, as any other prince in Europe would have done, applied to the Italian for assistance. The conjuror was willing, confessing that the case was one where his abilities might properly be employed. But another of his supporters interfered, and forced him to refuse. The King of England had always paid his share for the conjuror's maintenance. He was violently deprived of a concession which it was admitted that he had a right to claim. But for the conjuror's pretensions to make the unlawful lawful he would not have been in the situation in which he found himself. What could be more natural than that, finding himself thus treated, he should begin to doubt whether the conjuror, after all, had the power of making wrong into right? whether the marriage had not been wrong from the beginning? And, when the magical artist began to curse, as his habit was when doubts were thrown on his being the Vicar of the Almighty, what could be more natural also than to throw him and his tackle out of window? The passing of the Act increased the anxiety about the position of the Princess Mary. In the opinion of most reasonable persons her claim to the succession was superior to that of Elizabeth, and, if she had submitted to her father, it would probably have been allowed and established. In the eyes of the disaffected, however, she was already, by Clement's sentence, the legitimate possessor of the throne. Reginald Pole, Lady Salisbury's son and grandson of the Duke of Clarence, was still abroad. Henry had endeavoured to gain him over, but had not succeeded. He was of the blood of the White Rose, and, with his brother, had gone by instinct into opposition. His birth, in those days of loyalty to race, gave him influence in England, and Catherine, as has been seen, had fixed upon him as Mary's husband. He had been brought already under Charles's notice as likely to be of use in the intended rebellion. The Queen, wrote Chapuys to the Emperor, knew no one to whom she would better like her daughter to be married; many right-minded people held that the light to the crown lay in the family of the Duke of Clarence, Edward's children having been illegitimate; if the Emperor would send an army across with Lord Reginald attached to it everyone would declare for him; his younger brother Geoffrey was a constant visitor to himself; once more he insisted that nothing could be more easy than the conquest of the whole kingdom.[298] The object with Chapuys was now to carry Mary abroad, partly that she might be married to Pole, partly for her own security. Notwithstanding the King's evident care for her health and good treatment he could not look into the details of her daily life, and Anne was growing daily more dangerous. Both Catherine and the Princess had still many friends among the ladies of the Court. To one of these, young and beautiful--and, therefore, certainly not the plain Jane Seymour--the King was supposed to have paid attentions. Like another lady who had been mentioned previously, she was devoted to Catherine's interests, and obviously not, therefore, a pretender to Henry's personal affections. Anne had affected to be jealous, and under other aspects had reason for uneasiness. She had demanded this lady's dismissal from the court, and had been so violent that "the King had left her in displeasure, complaining of her importunacy and vexatiousness." The restoration of Mary to favour was a constant alarm to Anne, and she had a party of her own which had been raised by her patronage, depended on her influence, and was ready to execute her pleasure. Thus the petty annoyances of which both Catherine and her daughter complained were not discontinued. The household at Kimbolton was reduced; a confidential maid who had been useful in the Queen's correspondence was discovered and dismissed. Mary was left under the control of Mrs. Shelton, who dared not openly displease Anne. It was Anne that Chapuys blamed. Anne hated the Princess. The King had a real love for her. In her illness he had been studiously kind. When told it had been caused by mental trouble he said, with a sigh, "that it was pity her obstinacy should prevent him from treating her as he wished and as she deserved. The case was the harder, as he knew that her conduct had been dictated by her mother, and he was therefore obliged to keep them separate."[299] The Privy Councillors appear to have remonstrated with Anne on her behaviour to Mary. Passionate scenes, at any rate, had occurred between her and Henry's principal Ministers. She spoke to her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, in terms "which would not be used to a dog." Norfolk left the room in indignation, muttering that she was a "_grande putaine_." The malcontents increased daily and became bolder in word and action. Lord Northumberland, Anne's early lover, of whom Darcy had been doubtful, professed now to be so disgusted with the malice and arrogance of the Lady that he, too, looked to the Emperor's coming as the only remedy. Lord Sandys, Henry's chamberlain, withdrew to his house, pretending sickness, and sent Chapuys a message that the Emperor had the hearts of the English people, and, at the least motion which the Emperor might make, the realm would be in confusion.[300] The news from Fitzgerald was less satisfactory. His resources were failing, and he wanted help, but he was still standing out. England, however, was more and more sure; the northern counties were unanimous, in the south and west the Marquis of Exeter and the Poles were superior to any force which could be brought against them; the spread of Lutheranism was creating more exasperation than even the divorce. Moderate men had hoped for an arrangement with the new Pope. Instead of it, the heretical preachers were more violent than ever, and the King was believed to have encouraged them. Dr. Brown, an Augustinian friar, and General of the Mendicant Order, who, as some believed, had married the King and Anne, had dared to maintain in a sermon "that the Bishops and all others who did not burn the Bulls which they had received from the Pope, and obtain others from the King, deserved to be punished. Their authority was derived from the King alone. Their sacred chrism would avail them nothing while they obeyed the Idol of Rome, who was a limb of the Devil." "Language so abominable," said Chapuys, in reporting it, "must have been prompted by the King, or else by Cromwell, who made the said monk his right hand in all things unlawful;" Cromwell and Cranmer being of Luther's opinion that there was no difference between priests and bishops, save what the letters patent of the Crown might constitute. "Cromwell," Chapuys said, "had been feeling his way with some of the Bench on the subject." At a meeting of Council he had asked Gardiner and others whether the King could not make and unmake bishops at his pleasure. They were obliged to answer that he could, to save their benefices.[301] Outrages so flagrant had shocked beyond longer endurance the Conservative mind of England. Darcy, at the beginning of the new year (a year which, as he hoped, was to witness an end to them), sent Chapuys a present of a sword, as an indication that the time was come for sword-play.[302] Let the Emperor send but a little money; let a proclamation be drawn in his name that the nation was in arms for the cause of God and the Queen, the comfort of the people, and the restoration of order and justice, and a hundred thousand men would rush to the field. The present was the propitious moment. If action was longer delayed it might be too late.[303] To the enthusiastic and the eager the cause which touches themselves the nearest seems always the most important in the world. Charles V. had struggled long to escape the duty which the Pope and destiny appeared to be combining to thrust upon him. With Germany unsettled, with the Turks in Hungary, with Barbarossa's corsair-fleet commanding the Mediterranean and harassing the Spanish coast, with another French war visibly ahead, and a renewed invasion of Italy, Charles was in no condition to add Henry to the number of his enemies. Chapuys and Darcy, Fisher and Reginald Pole allowed passion to persuade them that the English King was Antichrist in person, the centre of all the disorder which disturbed the world. All else could wait, but the Emperor must first strike down Antichrist and then the rest would be easy. Charles was wiser than they, and could better estimate the danger of what he was called on to undertake; but he could not shut his ears entirely to entreaties so reiterated. Before anything could be done, however, means would have to be taken to secure the persons of the Queen and Princess--of the Princess especially, as she would be in most danger. So far he had discouraged her escape when it had been proposed to him, since, were she once in his hands, he had thought that war could no longer be avoided. He now allowed Chapuys to try what he could do to get her out of the country, and meanwhile to report more particularly on the landing of an invading force. The escape itself presented no great difficulty. The Princess was generally at the Palace at Greenwich. Her friends would let her out at night; an armed barge could be waiting off the walls, and a Flemish man-of-war might be ready at the Nore, of size sufficient to beat off boats that might be sent in pursuit. Should she be removed elsewhere the enterprise would not be so easy. In the event of an insurrection while she was still in the realm, Chapuys said the first step of the Lords would be to get possession of her mother and Mary. If they failed, the King would send them to the Tower: but in the Tower they would be out of danger, as the Constable, Sir William Kingston, was their friend. In any case he did not believe that hurt would be done them, the King feeling that, if war did break out, they would be useful as mediators, like the wife and mother of Coriolanus. CHAPTER XVII. Prospects of civil war--England and Spain--Illness of the Princess Mary-- Plans for her escape--Spirit of Queen Catherine--The Emperor unwilling to interfere--Negotiations for a new treaty between Henry and Charles--Debate in the Spanish Council of State--The rival alliances--Disappointment of the confederate Peers--Advance of Lutheranism in England--Cromwell and Chapuys--Catherine and Mary the obstacles to peace--Supposed designs on Mary's life. England, to all appearance, was now on the eve of a bloody and desperate war. The conspirators were confident of success; but conspirators associate exclusively with persons of their own opinions, and therefore seldom judge accurately of the strength of their opponents. Chapuys and his friends had been equally confident about Ireland. Fitzgerald was now a fugitive, and the insurrection was burning down; yet the struggle before Henry would have been at least as severe as had been encountered by his grandfather Edward, and the country itself would have been torn to pieces; one notable difference only there was in the situation--that the factions of the Roses had begun the battle of themselves, without waiting for help from abroad; the reactionaries under Henry VIII., confessedly, were afraid to stir without the avowed support of the Emperor; and Charles, when the question came seriously before him, could not have failed to ask himself why, if they were as strong as they pretended, and the King's party as weak as they said it was, they endured what they could easily prevent. These reflections naturally presented themselves both to the Emperor and to the Spanish Council when they had to decide on the part which they would take. If what Chapuys represented as a mere demonstration should turn into serious war, England and France would then unite in earnest; they would combine with Germany; and Europe would be shaken with a convulsion of which it was impossible to foresee the end. The decision was momentous, and Charles paused before coming to a resolution. Weeks passed, and Chapuys could have no positive answer, save that he was to give general encouragement to the Queen's friends, and let them know that the Emperor valued their fidelity. Weary of his hesitation, and hoping to quicken his resolution, Catherine sent Chapuys word that the Princess was to be forced to swear to the Act of Supremacy, and that, on her refusal, she was to be executed or imprisoned for life. Catherine wrote what she, perhaps, believed, but could not know. But the suspense was trying, and the worst was naturally looked for. News came that English sailors had been burnt by the Inquisition at Seville as heretics. Cromwell observed to Chapuys that "he had heard the Emperor was going to make a conquest of the realm." The Ambassador had the coolness to assure him that he was dreaming; and that such an enterprise had never been thought of. Cromwell knew better. He had learnt, for one thing, of the plans for Mary's escape. He knew what that would mean, and he had, perhaps, prevented it. The project had been abandoned for the moment. Instead of escaping, she had shown symptoms of the same dangerous illness by which she had been attacked before. There was the utmost alarm, and, as a pregnant evidence of the condition of men's minds, the physicians refused to prescribe for her, lest, if she died, they should be suspected of having poisoned her. The King's physician declined. Queen Catherine's physician declined--unless others were called in to assist--and the unfortunate girl was left without medical help, in imminent likelihood of death, because every one felt that her dying at such a time would be set down to foul play. The King sent for Chapuys and begged that he would select a doctor, or two doctors, of eminence to act with his own. Chapuys, with polite irony, replied that it was not for him to make a selection; the King must be better acquainted than he could be with the reputation of the London physicians; and the Emperor would be displeased if he showed distrust of his Majesty's care for his child. Cromwell, who was present, desired that if the Princess grew worse Chapuys would allow one of his own people to be with her. Henry continued to express his grief at her sufferings. Some members of the Council "had not been ashamed to say" that as men could find no means of reconciling the King with the Emperor, God might open a door by taking the Princess to himself. It was a very natural thought. Clement had said the same about Catherine. But the aspiration would have been better left unexpressed.[304] Chapuys's suspicions were not removed. He perceived the King's anxiety to be unfeigned; but he detested him too sincerely to believe that in anything he could mean well. The Princess recovered. Catherine took advantage of the attack to entreat again that her daughter might be under her own charge. It was cruel to be obliged to refuse. Chapuys presented the Queen's request. The King, he said, heard him patiently and graciously, and, instead of the usual answer that he knew best how to provide for his daughter, replied, gently, that he would do his utmost for the health of the Princess, and, since her mother's physician would not assist, he would find others. But to let Chapuys understand that he was not ignorant of his secret dealings, he said he could not forget what was due to his own honour. The Princess might be carried out of the kingdom, or might herself escape. She could easily do it if she was left in her mother's charge. He had perceived some indications, he added significantly, that the Emperor wished to have her in his hands. Ambassadors have a privilege of lying. Chapuys boldly declared that there was no probability of the Emperor attempting to carry off the Princess. The controversy had lasted five years, and there had been no indication of any such purpose. The King said that it was Catherine who had made the Princess so obstinate. Daughters owed some obedience to their mothers, but their first duty was to the father. This Chapuys did not dispute, but proposed as an alternative that she should reside with her old governess, Lady Salisbury. The King said the Countess was a foolish woman, and of no experience.[305] The difficulty was very great. To refuse so natural a request was to appear hard and unfeeling; yet to allow Catherine and Mary to be together was to furnish a head to the disaffection, of the extent of which the King was perfectly aware. He knew Catherine, and his words about her are a key to much of their relations to one another. "She was of such high courage," he said, "that, with her daughter at her side, she might raise an army and take the field against him with as much spirit as her mother Isabella."[306] Catherine of Aragon had qualities with which history has not credited her. She was no patient, suffering saint, but a bold and daring woman, capable, if the opportunity was offered her, of making Henry repent of what he had done. But would the opportunity ever come? Charles was still silent. Chapuys continued to feed the fire with promises. Granvelle, Charles's Minister, might be more persuasive than himself. To Granvelle the Ambassador wrote "that the Concubine had bribed some one to pretend a revelation from God that she was not to conceive children while the Queen and the Princess were alive. The Concubine had sent the man with the message to the King, and never ceased [Wolsey had called Anne 'the night crow'] to exclaim that the ladies were rebels and traitresses, and deserved to die."[307] Norfolk, irritated at Anne's insolence to him, withdrew from court in ill-humour. He complained to Reginald Pole's brother, Lord Montague, that his advice was not attended to, and that his niece was intolerable. The Marquis of Exeter regretted to Chapuys that the chance had not been allowed him so far to shed his blood for the Queen and Princess. "Let the movement begin, and he would not be the last to join." Mary, notwithstanding the precautions taken to keep her safe, had not parted with her hope of escape. If she could not be with her mother she thought the Emperor might, perhaps, intercede with the King to remove her from under Mrs. Shelton's charge. The King might be brought to consent; and then, Chapuys said, with a pinnace and two ships in the river, she might still be carried off when again at Greenwich, as he could find means to get her out of the house at any hour of the night.[308] At length the suspense was at an end, and the long-waited-for decision of the Emperor arrived. He had considered, he said, the communications of Lord Darcy and Lord Sandys; he admitted that the disorders of England required a remedy; but an armed interference was at the present time impossible.[309] It was a poor consolation to the English Peers and clergy; and there was worse behind. Not only the Emperor did not mean to declare war against Henry, but, spite of Catherine, spite of excommunication, spite of heresy, he intended, if possible, to renew the old alliance between England and the House of Burgundy. Politics are the religion of princes, and if they are wise the peace of the world weighs more with them than orthodoxy and family contentions. Honour, pride, Catholic obligations recommended a desperate stroke. Prudence and a higher duty commanded Charles to abstain. Sir John Wallop, the English representative at Paris, was a sincere friend of Queen Catherine, but was unwilling, for her sake, to see her plunge into an insurrectionary whirlpool. Viscount Hannart, a Flemish nobleman with English connections, was Charles's Minister at the same Court. Together they discussed the situation of their respective countries. Both agreed that a war between Henry and the Emperor would be a calamity to mankind; while in alliance they might hold in check the impatient ambition of France. Wallop suggested that they might agree by mutual consent to suspend their differences on the divorce; might let the divorce pass in silence for future settlement, and be again friends. The proposal was submitted to the Spanish Council of State. The objections to it were the wrongs done, and still being done, to the Queen and Princess in the face of the Pope's sentence, and the obligations of the Emperor to see that sentence enforced. An arrangement between the Emperor and the King of England on the terms suggested would be ill received in Christendom, would dispirit the two ladies, and their friends in England who had hitherto supported the claims of the Princess Mary to the succession; while it might, further, encourage other princes to divorce their wives on similar grounds. In favour of a treaty, on the other hand, were the notorious designs of the French King. France was relying on the support of England. If nothing was done to compose the existing differences the King of England might be driven to desperate courses. The Faith of the Church would suffer. The General Council, so anxiously looked for, would be unable to meet. The French King would be encouraged to go to war. Both he and the King of England would support the German schism, and the lives of the Princess and her mother would probably be sacrificed. A provisional agreement might modify the King of England's action, the Church might be saved, the ladies' lives be secured, and doubt and distrust be introduced between England and France. The Emperor could then deal with the Turks, and other difficulties could be tided over till a Council could meet and settle everything.[310] Chapuys had written so confidently on the strength of the insurrectionary party that it was doubted whether choice between the alternative courses might not better be left for him to decide. Charles, who could better estimate the value of the promises of disaffected subjects, determined otherwise. The Ambassador, therefore, was informed that war would be inconvenient. Lord Darcy's sword must remain in the scabbard, and an attempt be made for reconciliation on the lines suggested by Sir John Wallop. Meanwhile, directions were given to the Inquisitors at Seville to be less precipitate in their dealings with English seamen. From the first it had been Cromwell's hope and conviction that an open quarrel would be escaped. The French party in the English Council--Anne Boleyn, her family, and friends--had been urging the alliance with France, and a general attack on Charles's scattered dominions. Cromwell, though a Protestant in religion, distrusted an associate who, when England was once committed, might make his own terms and leave Henry to his fate. In politics Cromwell had been consistently Imperialist. He had already persuaded the King to allow the Princess to move nearer to Kimbolton, where her mother's physician could have charge of her. He sent thanks to Charles in the King's name for his interference with the Holy Office. He left nothing undone to soften the friction and prepare for a reconciliation. Catherine and Mary he perceived to be the only obstacle to a return to active friendship. If the broken health of one, and the acute illness of the other, should have a fatal termination, as a politician he could not but feel that it would be an obstacle happily removed. Chapuys's intrigue with the confederate Peers had been continued to the latest moment. All arrangements had been made for their security when the rising should break out. Darcy himself was daily looking for the signal, and begged only for timely notice of the issue of the Emperor's manifesto to escape to his castle in the north.[311] The Ambassador had now to trim his sails on the other tack. The Emperor was ready to allow the execution of Clement's sentence to stand over till the General Council, without prejudice to the rights of parties, provided an engagement was made for the respectful treatment of the Queen and Princess, and a promise given that their friends should be unmolested. To Catherine the disappointment was hard to bear. The talk of a treaty was the death-knell of the hopes on which she had been feeding. A close and confidential intercourse was established between Chapuys and Cromwell to discuss the preliminary conditions, Chapuys, ill liking his work, desiring to fail, and on the watch for any point on which to raise a suspicion. The Princess was the first difficulty. Cromwell had promised that she should be moved to her mother's neighbourhood. She had been sent no nearer than Ampthill. Cromwell said that he would do what he could, but the subject was disagreeable to the King, and he could say no more. He entered at once, however, on the King's desire to be again on good terms with the Emperor. The King had instructed him to discuss the whole situation with Chapuys, and it would be unfortunate, he said, if the interests of two women were allowed to interfere with weighty matters of State. The Queen had been more than once seriously ill, and her life was not likely to be prolonged. The Princess was not likely to live either; and it did not appear that either in Spain or France there was much anxiety for material alteration in their present position. Meanwhile, the French were passionately importuning the King to join in a war against the Emperor. Cromwell said that he had been himself opposed to it, and the present moment, when the Emperor was engaged with the Turks, was the last which the King would choose for such a purpose. The object to be arrived at was the pacification of Christendom and the general union of all the leading Powers. The King desired it as much as he, and had, so far, prevented war from being declared by France. It was true that the peace of the world was of more importance than the complaints of Catherine and Mary. Catherine had rejected a compromise when the Emperor himself recommended it, and Mary had defied her father and had defied Parliament at her mother's bidding. There were limits to the sacrifices which they were entitled to demand. Chapuys protested against Cromwell's impression that the European Powers were indifferent. The strongest interest was felt in their fate, he said, and many inconveniences would follow should harm befall them. The world would certainly believe that they had met with foul play. The Emperor would be charged with having caused it by neglecting to execute the Pope's sentence, and it would be said also that, but for the expectations which the Emperor had held out to them of defending their cause, they would themselves have conformed to the King's wishes; they would then have been treated with due regard and have escaped their present miseries. Cromwell undertook that the utmost care and vigilance should be observed that hurt should not befall them. The Princess, he said, he loved as much as Chapuys himself could love her, and nothing that he could do for them should be neglected; but the Ambassador and the Emperor's other agents were like hawks who soared high to stoop more swiftly on their prey. Their object was to have the Princess declared next in succession to the crown, and that was impossible owing to the late statutes. Chapuys reported what had passed to his master, but scarcely concealed his contempt for the business in which he was engaged. "I cannot tell," he wrote, "what sort of a treaty could be made with this King as long as he refuses to restore the Queen and Princess, or repair the hurts of the Church and the Faith, which grow worse every day. No later than Sunday last a preacher raised a question whether the body of Christ was contained, or not, in the consecrated wafer. Your Majesty may consider whither such propositions are tending."[312] A still more important conversation followed a few days later. It can hardly be doubted, in the face of Chapuys's repeated declaration that both Catherine and her daughter were in personal danger, that Anne Boleyn felt her position always precarious as long as they were alive, and refused to acknowledge her marriage. She perhaps felt that it would go hard with herself in the event of a successful insurrection. She had urged, as far as she dared, that they should be tried under the statute; but Henry would not allow such a proposal to be so much as named to him. Other means, however, might be found to make away with them, and Sir Arthur Darcy, Lord Darcy's son, thought they would be safer in the King's hands in the Tower than in their present residence. "The devil of a Concubine would never rest till she had gained her object." The air was thick with these rumours when Chapuys and Cromwell again met. The overtures had been commenced by the Emperor. Cromwell said the King had given him a statement in writing that he was willing to renew his old friendship with the Emperor and make a new treaty with him, if proper safeguards could be provided for his honour and reputation; but it was to be understood distinctly that he would not permit the divorce question to be reopened; he would rather forfeit his crown and his life than consent to it, or place himself in subjection to any foreign authority; this was his firm resolution, which he desired Chapuys to make known to the Emperor. The Spanish Ministry had been willing that the Pope's sentence should be revised by a General Council. Why, Chapuys asked, might not the King consent also to refer the case to the Council? The King knew that he was right. He had once been willing--why should he now refuse? A Council, it had been said, would be called by the Pope, and would be composed of clergy who were not his friends; but Chapuys would undertake that there should be no unfair dealing. Were the Pope and clergy to intend harm, all the Princes of Christendom would interfere. The Emperor would recommend nothing to which the King would not be willing to subscribe. The favourable verdict of a Council would restore peace in England, and would acquit the Emperor's conscience. The Emperor, as matters stood, was bound to execute the sentence which had been delivered, and could not hold back longer without a hope of the King's submission. Cromwell admitted the reasonableness of Chapuys's suggestion. The Emperor was showing by the advances which he had commenced that he desired a reconciliation. A Council controlled by the princes of Europe might perhaps be a useful instrument. Cromwell promised an answer in two days. Then, after a pause, he returned to the subject of which he had spoken before:--In a matter of so much consequence to the world as the good intelligence of himself and the King of England, he said that the Emperor ought not to hesitate on account of the Queen and the Princess. They were but mortal. If the Princess was to die, her death would be no great misfortune, when the result of it would be the union and friendship of the two Princes.[313] He begged Chapuys to think it over when alone and at leisure. He then went on to inquire (for Chapuys had not informed him that the Emperor had already made up his mind to an arrangement) whether the ladies' business might not be passed over silently in the new treaty, and be left in suspense for the King's life. A General Council might meet to consider the other disorders of Christendom, or a congress might be held, previously appointed jointly by the King and the Emperor, when the ladies' rights might be arranged without mystery. Then once more, and, as Chapuys thought, with marked emphasis, he asked again what harm need be feared if the Princess were to die. The world might mutter, but why should it be resented by the Emperor?[314] Chapuys says that he replied that he would not dwell on the trouble which might arise if the Princess suddenly died in a manner so suspicious. God forbid that such a thing should be! How could the Emperor submit to the reproach of having consented to the death of his cousin, and sold her for the sake of a peace? Chapuys professed to believe, and evidently wished the Emperor to believe, that Cromwell was seriously proposing that the Princess Mary should be made away with. A single version of a secret conversation is an insufficient evidence of an intended monstrous crime. We do not know in what language it was carried on. Cromwell spoke no language but English with exactness, and Chapuys understood English imperfectly. The recent and alarming illness of the Princess, occasioned by restraint, fear, and irritation, had made her condition a constant subject of Chapuys's complaints, and Cromwell may have been thinking and speaking only of her dying under the natural consequences of prolonged confinement. Chapuys's unvarying object was to impress on the Emperor that her life was in danger. But Cromwell he admitted had been uniformly friendly to Mary, and, had foul play been really contemplated, the Emperor's Ambassador was the last person to whom the intention would have been communicated. The conversation did not end with Chapuys's answer. Cromwell went on, he said (still dwelling on points most likely to wound Charles), to rage against popes and cardinals, saying that he hoped the race would soon be extinct, and that the world would be rid of their abomination and tyranny. Then he spoke again of France, and of the pressure laid on Henry to join with the French in a war. Always, he said, he had dissuaded his master from expeditions on the Continent. He had himself refused a large pension which the French Government had offered him, and he intended at the next Parliament to introduce a Bill prohibiting English Ministers from taking pensions from foreign princes on pain of death. Men who have been proposing to commit murders do not lightly turn to topics of less perilous interest. Some days passed before Chapuys saw Cromwell again; but he continued to learn from him the various intrigues which were going on. Until the King was sure of his ground with Charles, the French faction at the court continued their correspondence with Francis. The price of an Anglo-French alliance was to be a promise from the French King to support Henry in his quarrel with Rome at the expected Council, and Chapuys advised his master not to show too much eagerness for the treaty, as he would make the King more intractable. The Emperor's way of remedying the affairs of England could not be better conceived, he said, provided the English Government met him with an honest response, provided they would forward the meeting of the Council, and treat the Queen and Princess better, who were in great personal danger. This, however, he believed they would never do. The Queen had instructed him to complain to the Emperor that her daughter was still left in the hands of her enemies, and that if she was to die it would be attributed to the manner in which she had been dealt with; the Queen, however, was satisfied that the danger would disappear if the King and the Emperor came to an understanding; and, if she could be assured that matters would be conducted as the Emperor proposed, he would be able to persuade her to approve of the whole plan. Chapuys never repeated his suspicion that danger threatened Mary from Cromwell, and, if he had really believed it, he would hardly have failed to make further mention of so dark a suggestion. He was not scrupulous about truth: diplomatists with strong personal convictions seldom are. He had assured the King that a thought had never been entertained of an armed interference in England, while his letters for many months had been full of schemes for insurrection and invasion. He was eager for the work to begin. He was incredulous of any other remedy, and, if he dared, would have forced the Emperor's hand. He depended for his information of what passed at the court upon Anne Boleyn's bitterest enemies, and he put the worst interpretation upon every story which was brought to him. Cromwell, he said, had spoken like Caiaphas. It is hardly credible that Cromwell would have ventured to insult the Emperor with a supposition that he would make himself an accomplice in a crime. But though I think it more likely that Chapuys misunderstood or misrepresented Cromwell than that he accurately recorded his words, yet it is certain that there were members of Henry's Council who did seriously desire to try and to execute both Mary and her mother. Both of them were actively dangerous. Their friends were engaged in a conspiracy for open rebellion in their names, and, under the Tudor princes, nearness of blood or station to the Crown was rather a danger than a protection. Royal pretenders were not gently dealt with, even when no immediate peril was feared from them. Henry VII. had nothing to fear from the Earl of Warwick, yet Warwick lay in a bloody grave. Mary herself executed her cousin Jane Grey, and was hardly prevented from executing her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth, in turn, imprisoned Catherine Grey, and let her die as Chapuys feared that Mary was now about to die. The dread of another war of succession lay like a nightmare on the generations which carried with them an ever-present memory of the Wars of the Roses. CHAPTER XVIII. Negotiations for a treaty--Appeal of Catherine to the Emperor--Fresh plans for the escape of Mary--Forbidden by the Emperor--The King and his daughter--Suggestion of Dr. Butts--The clergy and the Reformation--The Charterhouse monks--More and Fisher in the Tower--The Emperor in Africa-- The treaty--Rebellion in Ireland--Absolution of Lord Thomas Fitzgerald for the murder of the Archbishop of Dublin--Treason of Lord Hussey--Fresh debates in the Spanish Council--Fisher created cardinal--Trial and execution of Fisher and More--Effect in Europe. More than a year had now passed since Clement had delivered judgment on the divorce case. So far the discharge had been ineffective, and the Brief of Execution, the direct command to the Catholic Powers to dethrone Henry and to his subjects to renounce their allegiance, was still withheld. The advances which the new Pope had made to England having met with no response, Paul III. was ready to strike the final blow, but his hand had been held by Charles, who was now hoping by a treaty to recover the English alliance. Catherine had consented, but consented reluctantly, to an experiment from which she expected nothing. Chapuys himself did not wish it to succeed, and was unwilling to part with the expectations which he had built on Darcy's promises. The Spanish Council, in recommending the course which the Emperor had taken, had foreseen the dispiritment which it might produce among the Queen's friends, and the injury to the Holy See by the disregard of a sentence which Charles had himself insisted on. The treaty made no progress. The sacrifice appeared to be fruitless, and Catherine appealed to Charles once more in her old tone. She would be wanting in her duty to herself, she said, and she would offend God, if she did not seek the help of those who alone could give her effectual assistance. She must again press upon his Majesty the increasing perils to the Catholic Faith and the injury to the English realm which his neglect to act was producing. The sentence of Clement had been powerless. She entreated him with all her energy as a Christian woman to hesitate no longer. Her daughter had been ill, and had not yet recovered. Had her health been strong, the treatment which she received would destroy it, and, if she died, there would be a double sin. The Emperor need not care for herself. She was accustomed to suffering and could bear anything. But she must let him know that she was as poor as Job, and was expecting a time when she would have to beg alms for the love of God.[315] Mary was scarcely in so bad a case as her mother represented. Her spirit had got the better of her illness, and she was again alert and active. The King had supplied her with money and had sent her various kind messages, but she was still eager to escape out of the realm, and Charles had again given a qualified consent to the attempt being made if it was sure of success. With Mary in his hands, he could deal with Henry to better advantage. A favourable opportunity presented itself. Three Spanish ships were lying in the Lower Pool; Mary was still at Greenwich, and their crews were at her disposition. Chapuys asked if she was ready. She was not only ready but eager. She could leave the palace at night with the help of confederates, be carried on board, and disappear down the river. Accident, or perhaps a whispered warning, deranged her plans. By a sudden order she was removed from Greenwich to Eltham. The alteration of residence was not accompanied with signs of suspicion. She was treated with marked respect. A State litter of some splendour was provided for her. The governess, Mrs. Shelton, however, was continued at her side, and the odious presence redoubled her wish to fly. Before she left Greenwich she sent a message to Chapuys imploring his advice and his assistance. She begged him for the love of God to contrive fresh means for removing her from the country. The enterprise, he thought, would be now dangerous, but not impossible, and success would be a glorious triumph. The Princess had told him that in her present lodging she could not be taken away at night, but she might walk in the day in fine weather, and might be surprised and carried off as if against her consent. The river would not be many miles distant, and, if she could be fallen in with when alone, there might be less difficulty than even at Greenwich, because she could be put on board below Gravesend.[316] As a ship would be required from Flanders, Chapuys communicated directly with Granvelle. He was conscious that, if he was himself in England when the enterprise was attempted, his own share in it would be suspected and it might go hard with him. He proposed, therefore, under some excuse of business in the Low Countries, to cross over previously. It would be a splendid _coup_, he said, and, considering how much the Princess wished it and her remarkable prudence and courage, the thing could, no doubt, be managed. Could she be once seized and on horseback, and if there was a galley at hand and a large ship or two, there would be no real difficulty. The country-people would help her, and the parties sent in pursuit would be in no hurry.[317] Either the difficulties proved greater than were expected, or Charles was still hoping for the treaty, and would not risk an experiment which would spoil the chances of an accommodation. Once more he altered his mind and forbade the venture, and Chapuys had to take up again a negotiation from which he had no expectation of good. He met Cromwell from time to time, his master's pleasure being to preserve peace on tolerable terms; and the Ambassador continued to propose the reference of the divorce case to the General Council, on which Cromwell had seemed not unwilling to listen to him. If Henry could be tempted by vague promises to submit his conduct to a Council called by the Pope, he would be again in the meshes out of which he had cut his way. The cunning Ambassador urged on Cromwell the honour which the King would gain if a Council confirmed what he had done; and when Cromwell answered that a Council under the Emperor's influence might rather give an adverse sentence, he said that, if it was so, the King would have shown by a voluntary submission that his motives had been pure, and might have perfect confidence in the Emperor's fairness. Cromwell said he would consult the King; but the real difficulty lay in the pretensions of the Princess. Cromwell was well served; he probably knew, as well as Chapuys, of the intended rape at Eltham, and all that it would involve. "Would to God"--he broke out impatiently, and did not finish the sentence; but Chapuys thought he saw what the finish would have been.[318] Henry may be credited with some forbearance towards his troublesome daughter. She defied his laws. Her supporters were trying to take his crown from him, and she herself was attempting to escape abroad and levy war upon him. Few of his predecessors would have hesitated to take ruder methods with so unmalleable a piece of metal. She herself believed that escape was her only chance of life. She was in the power of persons who, she had been told, meant to poison her, while no means were neglected to exasperate the King's mind against her. He, on his side, was told that she was incurably obstinate, while everything was concealed that might make him more favourably disposed towards her. In the midst of public business with which he was overwhelmed, he could not know what was passing inside the walls at Eltham. He discovered occasionally that he had been deceived. He complained to Cromwell "that he had found much good in his daughter of which he had not been properly informed." But if there was a conspiracy against Mary, there was also a conspiracy against himself, in a quarter where it could have been least expected. Dr. Butts, the King's physician, whose portrait by Holbein is so familiar to us, was one of the most devoted friends of Queen Catherine. During Mary's illness, Dr. Butts had affected to be afraid of the responsibility of attending upon her. He had consented afterwards, though with apparent reluctance, and had met in consultation Catherine's doctor, who had also allowed himself to be persuaded. Henry sent Butts down to Eltham with his own horses. The Royal physician found his patient better than he expected, and, instead of talking over her disorders, he talked of the condition of the realm with his brother practitioner. "The Doctor is a very clever man," wrote Chapuys, reporting the account of the conversation which he received from the Queen's physician, "and is intimate with the nobles and the Council. He says that there are but two ways of assisting the Queen and Princess and of setting right the affairs of the realm: one would be if it pleased God to visit the King with some little malady."[319] "The second method was force, of which, he said, the King and his Ministers were in marvellous fear. If it came to a war, he thought the King would be specially careful of the Queen and Princess, meaning to use them, should things turn to the worst, as mediators for peace. But if neither of these means were made use of, he really believed they were in danger of their lives. He considered it was lucky for the King that the Emperor did not know how easy the enterprise of England would be; and the present, he said, was the right time for it." His private physician, it is to be remembered, was necessarily, of all Henry's servants, the most trusted by him; and the doctor was not contented with indirect suggestions, for he himself sent a secret message to Chapuys that twenty great peers and a hundred knights were ready, they and their vassals, to venture fortune and life, with the smallest assistance from the Emperor, to rise and make a revolution.[320] Dr. Butts with his _petite maladie_ was a "giant traitor," though, happily for himself, he was left undiscovered. Human sympathies run so inevitably on the side of the sufferers in history, that we forget that something also is due to those whom they forced into dealing hardly with them. Catherine and the faithful Catholics who conspired and lost their lives for her cause and the Pope's, are in no danger of losing the favourable judgment of the world; the tyranny and cruelty of Henry VIII. will probably remain for ever a subject of eloquent denunciation; but there is an _altera pars_--another view of the story, which we may be permitted without offence to recognise. Henry was, on the whole, right; the general cause for which he was contending was a good cause. His victory opened the fountains of English national life, won for England spiritual freedom, and behind spiritual freedom her political liberties. His defeat would have kindled the martyr-fires in every English town, and would have burnt out of the country thousands of poor men and women as noble as Catherine herself. He had stained the purity of his action by intermingling with it a weak passion for a foolish and bad woman, and bitterly he had to suffer for his mistake; but the revolt against, and the overthrow of, ecclesiastical despotism were precious services, which ought to be remembered to his honour; and, when the good doctor to whom he trusted his life, out of compassion for an unfortunate lady was, perhaps, willing to administer a doubtful potion to him, or to aid in inviting a Catholic army into England to extinguish the light that was dawning there, only those who are Catholics first and Englishmen afterwards will say that it was well done on the doctor's part. The temper of the nation was growing dangerous, and the forces on both sides were ranging themselves for the battle. Bishop Fisher has been seen sounding on the same string. He, with More, had now been for many months in the Tower, and his communications with Chapuys having been cut off, he had been unable to continue his solicitations; but the Ambassador had undertaken for the whole of the clergy on the instant that the Emperor should declare himself. The growth of Lutheranism had touched their hearts with pious indignation; their hatred of heresy was almost the sole distinction which they had preserved belonging to their sacred calling. The regular orders were the most worthless; the smaller monasteries were nests of depravity; the purpose of their existence was to sing souls out of purgatory, and the efficacy of their musical petitionings being no longer believed in, the King had concluded that monks and nuns could be better employed, and that the wealth which maintained them could be turned to better purpose--to the purpose especially of the defence of the realm against them and their machinations. The monks everywhere were the active missionaries of treason. They writhed under the Act of Supremacy. Their hope of continuance depended on the restoration of the Papal authority. When they were discovered to be at once useless and treacherous, it was not unjust to take their lands from them and apply the money for which those lands could be sold, to the fleet and the fortresses on the coast. In this, the greatest of his reforms, Cromwell had been the King's chief adviser. He had been employed under Wolsey in the first suppression of the most corrupt of the smaller houses. In the course of his work he had gained an insight into the scandalous habits of their occupants, which convinced him of the impolicy and uselessness of attempting to prolong their existence. Institutions however ancient, organizations however profoundly sacred, cannot outlive the recognition that the evil which they produce is constant and the advantage visionary. That the monastic system was doomed had become generally felt; that the victims of the intended overthrow should be impatient of their fate was no more than natural. The magnitude of the design, the interests which were threatened, the imagined sanctity attaching to property devoted to the Church, gave an opportunity for outcry against sacrilege. The entire body of monks became in their various orders an army of insurrectionary preachers, well supplied with money, terrifying the weak, encouraging the strong, and appealing to the superstitions so powerful with a people like the English, who were tenacious of their habits and associations. The Abbots and Priors had sworn to the supremacy, but had sworn reluctantly, with secret reservations to save their consciences. With the prospect of an Imperial deliverer to appear among them, they were recovering courage to defy their excommunicated enemy. Those who retained the most of the original spirit of their religion were the first to recover heart for resistance. The monks of the London Charterhouse, who were exceptions to the general corruption, and were men of piety and character, came forward to repudiate their oaths and to dare the law to punish them. Their tragical story is familiar to all readers of English history. Chapuys adds a few particulars. Their Prior, Haughton, had consented to the Act of Supremacy; but his conscience told him that in doing so he had committed perjury. He went voluntarily, with three of the brotherhood, to Cromwell, and retracted his oath, declaring that the King in calling himself Head of the Church was usurping the Pope's authority. They had not been sent for; their house was in no immediate danger; and there was no intention of meddling with them. Their act was a gratuitous defiance; and under the circumstances of the country was an act of war. The effect, if not the purpose, was, and must have been, to encourage a spirit which would explode in rebellion. Cromwell warned them of their danger, and advised them to keep their scruples to themselves. They said they would rather encounter a hundred thousand deaths. They were called before a Council of Peers. The Knights of the Garter were holding their annual Chapter, and the attendance was large. The Duke of Norfolk presided, having returned to the Court, and the proceedings were unusually solemn. The monks were required to withdraw their declaration; they were told that the statute was not to be disputed. They persisted. They were allowed a night to reflect, and they spent it on their knees in prayer. In the morning they were recalled; their courage held, and they were sentenced to die, with another friar who had spoken and written to similar purpose. They had thrown down a challenge to the Government; the challenge was accepted, and the execution marked the importance of the occasion. They were not a handful of insignificant priests, they were the advanced guard of insurrection; and to allow them to triumph was to admit defeat. They were conducted through the streets by an armed force. The Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Richmond, Henry's illegitimate son, Lord Wiltshire, and Lord Rochford attended at the scaffold. Sir Henry Norris was also there, masked, with forty of the Royal Guard on horseback. At the scaffold they were again offered a chance of life; again they refused, and died gallantly. The struggle had begun for the Crown of England. In claiming the supremacy for the Pope, these men had abjured their allegiance to the King whom the Pope had excommunicated. Conscience was nothing--motive was nothing. Conscience was not allowed as a plea when a Lutheran was threatened with the stake. In all civil conflicts high motives are to be found on both sides, and in earnest times words are not used without meaning. The Statute of Supremacy was Henry's defence against an attempt to deprive him of his crown and deprive the kingdom of its independence. To disobey the law was treason; and the penalty of treason was death.[321] Chapuys in telling the story urged it as a proof to Charles that there was no hope of the King's repentance. It was now expected that More and Fisher, and perhaps the Queen and Princess, would be called on also to acknowledge the supremacy, and, if they refused, would suffer the same fate. The King's Ministers, Chapuys said, were known to have often reproached the King, and to have told him it was a shame for him and the kingdom not to punish them as traitors. Anne Boleyn was fiercer and haughtier than ever she was.[322] Sir Thomas More was under the same impression that Anne had been instigator of the severities. She would take his head from him, he said, and then added, prophetically, that her own would follow. The presence of her father and brother and her favourite Norris at the execution of the Carthusians confirmed the impression. The action of the Government had grounds more sufficient than a woman's urgency. More and Fisher received notice that they would be examined on the statute, and were allowed six weeks to prepare their answer. Chapuys did not believe that any danger threatened Catherine, or threatened her household. She herself, however, anticipated the worst, and only hoped that her own fate might rouse the Emperor at last. The Emperor was not to be roused. He was preparing for his great expedition to Tunis to root out the corsairs, and had other work on hand. In vain Chapuys had tried to make him believe that Cromwell meditated the destruction of the Princess Mary; in vain Chapuys had told him that words were useless, and that "cautery was the only remedy"--that the English Peers were panting for encouragement to take arms. He had no confidence in insurgent subjects who could not use the constitutional methods which they possessed to do anything for themselves. He saw Henry crushing down resistance with the relentless severity of the law. He replied to Chapuys's entreaties that, although he could not in conscience abandon his aunt and cousin, yet the Ambassador must temporise. He had changed his mind about Mary's escape: he said it was dangerous, unadvisable, and not to be thought of.[323] The present was not the proper moment. He wrote a cautious letter to the King, which he forwarded for Chapuys to deliver. In spite of Charterhouse monks and Lutheran preachers, the Ambassador was to take up again the negotiations for the treaty. Thus Cromwell and he recommenced their secret meetings. A country-house was selected for the purpose, where their interviews would be unobserved. Chapuys had recommended that Henry should assist in calling a General Council. Cromwell undertook that Henry would consent, provided the Council was not held in Italy, or in the Pope's or the Emperor's dominions, and provided that the divorce should not be among the questions submitted to it. The Emperor, he said, had done enough for his honour, and might now leave the matter to the King's conscience. With respect to the Queen and Princess, the King had already written to Sir John Wallop, who was to lay his letters before the Spanish Ambassador in Paris. The King had said that, although the Emperor, in forsaking a loyal friend for the sake of a woman, had not acted well with him, yet he was willing to forget and forgive. If the Emperor would advise the ladies to submit to the judgment of the Universities of Europe, which had been sanctioned by the English estates of the realm, and was as good as a decree of a Council, they would have nothing to complain of.[324] Chapuys observed that such a letter ought to have been shown to himself before it was sent; but that was of no moment. The King of France, Cromwell went on, would bring the Turk, and the Devil, too, into Christendom to recover Milan; the King and the Emperor ought to draw together to hold France in check; and yet, to give Chapuys a hint that he knew what he had been doing, he said he had heard, though he did not believe it, that the Emperor and the King of the Romans had thought of invading England, in a belief that they would make an easy conquest of it. They would find the enterprise more costly than they expected, and, even if they did conquer England, they could not keep it. Chapuys, wishing to learn how much had been discovered, asked what Cromwell meant. Cromwell told him the exact truth. The scheme had been to stop the trade between England and Flanders. A rebellion was expected to follow, which, Cromwell admitted, was not unlikely; and then, in great detail and with a quiet air of certainty, he referred to the solicitations continually made to the Emperor to send across an army. Leaving Chapuys to wonder at his sources of information, so accurate, Cromwell spoke of an approaching conference at Calais, which was to be held at the request of the French King. He did not think anything would come of it. He had himself declined to be present, but one of the proposals to be made would be an offer of the Duke of Angoulême for the young Princess Elizabeth. The Council, he said, had meantime been reviewing the old treaty for the marriage of the Emperor to the Princess Mary, and the King had spoken in the warmest terms of the Emperor. Perhaps as a substitute for the French connection, and provided the divorce was not called in question again, he thought that the Princess Elizabeth might be betrothed to Philip, and a marriage could be found out of the realm for the Princess Mary with the Emperor's consent and approbation. The King, in this case, would give her the greatest and richest dower that was ever given to any Queen or Empress.[325] Chapuys observed that the divorce must be disposed of before fresh marriages could be thought of. Cromwell wished him to speak himself to the King. Chapuys politely declined to take so delicate a negotiation out of Cromwell's hands. For himself, he had not yet abandoned hope of a different issue. Lord Darcy was still eager as ever, and wished to communicate directly with the Emperor. From Ireland, too, the news were less discouraging. The insurrection had burnt down, but was still unsubdued. Lord Thomas found one of his difficulties to lie in the incompleteness of the Papal censures. The formal Bull of Deposition was still unpublished. The young chief had written to the Pope to say that, but for this deficiency, he would have driven the English out of the island, and to beg that it might be immediately supplied. He had himself, too, perhaps, been in fault. The murder of an archbishop who had not been directly excommunicated was an irregularity and possibly a crime. He prayed that the Pope would send him absolution. Paul as he read the letter showed much pleasure. He excused his hesitation as having risen from a hope that the King of England would repent. For the future he said he would do his duty; and at once sent Lord Thomas the required pardon for an act which had been really meritorious.[326] The absolution may have benefited Lord Thomas's soul. It did not save him from the gallows. Again Cromwell and Chapuys met. Again the discussion returned to the insoluble problem. The Spanish Council of State had half recommended that the divorce should be passed over, as it had been at Cambray. Chapuys laboured to entangle Henry in an engagement that it should be submitted to the intended General Council. The argument took the usual form. Cromwell said that the King could not revoke what he had done, without disgrace. Chapuys answered that it was the only way to avoid disgrace, and the most honourable course which he could adopt. The King ought not to be satisfied in such a matter with the laws and constitutions of his own country. If he would yield on this single point, the taking away the property of the clergy might in some degree be confirmed. The ground alleged for it being the defence of the realm, there would be less occasion for such measures in future; the Emperor would allow the King to make his submission in any form that he might choose, and everything should be made as smooth as Henry could desire. Cromwell, according to Chapuys, admitted the soundness of the argument, but he said that it was neither in his power, nor in any man's power, to persuade the King, who would hazard all rather than yield. Even the present Pope, he said, had, when Cardinal, written an autograph letter to the King, telling him that he had a right to ask for a divorce, and that Clement had done him great wrong. The less reason then, Chapuys neatly observed, for refusing to lay the matter before a General Council. The Ambassador went through his work dutifully, though expecting nothing from it, and his reports of what passed with the English Ministers ended generally with a recommendation of what he thought the wiser course. Lord Hussey, he said, had sent to him to say that he could remain no longer in a country where all ranks and classes were being driven into heresy; and would, therefore, cross the Channel to see the Emperor in person, to urge his own opinion and learn the Emperor's decision from his own lips. If the answer was unfavourable he would tell his friends, that they might not be deceived in their expectations. They would then act for themselves.[327] It is likely that Chapuys had been instructed to reserve the concessions which Charles was prepared to make till it was certain that, without them, the treaty would fail. France meanwhile was outbidding the Emperor, and the King was using, without disguise, the offers of each Power to alarm the other. Cromwell at the next meeting told Chapuys that Francis was ready to support the divorce unreservedly if Henry would assist him in taking Milan. The French, he said, should have a sharp answer, could confidence be felt in the Emperor's overtures. A sharp struggle was going on in the Council between the French and Imperial factions. Himself sincerely anxious for the success of the negotiation in which he was engaged, Cromwell said he had fallen into worse disgrace with Anne Boleyn than he had ever been. Anne had never liked him. She had told him recently "she would like to see his head off his shoulders."[328] She was equally angry with the Duke of Norfolk, who had been too frank in the terms in which he had spoken of her. If she discovered his interviews with Chapuys she would do them both some ill turn. The King himself agreed with Cromwell in preferring the Emperor to Francis, but he would not part company with France till he was assured that Charles no longer meant his harm. Charles, it will be remembered, had himself written to Henry, and the letter had by this time arrived. Chapuys feared that, if he presented it at a public audience, the Court would conclude that the Emperor was reconciled, and had abandoned the Queen and Princess, so he applied for a private reception. The King granted it, read the letter, spoke graciously of the expedition against the Turks, and then significantly of his own armaments and the new fortifications at Dover and Calais. He believed (as Chapuys had heard from the Princess Mary) that, if he could tide over the present summer, the winter would then protect him, and that in another year he would be strong enough to fear no one. Seeing that he said nothing of the treaty, Chapuys began upon it, and said that the Emperor was anxious to come to terms with him, so far as honour and conscience would allow. Henry showed not the least eagerness. He replied with entire frankness that France was going to war for Milan. Large offers had been made to him, which, so far, he had not accepted; but he might be induced to listen, unless he could be better assured of the Emperor's intention.[329] It was evident that Henry could neither be cajoled nor frightened. Should Charles then give up the point for which he was contending? Once more the Imperial Privy Council sat to consider what was to be done. It had become clear that no treaty could be made with Henry unless the Emperor would distinctly consent that the divorce should not be spoken of. The old objections were again weighed--the injuries to the Queen and to the Holy See, the Emperor's obligations, the bad effect on Christendom and on England which a composition on such terms would produce, the encouragement to other Princes to act as Henry had done--stubborn facts of the case which could not be evaded. On the other hand were the dangerous attitude of Francis, the obstinacy of Henry, the possibility that France and England might unite, and the inability of the Emperor to encounter their coalition. Both Francis and Henry were powerful Princes, and a quarrel would not benefit the Queen and her daughter if the Emperor was powerless to help them. The divorce was the difficulty. Should the Emperor insist on a promise that it should be submitted to a General Council? It might be advisable, under certain circumstances, to create disturbances in England and Ireland, so as to force the King into an alliance on the Emperor's terms. But if Henry could be induced to suspend or modify his attacks on the Faith and the Church, to break his connection with France and withdraw from his negotiations with the Germans, if securities could be taken that the Queen and Princess should not be compelled to sign or promise anything without the Emperor's consent, the evident sense of the Spanish Council of State was that the proceedings against the King should be suspended, perhaps for his life, and that no stipulations should be insisted on, either for the King's return to the Church or for his consent to the meeting of the General Council. God might perhaps work on the King's conscience without threat of force or violence; and the Emperor, before starting on his expedition to Tunis, might tell the English Ambassador that he wished to be the King's friend, and would not go to war with any Christian Prince unless he was compelled. The Queen's consent would, of course, be necessary; she and the Princess would be more miserable than ever if they were made to believe that there was no help for them.[330] But their consent, if there was no alternative, might be assumed when a refusal would be useless. If the willingness to make concessions was the measure of the respective anxieties for an agreement between the two countries, Spain was more eager than England, for the Emperor was willing to yield the point on which he had broken the unity of Christendom and content himself with words, while Henry would yield nothing, except the French alliance, for which he had cared little from the time that France had refused to follow him into schism. An alliance of the Emperor with an excommunicated sovereign in the face of a sentence which he had himself insisted on, and with a Bull of Deposition ready for launching, would be an insult to the Holy See more dangerous to it than the revolt of a single kingdom. The treaty might, however, have been completed on the terms which Wallop and the Imperial Ambassador had agreed on at Paris, and which the Imperial Council had not rejected. The Pope saw the peril, struck in, and made it impossible. In the trial and execution of the Carthusians Henry had shown to Europe that he was himself in earnest. The blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church, and Paul calculated rightly that he could not injure the King of England more effectually than by driving him to fresh severities and thus provoking an insurrection. No other explanation can be given for his having chosen this particular moment for an act which must and would produce the desired consequence. Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More had been allowed six weeks to consider whether they would acknowledge the Statute of Supremacy. More was respected by every one, except the Lutherans, whom he confessed that he hated; Fisher was regarded as a saint by the Catholic part of England; and the King, who was dependent after all on the support of his subjects and could not wish to shock or alienate them, would probably have pressed them no further, unless challenged by some fresh provocation. Fisher had waded deep into treason, but, if the King knew it, there was no evidence which could be produced. Before the six weeks were expired the Court and the world were astonished to hear that Paul had created the Bishop of Rochester a cardinal, and that the hat was already on the way. Casalis, who foresaw the consequences, had protested against the appointment, both to the Pope and the Consistory. Paul pretended to be frightened. He begged Casalis to excuse him to the King. He professed, what it was impossible to believe, that he had intended to pay England a compliment. A general Council was to meet. He wished England to be represented there by a Prelate whom he understood to be distinguished for learning and sanctity. The Roman Pontiffs have had a chequered reputation, but the weakest of them has never been suspected of a want of worldly acuteness. The condition of England was as well understood at Rome as it was understood by Chapuys, and, with Dr. Ortiz at his ear, Paul must have been acquainted with the disposition of every peer and prelate in the realm. Fisher's name had been familiar through the seven years' controversy as of the one English Bishop who had been constant in resistance to every step of Henry's policy. Paul, who had just absolved Silken Thomas for the Archbishop of Dublin's murder, had little to learn about the conspiracy, or about Fisher's share in it. The excuse was an insolence more affronting than the act itself. It was impossible for the King to acknowledge himself defied and defeated. He said briefly that he would send Fisher's head to Rome, for the hat to be fitted on it. Sir Thomas More, as Fisher's dearest friend, connected with him in opposition to the Reformation and sharing his imprisonment for the same actions, was involved along with him in the fatal effects of the Pope's cunning or the Pope's idiotcy. The six weeks ran out. The Bishop and the ex-Chancellor were called again before the Council, refused to acknowledge the supremacy, and were committed for trial. The French and English Commissioners had met and parted at Calais. Nothing had been concluded there, as Cromwell said with pleasure to Chapuys, prejudicial to the Emperor; but as to submitting the King's conduct to a Council, Cromwell reiterated that it was not to be thought of. Were there no other reason, the hatred borne to him by all the English _prestraylle_ for having pulled down the tyranny of the Church and tried to reform them, would be cause sufficient. The Council would be composed of clergy. More than this, and under the provocation of the fresh insult, Cromwell said that neither the King nor his subjects would recognise any Council convoked by the Pope. A Council convoked by the Emperor they would acknowledge, but a Papal Council never. They intended to make the Church of England a true and singular mirror to all Christendom.[331] Paul can hardly have deliberately contemplated the results of what he had done. He probably calculated, either that Henry would not dare to go to extremities with a person of so holy a reputation as Bishop Fisher, or that the threat of it would force Fisher's and the Queen's friends into the field in time to save him. They had boasted that the whole country was with them, and the Pope had taken them at their word. Yet his own mind misgave him. The Nuncio at Paris was directed to beg Francis to intercede. Francis said he would do his best, but feared the "hat" would prove the Bishop's death. Henry, Francis said, was not always easy to deal with. He almost treated him as a subject. He was the strangest man in the world. He feared he could do no good with him.[332] There was not the least likelihood that the King would allow the interposition either of Francis or of any one. The crime created by the Act of Supremacy was the denial by word or act of the King's sovereignty, ecclesiastical or civil, and the object was to check and punish seditious speaking or preaching. As the Act was first drafted, to speak at all against the supremacy brought an offender under the penalties. The House of Commons was unwilling to make mere language into high treason, and a strong attempt was made to introduce the word "maliciously." Men might deny that the King was Head of the Church in ignorance or inadvertence; and an innocent opinion was not a proper subject for severity. But persons who had exposed themselves to suspicion might be questioned, and their answers interpreted by collateral evidence, to prove disloyal intention. Chapuys's letters leave no doubt of Fisher's real disloyalty. But his desire to bring in an Imperial army was shared by half the Peers, and, if proof of it could be produced, their guilty consciences might drive them into open rebellion. It was ascertained that Fisher and More had communicated with each other in the Tower on the answers which they were to give. But other points had risen for which Fisher was not prepared. Among the papers found in his study were letters in an unknown hand addressed to Queen Catherine, which apparently the Bishop was to have forwarded to her, but had been prevented by his arrest. They formed part of a correspondence between the Queen and some Foreign Prince, carried on through a reverend father spoken of as E. R. ... alluding to things which "no mortal man was to know besides those whom it behoved," and to another letter which E. R. had received of the Bishop himself. Fisher was asked who wrote these letters: "Who was E. R.? Who was the Prince?" What those things were which no mortal was to know? If trifles, why the secrecy, and from whom were they to be concealed? What were the letters which had been received from the Bishop himself to be sent oversea? The letters found contained also a request to know whether Catherine wished the writer to proceed to other Princes in Germany and solicit them; and again a promise that the writer would maintain her cause among good men there, and would let her know what he could succeed in bringing to pass with the Princes. The Bishop was asked whether, saving his faith and allegiance, he ought to have assisted a man who was engaged in such enterprises, and why he concealed a matter which he knew to be intended against the King; how the letter came into his hands, who sent it, who brought it. If the Bishop refused to answer or equivocated, he was to understand that the King knew the truth, for he had proof in his hands. The writer was crafty and subtle and had promised to spend his labour with the Princes that they should take in hand to defend the Lady Catherine's cause. The King held the key to the whole mystery. The mine had been undermined. The intended rebellion was no secret to Henry or to Cromwell. Catherine, a divorced wife, and a Spanish princess, owed no allegiance in England. But Fisher was an English subject, and conscience is no excuse for treason, until the treason succeeds. Fisher answered warily, but certainly untruly, that he could not recollect the name either of the Prince who wrote the letter which had been discovered or of the messenger who brought it. It was probably some German prince, but, as God might help him, he could not say which, unless it was Ferdinand, King of Hungary. E. R. was not himself, nor did he ever consent that the writer should attempt anything with the German Princes against the King. He had been careful. He had desired Chapuys from the beginning that his name should not be mentioned, except in cipher. He had perhaps abstained from directly advising an application to Ferdinand, who could not act without the Emperor's sanction. His messages to Charles through his Ambassador even Fisher could scarcely have had the hardiness to deny; but these messages, if known, were not alleged. The Anglo-Imperial alliance was on the anvil, and the question was not put to him.[333] Of Fisher's malice, however, as the law construed it, there was no doubt. He persisted in his refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of the Crown. Five days after his examination he was tried at Westminster Hall, and in the week following he was executed on Tower Hill. He died bravely in a cause which he believed to be right. To the last he might have saved himself by submission, but he never wavered. He knew that he could do better service to the Queen and the Catholic Church by his death than by his life. Cromwell told Chapuys that "the Bishop of Rome was the cause of his punishment, for having made a Cardinal of the King's worst enemy." He was "greatly pitied of the people." The pity would have been less had his real conduct been revealed. A nobler victim followed. In the lists of those who were prepared to take arms against the King there is no mention of the name of Sir Thomas More; but he had been Fisher's intimate friend and companion, and he could hardly have been ignorant of a conspiracy with which Fisher had been so closely concerned; while malice might be inferred without injustice from an acquaintance with dangerous purposes which he had not revealed. He paid the penalty of the society to which he had attached himself. He, even more than the Bishop of Rochester, was the chief of the party most opposed to the Reformation. He had distinguished himself as Chancellor by his zeal against the Lutherans, and, if that party had won the day, they would have gone to work as they did afterwards when Mary became Queen. No one knew better than More the need in which the Church stood of the surgeon's hand; no one saw clearer the fox's face under the monk's cowl: but, like other moderate reformers, he detested impatient enthusiasts who spoilt their cause by extravagance. He felt towards the Protestantism which was spreading in England as Burke felt towards the Convention and the Jacobin Club, and while More lived and defied the statute the vast middle party in the nation which was yet undecided found encouragement in opposition from his example. His execution has been uniformly condemned by historians as an act of wanton tyranny. It was not wanton, and it was not an act of tyranny. It was an inevitable and painful incident of an infinitely blessed revolution. The received accounts of his trial are confirmed with slight additions by a paper of news from England which was sent to the Imperial Court. More was charged with having deprived the King of the title of "Supreme Head of the Church," which had been granted to him by the last Parliament. He replied that, when questioned by the King's Secretary what he thought of the statute, he had answered that, being a dead man to the world, he cared nothing for such things, and he could not be condemned for silence. The King's Attorney said that all good subjects were bound to answer without dissimulation or reserve, and silence was the same as speech. Silence, More objected, was generally taken to mean consent. Whatever his thoughts might be, he had never uttered them. He was charged with having exchanged letters with the Bishop of Rochester in the Tower on the replies which they were to give on their examination. Each had said that the statute was a sword with two edges, one of which slew the body, the other the soul. As they had used the same words it was clear that they were confederated. More replied that he had answered as his conscience dictated, and had advised the Bishop to do the same. He did not believe that he had ever said or done anything maliciously against the statute. The jury consulted only for a quarter of an hour and returned a verdict of "guilty." Sentence passed as a matter of course, and then More spoke out. As he was condemned, he said he would now declare his opinion. He had studied the question for seven years, and was satisfied that no temporal lord could be head of the spiritualty. For each bishop on the side of the Royal Supremacy he could produce a hundred saints. For their Parliament he had the Councils of a thousand years. For one kingdom he had all the other Christian Powers. The Bishops had broken their vows; the Parliament had no authority to make laws against the unity of Christendom, and had capitally sinned in making them. His crime had been his opposition to the second marriage of the King. He had faith, however, that, as St. Paul persecuted St. Stephen, yet both were now in Paradise, so he and his judges, although at variance in this world, would meet in charity hereafter.[334] The end came quickly. The trial was on the 1st of July; on the 6th the head fell of one of the most interesting men that England ever produced. Had the supremacy been a question of opinion, had there been no conspiracy to restore by arms the Papal tyranny, no clergy and nobles entreating the landing of an army like that which wasted Flanders at the command of the Duke of Alva, no Irish nobles murdering Archbishops and receiving Papal absolution for it, to have sent Sir Thomas More to the scaffold for believing the Pope to be master of England would have been a barbarous murder, deserving the execration which has been poured upon it. An age which has no such perils to alarm its slumbers forgets the enemies which threatened to waste the country with fire and sword, and admires only the virtues which remain fresh for all time; we, too, if exposed to similar possibilities might be no more merciful than our forefathers. The execution of Fisher and More was the King's answer to Papal thunders and domestic conspirators, and the effect was electric. Darcy again appealed to Chapuys, praying that the final sentence should be instantly issued. He did not wish to wait any longer for Imperial aid. The Pope having spoken, the country would now rise of itself. The clergy would furnish all the money needed for a beginning, and a way might be found to seize the gold in the treasury. Time pressed. They must get to work at once. If they loitered longer the modern preachers and prelates would corrupt the people, and all would be lost.[335] Cifuentes wrote from Rome to the Emperor that the Bishop of Paris was on his way there with proposals from Francis for an arrangement with England which would be fatal to the Queen, the Church, and the morals of Christendom. He begged to be allowed to press the Pope to hold in readiness a brief deposing Henry; a brief which, if once issued, could not be recalled.[336] CHAPTER XIX. Campaign of the Emperor in Africa--Uncertainties at Rome--Policy of Francis--English preparations for war--Fresh appeals to the Emperor--Delay in the issue of the censures--The Princess Mary--Letter of Catherine to the Pope--Disaffection of the English Catholics--Libels against Henry, Cromwell, and Chapuys--Lord Thomas Fitzgerald--Dangerous position of Henry--Death of the Duke of Milan--Effect on European policy--Intended Bull of Paul III.--Indecision of Charles--Prospect of war with France-- Advice of Charles to Catherine--Distrust of the Emperor at the Papal Court--Warlike resolution of the Pope restrained by the Cardinals. Cifuentes had been misinformed when he feared that Francis was again about to interpose in Henry's behalf at Rome. The conference at Calais had broken up without definite results. The policy of France was to draw Henry off from his treaty with the Emperor; Henry preferred to play the two great Catholic Powers one against the other, and commit himself to neither; and Francis, knowing the indignation which Fisher's execution would produce at Rome, was turning his thoughts on other means of accomplishing his purpose. The Emperor's African campaign was splendidly successful--too successful to be satisfactory at the Vatican. The Pope, as the head of Christendom, was bound to express pleasure at the defeat of the Infidels, but he feared that Charles, victorious by land and sea, might give him trouble in his own dominions.[337] A settled purpose, however, remained to punish the English King, and Henry had need to be careful. The French faction in the Council wished him to proceed at once to extremities with the Princess, which would effectually end the hopes of an Imperial alliance. Anne Boleyn was continually telling the King that the Queen and Princess were his greatest danger. "They deserved death more than those who had been lately executed, since they were the cause of all the mischief."[338] Chapuys found himself no longer able to communicate with Mary, from the increased precaution in guarding her. It was alleged that there was a fear of her being carried off by the French. The Imperial party at Rome, not knowing what to do or to advise, drew a curious memorandum for Charles's consideration. The Emperor, they said, had been informed when the divorce case was being tried at Rome, _that England was a fief of the Church of Rome_, and as the King had defied the Apostolic See, he deserved to be deprived of his crown. The Emperor had not approved of a step so severe. But the King had now beheaded the Bishop of Rochester, whom the Pope had made a cardinal. On the news of the execution the Pope and Cardinals had moved that he should be deprived at once and without more delay for this and for his other crimes. Against taking such action was the danger to the Queen of which they were greatly afraid, and also the sense that if, after sentence, the crown of England devolved on the Holy See, injury might be done to the prospects of the Princess. It might be contrived that the Pope in depriving the King might assign the crown to his daughter, or the Pope in consistory might declare secretly that they were acting in favour of the Princess and without prejudice to her claim. To this, however, there was the objection that the King might hear of it through some of the Cardinals. Something at any rate had to be done. All courses were dangerous. The Emperor was requested to decide.[339] A new ingredient was now to be thrown into the political cauldron. So far from wishing to reconcile England with the Papacy, the Pope informed Cifuentes that Francis was now ready and willing to help the Apostolic See in the execution of the sentence against the King of England. Francis thought that the Emperor ought to begin, since the affair was his personal concern; but when the first step was taken Francis himself would be at the Pope's disposition. The meaning of this, in the opinion of Cifuentes, was merely to entangle the Emperor in a war with England, and so to leave him. The Pope himself thought so too. Francis had been heard to say that when the Emperor had opened the campaign he would come next and do what was most for his own interest. The Pope, however, said, as Clement had said before him, that, if Charles and Francis would only act together against England, the "execution" could be managed satisfactorily. Cifuentes replied that he had no commission to enter into that question. He reported what had passed to his master, and said that he would be in no haste to urge the Pope to further measures.[340] Henry had expected nothing better from France. He had dared the Pope to do his worst. He stood alone, with no protection save in the jealousy of the rival Powers, and had nothing to trust to save his own ability to defend his country and his crown. His chief anxiety was for the security of the sea. A successful stoppage of trade would, as Cromwell admitted, lead to confusion and insurrection. Ship after ship was built and launched in the Thames. The busy note of preparation rang over the realm. The clergy, Lord Darcy had said, were to furnish money for the rising. The King was taking precautions to shorten their resources, and turn their revenues to the protection of the realm. Cromwell's visitors were out over England examining into the condition of the religious houses, exposing their abuses and sequestrating their estates. These dishonoured institutions had been found to be "very stews of unnatural crime" through the length and breadth of England. Their means of mischief were taken away from such worthless and treacherous communities. Crown officials were left in charge, and their final fate was reserved for Parliament. Henry, meanwhile, confident in his subjects, and taking lightly the dangers which threatened him, went on progress along the Welsh borders, hunting, visiting, showing himself everywhere, and received with apparent enthusiasm. The behaviour of the people perplexed Chapuys. "I am told," he wrote, "that in the districts where he has been, a good part of the peasantry, after hearing the Court preachers, are abused into the belief that he was inspired by God to separate himself from his brother's wife. They are but idiots. They will return soon enough to the truth when there are any signs of change." They would not return, nor were they the fools he thought them. The clergy, Chapuys himself confessed it, had made themselves detested by the English commons for their loose lives and the tyranny of the ecclesiastical courts. The monasteries, too many of them, were nests of infamy and fraud, and the King whom the Catholic world called Antichrist appeared as a deliverer from an odious despotism. At Rome there was still uncertainty. The Imperial memorandum explains the cause of the hesitation. The Emperor was engaged in Africa, and could decide nothing till his return. The great Powers were divided on the partition of the bear's skin, while the bear was still unstricken. Why, asked the impatient English Catholics, did not the Pope strike and make an end of him when even Francis, who had so long stayed his hand, was now urging him to proceed? Francis was probably as insincere as Cifuentes believed him to be. But the mere hope of help from such a quarter gave fresh life to the wearied Catherine and her agents. "The Pope," wrote Dr. Ortiz to the Emperor, "has committed the deprivation of the King of England and the adjudication of the realm to the Apostolic See as a fief of the Church to Cardinals Campeggio, Simoneta, and Cesis. The delay in granting the executorials in the principal cause is wonderful. Although the deposition of the King was spoken of so hotly in the Consistory, and they wrote about it to all the Princes, they will only proceed with delay and with a monition to the King to be intimated in neighbouring countries. This is needless. His heresy, schism, and other crimes are notorious. He may be deprived without the delay of a monition. If it is pressed, it is to be feared it will be on the side of France. It is a wonderful revenge which the King of France has taken on the King of England, to favour him until he has fallen into schism and heresy, and then to forsake him in it, to delude him as far as the gallows, and to leave him to hang. The blood of the saints whom that King has martyred calls to God for justice."[341] Catherine, sick with hope deferred and tired of the Emperor's hesitation, was catching at the new straw which was floating by her. Ortiz must have kept her informed of the French overtures at the Vatican. She prayed the Regent Mary to use her influence with the French Queen. Now was the time for Francis to show himself a true friend of his brother of England, and assist in delivering him from a state of sin.[342] Strange rumours were current in France and in England to explain the delay of the censures. The Pope had confessed himself alarmed at the completeness of Charles's success at Tunis. It was thought that the Emperor, fresh from his victories, might act on the advice of men like Lope de Soria, take his Holiness himself in hand and abolish the Temporal Power; that the Pope knew it, and therefore feared to make matters worse by provoking England further.[343] Pope and Princes might watch each other in distrust at a safe distance; but to the English conspirators the long pause was life or death. Delays are usually fatal with intended rebellion. The only safety is in immediate action. Enthusiasm cools, and secrets are betrayed. Fisher's fate was a fresh spur to them to move, but it also proved that the Government knew too much and did not mean to flinch. Chapuys tried Granvelle again. "Every man of position here," he said, "is in despair at the Pope's inaction. If something is not done promptly there will be no hope for the ladies, or for religion either, which is going daily to destruction. Things are come to such a pass that at some places men even preach against the Sacrament. The Emperor is bound to interfere. What he has done in Africa he can do in England with far more ease and with incomparably more political advantage."[344] Granvelle could but answer that Henry was a monster, and that God would undoubtedly punish him; but that for himself he was so busy that he could scarcely breathe, and that the Emperor continued to hope for some peaceful arrangement. Cifuentes meanwhile kept his hand on Paul. His task was difficult, for his orders were to prevent the issue of the executorials for fear France should act upon them, while Catholic Christendom would be shaken to its base if it became known that it was the Emperor who was preventing the Holy See from avenging itself. Even with the Pope Cifuentes could not be candid, and Ortiz, working on Paul's jealousy and unable to comprehend the obstacle, had persuaded his Holiness to draw up "the brief of execution" and furnish a copy to himself.[345] "In the matter of the executory letters," Cifuentes wrote to Charles, "I have strictly followed your Majesty's instructions. They have been kept back for a year and a half without the least appearance that the delay proceeded from us, but, on the contrary, as if we were disappointed that they were not drawn when asked for. Besides his Holiness's wish to wait for the result of the offers of France, another circumstance has served your Majesty's purpose. There were certain clauses to which I could not consent, in the draft shown to me, as detrimental to the right of the Queen and Princess and to your Majesty's preëminence. "Now that all hope has vanished of the return of the King of England to obedience, Dr. Ortiz, not knowing that you wished the execution to be delayed, has taken out the executory letters and almost despatched them while I was absent at Perugia. The letters are ready, nothing being wanted but the Pope's seal. I have detained them for a few days, pretending that I must examine the wording. They will remain in my possession till you inform me of your pleasure."[346] The issue of the Pope's censures either in the form of a letter of execution or of a Bull of Deposition was to be the signal of the English rising, with or without the Emperor. Darcy and his friends were ready and resolved to begin. But without the Pope's direct sanction the movement would lose its inspiration. The Irish rebellion had collapsed for the want of it. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald had surrendered and was a prisoner in the Tower. It was not the part of a child, however great her imagined wrongs, deliberately to promote an insurrection against her father. Henry II.'s sons had done it, but times were changed. The Princess Mary was determined to justify such of Henry's Council as had recommended the harshest measures against her. She wrote a letter to Chapuys which, if intercepted, might have made it difficult for the King to save her. "The condition of things," she said, "is worse than wretched. The realm will fall to ruin unless his Majesty, for the service of God, the welfare of Christendom, the honour of the King my father, and compassion for the afflicted souls in this country, will take pity on us and apply the remedy. This I hope and feel assured that he will do if he is rightly informed of what is taking place. In the midst of his occupations in Africa he will have been unable to realise our condition. The whole truth cannot be conveyed in letters. I would, therefore, have you despatch one of your own people to inform him of everything, and to supplicate him on the part of the Queen my mother, and myself for the honour of God and for other respects to attend to and provide for us. In so acting he will accomplish a service most agreeable to Almighty God. Nor will he win less fame and glory to himself than he has achieved in the conquest of Tunis or in all his African expedition."[347] Catherine simultaneously addressed herself to the Pope in a letter equally characteristic. The "brief of execution" was the natural close of her process, which, after judgment in her favour, she was entitled to demand. The Pope wished her to apply for it, that it might appear to be granted at her instance and not on his own impulse. "Most Holy and Blessed Father," she wrote, "I kiss your Holiness's hands. My letters have been filled with complaints and importunities, and have been more calculated to give you pain than pleasure. I have therefore for some time ceased from writing to your Holiness, although my conscience has reproached me for my silence. One only satisfaction I have in thinking of the present state of things: I thank unceasingly our Lord Jesus Christ for having appointed a vicar like your Holiness, of whom so much good is spoken at a time when Christendom is in so great a strait. God in His mercy has preserved you for this hour. Once more, therefore, as an obedient child of the Holy See, I do entreat you to bear this realm in special mind, to remember the King, my lord and husband, and my daughter. Your Holiness knows, and all Christendom knows, what things are done here, what great offence is given to God, what scandal to the world, what reproach is thrown upon your Holiness. If a remedy be not applied shortly there will be no end to ruined souls and martyred saints. The good will be firm and will suffer. The lukewarm will fail if they find none to help them, and the rest will stray out of the way like sheep that have lost their shepherd. I place these facts before your Holiness because I know not any one on whose conscience the deaths of these holy and good men and the perdition of so many souls ought to weigh more heavily than on yours, inasmuch as your Holiness neglects to encounter these evils which the Devil, as we see, has sown among us. "I write frankly to your Holiness, for the discharge of my own soul, as to one who, I hope, can feel with me and my daughter for the martyrdoms of these admirable persons. I have a mournful pleasure in expecting that we shall follow them in the manner of their torments. And so I end, waiting for the remedy from God and from your Holiness. May it come speedily. If not, the time will be past. Our Lord preserve your Holiness's person."[348] On the same day and by the same messenger she wrote to Charles, congratulating him on his African victory, and imploring him, now that he was at liberty, to urge the Pope into activity. In other words, she was desiring him to carry fire and sword through England, when if she herself six years before would have allowed the Pope's predecessor to guide her and had retired into "religion," there would have been no divorce, no schism, no martyrs, no dangers of a European convulsion on her account. Catherine, as other persons have done, had allowed herself to be governed by her own wounded pride, and called it conscience. Chapuys conveyed the Queen's arguments both to Charles and to Granvelle. He again assured them that the Princess and her mother were in real danger of death. If the Emperor continued to hesitate, he said, after his splendid victories in Africa, there would be general despair. The opportunity would be gone, and an enterprise now easy would then be difficult, if not impossible. Now was the time. The execution of More and Fisher, the suppression of the monasteries, the spoliation of the Church, had filled clerical and aristocratic England with fear and fury. The harvest had failed; and the failure was interpreted as a judgment from Heaven on the King's conduct. So sure Chapuys felt that the Emperor would now move that he sent positive assurances to Catherine that his master would not return to Spain till he had restored her to her rights. Even the Bishop of Tarbes, who was again in London, believed that Henry was lost at last. The whole nation, he said, Peers and commons, and even the King's own servants, were devoted to the Princess and her mother, and would join any prince who would take up their cause. The discontent was universal, partly because the Princess was regarded as the right heir to the crown, partly for fear of war and the ruin of trade. The autumn had been wet: half the corn was still in the fields. Queen Anne was universally execrated, and even the King was losing his love for her. If war was declared, the entire country would rise.[349] The Pope, it has been seen, had thought of declaring Mary to be Queen in her father's place. Such a step, if ventured, would inevitably be fatal to her. Her friends in England wished to see her married to some foreign prince--if possible, to the Dauphin--that she might be safe and out of the way. The Princess herself, and even the Emperor, were supposed to desire the match with the Dauphin, because in such an alliance the disputes with France might be forgotten, and Charles and the French king might unite to coerce Henry into obedience. The wildest charges against Henry were now printed and circulated in Germany and the Low Countries. Cromwell complained to Chapuys. "Worse," he said, "could not be said against Jew or Devil." Chapuys replied ironically that he was sorry such things should be published. The Emperor would do his best to stop them, but in the general disorder tongues could not be controlled. So critical the situation had become in these autumn months that Cromwell, of course with the King's consent, was obliged to take the unusual step of interfering with the election of the Lord Mayor of London, alleging that, with the State in so much peril, it was of the utmost consequence to have a well-disposed man of influence and experience at the head of the City. "Cromwell came to me this morning," Chapuys wrote to his master on the 13th of October; "he said the King was informed that the Emperor intended to attack him in the Pope's name (he called his Holiness, 'bishop of Rome,' but begged my pardon while he did so,) and that a Legate or Bishop was coming to Flanders to stir the fire. The King could not believe that the Emperor had any such real intention after the friendship which he had shown him, especially when there was no cause. In breaking with the Pope he had done nothing contrary to the law of God, and religion was nowhere better regulated and reformed than it was now in England. The King would send a special embassy to the Emperor, if I thought it would be favourably received. I said I could not advise so great a Prince. I believed that, if the object of such an embassy was one which your Majesty could grant in honour and conscience, it would not only be well received but would be successful. Otherwise, I could neither recommend nor dissuade."[350] By the same hand which carried this despatch Chapuys forwarded the letters of Catherine and Mary, adding another of his own to Granvelle, in which he said that "if the Emperor wished to give peace and union to Christendom, he must begin in England. It would be easy, for everyone was irritated. The King's treasure would pay for all, and would help, besides, for the enterprise against the Turk. It was time to punish him for his folly and impiety."[351] Charles seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion. He had already written from Messina, on his return from Tunis, both to Chapuys and to his Ambassador in Paris, that, as long as Henry retained his concubine, persisted in his divorce, and refused to recognise the Princess as his heir, he could not honourably treat with him.[352] The Pope, when Catherine's letter reached him, was fuming with fresh anger at the fate of the Irish rebellion. Lord Thomas, spite of Papal absolution and blessing, was a prisoner in the Tower. He had surrendered to his uncle, Lord Leonard Grey, under some promise of pardon. He had been carried before the King. For a few days he was left at liberty, and might have been forgiven, if he would have made a satisfactory submission; but he calculated that "a new world" was not far off, and that he might hold out in safety. Such a wild cat required stricter keeping. The Tower gates closed on him, and soon after he paid for the Archbishop's life with his own. Ortiz, when he heard that Fitzgerald was imprisoned, said that the choice lay before him to die a martyr or else to be perverted. God, he hoped, would permit the first. The spirit of one of the murdered Carthusians had appeared to the brotherhood and informed them of the glorious crown which had been bestowed on Fisher.[353] In this exalted humour Catherine's letter found Paul and the Roman clergy. The Pope had already informed Cifuentes that he meant to proceed to "deprivation." The letters of execution had been so drawn or re-drawn as to involve the forfeiture of Henry's throne,[354] and Ortiz considered that Providence had so ordered it that the Pope was now acting _motu proprio_ and not at the Queen's solicitation. Cifuentes was of opinion, however, that Paul meant to wait for the Queen's demand, that the responsibility might be hers. Chapuys's courier was ordered to deliver Catherine's letter into the Pope's own hands. Cifuentes took the liberty of detaining it till the Emperor's pleasure was known. But no one any longer doubted that the time was come. France and England were no longer united, and the word for action was to be spoken at last. At no period of his reign had Henry been in greater danger. At home the public mind was unsettled. A large and powerful faction of peers and clergy were prepared for revolt, and abroad he had no longer an ally. England seemed on the eve of a conflict the issue of which no one could foresee. At this moment Providence, or the good luck which had so long befriended him, interposed to save the King and save the Reformation. Sforza, Duke of Milan and husband of Christina of Denmark, died childless on the 24th of October. Milan was the special subject of difference between France and the Empire. The dispute had been suspended while the Duke was alive. His death reopened the question, and the war long looked for for the Milan succession became inevitable and immediately imminent. The entire face of things was now changed. Francis had, perhaps, never seriously meant to join in executing the Papal sentence against England; but he had intended to encourage the Emperor to try, that he might fish himself afterwards in the troubled waters, and probably snatch at Calais. He now required Henry for a friend again, and the old difficulties and the old jealousies were revived in the usual form. Both the great Catholic Powers desired the suspension of the censures. The Emperor was again unwilling to act as the Pope's champion while he was uncertain of the French King. Francis wished to recover his position as Henry's defender. The Pope was an Italian prince as well as sovereign of the Church, and his secular interest was thought to be more French than Imperial. No sooner was Sforza gone than the Cardinal Du Bellay and the Bishop of Mâcon were despatched from Paris to see and talk with Paul. They found him still too absorbed in the English question to attend to anything besides. He was in the high exalted mood of Gregory VII., imagining that he was about to reassert the ancient Papal prerogative, and again dispose of kingdoms. The Pope, wrote the French Commissioners, having heard that there was famine and plague in England, had made up his mind to act, and was incredibly excited. The sentence was prepared and was to issue unexpectedly like a bolt out of the blue sky. They enclosed a copy of it, and waited for instructions from Francis as to the line which they were to take. To set things straight again would, they said, be almost impossible; but they would do their best to prevent extremities, and to show the King of England that they had endeavoured to serve him. Nothing like the sentence which Paul had constructed had been ever seen before. Some articles had been inserted to force Francis to choose between the Pope and the King. They were malicious, unjust, and _terriblement enormes_.[355] The new Hildebrand, applying to himself the words of Jeremiah, "Behold, I have set thee over nations and kingdoms, that thou mayest root out and destroy," had proceeded to root out Henry. He had cursed him; he cursed his abettors. His body when he died was to lie unburied and his soul lie in hell for ever. His subjects were ordered to renounce their allegiance, and were to fall under interdict if they continued to obey him. No true son of the Church was to hold intercourse or alliance with him or his adherents, under pain of sharing his damnation; and the Princes of Europe and the Peers and commons of England were required, on their allegiance to the Holy See, to expel him from the throne.[356] This was the "remedy" for which Catherine had been so long entreating, out of affection for her misguided lord, whose soul she wished to save. The love which she professed was a love which her lord could have dispensed with. The Papal Nuncio reported from Paris the attitude which France intended to assume. He had been speaking with the Admiral Philip de Chabot about England. The Admiral had admitted that the King had doubtless done violent things, and that the Pope had a right to notice them. France did not wish to defend him against the Pope, but, if he was attacked by the Emperor, would certainly take his part. The Nuncio said that he had pointed out that the King of England had God for an enemy; that he was, therefore, going to total ruin; and that the Pope had hoped to find in Francis a champion of the Church. The Admiral said that, of course, England ought to return to the faith: the Pope could deal with him hereafter; but France must take care of her own interests.[357] Charles, too, was uneasy and undecided. Until the Milan question had been reopened the French had spoken as if they would no longer stand between Henry and retribution, but he was now assured that they would return to their old attitude. They had stood by Henry through the long controversy of the divorce. Even when Fisher was sent to the scaffold they had not broken their connection with him. The King, he knew, was frightened, and would yield, if France was firm; but, unless the Pope had a promise from the French King under his own hand to assist in executing the censures, the Pope would find himself disappointed; and the fear was that Francis would draw the Emperor into a war with England and then leave him to make his own bargain.[358] Kings whose thrones and lives are threatened cannot afford to be lenient. Surrounded by traitors, uncertain of France, with the danger in which he stood immeasurably increased by the attitude of Catherine and her daughter, the King, so the Marchioness of Exeter reported to Chapuys, had been heard to say that they must bend or break. The anxiety which they were causing was not to be endured any longer. Parliament was about to meet, and their situation would have then to be considered.[359] The Marchioness entreated him to let the Emperor know of this, and tell him that, if he waited longer, he would be too late to save them. Chapuys took care that these alarming news should lose nothing in the relating. Again, after a fortnight, Lady Exeter came to him, disguised, to renew the warning. The "she-devil of a Concubine," she said, was thinking of nothing save of how to get the ladies despatched. The Concubine ruled the Council, and the King was afraid to contradict her. The fear was, as Chapuys said, that he would make the Parliament a joint party with him in his cruelties, and that, losing hope of pardon from the Emperor, they would be more determined to defend themselves.[360] The danger, if danger there was, to Catherine and Mary, was Chapuys's own creation. It was he who had encouraged them in defying the King, that they might form a visible rallying-point to the rebellion. Charles was more rational than the Ambassador, and less credulous of Henry's wickedness. "I cannot believe what you tell me," he replied to his Ambassador's frightful story. "The King cannot be so unnatural as to put to death his own wife and daughter. The threats you speak of can only be designed to terrify them. They must not give way, if it can be avoided; but, if they are really in danger, and there is no alternative, you may tell them from me that they must yield. A submission so made cannot prejudice their rights. They can protest that they are acting under compulsion, in fear for their lives. I will take care that their protestation is duly ratified by their proctors at Rome."[361] Chapuys was a politician, and obeyed his orders. But that either Catherine or her daughter should give way was the last wish either of him or of Ortiz, or any of the fanatical enthusiasts. Martyrs were the seed of the Church. If Mary abandoned her claim to the succession, her name could no longer be used as a battle-cry. The object was a revolution which would shake Henry from his throne. On the scaffold, as a victim to her fidelity to her mother and to the Holy See, she would give an impulse to the insurrection which nothing could resist. The croaks of the raven were each day louder. Lady Exeter declared that the King had said that the Princess should be an example that no one should disobey the law. There was a prophecy of him that at the beginning of his reign he would be gentle as a lamb, and at the end worse than a lion. That prophecy he meant to fulfil.[362] Ortiz, who had his information from Catherine herself, said that she was preparing to die as the Bishop of Rochester and the others had died. She regretted only that her life had not been as holy as theirs. The "kitchen-wench"--as Ortiz named Anne--had often said of the Princess that either Mary would be her death or she would be Mary's, and that she would take care that Mary did not laugh at her after she was gone.[363] Stories flying at such a time were half of them the creation of rage and panic, imperfectly believed by those who related them, and reported to feed a fire which it was so hard to kindle; but they show the spirit of which the air was full. At Rome there was still distrust. Francis had shown the copy of the intended sentence to the different Ambassadors at Paris. He had said that the Pope was claiming a position for the Apostolic See which could not be allowed, and must be careful what he did.[364] Paul agreed with the Emperor that, before the sentence was delivered, pledges to assist must be exacted from Francis, but had thought that he might calculate with sufficient certainty on the hereditary enmity between France and England. Cifuentes told him that he must judge of the future by the past. The French were hankering after Italy, and other things were nothing in comparison. The Pope hinted that the Emperor was said to be treating privately with Henry. Cifuentes could give a flat denial to this, for the treaty had been dropped. If the Emperor, however, resolved to undertake the execution Francis was not to be allowed to hear of it, as he would use the knowledge to set Henry on his guard.[365] Chapuys was a master of the art of conveying false impressions while speaking literal truth. Francis, who, in spite of Cifuentes, learnt what was being projected at Rome, warned Henry that the Emperor was about to invade England. He even said that the Emperor had promised that, if he would not interfere, the English crown might be secured to a French prince by a marriage with Mary. Cromwell questioned Chapuys on such "strange news." Lying cost Chapuys nothing. The story was true, but he replied that it was wild nonsense. Not only had the Emperor never said such a thing, but he had never even thought of anything to the King's prejudice, and had always been solicitous for the honour and tranquillity of England. The Emperor wished to increase, not diminish, the power of the King, and even for the sake of the Queen and Princess he would not wish the King to be expelled, knowing the love they bore him. Cromwell said he had always told the King that the Emperor would attempt nothing against him unless he was forced. Chapuys agreed: so far, he said, from promoting hostilities against the King, the Emperor, ever since the sentence on the divorce, had held back the execution, and, if further measures were taken, they would be taken by the Pope and Cardinals, not by the Emperor.[366] In this last intimation Chapuys was more correct than he was perhaps aware of. The Pope, sick of the irresolutions and mutual animosities of the great Catholic Powers, had determined to act for himself. Catherine's friends had his ear. They at all events knew their own minds. On the 10th of December he called a consistory, said that he had suffered enough in the English cause, and would bear it no more. He required the opinions of the Cardinals on the issue of the executorial brief. The scene is described by Du Bellay, who was one of them, and was present. The Cardinals, who had been debating and disagreeing for seven years, were still in favour of further delays. They all felt that a brief or bull deposing the King was a step from which there would be no retreat. The Great Powers, they were well aware, would resent the Pope's assumption of an authority so arrogant. All but one of them said that before the executory letters were published a monition must first be sent to the King. The language of the letters, besides, was too comprehensive. The King's subjects and the King's allies were included in the censures, and, not being in fault, ought not to suffer. Voices, too, were heard to say that kings were privileged persons, and ought not to be treated with disrespect. The Pope, before dissatisfied with their objections, now in high anger at the last suggestion, declared that he would spare neither emperors, nor kings, nor princes. God had placed him over them all; the Papal authority was not diminished--it was greater than ever, and would be greater still when there was a pope who dared to act without faction or cowardice. He reproached the Cardinals with embroiling a clear matter. The brief, he maintained, was a good brief, faulty perhaps in style, but right in substance, and approved it was to be, and at once. It hit all round--hit the English people who continued loyal to their sovereign, hit the Continental Powers who had treaties with Henry which they had not broken. The Cardinals thought the Pope would spoil everything. Campeggio said such a Bull touched the French King, and must not appear. The Archbishop of Capua went with the Pope: "Issue at once," he said, "or the King will be sending protests, as he did in Clement's time." The Pope spoke in great anger, but to no purpose. The majority of the Cardinals was against him, and the Bull was allowed to sleep till a more favourable time. "It is long," said Du Bellay, "since there has been a Pope less loved by the College, the Romans, and the world."[367] CHAPTER XX. Illness of Queen Catherine--Her physician's report of her health--Her last letter to the Emperor--She sends for Chapuys--Interview between Chapuys and Henry--Chapuys at Kimbolton--Death of Catherine--Examination of the body--Suspicion of poison--Chapuys's opinion--Reception of the news at the Court--Message of Anne Boleyn to the Princess Mary--Advice of Chapuys-- Unpopularity of Anne--Court rumours. While the Pope was held back by the Cardinals, and the Great Powers were watching each other, afraid to move, the knot was about to be cut, so far as it affected the fortunes of Catherine of Aragon, in a manner not unnatural and, by Cromwell and many others, not unforeseen. The agitation and anxieties of the protracted conflict had shattered her health. Severe attacks of illness had more than once caused fear for her life, and a few months previously her recovery had been thought unlikely, if not impossible. Cromwell had spoken of her death to Chapuys as a contingency which would be useful to the peace of Europe, and which he thought would not be wholly unwelcome to her nephew. Politicians in the sixteenth century were not scrupulous, and Chapuys may perhaps have honestly thought that such language suggested a darker purpose. But Cromwell had always been Catherine's friend within the limits permitted by his duty to the King and the Reformation. The words which Chapuys attributed to him were capable of an innocent interpretation; and it is in the highest degree unlikely that he, of all men, was contemplating a crime of which the danger would far outweigh the advantage, and which would probably anticipate for a few weeks or months only a natural end, or that, if he had seriously entertained such an intention, he would have made a confidant of the Spanish Ambassador. Catherine had been wrought during the autumn months into a state of the highest excitement. Her letters to the Pope had been the outpourings of a heart driven near to breaking; and if Chapuys gave her Charles's last message, if she was told that it was the Emperor's pleasure that she and her daughter must submit, should extremities be threatened against them, she must have felt a bitter conviction that the remedy which she had prayed for would never be applied, and that the struggle would end in an arrangement in which she would herself be sacrificed. The life at Kimbolton was like the life at an ordinary well-appointed English country-house. The establishment was moderate, but the castle was in good condition and well-furnished; everything was provided which was required for personal comfort; the Queen had her own servants, her confessor, her physician, and two or three ladies-in-waiting; if she had not more state about her it was by her own choice, for, as has been seen, she had made her recognition as queen the condition of her accepting a more adequate establishment. Bodily hardships she had none to suffer, but she had a chronic disorder of long standing, which had been aggravated by the high-strung expectations of the last half-dozen years. Sir John Wallop, the English ambassador at Paris, had been always "her good servant;" Lady Wallop was her _creatura_ and was passionately attached to her. From the Wallops the Nuncio at the French Court heard in the middle of December that she could not live more than six months. They had learnt the "secret" of her illness from her own physician, and their evident grief convinced him that they were speaking the truth. Francis also was aware of her condition; the end was known to be near, and it was thought in Court circles that when she was gone "the King would leave his present queen and return to the obedience of the Church."[368] The disorder from which Catherine was suffering had been mentioned by Cromwell to Chapuys. The Ambassador asked to be allowed to visit her. Cromwell said that he might send a servant at once to Kimbolton, to ascertain her condition, and that he would ask the King's permission for himself to follow. The alarming symptoms passed off for the moment; she rallied from the attack, and on the 13th of December she was able to write to Ortiz, to tell him of the comfort and encouragement which she had received from his letters, and from the near prospect of the Pope's action. In that alone lay the remedy for the sufferings of herself and her daughter and "all the good." The Devil, she said, was but half-tied, and slackness would let him loose. She could not and dared not speak more clearly; Ortiz was a wise man, and would understand.[369] On the same day she wrote her last letter to the Emperor. The handwriting, once bold and powerful, had grown feeble and tremulous, and the imperfectly legible lines convey only that she expected something to be done at the approaching parliament which would be a world's scandal and her own and her daughter's destruction.[370] Finding herself a little better, she desired Chapuys to speak to Cromwell about change of air for her, and to ask for a supply of money to pay the servants' wages. Money was a gratuitous difficulty: she had refused to take anything which was addressed to her as princess dowager, and the allowance was in arrears. She had some confidence in Cromwell, and Charles, too, believed, in spite of Chapuys's stories, that Cromwell meant well to Catherine, and wished to help her. He wrote himself to Cromwell to say that his loyal service would not be forgotten.[371] Chapuys heard no more from Kimbolton for a fortnight, and was hoping that the attack had gone off like those which had preceded it; on the 29th, however, there came a letter to him from the Spanish physician, saying that she was again very ill, and wished to see him. Chapuys went to Cromwell immediately. Cromwell assured him that no objection would be raised, but that, before he set out, the King desired to speak with him. He hurried to Greenwich, where the Court was staying, and found Henry more than usually gracious, but apparently absorbed in politics. He walked up and down the room with his arm around the Ambassador's neck, complained that Charles had not written to him, and that he did not know what to look for at his hands. The French, he said, were making advances to him, and had become so pressing, since the death of the Duke of Milan, that he would be forced to listen to them, unless he could be satisfied of the Emperor's intentions. He was not to be deluded into a position where he would lose the friendship of both of them. Francis was burning for war. For himself he meant honourably, and would be perfectly open with Chapuys: he was an Englishman, he did not say one thing when he meant another. Why had not the Emperor let him know distinctly whether he would treat with him or not? Chapuys hinted a fear that he had been playing with the Emperor only to extort better terms from France. A war for Milan there might possibly be, but the Emperor after his African successes was stronger than he had ever been, and had nothing to fear. All that might be very well, Henry said, but if he was to throw his sword into the scale the case might be different. Hitherto, however, he had rejected the French overtures, and did not mean to join France in an Italian campaign if the Emperor did not force him. As to the threats against himself, English commerce would of course suffer severely if the trade was stopped with the Low Countries, but he could make shift elsewhere; he did not conceal his suspicions that the Emperor meant him ill, or his opinion that he had been treated unfairly in the past.[372] Chapuys enquired what he wished the Emperor to do. To abstain, the King replied, from encouraging the Princess and her mother in rebellion, and to require the revocation of the sentence which had been given on the divorce. The Emperor could not do that, Chapuys rejoined, even if he wished to do it. The King said he knew the Pope had called on the Emperor to execute the sentence; he did not believe, however, that Madame, as he called Catherine, had long to live, and, when she was gone, the Emperor would have no further excuse for interfering in English affairs. Chapuys replied that the Queen's death would make no difference. The sentence had been a necessity. The King ended the conversation by telling him that he might go to see her, if he liked; but she was _in extremis_, and he would hardly find her alive. At the Princess's request, Chapuys asked if she also might go to her mother. At first Henry refused, but said, after a moment, he would think about it, and added, as Chapuys afterwards recollected, a few words of kindness to Catherine herself. Unfeeling and brutal, the world exclaims. More feeling may have been shown, perhaps, than Chapuys cared to note. But kings whose thrones are menaced with invasion and rebellion have not much leisure for personal emotions. Affection for Catherine Henry had none, however, and a pretence of it would have been affectation. She had harassed him for seven years; she had urged the Pope to take his crown from him; she had done her worst to stir his subjects into insurrection, and bring a Spanish fleet and army into English waters and upon English soil. Respect her courage he did, but love for her, if in such a marriage love had ever existed, must have long disappeared, and he did not make a show of a regret which it was impossible for him to feel. He perhaps considered that he had done more than enough in resisting the advice of his Council to take stronger measures. After despatching the letter describing the interview at Greenwich, the Ambassador started with his suite for Kimbolton, and with a gentleman of Cromwell's household in attendance. Immediately on his arrival Catherine sent for him to her bedside, and desired that this gentleman should be present also, to hear what passed between them. She thanked Chapuys for coming. She said, if God was to take her, it would be a consolation to her to die in his arms and not like a wild animal. She said she had been taken seriously ill at the end of November with pain in the stomach and nausea; a second and worse attack of the same kind had followed on Christmas Day; she could eat nothing, and believed that she was sinking. Chapuys encouraged her--expressed his hopes for her recovery--said that he was commissioned to tell her that she might choose a residence for herself at any one of the royal manors, that the King would give her money, and was sorry to hear of her illness. He himself entreated her to keep up her spirits, as on her recovery and life the peace of Christendom depended. The visit excited her, she was soon exhausted, and they then left her to rest. After an interval she sent for the Ambassador again, and talked for two hours with him alone. She had brightened up; the next morning she was better; he remained four days at Kimbolton, which were spent in private conversation. She was the same Catherine which she had always been--courageous, resolute, and inflexible to the end. She spoke incessantly of the Emperor, and of her own and her daughter's situation. She struck perpetually on the old note: the delay of the "remedy" which was causing infinite evil, and destroying the souls and bodies of all honest and worthy people. Chapuys explained to her how the Emperor had been circumstanced, and how impossible it had been for him to do more than had been done. He comforted her, however, with dilating on the Pope's indignation at the execution of Fisher, and his determination to act in earnest at last. He told her how Francis, who had been the chief difficulty, was now becoming alienated from the King, and satisfied her that the delay had not been caused by forgetfulness of herself and the Princess. With these happier prospects held out to her she recovered her spirits and appeared to be recovering her health. At the end of the four days she was sleeping soundly, enjoying her food, laughing and exchanging Castilian jokes with a Spaniard whom Chapuys had brought with him. She was so much better, so happy, and so contented, that the Ambassador ceased to be alarmed about her. He thought it would be imprudent to abuse the King's permission by remaining longer unnecessarily. The physician made no objection to his going, and promised to let him know if there was again a change for the worse; but this person evidently no longer believed that there was any immediate danger, for his last words to Chapuys were to ask him to arrange for her removal from Kimbolton to some better air. Catherine, when the Ambassador took leave, charged him to write to the Emperor, to Granvelle, and to Secretary Covos, and entreat them, for God's sake, to make an end one way or the other, for the uncertainty was ruining the realm and would be her own and her daughter's destruction. This was on the night of Tuesday, the 4th of January. Chapuys was to leave the next morning. Before departing he ascertained that she had again slept well, and he rode off without disturbing her. Through the Wednesday and Thursday she continued to improve, and on the Thursday afternoon she was cheerful, sate up, asked for a comb and dressed her hair. That midnight, however, she became suddenly restless, begged for the sacrament, and became impatient for morning when it could be administered. Her confessor, Father Ateca (who had come with her from Spain, held the see of Llandaff, and had been left undisturbed through all the changes of the late years), offered to anticipate the canonical hour, but she would not allow him. At dawn on Friday she communicated, prayed God to pardon the King for the wrongs which had been inflicted upon her, and received extreme unction; she gave a few directions for the disposition of her personal property, and then waited for the end. At two o'clock in the afternoon she passed peacefully away (Friday, Jan. 7, 1536). A strange circumstance followed. The body was to be embalmed. There were in the house three persons who, according to Chapuys, had often performed such operations, neither of them, however, being surgeons by profession. These men, eight hours after the death, opened the stomach in the usual way, but without the presence either of the confessor or the physician. Chapuys says that these persons were acting by the King's command,[373] but there is nothing to indicate that the confessor and physician might not have been present at the operation had they thought it necessary. Chapuys had previously asked the physician if the Queen could have been poisoned. The physician said that he feared so, as she had not been well since she had taken some Welsh ale; if there had been poison, however, it must have been very subtle, as he had observed no symptom which indicated it; when the body was opened they would know.[374] The physician had thus looked forward to an examination, and had he really entertained suspicions he would certainly have made an effort to attend. If he was prohibited, or if the operation had been hurried through without his knowledge, it is not conceivable that, after he had left England and returned to his own country, he would not have made known a charge so serious to the world. This he never did. It is equally remarkable that on removing from Kimbolton he was allowed to attend upon the Princess Mary--a thing impossible to understand if he had any mystery of the kind to communicate to her, or if the Government had any fear of what he might say. When the operation was over, however, one of the men went to the Father Ateca and told him in confession, as if in fear of his life, that the body and intestines were natural and healthy, but that the heart was black. They had washed it, he said; they had divided it, but it remained black and was black throughout. On this evidence the physician concluded that the Queen, beyond doubt, had died of poison.[375] A reader who has not predetermined to believe the worst of Henry VIII. will probably conclude differently. The world did not believe Catherine to have been murdered, for among the many slanders which the embittered Catholics then and afterwards heaped upon Henry, they did not charge him with this. Chapuys, however, believed, or affected to believe, that by some one or other murdered she had been. It was a terrible business, he wrote. The Princess would die of grief, or else the Concubine would kill her. Even if the Queen and Princess had taken the Emperor's advice and submitted, the Concubine, he thought, under colour of the reconciliation which would have followed, would have made away with them the more fearlessly, because there would then be less suspicion. He had not been afraid of the King. The danger was from the Concubine, who had sworn to take their lives and would never have rested till it was done. The King and his Mistress, however, had taken a shorter road. They were afraid of the issue of the brief of execution. With Catherine dead the process at Rome would drop, the chief party to the suit being gone. Further action would have to be taken by the Pope on his own account, and no longer upon hers, and the Pope would probably hesitate; while, as soon as the mother was out of the way, there would be less difficulty in working upon the daughter, whom, being a subject, they would be able to constrain.[376] It was true that the threatened Papal brief, being a part and consequence of the original suit, would have to be dropped or recalled. Henry could not be punished for not taking back his wife when the wife was dead. To that extent her end was convenient, and thus a motive may be suggested for making away with her. It was convenient also, as was frankly avowed, in removing the principal obstacle to the reconciliation of Henry and the Emperor; but, surely, on the condition that the death was natural. Had Charles allowed Chapuys to persuade him that his aunt had been murdered, reconciliation would have been made impossible for ever, and Henry would have received the just reward of an abominable crime. Chapuys's object from the beginning had been to drive the Emperor into war with England, and if motive may be conjectured for the murder of Catherine, motive also can be found for Chapuys's accusations, which no other evidence, direct or indirect, exists to support. If there had been foul play there would have been an affectation of sorrow. There was none at all. When the news arrived Anne Boleyn and her friends showed unmixed pleasure. The King (Chapuys is again the only witness and he was reporting from hearsay) thanked God there was now no fear of war; when the French knew that there was no longer any quarrel between him and the Emperor, he could do as he pleased with them. Chapuys says these were his first words on receiving the tidings that Catherine was gone--words not unnatural if the death was innocent, but scarcely credible if she had been removed by assassination. The effect was of general relief at the passing away of a great danger. It was thought that the Pope would now drop the proceedings against the King, and Cromwell said that perhaps before long they would have a Legate among them. Even Chapuys, on consideration, reflected that he might have spoken too confidently about the manner of Catherine's end. Her death, he imagined, had been brought about partly by poison and partly by despondency. Had he reflected further he might have asked himself how poison could have been administered at all, as the Queen took nothing which had not been prepared by her own servants, who would all have died for her. Undoubtedly, however, the King breathed more freely when she was gone. There was no longer a woman who claimed to be his wife, and whose presence in the kingdom was a reflection on the legitimacy of his second daughter. On the Sunday following, the small Elizabeth was carried to church with special ceremony. In the evening there was a dance in the hall of the palace, and the King appeared in the middle of it with the child in his arms. All allowance must be made for the bitterness with which Chapuys described the scene. He was fresh from Catherine's bedside. He had witnessed her sufferings; he had listened to the story of her wrongs from her own lips. He had talked hopefully with her of the future, and had encouraged her to expect a grand and immediate redress; and now she was dead, worn out with sorrow, if with nothing worse, an object at least to make the dullest heart pity her, while of pity there was no sign. What was to be done? He himself had no doubt at all. The enemy was off his guard and now was the moment to strike. Anne Boleyn sent a message to Mary that she was ready, on her submission, to be her friend and a second mother to her. Mary replied that she would obey her father in everything, saving her honour and conscience, but that it was useless to ask her to abjure the Pope. She was told that the King himself would use his authority and command her to submit. She consulted Chapuys on the answer which she was to give should such a command be sent. He advised her to be resolute but cautious. She must ask to be left in peace to pray for her mother's soul; she must say that she was a poor orphan, without experience or knowledge; the King must allow her time to consider. He himself despatched a courier to the Regent of the Netherlands with plans for her escape out of England. The Pope, he said, must issue his Bull without a day's delay, and in it, for the sake of Catherine's honour, it must be stated that she died queen. Instant preparations must be made for the execution of the sentence. Meanwhile he recommended the Emperor to send some great person to remonstrate against the Princess's treatment and to speak out boldly and severely. The late Queen, he wrote, used to say that the King and his advisers were like sheep to those who appeared like wolves, and lions to those who were afraid of them. Mildness at such a moment would be the ruin of Christendom. If the Emperor hesitated longer, those who showed no sorrow at the mother's death would take courage to make an end with the daughter. There would be no need of poison. Grief and hard usage would be enough.[377] The King with some hesitation had consented to Chapuys's request that Catherine's physician should be allowed to attend the Princess. The presence of this man would necessarily be a protection, and either Anne's influence was less supreme than the Ambassador had feared or her sinister designs were a malicious invention. It is unlikely, however, that warnings so persistently repeated and so long continued should have been wholly without foundation, and, if the inner secrets of the Court could be laid open, it might be found that the Princess had been the subject of many an altercation between Anne and the King. Even Chapuys always acknowledged that it was from her, and not from Henry, that the danger was to be feared. He had spoken warmly of Mary, had shown affection for her when her behaviour threatened his own safety. He admired the force of character which she was showing, and had silenced peremptorily the Ministers who recommended severity. But if he was her father, he was also King of England. If he was to go through with his policy towards the Church, the undisguised antagonism of a child whom three quarters of his subjects looked on as his legitimate successor, was embarrassing and even perilous. Had Anne Boleyn produced the Prince so much talked of all would then have been easy. He would not then be preferring a younger daughter to an elder. Both would yield to a brother with whom all England would be satisfied, and Mary would cease to have claims which the Emperor would feel bound to advocate. The whole nation were longing for a prince; but the male heir, for which the King had plunged into such a sea of troubles, was still withheld. He had interpreted the deaths of the sons whom Catherine had borne him into a judgment of Heaven upon his first marriage; the same disappointment might appear to a superstitious fancy to be equally a condemnation of the second. Anne Boleyn's conduct during the last two years had not recommended her either to the country or perhaps to her husband. Setting aside the graver charges afterwards brought against her, it is evident that she had thrown herself fiercely into the political struggles of the time. To the Catholic she was a _diablesse_, a tigress, the author of all the mischief which was befalling them and the realm. By the prudent and the moderate she was almost equally disliked; the nation generally, and even Reformers like Cromwell and Cranmer, were Imperialist; Anne Boleyn was passionately French. Personally she had made herself disliked by her haughty and arrogant manners. She had been received as Queen, after her marriage was announced, with coldness, if not with hostility. Had she been gracious and modest she might have partially overcome the prejudice against her. But she had been carried away by the vanity of her elevation; she had insulted the great English nobles; she had spoken to the Duke of Norfolk "as if he was a dog;" she had threatened to take off Cromwell's head. Such manners and such language could not have made Henry's difficulties less, or been pleasing to a sovereign whose authority depended on the goodwill of his people. He had fallen in love with an unworthy woman, as men will do, even the wisest; yet in his first affection he had not been blind to her faults, and, even before his marriage, had been heard to say that, if it was to be done again, he would not have committed himself so far. He had persisted, perhaps, as much from pride, and because he would not submit to the dictation of the Emperor, as from any real attachment. Qualities that he could respect she had none. Catherine was gone; from that connection he was at last free, even in the eyes of the Roman Curia; but whether he was or was not married lawfully to Anne, was a doubtful point in the mind of many a loyal Englishman; and, to the best of his own friends, to the Emperor, and to all Europe, his separation from a woman whom the Catholic world called his concubine, and a marriage with some other lady which would be open to no suspicion and might result in the much desired prince, would have been welcomed as a peace-offering. She had done nothing to reconcile the nation to her. She had left nothing undone to exasperate it. She was believed, justly or unjustly, to have endeavoured to destroy the Princess Mary. She was credited by remorseful compassion with having been the cause of her mother's death. The isolation and danger of England was all laid to her account. She was again _enceinte_. If a prince was born, all faults would be forgotten; but she had miscarried once since the birth of Elizabeth, and a second misfortune might be dangerous. She had failed in her attempts to conciliate Mary, who, but for an accident, would have made good her escape out of England. When the preparations were almost complete the Princess had been again removed to another house, from which it was found impossible to carry her away. But Chapuys mentions that, glad as Anne appeared at the Queen's death, she was less at ease than she pretended. Lord and Lady Exeter had brought him a Court rumour of words said to have been uttered by the King, that "he had been drawn into the marriage by witchcraft; God had shown his displeasure by denying him male children by her, and therefore he might take another wife." Lord and Lady Exeter were not trustworthy authorities--on this occasion even Chapuys did not believe them--but stories of the kind were in the wind. It was notorious that everything was not well between the King and Lady Anne. A curious light is thrown on the state of Anne's mind by a letter which she wrote to her aunt, Mrs. Shelton, after Mary's rejection of her advances. Mrs. Shelton left it lying open on a table. Mary found it, copied it, and replaced it, and the transcript, in Mary's handwriting, is now at Vienna. "MRS. SHELTON,--My pleasure is that you seek to go no further to move the Lady Mary towards the King's grace, other than as he himself directed in his own words to her. What I have done myself has been more for charity than because the King or I care what course she takes, or whether she will change or not change her purpose. When I shall have a son, as soon I look to have, I know what then will come to her. Remembering the word of God, that we should do good to our enemies, I have wished to give her notice before the time, because by my daily experience I know the wisdom of the King to be such that he will not value her repentance or the cessation of her madness and unnatural obstinacy when she has no longer power to choose. She would acknowledge her errors and evil conscience by the law of God and the King if blind affection had not so sealed her eyes that she will not see but what she pleases. "Mrs. Shelton, I beseech you, trouble not yourself to turn her from any of her wilful ways, for to me she can do neither good nor ill. Do your own duty towards her, following the King's commandment, as I am assured that you do and will do, and you shall find me your good lady, whatever comes. "Your good Mistress, "ANNE R." CHAPTER XXI. Funeral of Catherine--Miscarriage of Anne--The Princess Mary and the Act of Supremacy--Her continued desire to escape--Effect of Catherine's death on Spanish policy--Desire of the Emperor to recover the English alliance-- Chapuys and Cromwell--Conditions of the treaty--Efforts of the Emperor to recover Henry to the Church--Matrimonial schemes--Likelihood of a separation of the King from Anne--Jane Seymour--Anne's conduct--The Imperial treaty--Easter at Greenwich--Debate in Council--The French alliance or the Imperial--The alternative advantages--Letter of the King to his Ambassador in Spain. Catherine was buried with some state in Peterborough Cathedral, on the 29th of January. In the ceremonial she was described as the widow of Prince Arthur, not as the Queen of England, and the Spanish Ambassador, therefore, declined to be present. On the same day Anne Boleyn again miscarried, and this time of a male infant. She laid the blame of her misfortune on the Duke of Norfolk. The King had been thrown from his horse; Norfolk, she said, had alarmed her, by telling her of the accident too suddenly. This Chapuys maliciously said that the King knew to be untrue, having been informed she had heard the news with much composure. The disappointment worked upon his mind; he said he saw plainly God would give him no male children by that woman; he went once to her bedside, spoke a few cold words, and left her with an intimation that he would speak to her again when she was recovered. Some concluded that there was a defect in her constitution; others whispered that she had been irritated at attentions which the King had been paying to Jane Seymour, who in earlier days had been a lady-in-waiting to Catherine. Anne herself, according to a not very credible story of Chapuys's, was little disturbed; her ladies were lamenting; she consoled them by saying that it was all for the best; the child that had been lost had been conceived in the Queen's lifetime, and the legitimacy of it might have been doubtful; no uncertainty would attach to the next.[378] It is not likely that Anne felt uncertain on such a point, or would have avowed it if she had. She might have reasons of her own for her hopes of another chance. Henry seemed to have no hope at all; he sent Chapuys a message through Cromwell that Mary's situation was now changed; her train should be increased, and her treatment improved--subject, however, of course, to her submission. Mary had made up her mind, under Chapuys's advice, that if a prince was born, she would acknowledge the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Succession with a secret protest, as the Emperor had recommended her. She had no intention, however, of parting with her pretensions, and alienating her friends, as long as there was no brother whose claims she could not dispute. Chapuys had imagined, and Mary had believed, that the Emperor would have resented the alleged poisoning of Catherine; that, instead of her death removing the danger of war, as Henry supposed, war had now become more certain than ever. With this impression, the Princess still kept her mind fixed on escaping out of the country, and continued to press Chapuys to take her away. She had infinite courage; a Flemish ship was hovering about the mouth of the Thames ready to come up, on receiving notice, within two or three miles of Gravesend. The house to which she had been removed was forty miles from the place where she would have to embark; it was inconvenient for the intended enterprise, and was, perhaps, guarded, though she did not know it. She thought, however, that, if Chapuys would send her something to drug her women with, she could make her way into the garden, and the gate could be broken open. "She was so eager," Chapuys said, "that, if he had told her to cross the Channel in a sieve, she would venture it;" the distance from Gravesend was the difficulty: the Flemish shipmaster was afraid to go higher up the river: a forty miles' ride would require relays of horses, and the country through which she had to pass was thickly inhabited. Means, however, might be found to take her down in a boat, and if she was once out of England, and under the Emperor's protection, Chapuys was convinced that the King would no longer kick against the pricks. Mary herself was less satisfied on this point. Happy as she would be to find herself out of personal danger, she feared her father might still persist in his heresies, and bring more souls to perdition; "she would, therefore, prefer infinitely," she said, "the general and total remedy so necessary for God's service." She wished Chapuys to send another messenger to the Emperor, to stir him up to activity. But Chapuys, desperate of rousing Charles by mere entreaties, encouraged her flight out of the country as the surest means of bringing Henry to a reckoning. The difficulty would not be very great; the King had shown an inclination to be more gentle with her; Mrs. Shelton had orders to admit her mother's physician to her at any time that he pleased; and others of the household at Kimbolton were to be transferred to her service; these relaxations would make the enterprise much easier, and Chapuys was disposed to let it be tried. The Emperor's consent, however, was of course a preliminary condition, and his latest instructions had been unfavourable. The Ambassador, therefore, referred the matter once more to Charles's judgment, adding only, with a view to his own safety, that, should the escape be carried out, his own share in it would immediately be suspected; and the King, who had no fear of anyone in the world, would undoubtedly kill him. He could be of no use in the execution of the plot, and would, therefore, make an excuse to cross to Flanders before the attempt was made.[379] Chapuys's precipitancy had been disappointed before, and was to be disappointed again; he had worked hard to persuade Charles that Catherine had been murdered; Charles, by the manner in which he received the intelligence, showed that his Minister's representations had not convinced him. In sending word to the Empress that the Queen was dead, the Emperor said that accounts differed as to her last illness: some saying that it was caused by an affection of the stomach, which had lasted for some days; others that she had drunk something suspected to have contained poison. He did not himself say that he believed her to have been poisoned, nor did he wish it to be repeated as coming from him. The Princess, he heard, was inconsolable; he hoped God would have pity on her. He had gone into mourning, and had ordered the Spanish Court to do the same.[380] In Spain there was an obvious consciousness that nothing had been done of which notice could be taken. Had there been a belief that a Spanish princess had been made away with in England, as the consummation of a protracted persecution, so proud a people would indisputably have demanded satisfaction. The effect was exactly the opposite. Articles had been drawn by the Spanish Council for a treaty with France as a settlement of the dispute about Milan. One of the conditions was the stipulation to which Cromwell had referred in a conversation with Chapuys, that France was to undertake the execution of the Papal sentence and the reduction of England to the Church. The Queen being dead, the Emperor's Council recommended that this article should now be withdrawn, and the recovery of the King be left to negotiation.[381] Instead of seeing in Catherine's death an occasion for violence, they found in it a fresh motive for a peaceful arrangement. It was assumed that if the Princess escaped, and if Henry did not then submit, war would be the immediate consequence. The Emperor, always disinclined towards the "remedy" which his Ambassador had so long urged upon him, acted as Cromwell expected. The adventurous flight to Gravesend had to be abandoned, and he decided that Mary must remain quiet. In protecting Catherine while alive he had so far behaved like a gentleman and a man of honour. He was her nearest relation, and it was impossible for him to allow her to be pushed aside without an effort to prevent it. But as a statesman he had felt throughout that a wrong to his relation, or even a wrong to the Holy See, in the degraded condition of the Papacy, was no sufficient cause for adding to the confusions of Christendom. He had rather approved than condemned the internal reforms in the Church of England: and, after taking time to reflect and perhaps inquire more particularly into the circumstances of Catherine's end, he behaved precisely as he would have done if he was satisfied that her death was natural: he gave Chapuys to understand, in a letter from Naples,[382] that, if a fresh opening presented itself, he must take up again the abandoned treaty; and the secret interviews recommenced between the Ambassador and the English Chief Secretary. These instructions must have arrived a week after the plans had been completed for Mary's escape, and Chapuys had to swallow his disappointment and obey with such heart as he could command. The first approaches were wary on both sides. Cromwell said that he had no commission to treat directly; and that, as the previous negotiations had been allowed to drop, the first overtures must now come from the Emperor; the Queen being gone, however, the ground of difference was removed, and the restoration of the old alliance was of high importance to Christendom; the King and the Emperor united could dictate peace to the world; France was on the eve of invading Italy, and had invited the King to make a simultaneous attack upon Flanders; a party in the Council wished him to consent; the King, however, preferred the friendship of the Emperor, and, Catherine being no longer alive, there was nothing to keep them asunder. Chapuys, who never liked the proposal of a treaty at all, listened coldly; he said he had heard language of that kind before, and wished for something more precise; Cromwell replied that he had been speaking merely his own opinion; he had no authority and, therefore, could not enter into details; if there was to be a reconciliation, he repeated that the Emperor must make the advances. The Emperor, Chapuys rejoined, would probably make four conditions: the King must be reconciled to the Church as well as to himself; the Princess must be restored to her rank and be declared legitimate; the King must assist in the war with the Turks, and the league must be offensive as well as defensive. Cromwell's answer was more encouraging than Chapuys perhaps desired. The fourth article, he said, would be accepted at once, and on the third the King would do what he could; no great objection would be made to the second; the door was open. Reconciliation with Rome would be difficult, but even that was not impossible. If the Emperor would write under his own hand to the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and to the Duke of Richmond, who in mind and body singularly resembled his father, much might be done. A confidential Minister would not have ventured so far without knowing Henry's private views, and such large concessions were a measure of the decline of Anne Boleyn's influence. As regarded the Princess Mary, Chapuys had found that there was a real disposition to be more kind to her, for the King had sent her a crucifix which had belonged to her mother, containing a piece of the true cross, which Catherine had desired that she should have,[383] and had otherwise showed signs of a father's affection. The Emperor himself now appears upon the scene, and the eagerness which he displayed for a reconciliation showed how little he had really seen to blame in Henry's conduct. So long as Catherine lived he was bound in honour to insist on her acknowledgment as queen; but she was gone, and he was willing to say no more about her. He saw that the intellect and energy of England were running upon the German lines. Chapuys, and perhaps other correspondents more trustworthy, had assured him that, if things went on as they were going, the hold of the Catholic Church on the English people would soon be lost. The King himself, if he wished it, might not be able to check the torrent, and the opinion of his vassals and his own imperious disposition might carry him to the extreme lengths of Luther. The Emperor was eager to rescue Henry before it was too late from the influences under which his quarrel with the Pope had plunged him. He praised Chapuys's dexterity; he was pleased with what Cromwell had said, and proceeded himself to take up the points of the proposals. "The withdrawal of the King from the Church of Rome," he said, "was a matter of great importance. His pride might stand in the way of his turning back: he might be ashamed of showing a want of resolution before the world and before his subjects, and he was obstinate in his own opinions." Charles, therefore, directed Chapuys to lay before him such considerations as were likely to affect his judgment, the peril to his soul, the division and confusion sure to arise in his realm, and the evident danger should the Pope go on to the execution of the sentence and call in the assistance of the Princes of Christendom. Under the most favourable aspect, both he and his supporters would be held in continual anxiety; and, though he might be able to maintain what he had begun as long as he himself lived, he could not do it without great difficulty, and would inevitably leave an inheritance of calamity to those who came after him. Chapuys was to advise him, therefore, to take timely measures for the security of the realm, and either refer his differences with the Pope to a General Council, or trust to Charles himself to negotiate for him with the Holy See, which he might assure himself that Charles would do on honourable and favourable terms. The chief objections likely to be raised by Henry would be the Pope's sentence in the divorce case, the interests of his country in the annates question, and other claims upon the realm which the Pope pretended. The first could be disposed of in the arrangement to be made for the Princess; the annates could be moderated, and a limit fixed for the Pope's other demands; as to the supreme authority over the Church of England, Chapuys might persuade the King that the relative positions of the Crown and the Holy See might be determined to his own honour, and the profit and welfare of the realm.[384] The Emperor, indeed, was obliged to add he could give no pledge to the prejudice of the Church without the Pope's consent, but Chapuys might promise that he would use his utmost exertions to bring about a reasonable composition. Charles evidently did not intend to allow the pretensions of the Papacy to stand in the way of the settlement of Europe. If the Ambassador saw that a reconciliation with Rome was hopeless, sooner than lose the treaty the Emperor was ready to consent to leave that point out in order to carry the others, provided the King did not require him directly to countenance what he had done. As to the Princess, care would have to be taken not to compromise the honour of the late Queen, or the legitimacy and rights of her daughter. If her father would not consent to recognise formally her claim on the succession, that too might be left in suspense till the King's death; and Charles was willing to undertake that, as long as Henry lived, no action was to be taken against him, and none permitted to be taken on the part of any one, not even of the Pope, to punish him for his treatment of Catherine--not though her end had been hastened, as some suspected, by sinister means. A marriage could be arranged for Mary between the King and the Emperor; and, should the King himself decide to abandon the Concubine and marry again in a fit and convenient manner, Chapuys was to offer no opposition, and the Emperor said that he would not object to help him in conformity with the treaty.[385] It was obvious to everyone that, if Henry separated from Anne, an immediate marriage with some other person would follow. Charles was already weighing the possibility, and when the event occurred it will be seen that he lost not a moment in endeavouring to secure Henry's hand for another of his own relations. Princes and statesmen are not scrupulous in arranging their political alliances, but, considering all that had happened and all that was about to happen, the readiness of Charles V. to bestow a second kinswoman on the husband of Queen Catherine may be taken to prove that his opinion of Henry's character was less unfavourable than that which is generally given by historians. Cromwell had been premature in allowing a prospect of the restoration of the Papal authority in England. Charles, in his eagerness to smooth matters, had suggested that a way might be found to leave the King the reality of the supremacy, while the form was left to the Pope. But no such arrangement was really possible, and Henry had gone on with his legislative measures against the Church as if no treaty was under consideration. Parliament had met again, and had passed an Act for the suppression of the smaller monasteries. That the Emperor should be suing to him for an alliance while he was excommunicated by the Pope, and was deliberately pursuing a policy which was exasperating his own clergy, was peculiarly agreeable to Henry, and he enjoyed the triumph which it gave him; a still greater triumph would be another marriage into the Imperial family; and a wish that he should form some connection, the legality of which could not be disputed, was widely entertained and freely uttered among his own subjects. Chapuys, before Charles's letter could have reached him, had been active in encouraging the idea. He had spoken to Mary about it, and Mary had been so delighted at the prospect of her father's separation from Anne, that she said she would rejoice at it, though it cost her the succession.[386] That the King was likely to part with Anne was the general talk of London. Chapuys called on Cromwell, alluded to the rumour which had reached him, and intimated how much mischief would be avoided if the King could make up his mind to take another wife, against whom no objection could be brought. Cromwell said that he had never himself been in favour of the marriage with Anne, but, seeing the King bent on it, he had assisted him to the best of his power; he believed, however, that, the thing having been done, the King would abide by it; he might pay attentions to other ladies, but they meant nothing. Cromwell's manner seemed peculiar, and Chapuys observed him more closely. The Secretary was leaning against a window, turning away his face as if to conceal a smile. There had been a report that some French princess was being thought of, and perhaps Chapuys made some allusion to it; for Cromwell said that Chapuys might assure himself that, if the King did take another wife, he would not look for her in France. The smile might have had a meaning which Chapuys could not suspect. The Secretary was by this time acquainted with circumstances in Anne's conduct which might throw another aspect on the situation, but the moment had not come to reveal them. It is likely enough that the King had been harassed and uncertain. The air was thick with stories claiming to be authentic. Lady Exeter had told Chapuys that the King had sent a purse and a letter to Jane Seymour, of whom Anne had been jealous. Jane Seymour had returned the letter unopened and the money along with it, and had prayed the bearer to say to the King that he must keep his presents till she made some honourable marriage. Lady Exeter and her friends made their own comments. Anne's enemies, it was said, were encouraging the intimacy with Jane, and had told the lady to impress upon the King that the nation detested his connection with Anne and that no one believed it lawful; as if it was likely that a woman in the position in which Jane Seymour was supposed to stand could have spoken to him on such a subject, or would have recommended herself to Henry, if she did. At the same time it is possible and even probable that Henry, observing her quiet, modest and upright character, may have contrasted her with the lady to whom he had bound himself, may have wished that he could change one for the other, and may even have thought of doing it; but that, as Cromwell said, he had felt that he must make no more changes, and must abide by the destiny which he had imposed on himself.[387] For, in fact, it was not open to Henry to raise the question of the lawfulness of his marriage with Anne, or to avail himself of it if raised by others. He had committed himself far too deeply, and the Parliament had been committed along with him, to the measures by which the marriage was legalised. Yet Anne's ascendancy was visibly drawing to an end, and clouds of a darker character were gathering over her head. In the early days of her married life outrageous libels had been freely circulated, both against her and against the King. Henry had been called a devil. The Duke of Norfolk had spoken of his niece as a _grande putaine_. To check these effusive utterances the severest penalties had been threatened by proclamation against all who dared to defame the Queen's character, and no one had ventured to whisper a word against her. But her conduct had been watched; light words, light actions had been observed and carefully noted. Her overbearing manner had left her without a friend save her own immediate connections and personal allies. "Men's mouths had been shut when they knew what ought not to have been concealed."[388] A long catalogue of misdeeds had been registered, with dates and particulars, treasured up for use by the ladies of the household, as soon as it should become safe to speak; and if her conduct had been really as abandoned as it was afterwards alleged to have been, the growing alienation of the King may be easily understood. It was impossible for any woman to have worn a mask so long and never to have given her husband occasion for dissatisfaction. Incidents must have occurred in the details of daily life, if not to rouse his suspicions, yet to have let him see that the woman for whom he had fought so fierce a battle had never been worth what she had cost him. Anne Boleyn's fortunes, however, like Catherine's, were but an episode in the affairs of England and of Christendom, and the treaty with the Emperor was earnestly proceeded with as if nothing was the matter. The great concerns of nations are of more consequence to contemporary statesmen than the tragedies or comedies of royal households. Events rush on; the public interests which are all-absorbing while they last are superseded or forgotten; the personal interests remain, and the modern reader thinks that incidents which most affect himself must have been equally absorbing to every one at the time when they occurred. The mistake is natural, but it is a mistake notwithstanding. The great question of the hour was the alternative alliance with the Empire or with France, and the result to be expected from the separation of England from Rome. The Emperor wrote, as Cromwell had suggested, to the three Dukes. Chapuys paid Cromwell a visit at his country-house in the middle of April, to discuss again the four conditions. Cromwell had laid them before the King, and had to report his answer. The reconciliation with Rome was declared impossible. Henry said that the injuries to England by the Pope's sentence had been too great, and the statutes too recent to be repealed. The Pope himself was now making overtures, and was disposed to gratify the King as much as possible. Something, therefore, might be done in the future, but for the present the question could not be entertained. Cromwell offered to show the Ambassador the Pope's letters, if he wished to see them. Chapuys observed sarcastically that, after all that had passed, the King ought to be highly gratified at finding his friendship solicited by the Pope and the Emperor, the two parties whom he had most offended. It might be hoped that, having enjoyed his triumph, the King would now recollect that something was due to the peace of Christendom. Cromwell did not attempt a repartee, and let the observation pass. He said, however, that he hoped much from time. On the other points, all consideration would be shown for the Princess, but the King could not consent to make her the subject of an article in the treaty; no difficulty would be made about assistance in the Turkish war; as to France, the Council were now unanimous in recommending the Imperial alliance, and had represented their views to the King. The King was pausing over his resolution, severely blaming the course which Francis was pursuing, but less willing to break with France than Cromwell had himself expected. Francis, Cromwell said, had stood by the King as a friend in the worst of his difficulties, and the King did not like to quarrel with him; he, however, intended to speak to Chapuys himself. The Court was keeping Easter at Greenwich, and thither the Ambassador repaired. Easter Sunday falling on the 16th of April, the Chapter of the Garter was to be held there, and the assembly was large and splendid. Anne Boleyn was present in state as Queen, with her brother Lord Rochford, the demeanour of both of them undisturbed by signs of approaching storm. When Chapuys presented himself, Rochford paid him particular attention. The Ambassador had been long absent from the Court circle. Cromwell told him that the King would be pleased if he would now pay his respects to Anne, which he had never hitherto done, adding that, if he objected, it would not be insisted on. Chapuys excused himself. For various reasons, he said, he thought it not desirable. Cromwell said that his answer would be taken in good part, and hoped that the rest of their business would run smoothly. Henry himself passed by as Cromwell was speaking to Chapuys. He bowed, took off his cap, and motioned to the Ambassador to replace his own. He then inquired after his health, asked how the Emperor was, how things were going in Italy--in short, was particularly courteous. Service followed in the chapel. Rochford conducted Chapuys thither, and, as his sister was to be present and an encounter could not be avoided, people were curious to see how she and the Ambassador would behave to each other. Anne was "affable" enough, and curtseyed low as she swept past. After mass the King and several members of the Council dined in Anne's apartments. As it was presumed that Chapuys would not desire to form one of the party, he was entertained by the household. Anne asked why he had not been invited. The King said there was reason for it. Dinner over, Henry led Chapuys into his private cabinet, Cromwell following with the Chancellor Audeley. No one else was present at the beginning of the conference. The King drew the Ambassador apart into a window, when Chapuys again produced at length his four points. The King listened patiently as Chapuys expatiated on the action of the French, remarking only that Milan and Burgundy belonged to France and not to the Emperor. The observation showed Chapuys that things were not yet as he could have wished. He inquired whether, if the treaty was made, England would be prepared to assist the Emperor should France attack the Duke of Gueldres. Henry answered that he would do his part better than others had done their parts with him; he then called up Cromwell and Audeley, and made Chapuys repeat what he had said. This done, Chapuys withdrew to another part of the room, and fell into conversation with Sir Edward Seymour, who had since entered. He left Henry talking earnestly with the two Ministers, and between him and them Chapuys observed that there was a strong difference of opinion. The King's voice rose high. Cromwell, after a time, left him, and, saying that he was thirsty, seated himself on a chest out of the King's sight and asked for water. The King then rejoined the Ambassador, and told him that his communications were of such importance that he must have them in writing. Chapuys objected that this was unusual. He had no order to write anything, and dared not go beyond his instructions. Henry was civil, but persisted, saying that he could give no definite answer till he had the Emperor's offer in black and white before him. Generally, however, he said that his quarrel with Rome did not concern the Emperor. If he wished to treat with the Pope, he could do it without the Emperor's interposition; the Princess was his daughter, and would be used according to her deserts; a subvention for the Turkish war might be thought of when the alliance with Charles was renewed. Finally he said that he would not refuse his friendship to those who sought it in becoming terms, but he _was not a child, to be whipped first and then caressed and invited back again and called sweet names_. He drummed with his finger on his knees as he spoke. He insisted that he had been injured and expected an acknowledgment that he had been injured. The overtures, he repeated, must come from the Emperor. The Emperor must write him a letter requesting him to forget and forgive the past, and no more should then be said about it; but such a letter he must and would have. Chapuys restrained his temper. He said it was unreasonable to expect the Emperor to humiliate himself. Henry only grew more excited, called Charles ungrateful, declared that but for himself he would never have been on the Imperial throne, or even have recovered his authority in Spain when the commons had revolted; and, in return, the Emperor had stirred up Pope Clement to deprive him of his kingdom. Chapuys said it was not the Emperor's doing. The Pope had done it himself, at the solicitation of other parties. So the conference ended, and not satisfactorily. Henry was not a child to be whipped and caressed. Charles wanted him now, because he was threatened by France; and he, of his own judgment, preferred the Imperial alliance, like the rest of his countrymen; but Charles had coerced the Pope into refusing a concession which the Pope had admitted to be just, and the King knew better than his Council that the way to secure the Emperor's friendship was not to appear too eager for it. The sharpness with which the King had spoken disappointed and even surprised Cromwell, who, when the audience was over, could hardly speak for vexation. His impression apparently was that the French faction had still too much influence with the King, and the French faction was the faction of Anne. He recovered his spirits when Chapuys informed him of the concessions which the Emperor was prepared to make, and said that he still hoped for "a good result." The next morning, Wednesday, 19th of April, the Privy Council met again in full number. They sate for three hours. The future of England, the future of Europe, appeared to them at that moment to be hanging on the King's resolution. They went in a body to him and represented on their knees that they believed the Imperial alliance essential to the safety of the country, and they implored him not to reject a hand so unexpectedly held out to him on a mere point of honour. Henry, doubtless, felt as they did. Since his quarrel with Charles he had hardly known a quiet hour; he had been threatened with war, ruin of trade, interdict, and internal rebellion. On a return to the old friendship the sullen clergy, the angry Peers, would be compelled into submission, for the friend on whom they most depended would have deserted them; the traders would no longer be in alarm for their ventures; the Pope and his menaces would become a laughingstock, and in the divorce controversy the right would be tacitly allowed to have been with the King, since it was to be passed over without being mentioned. Immense advantages. But the imperious pride of Henry insisted on the form as well as the substance--on extorting a definite confession in words as well as a practical acknowledgment. All the troubles which had fallen on him--the quarrel with the Papacy, the obstinate resistance of Catherine and Mary, the threats of invasion, and insurrection--he looked upon as Charles's work. It was true that the offered friendship was important to England, but England's friendship was important to the Emperor, and the Emperor must ask for it. He told the kneeling Councillors that he would sooner lose his crown than admit, even by implication, that he had given Charles cause to complain of him. He was willing to take the Emperor's hand, but he would not seek or sue for it. The Emperor himself must write to him. Cromwell, in describing what had passed to Chapuys, said that he was sorry that things had gone no better, but that he was not discouraged. The King had directed him to thank Chapuys for his exertions, and, for himself, he trusted that the Ambassador would persevere. If the Emperor would send even a letter of credit the King would be satisfied. In all his private conversations, although he had taken the responsibility on himself, he had acted under the King's instructions. The Ambassador asked him, if this was so, what could have caused the change. He answered that kings had humours and peculiarities of their own, unknown to ordinary mortals. In spite of what had passed, the King was writing at that moment to Francis, to require him to desist from his enterprise against Italy. Chapuys replied that he would endeavour to obtain the letter from the Emperor which the King demanded. He wrote to Charles, giving a full and perhaps accurate account of all that had passed; but he ended with advice of his own which showed how well Henry had understood Chapuys's own character, and the slippery ground on which he was standing. Chapuys had disliked the treaty with England from the beginning. He told his master that Henry's real purpose was to make him force out of the Pope a revocation of the sentence on the divorce. He recommended the Emperor once more to leave Henry to reap the fruit of his obstinacy, to come to terms with France, and allow the Pope to issue the Bull of Deposition--with a proviso that neither he nor Francis would regard any child as legitimate whom the King might have, either by the Concubine or by any other woman whom he might marry during the Concubine's life, unless by a dispensation from the Pope, which was not likely to be asked for. He did not venture to hope that the Emperor would agree, but such a course, he said, would bring the King to his senses, and force would be unnecessary.[389] To Granvelle the Ambassador wrote more briefly to the same purpose. "God knew," he said, "how he had worked to bring the King to a right road; but he had found him unspeakably obstinate. The King seemed determined to compel the Emperor to acknowledge that Clement's sentence had been given under pressure from himself. Cromwell had behaved like an honest man, and had taken to his bed for sorrow. Cromwell knew how necessary the Emperor's friendship was to the King, but God or the Devil was preventing it."[390] Henry gave his own version of the story to the English Ministers at Charles's court. "The Emperor's Ambassador," he said, "has been with us at Greenwich with offers to renew the alliance, the conditions being that he would allow the Emperor to reconcile us with the Pope, that we will declare our daughter Mary legitimate and give her a place in the succession, that we will help him against the Turks, and declare war against France should France invade Milan. "Our answer was that the breach of amity came first from the Emperor himself. We gave him the Imperial crown when it lay with us to dispose of. We lent him money in his difficulties, etc. In return he has shown us nothing but ingratitude, stirring the Bishop of Rome to do us injury. If he will by express writing desire us to forget his unkind doings, or will declare that what we consider unkindness has been wrongly imputed to him, we will gladly embrace his overtures; but as we have sustained the wrong we will not be suitors for reconciliation. As to the Bishop of Rome, we have not proceeded on such slight grounds as we would revoke or alter any part of our doings, having laid our foundation on the Law of God, nature, and honesty, and established our work thereupon with the consent of the Estates of the Realm in open and high court of Parliament. A proposal has been made to us by the Bishop himself which we have not yet embraced, nor would it be expedient that a reconciliation should be compassed by any other means. We should not think the Emperor earnestly desired a reconciliation with us, if he desired us to alter anything for the satisfaction of the Bishop of Rome, our enemy. "As to our daughter Mary, if she will submit to the laws we will acknowledge and use her as our daughter; but we will not be directed or pressed therein. It is as meet for us to order things here without search for foreign advice as for the Emperor to determine his affairs without our counsel. About the Turks, we can come to no certain resolution; but if a reconciliation of the affairs of Christendom ensue, we will not fail to do our duty. Before we can treat of aid against the French King the amity with the Emperor must first be renewed."[391] CHAPTER XXII. Easter at Greenwich--French and Imperial factions at the English court-- Influence of Anne Boleyn--Reports of Anne's conduct submitted to the King--Flying rumours--Secret Commission of Inquiry--Arrests of various persons--Sir Henry Norris and the King--Anne before the Privy Council-- Sent to the Tower--Her behaviour and admissions--Evidence taken before the Commission--Trials of Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeton--Letter of Weston--Trial of Anne and her brother--Executions--Speech of Rochford on the scaffold--Anne sentenced to die--Makes a confession to Cranmer-- Declared to have not been the King's lawful wife--Nature of the confession not known--Execution. At the moment when the King was bearing himself so proudly at the most important crisis of his reign, orthodox historians require us to believe that he was secretly contriving to rid himself of Anne Boleyn by a foul and false accusation, that he might proceed immediately to a new marriage with another lady. Men who are meditating enormous crimes have usually neither leisure nor attention for public business. It is as certain as anything in history can be certain that to startle Europe with a domestic scandal while mighty issues were at stake on which the fate of England depended was the last subject with which England's King was likely to have been occupied. He was assuming an attitude of haughty independence, where he would need all his strength and all the confidence of his subjects. To conspire at such a moment against the honour and life of a miserable and innocent woman would have occurred to no one who was not a maniac. Rumour had been busy spreading stories that he was weary of Anne and meant to part with her; but a few days previously he had dissolved the Parliament which for seven years had been described as the complacent instrument of his will. He could not be equally assured of the temper of another, hastily elected, in the uneasy condition of the public mind; and, without a Parliament, he could take no action which would affect the succession. However discontented he might be with his present Queen, the dissolution of Parliament is a conclusive proof that at the time of Chapuys's visit to Greenwich he was not contemplating a matrimonial convulsion. Probably, in spite of all the stories set flowing into Chapuys's long ears by the ladies of the household, he had resolved to bear his fortune, bad as it was, and was absolutely ignorant of the revelation which was about to break upon him. Husbands are proverbially the last to know of their wives' infidelities; and the danger of bringing charges which could not be substantiated against a woman in Anne's position would necessarily keep every lip shut till the evidence could be safely brought forward. Cromwell appears to have been in possession of important information for many weeks. The exposure, however, might still have been delayed, but for the unfavourable answer of the King to the Emperor's advances, which had so much distressed the advocates of a renewal of the amity. France was now going to war, and making large offers for the English alliance. Henry, though his affection for Anne had cooled, still resented the treatment which he had received from Charles, and had a fair opportunity of revenging himself. The wisest of his Ministers were against Continental adventures, and wished him earnestly to accept the return of a friendship the loss of which had cost the country so dear. But the French faction at the court, Anne and her relations, and the hot-tempered young men who surrounded him, were still able to work upon his wounded pride. Could they plunge the country into war at the side of Francis, they would recover their ascendancy. Any day might see some fatal step taken which could not be recovered. Both Anne and Rochford were bold, able, and unscrupulous, and Cromwell, with a secret in his hand which would destroy them, saw that the time was come to use it. That it was not accident which connected the outburst of the storm on Anne's head with the political negotiations is certain from Cromwell's own words. He told Chapuys that it was the disappointment which he had felt at the King's reply to him on the Wednesday after Easter that had led him to apply the match to the train.[392] A casual incident came to his assistance. A Privy Councillor, whose name is not mentioned, having remarked sharply on the light behaviour of a sister who was attached to the court, the young lady admitted her offence, but said it was nothing in comparison with the conduct of the Queen. She bade her brother examine Mark Smeton, a groom of the chamber and a favourite musician.[393] The Privy Councillor related what he had heard to two friends of the King, of whom Cromwell must have been one. The case was so serious that they agreed that the King must be informed. They told him. He started, changed colour, thanked them, and directed an inquiry to be held in strict secrecy. The ladies of the bedchamber were cross-questioned. Lady Worcester[394] was "the first accuser." "Nan Cobham" and a maid gave other evidence; but "Lady Worcester was the first ground."[395] Nothing was allowed to transpire to disturb the festivities at Greenwich. On St. George's Day, April 23, the Queen and her brother received an intimation that they were in less favour than usual. The Chapter of the Garter was held. An order was vacant; Anne asked that it should be given to Lord Rochford, and the request was refused; it was conferred on her cousin, Sir Nicholas Carew, to her great vexation. In this, however, there was nothing to alarm her. The next day, the 24th, a secret committee was appointed to receive depositions, consisting of the Chancellor, the Judges, Cromwell, and other members of Council; and by this time whispers were abroad that something was wrong, for Chapuys, writing on the 29th of April, said that "it would not be Carew's fault if Anne was not out of the saddle before long, as he had heard that he was daily conspiring against her and trying to persuade Mistress Seymour and her friends to work her ruin. Four days ago [i. e. on April 25] Carew and other gentlemen sent word to the Princess to take courage, as the King was tired of the Concubine and would not endure her long."[396] Geoffrey Pole, Reginald's brother, a loose-tongued gentleman, told Chapuys that the Bishop of London (Stokesley) had been lately asked whether the King could dismiss the Concubine; the Bishop had declined to give an opinion till the King asked for it, and even then would not speak till he knew the King's intention. The Bishop, Chapuys said, was one of the promoters of the first divorce, and was now penitent, the Concubine and all her family being accursed Lutherans.[397] Such stories were but surmise and legend. I insert them to omit nothing which may be construed into an indication of conspiracy. The Commission meanwhile was collecting facts which grew more serious every day. On Thursday, the 27th, Sir William Brereton, a gentleman of the King's Privy Chamber, was privately sent to the Tower, and on the 30th was followed thither by the musician Smeton. The next morning, the 1st of May, High Festival was held at Greenwich. A tournament formed a part of the ceremony, with the Court in attendance. Anne sate in a gallery as Queen of the day, while her knights broke lances for her, caring nothing for flying scandal, and unsuspecting the abyss which was opening under her feet. Sir Henry Norris and Lord Rochford were in the lists as defender and challenger, when, suddenly, the King rose; the pageant was broken up in confusion; Henry mounted his horse and, followed by a small train, rode off for London, taking Norris with him. Sir Henry Norris was one of Henry's most intimate personal friends. He was his equerry, and often slept in his room or in an adjoining closet. The inquiries of the Commission had not yet implicated him as a principal, but it had appeared that circumstances were known to him which he ought to have revealed. The King promised to forgive him if he would tell the truth, but the truth was more than he could dare to reveal. On the following day he, too, was sent to the Tower, having been first examined before the Commissioners, to whom--perhaps misled by some similar hope of pardon held out to him by Sir William Fitzwilliam--he confessed more than it was possible to pardon, and then withdrew what he had acknowledged.[398] So far, Smeton only had confessed to "any actual thing," and it was thought the King's honour would be touched if the guilt of the rest was not proved more clearly. Anne had been left at Greenwich. On the next morning she was brought before the Council there, her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, presiding. She was informed that she was charged with adultery with various persons. Her answers, such as they were, the Duke set aside as irrelevant. She complained afterwards that she had been "cruelly handled" by the Council. It was difficult not to be what she would consider cruel. She, too, was conducted up the river to the Tower, where she found that to Smeton and Brereton and Norris another gentleman of the household, Sir Francis Weston, had now been added. A small incident is mentioned which preserves a lost practice of the age. "On the evening of the day on which the Concubine was sent to the Tower, the Duke of Richmond went to his father to ask his blessing, according to the English custom. The King said, in tears, that he, and his sister the Princess, ought to thank God for having escaped the hands of that woman, who had planned to poison them."[399] Chapuys made haste to inform the Emperor of the welcome catastrophe. The Emperor, he said, would recollect the expressions which he had reported as used by Cromwell regarding the possible separation of the King and the Concubine. Both he and the Princess had been ever since anxious that such a separation should be brought about. What they had desired had come to pass better than any one could have hoped, to the great disgrace of the Concubine, who, by the judgment of God, had been brought in full daylight from Greenwich to the Tower, in charge of the Duke of Norfolk and two chamberlains. Report said it was for continued adultery with a spinet-player belonging to her household. The player had been committed to the Tower also, and, after him, Sir H. Norris, the most familiar and private companion of the King, for not having revealed the matter.[400] Fresh news poured in as Chapuys was writing. Before closing his despatch he was able to add that Sir Francis Weston and Lord Rochford were arrested also. The startling story flew from lip to lip, gathering volume as it went. Swift couriers carried it to Paris. Viscount Hannaert, the Imperial Ambassador there,[401] wrote to Granvelle that Anne had been surprised in bed with the King's organist.[402] In the course of the investigation, witnesses had come forward to say that nine years previously a marriage had been made and consummated between Anne and Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Percy, however, swore, and received the sacrament upon it, before the Duke of Norfolk and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, that no contract or promise of marriage of any kind had passed between them.[403] Anne's attendants in the Tower had been ordered to note what she might say. She denied that she was guilty, sometimes with hysterical passion, sometimes with a flighty levity; but not, so far as her words are recorded, with the clearness of conscious innocence. She admitted that with Norris, Weston, and Smeton she had spoken foolishly of their love for herself, and of what might happen were the King to die. Smeton, on his second examination, confessed that he had on three several occasions committed adultery with the Queen. Norris repudiated his admissions to Sir William Fitzwilliam--what they were is unknown--and offered to maintain his own innocence and the Queen's with sword and lance. Weston and Brereton persisted in absolute denial. Meanwhile the Commission continued to take evidence. A more imposing list of men than those who composed it could not have been collected in England. The members of it were the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Suffolk, Lord Wiltshire, Anne's and Rochford's father, the Earls of Oxford, Westmoreland, and Sussex, Lord Sandys, Thomas Cromwell, Sir William Fitzwilliam, the Lord High Admiral, Sir William Paulet, Lord Treasurer, and nine judges of the courts at Westminster. Before these persons the witnesses were examined and their depositions written down. "The confessions," Cromwell wrote afterwards to Gardiner, "were so abominable that a great part of them were not given in evidence, but were clearly kept secret."[404] The alleged offences had been committed in two counties. The Grand Juries of Kent and Middlesex returned true bills on the case presented to them. On the 7th of May writs were sent out for a new Parliament, to be chosen and to meet immediately. The particular charges had been submitted to the Grand Juries with time, place, and circumstance. The details have been related by me elsewhere.[405] In general the indictment was that for a period of more than two years, from within a few weeks after the birth of Elizabeth to the November immediately preceding, the Queen had repeatedly committed acts of adultery with Sir Henry Norris, Sir William Brereton, Sir Francis Weston, Mark Smeton, and her brother Lord Rochford. In every case the instigation and soliciting were alleged to have been on the Queen's side. The particulars were set out circumstantially, the time at which the solicitations were made, how long an interval elapsed between the solicitation and the act, and when and where the several acts were committed. Finally it was said that the Queen had promised to marry some one of these traitors whenever the King depart this life, affirming that she would never love the King in her heart. Of all these details evidence of some kind must have been produced before the Commission, and it was to this that Cromwell referred in his letter to Gardiner. The accused gentlemen were all of them in situations of trust and confidence at the court, with easy access to the Queen's person, and, if their guilt was real, the familiarity to which they were admitted through their offices was a special aggravation of their offences. In a court so jealous, and so divided, many eyes were on the watch and many tongues were busy. None knew who might be implicated, or how far the Queen's guilt had extended. Suspicion fell on her cousin, Sir Francis Bryan, who was sharply examined by Cromwell. Suspicion fell also on Anne's old lover, Sir Thomas Wyatt, Surrey's friend, to whom a letter survives, written on the occasion by his father, Sir Henry. The old man told his son he was sorry that he was too ill to do his duty to his King in that dangerous time when the King had suffered by false traitors. He prayed God long to give _him_ grace, to be with him and about him that had found out the matter, and the false traitors to be punished to the example of others.[406] Cranmer had been much attached to Anne. The Catholic party being so bitter against her, she had made herself the patroness of the Protestant preachers, and had protected them against persecution. The Archbishop had regarded her as an instrument of Providence, and when the news reached him of the arrest and the occasion of it he was thunderstruck. He wrote an anxious and beautiful letter to the King, expressing a warm belief and hope that the Queen would be able to clear herself. Before he could send it he was invited to meet the Council in the Star Chamber. On his return he added a postscript that he was very sorry such faults could be proved by the Queen as he heard of their relation.[407] On Friday, the 12th of May, the four commoners were brought up for trial. The Court sat in Westminster Hall, Lord Wiltshire being on the bench with the rest. Their guilt, if proved, of course involved the guilt of his daughter. The prisoners were brought to the bar and the indictment was read. Smeton pleaded guilty of adultery, but not guilty of the inferential charge of compassing the death of the King. The other three held to their denial. Weston was married. His mother and his young wife appeared in court, "oppressed with grief," to petition for him, offering "rents and goods" for his deliverance;[408] but it could not avail. The jury found against them all, and they were sentenced to die. Two letters to Lord and Lady Lisle from a friend in London convey something of the popular feeling. "John Husee to Lady Lisle. May 13. "Madam, I think verily if all the books and chronicles were totally revolved and to the uttermost persecuted and tried, which against women hath been penned, contrived, and written since Adam and Eve, those same were, I think, verily nothing in comparison of that which hath been done and committed by Anne the Queen, which though I presume be not all things as it is now rumoured, yet that which hath been by her confessed, and other offenders with her, by her own alluring, procurement, and instigation, is so abominable and detestable, that I am ashamed that any good woman should give ear thereunto. I pray God give her grace to repent while she now liveth. I think not the contrary but she and all they shall suffer."[409] "To Lord Lisle. Same date. "Here are so many tales I cannot tell what to write. Some say young Weston shall scape, and some that none shall die but the Queen and her brother; others, that Wyatt and Mr. Page are as like to suffer as the rest. If any escape, it will be young Weston, for whom importunate suit is made." Great interest was felt in Sir F. Weston. The appearance of his wife and mother in court had created general compassion for him. He was young, rich, accomplished. He was well known in Paris, had been much liked there. M. d'Intevelle, who had been his friend, hurried over to save him, and the Bishop of Tarbes, the resident Ambassador, earnestly interceded. Money, if money could be of use, was ready to be lavished. But like Norris, Weston had been distinguished by Henry with peculiar favour; and if he had betrayed the confidence that was placed in him he had nothing to plead which would entitle him to special mercy. A letter has been preserved, written by Weston to his family after his sentence, inclosing an inventory of his debts, which he desired might be paid. If any one can believe, after reading it, that the writer was about to die for a crime of which he knew that he was innocent, I shall not attempt to reason with such a person. "Father, mother, and wife, "I shall humbly desire you, for the salvation of my soul, to discharge me of this bill, and forgive me all the offences that I have done unto you, and in especial to my wife, which I desire for the love of God to forgive me and to pray for me; for I believe prayer will do me good. God's blessing have my children and mine. "By me, a great offender to God."[410] On Sunday the 14th a report of the proceedings up to that moment was sent by Cromwell to Sir John Wallop and Gardiner at Paris. The story, he said, was now notorious to every one, but he must inform them further how the truth had been discovered and how the King had proceeded. The Queen's incontinent living was so rank and common that the ladies of the Privy Chamber could not conceal it. It came to the ears of some of the Council, who told his Majesty, though with great fear, as the case enforced. Certain persons of the household and others who had been about the Queen's person were examined; and the matter appeared so evident that, besides the crime, there brake out a certain conspiracy of the King's death, which extended so far that they that had the examination of it quaked at the danger his Grace was in, and on their knees gave God laud and praise that he had preserved him so long from it. Certain men were committed to the Tower, Mark and Norris, and the Queen's brother. Then she herself was apprehended; after her, Sir Francis Weston and Brereton. Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Mark were already condemned to death, having been arraigned at Westminster on the past Friday. The queen and her brother were to be arraigned the next day. He wrote no particulars. The things were so abominable that the like was never heard.[411] Anne Boleyn was already condemned by implication. The guilt of her paramours was her own. She herself was next brought to the bar, with her brother, to be tried by the Peers. The court was held at the Tower. Norfolk presided as High Steward. Lord Wiltshire was willing to sit, but the tragedy was terrible enough without further aggravation, and the world was spared the spectacle of a father taking part in the conviction of his own children on a charge so hideous. The Earl of Northumberland did sit, though ill from anxiety and agitation. Twenty-five other Peers took their places also. The account of the proceedings is preserved in outline in the official record; a further detailed description was furnished by Chapuys to the Emperor, containing new and curious particulars. On Monday the 15th of May, Chapuys wrote, the Concubine and her brother were condemned for treason by the principal nobles of England. The Duke of Norfolk passed sentence, and Chapuys was told that the Earl of Wiltshire was ready to assist at the trial, as he had done at that of the rest. The _putaine_ and her brother were not taken to Westminster, as the others had been, but were brought to the bar at the Tower. No secret was made of it, however, for over two thousand persons were present. The principal charge against her was that she had cohabited with her brother and the other accomplices, that a promise had passed between her and Norris that she would marry him after the King's decease--a proof that they had desired his death; that she had exchanged medals with Norris, implying that they were leagued together; that she had poisoned the late Queen, and intended to poison the Princess.[412] To most of these charges she returned an absolute denial; others she answered plausibly, but confessed having given money to Weston and to other gentlemen. She was likewise charged, and the brother also, with having ridiculed the King, showing in many ways she had no love for him, and was tired of her life with him. The brother was accused of having had connection with his sister. No proof of his guilt was produced, except that of having been once alone with her for many hours, and other small follies. He replied so well that many who were present were betting two to one he would be acquitted. Another charge against him was that the Concubine had told his wife that the King was unequal to his duties.[413] This was not read out in court; it was given to Rochford in writing, with a direction not to make it public, but to say merely yes or no. To the great annoyance of Cromwell and others, who did not wish suspicions to be created which might prejudice the King's issue, Rochford read it aloud.[414] He was accused also of having used words implying a doubt whether Anne's daughter was the King's, to which he made no answer. The brother and sister were tried separately and did not see each other. The Concubine was sentenced to be burnt alive or beheaded, at the King's pleasure. When she heard her fate she received it calmly, saying that she was ready to die, but was sorry that others who were innocent and loyal should suffer on her account. She begged for a short respite, to dispose her conscience. The brother said that, since die he must, he would no longer plead "not guilty," but would confess that he deserved death, and requested only that his debts might be paid out of his property.[415] Two days after the trial of the Queen and Rochford, the five gentlemen suffered on Tower Hill. The Concubine, wrote Chapuys, saw them executed from the windows of the Tower, to enhance her misery. The Lord Rochford declared himself innocent of everything with which he was charged, although he confessed that he had deserved death for having contaminated himself with the new sects of religion, and for having infected many others. For this he said that God had justly punished him. He prayed all the world to keep clear of heresy, and his words would cause the recovery and conversion of innumerable souls.[416] This is a good instance of Chapuys's manner, and is a warning against an easy acceptance of his various stories. It is false that Rochford declared himself innocent of the adultery. It is false that he said that he deserved death for heresy. He said nothing--not a word--about heresy. What he did say is correctly given in Wriothesley's Chronicle, which confirms the report sent from London to the Regent of the Netherlands.[417] The Spanish writer says that his address was "_muy bien Catolica_," but it will be seen that he carefully avoided a denial of the crime for which he suffered. "Masters all, I am come hither not to preach a sermon, but to die, as the law hath found me, and to the law I submit me, desiring you all, and specially my masters of the Court, that you will trust in God specially, and not in the vanities of the world; for if I had so done I think I had been alive as ye be now. Also I desire you to help to the setting forth of the true Word of God; I have been diligent to read it and set it forth truly; but if I had been as diligent to observe it and done and lived thereafter as I was to read it and set it forth, I had not come hereto. Wherefore I beseech you all to be workers and live thereafter, and not to read it and live not thereafter. As for my offences, it cannot avail you to hear them that I die here for; but I beseech God that I may be an example to you all, and that all you may beware by me, and heartily I require you all to pray for me and to forgive me if I have offended you, and I forgive you all, and God save the king."[418] Of the other four, Smeton and Brereton admitted the justice of their sentence, Brereton adding that, if he had to die a thousand deaths, he deserved them all. Norris was almost silent. Weston lamented in general terms the wickedness of his past life. From not one of the five came the indignant repudiation of a false accusation which might have been surely looked for from innocent men, and especially to be looked for when the Queen's honour was compromised along with theirs. A Protestant spectator of the execution, a follower of Sir H. Norris, and a friend and schoolfellow of Brereton, said that at first he and all other friends of the Gospel had been unable to believe that the Queen had behaved so abominably. "As he might be saved before God, he could not believe it, till he heard them speak at their death; but in a manner all confessed but Mr. Norris, who said almost nothing at all."[419] Dying men hesitate to leave the world with a lie on their lips. It appears to me, therefore, that these five gentlemen did not deny their guilt, because they knew that they were guilty. The unfortunate Anne was still alive; and while there was life there was hope. A direct confession on their part would have been a confession for her as well as themselves, and they did not make it; but, if they were really innocent, that they should have suffered as they did without an effort to clear themselves or her is one more inexplicable mystery in this extraordinary story. Something even more strange was to follow. At her trial Anne had been "unmoved as a stone, and had carried herself as if she was receiving some great honour." She had been allowed a chair, and had bowed to the Peers as she took her seat. She said little, "but her face spoke more than words, and no one to look on her would have thought her guilty." "She protested that she had not misconducted herself." When Norfolk delivered sentence her face did not change. She said merely that she would not dispute the judgment, but appealed to God.[420] Smeton had repeated his own confession on the scaffold. She turned pale when she was told of it. "Did he not acquit me of the infamy he has laid on me?" she said. "Alas, I fear his soul will suffer for it!"[421] But she had asked for time to prepare her conscience and for spiritual help; she called herself a Lutheran, and on the Tuesday, the day after her trial, Cranmer went to the Tower to hear her confession. She then told the Archbishop something which, if true, invalidated her marriage with the King; if she had not been his wife, her intrigues were not technically treason, and Cranmer perhaps gave her hope that this confession might save her, for she said afterwards to Sir William Kingston that she expected to be spared and would retire into a nunnery.[422] The confession, whatever it might be, was produced on the following day by the Archbishop sitting judicially at Lambeth,[423] and was there considered by three ecclesiastical lawyers, who gave as their opinion that she had never been the King's lawful wife, and this opinion was confirmed by the Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, the Earl of Oxford, and a committee of bishops. The confession itself belonged to the secrets which Cromwell described as "too abominable to be made known," and was never published. The judgment of the Archbishop itself was ratified on the 28th of June by the two Houses of Convocation. It was laid before Parliament and was made the basis of a new arrangement of the succession. But the Statute merely says "that God, from whom no secret things could be hid, had caused to be brought to light evident and open knowledge of certain impediments unknown at the making of the previous Act, and since that time confessed by the Lady Anne before the Archbishop of Canterbury, sitting judicially for the same, whereby it appeared that the marriage was never good nor consonant to the laws." Conjecture was, of course, busy over so singular a mystery. Some said that the Archbishop had declared Elizabeth to have been Norris's bastard, and not the daughter of the King. Others revived the story of Henry's supposed intrigue with Anne's sister, Mary, and Chapuys added a story which even he did not affect to believe, agreeable as it must have been to him. "Many think," he said, "that the Concubine had become so audacious in vice, because most of the new bishops had persuaded her that she need not go to confession; and that, according to the new sect, it was lawful to seek aid elsewhere, even from her own relations, when her husband was not able to satisfy her."[424] The Wriothesley Chronicle says positively that, on the 17th of May, in the afternoon, at a solemn court kept at Lambeth by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the doctors of the law, the King was divorced from his wife, Queen Anne; and there at the same court was a privy contract approved that she had made to the Earl of Northumberland, afore the King's time, and so she was discharged, and was never lawful Queen of England.[425] There are difficulties in accepting either of these conjectures. Chapuys, like Dr. Lingard after him, decided naturally for the hypothesis most disgraceful to the King. The Mary Boleyn story, authoritatively confirmed, at once covered Henry's divorce process with shame, and established the superior claim of Mary to the succession.[426] But in the Act of Parliament the cause is described as something unknown in 1533, when the first Statute was passed: and the alleged intrigue had then been the common subject of talk in Catholic circles and among the Opposition members of Parliament. The Act says that the cause was a fact confessed by the Lady Anne. The Lady Anne might confess her own sins, but her confession of the sins of others was not a confession at all, and could have carried no validity unless supported by other evidence. Chapuys's assertion requires us to suppose that Henry, being informed of Anne's allegation, consented to the establishment of his own disgrace by making it the subject of a legal investigation; that he thus himself allowed a crime to be substantiated against him which covered him with infamy, and which no other attempt was ever made to prove. How did Chapuys know that this was the cause of the divorce of Anne? If it was communicated to Parliament, it must have become the common property of the realm, and have been no longer open to question. If it was not communicated, but was accepted by Parliament, itself on the authority of the Council, who were Chapuys's informants, and how did they know? Under Chapuys's hypothesis the conduct of King, Council, Parliament, and Convocation becomes gratuitous folly--folly to which there was no temptation and for which there was no necessity. The King had only to deny the truth of the story, and nothing further would have been made of it. The real evidence for the _liaison_ with Mary Boleyn is the ineradicable conviction of a certain class of minds that the most probable interpretation of every act of Henry is that which most combines stupidity and wickedness. To argue such a matter is useless. Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason. The Northumberland explanation is less improbable, but to this also there are many objections. Northumberland himself had denied on oath, a few days before, that any contract had ever passed between Anne and himself. If he was found to have perjured himself, he would have been punished, or, at least, disgraced; yet, a few months later, in the Pilgrimage of Grace, he had the King's confidence, and deserved it by signal loyalty. The Norris story is the least unlikely. The first act of criminality with Anne mentioned in the indictment was stated to have been committed with Norris four weeks after the birth of Elizabeth, and the intimacy may have been earlier; while the mystery observed about it may be better accounted for, since, if it had been avowed, Elizabeth's recognition as the King's daughter would have made ever after impossible, and the King did believe that she was really his own daughter. But here, again, there is no evidence. The explanation likeliest of all is that it was something different from each of these--one of the confessions which had been kept back as "too abominable." It is idle to speculate on the antecedents of such a woman as Anne Boleyn. If she had expected that her confession would save her, she was mistaken. To marry a king after a previous unacknowledged intrigue was in those days constructive treason, since it tainted the blood royal.[427] The tragedy was wound up on Friday, the 19th of May; the scene was the green in front of the Tower. Foreigners were not admitted, but the London citizens had collected in great numbers, and the scaffold had been built high that everyone might see. The Chancellor, the Duke of Suffolk, the young Duke of Richmond--then himself sick to death--Cromwell, and other members of the Council, were present by the King's order. Throughout the previous day Anne had persisted in declaring her innocence. In the evening she had been hysterical, had talked and made jokes. The people would call her "Queen Anne _sans tête_," she said, and "laughed heartily." In the morning at nine o'clock she was led out by Sir William Kingston, followed by four of her ladies. She looked often over her shoulder, and on the fatal platform was much "amazed and exhausted." When the time came for her to speak, she raised her eyes to heaven and said, "Masters, I submit me to the law, as the law has judged me, and as for my offences, I accuse no man. God knoweth them. I remit them to God, beseeching him to have mercy on my soul. I beseech Jesu save my sovereign and master, the King, the most godly, noble, and gentle Prince there is."[428] She then laid her head on the block and so ended; she, too, dying without at the last denying the crime for which she suffered. Of the six who were executed not one made a protestation of innocence. If innocent they were, no similar instance can be found in the history of mankind. CHAPTER XXIII. Competition for Henry's hand--Solicitations from France and from the Emperor--Overtures from the Pope--Jane Seymour--General eagerness for the King's marriage--Conduct of Henry in the interval before Anne's execution--Marriage with Jane Seymour--Universal satisfaction--The Princess Mary--Proposal for a General Council--Neutrality of England in the war between France and the Empire. Human nature is said to be the same in all ages and countries. Manners, if it be so, signally vary. Among us, when a wife dies, some decent interval is allowed before her successor is spoken of. The execution for adultery of a Queen about whom all Europe had been so long and so keenly agitated might have been expected to be followed by a pause. No pause, however, ensued after the fall of Anne Boleyn. If Henry had been the most interesting and popular of contemporary princes, there could not have been greater anxiety to secure his vacant hand. Had he been the most pious of Churchmen, the Pope could not have made greater haste to approach him with offers of friendship. There was no waiting even for the result of the trial. No sooner was it known that Anne had been committed to the Tower for adultery than the result was anticipated as a certainty. It was assumed as a matter of course that the King would instantly look for another wife, and Francis and the Emperor lost not a moment in trying each to be beforehand with the other. M. d'Inteville had come over to intercede for Sir Francis Weston, but he brought a commission to treat for a marriage between Henry and a French princess. To this overture the King replied at once that it could not be, and, according to Chapuys, added ungraciously, and perhaps with disgust, that he had experienced already the effects of French education.[429] The words, perhaps, were used to Cromwell, and not to the French Ambassador; but Chapuys was hardly less surprised when Cromwell, in reporting them, coolly added that the King could not marry out of the realm, because, if a French princess misconducted herself, they could not punish her as they had punished the last.[430] The Ambassador did not understand irony, and was naturally startled, for he had received instructions to make a similar application on behalf of his own master. Charles was eager to secure the prize, and, anticipating Anne's fate, he despatched a courier to Chapuys on hearing of her arrest, with orders to seize the opportunity. "If Hannaert's news be true," he wrote on the 15th of May, the day of the trial at Westminster, "the King, now that God has permitted this woman's damnable life to be discovered, may be more inclined to treat with us, and there may be a better foundation for an arrangement in favour of the Princess. But you must use all your skill to prevent a marriage with France. The King should rather choose one of his own subjects, either the lady for whom he has already shown a preference or some other." So far Charles had written when Chapuys's messenger arrived with later news. "George has just come," the Emperor then continued, "and I have heard from him what has passed about the Concubine. It is supposed that she and the partners of her guilt will be executed, and that the King, being of amorous complexion and anxious, as he has always pretended, for a male heir, will now marry immediately. Overtures will certainly be made to him from France. You will endeavour, either as of yourself or through Cromwell, to arrange a match for him with the Infanta of Portugal, my niece, who has a settlement by will of 400,000 ducats. Simultaneously you will propose another marriage between the Princess Mary and the Infant of Portugal, Don Louis, my brother-in-law. You will point out that these alliances will remove past unpleasantness, and will unite myself, the King, and our respective countries. You will show the advantage that will accrue to the realm of England should a Prince be the result, and we may reasonably hope that it will be so, the Infanta being young and well nurtured. If you find the King disinclined to this marriage, you may propose my niece, the Duchess Dowager of Milan, a beautiful young lady with a good dowry."[431] On the same 15th of May Granvelle, no less eager, wrote to Chapuys also. "M. l'Ambassadeur, my good brother and friend, I have received your letters and have heard what your messenger had to tell me. You have done well to keep us informed about the Concubine. It is indeed fine music and food for laughter.[432] God is revealing the iniquity of those from whom so much mischief has risen. We must make our profit of it, and manage matters as the Emperor directs. Use all your diligence and dexterity. Immense advantage will follow, public and private. You will yourself not fail of your reward for your true and faithful services."[433] So anxious was Charles for fresh matrimonial arrangements with Henry, that he wrote again to the same purpose three days later--a strange wish if he believed Catherine to have been murdered, or her successor to be on the eve of execution because the King was tired of her. To Charles and Granvelle, as to Chapuys himself, the unfortunate Anne was the English Messalina. The Emperor and all the contemporary world saw in her nothing but a wicked woman at last detected and brought to justice.[434] What came of these advances will be presently seen; but, before proceeding, a glance must be given at the receipt of the intelligence of Anne's fall at the Holy See. This also was _chose de rire_. Chapuys had sent to Rome in the past winter a story that Henry had said Anne Boleyn had bewitched him. The Pope had taken it literally, and had supposed that when the witch was removed the enchantment would end. He sent for Sir Gregory Casalis on the 17th of May, and informed him of what he had heard from England. He said that he had always recognised the many and great qualities of the King; and those qualities he did not doubt would now show themselves, as he had been relieved from his unfortunate marriage. Let the King reattach himself to Holy Church and take the Pope for an ally; they could then give the law both to the Emperor and to the King of France, and the entire glory of restoring peace to Christendom would attach to Henry himself. The King, he said, had no cause to regard him as an enemy; for he had always endeavored to be his friend. In the matrimonial cause he had remonstrated in private with his predecessor. At Bologna he had argued for four hours with the Emperor, trying to persuade him that the King ought not to be interfered with.[435] Never had he desired to offend the King, although so many violent acts had been done in England against the Holy See. He had made the Bishop of Rochester a cardinal solely with a view to the General Council, and because the Bishop had written a learned book against Luther. On the Bishop's execution, he had been compelled to say and do certain things, but he had never intended to give effect to them. If the Pope had thought the King to have been right in his divorce suit, it was not easy to understand why he had excommunicated him and tried to deprive him of his crown because he had disobeyed a judgment thus confessed to have been unjust. Casalis asked him if he was to communicate what he had said to the King. The Pope, after reflecting a little, said that Casalis might communicate it as of himself; that he might tell the King that the Pope was well-disposed towards him, and that he might expect every favour from the Pope. Casalis wrote in consequence that on the least hint that the King desired a reconciliation, a Nuncio would be sent to England to do everything that could be found possible; after the many injuries which he had received, opinion at Rome would not permit the Pope to make advances until he was assured that they would be well received; but some one would be sent in Casalis's name bringing credentials from his Holiness. Never since the world began was a dastardly assassination, if Anne Boleyn was an innocent woman, rewarded with so universal a solicitation for the friendship of the assassin. In England the effect was the same. Except by the Lutherans, Anne had been universally hated, and the king was regarded with the respectful compassion due to a man who had been cruelly injured. The late marriage had been tolerated out of hope for the birth of the Prince who was so passionately longed for. Even before the discovery of Anne's conduct, a considerable party, with the Princess Mary among them, had desired to see the King separated from her and married to some other respectable woman. Jane Seymour had been talked about as a steady friend of Catherine, and, when Catherine was gone, of the Princess. The King had paid her attentions which, if Chapuys's stories were literally true--as probably they were not--had been of a marked kind. In all respects she was the opposite of Anne. She had plain features, pale complexion, a low figure--in short, had no personal beauty, or any pretensions to it, with nothing in her appearance to recommend her, except her youth. She was about twenty-five years of age. She was not witty either, or brilliant; but she was modest, quiet, with a strong understanding and rectitude of principle, and, so far as her age and her opportunities allowed, she had taken Mary's part at the court. Perhaps this had recommended her to Henry. Whether he had himself ever seriously thought of dismissing Anne and inviting Jane Seymour to take her place is very dubious; nor has anyone a right to suppose that under such conditions Jane Seymour would have regarded such a proposal as anything but an insult. How soon after the detection of Anne's crime the intention was formed is equally uncertain.[436] Every person at home and abroad regarded it as obvious that he must marry some one, and marry at once. He himself professed to be unwilling, "unless he was constrained by his subjects." In Chapuys's letters, truth and lies are so intermixed that all his personal stories must be received with distrust. Invariably, however, he believed and reported the most scandalous rumours which he could hear. Everybody, he said, rejoiced at the execution of the _putaine_; but there were some who spoke variously of the King. He had heard, from good authority, that in a conversation which passed between Mistress Seymour and the King before the arrest of the Concubine, the lady urged him to restore the Princess to the court. The King told her she was a fool; she ought to be thinking more of the children which they might expect of their own, than of the elevation of the other. The lady replied that in soliciting for the Princess, she was consulting for the good of the King, of herself, of her children should she have any, and of all the realm, as, without it, the English nation would never be satisfied. Such a conversation is not in itself likely to have been carried on _before_ Anne's arrest, and certainly not where it could be overheard by others; especially as Chapuys admitted that the King said publicly he would not marry anyone unless the Parliament invited him. One would like to know what the trustworthy authority might have been. Unfortunately for the veracity of his informant, he went on with an account of the King's personal behaviour, the accuracy of which can be tested. "People," he said, "had found it strange that the King, after having received such ignominy, should have gone about at such a time banqueting with ladies, sometimes remaining after midnight, and returning by the river, accompanied by music and the singers of his chamber. He supped lately," the Ambassador continued, "with several ladies at the house of the Bishop of Carlisle, and showed extravagant joy." The Bishop came the next morning to tell Chapuys of the visit, and added a story of the King having said that he had written a tragedy on Anne's conduct which he offered the Bishop to read.[437] Of John Kite, the Bishop of Carlisle, little is known, save that Sir William Kingston said he used to play "penny gleek" with him. But it happens that a letter exists, written on the same day as Chapuys's, which describes Henry's conduct at precisely the same period. John Husee, the friend and agent of Lord Lisle, was in London on some errand from his employer. His business required him to speak to the King, and he said that he had been unable to obtain admittance, the King having remained in strict seclusion from the day of Anne's arrest to her execution. "His Grace," Husee wrote, "came not abroad this fortnight, except it was in the garden or in his boat, when it may become no man to interrupt him. Now that this matter is past I hope to see him."[438] Chapuys was very clever; he may be believed, with limitations, when writing on business or describing conversations of his own with particular persons; but so malicious was he, and so careless in his matters of fact or probability, that he cannot be believed at all when reporting scandalous anecdotes which reached him from his "trustworthy authorities." It is, however, true that, before the fortnight had expired, the King had resolved to do what the Council recommended--marry Jane Seymour, and marry her promptly, to close further solicitation from foreign Powers. There is no sign that she had herself sought so questionable an elevation. A powerful party in the State wished her to accept a position which could have few attractions, and she seems to have acquiesced without difficulty. Francis and Charles were offering their respective Princesses; the readiest way to answer them without offence was to place the so much coveted hand out of the reach of either. On the 20th of May, the morning after Anne was beheaded, Jane Seymour was brought secretly by water to the palace at Westminster, and was then and there formally betrothed to the King. The marriage followed a few days later. On Ascension Day, the 25th of May, the King, in rejecting the offered match from Francis, said that he was not then actually married. On the 29th or 30th, Jane was formally introduced as Queen. Chapuys was disappointed in his expectation of popular displeasure. Not a murmur was heard to break the expression of universal satisfaction. The new Queen was a general favourite; everyone knew that she was a friend of the Princess Mary, and everyone desired to see Mary replaced in her rights. Fortunately for the Princess, the attempt at escape had never been carried out. She had remained quietly watching the overthrow of her enemy, and trusting the care of her fortunes to Cromwell, who, she knew, had always been her advocate. She had avoided writing to him to intercede for her, because, as she said, "I perceived that nobody dared speak for me as long as that woman lived who is now gone, whom God in his mercy forgive!"[439] The time had now come for her to be received back into favour. Submission of some kind it would be necessary for her to make; and the form in which it was to be done was the difficulty. The King could not replace in the line of the succession a daughter who was openly defying the law. Cromwell drew for Mary a sketch of a letter which he thought would be sufficient. It was to acknowledge that she had offended her father, to beg his blessing and his forgiveness, and to promise obedience for the future, to congratulate him on his marriage, and to ask permission to wait on the new Queen. He showed the draft to Chapuys, for the Princess to transcribe and send. Chapuys objected that the surrender was too absolute. Cromwell said that he might alter it if he pleased, and a saving clause was introduced, not too conspicuous. She was to promise to submit in all things "under God." In this form, apparently, the letter was despatched, and was said to have given great satisfaction both to Henry and the new Queen. Now it was thought that Mary would be restored to her rank as Princess. She would be excluded from the succession only if a son or daughter should be born of the new marriage; but this did not alarm Chapuys, for "according to the opinion of many," he said, "there was no fear of any issue of either sex." On Ascension Day, the Ambassador had been admitted to an audience, the first since the unprosperous discussion at Greenwich. The subject of the treaty with the Emperor had been renewed under more promising auspices. The King had been gracious. Chapuys had told him that the Emperor desired to explain and justify the actions of which the King had complained; but before entering on a topic which might renew unpleasant feelings, he said that the Emperor had instructed him to consult the King's wishes; and he undertook to conform to them. The King listened with evident satisfaction; and a long talk followed, in the course of which the Ambassador introduced the various proposals which the Emperor had made for fresh matrimonial connections. The King said that Chapuys was a bringer of good news; his own desire was to see a union of all Christian princes; if the Emperor was in earnest, he hoped that he would furnish the Ambassador with the necessary powers to negotiate, or would send a plenipotentiary for that particular purpose. The offer of the Infanta of Portugal for the King himself was, of course, declined, the choice being already made; but Cromwell said afterwards that Don Luis might perhaps be accepted for the Princess, the position of the Princess being the chief point on which the stability of all other arrangements must depend. As to the "General Council," it was not to be supposed that the King wanted to set up "a God of his own," or to separate himself from the rest of Christendom. He was as anxious as any one for a Council, but it must be a Council called by the Emperor as chief of Christian Europe. It is to be observed that Henry, as Head of the Church of England, took upon himself the entire ordering of what was or was not to be. Even the form of consulting the clergy was not so much as thought of. Chapuys could not answer for as much indifference on the Emperor's part. The Council, he thought, must be left in the Pope's hand at the outset. The Council itself, when it assembled, could do as it pleased. He suggested, however, that Cromwell should put in writing his conception of the manner in which a Council could be called by the Emperor, which Cromwell promised to do. All things were thus appearing to run smooth. Four days later, when the marriage with Jane Seymour had been completed, Chapuys saw Henry again. The King asked him if he had heard further from the Emperor. Chapuys was able to assent. Charles's eager letters had come in by successive posts, and one had just arrived in which he had expressed his grief and astonishment at the conduct of Anne Boleyn, had described how he had spoken to his own Council about the woman's horrible ingratitude, and had himself offered thanks to God for having discovered the conspiracy, and saved the King from so great a danger. Henry made graceful acknowledgments, replied most politely on the offer of the Infanta, for which he said he was infinitely obliged to the Emperor, and conducted the Ambassador into another room to introduce him to the Queen. Chapuys was all courtesy. At Henry's desire he kissed and congratulated Jane. The Emperor, he said, would be delighted that the King had found so good and virtuous a wife. He assured her that the whole nation was united in rejoicing at her marriage. He recommended the Princess to her care, and hoped that she would have the honourable name of peacemaker. The King answered for her that this was her nature. She would not for the world that he went to war. Chapuys was aware that Henry was not going to war on the side of Francis--that danger had passed; but that he would not go to war at all was not precisely what Chapuys wished to hear. What Charles wanted was Henry's active help against the French. The fourth condition of the proposed treaty was an alliance offensive and defensive. Henry merely said he would mediate, and, if France would not agree to reasonable terms, he would then declare for the Emperor.[440] The Emperor, like many other persons, had attributed the whole of Henry's conduct to the attractions of Anne Boleyn. He had supposed that after his eyes had been opened he would abandon all that he had done, make his peace with the Pope, and return to his old friends with renewed heartiness. He was surprised and disappointed. Mediation would do no good at all, he said. If the King would join him against France, the Emperor would undertake to make no peace without including him, and would take security for the honour and welfare of the realm. But he declined to quarrel with the Pope to please the King; and if the King would not return to the obedience of the Holy See or submit his differences with the Pope to the Emperor and the Council, he said that he could make no treaty at all with him. He directed Chapuys, however, to continue to discuss the matter in a friendly way, to gain time till it could be seen how events would turn.[441] How events did turn is sufficiently well known. The war broke out--the French invaded Italy; the Emperor, unable to expel them, turned upon Provence, where he failed miserably with the loss of the greater part of his army. Henry took no part. The state of Europe was considered at length before the English Council. Chapuys was heard, and the French Ambassador was heard; and the result was a declaration of neutrality--the only honourable and prudent course where the choice lay between two faithless friends who, if the King had committed himself to either, would have made up their own quarrels at England's expense. CHAPTER XXIV. Expectation that Henry would return to the Roman Communion--Henry persists in carrying out the Reformation--The Crown and the clergy--Meeting of a new Parliament--Fresh repudiation of the Pope's authority--Complications of the succession--Attitude of the Princess Mary--Her reluctant submission--The King empowered to name his successor by will--Indication of his policy--The Pilgrimage of Grace--Cost of the Reformation--The martyrs, Catholic and Protestant. Whether Henry, on the exposure of the character of the woman for whom, in the world's union, he had quarrelled with Rome and broken the union of Christendom, would now reverse his course and return to the communion of the Apostolic See, was the question on which all minds were exercising themselves. The Pope and the European Powers were confident, believing the reports which had reached them of the discontent in England. Cranmer feared it, as he almost confessed in the letter which he wrote to the King when he first heard of the arrest of Anne. She had been conspicuously Lutheran; her family and her party were Lutheran, and the disgrace might naturally extend to the cause which they represented. The King was to show that he had not, as he said himself, "proceeded on such light grounds." The divorce had been the spark which kindled the mine; but the explosive force was in the temper of the English nation. The English nation was weary of a tribunal which sold its decrees for money, or allowed itself to be used as a tool by the Continental Sovereigns. It was weary of the iniquities of its own Church Courts, which had plundered rich and poor at their arbitrary pleasure--of a clergy which, protected by the immunities which Becket had won for them, and restrained by no laws save those which they themselves allowed, had made their lives a scandal and their profession an offence. The property which had been granted them in pious confidence for holy uses was squandered in luxurious self-indulgence; and they had replied to the reforms which were forced upon them by disloyalty and treason. They had been coerced into obedience; they had been brought under the control of the law, punished for their crimes in spite of their sacred calling under which they had claimed exemption, and been driven into the position of ordinary citizens. Their prelates were no longer able to seize and burn _ex officio_ obnoxious preachers, or imprison or ruin under the name of heretics rash persons who dared to speak the truth of them. In exasperation at the invasion of these time-honoured privileges, they denounced as sacrilege the statutes which had been required to restrain them. They had conspired to provoke the Pope to excommunicate their Sovereign, and solicited the Catholic Powers to invade their country and put the Reformers down with fire and sword. The King, who had been the instrument of their beneficent humiliation, did not intend either to submit the internal interests of the country to the authority of a foreign bishop, or to allow the black regiments at home to recover the power which they had so long abused. Cromwell's commissioners were still busy on the visitation of the religious houses. Each day brought in fresh reports of their condition. These communities, supposed to be special servants of God, had become special servants of the Devil. The eagerness with which the Pope solicited Henry's return, the assurance that he had always been his friend--had always maintained that Henry was right in the divorce case, when he had a Bull ready in his desk taking his crown from him--was in itself sufficient evidence of the fitness of such a ruler to be the Supreme Judge in Christendom. Just as little could the Emperor be trusted, whose affectations of friendship were qualified by secret reservations. The King had undertaken a great and beneficent work in his own realm and meant to go through with it. The Pope might do as he pleased. The Continental Princes might quarrel or make peace, hold their Councils, settle as they liked their own affairs, in their own way; England was sufficient for herself. He had called his people under arms; he had fortified the coasts; he had regenerated the navy. The nation, or the nobler part of it, he believed to be loyal to himself--to approve what he had done and to be ready to stand by him. He was not afraid of attack from abroad. If there was a rebellious spirit at home, if the clergy were mutinous because the bit was in their mouths, if the Peers of the old blood were alarmed at the growth of religious liberty and were discontented because they could no longer deal with it in the old way, the King was convinced that he was acting for the true interests of the country, that Parliament would uphold him, and that he could control both the ecclesiastics and the nobles. The world should see that the reforms which he had introduced into England were not the paltry accidents of a domestic scandal, but the first steps of a revolution deliberately resolved on and sternly carried out which was to free the island for ever from the usurped authority of an Italian Prelate, and from the poisonous influences within the realm of a corrupt and demoralising superstition. The call of Parliament after Anne's execution was the strongest evidence of confidence in his people which Henry had yet given. He had much to acknowledge and much to ask. He had to confess that, although he had been right in demanding a separation from his brother's wife, he had fatally mistaken the character of the woman whom he had chosen to take her place. The succession which he had hoped to establish he had made more intricate than before. He had now three children, all technically illegitimate. The Duke of Richmond was the son of the only mistress with whom he was ever known to have been really connected. The Duke was now eighteen years old. He had been educated as a Prince, but had no position recognised by the law. Elizabeth's mother had acknowledged to having committed herself before her marriage with the King, and many persons doubted whether Elizabeth was the King's true daughter. Mary's claim was justly considered as the best, for, though her mother's marriage had been declared illegal, she had been born _bonâ fide parentum_. What Parliament would do in such extraordinary circumstances could not be foreseen with any certainty, and the elections had to be made with precipitancy and without time for preparation. The writs were issued on the 7th of May. The meeting was to be on the 8th of June. The Crown could influence or control the elections at some particular places. At Canterbury Cromwell named the representatives who were to be chosen,[442] as, till the Reform Bill of 1832, they continued to be named by the patrons of boroughs. Yet it would be absurd to argue from single instances that the Crown could do what it pleased. Even with leisure to take precautions and with the utmost exercise of its powers, it could only affect the returns, in the great majority of the constituencies, through the Peers and landowners, and the leading citizens in the corporations. With only four weeks to act in, a Queen to try and execute, and a King to marry in the interval, no ingenuity and no industry could have sufficed to secure a House of Commons whose subserviency could be counted on, if subserviency was what the King required. It is clear only that, so far as concerned the general opinion of the country, the condemnation of Anne Boleyn had rather strengthened than impaired his popularity. As Queen she had been feared and disliked. Her punishment was regarded as a creditable act of justice, and the King was compassionated as a sufferer from abominable ingratitude. Little is known in detail of the proceedings of this Parliament. The Acts remain: the debates are lost. The principal difficulties with which it had to deal concerned Anne's trial and the disposition of the inheritance of the Crown. On the matter of real importance, on the resolution of King and Legislature to go forward with the Reformation, all doubts were promptly dispelled. An Act was passed without opposition reasserting the extinction of the Pope's authority, and another taking away the protection of sanctuary from felonious priests. The succession was a harder problem. Day after day it had been debated in the Council. Lord Sussex had proposed that, as all the children of the King were illegitimate, the male should be preferred to the female and the crown be settled on the Duke of Richmond.[443] Richmond was personally liked. He resembled his father in appearance and character, and the King himself was supposed to favour this solution. With the outer world the favourite was the Princess Mary. Both she and her mother were respected for a misfortune which was not due to faults of theirs, and the Princess was the more endeared by the danger to which she was believed to have been exposed through the machinations of Anne. The new Queen was her strongest advocate, and the King's affection for her had not been diminished even when she had tried him the most. He could not have been ignorant of her correspondence with Chapuys: he probably knew that she had wished to escape out of the realm, and that the Pope, who was now suing to him, had meant to bestow his own crown upon her. But her qualities were like his own, tough and unmalleable, and in the midst of his anger he had admired her resolution. Every one expected that she would be restored to her rank after Anne's death. The King had apparently been satisfied with her letter to him. Cromwell was her friend, and Chapuys, who had qualified her submission, was triumphant and confident. He was led to expect that an Act would be introduced declaring her the next heir--nay, he had thought that such an Act had been passed. Unfortunately for him the question of her acknowledgment of the Act of Supremacy was necessarily revived. Had she or had she not accepted it? The Act had been imposed, with the Statute of Treasons attached, as a test of loyalty to the Reformation. It was impossible to place her nearest to the throne as long as she refused obedience to a law essential to the national independence. To refuse was to confess of a purpose of undoing her father's work, should he die and the crown descend to her. She had supposed that "she was out of her trouble" while she had saved her conscience by the reservation in her submission. Chapuys found her again "in extreme perplexity and anger." The reservation had been observed. The Duke of Norfolk, Lord Sussex, a Bishop, and other Privy Councillors, had come with a message to her, like those which had been so often carried ineffectually to her mother, to represent the necessity of obedience. Chapuys said that she had confounded them with her wise answers, and that, when they could not meet her arguments, they "told her that, if she was their daughter, they would knock her head against the wall till it was as soft as a baked apple." In passing through Mary and through Chapuys the words, perhaps, received some metaphorical additions. It is likely enough, however, that Norfolk, who was supporting her claims with all his power, was irritated at the revival of the old difficulties which he had hoped were removed. The Princess "in her extreme necessity" wrote for advice to the Ambassador. The Emperor was no longer in a condition to threaten, and to secure Mary's place as next in the succession was of too vital importance to the Imperialists to permit them to encourage her in scruples of conscience. Chapuys answered frankly that, if the King persisted, she must do what he required. The Emperor had distinctly said so. Her life was precious, she must hide her real feelings till a time came for the redress of the disorders of the realm. Nothing was demanded of her expressly against God or the Articles of Faith, and God looked to intentions rather than acts. Mary still hesitated. She had the Tudor obstinacy, and she tried her will against her father's. The King was extremely angry. He had believed that she had given way and that the troubles which had distracted his family were at last over. He had been exceptionally well-disposed towards her. He had probably decided to be governed by the wishes of the people and to appoint her by statute presumptive heir, and she seemed determined to make it impossible for him. He suspected that she was being secretly encouraged. To defend her conduct, as Cromwell ventured to do, provoked him the more, for he felt, truly, that to give way was to abandon the field. Lady Hussey was sent to the Tower; Lord Exeter and Sir William Fitzwilliam were suspended from attendance on the Council; and even Cromwell, for four or five days, counted himself a lost man. Jane Seymour interceded in vain. To refuse to acknowledge the supremacy was treason, and had been made treason for ample reason. Mary, as the first subject in the realm, could not be allowed to deny it. Henry sent for the Judges, to consider what was to be done, and the Court was once more in terror. The Judges advised that a strict form of submission should be drawn, and that the Princess should be required to sign it. If she persisted in her refusal, she would then be liable to the law. The difficulty was overcome, or evaded, in a manner characteristic of the system to which Mary so passionately adhered. Chapuys drew a secret protest that, in submitting, she was yielding only to force. Thus guarded, he assured her that her consent would not be binding, that the Pope would not only refrain from blaming her, but would highly approve. She was still unsatisfied, till she made him promise to write to the Imperial Ambassador at Rome to procure a secret absolution from the Pope for the full satisfaction of her conscience. Thus protected, she disdainfully set her name to the paper prepared by the Judges, without condescending to read it, and the marked contempt, in Chapuys's opinion, would serve as an excuse for her in the future.[444] While the crisis lasted the Council were in permanent session. Timid Peers were alarmed at the King's peremptoriness, and said that it might cost him his throne. The secret process by which Mary had been brought to yield may have been conjectured, and her resistance was not forgotten, but she had signed what was demanded, and it was enough. In the Court there was universal delight. Chapuys congratulated Cromwell, and Cromwell led him to believe that the crown would be settled as he wished. The King and Queen drove down to Richmond to pay the Princess a visit. Henry gave her a handsome present of money and said that now she might have anything that she pleased. The Queen gave her a diamond. She was to return to the court and resume her old station. One cloud only remained. If it was generally understood that the heir presumptive in her heart detested the measures in which she had formally acquiesced, the country could no longer be expected to support a policy which would be reversed on the King's death. Mary's conduct left little doubt of her real feelings, and therefore it was not held to be safe to give her by statute the position which her friends desired for her. The facility with which the Pope could dispense with inconvenient obligations rendered a verbal acquiescence an imperfect safeguard. Parliament, therefore, did not, after all, entail the crown upon her, in the event of the King's present marriage being unfruitful, but left her to deserve it and empowered the King to name his own successor. Chapuys, however, was able to console himself with the reflection that the Bastard, as he called Elizabeth, was now out of the question. The Duke of Richmond was ill--sinking under the same weakness of constitution which had been so fatal in the Tudor family and of which he, in fact, died a few weeks later. The prevailing opinion was that the King could never have another child. Mary's prospects, therefore, were tolerably "secure. I must admit," Chapuys wrote on the 8th of July, "that her treatment improves every day. She never had so much liberty as now, or was served with so much state even by the little Bastard's waiting-women. She will want nothing in future but the name of Princess of Wales,[445] and that is of no consequence, for all the rest she will have more abundantly than before." Mary, in fact, now wanted nothing save the Pope's pardon for having abjured his authority. Chapuys had undertaken that it would be easily granted. The Emperor had himself asked for it, yet not only could not Cifuentes obtain the absolution, but he did not so much as dare to speak to Paul on the subject. The absolution for the murder of an Archbishop of Dublin had been bestowed cheerfully and instantly on Fitzgerald. Mary was left with perjury on her conscience, and no relief could be had. There appeared to be some technical difficulty. "Unless she retracted and abjured in the presence of the persons before whom she took the oath, it was said that the Pope's absolution would be of no use to her." There was, perhaps, another objection. Cifuentes imperfectly trusted Paul. He feared that if he pressed the request the secret would be betrayed and that Mary's life would be in danger.[446] Time, perhaps, and reflection alleviated Mary's remorse and enabled her to dispense with the Papal anodyne, while Cromwell further comforted the Ambassador in August by telling him that the King felt he was growing old, that he was hopeless of further offspring, and was thinking seriously of making Mary his heir after all.[447] Age the King could not contend with, but for the rest he had carried his policy through. The first act of the Reformation was closing, and he was left in command of the situation. The curtain was to rise again with the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire rebellion, to be followed by the treason of the Poles. But there is no occasion to tell a story over again which I can tell no better than I have done already, nor does it belong to the subject of the present volume. The Pilgrimage of Grace was the outbreak of the conspiracy encouraged by Chapuys to punish Henry, and to stop the progress of the Reformation; Chapuys's successors in the time of Elizabeth followed his example; and with them all the result was the same--the ruin of the cause which with such weapons they were trying to maintain, and the deaths on the scaffold of the victims of visionary hopes and promises which were never to be made good. All the great persons whom Chapuys names as willing to engage in the enterprise--the Peers, the Knights, who, with the least help from the Emperor, would hurl the King from his throne, Lord Darcy and Lord Hussey, the Bishop of Rochester, as later on, the Marquis of Exeter, Lord Montague, and his mother--sank one after another into bloody graves. They mistook their imaginations for facts, their passions for arguments, and the vain talk of an unscrupulous Ambassador for solid ground on which to venture into treason. In their dreams they saw the phantom of the Emperor coming over with an army to help them. Excited as they had been, they could not part with their hopes. They knew that they were powerful in numbers. Their preparations had been made, and many thousands of clergy and gentlemen and yeomen had been kindled into crusading enthusiasm. The flame burst out sporadically and at intervals, without certain plan or purpose, at a time when the Emperor could not help them, even if he had ever seriously intended it, and thus the conflagration, which at first blazed through all the northern counties, was extinguished before it turned to civil war. The common people who had been concerned in it suffered but lightly. But the roots had penetrated deep; the conspiracy was of long standing; the intention of the leaders was to carry out the Papal censures, and put down what was called heresy. The rising was really formidable, for the loyalty of many of the great nobles was not above suspicion, and, if not promptly dealt with, it might have enveloped the whole island. Those who rise in arms against Governments must take the consequences of failure, and the leaders who had been the active spirits in the sedition were inexorably punished. In my History of the time I have understated the number of those who were executed. Care was taken to select only those who had been definitely prominent. Nearly three hundred were hanged in all--in batches of twenty-five or thirty, in each of the great northern cities; and, to emphasize the example and to show that the sacerdotal habit would no longer protect treason, the orders were to select particularly the priests and friars who had been engaged. The rising was undertaken in the name of religion. The clergy had been the most eager of the instigators. Chapuys had told the Emperor that of all Henry's subjects the clergy were the most disaffected, and the most willing to supply money for an invasion. They were therefore legitimately picked out for retribution, and in Lincoln, York, Hull, Doncaster, Newcastle, and Carlisle, the didactic spectacle was witnessed of some scores of reverend persons swinging for the crows to eat in the sacred dress of their order. A severe lesson was required to teach a superstitious world that the clerical immunities existed no longer and that priests who broke the law would suffer like common mortals; but it must be clearly understood that, if these men could have had their way, the hundreds who suffered would have been thousands, and the victims would have been the poor men who were looking for a purer faith in the pages of the New Testament. When we consider the rivers of blood which were shed elsewhere before the Protestant cause could establish itself, the real wonder is the small cost in human life of the mighty revolution successfully accomplished by Henry. With him, indeed, Chapuys must share the honour. The Catholics, if they had pleased, might have pressed their objections and their remonstrances in Parliament; and a nation as disposed for compromise as the English might have mutilated the inevitable changes. Chapuys's counsels tempted them into more dangerous and less pardonable roads. By encouraging them in secret conspiracies he made them a menace to the peace of the realm. He brought Fisher to the block. He forced the Government to pass the Act of Supremacy as a defence against treason, and was thus the cause also of the execution of Sir Thomas More and the Charterhouse Monks. To Chapuys, perhaps, and to his faithful imitators later in the century--De Quadra and Mendoza--the country owes the completeness of the success of the Reformation. It was a battle fought out gallantly between two principles--a crisis in the eternal struggle between the old and the new. The Catholics may boast legitimately of their martyrs. But the Protestants have a martyrology longer far and no less honourable, and those who continue to believe that the victory won in England in the sixteenth century was a victory of right over wrong, have no need to blush for the actions of the brave men who, in the pulpit or in the Council Chamber, on the scaffold or at the stake, won for mankind the spiritual liberty which is now the law of the world. Footnotes: [1] _Calendar of State Papers, Hen. VIII., Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. Introduction, p. 223. [2] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic, Hen. VIII._, vol. iv. p. 1112.--Hen. VIII. to Clement VII., Oct. 23, 1526.--_Ib._ p. 1145. Giberto to Gambara, Dec. 20, 1526.--_Ib._ p. 1207. [3] Giberto, Bishop of Verona, to Wolsey, Feb. 10, 1527.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. pp. 1282-3. [4] Giberto, Bishop of Verona, to Wolsey, Feb. 10, 1527.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, April 26, 1527, vol. iv. p. 1386. [5] Inigo de Mendoza to the Emperor, Jan. 19, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. pt. 2, p. 24. [6] Alonzo Sanchez to Charles V., May 7, 1527.--_Ib._ p. 176. [7] Mendoza to Charles V., March 18, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 110. [8] Report from England, Nov. 10, 1531.--_Venetian Calendar._ Falieri arrived in England in 1528, and the general parts of the Report cover the intervening period. [9] Inigo de Mendoza to Charles V., May 18, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 193. [10] Lope de Soria to Charles V., May 25, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 209. [11] Mendoza to Charles V., July 13, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. ii. part 2, p. 276. [12] _Ib._ vol. iii. part 2, p. 273. [13] Andrea Navagero to the Signory, July 17, 1527.--_Venetian Calendar._ [14] Mendoza to Charles V., July 17, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar._ [15] Wolsey to Henry VIII., July 5.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2. Bishop Fisher to Paul, _ibid._, p. 1471. [16] Charles V. to Inigo de Mendoza, July 29.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 1500. [17] _Ibid._ [18] Charles V. to Mendoza, Sept. 30, 1527.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 1569. [19] The Emperor to the Cardinal of York, Aug. 31, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 357. [20] Wolsey to Henry VIII., Aug. --, 1527.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2. [21] The Cardinals of France to Clement VII., Sept. 16, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 383. [22] Mendoza to Charles V., Aug. 16, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 327. [23] The date of Henry's resolution to marry Anne is of some consequence, since the general assumption is that it was the origin of the divorce. Rumour, of course, said so afterwards, but there is no evidence for it. The early love-letters written by the King to her are assigned by Mr. Brewer to the midsummer of 1527. But they are undated, and therefore the period assigned to them is conjecture merely. [24] Mendoza to Charles V., Oct. 26, 1527.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 432. [25] _Ibid._ [26] Knight to Henry VIII., Dec. 4.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 1633-4. [27] I follow Mr. Brewer's translation. [28] 1. When he says, "It is thought," let him be examined whom he ever heard say any such thing of the King. 2. Where, when, and why he spoke those words to Sir Wm. Essex and Sir Wm. Barentyne. 3. Whether he communicated the matter to any other. 5, 6. Whether he thought the words true and why. 7, 8. Whether he did not think the words very slanderous to any man's good name. 10, 15. Whether he thinks such reports conducive to the peace of the Commonwealth, or fitting for a true subject to spread.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, 1537, p. 333. [29] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 1672. [30] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 1672. [31] Casalis to Wolsey, January 13, 1528.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 1694. [32] Three foreigners held English sees, not one of which either of them had probably ever visited. Campeggio was Bishop of Salisbury; Ghinucci, the auditor of the Rota, was Bishop of Worcester; and Catherine's Spanish confessor, who had come with her to England, was Bishop of Llandaff. [33] Wolsey to Gardiner and Fox, February --, 1528.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 1740. [34] Embassy to the German Princes, January 5, 1534.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vii. p. 10. [35] Casalis to Peter Vannes, April, 1538.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 1842. [36] Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn, June or July, 1528.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 1960. [37] Eleanor Carey was the sister of Mary Boleyn's husband. [38] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv., Introduction, pp. 388-9. [39] The Emperor to Mendoza, July 5, 1528.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 728. [40] Mendoza to the Emperor, September 18, 1528.--_Ibid._ vol. iii. part 2, p. 788. [41] Charles V. to Queen Catherine, September 1, 1528.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 779. [42] Campeggio to Salviati and to Sanga, October 17, 1528.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 2099-2102. [43] Campeggio to Salviati, October 26, 1528.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 2108. [44] Campeggio to Sanga, Oct. 28.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. part 2, p. 2113. [45] Sanga to Campeggio, Dec. --, 1528.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. part 2, p. 2210. [46] Wolsey to Casalis, Nov. 1, 1528.--_Ib._ vol. iv. part 2, p. 2120. [47] Catherine to Charles V., Nov. 24, 1528.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 855. [48] Mendoza to Charles V., Dec. 2, 1528.--_Ib._ p. 862. Jan. 16, 1529.--_ib._ p. 878. [49] Sylvester Darius to Wolsey, Nov. 25, 1528.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 2126. [50] Du Bellay to Montmorency, Dec. 9, 1528.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 2177. [51] John Casalis to Wolsey, Dec. 17, 1528.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 2186. [52] Mendoza to Charles V., Feb. 4, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2. [53] Knight and Benet to Wolsey, Jan. 8, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. part 3, p. 2262. [54] Mai to Charles V., April 3, 1529,--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iii. part 2, p. 973. [55] Micer Mai to the Emperor, May 11, 1529.--_Ibid._ vol. iv. part 1, p. 20. [56] In Spanish the words are even more emphatically contemptuous: "Y que ennoramala que se curasen de sus bulas y de sus bellaquerias, si las querian dar ó no dar, y que no pongan lengua en los reyes y querir ser jueces de la subjeccion de los reynos." [57] Micer Mai to the Emperor, June 5, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 60. [58] Campeggio to Sanga, April 3, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2379. [59] Gardiner to Henry VIII., April 21.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2415. [60] Bryan to Henry VIII.--_Ibid._ p. 2418. [61] Wolsey to Gardiner, May 5, 1529.--_Ibid._ p. 2442. [62] Campeggio to Salviati, May 12, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, p. 2451. [63] Du Bellay to Montmorency, May 22, 1529.--_Ibid._ vol. iv. p. 2469. [64] _Ibid._ May 28, 1529, p. 2476-7. [65] The Duke of Suffolk to Henry VIII., June 4, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2491. [66] Sanga to Campeggio, May 29, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2479. [67] Casalis to Wolsey, June 13, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, pp. 2507-8. [68] Mendoza to Charles V., June 17, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 96. [69] Campeggio to Salviati, June 16, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2509. [70] Wolsey to Casalis, June 22, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2526. [71] "La mas necia y bellaca carta que se pudiera hacer en el Infierno." [72] Mai to Charles V., August 4, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, page 155 (abridged). [73] Same to the same, August 28.--_Ibid._ p. 182. [74] Benet, Casalis, and Vannes to Henry VIII.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. pp. 2567-8. [75] Campeggio to Salviati, June 29, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2538. [76] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2581. [77] Mai to Charles V., Sept. 3, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 195. [78] This was not an idle boast. A united army of French and English might easily have marched across the Alps; and nothing would have pleased Francis better than to have led such an army, with his brother of England at his side, to drive out the Emperor. [79] Wolsey to Benet, etc., July 27.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2591. [80] Paget to Petre.--_State Papers, Henry VIII._, vol. x. p. 466. [81] Chapuys to the Regent Margaret, Sept. 18, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 214. [82] Chapuys to Charles V., Sept. 2.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 225. [83] _Ibid._ p. 229. [84] Chapuys to Charles V., Sept. 2, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. vi. part 1, pp. 236-7. [85] _Ibid._ p. 236. [86] _Ibid._ p. 274. [87] Chapuys to Charles V., Sept. 2, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. vi. part 1, p. 294. [88] The transcripts of these documents were furnished to me by the late Sir Francis Palgrave, who was then Keeper of the Records. [89] Cardinal Wolsey and Lord Darcy, July 1, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. pp. 2548-62. [90] Du Bellay to Montmorency, Oct. 17, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. pt. 3, p. 2675. [91] Chapuys to the Emperor, Oct. 25, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 304. [92] Hen. VIII. to Campeggio, Oct. 22, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2677. [93] To Salviati, Nov. 5.--_Ibid._ p. 2702. [94] Hen. VIII. to Clement VII.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2660. [95] Casalis to Henry VIII., Dec. 26, 1529.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2722. [96] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 6, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 344. [97] _Ibid._ [98] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 6, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 351. [99] Charles V. to Ferdinand, Jan. 11, 1530.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2742. [100] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 9, 1529--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 359. [101] _Ibid._ p. 361. [102] _Ibid._ p. 366. [103] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 9, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 367. [104] _Ibid._ p. 368. [105] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 9, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 369. [106] Wolsey to Gardiner, Jan. 1530.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2763. [107] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 6, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. pp. 449-50. [108] Chapuys to Charles V. Jan. 31, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. p. 387. [109] Charles V. to Ferdinand, Jan. 11, 1530.--_Ibid._ vol. iv. part 1, pp. 405-6. [110] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 6, 1530.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol, iv. p. 2780. [111] Bishop of Tarbes to Francis I., from Bologna, March 27, 1530.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 2826. [112] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 31, 1529.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 394. [113] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 12, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 417. [114] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 20, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 436. [115] _Ibid._ April 23, 1530, p. 511. [116] Chapuys to Charles V., April 23, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 533. [117] _Ibid._ p. 600. [118] "J'ay reçeu lettres du medicin du Cardinal, par lesquelles il m'advertit que son maystre pour non sçavoir en quelles termes sont les affaires de la Reyne, il ne scauroit particulierement quel conseil donner et que estant informe, il y vouldroit donner conseil et addresse comme ce estoit pour gagner paradis. Car de la depend son bien, honneur et repoz, et qu'il lui semble pour maintenant que l'on debvroyt proceder a plus grandes censures et a la _invocation du bras seculier_. Car maintenant il n'y a nul nerf." [119] T. Arundel to Wolsey, Oct. 16, 1530.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 3013. [120] Chapuys to Charles V., Nov. 27, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 3035. [121] Anne Boleyn. [122] Chapuys to Charles V., July 11, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 630. [123] Mai to Charles V., Oct. 2 and Oct. 10, 1530.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. pp. 3002, 3009. [124] Answer of the Pope, Sept. 27, 1530.--_Ibid._ p. 2291. [125] Chapuys to Charles V., Sept. 4, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 707. [126] Chapuys to Charles, Sept. 20, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 726. [127] Chapuys to Charles V., Oct. 1, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 734. [128] Chapuys to Charles V., Oct. 1, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 734. [129] Chapuys to Charles V., Oct. 15, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 759. [130] Henry VIII. to Clement VII., Dec. 6, 1530.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. iv. p. 3055. [131] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 21, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 853. [132] _Ibid._ [133] Catherine to the Pope, Dec. 17, 1530.--_Ibid._ p. 855. [134] Catherine to the Pope, December 17, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 855. [135] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 1, 1531.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 10. [136] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 12. [137] Chapuys to Charles, Dec. 21, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 854. [138] Chapuys to Charles V., January 13, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 22. [139] Chapuys to Charles V., January 13, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 23. [140] _Ibid._ p. 26. [141] Muxetula to Charles V., Jan. 12, 1531.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 18. [142] Mai to Covos, Feb. 13, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 59. [143] Chapuys to the Emperor, Jan. 23, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 39. [144] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 14, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 63. [145] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 21, 1530.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 69; and _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 49. There are a few verbal differences between the two versions. [146] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 21, 1530.--_Ibid._ [147] Chapuys to Charles V., March 22, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 94. _Ibid._--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 68. [148] Micer Mai to Covos, March 28, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 105. Ortiz to the Archbishop of Santiago, April 11, 1531.--_Ibid._ p. 116. [149] Queen Catherine to the Emperor, April 5, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 112. [150] Micer Mai to Charles V., April 21, 1531.--_Ibid._ p. 130. [151] Chapuys to Charles V., April 2, 1531.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 83. [152] Micer Mai to Charles V., May 25, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 165. [153] Chapuys to Charles V., June 6, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 170. [154] Chapuys to Charles V., June 6, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 172. [155] Answer to the Papal Legate respecting the Cause of England, July, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 203. [156] Chapuys to Charles V., June 24, 1531.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. pp. 144-5. [157] The Emperor's Answer to the Legate, July 26, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 218. [158] Catherine's phrase for the excommunication of her husband. [159] Queen Catherine to Charles V., July 28.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 220. [160] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 239. [161] Chapuys to Charles V., January 4, 1532.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 335. [162] Chapuys to Charles V., October 1, 1531---_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 256. [163] Mai to Covos, Oct. 24, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 276. [164] _Ibid._ [165] Chapuys to Charles V., Oct. 16, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 263. [166] Catherine to Charles V., Nov. 6, 1531.--_Ib._ p. 279. I must remind the reader that I have to compress the substance both of this and many other letters. [167] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 4, 1531.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 320. [168] Mai to Charles V., Dec. 12.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 328. [169] Catherine to Charles V., Dec. 15, 1531.--_Ib._ p. 331. [170] Mai to the Emperor, Jan. 15, 1532--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 360. [171] Clement VII. to Henry VIII., Jan. 25, 1532.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 358. [172] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 368. [173] Henry VIII. to the Bishop of Durham, Feb. 24, 1532. Compressed.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 387. [174] Archbishop Warham, 1532.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 541. [175] _History of England_, vol. i. p. 322, etc. [176] Carlo Capello to the Signory, July 10, 1532.--_Venetian Calendar_, vol. iv. p. 342. [177] Chapuys to Charles V., May 13, 1532.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 446. [178] "Le Roy et son Conseil sçavoient bien qu'il y en avoient à faire sans vouloir mestre le chat entre les jambes dautres." Chapuys to the Emperor, Feb. 14, 1532.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 384; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 381. [179] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 28, 1532.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 392. [180] An address purporting to have been presented by Convocation on this occasion, not only complaining of the annates, but inviting a complete separation from the See of Rome, was perhaps no more than a draft submitted to the already sorely humiliated body, and not accepted by it.--_History of England_, vol. i. p. 332-3. The French Ambassador says distinctly that the clergy agreed to nothing, but their refusal was treated as of no consequence. [181] Chapuys to Charles V., May 22, 1532.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 476. [182] Maître d'hôtel to the Emperor, and Governor of Brescia. [183] Montfalconet to Charles V., May, 1532.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 479. [184] Chapuys to the Emperor, April 16, 1532.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 425. In 1499 Louis XII. repudiated his first wife, Jeanne de France, and married Anne of Brittany, widow of Charles VIII. [185] _Spanish Calendar_, vol iv. part 1, p. 447. [186] Ortiz to Charles V., May, 1532.--_Ibid._ p. 438. [187] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 539. [188] Ortiz to Charles V., July 28, 1532.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 486. [189] Ortiz to Charles V., July 28, 1532.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 414. [190] Ortiz to Charles V., July 28, 1532.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 469. [191] Charles V. to Mary of Hungary, Nov. 7, 1532.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 642. [192] Chapuys to Charles V., Oct. 1, 1532.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 592. [193] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 512. [194] Ortiz to the Emperor, Sept. 30, 1532.--_Ib._ p. 533. [195] Instructions to Cardinal Grammont and Tournon, Nov. 13, 1532.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 648. [196] Chapuys to Charles V., Nov. 10.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 644. [197] _Ibid._ p. 667. [198] To the Emperor, Nov. 11.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 554. [199] Queen Catherine to Chapuys, Nov. 22, 1532.--_Compressed Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 291. The editor dates this letter Nov. 1531. He has mistaken the year. No report had gone abroad that the King was married to Anne before his return from France. [200] Clement VII. to Henry VIII., Nov. 15, 1532; second date, Dec. 23.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. v. p. 650. [201] Ortiz to the Empress, Jan. 19, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, pp. 579-80. [202] Carlo Capello to the Signory, March 15, 1533.--_Venetian Calendar_, vol. iv. p. 389. [203] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 9, 1533, vol. vi. p. 62. The same letter will be found in the _Spanish Calendar_, with some differences in the translation. The original French is in parts obscure. [204] Chapuys to the Emperor, Feb. 23, 1533. _Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 1, p. 609. [205] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 65. [206] Ghinucci and Lee to Henry VIII., March 11, 1533.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 100. [207] More to Erasmus.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 144. [208] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 15.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 73. _Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 600. [209] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 9, 1533. Compressed.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 592-600. [210] Chapuys here mentions this very curious fact: "The Earl of Wiltshire," he wrote on Feb. 15, "has never declared himself up to this moment. On the contrary, he has hitherto, as the Duke of Norfolk has frequently told me, tried to dissuade the King rather than otherwise from the marriage."--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 602. [211] Henry VIII. to Francis I., March 11, 1533.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 103. [212] Chapuys to Charles V., March 11, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 619. [213] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, April 21, 1533, vol. iv. p. 171. [214] Chapuys to Charles V., March 31.--_Ibid._ vol. vi. p. 128. [215] Chapuys to Charles V., March 31.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 128. [216] Dr. Ortiz to Charles V., April 14, 1533.--_Ibid._ pp. 159-60. [217] Chapuys to Charles V., March 31, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 626. [218] Chapuys to Charles V., April 10, 1533. Compressed.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. pp. 149-51. _Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 630. [219] Chapuys to Charles V., April 16, 1533.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 163, etc., abridged. Also _Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 635. [220] I have related elsewhere the story of the Dunstable trial, and do not repeat it.--_History of England_, vol. i, pp. 417-423. [221] Chapuys to Charles V., April 27, 1533. Abridged.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv, part 2, p. 648. [222] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 650-658. [223] The Count de Cifuentes to Charles V., May 7, 1533.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. pp. 203-4. [224] _Ibid._, May 10. [225] Ortiz to Charles V., May 3, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 659. [226] Chapuys to Charles V., May 18, 1533.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. pp. 225-6. [227] Chapuys to Henry VIII., May 5, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 668. [228] Cranmer had sworn the usual oath, but with a reservation that his first duty was to his Sovereign and the laws of his country. [229] Chapuys to Charles V., May 26, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 687. [230] Chapuys to Charles V., May 29, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 699. [231] Cifuentes to Charles V., May 29, 1533.--_Ibid._ p. 702. [232] The Cardinal of Jaen to Charles V., June 16, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 709. [233] Davalos to Charles V., June 30 and July 5, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 725-728. [234] _Ibid._ [235] Davalos to Charles V., June 30 and July 5, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 749. [236] _Ibid._ p. 734. [237] Chapuys to Charles V., June 28, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 718-20. [238] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 399. [239] Chapuys to Charles V., Aug. 3, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 759-60. [240] Chapuys to Granvelle, Nov. 21, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. 9, p. 289. [241] Chapuys to Charles V., Aug. 23, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 777. [242] Chapuys to Charles V., Sept. 10, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 789. [243] _Ibid._ p. 788. [244] Chapuys to Charles V., Nov. 3, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 842. [245] The King's infirmities were not a secret. In 1533, upon Elizabeth's birth, a Señor de Gambaro, who was an intimate friend of the Duke of Norfolk, wrote at Rome for Cifuentes a curious account of the situation and prospects of things in England. Among other observations he says: "The [expected] child will be weak, owing to his father's condition." Avisos de las Cosas de Inglaterra dados por Sr. de Gambaro en Roma.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 683. [246] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 486. _Spanish Calendar_, vol. vi. part 2, p. 813. [247] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 486. _Spanish Calendar_, vol. vi. part 2, p. 813. [248] News from Flanders.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 493. [249] _I. e._ the calling in the secular arm, which had not been actually done in the Brief _de Attentatis_. [250] Chapuys to Charles V., Oct. 10, 1533.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 511. [251] _Ibid._ [252] Cifuentes to Charles V., Oct. 23, 1533.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 534. [253] _Ibid._ [254] The Papal Nuncio to Charles V., Oct. 22.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 830. [255] Chapuys to Charles V., Nov. 3, 1533.--_Ibid._ pp. 839-41. [256] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 6, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 871. [257] Chapuys to Charles V., Nov. 20, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 859. Catherine to Charles V., Nov. 21.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 578. [258] Chapuys to Charles V., Nov. 24, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 864. [259] Gardiner to Henry VIII., Nov. 1533.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vi. p. 571. [260] Chapuys to Charles, Dec. 9, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 875. [261] Chapuys to Charles, Jan. 17, 1534.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vii. p. 31. [262] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 11, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 31. [263] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 17, 1534.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vii. pp. 31-33. [264] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 16, 1533.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. iv. part 2, p. 883. [265] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 32. [266] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 3, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 1. [267] Cifuentes to Charles V., Jan. 23, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 17. [268] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 28, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 24. [269] Cifuentes to Charles V., March 24.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 84. [270] Ortiz to Charles V., March 24, 1534.--_Ibid._ vol. v. p. 89. [271] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 21, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 53-54. [272] _Haine novercule._ [273] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 26, 1534. Abridged.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 59, etc. [274] Chapuys to Charles V., March 7, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 73. [275] Chapuys to Charles V., March 30.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 96. [276] Chapuys to Charles V., 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 96. [277] Chapuys to Charles V., April 22, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 126, 127. [278] _Ibid._ May 14, p. 151. [279] Chapuys to Charles V., April 14, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 125-31. [280] _Ibid._ May 21, 1534, p. 167. [281] Chapuys to Charles V., May 14, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 153, 154. [282] Chapuys to Charles V., May 14, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 153, 154. [283] Chapuys to Charles V., May 19, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 155-66. [284] Lee and Tunstall to Henry VIII., May 21, 1534.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vii. p. 270. [285] Chapuys to Charles V., May 29, 1534,--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 169. [286] Thus much was certainly meant by the King's words: "He could not allow any of his native subjects to refuse to take the oath."--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vii. p. 272. [287] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 172. [288] Cifuentes to Charles V., June 6, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 174 et seq. [289] Chapuys to Charles V., June 23, 1534. Abridged.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 198-99. [290] Chapuys to Charles V., July 27, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 219-20. [291] Chapuys to Charles V., July 27, 1534.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vii. p. 389. [292] Cifuentes to Charles V., Aug. 1, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 229. [293] Chapuys to Charles V., Aug. 11, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 243-4. [294] Chapuys to Charles V., Aug. 29, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, p. 250. [295] Chapuys to Charles V., Oct. 24, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 294 et seq. [296] Chapuys to Charles V., Sept. 30, 1534.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vii. p. 466; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 608. [297] Chapuys to Charles V., Oct. 13, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 279. [298] Chapuys to Charles V., Nov. 3, 1534.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. vii. p. 519. [299] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 19, 1534.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 343. [300] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 14, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 14. [301] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 28, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 38. [302] "Veuillant denoter par icelle, puisque n'a moyen de m'envoyer dire securement, que la saison sera propice pour jouer des cousteaulx."-- _Ibid._ Jan. 1, p. 1; and _MS. Vienna_. [303] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 28, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 38. [304] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 9, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. pp. 68-72. [305] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 25, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 100. [306] "Car estant la Royne si haultain de coeur, luy venant en fantasye, a l'appuy de la faveur de la Princesse, elle se pourroit mettre au champs et assembler force des gents et luy faire la guerre aussy hardiment que fit la Royne sa mere." Chapuys à l'Empereur, Mar. 23, 1535.--_MS. Vienna._ [307] Chapuys to Granvelle, March 23, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 432; and _MS. Vienna_. [308] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 25, 1534.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 105. [309] _Spanish Calendar_, Feb. 26, 1535, vol. v. p. 402. [310] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, Feb. 26, 1535, vol. viii. p. 106. [311] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 421-22. [312] Chapuys to Charles V., March 7, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 413-422. [313] "Il me dit que vostre Majesté ne se debvoit arrester pour empescher ung si inestimable bien que produiroit en toute la Chresteaneté l'union et la bonne intelligence dentre vostre Majesté et le Roi son maistre pour l'affaire des Royne et Princesse qui n'estoient que mortelles; et que ne seroit grande dommage de la morte de la dicte Princesse au pris du bien que sortiroit de la dicte union et intelligence; en quoy il me prioit vouloir considerer quand seroy seul et desoccupé." Chapuys to Charles V., March 23, 1535.--_MS. Vienna_; and _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 426. This and other of Chapuys's most important letters I transcribed myself at Vienna. [314] "Me repliequant de nouveaulx quel dommage ou danger seroyt que la dicte Princesse feust morte oyres que le peuple en murmurast, et quelle raison auroit vostre Majesté en fayre cas." [315] Queen Catherine to Charles V., April 8.--_MS. Vienna_; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 197. [316] Chapuys to Charles V., April 4, 1535.--_MS. Vienna_; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 193. [317] Chapuys to Granvelle, April 5, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 194 and _MS. Vienna_. [318] Chapuys to Charles V., April 17, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 209. [319] "Le premier estoit si Dieu vouloit visiter le Roy de quelque petite maladie." The word _petite_ implied perhaps in Chapuys's mind that Dr. Butts contemplated a disorder of which he could control the dimensions, and the word, if he used it, is at least as suspicious as Cromwell's language about Mary. [320] "Affirmant pour tout certain qu'il y avoit une xx des principaulx Seigneurs d'Angleterre et plus de cent Chevaliers tout disposés et prests à employer personnes, biens, armes, et subjects, ayant le moindre assistance de vostre Majesté." Chapuys to Charles V., April 25, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 222; and _MS. Vienna_. [321] Chapuys to Charles V., May 5, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 452. [322] _Ibid._ [323] Charles V. to Chapuys, May 10, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 459. [324] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 459. [325] Chapuys to Charles V., May 8, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 457. [326] Dr. Ortiz to Charles V., May 27, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 462. [327] Chapuys to Charles V., May 23, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 280; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 465. [328] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 484. [329] Chapuys to Charles V., June 5, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 483. [330] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 486. [331] Chapuys to Charles V., June 30, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 500. [332] The Bishop of Faenza to M. Ambrogio, June 6, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. p. 320. [333] Examination of Fisher in the Tower, June 12, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. viii. pp. 331 et seq. [334] News from England, July 1, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 507. [335] Chapuys to Charles V., July 11, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 512. [336] Cifuentes to Charles V., July 16, 1535.--_Ibid._ p. 515. [337] _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 532. [338] Chapuys to Charles V., July 25, 1535.--_Ibid._ vol. v. p. 518. [339] Memorandum on the Affairs of England.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 522. [340] _Ibid._ p. 535. [341] Ortiz to the Empress, Sept. 1, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. p. 84. [342] "Cuando se viese con la Señora Reyna su hermana despues de dadas mis afectuosas encomiendas rogarle de mi parte quisiese tener mencion de my con el Christianisimo Rey su marido y hacer quanto pudiese ser, que el sea buen amigo al Rey mi Señor procurando de quitarle del pecado, en que esta." Catherine to the Regent Mary, Aug. 8, 1535.--_MS. Vienna._ [343] Chapuys to Charles V., Sept. 25, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. pp. 140-141. [344] Chapuys to Granvelle, Sept. 25, 1535.--_Vienna MS._; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. p. 141. [345] The executory brief was not identical with the Bull of Deposition. The first was the final act of Catherine's process, a declaration that Henry, having disobeyed the sentence on the divorce delivered by Clement VII., was excommunicated, and an invitation to the Catholic Powers to execute the judgment by force. The second involved a claim for the Holy See on England as a fief of the Church--an intimation that the King of England had forfeited his crown and that his subjects' allegiance had reverted to their Supreme Lord. The Pope and Consistory preferred the complete judgment, as more satisfactory to themselves. The Catholic Powers objected to it for the same reason. The practical effect would be the same. [346] Cifuentes to Charles V., Oct. 8, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 547. [347] "Et luy supplier de la part de la Reyne, ma mère, et myenne en l'honneur de Dieu et pour aultres respects que dessus vouloit entendre et pourvoyr aux affaires dycy. En quoy fera tres agréable service a Dieu, et n'en acquerra moins de gloire qu'en la conqueste de Tunis et de toute l'affaire d'Afrique." _De la Princesse de l'Angleterre à l'Ambassadeur_, October, 1535.--_MS. Vienna_; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 559. [348] Queen Catherine to the Pope, October 10, 1535.--_MS. Vienna._ [349] The Bishop of Tarbes to the Bailly of Troyes, October, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. p. 187. [350] Chapuys to Charles V., October 13, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. p. 196. [351] Chapuys to Granvelle, October 13, 1535.--_Ibid._ p. 199. [352] _Ibid._ pp. 225, 228. [353] _Spanish Calendar_, October 24, 1535, vol. v. p. 559. [354] Ortiz to the Emperor, November 4, 1535.--_Ibid._ vol. v. p. 565. [355] Du Bellay and the Bishop of Mâcon to Francis I., November 12, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. p. 273. [356] Froude's _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 386. [357] Bishop of Faenza to M. Ambrogio, November 15, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. p. 276. [358] Charles V. to Cifuentes, November, 1535.--_Ibid._ vol. ix. p. 277. [359] "Tout a cest instant la Marquise de Exeter m'a envoyé dire que le Roy a dernierement dit à ses plus privés conseillers qu'il ne voulloit plus demeurer en les fascheuses crainctes et grevements qu'il avoit de long temps eus à cause des Royne et Princesse; et qu'il y regardassent à ce prochain Parlement l'en faire quiete, jurant bien et tres obstinement qu'il n'actendoit plus longuement de y pourvoir." Chapuys to Charles V., Nov. 6, 1535.--_MS. Vienna._ [360] "Afin que par ce moyen, perdant l'espoir de la clemence et misericorde de Vostre Majeste toute-fois fussent plus determinez a se defendre." Chapuys à l'Empereur.--_MS. Vienna_, Nov. 23. [361] The Emperor to Chapuys.--_MS. Vienna._ [362] Chapuys to Granvelle, Nov. 21, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. p. 290. [363] Ortiz to the Empress, Nov. 22, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. pp. 293-4. [364] Bishop of Faenza to M. Ambrogio, Dec. 9.--_Ibid._ vol. ix. p. 317. [365] Cifuentes to Charles V., Nov. 30, 1535.--_Ibid._ vol. ix. p. 303. [366] Chapuys to Charles V., Dec. 18, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. p. 333. [367] Cardinal du Bellay to the Cardinals of Lorraine and Tournon, Dec. 22, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. pp. 341-43. [368] The Bishop of Faenza to M. Ambrogio, Dec. 13, 1535.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. ix. p. 326. [369] Queen Catherine to Dr. Ortiz, Dec. 13, 1535.--_Ibid._ vol. ix. p. 325. [370] Queen Catherine to Charles V., Dec. 13, 1535.--_MS. Vienna._ [371] The Emperor to Thomas Cromwell, Dec. 13, 1535.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. ix. p. 588. [372] "Et que vostre Ma{té} luy avoit usé de la plus grande ingratitude que l'on scauroit dire, solicitant à l'appetit d'une femme tant de choses contre luy, que luy avoit faict innumerables maux et fascheries, et de telle importance, que vostre Ma{té} par menasses et force avoit faict donner la sentence contre luy, comme le mesme Pape l'avoit confessé." Chapuys a l'Empereur, Dec. 30, 1535.--_MS. Vienna_; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. p. 595. [373] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 21, 1536.--_MS. Vienna_; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 18. [374] "Je demanday par plusieurs fois au médecin s'il y avoit quelque soubçon de venin. Il me dict qu'il s'en doubtoit, car depuys qu'elle avoit beu d'une cervise de Galles elle n'avoit fait bien; et qu'il failloit que ne fust poison terminé et artificeux, car il ne veoit les signes de simple et pur venin." Chapuys à l'Empereur, Jan. 9, 1536.--_MS. Vienna_; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 22. [375] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 9 and Jan. 21, 1536.--_MS. Vienna_; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, pp. 2-10. [376] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 21, 1536.--_MS. Vienna_; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 47. [377] Chapuys to Charles V., Jan. 21 and Jan. 29.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, pp. 10-26. [378] "L'on m'a dicte que la Concubine consoloit ses demoiselles qui pleuroient, leur disant que c'estoit pour le mieulx, car elle en seroit tant plus tost enceinte, et que le fils qu'elle pourterait ne seroit dubieulx comme fust este icelle, estant concen du vivant de la Royne." Chapuys to Granvelle, Feb. 25, 1536.--_MS. Vienna_; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 135. [379] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb, 17, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 116. [380] Charles V. to the Emperor, Feb. 1, 1536.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 33. [381] Report of the Privy Council of Spain, Feb. 26, 1536.--_Ibid._ p. 60. [382] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 224. [383] Chapuys to Charles V., Feb. 25, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. pp. 131 et seq. [384] "Et aussy quant à l'auctorité de l'Eglise Anglicane l'on pourroit persuader au Roy que la chose se appoineteroit à son honnneur, proufit, et bien du royaulme." [385] _I. e._ as part of it. Charles V. to Chapuys, March 28, 1536.--_MS. Vienna_; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. pp. 224 et seq.; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, pp. 71 et seq. There are some differences in the translations in the two Calendars. When I refer to the MS. at Vienna I use copies made there by myself. [386] Chapuys to Charles V., April 1, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 243. [387] Chapuys to Charles V., April 1, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 242. [388] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, June 2, 1536, vol. x. pp. 428 et seq. [389] Chapuys to Charles V., April 21, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. pp. 287 et seq.; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, pp. 85 et seq. [390] April 21.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic._ [391] Henry VIII. to Pate, April 25, 1536. Abridged.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 306. [392] "Et que a luy avoit este l'auctorite de descouvrir et parachever les affairs de la dicte Concubine, en quoy il avoit eu une merveilleuse pene; et que sur le desplesir et courroux qu'il avoit eu sur le reponse que le Roy son maistre m'avoit donné le tiers jour de Pasques il se mit a fantasier et conspirer le dict affaire," etc. Chapuys to Charles V., June 6, 1536.--_MS. Vienna_; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 137. From the word "conspirer" it has been inferred that the accusation of Anne and her accomplices was a conspiracy of Cromwell's, got up in haste for an immediate political purpose. Cromwell must have been marvellously rapid, since within four days he was able to produce a case to lay before a Special Commission composed of the highest persons in the realm assisted by the Judges, involving the Queen and a still powerful faction at the court. We are to believe, too, that he had the inconceivable folly to acknowledge it to Chapuys, the most dangerous person to whom such a secret could be communicated. Cromwell was not an idiot, and it is impossible that in so short a time such an accumulation of evidence could have been invented and prepared so skilfully as to deceive the Judges. [393] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, June 2, vol. x. p. 428. [394] Daughter of Sir Anthony Brown, Master of the Horse. [395] John Husee to Lady Lisle, May 24, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 397. [396] Chapuys to Charles V., April 29.--_Spanish Calendar_, p. 105. [397] _Ibid._ [398] _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 454. [399] Chapuys to Charles V., May 19, 1536.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 125. [400] Chapuys to Charles V., May 2, 1536.--_MSS. Vienna_; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 330; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 107. [401] In transcribing the MS. twenty years ago at Vienna I mistook the name for Howard, which it much resembled in the handwriting of the time. I am reminded correctly that there was no Viscount Howard in the English Peerage. [402] "Le Visconte Hannaert a escript au Sr de Granvelle que au mesme instant il avoit entendu de bon lieu que la concubine du dict Roy avoit esté surprise couchée avec l'organiste du dict Roy." [403] The Earl of Northumberland to Cromwell, May 13, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 356. [404] Cromwell to Gardiner, July 5, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. xi. p. 17. [405] _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 470. [406] Sir Henry Wyatt to Thomas Wyatt, May 7, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 345. "Him" refers to Cromwell. [407] _History of England_, vol. ii. pp. 459-462. [408] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 430. [409] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 357. [410] Autograph letter of Sir Francis Weston, May 3, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 358. [411] Cromwell to Wallop and Gardiner, May 14, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 359. [412] "Qu'elle avoit faict empoissoner la fene Royne et machyné de faire de mesme à la Princesse." Chapuys was not present, but was writing from report, and was not always trustworthy. No trace is found of these accusations in the Record, but they may have been mentioned in the pleadings. [413] "Que le Roy n'estoit habille en cas de copuler avec femme, et qu'il n'avoit ni vertu ni puissance." Historians, to make their narrative coherent, assume an intimate acquaintance with the motives for each man's or woman's actions. Facts may be difficult to ascertain, but motives, which cannot be ascertained at all unless when acknowledged, they are able to discern by intuition. They have satisfied themselves that the charges against Anne Boleyn were invented because the King wished to marry Jane Seymour. I pretend to no intuition myself. I do not profess to be wise beyond what I find written. In this instance I hazard a conjecture--a conjecture merely--which occurred to me long ago as an explanation of some of the disasters of Henry's marriages, and which the words, alleged to have been used by Anne to Lady Rochford, tend, _pro tanto_, to confirm. Henry was already showing signs of the disorder which eventually killed him. Infirmities in his constitution made it doubtful, both to others and to himself, whether healthy children, or any children at all, would in future be born to him. It is possible--I do not say more--that Anne, feeling that her own precarious position could only be made secure if she became the mother of a prince, had turned for assistance in despair at her disappointments to the gentlemen by whom she was surrounded. As an hypothesis, this is less intolerable than to suppose her another Messalina. In every instance of alleged offence the solicitation is said to have proceeded from herself, and to have been only yielded to after an interval of time. [414] "Au grand despit de Cromwell et d'aucungs autres qui ne vouldroient en cest endroit s'engendroit suspicion qui pourroit prejudiquer à la lignée que le dict Roy pretend avoir."--_MSS. Vienna._ [415] Chapuys to Charles V., May 19, 1536.--_MSS. Vienna_; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, pp. 122 et seq. In one or two instances my translation will be found to differ slightly from that of S{r} Gayangas. [416] Chapuys to Charles V., May 19.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 128. [417] _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 483. [418] _Wriothesley's Chronicle_ (Camden Society's Publications), vol. i. p. 39. [419] Constantine's Memorial.--_Archæologia_, vol. xxiii. pp. 63-66. [420] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, June 2, vol. x. p. 430. [421] _Ibid._ p. 431. [422] Kingston to Cromwell, May 16, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 371. [423] 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 7. [424] Chapuys to Granvelle, May 19, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 380. [425] _Wriothesley's Chronicle_, vol. i. pp. 40, 41. [426] Chapuys's words are worth preserving. He was mistaken in his account of the Statute. It did not declare Mary legitimate, and it left Henry power to name his own successor should his marriage with Jane Seymour prove unfruitful. So great an error shows the looseness with which he welcomed any story which fell in with his wishes. He says: "Le statut declairant la Princesse legitime heretiere, la fille de la Concubine, a esté revoqué, et elle declairé bastarde, non point comme fille de M. Norris, comme se pouvoit plus honnestement dire, mais pour avoir esté la marriage entre la dicte Concubine et le dict Roy illegitime à cause qu'il avoit cogneu charnellement la soeur de la dicte Concubine: pour laquelle cause l'Archevesque de Canterburi, ung ou deux jours avant que la dicte Concubine fut executée, donna et prefera la sentence de divorce, de quoy, comme sçavez trop mieulx, n'estoit grand besoign, puisque l'epée et la mort les auroit prochainement et absolument divorcés: et puisque aussy le vouloient faire, le pretext eust esté plus honneste d'alleguer qu'elle avoit este mairée à aultre encores vivant. Mais Dieu a voulu descouvrir plus grande abomination, qui est plus que inexcusable actendu qu'il ne peut alleguer ignorance neque juris neque facti. Dieu veuille que telle soit la fin de toutes ses folies!" Chapuys à Granvelle, July 8, 1536.--_MS. Vienna._ [427] This was distinctly laid down in the case of Catherine Howard. [428] _Wriothesley's Chronicle_, pp. 41, 42. [429] "Le Roy respondit qu'il avoit trop experimenté en la dicte Concubine, que c'estoit de la nourriture de France." Chapuys à l'Empereur, June 6.--_MS. Vienna._ [430] "Me dict qu'icelluy Baily de Troyes et l'autre Ambassadeur avoient proposé le mariage de l'aisnée fille de France avec ce Roy, mais que c'estoit peine perdue. Car ce Roy ne se marieroit oncques hors de sou royaulme, et, luy demandant raison pourquoy, il m'en dit avec assez mine assurance que se venant à mesfaire de son corps une Reine estrangere qui fut de grand sang et parentage, l'on ne pourroit chastier et s'en faire quitte comme il avoit fait de la derniere," Chapuys à l'Empereur.--_MS. Vienna_, June 6. [431] Charles V. to Chapuys, May 15, 1536.--_MS. Vienna_; _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 370. [432] "Qui à la verité est une musique de hault genre et digne de rire." [433] _MS. Vienna._ [434] Chapuys to Granvelle, May 19, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 380. [435] "In causâ matrimonii et in consistoriis et publice et privatim apud Clementem VII. se omnia quæ potuit pro vestrâ Majestate egisse: et Bononiæ Imperatori per horas quatuor accurate persuadere conatum fuisse, non esse Majestatem vestram per illam causam impugnandam." Sir Gregory Casalis to Henry VIII., May 27, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. pp. 406 _et seq._ [436] Cromwell, writing to Gardiner to inform him of the marriage, said that "the nobles and Council upon their knees had moved him to it." If their entreaty had been no more than a farce, Cromwell would hardly have mentioned it so naturally in a private letter to a brother Privy Councillor.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. xi. p. 16. [437] Chapuys to Charles V., May 19, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 378. [438] John Husee to Lord Lisle, May 19.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 385. [439] The Princess Mary to Cromwell, May 26, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic._ [440] Chapuys to Charles V., June 6.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 440; _Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. pp. 137 et seq. [441] Charles V. to Chapuys, June 30, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 511. [442] _Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, June 6, 1536, vol. x. p. 389. [443] Chapuys to Charles V., June 6, 1536.--_Calendar, Foreign and Domestic_, vol. x. p. 441. [444] Chapuys to Charles V., July 1, 1536.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, pp. 184 et seq. [445] Chapuys to Charles V., July 8, 1536.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 221. In using the words, "Princess of Wales," Chapuys adds a curious fact, if fact it be--"Nowhere that I know of," he says, "is the title of Princess given to a King's daughter as long as there is hope of male descent. It was the Cardinal of York who, for some whim or other of his own, broke through the rule and caused Henry's daughter by Catherine to be called 'Princess of Wales.'" [446] Cifuentes to Charles V., August 4, 1536.--_Spanish Calendar_, vol. v. part 2, p. 221. [447] Chapuys to Charles V., August 12, 1536. INDEX. Abbots, mitred: division of opinion on the Annates Bill, 187. "Advocation" of a cause to Rome, 108. Alençon, Princesse d': Wolsey's alleged desire of Henry VIII.'s marriage with, 49 _sq._ Amadas, Mrs., 235. Annates Bill, 187. Appeals, Act of, 58, 209. Arches Court, the, reformation of, 185. Arthur, Prince (Henry VIII.'s brother): question of the consummation of his marriage with Catherine, 171. Ateca, Father (Bishop of Llandaff), Catherine's confessor, 379. Audeley, Chancellor, 405. Barentyne, Sir William, 60. Barton, Elizabeth. See _Nun of Kent_. Bath, Bishop of (English ambassador at Paris), on the initial stages of the divorce of Henry VIII., 25. Becket, Archbishop (Canterbury), the hero of the English clergy, 158. Bellay du (French ambassador to England): on Wolsey's position towards the divorce, 94; on the Blackfriars Legatine court, 107; account of Wolsey after his fall, 121; mission from Francis to Anne Boleyn, 250; special mission to Clement, 256; the Pope's reply, 257 _sqq._; mission to the Pope in regard to Milan, 362; description of the debate in Consistory on the Bull of Deposition, 369. Benet, Dr., English agent at Rome, 104. Bishop's courts, the, reformation of, 185. Bishops, English: their qualified acceptance of the Royal Supremacy, 161; their official opinions on the divorce question, 166; unanimous against the Annates Bill, 187. Bilney, Thomas, burnt as a heretic, by a bishop's order, 255. Blackfriars, the trial of the divorce cause before the Legatine court at, 49; the Papal supremacy on its trial there, 100. Boleyn, Sir Thomas (Anne Boleyn's father; afterwards Earl of Wiltshire): opposed to his daughter's advancement, 48. See also _Wiltshire, Earl of_. Boleyn, Lady, 47; the charge of her being unduly intimate with Henry VIII., 55, 57. Boleyn, Anne: account of her family and her early life, 47; alleged amour with Henry Percy, _ib._; hatred of Wolsey, 48; her personal appearance, _ib._; attempt to influence Henry in appointing an Abbess, 71; annoyance at Wolsey's getting a pension after his fall, 132; pleasure at the signs of Henry's breach with the Papacy, 152; said (by Chapuys) to be favouring the Lutherans, 163; unpopularity arising from her insolence and her intrigues, 167; objects to the Princess Mary being near her father, 174; created Marchioness of Pembroke, 193; compliments paid her by the French king, 194; present at the interview between Henry and Francis, 195; continued unpopularity, 201; agrees to a private marriage, 203; a staunch Lutheran, 207; announcement of her being _enceinte_, 211; her coronation, 230; gives birth to a daughter, 238; Bill establishing the succession in her offspring by Henry, 262; attempts to force Princess Mary to acknowledge her as Queen, 266; alleged threats against Mary, 262, 266, 269, 279; suspected evil intentions against Catherine, 277; meets a rebuff in the acquittal of Lord Dacre, 284; violence and insolence to the King through jealousy, 296; and to his principal Ministers, 297; urges Henry to bring Catherine and Mary to trial under the Succession Act, 312; joy at Catherine's death, 382; friendly message to Mary, 383; Anne's continued unpopularity, 385; letter to Mrs. Shelton about Mary, 387; a second miscarriage, 388; a long catalogue of misdeeds charged against her, 402; Easter (1536) at Greenwich, 404; inquiry into infidelities charged against her, 415; charged before the Council with adultery, 417; sent to the Tower, _ib._; alleged to have planned the poisoning of the Princess Mary and the Duke of Richmond, 418; denial of the charge of adultery, 419; charged with having been herself the solicitor to adultery, 420; her trial: the indictment, 426; a reason suggested for her infidelities, 426 _n._; her trial, 480 _sqq._; her confession to Cranmer, invalidating her marriage with Henry, 431; her marriage declared null, 431; her dying speech, 435; execution, _ib._ Boleyn, Mary: Henry VIII.'s alleged intimacy with, 55 _sqq._; Chapuys's reference to it, 130. Bourbon, Cardinal, 46. Bourbon, Duke of: his treatment of Italy after the battle of Pavia, 27; sack of Rome by (1527), 35. Brereton, Sir William (paramour of Anne Boleyn), 416, 419; execution, 420. Brewer, Mr.: his translation and interpretation of Wolsey's suggested Papal dispensation for Henry VIII.'s second marriage, 54 _sq._; his views on the alleged intrigue between Henry and Mary Boleyn, 58. Bribery of ministers, a common custom, 45. Brief of Execution: its issue still delayed by Paul III., 318; differences between it and the Bull of Deposition, 353 _n._ Brown, Dr. (Augustinian friar): denounces the authority of the Pope in England, 298. Bryan, Sir Francis: his opinion of Clement VII.'s intentions towards Henry VIII., 93; suspected of intriguing with Anne, 421. Bulls for English bishoprics, enormous cost of, 89. Burgo, Andrea de, 103, 168. Burgo, Baron de: appointed to succeed Casalis as Nuncio in England, 144; Chapuys's account of his first interview with Henry, 145; protest against the revival of the statute of Præmunire, 148; Henry's reply, 149; report of an interview with Henry at Hampton Court, and with Norfolk, 150; reply to Norfolk's caution against introducing Papal briefs, 156; his attempted appeal to Convocation, 160; presents Clement's brief to Henry, 162; account of Henry's reception of the threat of excommunication, 169; secret communications with Henry, 205; accompanies the King in state to the opening of Parliament, 206. Butts, Dr. (Henry's physician): Chapuys's account of his treachery, 323. Calais, Conference at, 339, 347. Cambrai: suggested as neutral ground for the trial of the divorce cause, 124, 129, 169, 176, 200. Cambrai, Peace of, 66, 109, 112, 114, 134, 223. Campeggio, Bishop (Salisbury), 64, 92; chosen by the Pope as special Legate to England, 67 _sq._, 74; reception in England, 76; his reports thence, 78; his consultation with Wolsey, 79; suggestion to marry the Princess Mary to the Duke of Richmond, _ib._; dilatoriness, 84; account of Lutheran proposals to Henry, 91; his advice to Catherine at Blackfriars, 100; effect upon him of Bishop Fisher's denunciation of the divorce, 107; indignity offered to him on his leaving England, 122; Henry's reply to his complaint, _ib._; revenues of his see sequestrated, 238. Canonists, Henry VIII.'s consultation of, and the results, 136. Capello, Carlo (Venetian ambassador to London): his account of Anne Boleyn's unpopularity, 201. Carew, Sir Nicholas, 415. Carey, Eleanor: Henry VIII.'s refusal to appoint her Abbess of Wilton, 71. Casalis, Sir Gregory, English agent at Rome, 37; on a special mission to the Pope at Orvieto, 53; his report, 63; on the Pope's position, 68; account of his interview with Clement to complain of dilatoriness, 84; after the Pope's recovery from illness, 89; _résumé_ of the Pope's position towards the Emperor, 96; protests to the Pope against Fisher being made Cardinal, 338. Casalis, John (Papal Nuncio in England): his statement that the Pope desired to reconcile the King and the Emperor, 127; the Nuncio "heart and soul" with the King, 135. Catherine of Aragon: death of her male children by Henry, 21; irregularity of her marriage, 23; her character, 24; description of her by Falieri, 32; first discovery of the proposal for a divorce, 34; a scene with her husband, 38; endeavours to obtain the revocation of Wolsey's Legatine powers, 39; no suspicion for some time of Anne Boleyn, 48; believed that Wolsey was the instigator of the divorce, 49; her ignorance of any intrigue between Henry and either Lady Boleyn or her daughter Mary, 58; Catherine refuses to acquiesce in a private arrangement of the divorce, 62; stands resolutely upon her rights, 64; objects to the case being tried in England, 75; the arguments of the Legates to her, 77; the Queen remains still firm, 78; her popularity, 79, 81; the Brief amending defects in Julius' dispensation, 83, 86; Catherine refuses to embrace a conventual life, 87; protest against the trial at Blackfriars, 101; appeal to Henry there, _ib._; Catherine pronounced contumacious, 102; her joy at the advocation of the cause to Rome, 108; objection to the summoning of Parliament, 110; first interview with Chapuys, 113 _sq._; demands from Rome instant sentence in her cause, 125; dislike of Wolsey up to his death, 132; fresh efforts to persuade her to take the veil, 133; the suggestion of a neutral place for the trial, 143; alarm at the enforcement of Præmunire, 149; a party formed in her favour in the House of Commons, 151; letter of Catherine to Clement, 151; sends a special representative to Rome, 159; reception of the news that Henry had declared himself "Pope" in England, 162; distrust of Clement's intentions, 163; renewed appeal to the Emperor, 165; causes of her popularity, 167; her answer to a delegation of Peers and Bishops urging a neutral place of trial, 170; sneer at the "Supremum Caput," 171; question of the consummation of her marriage with Prince Arthur, 171; Catherine separated from her daughter, and sent to Moor Park, 174; English nobles make another effort to move Catherine, 176; her reply, 177; annoyed at the Pope's delays, 179; her opinion on the probable result of the meeting of Henry and Francis, 193; complaints to Charles, 197; the proposal that Cranmer should try the cause in the Archbishop's court, 207; Catherine pressed by English peers to withdraw her appeal, after the passing of the Act of Appeals, 214; her reply, 216; _résumé_ of her position in regard to Henry, 217 _sq._; summoned, refuses to appear before Cranmer's court at Dunstable, 220; her rejection of the demand that she be styled and endowed as "Princess Dowager," 234; allowed to have the Princess Mary with her, 234; said to have desired a marriage between the Princess and Reginald Pole, 241, 295; absolute refusal of the renewed Cambrai proposition, 246; sent to Kimbolton, and separated again from her daughter, 252; fear of foul play, 254; insistence that Chapuys should appeal to Parliament for her, 262; refusal to take the Succession oath, 271; two accounts of her interview with Tunstal and Lee on the subject, 275 _sq._; suspected evil intentions of Anne against her, 277; disquiet at the Emperor's inaction, 280; obliged to refuse to receive Chapuys at Kimbolton, 281; her household reduced by Anne, 296; endeavours to quicken the Emperor's resolution, 392; anxiety caused by her daughter's second illness, 304; the Emperor's refusal to interfere the death-knell of her hopes, 309; another appeal to Charles, 319; appeal to the Pope to "apply a remedy," 356; a similar appeal to Charles, 357; what the "remedy" was, 362; Catherine's expectation of "martyrdom," 366; seized with fatal illness, 372; her last letters, 373; interviews with Chapuys, 377; her death, 379; suspicion that she was poisoned, 379 _sqq._; her burial as "widow of Prince Arthur," 389. Catholic party in England: incipient treason develops into definite conspiracy, 240; notorious intention to take arms in behalf of Catherine and Mary, 271; all their leaders sank into bloody graves, 461. Cellini, Benvenuto, anecdote of Clement VII., 75. Chabot, Admiral Philip de, 364. Chapuys, Eustace (Imperial ambassador to England): his character, 112; his reception in England, _ib._; interview with Henry, 113; and with Catherine, 114; report on the feeling of the people, _ib._; report of Henry's refusal to aid Charles with money against the Turks, 126; and of Henry's attack on the Pope and Cardinals, _ib._; on Henry's firm determination to marry again, 127; on English popular hatred of the priests, 128; suggestion of reference to the Sorbonne, 129; on Norfolk's dread of Wolsey's return to office, 132; statement that the Commons were sounded on the divorce, 133; report of Norfolk's opinion of probable results of refusing the divorce, 136 _sq._; Chapuys's mistaken estimate of English feeling, 137; on Wolsey's communications with Catherine, 138; and his desire to "call in the secular arm," 139; secrets obtained from Wolsey's physician, 140; his account of De Burgo's (Nuncio) first interview with Henry (1530), 145; advice to the Nuncio, 146; on Anne Boleyn's jubilance, 152; dislike of his position in England, 153; reply to Norfolk's statement of the superiority in England of the King's to the Pope's authority, 155; astounded by the enforcement of Præmunire against the English clergy, 160; blames Clement's timidity and dissimulation, 162; his account of Henry's treatment of the Pope's attempts at friendly negotiations, 178; report of Henry's denunciation of Papal claims in England, 209; desires the Emperor to make war on England, 213; interview with Henry after the passing of the Act of Appeals, 214; report on Cranmer's judgment, 221; bold action, and consequent discussion with the Council, 226; proposes a special Spanish embassy to London, 233; his high opinion of Thomas Cromwell, 236; attempt to combine Scotland and England through a marriage between James and the Princess Mary, 261; interview with Henry as to Catherine's appeal to Parliament, 263; his intrigues with Scotland and with Ireland against the peace of England, 268 _sq._, 275; speech to the English Council against the Succession oath, 272 _sq._; presses his views on Cromwell, 275; account of Tunstal's and Lee's interview with Catherine on the Succession oath, 276; expresses fears for the safety of Catherine's life, 277; his pilgrimage to our Lady of Walsingham (taking Kimbolton on the way), 281 _sq._; delight at the Irish rebellion, 285; renewed fears for the safety of Catherine and Mary, 286; negotiations for insurrection with Lords Hussey and Darcy, 288 _sq._; reversal of his revolutionary tactics, 309; fresh negotiations with Cromwell, 309 _sqq._; belief that Cromwell desired to have the Princess Mary made away with, 314; presses on Cromwell the appeal to a General Council, 321; letter to Charles emphasizing Catherine's appeals for the "remedy," 357; belief that time and circumstances were propitious, 358; reception of Cromwell's protest against the Emperor's supposed intended attack on Henry, 359; interviews with the Marchioness of Exeter, 365; interview with Henry before visiting Catherine in her mortal illness, 374; visit to Catherine, 377; suspicious as to her having been poisoned, 379 _sqq._; advice to Mary in regard to Anne Boleyn, 383; another plan for Mary's escape, 391; resumes negotiations with Cromwell for a treaty between Charles and Henry, 394; expectations of Henry's separation from Anne, 400; continued negotiations for the treaty, 403; account of the Easter (1536) at Greenwich, 404; Henry insists on a letter from Charles, 406, 408; Chapuys's report to Charles, 409; report to the Emperor of Anne Boleyn's downfall, 418; false account of Rochford's dying speech, 428; his explanation of Anne's mysterious confession to Cranmer, 432; reports about Jane Seymour, 442; the negotiations for a treaty again taken up, 446; introduced to Henry's new Queen, 448; advises Mary to take the Succession oath with a secret protest, 457; on the title "Princess of Wales," 459 _n._; difficulty with Rome about absolution for Mary's "protest," 460; the success of the Reformation indirectly owing to Chapuys, 463. Charles V. (Emperor): his position in regard to Europe in 1526, 26; his relations to the Church, 43; letter to Henry VIII. on his desired divorce, 44; letter to Wolsey, 45; persistent efforts to bribe Wolsey, 50; allows the Pope to escape from captivity, 52; suggests a private arrangement between Henry and Catherine, 64; declaration of war by France and England against Charles, 65; his reply, _ib._; instructions to Mendoza on the Legatine Commission, 74; letter to Catherine, 75; suggestion that she should take the veil, 77; becomes the champion of the Roman hierarchy, 97; seeks Henry's aid against the Turks, 126; determination to stand by Catherine, 133; fear of exciting the German Lutherans, _ib._; his coronation at Bologna, 134; reply to the English deputies, _ib._; personal interest in the question of papal dispensations--his affinity to his wife, 141; unconscious of the changes passing over the mind of the English people, 154; perplexed by Henry's enforcement of Præmunire, 164; letter to Sir T. More, 167; insistence that only the Pope should be the judge in Henry's case, 171; slight modification in his demand, 173; efforts to effect reunion of the Lutherans with the Church, 175; his position towards England after Cranmer's judgment, 222 _sqq._; his nearness to the succession to the English Crown, 254; dread of an Anglo-French alliance, 278; suggests a joint embassy to England from the Pope and himself, _ib._; causes of his hesitation to accede to the wishes of the reactionists in England, 299, 302; ultimate refusal, 306, 308; proposed treaty between Charles and Henry, 307; letter to Henry relating to the proposed treaty, 335; his successful campaign in Africa, 347; memorandum of the Spanish Council of State, 348; apparent change of feeling towards Henry, 360; modifications of policy after the death of Duke Sforza (Milan), 364; Charles's treatment of Chapuys's alarms about Henry's intentions towards Catherine and Mary, 366; reception of the news of Catherine's death, 392; resumption of negotiations for the abandoned treaty, 394; eagerness for reconciliation with Henry, 396; his proposal, 397; anticipated remarriage of Henry, 398; reply to Cromwell's suggestions on the treaty, 403; proposes the Infanta of Portugal as a wife for Henry, and the Infant (Don Louis) as a husband for Princess Mary, 438; an alternative proposal, _ib._; disappointed with Henry's conduct after his new marriage, 448; signally defeated by the French in Provence, 449. Charterhouse monks: their retractation of their Supremacy oath, 327; executed for treason, 328. Church reform in the Parliament of 1529, 115 _sqq._, 127 _sq._ Cifuentes, Count de (Imperial ambassador to Rome), 210, 224, 231, 256 _sqq._, 270, 278, 346 _sq._, 353, 460. Clarencieulx (English herald), 65. Clarendon, Constitutions of, 184 _sq._ Clement VII., Pope: his political position when the divorce was first mooted, 25; Charles V.'s inroads on Italy, 27; the Pope's appeal for help to Henry VIII., _ib._; financial difficulties and the method of relieving them, 30; a witness of the sack of Rome (1527), 35; his captivity, 38, 44; Dr. Knight's mission to, from Henry VIII, 51; the Pope's escape to Orvieto, 52; his desire to please Henry, 62; his suggestion of a compromise, 63; concessions to Henry, 67; consent that the cause should be heard in England, 68; the secret "decretal," 69; alleged contingent assent to the proposal to marry Princess Mary to Duke of Richmond, 80; perplexities in regard to the secret "decretal," 84; fresh pressure from the Emperor, 86; the brief of Julius II., 87; serious illness of Clement, 88; expresses determination not to grant the divorce, 90; _résumé_ of his halting conduct in the cause, 99; between the hammer and the anvil, 105; veers towards Henry's side, 125; desirous to reconcile Henry and the Emperor, 127; his prohibitory brief against Henry's second marriage, 134; the hand of the Emperor therein, _ib._; his desire that Henry should solve the difficulty, by marriage, 142; his reply to the English mission after the failure at Blackfriars, 144; issues a second brief forbidding Henry's second marriage, 153; continued desire of a compromise, 160; treatment of the appeal to a General Council, 166; reasons for his delay in the divorce case, 168 _sq._; brought by Micer Mai to consent to communion in both kinds and to the marriage of priests, 175; attempts friendly negotiations with Henry, 178; Clement's distrust as to the statements about English popular sentiment, 180; he sends Henry another expostulating brief, 181, 189; Ortiz's attempt to extract a sentence of excommunication, 189; Clement's privately expressed wish that Henry would marry without waiting for sentence, 192; another brief prepared against Henry, 196; continued indecision, 197; conditional excommunication of Henry, 198; reception of the news of Henry's marriage, 210; preparation for the interview with Francis at Nice, 231; Clement signs the brief _Super Attentatis_, 233; interview with Francis at Marseilles, 243; treatment of the French suggestion that Henry's case should be heard at Cambrai, 244; subject to a cross-fire of influences, 256 _sqq._; the sentence delivered: the marriage of Henry and Catherine declared valid, 259; threat to absolve English subjects from their allegiance, 265; the Brief of Execution (calling in the secular arm) held back, 278; Clement's death, 290. Clergy Discipline Acts, 125. Clergy (English): their state, and the popular feeling towards them, 115; their sentiments on the contest between Henry and the Pope, 157; unanimous censure of the King, 158; the clergy under Præmunire, _ib._; felonious clerks punished like secular criminals, 185; traitor priests executed in their clerical habits, 185, 462; indignation of the clergy at the statutes passed in restraint of their privileges, 451. Commission to investigate charges against Anne Boleyn, the, 420; the evidence before them, 421. Commons, Petition of the (1529), 115. Comunidades, the revolt of the, 43. Conspiracy connected with the Nun of Kent, 195, 247, 265. Convocation: De Burgo's futile appeal to, 160; acceptance of Royal Supremacy, 186; alleged address against annates, 187 _n._ Covos, Secretary, 269. Cranmer, Thomas (afterwards Archbishop): one of the English deputies at the coronation of Charles V., 134; his marriage as a priest, 202; made Archbishop of Canterbury, 203; the proposal that he should try the divorce cause, 207; gives judgment for the divorce, 220; his qualified oath to the Pope, 227; his high regard for Anne, 421; his alarm for the political results of Anne's guilt, 450. Cromwell, Thomas: his relations with Chapuys, 229, 235, 240; sketch of his career, 236; eager for the reform of the clergy, 237; alleged desire of the deaths of Catherine and Mary, 286; his discovery of the Emperor's intentions in regard to Princes Mary, 302; on the illness of the Princess, 303; his political principles, 308; in negotiation again with Chapuys, 309, 321, 330, 333; professed anxiety for Catherine's and Mary's safety, 311; Anne Boleyn's enmity to him, 334; statement of English objection to a Papal General Council, 339; interferes with the election of the Lord Mayor, 359; treatment of Chapuys's advances for resuming negotiations of the abandoned treaty, 394; contingent acceptance of the Emperor's proposals, 395; sounded by Chapuys as to Henry's possible separation from Anne, 400; negotiations continued, 403; his knowledge of Anne's infidelities, 413; informs the King, 415; report of the proceedings against Anne, 424; the commission of investigation of monastic establishments, 452; influence over some parliamentary elections, 454; a strong friend of Princess Mary, 455; her refusal of the Succession oath brings on Cromwell the King's displeasure, 457; expresses his belief that Mary will be declared his heir by the King, 460. Dacre of Naworth, Lord: tried for treason, and acquitted, 284. Darcy of Templehurst, Lord: his charges against Wolsey, 117 _sqq._; opinions on the Royal Supremacy, 186; scheme proposed by him to Chapuys for an insurrection against Henry, 289; intimates to Chapuys that the time of action has arrived, 298; eager for insurrection, 332, 346; comes to a violent end, 461. Darcy, Sir Arthur (Lord Darcy's son), 312. Darius, Sylvester, English agent at Valladolid, 82. Davalos, Rodrigo (Spanish lawyer): his special method of expediting the divorce suit at Rome, 232. Deceased husband's brother, marriage with, 24, 52. Deposition, the Bull of: not identical with the Brief of Execution, 353 _n._ Desmond, Earl of: offers his services to the Emperor against Henry, 269. Dispensing power, the Papal claim of, in matrimonial matters, 24, 33; various views of canon lawyers, 125; how it affected various Royal families, 141; a Cardinal's opinion of the alleged power, 160. Dublin, Archbishop of, slaughtered by Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, 285. Dunstable, Cranmer's court at, 220. Durham, Wolsey bishop of, 89. Dyngley, Sir Thomas, 59. Ecclesiastical Courts: their tyranny over the laity, 115. Edward IV.: his children by Elizabeth Grey declared by a Church court to be illegitimate, 22. Elections, parliamentary, limited extent of Crown influence over, 453 _sq._ Elizabeth, Princess: proposal for her marriage with the Duke of Angoulême, 331. Emmanuel, King (Portugal): married successively to two sisters and their niece, 141. English people: their sentiments on the contest between Henry and the Pope, 157, 167; wearied of the tyranny of Rome, and of the iniquities of Church courts and the clergy, 451. Esher, Wolsey's residence at, 132. Essex, Sir William, 60. Europe, general interest of, in the English Reformation movement, 13. Exeter, Marchioness of, 365 _sq._, 400. Exeter, Marquis of (grandson of Edward IV.: a possible claimant to succeed Henry VIII.), 23, 214, 457, 461. Falieri, Ludovico (Venetian ambassador to England): his descriptions of Queen Catherine and Henry VIII., 32; on female succession to the English crown, 123. Ferdinand (King of Hungary, and King of the Romans: Charles V.'s brother), 133, 342. Fisher, Bishop (Rochester): his first views about the divorce, 42; his emphatic denunciation of it, 106; objection to the Clergy Discipline Acts, 125; staunch in favour of Catherine, 151; his opposition to the Royal Supremacy overcome by threats, 163; determination to defend Catherine in Parliament, 184; committed to the custody of Bishop Gardiner, 212; released, 231; becomes leader of the Catholic conspiracy, 241; sent to the Tower, 249; again sent to the Tower for refusing to take the Succession oath, 268; created Cardinal, 338; committed for trial, 339; incriminating letters found on him, 341; trial and execution, 343. Fitzgerald, Lord Thomas: in negotiation with Chapuys, 269; in open rebellion against Henry, 285; want of means, 297; defeat, 301; receives the Pope's absolution for the murder of the Archbishop of Dublin, 332; a prisoner in the Tower, 355; executed, 361. Fitzwilliam, Sir William, 176, 417, 419, 457. Flemish artisans in London, 83. Floriano, Messer: his speech on Campeggio's arrival in London, 76. Foxe, Dr. (afterwards Bishop): his mission from Henry to Clement, 66; his reply to Chapuys's defence of his action for Catherine, 227. Francis I. (France), defeat and capture of, at Pavia, 25; his belief that Charles intended to transfer the Apostolic See to Spain, 46; doubts Wolsey's honesty in regard to Henry VIII., 95; negotiations with the Smalcaldic League against Charles V., 135; promise to arrange with the Pope if Henry cut the knot and married, 144; desires the Pope to delay sentence, 165; his compliments and presents to Anne Boleyn, 194; meeting with Henry, 195; encourages Henry to marry and break with the Pope, _ib._; fails to keep his apparent promise to Henry, 231; abandons Henry, 243; letter to Anne Boleyn, 250; last efforts at Rome, 256 _sq._; influence on him of the remembrance of Pavia, 278; desire to set up a Patriarchate of France, 279; promotes the election of Farnese (Paul III.), 291; anxious desire to take Milan, 331, 334; dubious position on the question of the Papal deposition of Henry, 349; fresh aspirations towards Milan, 362; policy towards the Bull of Deposition, 364; successful invasion of Italy, 449; defeats Charles in Provence, _ib._ Gardiner, Stephen, 66, 92, 131, 212, 424. General Council: suggested appeal to, for the settlement of difficulties, 166, 312, 320, 339; demanded of the Pope by France and England, 195. Ghinucci, Bishop (Worcester), 64; revenues of his see sequestrated, 238. Granvelle (Spanish Minister), 353, 409, 419, 438. Grey, Lord Leonard, 360. Greys, the family of, possible claimants to succeed Henry VIII., 23. Gueldres, Duke of, 405. Hannaert, Viscount (Charles's ambassador at Paris): promotes a treaty between Charles and Henry, 307; his report on Anne's infidelity, 419. Haughton, Prior (Charterhouse), executed for treason, 328. Henry VIII.: effect of religious prejudice in estimating his character: on Catholics, 4; High Churchmen, 5; Protestants, _ib._; his ministers and prelates must share in whatever was questionable in his acts, 8; his personal popularity, 9; permanent character of his legislation, 10; its benefits extended beyond England, 11; all his laws were submitted to his Parliament, 13; calumnies and libels against Henry in his lifetime, 14; recent discovery of unpublished materials for his history, 15; nature and especial value of these, 16 _sq._ Henry VIII.: prospects (in 1526) of a disputed succession through the lack of an heir, 21; primary reason for his ceasing to cohabit with Catherine, _ib._; irregularity of his marriage, 23; first mention of the divorce, 25; receives an appeal for help from Clement VII., 27; sends the Pope money, 28; the first public expression of a doubt as to Princess Mary's legitimacy, 31; Falieri's description of Henry, 32; the King before the Legatine court, 34; unpopularity of the divorce, 39; receives a letter from Charles urging him not to make the divorce question public, 44; Henry determines to choose a successor to Catherine, 47; attracted to Anne Boleyn, _ib._; endeavors to obtain from the Pope a dispensation to marry a second time, 51; _résumé_ of Henry's position, 52 _sq._; examination of the charge that Henry's connection with Anne was incestuous, 55 _sqq._; the Pope's advice that he should marry again and then proceed with the trial, 63; Henry joins with France in declaring war against Charles, 65; his statement of his case as laid before Clement at Orvieto, 67; Henry's letter to Anne Boleyn, 70; the Abbess of Wilton, 71; Henry's letter of complaint to Wolsey about the appointment of an unfitting person, 72; Campeggio's prearranged delays, 74; speech in the City, 81; resolves to let the trial proceed before Campeggio and Wolsey, 93; Henry's address to the Legates at Blackfriars, 101; refuses to accept Clement, the Emperor's prisoner, as judge of his cause, 102; his momentary inclination to abandon Anne, 111; reception of Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, 112; interpretation of the advocation of his case to Rome, 123; denunciation of the Pope and Cardinals, 126; approves of the _reforming_ side of Lutheranism, _ib._; consults foreign doctors on his cause, 127, 134, 136; continued liking for Wolsey, 129; a brief from Clement forbidding his marriage, 134; Henry invited by Francis to join the Smalcaldic League, 135; desire to recall Wolsey, 136; sends him down to his diocese, 139; the suggestion of a neutral place for the trial, 143; Henry again denounces the Pope and all his Court, 145; emphatically refuses to allow his cause to be tried at Rome, _ib._; revival of the Præmunire, 147; a step towards the break with the Papacy, 149; Henry's direct appeal to the Pope, 150; Clement's second brief against Henry's second marriage, 153; a struggle with the Pope inevitable, 157; clipping the claws of the clergy, 158; Henry declared Supreme Head of the Church of England, 159; receives the Papal brief forbidding his second marriage, 162; reply to the Nuncio's questions as to the nature of his new Papacy, 163; and to the Pope's appeal for aid against the Turks, 164, 178; disregards the Pope's threat of excommunication, 169; rejects the Pope's efforts at friendly negotiations, 178; alleged bribery by Henry's ambassador at Rome, 179; deliberateness of Henry's conduct of his policy, 182; his reply to Bishop Tunstal's letter against schism, 183; steps towards the toleration of heresy, 186; displeasure with More, _ib._; Annates Bill, 187; French advice to Henry to marry without waiting for sentence, 192; meeting with Francis, 193 _sqq._; the immediate outcome thereof, 195 _sq._; rumour of his secret marriage with Anne, 196; again threatened with excommunication, 198; Henry appoints Cranmer to Canterbury, 203; privately married to Anne Boleyn, _ib._; his law in restraint of the powers of bishops, 205; courteous conduct towards the Nuncio, 206; allows his marriage to be known, 208; preparations for possible war, _ib._; appeals to Rome forbidden, 209; _résumé_ of Henry's position (in regard to the divorce) towards the Pope, 218 _sq._; Cranmer's judgment, 220; Henry informs the Emperor of his marriage, 224; the formal announcement in the House of Lords, 225; discovers that he had been misled by Francis, 231, 235, 245; disappointment at the birth of a daughter, 238; order that the Pope was only to be styled "Bishop of Rome," 230; difficulty in disposing of Catherine, 251; Henry's fears of an insurrection, _ib._; the King's nomination to bishoprics sufficient, without requiring Papal Bulls, 256; the Papal sentence, 259; passage of the Act abolishing the Pope's authority in England, _ib._; refusal of Chapuys's demand to speak in Parliament for Catherine, 263; enforces the oath to the Succession Act, 267; orders more kindly treatment of Princess Mary, 271; the question of demanding the Succession oath from Catherine and Mary, 271 _sqq._; the King modifies the demand, 276; another meeting with Francis arranged, but postponed, 279; cooling of his feelings for Anne, 286; reported _nouvelles amours_, 287, 296; interference on behalf of Mary, 287; refuses to acknowledge any special authority in any Pope, 291; prospects of civil war, 301; anxiety for Mary in her second illness, 303; refuses Chapuys's request that she should be again placed under her mother's care, 304; his high opinion of Catherine's courage, 305; desire to be on good terms with Charles, 310; letters to Sir John Wallop for the Spanish Ambassador in Paris, 330; receives a letter from Charles, 335; threat in regard to "Cardinal" Fisher, 339; jealousy of the rival Powers, 350; enthusiastic reception during his progress to the Welsh borders, _ib._; slanders against him on the Continent, 359; interference in the election of Lord Mayor, _ib._; a period of danger for Henry, 361; opinion that Catherine and Mary must "bend or break," 365; interview with Chapuys during Catherine's mortal illness, 375; effect of Catherine's death, 382; rejoicings in the Palace, 383; Henry's treatment of Mary, 384; beginning of his dissatisfaction with Anne, 387; disappointment at her second miscarriage, 389; present from him to Mary of her mother's crucifix, 395; speculation on his remarriage, 398; rumours about Henry's partiality to Jane Seymour, 400; his legal position towards Anne Boleyn, 401; refuses the Emperor's proposal of reconciliation with Rome, 403; reception of Chapuys at Greenwich (Easter, 1536), 404 _sqq._; Henry's determined position towards Charles, 406 _sqq._; his report on the affair to his ambassador to the Emperor, 410; dissolution of Parliament, 413; informed of Anne's infidelities, orders an inquiry, 415; the trials resulting, 422 _sqq._; the trial of Anne, 425; the mystery of Anne's confession to Cranmer, 430 _sqq._; the Lambeth sentence, 431; Anne's execution: high personages present by the King's command, 435; competition from the Continent for his hand, 436; overtures for reconciliation from Rome, 440 _sq._; Jane Seymour, 441; speedy marriage with her, 444; Mary restored to favor, 445; Henry's declaration of neutrality in the war between Francis and Charles, 449; his return to the Roman communion expected by the Catholics, 450; determination to carry out the Reformation, 452; his difficult position towards the new Parliament, 453; his popularity strengthened by the condemnation of Anne, 454; strength of his affection for Mary, 455; his anger at her again refusing to take the Succession oath, 457; joy at her acquiescence, 458; hopeless of further offspring, 460; close of the first Act of the Reformation, 460 _sqq._ Husee, John: his letter on Anne Boleyn to Lord and Lady Lisle, 422; on Henry's seclusion after Anne Boleyn's execution, 444. Hussey, Lady, 457. Hussey, Lord, 288, 334, 461. Illegitimacy, treatment of, by the Church of Rome, 22. Inteville, M. d': his compound mission to England, 423, 437. Ireland, rebellion in: proofs that it was part of a Papal holy war, 285. Italian conjuror, the, 294. Italian League, the, 28. Jaen, Cardinal of, 269. James V. of Scotland, a possible claimant to succeed Henry VIII., 23. Jordan, Isabella (Prioress of Wilton), 71. Julius II., Pope: his dispensation for Henry VIII.'s first marriage, 53; defects in his Bull of dispensation to Henry, 83; alleged brief correcting these, 83, 87; a Roman opinion of the nullity of his dispensation, 160. Kimbolton, Catherine's residence at, 252. Kingston, Sir W. (Constable of the Tower), 300, 431, 435, 443. Kite, Bishop (Carlisle), 443. Knight, Dr. (secretary to Henry VIII.): his special mission to Rome, 51. Laity, English middle class: their feelings towards Queen Catherine and towards the Church, 79. Lambeth sentence, the: the nullity of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn, 431 _sq._ Langey, Sieur de: special envoy to Anne Boleyn from Francis, 194. Lee, Archbishop (York), 176. Legatine Commission, the (Campeggio's), 67 _sqq._, 74, 76. Legatine court, Wolsey's, 34. Legend, invulnerability of, 61. Legends, historic, 1 _sqq._ Liberty, spiritual, of the world, won by Henry's work in the Reformation, 463. Liège, Cardinal of: suggested as a judge in the divorce cause, 144. Lincolnshire rebellion, 460. Lingard, Dr.: his interpretation of Wolsey's suggested Papal dispensation for Henry VIII.'s second marriage, 55. Llandaff, Queen Catherine's confessor Bishop of, 64. Lorraine, Cardinal, 46. Louis XII.: his method of settling a matrimonial difficulty, 188. Luther, Henry VIII.'s partial sympathy with, 126. Lutheran advances to Henry VIII., 91. Lutheranism: its rapid spread in England, 255, 280, 297. Lutherans, German: their tacit encouragement by Charles V., 27, 35; his fear of exciting them, 133; decidedly opposed to Henry's divorce, 154. Mai, Micer: Imperial agent at Rome, 89; resentment of a slight put upon the Emperor, 90; assent to Lutheran political objections to Rome, 91; his opinion of the Pope and his councillors, 103; and of Salviati's instructions to Campeggio, _ib._; reports on the mission from Henry to Clement, 143; suggestion of a General Council to settle difficulties, 166; obtains from Clement concessions as to reunion of Lutherans, 175; distracted with the Pope's evasions, 179; charges English ambassador with bribery, 179, 191. Manor of the More, Wolsey's residence at, 116. Martyrology: the Protestant longer and no less honourable than the Catholic, 463. Mary, Princess: proposed marriage of, with Francis I. or with one of his sons, 29; suggested proposal to marry her to her father's natural son (Duke of Richmond), 79; separated from her mother, 174; her father's love of her, _ib._; the Emperor's desire to protect her rights, 200; allowed again to live with her mother, 234; deprived of the title of "Princess," 240; letter to her father after his marriage with Anne, 254; attached to the establishment of her sister Elizabeth, 252; anecdotes of the King's affection for her, 252 _sq._; her determined attitude, 261, 266; "shows her teeth" against the Succession oath, 271 _sq._; has an alarming illness, 286; belief that her life is threatened, 287; project to convey her out of England, 300; another serious illness, 302; consternation of the physicians, 303; reality of her personal danger, 317; fresh plans for her escape, 319; removed from Greenwich to Eltham, 320; further plans, _ib._; petition to the Emperor to "apply the remedy," 355; her friends desire to have her married to the Dauphin, 358; reply to Anne Boleyn's friendly message after Catherine's death, 383; discovery of a letter about her from Anne to Mrs. Shelton, 388; proposal to take the Succession oath with a mental reservation, 390; another plan of escape, 391; rejoiced at the prospect of her father's separation from Anne, 399; received back into her father's favor, 445; question of her marriage, 446; her popularity increased in consequence of the machinations of Anne, 455; the question of the Succession oath revived, 456; by Chapuys's advice she submits (with a secret protest), 457; delight of the King and Queen, 458; her real feelings not disguised, _ib._; unable to obtain a Papal absolution for the "secret protest" connected with her oath, 460. Maximilian, Emperor: his high opinion of the English people, 20. Medici, Catherine de' (niece of Clement VII.), marriage of, with the Duke of Orleans, 243. "Melun, the eels of" (proverb), 226. Mendoza, Inigo de (Bishop of Burgos), mission of, from Spain to France and England, 29, 32, 34, 38; offers Wolsey the bribe of the Papacy, 39; instructed to offer other bribes to win Wolsey's friendship to the Emperor, 45; his first mention of Anne Boleyn, 48; his belief that Wolsey was the instigator of the divorce, 49; reports to Charles on the Legatine Commission, 75; mistaken estimate of English national opinion, 82; recalled: his farewell interview with Henry, 97. Milan: the question of succession reopened, 362; treaty prepared by Spain for settlement of the dispute, 393. Molza, Gerardo: his account of Campeggio's reception in England, 76. Monastic orders: their depraved condition, 325; preachers of insurrection, 326; the "very stews of unnatural crime," 350; continued proofs of their iniquitous condition, 452. Money, comparative value of, in Henry VIII.'s time, 89, 117. Montague, Lord, 305, 461. Montfalconet (Charles's maître d'hôtel): his report to Charles on Catherine's desire for a sentence, 188. Moor Park: Catherine's residence at, 174. More, Sir Thomas: made Lord Chancellor, 120; lack of sympathy with advanced Reformers, 131; enforces heresy laws against Lutherans, 154; horrified at the King's claim to Supremacy over the Church, he resigns the Chancellorship, 163; statement before the Lords of the opinions of Universities on the divorce, 166; his chancellorship distinguished for heresy-prosecutions, 186; resigns his office, 188; sent to the Tower for refusing to take the Succession oath, 268; his prophecy in regard to Anne Boleyn's fate, 329; committed for trial, 339; sketch of his position, 343; trial, 344; execution, 345. Mortmain Acts: measures to prevent their evasion, 185. Mountjoy, Lord, 214. Mythic element, the, influence of, in history, 1. Nixe, Bishop (Norwich): imprisoned for burning a heretic, 255 _sq._ Norfolk, Duke of (uncle of Anne Boleyn), joins in an appeal to the Pope to concede the divorce, 84; opposed to Anne's marriage with the King, 111; sentiments about the divorce, 114; made President of the Council, 120; his opinion on the absolute need of the divorce (1529), 128; condemnation of the Pope's position in the matter, 129; suspicions of Wolsey's possible return to power, 129, 131 _sq._; his statement to Chapuys of the necessity of Henry having made succession, 136; suggests the Cardinal of Liège and the Bishop of Tarbes as judges in the divorce cause, 143; cautions Chapuys against introducing Papal briefs into England, 154; firm stand against the threat of excommunication, 164; admiration of Catherine and dislike of Anne Boleyn, 167; heads a deputation of Peers and Bishops to Catherine, 170; consultation with Peers on restraint of Papal jurisdiction, 186; his courtesies to the Papal Nuncio, 206; interview with Chapuys before attending the meeting of the Pope and King Francis at Nice, 230; denunciation of Rome and Romanism, 250; expected that Henry would submit to the successor of Clement in the Papacy, 291; withdrawal from Court, 305; present at the execution of Charterhouse monks, 328. Norris, Sir Henry, 255; present at the execution of Charterhouse monks, 328; a paramour of Anne Boleyn, 416 _sq._, 418, 419; execution, 429. Northumberland, Earl of (Henry Percy), alleged secret marriage of, with Anne Boleyn, 47; disgust at Anne's arrogance, 297. Nun of Kent; disclosures connected with, 195, 265; the effect of the "revelations," 247. Observants, the General of the, Charles V.'s guardian of the Pope, 52, 62, 68. Orleans, Duke of: marriage with Catherine de' Medici, 243. Ortiz, Dr., Catherine's special representative at Rome, 159, 165, 176, 178 _sq._, 181, 189, 194, 199, 259, 261, 351 _sqq._, 361, 367, 373. Orvieto, imprisonment of Clement VII. at, 52, 62. Oxford, Earl of, 214. Paget, Lord: his description of Chapuys's character, 112. Papal curse, inefficiency of, in modern days, 260. Paris, University of: decision in favor of the divorce, 142. Parliaments, annual, introduced by Henry, 13. Parliament summoned after the failure of the Blackfriars court, 110; object of the meeting, 120; impeachment of Wolsey, 121; reform of Church courts, and Clergy Discipline Acts, 125; effect of Clement's delays on, 151; treatment (session 1531) of the Universities' opinions on the divorce, 166; third session (Jan. 1532): formation of an Opposition against violent anti-clerical measures, 182; measures passed in restraint of clerical claims, 185; the Opposition (Peers and Prelates) appeal to Chapuys for armed intervention by the Emperor, 225; the Act of Supremacy, 292; dissolution, 413; a new Parliament speedily summoned after Anne's execution, 453; no account left of the debates in this Parliament, 454; the new Act of Succession, 455. Patriarchate, a new, proposed, with Wolsey as its head, 38. Paul III. (Farnese): elected Pope as successor to Clement VII., 290; favourably disposed towards Henry, 291; restrained by Charles from issuing the Brief of Execution, 318; acknowledgment (when Cardinal) of Henry's right to a divorce, 333; prevents the treaty between Charles and Henry, 337; creates Fisher a Cardinal, 338; exasperation at the news of the execution of Fisher, 348; difficulties of desired retaliation, 349; delay in issuing the censures, 351; reasons therefor, 352; desire that Catherine should apply for the Brief of Execution, 356; thinks of declaring Mary Queen in place of her "deposed" father, 358; annoyance at the failure of Fitzgerald's rebellion, 360; thinks himself a new Hildebrand, 362; summary of his Bull against Henry, 363; delay in its issue, 367; a warm debate in Consistory, 368 _sqq._; professes kindly feelings to Henry after Catherine's death, 403; reception of the news of Anne's fall, 439; overtures for reconciliation, 440 _sq._; eager solicitations to Henry to return to the Roman communion, 454. Paulet, Sir William, 420. Pavia, political results of the defeat of Francis I. at, 25 _sqq._ Peers, English: their petition to Clement to grant Henry's petition, 142. "Penny Gleek," 443. Percy, Henry (Earl of Northumberland): his statement that Anne Boleyn meant to poison the Princess Mary, 253; swears that there was never contract of marriage between him and Anne, 419. Petition of the Commons (1529), 115. Peto, Cardinal, 60. Pilgrimage of Grace, the, 59, 460. Pole, Geoffrey (brother of Reginald), 295, 416. Pole, Reginald: his manifesto accompanying Paul III.'s Bull deposing Henry VIII., 56; his statement of Henry's desire to break with Anne Boleyn, 111; suggested marriage with Princess Mary, 241, 295. Pommeraye, La (French ambassador in London): his denunciation of "that devil of a Pope," 181; recommendation that Henry should follow Louis XII.'s example, 188, 192. Præmunire, 118, 147; proclamation for its enforcement, 148; embarrassments caused by its revival, 164. Prejudice, influence of, in judging historical characters, 2 _sqq._ Provisors, the Statute of, 122; its revival, 149. Reformation, English: at first political rather than doctrinal, 6; its characteristic excellence, 7. Reunion of Christendom, Charles V.'s efforts for, 175. Richmond, Duke of (_cr._ 1525), natural son of Henry VIII., 22, 395; present at the execution of Charterhouse monks, 328; educated as a Prince, but his position not recognized by the law, 453; his popularity and resemblance to his father, 455; Surrey's proposal that the Crown should be settled on him, 455; his death, 459. Rochford, Lord (Anne Boleyn's brother): mission to Paris to announce his sister's marriage, 208; present at the execution of Charterhouse monks, 328; specially attentive to Chapuys, 404; refused the Garter, 415; takes part in the tournament (1536), 416; arrested, 418; charged with incest with his sister, 420; his trial, 426 _sq._; Chapuys's account of his dying speech, 428; the real speech, _ib._ Rome, sack of, by the Duke of Bourbon, 35. Royal Supremacy, meaning of, 159; accepted by Convocation, 186. Russell, Sir John, sent with money to Clement VII., 28. St. Albans, Wolsey abbot of, 89, 116. St. John the Baptist and Herod, Bishop Fisher's allusion to, in the matter of the divorce, 106. Salisbury, Countess of, 23, 241, 461. Salviati, Cardinal, 46, 88, 103, 233. Sampson, Dean (of the Chapel Royal): speech against the Pope's claims over England, 274. Sanctuary: felonious clerks deprived of the right of, 454. Sandys, Lord (Henry's chamberlain), 297. Sanga (Clement VII.'s secretary), 27, 80, 96. Sens, Cardinal (Chancellor), 46. Seymour, Sir Edward, 405. Seymour, Jane: first association of her name with Henry, 400; her marriage, 444; great popularity, 445; kindness to Mary, 455, 458. Sforza, Duke of Milan, death of, 362. Shelton Mrs. (Anne Boleyn's aunt), 252, 262, 267, 269 _sq._, 320, 387, 392. Six Articles Bill, the, 7. Smalcaldic League, the, 135, 255. Smeton, Mark (paramour of Anne Boleyn), 415, 416, 419; execution, 429. Sorbonne, the: suggested reference of the divorce cause to, 129. Soria, Lope de (Minister of Charles V. at Genoa), his letter on the sack of Rome, 36, 43. Spain: the Cabinet's discussion of Catherine's position after Cranmer's judgment, 221 _sqq._; their decision, 223; debates on proposed treaty between Charles and Henry, 307, 335. Spaniards, the: their atrocities in Italy, 29, 35. Statute Book, the: its historic aspect, 13. Stokesley, Bishop (London), 134, 416. Succession to the English throne, danger of a disputed, 21, 79, 123; various possible claimants if Henry VIII. had no heir, 23. Succession, Act of, 264; the oath to it enforced, 267; debate in Council as to its enforcement on Catherine and Mary, 271 _sqq._; (after Anne's death) the discussion of, 454 _sq._ Suffolk, Duke of: his mission from Henry to France, 94; Chapuys's report on his sentiments about the divorce, 114; made Vice-President of the Council, 120. Supremacy, Act of (explaining in detail the meaning of the Royal Supremacy), 292 _sq._; enforced, 327 _sqq._ Sussex, Lord: one of a deputation of nobles to Catherine at Moor Park, 176; proposes to Parliament (after Anne's execution) that the Duke of Richmond should have the succession to the Crown, 455. Tarbes, Bishop of (afterwards Cardinal Grammont): his mission to England from France, 30; the first publicly to question the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, 31, 81; (ambassador to Clement VII.) his statement of Clement's real opinion on the divorce, 134; suggested by Duke of Norfolk as a judge in the divorce cause, 143; caution to Clement as to the consequences of his losing England, 168; mission to Rome to demand a General Council, 195; a proposal to Clement apparently in Henry's name, 244. Talboys, Sir Gilbert: married the mother of Henry VIII.'s illegitimate son, 22. Throgmorton, Sir George: his statements about Henry VIII., Lady Boleyn and her daughters, 59 _sqq._ Throgmorton, Michael, 59. Toison d'or (French herald), 65. Tournon, Cardinal: his special mission to Rome to demand a General Council, 195, 231. Treasons, the Statute of, 456. Tunstal, Bishop (Durham): his letter to Henry on the Royal Supremacy, 182; speech in favor of the Succession Act, 273 _sq._; mission to Catherine on the subject, 275. Wallop, Sir John (English representative at Paris), 306, 373, 424. Warham, Archbishop (Canterbury), assessor to Wolsey as Legate, 34; doubtful as to the divorce, 42; afterwards in favour of it, 142; his halting opinions 151; protest against the Royal Supremacy, 183; dying protest against the anti-papal legislation, 187. Weston, Sir Francis, paramour of Anne Boleyn, 417 _sqq._, 422 _sq._; execution, 429. Wilton, the state of the convent at, 71; Henry VIII.'s letters on the appointment of its Abbess, 72. Wiltshire, Earl of (Sir Thomas Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's father), 111, 134; one of the English deputies at the coronation of Charles V., 134; withdraws his opposition to his daughter's marriage with the King, 208; present at the execution of the Charterhouse monks, 328. Winchester, Wolsey bishop of, 89, 116. Wolsey, Cardinal: his first efforts to promote the divorce of Henry, 25; eager to maintain the Papacy, 26; his desire of an Anglo-French alliance, 29; a pensionary of the Emperor, _ib._; brings the question of divorce before his Legatine court, 34; his policy after the Sack of Rome, 37; the proposal to make Wolsey Archbishop of Rouen and Patriarch, 38; refuses the Emperor's offered bribe of the Papacy, 39; mission to Paris, 41; interview with Bishop Fisher, 42; further bribes offered him by Charles, 45; signs the French Cardinals' protest against the Pope's captivity, 46; distrust at the King's selection of Anne Boleyn, 49; at first endeavors to check the divorce, 50; sends a draft dispensation for the Pope's signature, 53; the wording thereof, 54; consultations with Campeggio, 79; the secret decretal, 84, 88; chances of Wolsey's election to the Papacy, 88; his boundless wealth, _ib._; letter to Campeggio on Catherine's position, 93; in doubt about the progress of his French policy, 94; foresight of coming events, 97; the Legatine court at Blackfriars, 99; delays, 105; effect of Bishop Fisher's interposition, 106; Campeggio refuses to pass sentence, 107; despatch to the Commissioners at Rome, _ib._; causes of the animosity that broke out against him, 116; the manifold sources of his wealth, _ib._; his son, 117; Lord Darcy's list of complaints against him, _ib._; details of his fall, 120 _sqq._; hopes of return to power, 131; obliged to resign the sees of Winchester and St. Albans, 132; allowed a grant by way of pension, _ib._; becomes the friend of Catherine and the secret adviser of Chapuys, 138; starts to visit his diocese, 139; his death at Leicester Abbey, 140. Worcester, Lady, the first accuser of Anne, 415. Wriothesley Chronicle, the, 428, 432. Wyatt, Sir Henry, 421. Wyatt, Sir Thomas (the poet), one of the lovers of Anne Boleyn, 47, 421. York, Archbishop (Lee): mission, with Tunstal, to Catherine about the Succession Act, 275. York, Wolsey archbishop of, 89, 116. Yorkshire rebellion, 460. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. Superscripted letters are shown in {brackets}. The following misprints have been corrected: "communiated" corrected to "communicated" (page 37) "thoughout" corrected to "throughout" (page 39) "resource" corrected to "recourse" (page 51) "againt" corrected to "against" (page 84) "been" corrected to "be" (page 291) "as sure" corrected to "assure" (page 302) "longed" corrected to "longer" (page 451) "nuanimons" corrected to "unanimous" (index) "Cramer" corrected to "Cranmer" (index) "Winton" corrected to "Wilton" (index) Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained. Punctuation has been corrected without note.